Oscar Smack-a-thon!
Have you finalized your picks for the current crop of Oscar hopefuls yet? No? Well, allow us to help you. In this, our second annual Oscar Smackdown, we pit the nominees for Best Picture against […]
Smackdown News
The Tiersky Top Ten, 2012
2012 was a year of countless blockbuster disappointments, a handful of sleeper gems, several overhyped critical darlings, some masterful documentaries and foreign films, loads of forgettable dreck, a couple of delightful surprises, and no genuine […]
Smackdown Smacks Down the 2013 Oscar Nominees
Movie Smackdown loves a good old fashioned film fight — it’s something we do every day that Hollywood does once a year during awards season. Who among us can’t appreciate putting some films in a cage and letting them duke it out until there’s only one left standing?
This year there were nine nominations out of a possibility of ten in the “Best Picture” category.
We’ve had most of the nominated “Best Picture” films in the Smack ring already. This offers us the chance, here in this single post, to create a gateway for you to lots of fresh writing, keen observation and (of course) a general lack of respect for authority, cinematic or otherwise. […]
Men of Steel (Smackdown’s Superman Smashup)
If you count Christopher Reeve (ignoring the earlier Kirk Alyn “Superman”) as the original fully-realized film Superman in 1978’s “Superman: The Movie”, that makes Brandon Routh’s 2006 “Superman Returns” the reboot and 2013’s “Man of Steel” the reboot of the reboot.
But don’t forget the TV Supermans: George Reeves from “Adventures of Superman” to John Haymes Newton and Gerard Christopher in “Superboy” to Dean Cain in “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” to Tom Welling in “Smallville.”
Our latest Smashup pays tribute to the reality that we’re almost getting to the point where as many actors have played Superman/Clark Kent as have played Hamlet. […]
“Django Unchained” (Tarantino) Meets “Lincoln” (Spielberg)
The body count in Django Unchained — given that it’s a Quentin Tarantino film — is way, way high. The film hits theaters on Christmas Day so we can consider “Peace on Earth” while amping up on slave-era violence. It will likely pack the theaters, Rotten Tomatoes has it with 100% fresh reviews as we write this. We wish we were smart enough to figure out what all of this means about violence in America and what should be done. We are devastated, like everyone else, by what happened in Connecticut, but doubt that a red carpet arrival for Tarantino’s spaghetti-western ultra-violence-fest has much bearing on it. […]
Stephen Colbert Photobombs Jon Stewart at the Emmys
“Why,†Stephen Colbert must be thinking, “am I always in Jon Stewart’s shadow?
“Anyone can see that my hair is as better than Stewart’s grandfatherly silver mane. (And it’s WAY better than Bryce Zabel’s, the Movie Smackdown guy who seems to be sprucing up his ‘do with a lovely red tiara in this picture.) ”
Colbert has a long way to go before he catches up with his stable mate’s record-setting ten consecutive Emmys for Outstanding Variety Series, but in terms of subversive attitude, he’s lurking right there over Stewart’s shoulder. Photo by Lauren Zabel. (Cont.) […]
CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: Republican National Convention (2012) -vs- Democratic National Convention (2012)
In less than two months Americans will write the final chapter of the recurring reality show we once called the presidential election. Former Massachusetts Governor Willard “Mitt†Romney emerged from testy GOP Smackdown primaries with his haircut intact. President Barack Obama didn’t have a Democrat opponent, but faced a tougher job: He had to govern during the run-up to the conventions.
Now the conventions are over, and it’s our turn to cast a pre-vote of sorts. Just how well – as TV events – did the parties establish their candidates and focus their messages for November? […]
The Odd Life of Timothy Green (2012) -vs- Foster (2011)
When I first saw the trailer for The Odd Life of Timothy Green, it seemed so quirky and original that I was surprised to learn it had a perfect Smackdown opponent waiting in semi-obscurity to face off against it. Foster, released in 2011 but only seen by a handful of people — most of them probably in London art houses — is so similar to Timothy Green in concept that I began to question the latter’s provenance. (As it turns out, Timothy is not a recast Yank version of Foster but an original script by director Peter Hedges, from a story by Ahmet Zappa, one of Frank’s kids.) Both films are gentle fairy tales that examine family relationships. Both involve children, who magically appear when they are most needed and manage to teach their troubled adoptive parents a thing or two about love and parenting. Both fathers are in jeopardy of losing their jobs, which the magical children in their lives are also able to help them address. And both are full of hokey life lessons, yet surprisingly are able to touch audiences in a genuinely heartfelt way. […]
Thoughts on the Dark Night
There have been many ridiculous and meaningful thoughts thrown out there about the “dark night†of Friday July 20. Violence, gun control, terrorism and insanity notwithstanding, they all probably make some sense after a few drinks and a lot of inherent frustration and anger about the apparent randomness of the recent violence in a Colorado movie theater.
Still, there are some things that bear mentioning. […]
Christian Bale as Batman -vs- Little David as Spider-Man
Remember the angry f***-word rant that Christian Bale went on a few years ago? How about little David, the kid coming home from the dentist, stoned out of his mind? We’ve never forgotten them. We’ve […]