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Every once in a while, a movie makes so much money that it totally shakes up the film industry. This instance is especially true when a genre many considered dead and buried comes along and makes some serious cash. This rarity happened in a big way back in 1999 when American Pie, a movie that cost $11 million, made $235 million worldwide. Think about it – the biggest star in the film was Eugene Levy. More than that – it was a teen sex comedy. That genre played out in the early eighties when Porky’s was such a big hit that every studio decided to make a sex comedy, and pretty much all of them tanked – especially the multiple Porky‘s sequels. Teen sex comedies were replaced by John Hughes’s brand of more thoughtful teen comedies, only for that genre to fall off as well. A year before, Sony made a John Hughes-style teen comedy,...

Joker is a movie directed by Todd Phillips starring Joaquin Phoenix, Robert De Niro and Frances Conroy.

The most awaited movie of the year leads us to a bitter social denouncement in which no one is left standing, that merges satire and flight of fancy. A kick in the mouth for movies about super heroes and the industry.

Joker is the movie of the year, no matter what they say, and mentioning Joaquin Phoenix as an Oscar winner is no longer a pipe dream nor is this movie a clear-cut candidate for the award that, I am afraid, will not receive it.

Storyline Joker (2019)

Arthur Fleck is a comedian (a clown) with a disreputable life that leads him to madness…(maybe not so much). He is considerably pissed off with society and will make someone pay.

About the Movie

Very, very good. Crude, cruel, an uncomfortable fusion of extremes that we love.

In 2019, no movie became a greater flashpoint for cultural debate than “Joker” — and Todd Phillips sat happily at the center of the battlefield. To some, Phillips looked like he wanted to provoke the ire of the moment — the bearded reprobate with a naughty grin and cynical gaze, the Hollywood bro who made those “Hangover” movies and gave up on comedy to avoid the sensitivities of the moment, a Tinseltown huckster straight out of the “Entourage” mold who cared less about the art of filmmaking than contorting it into the ultimate blockbuster coup.

But these readings tend to ignore his roots, and how they set him up for everything that followed. Phillips’ origin story has been obscured by the sheer scale of his commercial successes, and even he’s reticent to look back. “People don’t always know about my beginnings, and I get it,” Phillips told me when we met...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAgnès Varda, 1921—2019.Agnès Varda, vital initiator of the French New Wave, prolific auteur, nimble innovator, and constant inspiration as an artist and a person, has left us at the age of 90. "'In all women there is something in revolt which is not expressed,' Varda once said of her protagonist in Vagabond. Her films express exactly that sense of revolt, in both form and content." That's Christina Newland writing on Varda's cinema and its expression of the female experience for the New Statesman.Though it was first premiered at Venice in 2014, Abel Ferrara's Pasolini will finally have its North American release on May 10. The premiere coincides with “Abel Ferrara Unrated,” an upcoming retrospective of Ferrara's works at the Museum of Modern Art. Following a recent screening of High Life, Claire Denis stated that...

It was just yesterday that we passed along the first poster for The Hangover and Due Date co-writer-director Todd Phillips' gritty Joker origin film starring Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck aka The Clown Prince of Crime. That poster came to us from Phillips himself over on Instagram, and in his post, he promised us that the powers that be behind the scenes at Warner Bros. and DC would be dropping the teaser trailer on all of our heads today. And low and behold the director is a man of his word as today we have, you guessed it, the teaser trailer for Joker!

This teaser obviously gives us our first look at Phillips' new "dark and gritty" character study of the man who would be Joker. Set in Gotham City way back in 1981, Phillips' version of Batman's ultimate super-villain starts out as the rather simple tale of a...

In 1993, after not being accepted into any major film festival of the time, such as Sundance, filmmaker Todd Phillips personally toured the U.S. and Europe with his first documentary film, Hated: Gg Allin & The Murder Junkies. Following this experience, Phillips partnered up with fellow filmmaker Andrew Gurland to launch several initiatives to help small, challenging and often controversial films connect with audiences.

One of those initiatives was the first ever New York Underground Film and Video Festival, which was held at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City on March 18-20, 1994.

The term “underground film” was first used to describe the experimental film scene in 1961 by filmmaker and film theorist Stan Vanderbeek. Using “underground film” to describe the avant-garde cinema remained popular throughout the ’60s, then lost popularity in the ’70s as terms like “structural film” came into existence. “Underground film” ultimately regained some of its mojo...

The Decline of Western Civilization

Directed by Penelope Spheeris

Screenplay by Penelope Spheeris

1981, USA

My friend George is The authority on music, in my opinion. He was the guy that turned me on to bands like King’s X and The New Amsterdams – whose album Worse for the Wear is my long drive anthem – and helped me navigate the waters of the noise genre. One day, he shows me a documentary on the L.A. punk rock scene of the late 70’s / early 80’s. I witness young people choosing to live in squalor and grown men shouting nonsense into a microphone.

And the energy of it all was infectious.

George had previously introduced me to heavy punk through another documentary by Todd Philips called Hated in the Nation, about the “great” Gg Allin. That movie was more about one man; this movie is about a movement. And the poster child of that movement?...

Article by Aaron AuBuchon

Television means one of two things these days: episodic, long form (usually cable) dramas- the high water mark of narrative motion media storytelling, and on the other end, the nadir, are so-called ‘reality’ shows. We are bombarded by advertisements for shows about former celebrities doing strange things, people who desperately want to be celebrities, and normal people doing insane things for money. It gets nauseating sometimes, and we like to think of this as being indicative of some new shortcoming in the moral or intellectual fabric of our times, as though the mere presence of these things points to a reduction in the cultural ideal of our society. A common misconception about these shows is that they’re a relatively new phenomenon and that they have originated out of virtual air over the last decade or so. While this may be true of television, moviegoers have...

The Hangover's Todd Phillips has directed movies that involve drunken nights of debauchery and craziness. Before he directed Old School, Road Trip, and produced Project X, Phillips got his start with documentaries. He directed the G.G. Allin documentary Hated, and then helmed Frat House for HBO.

The project was to be part of the network's American Undercover series. The doc debuted at Sundance in 1998, but was shelved after accusations that the events shown were staged. Frat House was co-directed by Andrew Gurland (The Virginity Hit), The movie has been online before, and it is once again available. Here is a description: Frat House purports to go deep into the unseen world of rush week and the hazing that involves new recruits. The sizzle part of the doc is when Phillips decides to pledge himself in order to accurately experience and document what rushes undergo in order to join a fraternity.

To say that Todd Phillips has had an ongoing cinematic interest in recklessness and debauchery would be an understatement. As the director of "The Hangover," "Old School," "Road Trip" and the producer behind this weekend's R-rated found footage teenage bacchanalia "Project X," there is no one who is perhaps more tuned in to hedonistic male desires. But even before he made it big, Phillips was exploring what drives young men to the extreme ends of drunkeness and sex.

The director got his start with the notorious G.G. Allin documentary "Hated," before moving over to HBO to helm "Frat House." Originally intended for the network's "American Undercover" series, the one-hour doc premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1998 and following accusations that events in the movie were staged, it was permanently shelved. It has popped up online now and again over the years, and seems to have surfaced once more, and...

The Hangover Part II may have had the biggest opening five-day haul of any comedy in history, but the collective Internet/media/ spectator-snark voice has spoken, and the verdict is not pretty. The Hangover Part II, it is said, reduces the first Hangover to a transparently contrived formula; it’s a cookie-cutter comedy, way too safe and pat; it doesn’t do anything that’s really unpredictable; it’s more of the same; and beyond that (did I mention this point yet?), it’s more of the same. To which I can only react by asking: And you were expecting the movie to be what,...

"I can't believe this is happening Again!" - Ed Helms in The Hangover Part II

"Neither can we." - The Audience

Director Todd Phillips has a punk rock streak.  His first project, made while he was still an Nyu student, is the shock-documentary Hated: Gg Allin and the Murder Junkies.  In it an interview subject is about to reveal someone's identity, but stops himself.  "Wait, you can't use this in the movie."  Okay, we won't, is the response.  And, of course, the footage remains in the final cut.

Punk rock filmmaking!

The Hangover, a movie I didn't particularly care for, but also didn't hate, touched a nerve with a lot of people.  Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms are charismatic as the everyman joker and uptight dentist tracing the consequences of their uncaged inner animals.  The plot is absurd and some scenes are funnier than others, but at least it was a somewhat clever idea.

Short, but sweet, this week. I was out of town pretty much all week and didn’t have time to gather many links, unfortunately. Plus, I’ve been ensconced in a couple of bigger projects that have been eating up tons of my time. But, I had a few links drop pretty much into my lap, so that’s what we’ve got. Here they are:

Sick of the Radio interviewed Bad Lit fave Jon Clark about his music video for “So Unreal,” plus about his work in general. They asked him just about all the questions I would have wanted answered — and a few more.For Moving Image Source, Ed Halter writes a lengthy essay on the formerly “lost” films of philosopher Manuel DeLanda, one of Nick Zedd’s inspirations behind the Cinema of Transgression.Speaking of Transgression — and I usually am — Jay Hollinsworth lets us know about a...

These first two links to the website Cineflyer I had on the site earlier in the week, but I want to make sure they get read. One is an interview with film curator Brett Cashmere about his new series investigating Canada’s little-known Escarpment School movement. And the other is an interview with Escarpment School member Philip Hoffman. And, by the way, Bad Lit’s Screening section has all kinds of interesting information, so please check out those posts even if you don’t live in the city in which those Screenings take place. Searching for “underground film” articles every week sometimes brings up interesting results in ways I don’t typically think of the term. Anyway, doing so this week led me to this piece on Donna Magazine about the “green movement of Iran” being celebrated at the 10th International Diaspora Film Festival. Jack Sargeant reprints his nifty profile...

Mel Gibson can't even book a cameo these days. His much-talked about secret appearance in The Hangover sequel is no longer going to happen. What happened to derail his gig as a Bangkok tattoo artist? Read on... Pressure from above—and no, we don't mean heaven! Apparently, some at Warner Brothers weren't too keen on the Most Hated Man in Hollywood popping up in the sure-to-be-a-hit sequel. Director Todd Phillips released a statement that seemed to indicate as much: "I thought Mel would have been great in the movie and I had the full backing of Jeff Robinov and his team. But I realize filmmaking is a collaborative effort, and this decision ultimately did not have...

Ed Helms and Todd Phillips on the set of The HangoverThe other day I was reading an article in Salon magazine. The article was titled "Why we need more 'adult' movies?" and it addressed the need for more films with themes that "kids won't understand" according to the author. Then he went on to sing the praises of two recent movies, The American with George Clooney and The Romantics with Katie Holmes. I have to say I agreed with the premise, we could use more films with adult themes, but I couldn't agree with what he was saying.

First of all, the author seemed to equate slow pacing with "adult", going so far as to cite a scene in The Romantics where the camera lingers on Anna Paquin for almost a minute. Slow does not mean adult. (Many of the comments left for the author echoed my sentiments as well...

Congratulations to director Todd Phillips for winning the Best Motion Picture – Comedy or Musical Golden Globe for his hit film The Hangover. Phillips, it may not be popularly known by anyone other than regular readers of this site, holds a special place in the history of underground film as the co-founder of the New York Underground Film Festival in 1994.

Prior to that, Phillips directed the documentary Hated, about controversial punk rock musician and performance artist Gg Allin, who regularly defecated, urinated and self-mutilated himself live on stage. According to the book Deathtripping: The Extreme Underground, Phillips financed the film through cab driving, “credit card scams” and by selling an advance poster signed by convicted serial killer John Wayne Gacy. Three days before the film’s NYC premiere, Allin died of a heroin overdose.

Upon completion, Hated screened at film festivals all over the world. Phillips was especially impressed and inspired...

It's kind of hard to beat a shelf that already sags under the weight of bobbleheads of Jason Vorhees, Napoleon Dynamite, Al Franken and the 40-Year-Old Virgin (complete with realistic chest hair removal patterns). But then I feasted my eyes on the piece de resistance of completely unnecessary but must-have gross-out collectibles: The Gg Allin 1991 Extra Filthy Bloody Edition bobble.

Aggronautix, the same demented people who have created wobbly-necked figurines of such similarly obscure punk rock icons as Tesco Vee of the Meatmen, Milo of the Descendents and the barely-legal Dwarves, have truly gone all out for the second edition of the Allin figure, which commemorates the scat-loving punk icon in all his messy glory.

From the bloody hematoma on his forehead to the true Manchu beard-mustache combo, bloody cuts on his body and guaranteed-to-offend tattoos, this seven-inch tall likeness of the late punker best known for using the stage as a toilet,...

(Phillips, 1994) 6.0 You may never have heard the name "G.G" Allin before but after Todd Phillips little-seen, filthy, stinking documentary you may never forget it. For better, but more likely, for worse. You may never look at Todd Phillips in the same way either, so If you've already seen the terrible School for Scoundrels and The Hangover you may be surprised about how Phillips cut his teeth. "G.G" Allin was born Jesus Christ Allin (yes seriously) in 1956, after his father claimed the big man upstairs had come to him in a dream. Of course, you can't put that kind of weight on a kids shoulders and expect water into wine and bread and fishes. Allin instead decided to form a multitude of hardcore punk bands in the late 70's and 80's.   Allin's intense and brutal personality pushed his live shows over the edge and by the late 80's his...

The trajectory of careers can be pretty fascinating. I remember when G.G. Allin was a Lower East Side punk rock performance freakshow, cutting himself on stage, fighting with audience members and threatening/promising to kill himself during one of his performances. Todd Phillips was attending Nyu Film School at the time and while a junior there made his debut feature, a documentary portrait of the performer entitled Hated: Gg Allin and the Murder Junkies (1994). He also, with Andrew Gurland, founded the New York Underground Film Festival, would go on to make with Gurland the controversial college hazing doc Frat House (1998) and then, just two years later, would make the very successful comedy Road Trip. There was also Old School (2003)...

by Ryan J. Downey

The shenanigans Zach Galifianakas and crew get up to in “The Hangover” are nothing compared to the protagonist in director Todd Phillips’ debut. The maniacal star of 1994’s “Hated” slashed himself with razor blades, crapped on nightclub stages and verbally sparred with Geraldo. And that guy — late punk legend G.G. Allin — was a real person.

Considering Phillips’ deep roots in punk rock, heavy metal and other subcultural genres, defining musical moments like The Cramps and Danzig songs in “The Hangover” or the Metallica and Black Flag jams in “Old School” make a lot of sense. Skate-punk hero Mike Vallely, whose band Revolution Mother was invited by Philips to write a track specifically for the movie, cameos as the tuxedo rental guy who hands “The Hangover” crew their clothes on the freeway.

A couple of the musical moments in “The Hangover” — like Mike Tyson singing and air-drumming...