Has Dwayne Johnson been looking particularly extraterrestrial these days? Bulking up for Pain & Gain, he appears to have gone beyond your basic creatine-aided swelling and passed into some kind of advanced, superior non-human realm. But, sadly, we now have proof The Rock is indeed human. I mean, do superior advanced aliens get hernia surgery?
The Miami Heat's epic winning streak may have ended, but the Florida Gulf Coast University Eagles are the NCAA tournament's Cinderella story and Spring Breakers is a surprise hit. Here are five more reasons why Florida is the nation's current cultural capital.
The EDM bubble has yet to burst (or um, drop), and while we may look back at this era one day with all the head-shaking fondness now reserved for hair metal, right now is a good time to be an arena rave DJ or electronic musician in Florida. Particularly this month, when the annual Winter Music Conference is held in Miami in tandem with the electrocentric Ultra Music Festival. Diplo, who set out to be a world-famous DJ like Paul Oakenfold as a goof and ended up succeeding, also as a goof (Paul Jokenfold), titled his debut full-length album Florida in homage to the state he spent some years growing up in. Also inescapable: Carol City native Rick Ross's lumbering trap rap, heard blasting in bottle service clubs and out of hulking cars, most recently encouraging you to slip Molly in your date's drink and date-rape her.
The Germans probably have a word for that feeling you experience when something you believed to be perfect is proven imperfect by the subsequent revelation of a seemingly more-perfect thing. Anyway: Whatever that word is, you're about to be crushed by it, because a red-band trailer for Pain and Gain has arrived, and it has obliterated the now-tainted memory of the mere appetizer Michael Bay served us back in December. (Remember how excited we all got? Seems silly now.)
Last Thursday, January 17, a very important thing happened: The Spring Breakers trailer was released. The movie itself won't be out until those effervescent spring days, when fresh-faced coeds will actually be heading south in herds to quaff flavored rum from one another's navels. But its trailer — with its outre sensationalism, its lush provocateurism, and its Gucci Mane — has already proved itself to be, above all, one thing: art. Art set to Skrillex.
Silver: My brain is flopping around my skull like a Jell-O ring riding a go-cart down a bumpy hill. That was 2:22 of unrelenting terror, horror, and gore. And the highest form of praise I can loft onto it is this – I know the 1981 Evil Dead intimately, and am genuinely pleased that this remake is staying relatively true to the original narrative and that it's even incorporating some of the more iconic set pieces. And yet, from what I’ve seen in both this and the red band teaser released back in October, I still feel truly terrified and in the dark about this remake. The primary thoughts that ran through my head before I began typing this post were, Even though my wife is a big fan of the original, she is a little squeamish — do I dare drag her to this turned-up-to-11 version? and If she doesn’t go, am I brave enough to see this on my own? (And if I do see it on my own, do I then have to become one of those creepy dudes who sit in the handicapped seats in their oil-stained sweatpants eating popcorn crumbs off their washing-machine-faded Rorschach T-shirts?) But for my fellow Deadites, we should continue to take comfort, because aside from expanding upon the groundwork laid by October’s equally good teaser, we did get two more indicators that we should stop worrying and continue to get excited about this film.
Yesterday afternoon, Michael Bay debuted the trailer for Pain and Gain, his first non-Transformers movie since 2005, inspiring an internal Grantland e-mail chain every bit as over-the-top and exuberantly explosion-laden as his filmography. So we thought we'd share it. What has 16 thumbs and is way too excited about The Rock and Mark Wahlberg playing criminal bodybuilders? These guys.
Ice Cube is developing his first television starring vehicle, a vigilante drama called Eye For an Eye, for FX. Cube would play a veteran paramedic who, after seeing years of bloodied victims, decides to go rogue as he lays down justice on perpetrators. If this show isn’t soundtracked exclusively by a continuous loop of NWA’s “Gangsta Gangsta," well, then, I’ll have lost all faith in FX’s clearance department. Grade: B+ [Deadline]
