This is fascinating: Back in 2008, vampire-hunting tax crusader Wesley Snipes was locked in a legal battle with his talent agency over some unpaid commissions. (We don't want to make assumptions about the specifics of the case, but perhaps the dispute had something to do with the actor's well-documented philosophical aversion to sharing any percentage of his hard-earned income with strong-arming outside entities.) Today, the Hollywood Reporter unearths some video of Snipes's mind-blowing deposition, during which he very calmly explains how the agencies are essentially Armani-clad Don Magic Juans shaking down their stables of movie-star hos. You'd be criminally insane not to watch the video first, but here's the kicker:
Alex Pappademas: The thing that genuinely saddens me about the era of carefully quality-controlled fan-service-calibrated superhero-movie-making/marketing is that we'll never get another "Batdance." Kitschy, shrieky, underratedly funky, thoroughly off-message in terms of the dark, brooding post–Frank Miller vision of the movie it was nominally cross-promoting, basically unconcerned with Batman and/or the Joker except as a metaphor for Prince's own desire to be two different people so he could sleep with five Kim Basinger lookalikes at once (and then blow up an electric chair), this code-black spoiler alert in the form of a housequake was as inexplicable then as it is unthinkable now. It's hard to even imagine what the contemporary equivalent would be — a Nicki Minaj Avengers song that made incoherent sample-salad of half the dialogue from Joss Whedon's script, I guess, with Nicki strutting around in the video dressed as a half-Loki/half–Iron Man sex-imp — and harder to imagine the person who signed off on it not getting fired, or institutionalized.
What It's About: When an undercover CIA agent's assassination target is almost assassinated by other CIA agents, he decides to try and save the guy for no reason.
Who It's For: People clinically addicted to the sound of silenced pistols firing blanks.
Benjamin Franklin said that nothing is certain except death and taxes. But that was before Wesley Snipes. If you hate taxes like Wesley hates taxes, the only thing that is certain is death. (Though I sometimes think Mr. Snipes believes he IS Blade, a Daywalker he has played in films. Therefore, not even his death is certain.) 2010's Game of Death does not address Snipes's recent tax troubles. It focuses mostly on death.
