No ridiculously good-looking famous actor to see here, folks. JK.
Splash News
Soul Brother / Splash News
Soul Brother / Splash News
Splash News
Let’s all just move to the woods.
Between coffees, obviously.
Bottomless mimosas anyone?
Bravo / Via giphy.com
Oh cool, the L is down again.
How can two people be so loud and horrible...
Universal Pictures / Via giphy.com
It's five years.*
*That's debatable
Love thy neighbor? We don’t know anymore, guys.
Lloyd-Levitan Productions
Warner Bros. Television / Via fullhouseforever87.tumblr.com
"I had a neighbor who was too cheap to purchase her own underwear. She'd just steal mine from the dryer. I knew it was her because I spied on her and caught her in the act."
Sony Pictures Television / Via nasty-like-nas.tumblr.com
"My neighbor threw a ginormous party that started at 11:00 p.m. on a TUESDAY. Oh and it had a live band. What's worse? Her guests were so wasted there was throw-up ALL OVER our shared backyard."
Universal Pictures / Via catch-all-culture.com
From superhero blockbusters to raucous comedies to weepy tearjerkers to winsome indies to Bollywood spectacles, this is what was available at (many) movie theaters over the summer of 2014. So how many did you get to see?
Adam B. Vary for BuzzFeed / Columbia Pictures; Disney; 20th Century Fox; DreamWorks Animation; Screen Gems; Paramount Pictures; Universal Pictures
It was a terrible summer at the U.S. box office, but does that mean the movies were also terrible?
Jenny Chang for BuzzFeed / IFC Films; Marvel; Columbia Pictures; Radius-TWC; A24; Warner Bros.; Universal Pictures; 20th Century Fox
Adam B. Vary: Now that the dust has settled on this year's summer movie season, Alison, we can see plainly what we've suspected since at least June — this was a terrible summer at the domestic box office. Like, really, really, really bad. Collectively, Hollywood hasn't grossed this little at the box office since 2006 — and when adjusting for ticket price inflation, it appears this was the worst summer since 1992.
Breaking things down even further, it wasn't until August that a summer movie became the top-grossing film of the year so far — that would be Guardians of the Galaxy, which supplanted Marvel Studios' other movie this year, Captain America: The Winter Soldier (which was released in April), for the No. 1 spot atop the U.S. box office. As far as I can tell, before this year, an August movie hadn't won the summer domestic box office since at least 1980, and possibly ever. And Guardians did it with just $251.5 million (and counting) in domestic receipts. If current projections for the movie to top out around $290 million are correct, it will be the lowest-grossing summer movie champion since Shrek in 2001 (and adjusting for inflation, since Ghost in 1990 — there are BuzzFeed staffers who weren't even born in 1990).
Put simply: This year's summer movies just were not popular with American audiences. Are the movies themselves to blame? Do you think they were that bad?
Alison Willmore: No. Not at all. When it comes to shiny summer entertainment, I thought this year's crop was pretty good, from the supergroup pleasures of X-Men: Days of Future Past to the unexpectedly dark dramas of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes to the glorious weirdness of Guardians of the Galaxy. Not everything worked — ahem, Sex Tape — but in a season that's mainly about uncomplicated good times, uncomplicated good times were frequently had.
But now it's late August, and I do feel a little queasy, like I've been gorging on junk food for months. Here's what I do wonder, Adam: Does the idea of a summer blockbuster season make sense anymore? One thing that this job of seeing so many of these movies in a row emphasizes is a certain sameness. Many of them are about saving the world, many of them are heavy on explosions and destruction, and many of them are continuations of a franchise, brand, or series, meaning they have an obligation to be bigger than and to up the stakes from whatever came before. Marvel and DC have both staked out dates years in advance for their upcoming releases, mostly for prime summer territory, plenty of those opening weekends reserved for projects that don't yet have announced titles. So, the clutter isn't going to change anytime soon. Do you think these movies are drowning each other out?
Columbia Pictures
ABV: I think you hit the nail on the head: There was a feeling of homogenized sameness creeping into so many of the big summer movies this year — both within the individual franchises, and across the grand Hollywood VFX-blockbuster industrial complex. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 felt like the most disappointing example to me — a franchise reboot that tried so hard to find a kind of winsome indie rom-com sensibility, yet was utterly drowned out by its obligations to cover so much of the same visual and storytelling territory as other superhero movies (and, especially, earlier Spider-Man movies). Transformers: Age of Extinction, meanwhile, was exactly the same numbing visual onslaught as every other Transformers movie, despite the Mark Wahlberg and dinobots of it all — and it was almost three hours long. Maleficent was a weird mash-up of Snow White and the Huntsman, Oz the Great and Powerful, and the various Lord of the Rings/Hobbit movies, with its only genuine special effect being Angelina Jolie's unmatched star power (and enhanced cheek bones).
But this problem wasn't restricted just to bad movies. X-Men: Days of Future Past and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes were highly competent and entertaining experiences that nonetheless held very little by way of genuine surprise for me. Even the insanely fun and often surprising Guardians of the Galaxy leaned heavily on a bare-bones basic plot that felt virtually the same as several previous Marvel Studios movies.
And yet, all of these movies were far more successful in the U.S. than my favorite big effects movie of the summer, Edge of Tomorrow. Despite its obvious sci-fi invasion meets Groundhog Day structure, it most consistently surprised and delighted me. And no one saw it — or, rather, not nearly enough people saw it for anyone in Hollywood to consider it a success.
I'm depressed, Alison. Cheer me up!
These GIFs of Zefron’s chiseled abs will take all your Monday blues away.
Universal Pictures / Via chronolust.tumblr.com
Universal Pictures / Via chronolust.tumblr.com
Universal Pictures / Via chronolust.tumblr.com
Movies that are not sequels, prequels, remakes, or adaptations of novels, comic books, popular toy lines, or true stories are growing ever more scarce — but some did, at least, make money this year.
Universal; Warner Bros.; Universal; Universal; 20th Century Fox
There are many encouraging effects of Sony Pictures' decision to allow theaters to screen The Interview on Dec. 25, but perhaps one of the least acknowledged is the fact that it brings the last original studio movie of 2014 to screens nationwide. It's probably a minor consideration for Sony (if one at all), but in a year in which all top 10 grossing films stateside were either sequels or based on pre-existing creative properties, the addition of any original creative work born solely from its filmmakers' imaginations is a significant one.
As Grantland contributor Mark Harris recently laid out, Hollywood's entire business model — and therefore, the moviegoing diet of the vast majority of Americans — has been overtaken with sequels, prequels, reboots, remakes, reimaginings, and adaptations. As a point of contrast, 15 years ago, six original films cracked the top 10 domestic grossers of the year. But even prestige-y, awards-y movies that largely don't bother to compete with major studio releases have also become dominated with telling pre-existing stories: Just this year, Selma, The Theory of Everything, The Imitation Game, Wild, Foxcatcher, Unbroken, and Mr. Turner are all based on real people and real events (and all but Selma, Foxcatcher, and Mr. Turner were adaptations of books).
Of course, movies based on other things are often quite good — occasionally, even great — but they shouldn't be the only kind of movie. More and more, however, as far as Hollywood is concerned, they are. Original films do still get made, but they are fewer and farther between — of the top 50 grossers of the year in the U.S., just 12 of them are wholly original productions. Last year, that number was 15.
As you'll see in the list below, some of that drop could be chalked up to quality — namely, a lack of it. But as Harris noted in his essay, Hollywood's resources — both financial and creative — are finite. If the best minds and the most money are being invested in shepherding a suite of franchises scheduled through the rest of the decade, there is that much less oxygen for purely original creativity to thrive.
All box office data courtesy Box Office Mojo, and as of Sunday, Dec. 21.
Total domestic gross: $171,535,531
Total global gross: $635,535,531
Rank for 2014 domestic box office: 15
Let's set aside for the moment the movie's wordy portentousness, and marvel instead that co-writer/director Christopher Nolan is using his clout as arguably the most powerful filmmaker in Hollywood today (arguably!) to make an original movie with as much scope and ambition as this one. Its considerable global box office puts Interstellar ninth worldwide for the year, and makes as plain a case as possible that investing in a filmmaker's original vision can pay off handsomely.
In fact, let's invent a new thing. How about we start calling original filmmakers "human franchises" instead? Perhaps then Hollywood will pay more attention to supporting them.
Melinda Sue Gordon / Warner Bros.
Total domestic gross: $150,157,400
Total global gross: $268,157,400
Rank for all 2014 domestic box office: 18
Another human franchise: Seth Rogen, who was having a very good year (until this month) thanks to the runaway success of last May's very funny twentysomething college student vs. thirtysomething new parent comedy. In addition to starring in the film, Rogen produced Neighbors with his creative partner Evan Goldberg. The duo also wrote, produced, and directed last year's very funny — and quite original — apocalyptic comedy This Is the End, and they wrote, produced, and directed The Interview. What I'm saying here is that Rogen and Goldberg are arguably (arguably!) the biggest force in original comedy today, and I really, really hope the fallout from The Interview debacle doesn't diminish their commitment or ability to make original movies.
Glen Wilson / Universal
This year, BuzzFeed Entertainment talked to the people behind some of the biggest projects of the year (like The Hunger Games, American Horror Story, and Serial) and reminisced with others who helped make past favorites (like Friends, Twin Peaks, and Hey Dude). Warning: SPOILERS ABOUND!
Jaimie Etkin for BuzzFeed
BuzzFeed News went on an exclusive visit to the American Horror Story: Freak Show set to find out about the celebrated franchise's most controversial season yet, whether or not this is really the end for Jessica Lange, and who will be returning for Season 5.
FX
Director Francis Lawrence, screenwriter Peter Craig, and producer Nina Jacobson spoke to BuzzFeed News about adapting the final installment of Suzanne Collins' best-selling franchise. MAJOR SPOILERS!
Murray Close / Lionsgate
In Season 3, Oliver Queen's alter ego, Arrow, has faced Ra's al Ghul as the Big Bad. But for fans and The CW, he's already won.
Alice Mongkongllite for BuzzFeed / Via Warner Bros. Television / The CW
It was a year of fighting robots, brawling neighbors, battling tanks, and so much more. SPOILERS BELOW.
2014 was the year we fully surrendered to the blockbuster franchise, with its nine-figure budgets, shared universes, and promises of inevitable reboots, full of sound, fury, and spectacle. But given how much grand action there was on screen, there were surprisingly few standout fight sequences. Part of it's that the swooping digital battles that are everywhere now are... well, everywhere now, the new norm. Take Transformers: Age of Extinction, a movie overflowing with the expected Michael Bay eye-popping visuals, but also one that, at least for me, faded into a blur almost immediately. Except for this scene, which uses the most cutting edge cinematic technology to render, in exquisite detail, a robot that can turn into a truck fighting a robot that can turn into a dinosaur, and then riding it through the streets of Hong Kong. What really cements this moment is not the bewildering speech about freedom Optimus Prime gives the Dinobot he's beating up, but that the observing Autobots seem just as surprised at the T-rex transformation and the expanding rules of their franchise as anyone watching. "I was expecting a giant car!" gasps Drift.
Paramount Home Entertainment
Lucy writes itself into a bit of a corner by having its main character accelerate toward post-human transcendence so quickly — no one can win against or even surprise Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) once she begins her journey. That said, the scene in which she first puts her new awareness to use, taking out the men holding her captive in the back of a Taipei restaurant, digging out the bullet in her shoulder, and passing for some quick caloric intake, is a minor joy in all of its brisk, cold-eyed efficiency.
Universal Pictures
The Hobbit was obviously stretching its material for its final chapter, but who isn't thankful that left plenty of room for one last great Legolas fight? Orlando Bloom's elf prince has gotten to do something physics-defyingly awesome in just about every one of Peter Jackson's Tolkien adaptations, and his rematch with the Orc chieftain Bolg on a crumbling bridge was another cleverly orchestrated, impossibly athletic bit of Legolas action.
Warner Bros.
Gareth Edwards' Godzilla reboot was all about anticipation, teasing the first appearance of the MUTOs, the giant monsters that end up terrorizing various American cities, not to mention the famous kaiju himself. When the monsters finally do meet in San Francisco, the battle escalates as well, never more satisfyingly than in the moment in which Godzilla first shows off his nuclear capabilities. A MUTO is closing in on Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) when, just in time, Godzilla rises out of the darkness, spines glowing blue as he prepares a blast of atomic breath.
Warner Home Video
~Advanced~ ball fetching.
youtube.com / Via youtube.com
Via youtube.com
“It just sounds like bowling balls…that can’t be what it is.”
Seriously, what are you doing up there?
Joanna Borns/BuzzFeed/Thinkstock
Joanna Borns/BuzzFeed
Joanna Borns/BuzzFeed
Joanna Borns/BuzzFeed
Are they bowling up there…?
EVER.
It's either bowling OR dragging various dead bodies across the floor.
>:)
WHO. RAISED. YOU???
Yes, yes we can.
So jealous Zac got to touch Zac’s junk.
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
I have some things to talk to you about.
Getty Images
"Luckily, I have such a soft focus face that I don't think I will ever get to that point where someone comes up to me and is like, ‘I'm so sorry but I need you to Facetime with my girlfriend right now,'" Ike Barinholtz said in a recent interview with BuzzFeed News.
But he has seen plenty of that kind of fame firsthand. “I remember we were shooting Neighbors 2 and there were these three women — one was 58, one was 38, and one was 14 — and they were all screaming ‘Zac! Zac!’ over and over. And I was like, ‘That's three generations of women that want to fuck you,’” Barinholtz said with a laugh. “To have a life like Zac or Tina or Amy or Mindy is pretty intense.”
Zac is, of course, Zac Efron, Barinholtz’s co-star in Neighbors and its sequel, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising; Tina and Amy are, of course, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, Barinholtz’s co-stars in Sisters; and Mindy is, of course, Mindy Kaling, Barinholtz’s boss and co-star on The Mindy Project.
But as any of his — as he put it — “goddamn famous” friends would tell him, that intense degree of global fame is something that chooses you, not the other way around. And given that 2015 marks his most high-profile role to date, things could be changing for Barinholtz.
Kaling and Barinholtz on The Mindy Project.
Universal Television
Since 2012, the Chicago native has slowly and steadily built a passionate fanbase through The Mindy Project where, in addition to writing and producing, Barinholtz plays Morgan Tookers, a sweet but startlingly incompetent ex-convict who works as a nurse at Mindy Lahiri’s OBGYN practice. In 2014, he co-starred with Efron and Seth Rogen in the fraternity hit comedy Neighbors as Jimmy Blevins, a man who refused to let go of his ex-wife. The roles played into a very familiar professional narrative for Barinholtz. “Everyone I've ever played has basically been a really dumb sexual deviant in some way,” he said as he reclined behind his desk in the Mindy office he shares with David Stassen, his longtime writing partner.
So, in 2014, the 38-year-old comedian focused on finding projects shooting during the show’s hiatus that could change that. Enter Sisters, the first time Tina Fey and Amy Poehler have co-headlined a film since 2008’s Baby Mama. They play siblings who return to their hometown of Orlando to clean out their shared childhood bedroom when their parents sell the house they grew up in — and to get their lives in order. It’s en route to the house when Kate (Fey) and Maura (Poehler) encounter James (Barinholtz), their parents' neighbor who instantly clicks with divorcee Maura.
The role ticked all of the boxes for Barinholtz: It offered him the opportunity to play someone new — “a sweetheart who is a nice guy who really gets to be, like, a normal dude”— and something new as well — the love interest. But this being Hollywood, playing the love interest meant he would be shirtless and therefore, had to lose some of the weight he’d packed on during Season 2 of The Mindy Project. “Morgan was really letting himself go that season,” Barinholtz said. “When I think of Morgan, he's almost indigent, you know what I mean? He's on the fringes of society so I never wear makeup for him and I really was getting big. I was 240 pounds. Just big. And the first scene where you see me, Amy and Tina are driving by and I'm wearing a tight shirt — and that only works if you're in good shape. They can't drive by and be like, ‘I bet that guy does good impressions!’ You know?”
Poehler and Barinholtz in Sisters.
K.c. Bailey
So he reduced his food intake and upped his workouts, resulting in a substantially slimmer, but not entirely unrealistic physique. The shirtless reveal is particularly refreshing, given the industry’s obsession with hyper-chiseled leading men. “It’s funny, I was watching a trailer for the show Shameless and William H. Macy is fucking jacked in it,” Barinholtz said. “I was like, ‘Doesn't he play an alcoholic who basically lives in a gutter? What is he, a trainer also?’ Unless it's a story point that you are completely shredded or you're Captain America, don't run away from a small coat of flab, especially in the winter months. It's cold and you need to store alcohol — that extra fat to keep you alive. It's healthy fat. It's good fat.”
While audiences are excited to see Fey and Poehler together again, Barinholtz was equally thrilled that Sisters reunited him with the two, whom he first met nearly 20 years ago when all three were up-and-coming performers in Chicago’s improv scene. “Tina was always just so funny,” he said. “I knew Amy a lot more because we're a little more similar in the sense that we're like, ‘Hey! Yo! Let's get drunk and have a smoke!’ But I always liked Tina and, even in 1996, was completely in awe of her and her comedy. It's just so sharp.”
The fact that Barinholtz is now playing the male lead in a major motion picture co-starring two comedians he’s loved for 20 years is kind of blowing his mind. “I still think I'm going to get cut out of the film,” he said half in jest of Sisters, which hits theaters on Dec. 18. “I still think there's a chance it opens and my wife says to me, ‘You had one line! What happened?’ It was a surreal experience. I still can't believe it happened.”
The cast of Suicide Squad.
Warner Bros.
The incredible professional opportunities continued for Barinholtz after he returned to film the third season of The Mindy Project when he auditioned for a role in Suicide Squad, DC Comics’s big budget super villain team-up co-starring Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, and Viola Davis. The movie, once again, afforded him the chance to try something new. “Going to Suicide Squad was a very different experience. I don't want to say it was agro-male because Margot Robbie is tougher than any of the guys, but it was just a very raucous set,” he said of the gritty, action-heavy blockbuster. “[Director] David Ayer is very dark. He chases that real darkness and says crazy things to you before a take to get your head spinning. He likes to psychologically get in there. He would tell us, ‘You know on Fury, right before a scene, I almost got Shia [LaBeouf] and [Jon] Bernthal into a fistfight.’ And it's like, I don't want to do that!! But he gets great performances out of actors and the movie is so big in scope. When I think of some of those sets, it's like, This is the size of Universal Studios. It was very, very, very different.”
Keeping the details of a super high-profile movie secret has also been a new experience for Barinholtz, who wasn’t even able to speak in depth about the character he plays. “I have David Ayer in my head being like, ‘I'm going to kill you if you say anything,’” he said before thinking for a solid minute. “I can say it's probably not who you think it is. I can say that he's definitely someone that people will not like, and he is someone who likes to really mess with people — likes to really hurt people and fuck them up.”
Off set, the cast of Suicide Squad bonded by getting matching tattoos and while Barinholtz didn’t get one (“My wife said, ‘If you come back with a tattoo from a movie you are in, I'll know what kind of man you are,’” he recalled), he did emerge from the experience with some new impressions to add to his repertoire. Robbie’s Australian accent was just one of the nearly dozen Barinholtz busted out during the course of our hourlong interview. They ranged from Arnold Schwarzenegger, Donald Trump, and Mindy Kaling to a used car salesman, a chain restaurant waiter, and an old-timey Hollywood agent.
Barinholtz's MadTV cast.
Fox
Those impressions, formed over years of doing improv, served Barinholtz well on MadTV, where he was a cast member from 2002 to 2007. While he, like most burgeoning comedians, dreamt of getting tapped by Lorne Michaels to star on Saturday Night Live, Fox’s late-night sketch series came calling first and, as a struggling 24-year-old comedian, he couldn’t say no.
“I was a busboy at Morton’s in Beverly Hills and I had been grinding it out in comedy for a long time,” Barinholtz said. “I was like, ‘Oh, I don't care about SNL, I need money right now! I'll do whatever you want.’ The first couple of years I was just in heaven. But I was always surprised that I succeeded there because MadTV has a definite formula where they want big, stock characters. That's why Alex Borstein, Michael McDonald, Nicole Sullivan, Keegan Michael-Key were so great because they have that rotating cast of characters in their head. I've never been able to do that. I'm not one of these guys who transforms; I'm always playing an incarnation of myself. So I was always shocked when I would be asked to come back every year because I didn't think I was doing that well. … And then you start getting restless.”
After Season 12, Barinholtz left the show ready to join the ranks of comedians in Hollywood who transitioned from sketch comedies to film and television. There was only one problem: “Hollywood said no,” he said with a laugh. Going from a steady paycheck for five years to a series of slammed doors was a harsh reality for Barinholtz and the start of what he referred to as “my dark period.”
“Going back to being a broke writer-actor in L.A. is very humbling, especially when your girlfriend, now my wife, moved out here for you,” he said. “That was a humdinger. During that time, I took whatever I could get.” What he could get was a series of spoof films written and directed by Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, like 2008’s Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie and 2010’s Vampire’s Suck. “Getting those movies allowed me to survive and I'm so grateful and thankful to those guys for letting me come and imitate Dane Cook in Vampires Suck or whatever,” Barinholtz said.
Kaling and Barinholtz at the Television Critics Association summer press tour in August 2015.
Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images
And the bright side of his “dark period” was that it afforded him the time to focus on writing, something he and David Stassen, whom he’s known since they met as 8-year-olds at sports camp in Chicago, had done together since high school. “There's five minutes a year where I'm like, ‘Fuck you! You're wrong,’ but for the other 10 million minutes, it's pretty great to have someone you have a shorthand with and someone who almost, annoyingly, can finish my thoughts,” Barinholtz said of Stassen. “It’s nice to feel like you have another brain.”
Having a lifelong partner like Stassen is also what allows Barinholtz to feel comfortable taking time away from his first priority, writing and producing The Mindy Project, to expand his career as an actor. And while he has his ear to the ground for his next hiatus project — possibly his first-ever true lead role — Barinholtz is currently due back in The Mindy Project writers room, which suits him perfectly fine because he can very easily recall the years when a job — and career — of this caliber felt infuriatingly unattainable.
“Every time I drive past La Cienega and Third and see that loading dock outside Morton’s, I instantly go back there,” Barinholtz said, with a rare wistfulness in his voice. “I remember standing outside with the other waiters, smoking cigarettes, thinking, I've gotta do something. I want to have a body of work that, when I die, I can look back on and be proud of. Then, to have a few years where the industry tells you that not only is your dream not going to happen, but you might have to leave? It was so hard.
“So yeah, I definitely am so grateful for everything I have and to be surrounded by people, not just at this show, but in my career, who think I'm funny. Because when you get a big laugh, that's the greatest feeling. To me, laughs are definitely like a drug ... and if [people are] laughing with you, you're doing something right.”
Yes, Zac Efron is there, too.
Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
