By Rex Reed 10/02/12 8:02pm

movies

McConaughey and Efron in The Paperboy.

Swampwater: The Paperboy Is a Long Way Off His Route In This Sunburnt Adaptation

One by one, the punishments suffered last month at the Toronto film circus are arriving to pollute the screens at home. Next week, get ready for a diabolical torture called Seven Psychopaths. For now, avoid at all costs a trash-wallow about sex and inbred Southern racism called The Paperboy. The director is Lee Daniels, who shocked and turned off a sizeable portion of the public three years ago with Precious. Maybe shock for the sake of nothing else is what he stands for, but regardless of what you thought about his disturbing feature debut, it was light years ahead of The Paperboy. This raunchy dreck, cut from the same disposable toilet tissue as the recent trailer-trash creepfest Killer Joe, is a leap downhill from Precious.

A transcendentally awful slab of chicken-fried camp replete with Nicole Kidman urinating on the near-naked body of Zac Efron, The Paperboy was booed in Cannes, laughed down in Toronto and inserted in the New York Film Festival for no other purpose than to stir up controversy. It has no place in any of them. Read More

By Kim Velsey 8/13/12 4:45pm

Vanity Projects

John Cusack, policy expert.

Say Anything: HuffPost Live Presents John Cusack’s Ramblings On The Mortgage Crisis

Hollywood actor John Cusack has developed some strong opinions on the mortgage crisis. He’s been doing some reading, even talking to a few experts, and is reasonably well-informed about a plan some California cities have to use eminent domain to seize troubled mortgages.

Those of you curious to hear what Lloyd Dobler thinks about a complex policy initiative can now satisfy that curiosity in a poorly-produced, 15-minute long video of John Cusack discussing these issues. Mr. Cusack shares his expertise during a painfully long HuffPost Live video, kicking off the first day of Huffington Post’s video news initiative in true Huffington Post fashion. Appearing via Google Hangouts, Mr. Cusack has a badly organized discussion with Arianna Huffington, segment host John Zepps, a random homeowner in California and John Vlahoplus, the guy who’s pitching the plan and the lone expert in the group. Read More

By Sara Vilkomerson 11/10/09 9:57pm

Apocalypse (and How!)

2012
Running time 158 minutes
Written by Roland Emmerich and Harald Kloser
Directed by Roland Emmerich
Starring John Cusack, Amanda Peet, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Thandie Newton, Oliver Platt

We Were Warned. So sayeth the tag line for the latest from Roland Emmerich, master of destruction. And you know what? We were! Back with Read More

By Matt Haber 6/16/08 1:22pm

Reality Plus

The last time The New Yorker‘s George Packer was in Iraq was January 2007. He’s not sure if he wants to go back, but that doesn’t mean it’s not on his mind. "I do find myself thinking about it all the time still," he says. "Thinking of other ways to write about it."

One of Read More