Casino gaming used to be a relatively niche pastime which was reserved for those of us who could be bothered to book a vacation around going to a city such as Las Vegas, or lived close enough to a casino to base a night out around it. Today, though, with so many online casinos to …
Gambling has always been a popular ‘meme’ with film directors ever since Georges Méliès first pioneered moving pictures back in the late 1890s. For decades, no cowboy film was considered complete unless it featured a scene in which some black-hatted buffoon suffered a bullet-induced puncture after being discovered cheating at poker. Cowboy movies may …
Hollywood has had a long love affair with the heist sub-genre. Dating as far back as the silent film era with 1928’s Alias Jimmy Valentine, and transcending various genres like westerns (The War Wagon), war (Kelly’s Heroes) and even animation (Toy Story 3), the heist has tantalized our fantasies and outsmarted our wits for decades. …
Las Vegas…the hotbed haven where dreams of high rollers are realized among the glitzy bright lights, the element of chance and luck and the adrenaline for instant fortune. But there is a deception to Sin City that is overlooked–the isolation of a gambler’s anxiety and desperation, the false sense of confidence at the craps table …
Today, probably more people than ever before play casino, thanks mainly to the presence of so many online casinos. What used once to be a niche activity is now available to anyone at any time. Although it used to be perfectly possible to go to a casino, not that many people would actually bother to …
Both Soderbergh and Clooney have tackled many different questions over their careers, but together, they consistently aim to understand celebrity in all of its glory and danger. The pair seem to inherently understand the allure of movie stars, and their most successful collaborations are celebrations of those we elevate above the status of “actor” and to the level of pop culture Gods.
Read our appreciation of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven and Ocean’s Twelve here and here, respectively. * * * “I’m a goddamn American icon!” Depending on where you stand on Ocean’s Twelve, Ocean’s Thirteen represents either a group of enormously famous actors going back to salvage the goodwill they squandered in the middle entry of the franchise, or that same …
Ocean’s Twelve has a reputation that will always precede it; some have called it an anti-sequel, and publications like Entertainment Weekly have dubbed it one of the worst sequels of all time. Though both reactions are, perhaps, understandable, neither is remotely accurate. Ocean’s Twelve is an inherently self-aware sequel, possibly the most self-aware follow-up in modern history. What Steven Soderbergh, screenwriter George Nolfi (whose original script, Honor Among Thieves, was completely unrelated to Ocean’s Eleven and was sold initially before that remake had been released), and the slightly larger-than-before ensemble cast did was make a sequel to a critically and commercially lauded caper film that was wholly cognizant of the fact that it was a sequel to a critically and commercially lauded caper film. Ocean’s Twelve toys with audience expectations, because to cave into them would’ve promised something potentially more disturbing and commonplace than what many perceived to be an ambitious creative flop: something boring.
Movie stars, as we know them, are not so much dead in 2013 as much as they’re no longer making movies. Celebrity has stretched far beyond film or television; people become famous now without having accomplished much of anything, just for being at the right place at the right time, or tweeting out the right scandalous photo to set afire the comments sections at TMZ or Perez Hilton. Though movies cost more than they used to—both to make and to partake—they are less frequently headlined by a man or woman whose very presence ensures bankability. A handful of movie stars remain, yet even someone like Robert Downey, Jr. can only guarantee a movie will make back its profit and then some when he’s donned his Iron Man suit.
Steven Soderbergh became the poster child for new American independent cinema in the 90’s, after winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his debut feature Sex, Lies, & Videotape. Soderbergh spent the better part of the ensuing decade, directing small idiosyncratic films, and often wearing many hats including producer, screenwriter, cinematographer and …
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl Directed by Gore Verbinski Written by Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Stuart Beattie, and Jay Wolpert Starring Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Geoffrey Rush Captain Jack Sparrow is the worst thing that ever happened to Johnny Depp’s career. The prevailing wisdom is that the constantly …
We love crime movies. We may go on and on about Scorsese’s ability to incorporate Italian neo-realism techniques into Mean Streets (1973), the place of John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) in the canon of postwar noir, The Godfather (1972) as a socio-cultural commentary on the distortion of the ideals of the American dream blah …