Earlier this month a bunch of us came up with a list of the movie characters we'd love to have thanksgiving with. Now, here's the opposite. The title is pretty self-explanatory, so I don't need to set it up much. But as usual, we invite you to tell us of your own picks for worst Thanksgiving dinner guest. Please try to make it a movie character, though, because none of us know your annoying aunt, and plus this is a movie site.


Hannibal Lecter from Manhunter, The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, Red Dragon and Hannibal Rising

If you were to have Dr. Lecter (Brian Cox; Anthony Hopkins; Gaspard Ulliel) to your Thanksgiving feast, you'd want to prepare and cook all the food yourself. Otherwise, you might end up eating human flesh instead of turkey (or turducken, or whatever non-people-based meal you prefer). Then again, you might actually end up the meal, which is certainly much worse than unknowingly tasting Ray Liotta's brains. So, the best thing is to not even invite the guy.


Graham Young from Young Poisoner's Handbook

Another character who might be an interesting guest, but like with Lecter, you'll need to keep an eye on the food, or at least on the tea. Graham (Hugh O'Conor), aka "the teacup murderer" likes to play with poison, and there's a good chance he's going to spike the dinner or drinks with thallium.

On May 18, 1980, Deborah Curtis walked into her kitchen and found her husband, Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, hanged to death. As depicted in Anton Corbijn's Control, his feature debut, the event is all hers, shot from a distance, outside, across the street. Not even their infant daughter is present, having been left out in the car for what was to be just a moment. And certainly we, the audience, aren't brought in to examine the body, as we might have by another film.

It makes sense, because Control is based on Deborah Curtis' book "Touching from a Distance" (she also produced the film), which has been adapted here by Matt Greenhalgh. The moment should be all hers; it was her loss more than anyone's, in many ways. And at least in the way he's portrayed in the film, Ian Curtis did it just to hurt her, and that's what he's done, and that's what is shown. Sure, he may have been tortured, or unstable or anything else that could defend such a selfish act as suicide, but here he's pretty much a coward who couldn't make up his mind nor face up to any decision he actually was able to make.

Control begins in 1973, when Ian Curtis (Sam Riley) is a bored teenager in Macclesfield, England, listening to Bowie, Roxy Music and Mott the Hoople as all the young dudes of '70s Britain should. Fitting with the glam music, he wears furs and eyeliner, but what makes the setting unsettling is how void of color it is. Yes, Control was shot in black and white, which is only initially strange if you associate the glam scene with anything but an achromatic palette. And it completely foreshadows the wan and ultimately neutral behavior the singer would exhibit throughout the rest of his short, should-have-been-vibrant life.

It's hard to believe that it has been fifteen years since Oliver Stone released The Doors. The film had already been made available on DVD, but Lionsgate has announced that they will release a special edition DVD of the film this December, just in time for Christmas. What makes it a special edition? Well, nothing mind-blowing but there is an additional forty-three minutes of footage -- just think of all the shots we missed out on of half-naked spirit guides wandering in the desert. Other features include a one-on-one interview with Stone, and three extra documentaries on the phenomenon of Jim Morrison and The Doors.

Other than a spot-on impersonation of Morrison by Val Kilmer, there was really not much in Stone's film for someone who wasn't already a Doors fan. Considering Oliver Stone was never a filmmaker to let his perspective lay in the background -- usually he's too busy beating you over the head with it, it seemed strange to watch a Stone film that didn't have much to say. I always thought that a biopic should tell audiences something they didn't already know about a famous figure, and The Doors seemed like a re-enactment of the iconography of Morrison. There wasn't much there to surprise audiences; well, unless you count the surprise of Meg Ryan not embarrassing herself in one of her few dramatic roles. ...

[via JoBlo.com]

Based on Variety's massive list of the releases that are planned to celebrate the 40th anniversary of The Doors, I'm apparently the only person on earth who had no idea the blessed event was (nearly) upon us. In addition to the CD reissues and boxed sets, there are also two movies in the works that will celebrate the band. The first, an untitled, feature-length documentary that is being co-produced by TV king Dick Wolf and the three surviving Doors, "will include unreleased footage and interviews with the parents and sister of...Jim Morrison." So, basically, it's a straightforward, retrospective look at the band. The second project, however, sounds potentially more interesting.

Skater-turned-director Stacy Peralta (best known in the movie world for directing Dogtown and Z-Boys, and writing Lords of Dogtown) is putting together his own doc about the band. Entitled Six Nights, Six Records, Six Years, Peralta's film is described as "a social history overview as seen through the Doors' lives and music." It's not just us history majors who will dig this, is it? It sounds potentially fascinating to me, and incorporating a broader look at the country during the heyday of the band will hopefully set the movie apart from both Wolf's project and the worshipful docs that dominate the genre.