Tribeca: "Sleeping With Other People"

Tribeca ends tonight but we'll have a few more reviews for you as the team finishes up. Here's Joe Reid...

After the phenomenal success of Bachelorette (creatively if not commercially; I'm still fuming that it never got the promotional push it deserved), I expected Leslye Headland's follow-up film to have that same dark-heart-with-teeth approach to the tried and true "can men and women be friends" comedy. Intriguingly, a few things about that statement turned out to be not the case. The humor in Sleeping with Other People is still incredibly sharp, but where Bachelorette was as hard as nails when it came to female singlehood in a wedding-drenched world, Sleeping with Other People puts its beating heart on display.

Which isn't to say Headland has gone soft. [More...]

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Likability

Hello, lovelies. Beau here, hoping you all have had a fantastic weekend. Whether that involved arguing over the season finale of Girls, shielding your eyes from Halle Berry’s hair in The Call, or just readying yourselves for the onslaught of leprechauns and green colored ale that is St. Patrick's Day, I hope it’s been an enjoyable one before heading back into the work week.

A lot has been said about Lena Dunham and Girls. I don’t have a strong desire at this point to rehash the plot details and synopses of the past episode or the entire season for that matter (though I did that for the finale of season one). But, for myself, being an avid viewer of Girls and eagerly anticipating the next step in Ms. Dunham’s career, the most discomforting element of all the criticism and controversy surrounding the show is that there is particular attention being paid to the characters "likability".

This concern isn’t strictly limited to Dunham or Girls. The "unlikable!" charge has been levied at multiple television programs and films these past couple of years, as though whether or not you liked the primary set of characters, or the supporting ones, dictated whether or not the work as a whole was working or not.

HUH?

Regan. Eve. Maya.

I remember being pretty put off, frankly, this past summer when several online pundits and reviewers were slandering Leslye Headland’s Bachelorette for this very reason. more...

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Best Celebrity Tweets on Globe Night

I ♥ celebrities. Always have. Always will. Even when I find them insufferable I have to stargaze. Having met so many of them now I'm fully aware that they are only people just like you and me that but for one lucky break or important connection or family wealth or extraordinary quirk of DNA or once-in-a-lifetime talent or deals with Beelzebub or being in the right place at the right time or any number of reasons, they'd be on this side of the 'net obsessing on celebrities just like you and I. Well, actually in the age of twitter, the lines are ever blurring and who is on what side anyway. Everyone loves celebrity. Even celebrities. Here's a sampling of some celebrity or celebrity-adjacent tweets I enjoyed from this year's very memorable Golden Globes. 

ZACHARY LEVI (Chuck)

I wanna be the illegitimate offspring of Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell in my next life.

— Zachary Levi (@ZacharyLevi) January 14, 2013

Wiig and Ferrell did really have the crowd roaring. Wiig is dependably hilarious but they worked so well as a team riffing on one single joke across five nominees. (P.S. After Tangled, shouldn't Hollywood be asking Levi to work in musicals?)

MATT OSWALT (Puddin' strip)

Golden Globes isn't over until Tommy Lee Jones is ziplocked and put back in the freezer between Mickey Rourke and some venison

— Matt Oswalt (@Puddinstrip) January 14, 2013

LOL

Tommy Lee jones was enormously grumpy. It's true, internet. It's true. 

 

more after the jump...

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Curio: Leslye's Film Life

Alexa here. There's nothing I love more than reading a fan memoir, or more adequately put, a life story as told through beloved music or film.  Some of Pauline Kael's reviews read that way to me. I also enjoyed Nick Hornby's Songbook.  Right now I'm reading The Film That Changed My Life, which compiles some amazing interviews with directors about that favorite, pivotal film that changed things. I was similarly moved reading Leslye's great post, which reminded me of how films have shaped me, and also how my life shaped my viewing of certain films. Being at my most depressed helped add to my love of The Big Lebowski, as it finally lifted me from the funk. And seeing Rosemary's Baby during puberty, when I felt my body was betraying me, was a most visceral experience. 

Since mine is an arts column, I thought in honor of Leslye's coming-of-age tales I'd post some visual homages to her film signposts. (And if you're wondering why The Philadelphia Story is missing, it's because someone needs to get on designing a good indie poster for that one, stat!)

Rushmore lithograph by Cameron Thorne.

Love and Death by Richard Noble and Rita Sales Luís.

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Behind the Scene with Lizzy & Adam in "Bachelorette"...

...Or, 'How Public Transportation, Running Out of Time and "Party Down" Created Two Perfect Movie Minutes'

-by Leslye Headland

If there’s one thing I learned making a movie, it’s that every frame has a pretty epic story behind it. Here’s one about the scene with Lizzy and Adam on the bed in Bachelorette.

In 2007, during a bus ride from Beverly Hills back to Hollywood (I didn’t have a car for two years), The Proclaimers “500 Miles” came on my iPod shuffle. It was a song that meant so much to me when I was little (Benny & Joon!) but I hadn't heard it in forever. I decided to put it in the scene where my pokerfaced ex-lovers, Gena (Lizzy Caplan) and Clyde (Adam Scott), reconnect. There’s nothing like nostalgia to melt a cynical heart.

Fast forward to 2011. I’m in my first week of shooting. I’m on set with Lizzy and Adam. [Click for More]

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