Google’s New Year’s Resolutions map, and its sometimes wonkified translations of those resolutions (“to be overcome in everything, do everything to all!”), attempts to capture the flava of 2013 at its most nascent stage. So far, we want puppies and more money. Will a slew of Ryan Gosling movies suffice?
As the Grantland staff looks back this week on the highlights of the year in music, TV, film, and sports, we would obviously be remiss if we left out the one medium to rule them all: the Internet. Here are our picks for the best (and worst) of the Information Superhighway in 2012.
Welcome back to our series Rembert Explains the '80s. Every so often, we'll e-mail 25-year-old Rembert Browne a video from the 1980s that he hasn't seen. Rembert will write down his thoughts as he's watching the video, then we'll post those thoughts here. This week's installment was selected by Grantland reader/hero David P. Levine: Christopher Walken's Puss in Boots. If you have an idea for a future episode of Rembert Explains the '80s, e-mail us at hollywood@grantland.com.
Last week, Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell were stashed in a top-floor suite of the Beverly Hills Four Seasons while on a promotional jag for their new movie and second collaboration with each other and writer/director Martin McDonagh, Seven Psychopaths. (The first was a 2010 run on Broadway with A Behanding in Spokane.) Your humble correspondent was given a scant 10 minutes alone with the pair, ostensibly to talk about the movie, a strange and sensationalist exploration of psychosis, megaviolence, and puppy love co-starring fellow wackjobs Tom Waits, Colin Farrell, and Woody Harrelson. But Walken (serene and clad in black warm-up pants and a T-shirt) and Rockwell (hyperactive in jeans and availing himself of the PR team’s free yogurt) clearly enjoy each other’s company and did their best to make their own conversation.
Seven Psychopaths, Martin McDonagh's follow-up to 2008's excellent In Bruges, comes out this weekend, and while we're certainly looking forward to the director teaming up with Colin Farrell again, it's a pretty good bet that nine out of 10 scenes will be effortlessly stolen by Christopher Walken, arguably the original modern psychopath. With over 120 films on his résumé, not to mention all those SNL hosting gigs, and countless other cameos over the years, going down a Walken YouTube rabbit hole can be a daunting undertaking. So come in, have some champag-nyeh, and let the Grantland staff be your guide to the best of Walken on the Internet.
