esquire Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Esquire Slips Into Mary-Louise Parker's Bed for Story Time
Filed under: Shorts », Celebrities and Controversy », Home Entertainment »
I began to focus more attention on Mary-Louise Parker back in 2005, when she wrote a feature for Bust on Justin Theroux. In one opening paragraph, she slid from cross-pollinating blueberry bushes and pet pit bulls to a description of the actor himself: "His hair is ice-pond black, he could wash my windows with his eyelashes, and he has that rangy skateboarder's body that girls never grow out of going hormonal after." I was reading a lot of magazine intros that year, and hers was the first that didn't reek superfluous scene-drawing.Now she's getting literary again, this time with Esquire. The site is doing a new weekly series of bedtime stories and seeing that they say "straight from the bedroom of a Woman We Love," I'm assuming every installment will feature the lovely Ms. Parker. She kicks off with Alice in Wonderland, and you can watch it for yourselves after the jump.
Oh, how I wish that all mens' magazines' treatment of sexy women had them natural, lounging, and reading classic literature. And really, I think Parker is in her element when words are involved. Which, one can hope, will mean wonderful things for Howl. (Although she's playing Gail Potter, a woman brought in to speak against the famous work.)
Will you be tuning in for Parker's bedtime stories?
Are These the 75 Movies Every Man Must See?
Filed under: Classics », Fandom », Newsstand », Lists »
Summertime seems to be movie list-making time in just about every publication. I imagine it's because once you slap Chris Pine or Christian Bale onto a summer magazine cover, you're stuck waiting for the fall buzz to kick up ... or anxious film writers out there are hoping to remind audiences that they can ease the pain of mindless blockbusters with meat-and-potato classics. Either way, we get a lot of lists.
Esquire has a particularly interesting one up, though. They've compiled a collection of 75 movies they feel every man should see in his lifetime, and go so far as to suggest they've all shaped American manhood in some fashion. Some of the choices are obvious classics: In the Heat of the Night, 12 Angry Men, Chinatown, The Godfather, North by Northwest, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, The French Connection. Some are a little more on the forgotten side, like Fitzcarraldo and Run Silent, Run Deep.
But some of the choices are a little questionable. Iron Man? Three Kings? Runaway Train? Lone Star? Enjoyable sure, but are they must watch classics? Did Lone Star really shape modern manhood? I'm pretty sure Iron Man didn't considering it came out oh, exactly one year ago. Surely Easy Rider or Death Wish should have two of those spots. Doesn't John McClane deserve a rank above Johnny Dangerously? No Goodfellas? Why only one John Wayne (The Searchers) and no Jimmy Stewart or Gregory Peck?
Check out the list and ponder whether you think watching all 75 of these makes (or has made) a true man, as Esquire's version has me a little worried. Then come back and tell us what films you think are more essential than these.
*And no, clearly no one thinks there's an essential list for women. We may have to put that one together here on Cinematical.
Watch This: 'Good Morning, Megan' ... You Fox
Filed under: Fandom », Images »
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As if this spicy Megan Fox-related video would slide by me without making it to the front page of Cinematical so all you readers can then comment, "Yup, knew Erik Davis was writing the post when it was about Megan Fox ... blah blah but I'm not complaining." Last week I told you how for the first time in magazine history, Esquire was using the nifty new Red digital camera for a cover shoot -- and that the person being shot for the June issue was none other than Megan Fox, who stars in this summer's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
While the actual magazine will use stills from the video shoot for the cover and the photo spread inside, Esquire has made the video itself available for us to watch online ... and, ya know, evaluate the camera angles, lighting techniques ... the usual boring tech stuff. But if you happen to also be a fan of Megan Fox, then I suppose you might want to watch, too. Since Esquire refused to provide an embed code, we've snagged an assortment of sexy stills for you to check out down below. When you're done looking at those, the video is over here.
Scarlett Johansson Wants You to Admire Her Sexy Boobs, Er, Gallbladder
Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy », Newsstand », Scarlett Johansson »
Scarlett Johansson, who poses scantily clad in the November issue of Esquire magazine, which bestowed upon her the prestigious dubious title of Sexiest Woman Alive, at least had the intelligence to question the merit of the title, saying "What about my brain? What about my heart? What about my kidneys and my gallbladder?" My point exactly, Scarlett, but the problem is that your words carry a tad less weight after you've just done a photo spread in which you play an "enigmatic trailer-park temptress." WTF? I didn't even know there was a subset of sexual fetishists devoted to lusting after "trailer park temptresses," much less that that target market reads Esquire. Who knew?
The thing is, although I like Johansson, and she's turned in some decent performances (I actually liked her best so far in Match Point, where she got to display more than one emotion), I think she still has a lot of room to grow as an actress. And, not that she has to go the route of playing ugly people ala Charlize Theron in order to be taken seriously, but there has to be some middle ground she can find that allows her to be an intelligent young woman who is taken seriously, and cast in smart roles that don't focus on her "sexy" factor. Somehow, though, I don't think the path to those roles (and more Oscar noms) lies along "Trailer Park Temptress" Highway. If you want us to admire you for your gallbladder, Scarlett, keep your clothes on and leave something to the imagination.
Black Snake Moan Update: Oh Hell Yes
Filed under: Drama », Celebrities and Controversy », Newsstand », Movie Marketing »
Despite the fact that its release was pushed back, at least in part to distance it from Snakes on a Plane (the movie to which its trailer, oddly, is attached), the internet presence of Craig Brewer's Black Snake Moan (AKA That Other Samuel L. Jackson Movie) has slowly been ramping up this week. Among other things, the September issue of Esquire magazine features a short review of the film that, while not exactly glowing, makes it sound just as controversial as its plot -- a young nymphomaniac (Christina Ricci) spends a lot of time "chained half-naked to a radiator" as part of being "cured" by an older bluesman (Jackson) -- suggests. According to the Esquire piece (entitled You Just Can't Look Away), Black Snake Moan "comes as close to exploitation heaven as any studio based film made in the past 20 years. You watch it unfold -- detonate, more like -- with giddy incredulousness, stunned that somebody actually had the guts to put such supercharged images on the screen." Wow. I cannot wait for this thing to hit, and to watch as the public protectors of our cultural morality lose their collective minds in the press. For a little hint of what's in store (since we have to wait until freakin' February to see the movie now), check out the just-released posters -- you gotta love how Brewer is buying so completely into the flick's exploitation potential.
Nash, Lucas Dig GQ Founder
Filed under: Drama », Casting », Deals », Newsstand »
Did you know that David Smart, the guy who founded GQ and Esquire, had a Howard Hughes-style germ phobia? Yeah, neither did I. I also had no idea that Smart founded those magazines, and am sort of at a loss as to why anyone would care. Josh Lucas and Bruce Nash care, though, and they're banking on the fact that millions of other will, too, because the two of them are producing Smart, a movie about the fellow.According to an article in this morning's Variety (the headline of which is "Nash, Bridges get 'Smart'" -- who doesn't love a Don Johnson reference with their coffee?), Lucas' just-founded 2 Bridges Prods. will team with Nash Entertainment to produce the film, in which Lucas will play a supporting role (the role of Smart has yet not be cast). The screenplay for Smart was written by Charlie Peters (of, erm, Krippendorf's Tribe and Her Alibi fame), and is expected to detail the life of a man "whose life was almost entirely consumed by his germ phobia ... Meanwhile, he led an unorthodox personal life and was known for his womanizing and affinity for shirtless photos of himself." Now, I like phobias as much as the next girl, but how many times can you watch a guy bathe after sex? There must be something else going on in the movie, though, because Lucas' character is described as "a fictional FBI investigator who infiltrates Smart's world," and you know the FBI doesn't usually check out people who use excessive amounts of soap.
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