As we enter the final weeks of 2008, there can be no doubt that the season of listing is upon us. Exhibit A is today’s unveiling of the 2008 edition of Film Threat’s annual hatchet job, The Frigid 50: The Coldest People in Hollywood. (As a former Threat-er myself, I mean “hatchet job” in the most loving way, of course.) “Unlike those other lists that brown-nose their way into some pampered celebrity's good graces, the Frigid 50 is a written declaration of who or what in Hollywood needs a reality check, detailing the least-powerful, least-inspiring, least-intriguing people in all of Tinseltown. Before a career is over (or in some cases, immediately after), it finds itself sitting in Frigid 50 territory.”

So who made the cut this year? Hit the jump for a few choice selections.

Read More...

By now, even compulsive listmakers like your humble Screengrab staff are getting sick to our bones of year-end top ten lists.  We've seen them all, or at least we've seen all the movies that are on them, and you can only hear so many times how goddamn great the Coen Brothers are, even if you really, really believe it.  But leave it to Film Threat to come up with one last 2007 recap, and actually make it worth reading:  Phil Hall counts down the Ten Best Unseen Films of 2007.  (And he's right:  we haven't seen any of these).

Each year, for whatever reason, a lot of filmgoers -- even critics, industry types, and other insiders -- don't have the opportunity to see a lot of the films completed and released during that calendar year.  Possibly they've only gotten an overseas release, or they're having trouble getting a distrubutor, or they're still making the festival circuit, or they go straight to video or are only available from the filmmaker.  (By way of example, two of the Screengrab's favorite movies of 2007 were dated far earlier; the Oscar-winning German drama The Lives of Others, while completed in 2006, only showed in the U.S. at one film festival that year, while Charles Burnett's masterful Killer of Sheep was made over three decades ago but is only now seeing theatrical release due to clearance rights issues and financial problems.)  That's why lists like Hall's are valuable; they provide us with a sort of checklist for movies we might likely see in the year or years following for which our eyes should be peeled.

Read More...

Fans of Mike Judge's Idiocracy will recall "Brawndo", the thirst-mutilating energy drink that had replaced water in the dystopian future where the world was run by morons.  Well, Film Threat is reporting that, in one of the stranger marketing moves of all time, Brawndo is actually going to be produced (which should make the editors at Maxim pretty happy, as they recently named it one of the top fictional products they wished really existed) and sold for public consumption.  We're not sure if Mike had anything to do with this, or if it's just the result of an irony-deficient studio promotions department, but we would like to point out that it is being manufactured by a company whose other major sports drink product is called "Cocaine".  We trust no further comment is necessary.

"A jet-lagged Harvey Weinstein lecturing at an Arab film festival: what could go wrong with that?" This is one of many loaded questions posed by Jeff Beresford-Howe in his highly entertaining Film Threat diary of the first-ever Middle East International Film Festival, held recently in opulent Abu Dhabi. A mere four months in the making, the festival was sponsored by emirs rich on petrodollars and tourist dirhams, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t plenty that could go awry, as evidenced by the first night of the festival, where Beresford-Howe logs the reaction of a group of Arab women in the audience of Atonement to a scene involving the frequent use of a rather crude term for the female genitalia. The author also offers this not unexpected bit of advice: "If you ever want to see the full range of Homeland Security tricks and treats, book a same-day international flight to an Arab country and have your ticket paid for by a third party with a Middle Eastern address." — Leonard Pierce