AFTER DARK 37

Movie News After Dark: Brian De Palma Keeps It Naughty and Bustin’ Makes Steve Jobs Feel Good What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly column that has been returned to the hands of its rightful owner, for now. But before we get to my triumphant return after a week of vegging out and eating BBQ, lets give a round of applause to Nathan Adams, Luke Mullen, Kate Erbland, Kevin Carr and Robert Fure, who did a wonderful job last week during guest week. I don’t know about you, but I lizzed a few times while reading their work. Lets hope that I can bring the same verve to this week’s return. We begin, of course, with naughty bits… Several new images from Brian De Palma’s Passion this past week, courtesy of the Cannes Film Festival. That includes the above image, depicting a very devious, scantily clad Rachel McAdams burning a hole in my heart of hearts. It’s the eyes that do it. And the stockings. Definitely the stockings. Over on his Candler Blog, Jonathan Poritsky explains why Aaron Sorkin is the right guy to pen a Steve Jobs biopic (that won’t star Ashton Kutcher). He goes well beyond my own general argument, that Aaron Sorkin is the right guy to pen just about any movie. Including Peter Berg’s upcoming Battleship sequel. Over at The AV Club, Noel Murray finds unending ways to disappoint me. His review of Hysteria, a film about the birth of the vibrator (I told you this evening’s column would get naughty) is less than enthusiastic. It’s a brisk, entertaining read, but it doesn’t bode well for a film that I had high hopes for. Oh well, we’ll always have Maggie Gyllenhaal in Secretary. Devin Faraci at Badass Digest writes long and hard about how The Avengers defeated irony and cynicism in its run toward being a billion dollar movie. As always, he delivers a great read, expounding upon all the ways that The Avengers has become one of the most positively charged ions in the atomic structure of cinema in years. It’s nice, this happiness and optimism. Fact: I am absolutely in love with this latest Prometheus poster: New Yorker film critic Richard Brody has submitted his list and reasoning for his part of the Sight & Sound Ten Greatest Films of All Time poll, citing the likes of The Great Dictator and Hitchcock’s Marnie. With his epic beard, Brody is not to be ignored. His list is also a great place to start filling up your Netflix queue. The Atlantic has a great article from Jason Apuzzo and Govindini Murty about this summer’s battle between two ways of filming, a discussion about the high number of major summer films still being shot on film, rather than digital. This includes the two biggest films of summer, Joss Whedon’s The Avengers and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. As you may recall, we’ve mentioned the folks at Letterboxd numerous times. As a user of their service, I’m a big fan. Well, now it seems as if the community at Letterboxd is holding an online film festival using Netflix Instant to great a massive shared experience. With films like The Wind that Shakes the Barley and Transsiberian on the docket, there’s no way they’ll go wrong. In an appearance at this past weekend’s Hero Complex Film Festival in LA, Peter Weller explained why modern movies can’t replicate the morality of Robocop. “It makes you laugh and cry and moves you, and it’s hysterical and horrible and all those unbelievable things at once.” Also, “Bitches leave…” (I added that last part). The fine gentleman critic James Rocchi has been hard at work with his Cannes Diary, including an entry entitled How to Survive Cannes on Several Hundred Euros a Day, a great read for anyone interested in the way the job of film critic/blogger/psuedo-critic/non-critic works at a major festival on the other side of the big old ocean. Nerdist’s Perry Michael Simon asks, Will You Watch a Dan Harmon-less Community? This is, of course, in response to the fact that Dan Harmon was unceremoniously let go from the popular show that he created late last week. Harmon followed the news with his own very humorous, heartfelt blog post on the matter. To answer the question: yes, I will still watch. But I will go into said viewings with the understanding that it probably won’t be the same. And that’s going to be sad. Did you guys know that Steve Jobs was once a Ghostbuster? Well, sort of.