If that Oz movie with James Franco didn't provide the witchy horror you hoped for, try this new music video by Franco. It features the infamous occult director Kenneth Anger as a satanic priest. The music is by Franco's musical duo, Daddy, but we are mostly interested in the half-naked people wearing animal masks in a dark chamber of mystery.
Small world. I have this nightmare about James Franco regularly.
Jami Attenberg: I have to preface this by saying I was 75% predisposed to like Eat, Pray, Love. I enjoyed the book version a great deal, I practice yoga and meditation and I love food porn in movies.
Jami: The other 25% was Julia Roberts.
Maura Johnston: Oh Julia.
Jami: She wearies me. She talks about her husband too much in interviews.
Maura: I like her, but I think 67% of my predisposition toward her is because of My Best Friend's Wedding.
Jami: She never ever has any girlfriends in any of her movies. She doesn't do well with women.
Jami: And yet she is America's sweetheart.
Disney just put out this big expensive "spiritual prequel" (who came up with that line?) to the Wizard of Oz. That 1939 Judy Garland vehicle was one of the most groundbreaking, bizarre films of any era, pushing ideas about what could be done with movies to the very edge and also nearly killing two cast members along the way. Campy as it may be, and dated, still: it was released in 1939? Two years previous, people were still commuting from Germany to South America… by way of zeppelin. (I mean, in 1939, Gandhi was still trying to get Hitler to chill out.) So: this movie is pretty amazing for something [...]
Haha, dude. They are so baked, right? (There's more, if you're up for that.) Also: Shit My Writing Teacher Says, coming soon to CBS. I would totally watch this at 2 a.m. on public access.
"I was recently treated to an early prototype of a dessert that Marina Abramović, the 'grandmother of performance art,' created with the pastry chef Dominique Ansel." -James Franco, in the Wall Street Journal.
There was a moment, early on filming day for the pivotal scene in Barney's Version, when Paul Giamatti looked to me like an athlete preparing for a big game. As nattily dressed extras milled around the ballroom of Montreal’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, Giamatti, freshly planted in your father’s powder-blue tux, stood by the breakfast table around the corner. The producer, Robert Lantos, greeted him, and the two chatted a bit about the day ahead. Then Lantos, an imposing Hungarian-Canadian, abruptly gripped Giamatti’s shoulders, straightened him up, and gave him what looked like a Knute Rockne–style pep talk. Win one for the Richler, kid.
With that, Giamatti strode to the ballroom, [...]
1. At the Toronto International Film Festival the other night, the woman directly in front of me in the rush line said she was an aspiring filmmaker. She was wearing a striped button up shirt, pleated khakis, and a blue nylon shell. She carried a thermos. If I had to guess her age, I would probably end up somewhere around 65. She wanted a free ticket, she told the volunteer wrangler. To anything. The wrangler, who was at the lower end of middle-age and clearly relished the authority she'd been temporarily granted, fiddled constantly with her headset to signal her importance as she listened to this.
"You have to [...]
Left: Peter Orlovsky and his lover Alan Ginsberg, 1957. Right: Aaron Tveit and James Franco, as Orlovsky and Ginsberg, 2009.
