BuzzSugar

What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday

BuzzSugar — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 08:30:16 PDT

All of the new DVD releases hit stores (and Netflix) on Tuesdays. So each week in What to Netflix: New DVD Tuesday, I sort through the best of the batch and tell you what to add to your queue.

Smart People
I had high hopes for Smart People, mainly due to the stellar cast that includes Sarah Jessica Parker, Ellen Page, Thomas Haden Church, and Dennis Quaid.

The story takes place near the Carnegie Mellon campus and centers around a family headed by a widowed professor (Quaid) who are all having a terrible time relating to each other and the outside world, despite how book smart they are. When the professor's free-spirited brother (Church) crashes into their lives they all start to thaw out a bit and discover how far a little humanity can go.

The movie didn't quite meet my expectations but it's certainly a worthwhile rental if you're looking for a few laughs and a genuinely talented ensemble cast.

Special features include interviews with the producers, cast and crew of the movie, commentary from the director and writer, a collection of outtakes, nine deleted scenes and exclusive footage from the premiere of Smart People at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival.

Two more new options on DVD if you

The Wire: Season Five
I still have not totally come to grips with the fact that this final season of The Wire was overlooked by Emmy voters. The show has spent years as one of the most consistently well reviewed shows on television, though its ratings were never high. Today the final piece of the puzzle, the show's fifth season, is out on DVD, and marks the final chapter of David Simon's epic saga about Baltimore with a critical look at the media.

The season got more criticism than most (maybe because the media had to see themselves, rather than police officers or teachers, through Simon's bleak lens), but that didn't make it any less satisfying for me. The 10 episodes wrap up many of the stories Simon and series co-creator Ed Burns had been working on for years, and even at the end, nothing about The Wire is ever too neat or tidy. Once again, the lines between good guys and bad guys end up blurred, and that's a big part of what makes the show so captivating.

Special features include "The Wire Odyssey: A Retrospective of the First Four Seasons," "The Wire: The Last Word - A Documentary Exploring the Role of the Media," and six audio commentaries with Simon and members of the cast and crew.

How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer
I just happened to read something yesterday about how difficult it is for studios to embrace and market smart movies that are for and about women, even after the huge success of Sex and the City. So, it's an interesting coincidence that an example of this phenomenon is out on DVD today. I hardly heard anything about this film, even though it received an 84% on RottenTomatoes and stars one of Hollywood's biggest young stars. What the heck?

Anyway, How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer is about three generations of Mexican women grappling with issues of romance and sexuality - at all stages of life. It looks compelling, thoughtful and relatable and I, for one, am stoked to see this. The movie stars America Ferrera, Elizabeth Peña, Lucy Gallardo, and Eliana Alexander and was screened in competition at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. (Yeah: 2005! Sheesh.)

Do, Dump or Marry?

DearSugar — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 09:00:00 PDT

Smart People came out on Friday and seeing Sarah Jessica Parker on the big screen got me more than excited to see the new Sex and the City movie. Now I could go on and on about her, but we're here to talk about Dennis Quaid! He's had a rough few months, but luckily he was able to escape in his role in this much buzzed about movie. We haven't seen him on the big screen in a while but I'm glad he's back. I've been a huge fan since he played a southern charmer/philanderer in Something to Talk About and although he's not the most photogenic, I happen to think he's a total babe. So ladies, even though he's very much taken, tell me, would you want to do, dump or marry Dennis Quaid?

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Box Office: A Memorable Prom Weekend

BuzzSugar — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:30:38 PDT

Maybe it's that time of the year, or perhaps there was a strong nationwide desire to see a scary movie, but whatever the reason, horror flick Prom Night was crowned queen at the box office this weekend. Variety reports that the movie's $22.7 million marks the best opening for a horror picture so far this year, possibly due to the teen-friendly PG-13 rating.

Though Street Kings is loaded with bloodshed and big names like Forest Whitaker and Keanu Reeves, it was still no match for the teen screamfest, earning second place with an estimated $12 million. 21, on the other hand, is still performing well, taking the third spot with $11 million. It was followed by Nim's Island, Leatherheads, and Horton Hears a Who.

Little family comedy Smart People starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Ellen Page, and Dennis Quaid came in No. 7 earning about $4.2 million. The overall box office is still experiencing a slump compared to last year. I wonder if Forgetting Sarah Marshall will get more folks to the theaters next weekend?

And if you're curious about Prom Night, head over to movies.ivillage.com for the trailer and video clips.

Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures

Smart People: Emotionally Unintelligent

BuzzSugar — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:30:08 PDT

Smart People has a lot of good stuff going for it: a great cast (including Ellen Page in the follow-up to her star-making Juno role), sharp and funny dialogue, and a studied look at familial dysfunction.

The movie takes place in a dreary Pittsburgh near the Carnegie Mellon campus and is centered around a family headed by a widowed professor given a name that could only go to a serious blow-hard: Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid). He is father to high school senior Vanessa (Page) and Carnegie Melon student/talented poet James. Lawrence, we quickly learn, also has an adopted brother, Chuck (Thomas Haden Church), who's a major slacker and/or free spirit who comes to crash with the family when he's run out of money.

The story isn't the most original idea ever scripted, but if told right, it could have been a nice little movie about learning to love and appreciate the crazy nut-heads we're all dealt in life: our relatives. Unfortunately the loving and appreciating comes far too late and as a result, we end up watching a lot of seriously miserable people roam around being miserable without much point. To see what I think rescues this film from being a total Debbie Downer,

The Wetherholds, save for Chuck, are, as the title suggests, extremely intelligent (in the "we wear tweed and get published in The New Yorker" kind of way) but completely emotionally withdrawn. It takes a new love interest (Sarah Jessica Parker) to begin to melt the ice around the professor's heart and the fun-loving uncle to get the family to reveal an ounce of humanity to the outside world. Thankfully, they're so darn smart that when they take verbal jabs at each other, they're witty and biting enough to make for some good laughs.

Page, in particular, plays her politically conservative, uptight character with the same smart-aleck timing as slacker-teen Juno MacGuff - so it's funny, but not an acting stretch. However, some of the best moments of this film come during her scenes with Church, who takes an interest in getting his stick-in-the-mud niece to loosen up a little. They smoke pot together, get drunk, and have some really wonderfully touching, offbeat moments of bonding that are the result of two fine actors bringing out the best in each other.

Quaid's character, on the other hand, is really quite repellent. He is withdrawn, shows zero interest in his students, takes his children for granted and is that guy who talks about himself for 45 minutes on a date without asking the woman a question. Why would any woman, much less an attractive, accomplished doctor, want to be with him?

Unfortunately, the professor doesn't begin to see the error of his ways until it's much too late and as a result, it's hard to care about him - and, by extension, his family. At least there is one character who found the Wetherholds' repressed, socially awkward personalities unpleasant and indulgent. As Chuck, Church mastered a facial expression during exchanges between these unhappy people that perfectly expressed what I as a viewer was thinking: "Man, and they call me the idiot?"

To see the trailer and more clips from Smart People check out movies.ivillage.com.

Photos courtesy of Miramax Films

SJP and Ellen Page Are Bright Ladies at Smart People

Molly — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 02:01:00 PDT

Surprisingly, Ellen Page was the girly looking one at last night's NYC premiere of Smart People. Sarah Jessica Parker, on the other hand, went a little more rock star with her leggings, leopard print and hot pink. The cute little ladies' costars Dennis Quaid and Thomas Hayden Church were both on hand for the event. This was one of the hot movies at Sundance Film Festival and with such an adorable and talented cast, I can't wait to finally see it when it hits theaters April 11.

To see more from the premiere including Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker, Thomas Haden Church, Dennis Quaid, Ellen Barkin, just

View 21 Photos ›

Images include: Beth Ostrosky, Candace Bushnell, Cynthia Nixon, Dennis Quaid, Ellen Barkin, Ellen Page, James Lipton, Jane Fonda, Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker, Thomas Haden Church

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BuzzSugar's Most Anticipated Spring Movies

BuzzSugar — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 08:30:00 PST

The sunlight might be lasting longer and longer these days, but I'm still planning to spend time indoors at the movie theater this Spring. What is striking about the movies coming out this season is the variety: From quirky little indies that premiered at Sundance to highly anticipated blockbusters, you can check out the movies I'm most excited to view in the coming months by pressing "Start."

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Sundance Spotlight: Ellen Page, SJP in Smart People

BuzzSugar — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 08:30:19 PST

I have been sulking ever since I couldn't into the premiere of Smart People at Sundance. The cast is fantastic and the buzz surrounding it has been good. The family dramedy stars Dennis Quaid as an acerbic widowed professor with some sassy kids (including Vanessa, played by Ellen Page) whose life gets complicated when he falls in love with his former student (Sarah Jessica Parker), and his adopted brother (Thomas Haden Church) re-enters his life.

After the jump there are a couple clips from the movie, featuring Ellen Page once again making wisecracks like someone beyond her years. I'm still sad that I didn't get to a screening for this one, but the clips help a little. To check them out,

SJP and Matthew Have Lots To Celebrate at Sundance

Molly — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 23:31:43 PST

It was back to back nights of Sundance premieres for the Sarah Jessica Parker/Matthew Broderick power couple with Sunday bringing out her Smart People and Sunday featuring his Diminished Capacity. Both actors were happy to accompany their other halves to the big premieres - awwww. While I've heard good things about SJP's project with Dennis Quaid and Thomas Haden Church, I was actually there to see Matthew's movie last night. It's an incredibly sweet and funny film - Matthew plays perfectly slightly neurotic but hilarious while Alan Alda was just great as Matthew's elderly uncle. Plus, I can't not gush a little about seeing SJP again (this time from afar, though Sunday's treat of seeing her interviewed was thrills enough) as she came into the theater to a sea of flashing cameras of other audience members. Definitely a great weekend in Park City for all the stars and makers of these two films.

SJP is there for her Smart project, but of course everyone wants to hear about Sex and the City especially the new addition to one of the star's families. Christopher Noth's girlfriend had a baby over the weekend and Sarah was happy to gush about the new dad. She said, "I'm thrilled for him because I think first of all he's going to make a wonderful, wonderful father...He found a lovely lady to have a child with. It's the perfect time for him and I think he's very ready." Mr. Big Daddy? Sorry, sorry, I had to.

To see more from the premieres just

View 21 Photos ›

View 14 Photos ›

Images include: Ashton Holmes, Camille Mana, Dennis Quaid, Kimberly Buffington, Geoffrey Gilmore, Matthew Broderick, Noam Murro, Sarah Jessica Parker, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Alan Alda, Terry Kinney, Louis C.K., Kaycee Stroh

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Hysteria Director Tanya Wexler Talks Vibrators, Faking It, and Duck Sex

Tara Block — Fri, 25 May 2012 04:00:15 PDT

Don't be shy . . . It's time to talk sex toys! And Hysteria director Tanya Wexler is writing us a prescription for pleasure. Tanya's film - what she calls "the vibrator movie you can bring your mom to" - is in limited release and stars Hugh Dancy, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Rupert Everett. When working on a romantic comedy that centers around the invention of the vibrator, you end up with some entertaining and embarrassing situations along the way, and lucky for us, Tanya spilled all the hilariously dirty details. From teaming up with the film's partner Jimmyjane for a drive-by vibrator drop-off to a certain female Oscar-winner to trying unsuccessfully to get ducks to shag on command, Tanya was bursting with great stories from working on this very unconventional film. And while Tanya isn't ashamed to discuss the sexy subject matter of her latest film with us, the mother of four and her partner of 21 years did have a tricky challenge telling her preteen kids what her movie was about. (She eventually gave them the script and let them figure it out themselves!) Check out our interview with the fun-loving director now, and we dare you not to have a girl crush on her by the end!

TrèsSugar: What were some of the challenges to getting a movie made about vibrators?
Tanya Wexler: Getting the script right was tricky because if you just make a movie about the invention of the vibrator, it's actually a really short movie: you go "bzz" and it's done. And we had a kind of light romantic comedy. I say I made the vibrator movie you can bring your mom to. But some people wanted it to be raunchy or some people wanted it to be more serious and about feminism. People project a lot onto this movie of what they want, because there isn't a lot out there about vibrators and women's pleasure, and we still don't really deal with that topic very well, or we're overly antsy around it. And as a result, people have a lot of ideas of what the movie could and should be, and you can't please everyone. [laughs]

TS: Ha, good one.
TW: It's nonstop!

TS: Do you find sex toys inherently funny or something to be seriously celebrated?
TW: Yes!

TS: Both?
TW: Yes! Yes. I think they make me laugh, and I think that the inner kind of Beavis and Butt-head in all of us goes "[laugh]." You know, that inner 13-year-old, like, "Hahaha vibrator . . . " and yet they're awesome and fun.

TS: What shocked you the most when researching the movie?
TW: That ducks are the rapists of the bird world, and you'll see when you see the movie, because there's a little bit of questionable duck behavior - or awesome duck behavior - in the movie. It's totally a sidebar, but you cannot make ducks shag on command. I'm just saying.

TS: What about the whole history of hysteria being a medical condition?
TW: When I first heard the idea, I was like, "What do you mean it was invented in Victorian times?" I knew about hysteria, but the idea that the treatment was manual [British accent] massage deparaxism - which is what they called it - and, of course, the denial. The most shocking thing is the denial, that they didn't think it was sexual.

TS: Do you think they were really in denial?
TW: No, I don't think that some people were. My college roommate was with her high school boyfriend for two years and she had never had an orgasm. I think there's all kinds of denial, especially with women's sexuality. So the fact that there are young women today who haven't had an orgasm, whether self-induced - which is insane - or with a partner, then why wouldn't we think back then that women wouldn't know what orgasms were?

They would get a massage, and the doctor's saying, "Without a penis, this isn't sex, because sex is about procreation," so what is this? The best physical therapy you've ever had. So once you don't think of it as something other than what the doctor's supposed to do to cure your uncontrollable crying or uncontrollable laughter or whatever, then it's just an awesome muscle spasm. If you don't think women have their own inherent sexuality, then you're not thinking about it like that.

Keep reading for Tanya's thoughts on Fifty Shades and more!

9 Ways to Earn Extra Cash When Money Is Tight

Wise Bread — Thu, 24 May 2012 11:51:58 PDT

I'm sure everyone can do with a little more cash in their wallets. Here are some great suggestions by Wise Bread for you to make extra money.

Even though I'm self-employed full-time, I'm always looking for new and exciting ways to make more money.

Earlier this year, I wrote a Wise Bread post on websites that can help you earn extra cash. More recently, I came across a blog post on Zaarly titled, "10 Ways to Make Money Without a Job." After reviewing the latter post, I thought it was time to revisit the topic and let you in on a few more ways to get paid.

The ideas that Zaarly presents are perfect for the unemployed or those who just want to pad their pockets a little more. In addition, there are moonlighting jobs that I do that I thought you should know about. Thus, if you're without a steady paycheck or you just want to build up a rainy-day stash, here are some of your options.

1. Offer Experiences to Strangers

I recently learned about a new site called Vayable, which allows people with specialized knowledge and talents, local info, and time on their hands to create experiences that others can purchase. It's basically a touring and activity company without the company. Anyone can join the site and set up an experience. For instance, the Kan Brothers offer motorcycle tours of San Francisco - which include helmet rental, a drink at a local hot spot, and a city map - for two to four people at $75 per person. In New York City, Kim G. is offering a personalized painting lesson for groups of two to six for a flat rate of $300; the experience includes acrylic paints; canvas board and supplies; studio space; wine, cheese, and crackers; and Kim’s undivided attention. Consider this tip if you're interested in joining Vayable: Browse the site to see what other people in your area are offering. By creating a unique experience that no one else has established, you have a better chance of getting booked.

Read on for more.