Punch-Drunk Love Comes to the Criterion Collection This November

The home video distribution company Criterion Collection, which releases classic/cult films in special feature laden editions, announced yesterday that they will be releasing Paul Thomas Anderson’s hazy romantic drama Punch-Drunk Love on Blu-ray this November. This underrated classic stars Adam Sandler in a surprisingly dramatic turn, Emily Watson, and the usual PTA crew; Philip Seymour Hoffman, Luis Guzman and others. Surprisingly, this is PTA’s first addition to the Criterion Collection (hopefully the first of many).

 

Punch-Drunk Love is one of PTA’s best pieces of work, only behind There Will Be Blood and The Master. Adam Sandler goes against the typecast characters he usually runs with to play a genuinely disturbed, troubled small business owner. This is really more of an experience than a film; I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It has an incredibly polarizing soundtrack composed by Jon Brion paired with phenomenal cinematography by the legendary Robert Elswit. Check out all the special features that will be included on the disc.

 

DIRECTOR APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION:

• 4K digital transfer, supervised by director Paul Thomas Anderson, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• Blossoms & Blood, a twelve-minute 2002 piece by Anderson featuring Adam Sandler and Emily Watson, along with music by Jon Brion
• New interview with Brion
• New piece featuring behind-the-scenes footage of a recording session for the film’s soundtrack
• New conversation between curators Michael Connor and Lia Gangitano about the art of Jeremy Blake
• Additional artwork by Blake
• Cannes press conference from 2002
• NBC News interview from 2000 with David Phillips, “the pudding guy”
• Twelve Scopitones
• Deleted scenes
• Mattress Man commercial
• Trailers

 

 

Chaos lurks in every corner of this giddily off-kilter foray into romantic comedy by Paul Thomas Anderson. Struggling to cope with his erratic temper, novelty toilet plunger salesman Barry Egan (Adam Sandler, demonstrating remarkable versatility in his first dramatic role) spends his days collecting frequent-flyer-mile coupons and dodging the insults of his seven sisters. The promise of a new life emerges when Barry inadvertently attracts the affections of a mysterious woman named Lena (Emily Watson), but their budding relationship is threatened when he falls prey to the swindling operator of a phone sex line and her deranged boss (played with maniacal brio by Philip Seymour Hoffman). Fueled by the careening momentum of a baroque-futurist score by Jon Brion, the Cannes-award-winning Punch-Drunk Love channels the spirit of classic Hollywood musicals and the whimsy of Jacques Tati into an idiosyncratic ode to the delirium of new romance.

Matt Goodman
via The Nerd Machine

http://www.thenerdmachine.com/punch-drunk-love-comes-to-the-criterion-collection-this-november/

Devourer of Words 040: After the Con

MARC BERNARDIN'S DEVOURER OF WORDS

Devourer of Words 040: After the Con

You went to Comic-Con, you met some editors, you pitched your writing. Now what happens? Marc Bernardin has some sage advice on how to proceed...

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CCI_Gary_SDCC
via The Toucan Blog

http://www.comic-con.org/toucan/devourer-of-words-040-after-con

The New Hidden Figures Trailer Inspires

By Karen Valenzuela, @VictoriaNoir89

 

“Meet the women you don’t know, behind the mission you do.”

 

20th Century Fox has officially released the trailer for Hidden Figures. It focuses on three real-life African-American women who were instrumental in the U.S. space race of the 1950s and 60s. Taraji P. Henson (known for her dynamite role in Empire) stars as NASA mathematician and physicist Katherine Johnson, who calculated the trajectory for NASA’s Project Mercury, while also being influential in the mission that saw Neil Armstrong as the first man to set foot on the moon. Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe, as Dorothy Vaughn and Mary Jackson, round out the amazing cast that is making Hidden Figures look like it will be a powerhouse film.

 

 

The film was widely anticipated already, and now the release of the trailer has only increased that antipicipation. And it’s no wonder. The trailer highlights the barriers these women faced in society and in particular at NASA, not just as women in a male-dominated workplace, but as African-American women in a predominantly white environment as well.

 

We see men, both white and black, question whether a woman’s brain (and by extension a black woman’s brain) can handle the complicated, exceedingly important physics required to make John Glenn’s infamous mission to orbit Earth successful. And then we see Kirsten Dunst as Vivian Michael, the white woman overseeing Johnson’s work, give her a warning seeping with implications: “Don’t embarrass me.” And as Johnson arrives to claim her new desk, one of her coworkers puts a full trash bin in her arms for her to empty, assuming she’s the cleaning woman.

 

But with lines like, “Yes, they let women do some things at NASA, Mr. Johnson. And it’s not because we wear skirts. It’s because we wear glasses”, and “It’s equal rights. I have the right to see fine in every color”, this movie already looks like it’ll require a couple of fist punches into the air.

 

Hidden Figures is directed by Theodore Melfi (St. Vincent), and stars Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monáe, Aldis Hodge, and Mahershala Ali. The film hits theaters on January 13, 2017.

 

Let us know what you think in the comments below!

 

admin
via The Nerd Machine

http://www.thenerdmachine.com/the-new-hidden-figures-trailer-inspires/

Preview Monday: Nightwing #3!

Preview Monday: Nightwing #3!

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Nicole Valdez
via DC Comics

http://www.dccomics.com/blog/2016/08/15/preview-monday-nightwing-3

DC ALL-STAR BATMAN #1 Variant Comics Sweepstakes

DC ALL-STAR BATMAN #1 Variant Comics Sweepstakes

Enter for a chance to be our Grand Prize Winner who will receive a prize pack that includes 1 copy of each DC ALL-STAR BATMAN #1 variant comic. There are 24 comics in total!

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DCE Editorial
via DC Comics

http://www.dccomics.com/blog/2016/08/15/dc-all-star-batman-1-variant-comics-sweepstakes

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi Original Topps Trading Card Series Volume Three

Chances are you’ve now seen the Netflix original series Stranger Things. If you haven’t, well, you probably should.  One of the many strengths of the show is how it expertly returns you to a place of nostalgic bliss that makes you pine for the 80s. If, like me, you need even more 80s in your life to fill that “pink tux to the prom-breakfast club-Indiana Jones and the Return of the Goonies” sized void in your life, then look no further than Volume Three of The Original Topps Trading Card Series, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi.

 

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi–the original trading card series from Topps first published in 1983–is reprinted here in its entirety for the first time, featuring both sets of collectible cards and stickers. This deluxe compilation contains the fronts and backs of all 220 cards and 55 stickers (originally sold one per pack), including character profiles, trivia questions, and puzzle cards featuring all your favorite characters and scenes from the third Star Wars movie.  Also includes FOUR BONUS TRADING CARDS, as well as an introduction and commentary by Gary Gerani, the original editor of the Star Wars Topps series.

 

This must have for Star Wars collectors everywhere is available wherever books are sold August 16, 2016.

 

Matt Goodman
via The Nerd Machine

http://www.thenerdmachine.com/star-wars-return-of-the-jedi-original-topps-trading-card-series-volume-three/

Seth Rogen Pranks Shoppers To Promotes His New Film Sausage Party

By Karen Valenzuela, @VictoriaNoir89

 

Have you seen the trailer for Seth Rogen’s new film, Sausage Party? (Careful, it’s not safe for work!)

 

“The only thing food wants is to go home with us,” the tagline at the beginning of the trailer reads. The food products on the shelves of the grocery store jostle to the the front for the chance to be chosen by the gods!!! And when they get home, they see their potato buddy taken out of the bag…and skinned alive.

 

Suddenly it’s a horror film for food products.

 

Frank, a hot dog, and Brenda, his hot dog bun girlfriend (they were made for each other!) discover the horrific truth about being “chosen” and they enlist the help of their fellow enlightened food friends to warn the others.

 

Sausage Party was made by the usual suspects: Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and the creators of Superbad,Pineapple Express, Neighbors, etc. And just a few of the actors and actresses lending their voicing talents are Salma Hayek, Kristen Wiig, James Franco, Edward Norton, Paul Rudd, Craig Robinson, Danny McBride, and Nick Kroll.

 

To promote Sausage Party, creator Seth Rogen, who also voices Frank the hot dog, played a prank on a few lucky shoppers at a grocery store in New York. They put some animatronic food–namely a cantaloupe, a loaf of bread, and a sausage–on the shelves, waiting for an unsuspecting shopper to approach, and Seth Rogen spoke to them through a microphone from another room.

 

What follows is hilarious.

Sausage Party opened in theaters Friday and is now playing everywhere. The film is Rated R for strong language and drug use. So…Basically, it’s a typical Seth Rogen film.

Matt Goodman
via The Nerd Machine

http://www.thenerdmachine.com/seth-rogen-pranks-shoppers-to-promotes-his-new-film-sausage-party/