pretty in pink Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Molly Ringwald's tribute to John Hughes in the New York Times offers outsiders an enlightening look at what it was like to work with the writer and director who created the movies that not only shaped our teen years, but those of his stars.

While her essay is sentimental, it's not saccharine, and like Ms. Ringwald herself, it's beautiful. She offers us a rare glimpse into the reclusive director, "a sort of J.D. Salinger for Generation X" whom she compares to Peter Pan with a huge, open heart that eventually closed off to the world of Hollywood.

She writes, "Most people who knew John knew that he was able to hold a grudge longer than anyone - his grudges were almost supernatural things, enduring for years, even decades. Michael suspects that he was never forgiven for turning down parts in Pretty in Pink and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I turned down later films as well. Not because I didn't want to work with John anymore -- I loved working with him, more than anyone before or since...

Eventually, though, I felt that I needed to work with other people as well. I wanted to grow up, something I felt (rightly or wrongly) I couldn't do while working with John. Sometimes I wonder if that was what he found so unforgivable. We were like the Darling children when they made the decision to leave Neverland. And John was Peter Pan, warning us that if we left we could never come back. And, true to his word, not only were we unable to return, but he went one step further. He did away with Neverland itself."

And just like we all have our favorite memories of watching Hughes movies, so do his stars. Read her essay -- it will make you feel like you were there, crawling through the AC ducts above Maine North High School during detention.

James Spader returns to the villain roles that made him famous in Shorts, the new family film by writer-director Robert Rodriguez. But during the film's recent press day, the star of such '80s classics as Pretty in Pink and Less Than Zero took a moment to reflect on his experiences working with John Hughes, who passed away last week at the age of 59.

"I actually was very lucky on [Pretty in Pink]," Spader said during a roundtable interview on Saturday. "John [Hughes] wrote and produced that film; Howard Deutch directed it, and it was just such fun. That was a picture where John was on the set every day, I was living in New York at the time and I was out here on my own, and John and I got along really well."

"He'd invite me over to the house a lot on weekends to have lunch with his family," he continued. "He had a big family, and they would all be jumping around in the pool and stuff. He had a very odd writing affect – he wrote at night, long after the rest of the family had gone to bed – and I've always been a night person."

Obviously not everyone's memories of Hughes and his films are as intimate, but what do you remember most about the iconic writer-director? A scene? A movie? Let us know!

For some reason best left to psychologists, there are people who are attracted to what I call ... sex creeps. This type of character goes beyond what is called jolie-laide in women, a term that directly translates to pretty-ugly, although is generally used to describe "unconventional" beauty. There's no real correlation between the jolie-laide and the sex creep. No, the sex creep is attractive but prone to certain, shall we say, peccadilloes that go beyond the pale -- dating blow-up dolls, crashing cars to get off, dabbling in experimental gynecology. These guys all slime their ways between the lines.

In any case, here are seven of my favorite sex creeps. You might also notice there's a certain director who shows up a few times on the list -- he's an honorary sex creep as well. I hope he takes his title in the complimentary manner in which it's given.

There are plenty of John Hughes fans that consider Some Kind of Wonderful to be little more than a recycled Pretty in Pink. But today I'm going to nominate the story of Keith and Watts for Scenes We Love for a very important reason: it's about righting some wrongs. If you're a regular around here, you might remember a little theory I have about the ending of Hughes' teen masterpiece Pretty in Pink, and as it turns out I wasn't the only one who had a problem with it; as the story goes, Hughes wrote Wonderful as a way to finally get the ending that he preferred.

Wonderful was the story of Keith, a sensitive painter, and his best friend, a tom-boy drummer named Watts. When Keith makes good on the life ambition of every teen movie protagonist and goes for the popular girl (played by Lea Thompson), Watts realizes that her feelings for Keith go beyond friendship -- and, of course, what would any Hughes movie be without the abusive beautiful people (headed by Craig Sheffer) and the hoodlum with the heart of gold played by Elias Koteas -- who I've had a bit of a crush on ever since thanks to this movie.

After the jump: why I love this movie and Sheffer gets his well-deserved comeuppance..

If you've been waiting anxiously to see what would come of the Pretty in Pink, Clueless, and Mean Girls, games that William Goss mentioned last year, the wait is over! Unfortunately, it doesn't look like they're offering a lot. (Not that I'm surprised.) Variety got a chance to look at the three games, and they say the result "is derivative and pandering, but with just enough surprises to satisfy a target audience with low expectations."

The '80s installment, Pretty in Pink is said to be the strongest of the three, playing like a puzzle workbook with item-hunting -- like those touch screens you can play at a bar. The big highlights: you can choose the prom dress Andie wears to the prom, and even whether she ends up with Blaine or Duckie. The '90s installment, Clueless, has been called out as the weakest -- a drag and drop against the clock dressing game. The best, and oh-so-charming part: You get extra points if the outfit you created pleases the character's boyfriend. The only guy that's kosher for is Christian, and he's gay, so Paramount, that's ridiculous, insulting, and tacky. Finally, the '00 comes in with Mean Girls, which actually plays out like a mean teen version of Puzzle Quest. Well, a way-too-easy version of the game.

They'll definitely sell a few games, but what's the point? Girls are too dumb to play something slightly more in-depth? Hell, you can play simple games online that are more intriguing. If Paramount, or any other studio wants to make girls' games, which we so desperately need, how about sparking it up a little? If it's a movie, and a computer game, go the Monty Python and the Holy Grail route -- a long journey of a game with a slew of different mini-games (like the insanely great wiggling man in "I'm Not Dead Yet" Tetris). And while they're at it, I'd like a Heathers game done that way, please.

For women of a certain age, Pretty in Pink is the film for any gal who ever felt a little left of center from the beautiful people. After this flick came out, Molly Ringwald was our patron saint, and Pink was our religion. But, as the story goes, after disastrous test screenings, John Hughes (and Ringwald) decided to scrap the first ending (with Andie and her best friend Duckie, played by Jon Cryer, falling in love and dancing to David Bowie's Heroes) and replace it with Andie (Ringwald) and the bland pretty boy Blane (Andrew McCarthy) reuniting at the prom (in front of his shiny BMW no less) -- and to this day it still ticks me off. To me that ending wasn't about overcoming labels about being rich or poor, it was about the popular and the truly cool, and to watch Andie wander off to the dark side with boring old Blane was not the emotional moment Hughes was probably hoping for (which is also why I liked Some Kind of Wonderful so much; at least Girl-Duckie wins in the end of that flick).

Maybe it was because I had a crush on Duckie, or maybe it's just because I don't like easy endings, but to this day, whenever I watch this movie, I turn it off right before the ending so I don't have to be disappointed all over again. Unfortunately, footage of the original ending has become the stuff of legend. But, just to show you I'm not alone on this one, take a look at a new edit provided by another Pink fan looking to right some wrongs...

Man, has this day brought us news of film-based video games aplenty -- one of which you can play for free right now and the rest of which some of you simply can't wait for.

But you'll have to. Wait, that is. They haven't made the darn things yet. Sheesh, hold your horses already.

Trade publication Variety tells us of these titles over the course of two separate articles. One piece points out Universal's plan to crank out several games based on their properties, but only names their highest-profile property at the moment: Wanted. If any of you have seen the film (and a $123 million gross would suggest as much), then you know just how well it should lend itself to the format, what with the bullet curving and knife fighting and Angelina Jolie ogling.

Among the perks of being a sought-after Oscar-winning screenwriter is, apparently, the ability to fourwall a movie theater for two weeks and play a bunch of your favorite films for an appreciative audience. That's exactly what Juno's Diablo Cody is doing at LA's New Beverly Cinema from today through July 24th, and it won't come as any surprise to Cody's admirers that the lady's got good taste. Her slate includes reliable classics (Stripes, Pretty in Pink), off the wall genre picks (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors), some culty fun (Wet Hot American Summer) and the expected shout-out to Juno director Jason Reitman.

Previous guest programmers at the New Beverly have included Edgar Wright, Eli Roth and Joe Dante. Cody will introduce some of the films herself, and the theater's MySpace page promises "many guest appearances."

Kudos to Movie City News for coming across this. Check out the entire schedule after the jump -- it's really an inspired slate of picks. She's got a nose for filmmaking that's smart and unabashedly mainstream, as both Juno and this film festival proves.

Hey, remember Jason Biggs? Since starring in Woody Allen's Anything Else, he hasn't really appeared in ... anything else. Okay, so he co-starred in Jersey Girl and Eight Below, but he hasn't done anything of notice in years -- except for that hysterical short film, The Glitch, of course. I was beginning to think I might see him in the next American Pie direct-to-video sequel before I see him in a big-screen starring role again. Fortunately, according to The Hollywood Reporter, Biggs just got a new gig playing Dane Cook's best bud in Lionsgate's Bachelor No. 2. In addition to Cook, he joins Kate Hudson, Alec Baldwin and Lizzy Caplan (Mean Girls), who just signed on as Hudson's roommate.

As we told you previously, Bachelor follows a guy named Tank (Cook) who makes a living by giving women the worst dates of their lives. Hired by dumped men, Tank's promise is that he'll make the exes come crawling back. However, when his friend (Biggs) is the one broken up with, Tank ends up falling for the dumper (Hudson), making it a tough decision whether to stay loyal to his buddy or follow his heart. Yeah, in some ways it sounds a bit like Cook's upcoming movie Good Luck Chuck -- in which he sleeps with women who then go on to marry their next beau -- with a bit of the competitive love triangle thing from his Employee of the Month thrown in. Bachelor will be directed by Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful's Howard Deutch, but I wouldn't count on anything similar to those John Hughes classics, even with the love triangle storyline. So far this decade, Deutch's most notable work has been The Whole Ten Yards.

Other Biggs movies that could see the light of the projector one day include Michael Ian Black's The Pleasure of Your Company (aka Wedding Daze, aka The Next Girl I See), which MGM has been sitting on in the U.S. for almost a year now. He's also got another movie that seems to have changed names since the last time we wrote about it: Over My Dead Body, which was formerly titled How I Met My Boyfriend's Dead Fiancee (phew! good thing they changed it) -- though THR still gives the longer name.

(Reminder: Click on the movie titles to see a Weinberg-approved DVD review. If a review is unavailable, I'll just go with an Amazon link.)

Recent Theatricals

Akeelah and the Bee (Lionsgate) -- Bee-movie should make for an interesting double feature alongside Spellbound (the documentary, not the Hitchcock). (three featurettes, deleted scenes, gag reel)

Friends With Money (Sony) -- Aniston, Cusack, Keener & McDormand? Count me in. (filmmaker commentary, three featurettes)

Lonesome Jim (IFC) -- Y'know, that Buscemi guy is not just a pretty face; he's actually a pretty good director. (filmmaker commentary, featurette)

Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (WB) -- We all love Albert Brooks' patented brand of nebbishy neuroses, but let's chalk this one up to bad timing. (deleted scenes)

Mountain Patrol: Kekexili (Sony) -- A fantastic doco-style story about the dangers of Tibetan antelope poaching. Rent it. (no extras)

The Sentinel (Fox) -- Just keeping us warm until 24: The Movie shows up. (writer/director commentary, four deleted scenes, two featurettes)

Take the Lead (New Line) -- Because middle-aged housewives like movies too. That's why. (director/editor commentary, seven deleted scenes, four featurettes, three remixed trailers)