The ladies! The ladies! Slate’s Movie Club is back and this year it’s allll woman. I love this thing, it’s the best thing about the crummy first week of the year. One day in there are already six entries–the last one was posted as I typed this.
Insidery: The general consensus is that 2008 was a crap year for film and an even crapper (?) year for film critics. For the grown-ups guarding the last vestiges of their god-given attention spans with bared teeth, Film Comment has the transcripts of a roundtable of eminent film critics discussing their impending doom. For those who prefer such discussions in downloadable podcast form, here is a younger, scrappier group hashing out the same topic–and what a young critic is supposed to aspire to these days–over some beers at Manhattan’s Grassroots Tavern.
Alison Willmore and future Rumpus contributor Matt Singer do an excellent podcast every week over at IFC News. This week they talk about what they’re looking forward to at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
This is traditionally the deadest week on the film release calendar, so your options are whittled down to renting Pineapple Express, which comes out on DVD today, acquainting yourself with Steve’s idea of hot porn, or searching the new Japanese trailer for The Watchmen for cluuuues. Bonus link: M.I.A., whose “Paper Planes” made the Pineapple Express trailer so great, tells the CBC her Best Story Ever. It’s actually kind of scary.
Lowbrow alert: Apparently Josh Brolin thinks Russell Crowe is a d-bag; he uttered words to that effect at last night’s Film Critic’s Circle Awards.
