Quentin Tarantino’s Top 11 Films of 2011

01.16.12 Written by Vince Mancini

Quentin Tarantino recently released his eleven favorite films of 2011, and thanks to cocaine, he was able to watch all eleven of them in just under 40 minutes. Probably the biggest surprise is that Paul WS Anderson’s Three Musketeers made his top eleven. I still haven’t seen it, but I know it involves pirate ships carried by zeppelins shooting cannons at each other, and I’m a big proponent of the idea that at a certain level, “stupid” becomes “brilliant.”

The other suprise is that he has Drive listed among the “nice try” movies, which… I guess… means… he thought it could’ve been better? I don’t know, but he mentions it alongside Drive Angry, Hanna, and Real Steel, which aren’t exactly flattering company.

Quentin Tarantino’s official Top 11 of 2011

1. Midnight in Paris
2. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
3. Moneyball
4. The Skin I Live In
5. X-Men: First Class
6. Young Adult
7. Attack the Block
8. Red State
9. Warrior
10. The Artist / Our Idiot Brother (tie)
11. The Three Musketeers

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The 15 Biggest Flops of 2011

01.05.12 Written by Vince Mancini

Pictured: They don't know how she does it.

And now for your daily dose of easy Schadenfreude, the top 15 flops of 2011. While it’s easy and fun to tap dance on the grave of most of these ass piles (pour a little rum out for The Rum Diary – *I* liked it), remember: justice won’t truly be served until everyone involved in the making of New Year’s Eve gets shot out of a cannon.

1. Mars Needs Moms
Studio: Disney
Release Date: March 11, 2011
Budget: $150 million
Worldwide Gross: $39 million

2. Sucker Punch
Studio: Warner Bros.
Stars: Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens
Release Date: March 25, 2011
Budget: $82 million
Worldwide gross: $89.8 million

3. Arthur
Studio: Warner Bros.
Stars: Russell Brand, Helen Mirren, Jennifer Garner
Release Date: April 8, 2011
Budget: $40 million-plus
Worldwide Gross: $45.7 million

4. Green Lantern
Studio: Warner Bros.
Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively
Release Date: June 17, 2011
Budget: $200 million
Worldwide Gross: $219.9 million

5. Cowboys & Aliens
Studio: DreamWorks/Universal
Stars: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford
Release Date: July 29, 2011
Budget: $163 million
Worldwide Gross: $178.8

6. Glee: The 3D Concert Movie
Studio: Fox
Stars: Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, Darren Criss
Release Date: Aug. 12
Budget: $9 million
Worldwide Gross: $18.7 millon

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Shut up, Joe Wright.

04.04.11 Written by Vince Mancini

Joe-Wright-wonderconOver the weekend, director Joe Wright spoke to a crowd at WonderCon in San Francisco, and among other things, he heroically criticized Sucker Punch for its shameless objectification of women.  And Joe Wright should know a little something about terrible movies set entirely in the protagonist’s imagination, he directed Atonement.

“For me, one of the main issues in terms of women’s place in society and feminism is the sexual objectification of women,” said Wright, speaking at Wondercon in L.A. on Saturday. “That’s something that feminists in the ’70s tried to fight against but has been totally lost in the 21st century consumer-celebrity world. So for me, when I look at the poster for Sucker Punch it seems actually incredibly sexist, because it is sexually objectifying women regardless of if they can shoot you or not.”

Yes, it takes a real hero to finally take a stand against Zack Snyder’s sleazy whorephanage fantasy that everyone hated and hardly anyone saw.  But tell us, Joe, is bullying bad?  What of breast cancer?  Is this terrible scourge stealing away our mothers and sisters?  And please, be sure to phrase your answer in the form of semi-meaningless, PC buzzwords.

“I have a kind of immediate, knee-jerk reaction to such iconography,” Wright continued. “I remember when the Spice Girls came out in the mid-’90s and it was all about girl power, but one of them was dressed as a baby doll, do you know what I mean? That isn’t girl power, that isn’t feminism. That’s marketing bullsh*t. And I find it very, very alarming.”

You’re right, this terrible objectification is keeping our western women down, as evidenced by young women out-earning their male counterparts in 147 of America’s 150 biggest cities.  We should cover their flesh and start treating them better, like they do in Afghanistan.  That would be so much more “feminist.”  It’s nice to finally see someone who’s against all this marketing bullsh*t.  Wait, why are you at WonderCon, again?  It’s not to promote a movie, is it?

Wright’s Hanna, in which a totally not-scantily clad young girl kicks a bunch of ass, opens on Friday.

Oh right, that.

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A Jelly Bean-Pooping CGI Bunny is Your #1 Movie of 2011

04.04.11 Written by Vince Mancini
Put the bunny... back in the box

Put the bunny... back in the box

Over the weekend, Hop, the Russell Brand-voiced CGI extravaganza from the director of Alvin and the Chipmunks, grossed an estimated $38.1 million, just beating out Rango for the highest-grossing opening weekend of 2011 so far.  You see? THIS IS WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS, AMERICA.

It just goes to show that kids’ movies are like country music: there is no such thing as too much pandering.  But even Hop‘s big win still lagged behind both Alvin and the Chipmunks AND Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel, and even inflated 3D and IMAX ticket prices couldn’t keep overall business from falling 28% below the same weekend last year (which opened Clash of the Titans, Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too, and The Last Song).  I’d like to say it’s because Hollywood has released virtually nothing but terrible movies this year, but that seems like a preposterous statement on a weekend when a CGI-bunny that sh-ts jelly beans earned forty million dollars, doesn’t it.

Oh, and Sucker Punch?  Thanks for asking.  It fell almost 70% from last weekend’s already-disappointing opening, earning $6 million for the weekend for $29.9 million total.  The movie cost $82 million to make, so if my math serves, the financiers are going to lose “an assload.”  Sources say Zack Snyder is so depressed that he’s been angrily chugging vodka straight from the bottle in slow motion while backlit by the moonlight (don’t worry, the four people who saw Sucker Punch will totally get that). Your movie can be really weird or really sh-tty, but not both.  …Unless it stars a CGI bunny that sh-ts jelly beans, I guess.  Look, we just don’t know anymore, okay?

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Frotcast 41: The Parry Gripp Interview

03.31.11 Written by Vince Mancini

(the player below takes a second to load. here’s a direct link to the podcast.)

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So this week we got to interview Parry Gripp, he of awesome-internet-song and underrated-rock-band fame.  Hopefully I didn’t make toooo much of an ass of myself, but the fact that we managed to do an interview that wasn’t just 20 minutes of girlish squeals has to be considered a success.  INTERVIEW STARTS AT THE 47-MINUTE MARK. We talked animal songs, the birth and re-birth of Nerf Herder, rock music’s horrible Heidi-Cross-eyed-possumdeath in the late 90s, the Santa Barbara Orchid Estate, and lots of other fun stuff.  One interesting note was the genesis of “The Girl at the Video Game Store,” the song G4 eventually used for Attack of the Show and made a video for starring Olivia Munn (which he’d recorded on his own before G4 came along).

“I was trying to buy a Nintendo Wii, and I was working on this record for Hallmark, of kids’ music.  And my system was to work late into the evening, and then wake up in the morning and take the things that I’d recorded, go to Starbucks, buy a cup of coffee, and listen to what I’d made the night before.  Then I’d walk to the video store right when they opened and see if they had a Wii.  And it was probably a couple weeks before I got one. So I’d go in there, and there was this girl who worked there.  And I’m kind of older, but I know if I was younger, I would’ve been kind of fixated on her, because that’s just the kind of nerd I was in high school.  So every day for a couple weeks I’d go in there, and I’d ask if the Wii was in yet, and the girl would be like, ‘You know, you could just call.’”

I should also include a link to Horrible Movie Night, which I think I was supposed to ask about but didn’t.  In all seriousness, it sounds pretty cool if you live in the LA area.  Besides Parry, we brought Lindy West back to talk Sucker Punch.   Listen, share, enjoy.

DOWNLOAD IT HERE. SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES. NOW AVAILABLE ON ZUNE MARKETPLACE.  ALSO AVAILABLE ON BLACKBERRY PODCASTS.  …Email us at Frotcast@gmail.com.

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