Charles Bramesco

Just because you made it doesn’t mean you have to like it — and these ten films and filmmakers prove it.

Kyle Davies, the President of Domestic Distribution for Paramount Pictures, is not having a great week. The early eruption of a backlash to his studio’s newest release (the generously-budgeted Ghost in the Shell remake) and its whitewashed casting was cause for concern. But up until recently, he could assuage his shareholders’ worries by clinging to the notion that hackle-raising on the Internet would not have any tangible effects on the box-office receipts. That changed after this past weekend, when the Scarlett Johansson vehicle mustered a piteous $19 million in wide release. Left to answer for the film’s commercial failure, Davies has placed the blame on the controversy over tapping confirmed white woman Johansson to portray an Asian role, to which the whole of the Internet will now respond with a hearty “DA-DOY.”

What is a David Gordon Green film? The answer to this question has perplexed film scholars for years now: he began his career with the dreamy lyricism of tone poems George Washington and All the Real Girls, took a detour into stoner comedy with Your Highness and Pineapple Express, returned to difficult character studies for Prince Avalanche and Joe (or as I like to call it, Irrefutable Evidence That Nicolas Cage Is Still a Good Actor), then whipped up a studio-sized flop in haywire political satire Our Brand Is Crisis. Predicting his next move is all but impossible, so what luck that today brings the official news of what he’ll do next — and prepare yourself, because it just as incongruous with the rest of his scattered filmography as you’d expect.

The Avatar franchise has turned into James Cameron’s Xanadu, a vanity project of staggering scale to which the public will seemingly never be permitted access. It’s kept him busy since 2009, as he’s concurrently scripted a whopping four sequels to the immensely lucrative 2009 sci-fi epic. Perhaps, one day, it shall be his tomb. But to us unwashed rabble in the general populace, the grand Avatar franchise is little more than an idea, and a weird idea at that. As our beloved Editor-in-Chief Matt Singer noted not too long ago, pretty much everybody has moved on from Avatar as a cultural touchstone. Cameron seems more jazzed about this plan than anyone else, but he’ll have to put his dreams on hold for a little while longer.

Google is a wonderful company! They manufacture high-quality products and provide a web-surfing experience unparalleled in its intuitiveness and user ease. They’ve made tracking down a specific page in the endless expanse of the Internet into a few simple clicks, drastically cutting down research time. They connect people. They make the world a better place.

When Meryl Streep took the stage at the Golden Globes ceremony and delivered an impassioned speech calling out President-Elect Donald Trump as an overbearing bully, everyone had their reaction. Many rose up in support of the esteemed actress, celebrating her fiery diatribe as a heroic display of speaking truth to power. Others took issue with her anti-Trump stance, painting the woman as another pampered Hollywood liberal trapped within her bubble of privilege. A third, smaller faction of mixed martial arts enthusiasts took grave offense to Streep’s fleeting diss leveled at MMA and NFL football, and invited the multiple Academy Award winner to settle the matter in the octagon.

Actress Tippi Hedren rose to fame during the ’60s as the leading lady of such late-period Alfred Hitchcock classics as The Birds and Marnie. But in her upcoming memoir Tippi, an excerpt of which has been obtained and reported on by the New York Post, Hedren reveals that that stardom came with a terrible price...

Sir Kenneth Adam, the celebrated production designer responsible for the iconic sets from the James Bond franchise, Dr. Strangelove, and a host of other fine films, has died. He passed away last night in his London home following a brief stay in the hospital. He was 95 year old.

Each year’s ceremony usually yields a handful of viral moments, little unexpected happenings that catch the public’s interest and make their way around social media platforms. Last year, the surprise selfie taken by host Ellen Degeneres quickly set Twitter ablaze, racking up millions of retweets and favorites in a matter of minutes. This year’s ceremony re-set that bar, with Leonardo DiCaprio’s long-awaited Best Actor win now the most-tweeted Oscar moment of all time.

If the Oscars are like the electoral college, selecting the cream of the crop through an arcane and confusing process available only to an older, white, male elite population, then that makes the People’s Choice Awards the popular vote...