The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes: #1 Omar Little
The world's most quotable stick-up man terrorizes hardened thugs with an arsenal of guns and a vocabulary that fuses streetwise slang with Shakespearean flair. read more
The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes: #2 Batman
Best Movie: The Dark Knight Best Comic: Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Best Actors: Christian Bale In 1986, Frank Miller reimagined the then-campy superhero Batman as “The Dark Knight” in his revered graphic novel Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Later, through two standard-setting movies, Tim Burton’s original Batman and Christopher Nolan’s brilliant Batman Begins, we’ve been shown again the pathos-filled story of the burning rage that created the masked vigilante who strikes fear into the hearts of the criminals of Gotham. Often misunderstood by the very citizens and public officials he means to help, Batman follows his own... read more
Best of What's Next: The xx
The friends from London's Elliott School formed a band before any of them... read more
Salute Your Shorts: Tim Burton's Short Films (Part 2, 1983-2010)
Salute Your Shorts is a weekly column that looks at short films, music videos, commercials or any other short form visual media that generally gets ignored.Last week, we took a look at Tim Burton’s early, pre-professional works, a combination of odd side projects and student films he worked on for the first twenty-four years of his life. But the success, relative though it may have been, of “Vincent” made Burton a professional director and led his career on a very different path than those of the rest of the animators at Disney. For reasons still somewhat unclear, Disney continued to... read more
The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes: #4 The Dude
Movie: The Big Lebowski Actor: Jeff Bridges If you truly loved your kidnapped trophy wife, would you really ask a guy like Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski to deliver ransom money to her captors? Sure, he’s got plenty of time on his hands—enough to while away the days chasing down a stolen rug, at least—but he can hardly get himself dressed in the morning, chugs White Russians like it’s his job (incidentally, he doesn’t have a real one) and hangs around with a bunch of emotionally unstable bowling enthusiasts. Any mission you set him off on seems bound to fail. And... read more
The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes: #3 Dexter Morgan
TV Show: Dexter Actor: Michael C. Hall Sometimes, an anti-hero’s most obvious flaw is an abrasive personality. But Dexter Morgan couldn’t be sweeter to his wife, kids and co-workers; the Miami Police blood spatter expert just has a nasty habit of serial-killing. His code of only taking the lives of fellow murderers might appeal to our most primal sense of justice, but making the world a safer place is just a by-product; he kills because he likes it. It’s his slow march towards something that looks like redemption instead that has kept us rapt through four seasons. Dexter is broken,... read more
Best of What's Next: Local Natives
They haven’t yet built a reputation suited to their name... read more
The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes: #5 Malcolm Reynolds
TV Show: Firefly Movie: Serenity Actor: Nathan Fillion When Joss Whedon created Malcolm Reynolds as the centerpiece of Firefly, he wanted a hero who is “everything that a hero is not.” Once a sergeant in the losing war for independence, Mal captains a team of misfits in smuggling operations on the edge of the galaxy. His main goal in life is to be left alone and avoid the Alliance government—until he discovers (in the movie Serenity), their heavy-handed plan to fix (i.e., medicate and subdue) the world, at which point he aims to misbehave. He’s broken, bitter and faithless. He’s... read more
The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes: #6 Han Solo
Movie: Star Wars triology Actor: Harrison Ford Smart, sarcastic and possessing of a certain cocksure charisma—Han Solo defines the maxim “shoot first, ask question later.” Only, when A New Hope was re-released in 1997, he didn’t shoot first in his iconic showdown with Greedo in the Mos Eisley cantina, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the part of series diehards. (They even started circulating fan-made t-shirts emblazoned with “HAN SHOT FIRST.”) That might seem like a bit of an overreaction, but think about it: Han Solo is the archetypal sci-fi antihero, whence all others came. Without his roguish... read more
Start Press: Not Just Another Pretty Pixel
Before leaving San Francisco after the conclusion of the Game Developers Conference, I carved out some time to visit Dog Eared Books. It’s one of those exceedingly rare bookstores where the clerks are so genial and eager to help, you’re almost disappointed when you realize there’s no tip jar by the register. Some men dream about Megan Fox; I fantasize about being rich enough to walk around Dog Eared with a grocery cart, filling it to the top with any titles that seem remotely interesting. Considering how heavy books are, it’s astounding how helium-balloon light they make you feel as... read more
Best of What's Next: Nneka
In 2000, like so many other teenagers before her... read more
The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes: #8 "Cool Hand" Luke Jackson
Movie: Cool Hand Luke Actor: Paul Newman “Cool Hand” Luke is a man of few words, and it’s that quiet determination that keeps him firmly rooted on his own path—no matter how beaten down or abused, he doesn’t waver. Though confined to a life of dirty, sweltering and seemingly endless labor at a prison camp run by a maniacal little man known only as Captain, Luke’s independent spirit remains strong. His refusal to submit to the prison’s hierarchy, both with the guards and the prisoners themselves, (he exerts every ounce of effort and then some in a futile boxing match... read more
The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes: #7 Tyler Durden
Movie: Fight Club Actor: Brad Pitt Tyler Durden is the badass that we all wish we could be, deep down. The badass who, when hit, mouths off so that he can be hit again. And again. The badass who simultaneously defies and creates rules while never, ever letting anyone walk all over him. He’s the kind of guy who can name something “Project Mayhem” and not get laughed at. Durden, in his own words, is “smart, capable and, most importantly…free, in all the ways you are not,” and yet, when he tells you that, it’s not insulting; you respect him... read more
2 Faust 2 Furious: Script Excerpts From Michael Bay's $600 Million Adaptation of Dr. Faustus
What's the situation? It's bad. Real bad... read more
Best of What's Next: The Middle East
The history of The Middle East... read more
The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes
The regular-old hero has served us well for the past few thousand years, but ever since the time of that legendary literary bon vivant Lord Byron, we’ve learned to enjoy our heroes with a little bit of moral nuance. They’re human beings, just like you and I, only more cunning, erudite, world-weary, and charismatic than we could ever hope to be. But they’re also more emotionally resonant than the traditional white-knight hero precisely because they’re such deeply flawed people, grappling with eminently relatable self-doubt and moral hazard. Indeed, it’s no stretch to say that the anti-hero is usurping the heroic... read more
The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes: #10 Benjamin Linus
TV Show: Lost Actor: Michael Emerson With every deliberate squint of his barbed-wire blue eyes, former Leader of the Others Benjamin Linus used to command complete control of his tropical kingdom, dropping hints like crumbs while the survivors fumbled helplessly through the foliage looking for answers. Then his daughter was killed, and the Machiavellian Ben died along with her. Easily convinced to murder his mysterious leader, Jacob, Ben now exists in a no-mans land between the forces he formerly perceived as good and evil and is just as confused and terrified as the rest of the ragged, mud-soaked characters. But... read more
The 10 Greatest Anti-Heroes: #9 Tony Soprano
TV Show: The Sopranos Actor: James Gandolfini To love Tony Soprano, boss of a New Jersey crime family on HBO’s The Sopranos, takes a certain degree of denial. Just ask his wife, Carmella, who he cheats on at every opportunity. Or his daughter, Meadow—he sneaks off from a trip visiting colleges with her to strangle a snitch. Tony is a thief, a compulsive gambler and a manipulator of the highest order, but the pathos James Gandolfini brought to the role of a capo dei capi seeing a psychiatrist for his panic attacks made it all but impossible not to root... read more
Chloe Moretz Connects the Dots
This spring, a purple-haired Chloe Moretz will flip, somersault and knife-fight her way across the big screen... read more
Best of What's Next: So Cow
Brian Kelly was teaching English to elementary-school kids... read more
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