The Playlist

5 Scripts That Made Shane Black Hollywood's Hottest Writer In The 1990s

By Drew Taylor
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May 3, 2013 11:03 AM
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11 Comments

Features

“Iron Man 3” has already amassed more than $300 million worldwide and is on target to become the highest grossing opening weekend in the United States ever (outdoing even last summer’s “The Avengers”). This is quite a coup for director/co-writer Shane Black, who, back in the '90s, during a kind of spec script arms race, was frequently topping himself as the most paid screenwriter of all time, alongside guys like Joe Eszterhas (Black recently told Vanity Fair, in a terrific piece about spec scripts, “Eszterhas used to call and wake me up at night saying, ‘I just sold something for more money than you, ha-ha’”).

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25 Blockbuster Threequels: Did They Sink Or Save Their Franchises?

By The Playlist Staff
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May 2, 2013 3:04 PM
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35 Comments

Features

A lot's been written over the years about sequels -- when they go right and bring us a welcome return to characters and themes we'd flocked to see the first time out and, more often, when they do not, and instead deliver diminishing returns in everything except box office terms. But what of the second sequel, the so-called "threequel"? It's a franchise entry that presents its own specific challenges -- is it the conclusion to a trilogy (like "The Dark Knight Rises") or just the continuation of a franchise (such as "Die Hard With A Vengeance")? Does it have lost ground to make up after a disappointing second entry ("Mission: Impossible 3") or are expectations at an all-time high following a mark II triumph ("Return of the Jedi")? This weekend, we all get to see whether "Iron Man 3" rises to or sinks beneath its particular set of challenges -- you can read our judgement here -- but it's a situation with pitfalls Marvel head Kevin Feige, for one, was fully aware of.

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Is 2015 The Year Disney Dominates Hollywood & What Does This Mean For The Competition?

By Drew Taylor
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May 2, 2013 11:05 AM
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8 Comments

Features

Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress, an attraction built for the 1964's World's Fair that is still in operation at Florida's Magic Kingdom theme park, is one of the most emblematic for the company – it incorporates an emphasis on family values with a kind of sunny futurism that both Walt Disney the man (who oversaw the original attraction) and Walt Disney the company strove to maintain. Its theme song contains an earworm-y chorus of "It’s a great big beautiful tomorrow, shining at the end of every day." That great big beautiful tomorrow is coming soon; in 2015, Disney will dominate the cinematic marketplace in a way that no other studio has in the history of the medium (at least since people started paying attention to that kind of thing). But what will that mean for everybody else? How greatly will movies in general be affected by Disney's great big beautiful tomorrow?

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Discuss: Do Movie Trailers Give Away Too Much? New Study Says 50% Of Audiences Think Yes

By Charlie Schmidlin
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May 2, 2013 9:57 AM
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9 Comments

News

To anticipate a film nowadays is to wonder what its tipping point into overexposure will be. “Iron Man 3” is set to open tomorrow -- have you stayed away from trailers completely, or have you paid attention to every casting announcement and TV spot, hoping they won't reveal one set-piece too many? It's that question of enjoyment linked to movie marketing that a new study hoped to investigate, and the results are both predictable and surprising in equal measure.

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Wes Anderson's 5 Best Commercials

By Jessica Kiang
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May 1, 2013 12:13 PM
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6 Comments

Features

There are, apparently, people in the world who don't like the movies of Wes Anderson, who turns 44 today. Of course that's fine and everyone's entitled their opinions blah blah blah, but we're unapologetic apologists for the quirky formalism of the director, even if we end up inevitably having to use one of our most despised words -- "quirky" -- to describe it. But there are other words we use, like "charming" and "stylised," which are constantly countered by detractors with things like "precious" and "twee." And yes, his style is so mannered that it walks that line, but to our mind generally the surprise of Anderson's films is, despite the fetishizable costuming and set design and despite the controlled palettes and contorted dialogue, just how deeply felt they can be -- this never more in evidence than with last year's winning and winsome "Moonrise Kingdom."

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How Marvel's Movie Risks Paid Off & How The Studio System Could Stand To Pay Attention To Them

By Drew Taylor
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May 1, 2013 11:00 AM
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39 Comments

Features

In Steven Soderbergh's state of cinema address earlier this week, he remarked that, "Art is a very elegant problem solving model." He went on to describe his ideal model for a studio: "I think if I were going to run a studio I’d just be gathering the best filmmakers I could find and sort of let them do their thing within certain economic parameters." Now, the point of his impassioned address, which included such other applicable witticisms as "it's about horses, not races," is about what the studios should be doing versus what they are doing. But there is a studio that has followed his exact advice and it's not one you would expect: it's Marvel Studios.

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Robert Downey Jr.'s Career In 7 Films

By Jessica Kiang
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April 30, 2013 1:02 PM
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3 Comments

Robert Downey Jr., essential performances

Features

"Big man in a suit of armor. Take that away then what are you?" asks Captain America (Chris Evans) in Joss Whedon's "The Avengers." "Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist," shoots back Tony Stark, in a quip that, delivered either of two ways, is only slightly more impressive than the actual truth. Because of course, outside the suit, and outside the Marvel films, Iron Man/Tony Stark is in fact, Robert Downey Jr, and he's one of the biggest movie stars on the planet.

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The Best And Brightest Of The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival

By The Playlist Staff
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April 29, 2013 2:17 PM
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3 Comments

The Best And Brightest Of The Tribeca Film Festival 2013

Festivals

And so we’ve reached the end of the Tribeca Film Festival. Known for its wide-ranging selection of films from all over the globe, they truly outdid themselves this year with a slate of diverse, boundary-pushing films that suggested that, outside of the most prestigious fests like New York, Cannes and Sundance, independent cinema was alive and well, flourishing in the fest’s eleventh year. We profiled twenty films at the start of the fest that might be worth discussion, and a number of those spotlight films didn't disappoint. But the excitement of the Tribeca Film Festival is that there's often greatness emerging from where you least expect it.

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The Most Anticipated Blockbusters Of The 2013 Summer Season

By Drew Taylor
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April 29, 2013 12:03 PM
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5 Comments

The Playlist's Most Anticipated Blockbusters Of The 2013 Summer Season

Features

Ah, summer. That time of year marked by long days, short skirts, and the application of sunscreen. It’s the season where even the most hardened cineaste can put aside their Criterion Collection discs, if only for a moment, and get excited about the jazzy, visual effects-driven blockbusters coming down the pike. The line between “summer” and “any other time of the year,” in terms of movies, keeps getting blurrier and blurrier, with big-budget studio fare like “Oz the Great and Powerful” and “Oblivion” coming out in the spring (we had a Michael Bay movie open in April, for crying out loud – before this it was questionable whether or not he even existed outside of June or July).

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SFIFF: Steven Soderbergh Says Art Of Cinema Is Under Attack From The Studios, Decries Profit Driven Decision Making

By Sean Gillane
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April 29, 2013 11:03 AM
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14 Comments

Features

Saturday afternoon at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Steven Soderbergh presented an audience his take on the current state of cinema. The State of Cinema Address is an annual event held at the festival that allows a speaker (not always a filmmaker, last year the festival saw author Jonathan Levine give his take on the subject) to lay down their thoughts on contemporary film. This year the San Francisco Film Society, the organization that runs the festival, was able to land the prolific Steven Soderbergh at a particularly interesting time in his career: the beginning of a hiatus from directing.

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The Playlist

5 Scripts That Made Shane Black Hollywood's Hottest Writer In The 1990s

25 Blockbuster Threequels: Did They Sink Or Save Their Franchises?

Is 2015 The Year Disney Dominates Hollywood & What Does This Mean For The Competition?

Discuss: Do Movie Trailers Give Away Too Much? New Study Says 50% Of Audiences Think Yes

Wes Anderson's 5 Best Commercials

How Marvel's Movie Risks Paid Off & How The Studio System Could Stand To Pay Attention To Them

Robert Downey Jr.'s Career In 7 Films

The Best And Brightest Of The 2013 Tribeca Film Festival

The Most Anticipated Blockbusters Of The 2013 Summer Season

SFIFF: Steven Soderbergh Says Art Of Cinema Is Under Attack From The Studios, Decries Profit Driven Decision Making

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