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What to Rent: New DVD Tuesday

BuzzSugar — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 08:45:00 PDT

Whatever Spring weather you're experiencing, you can always count on Tuesday to bring you new DVDs. What's new this week? An intense movie and a TV series that'll take the edge off.

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

Nicolas Cage is currently having a mini comeback - just this weekend, he was promoting high-profile projects Kick-Ass and The Sorcerer's Apprentice at Wondercon, but this Winter, he starred in the more serious, more moody Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.

Cage plays a good cop gone bad on his way down in this gritty, evocative tale, directed by Werner Herzog and set in post-Katrina New Orleans. Eva Mendes stars opposite him as his prostitute girlfriend, while Val Kilmer shows up as a fellow officer. I very much enjoyed this dark trip, which surprised me by being accessible and even funny at times.

The DVD extras include a couple of making-of featurettes and cast interviews.

85%

Party Down

Starz's original series Party Down was a raunchy, irreverent delight last year. Adam Scott, Ken Marino, Jane Lynch, and Lizzy Caplan star as a group of struggling actors moonlighting as a put-upon wait-staff, and the second season looks to get even funnier when Megan Mullally joins the cast.

The next season starts April 23, so here's your chance to get into the show if you missed it the first time around. The extras include a gag reel, behind-the-scenes footage, and commentaries with Scott and the executive producers.

Bad Lieutenant: Good Cop Gone Nuts

BuzzSugar — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:30:49 PST

Nicolas Cage has said, "There's a very fine line between Method actor and schizophrenic." In Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, he teeters that line maniacally, with an ever-increasing slur and crooked swagger. Cage plays Terence McDonagh, a detective in post-Katrina New Orleans investigating a drug-related murder and his personal threshold for cocaine and heroin.

The first news of Bad Lieutenant was puzzling: famously extreme director Werner Herzog re-imagining a 1992 cult movie, also called Bad Lieutenant, but shifting the action to New Orleans and casting Nic Cage in the Harvey Keitel role opposite his Ghost Rider costar Eva Mendes. Weird.

But in fact, Bad Lieutenant is Herzog's second surprisingly accessible movie in as many years, following 2007's Rescue Dawn. And Cage is brilliant in a role seemingly made for him, so

read more. The noirish, pulpy, desperate, and often hilarious film opens with a good deed: McDonagh dives into a Katrina-flooded jail cell to save a prisoner's life, in the process injuring his back and subsequently getting hooked on Vicodin and then far harder drugs. As a degenerate cop in a washed-out city, Cage makes Denzel Washington's Training Day villain look like a Boy Scout. He slithers through the streets, confiscating drugs to snort with his prostitute girlfriend (Mendes), hooking up with a drug kingpin played by Alvin "Xzibit" Joiner, and fending off a rising tide of self-created trouble. "Being courteous is really getting in the way of my progress," he croaks before one of his more disturbing moral lapses. In post-Katrina New Orleans, Herzog has found the perfect setting. He never lets the city look pretty or even charmingly decayed, and he populates it with iguanas and alligators and snakes and fish. At every turn, McDonagh is confronted by cold-blooded animals, as he careens between the call of duty and the cold-blooded instinct of his addiction. It's impossible to ignore the reptilian symbolism, and the effect is perfectly bizarre. Despite its darkest moments, Bad Lieutenant is a remarkably good trip.

Photos Courtesy First Look Studios

Celeb Style: Eva Mendes

FabSugar — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:30:08 PDT

Eva Mendes never disappoints with her sleek and sophisticated red carpet ensembles. At the Bad Lieutenant photo call in Venice, the actress radiated in a black-and-white polka-dot dress and fun heels. Her dress is cute enough to stand on its own, but I love how she accessorized with a white watch and skinny belt for extra spunk. Once again, on target and tantalizing.

Teeze me satin polka-dot dress - Sold Out	Another Line Skinny Patent Belt with Covered Buckle - Sold Out
Christian Louboutin Zoupi 120 platforms - Sold Out	White Leather Strap Watch - Sold Out
Super Sunglasses - Sold Out	Lulu Townsend Oversized Pleated Clutch - Sold Out
Kenneth Jay Lane Gold & Jet Crystal Cocktail Ring - Sold Out

Check out CelebStyle for lots more celebrity street style!

Link Time! 5/28

BuzzSugar — Thu, 28 May 2009 13:30:42 PDT

Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon-Levitt talk 500 Days of Summer. - Pop Candy
Yo Teach! is a fake sitcom promoting the movie Funny People . . . and yet, I kind of want to watch it. - Vulture
Here's one list of female TV stars who should get more movie roles (including Olivia Wilde and Evangeline Lilly). - Cinematical
And while we're at it - what TV folks could really use a job now that pilots are being recast?. - The TV Addict
And here's a list of other TV shows that should get the big screen treatment (including Friends and Gilmore Girls). - MTV Movies Blog
A pretty thorough rundown of our Summer viewing options. - TV.com
The Bad Lieutenant trailer: Best worst trailer of the year so far? - Popwatch
Cell phone name or '80s TV show? - geeksugar

Photo courtesy of Fox Searchlight

Next Herzog Project to Star Ghost Rider Duo, Mendes and Cage

BuzzSugar — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:40:15 PDT

The wildly talented German director Werner Herzog (Rescue Dawn, Grizzly Man, Little Dieter Needs to Fly) has tapped the Ghost Rider leads for his next project, a remake of Bad Lieutenant. The original 1992 film has this description on Netflix:

Winner of an Independent Spirit Award (Harvey Keitel for Best Male Lead), director Abel Ferarra's gritty, visceral crime drama puts an out-of-control police lieutenant (Keitel) on a collision course with disaster. A survivor of the streets, this junkie, thief and killer comes face to face with his own sordid past. Although he's exploited young girls for sex, he's forced to confront his private demons when he investigates the rape of a nun.

Herzog's "reimagined" version will star Eva Mendes and Nicolas Cage with, I'm assuming, Eva Mendes playing the nun. I gotta say, this casting makes me scratch my head a bit. Herzog worked with Christian Bale and Steve Zahn on Rescue Dawn and made an incredible film. It seems like he could have gotten some better talent for this movie, but hey, maybe he sees something in Cage and Mendes that we haven't been able to see yet.

Source

Nicolas Cage - Love Him or Leave Him?

Shannon Vestal — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 05:30:00 PST

Drive Angry 3D opens this week with a golden-haired Nicolas Cage in the driver's seat as a man seeking revenge (watch the so cheesy you have to see it to believe it trailer). It's a movie that seems par for the course for Cage, who's earned an awesomely eccentric image in the past few years. He's a great actor, but for every Bad Lieutenant, there's a Ghost Rider. Though he's proven to be someone whose next move you can't anticipate, it's interesting to remember that he's an award season triple threat with a long and diverse resume.

On that note, I'd like to know how you feel about him. Are you into him or is he just not your cup of tea?