by Damon Martin
It all started with 1994’s independent smash hit Clerks and just a few short years later Kevin Smith was well on his way to being the Quentin Tarantino of pop culture nerd films. Now as 2010 closes, Smith may very well be embarking on his final films before moving on to concentrate on other projects including his vast podcasting and public speaking empire.
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by Ryan Stewart
“A lot of my life depends on what male actors are gonna be doing.”
– Elizabeth Banks
If you’re Sam Raimi, you have an interesting little dilemma to solve. One constant of the three Spider-Man films has been the Betty Brant character, a Peter Parker-smitten secretary who pops in for a couple of quick minutes to bat an eyelash at Peter or take a dig at her Daily Bugle boss, J. Jonah Jameson, before disappearing again. No one suspected, when the last film completed lensing in early 2006, that by the time pre-production on a fourth one rolled around, Elizabeth Banks, the actress who plays Betty, would have mushroomed into a bonafide A-list actress with starring roles in Oliver Stone’s W. and Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno under her belt. The rumor mill has been heating up lately with talk that Raimi may pursue the obvious solution of expanding the Betty Brant role into a lead part in Spider-Man 4, but for now it’s just talk.
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by Andrew E. Konietzky
You film minions are a voracious breed. I gave you a Horror Top 10 in October, which you greedily devoured. Unsatiated, you tore open another vein with the Holiday Top 10 in November, and now you want more. So I bring you The Film Strain’s Top 10 Tragically Underrated or Ignored Films of 2010. As with my previous lists, it is impossible to be 100% definitive and catalog all the films that got created this past year. Some of the films that I’ve included are big names, but considered failures by the studios. Many of them were tragically ignored by the masses and quietly slinked into DVD/Blu-Ray releases. Some may be completely unknown to many film lovers, so write them down. Here are 10 from 2010 that just did not get the respect and viewer love that they should have, but all of them actually got released in theaters somewhere.
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by Fred Topel
“Darren and Mickey and I all decided that we were going to keep our distance…”
– Evan Rachel Wood
Evan Rachel Wood has a lot to say about a little role in The Wrestler. She only appears in two scenes in the movie, but they are pivotal. She plays the estranged daughter of Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke), a professional wrestler who continues to prove hes an unreliable dad as he has flings with strippers and groupies on the road. Off the set, rumors were that Rourke and Wood were having a fling of their own.
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by Brett Warner
Every other Friday night, T.J. Byrnes Restaurant and Bar in Manhattan’s Financial District hosts a modestly produced karaoke night. The small, unassuming Irish pub is tucked away behind a towering housing project, and on any such night, nearby residents might hear the echoes of drunken laughter or the faint opening bass notes of The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me.” For Rutgers professor Fred Solinger and bookstore manager George Carmona, though, this is not just about getting plastered and mumbling through a semi-coherent rendition of “Copacabana”— it’s turf warfare.
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by Matt Dunbar
While the holiday season provides an endless bounty for Sinbad fans the world over, action movie nerds such as myself loathe the winter solstice and its attendant festivities. Despite the perfect Christmas-themed taglines for a Dolph Lundgren vehicle (“This Christmas, Earth has no time for peace…”), December usually means a dry spell for protracted car chases, overwrought explosions, and cheesy one-liners delivered with Central European accents.
Thankfully, there is one historical exception to this holiday action drought. Alongside George Bailey’s exuberant dash through Bedford Falls and Ralphie’s ill-fated target practice, nothing evokes the yule-tide spirit more than the sight of Alan Rickman’s flailing arms as he falls to his death off Nakatomi Towers. With due apologies to Lethal Weapon loyalists, the first Die Hard is the best Christmas movie to ever incorporate cocaine, automatic gunfire and lots of dead East Germans.
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by Alex Dueben
“She really was a manifestation of my inner thoughts”
– Jen Wang
Jen Wang first surfaced crafting short comics that appeared online and in the Flight anthologies, but her debut graphic novel Koko Be Good is the first work of hers that most people will have encountered. It’s a beautifully illustrated book that centers around three characters, each of whom is tackling, in their own way, what it means to be “good.”
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