New York Magazine

Skip to content, or skip to search.

Skip to content, or skip to search.

Vulture

Edited by Dan Kois & Lane Brown

Archive of The List

The List

8/15/08

8:00 AM

Ten Woody Allen Sex Scenes Better Than the Ones in ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’

Courtesy of MGM

Much has been made (lots of it by us) over the love scenes in Woody Allen's new Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Problem is, the film's non-threesomes aren't just dull by our standards — they're even kinda boring by Woody Allen's typical ones. After all, this is the director who gave us the Orgasmatron and the sex orb! And went down on Bette Midler in a theater! Plus, he once made Gene Wilder bone a sheep. After the jump, video of Ten Woody Allen Sex Scenes Better Than the Ones in Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

NSFW, obviously! »

The List

8/13/08

10:30 AM

Five Other Great Rejected Bond Themes

Photo: Getty Images

Beehived shit-starter Amy Winehouse told a British tabloid yesterday that she's planning on releasing her rejected theme song for the upcoming Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, to "prove that they have made a big mistake" by picking one by Jack White and Alicia Keys. "I guess they are going for clean-cut and boring," she said, presumably while acting in a completely responsible manner. "When I do release mine — and I am tempted to do it on the same day — this would be the bigger hit." Is she right? Probably! In recent years, Bond producers have exhibited pretty terrible judgment when it comes to picking their songwriting-contest winners. After the jump, hear five great passed-on Bond themes better than the ones they lost out to.

Three more reasons to dislike the music of Sheryl Crow! »

The List

8/12/08

11:45 AM

Ten Other Entertainment Events That Should Happen Once Every Four Years

Photo: Getty Images

It's a well-established fact that — thanks to TiVo, Internet piracy, and increased competition from video games — all traditional forms of popular entertainment are now a hundred times less popular than they were just a few short years ago. Naturally, then, we'd assumed this year's Summer Olympics in Beijing would suffer the same viewer antipathy that's plagued recent awards shows, major sporting events, and American Idol finales. As usual, though, we were completely wrong! Friday's opening ceremony was watched by 34.2 million people, the most ever for a non-domestic summer opener, proving that Americans can be made to care about practically anything, provided it only happens once every four years. What other entertainment events should be on an Olympics schedule?

Obviously Joyce Carol Oates novels and Ryan Adams albums -- but what else? »

The List

8/ 6/08

8:00 AM

Calvinball, Quidditch, and Other Fictional Sports We Wish the Olympics Would Adopt

Courtesy of Scholastic Press, Sci Fi, Paramount, Universal Pictures

One of the complaints often voiced by Olympics haters is that the sports played are too obscure and seem made up. Sure, LeBron James gets to play basketball in China, but who cares about team handball, modern pentathlon, and the 400-meter individual medley? But for us, the fringy sports we see only once every four years are what make the Olympics great. We can watch baseball any old time, but how awesome is it to watch guys whose whole lives are devoted to the art of badminton?

With that in mind, we started thinking about some other sports we wish they played in the Olympics. Cricket, sure, and it's pretty crazy the Olympics don't include golf. But why limit our discussion to sports that actually exist? What about Quidditch? It's the wizarding world's favorite sport, appearing in some of the most popular books ever written. We'd watch world-class Quidditch players in action. Wouldn't you? With that in mind, here are ten fictional sports we wish we could see played in Beijing.

Baseketball! Flonkerton! Brockian Ultra-Cricket! »

The List

7/ 2/08

9:45 AM

‘Umbrella’ Watch 2008: Vulture’s Top Five Songs of the Summer

Photo: Getty Images

A few weeks ago, Vulture set out on an ambitious quest to find 2008's Song of the Summer, a track that would rule the pop charts, be inescapable on the radio and in the streets, and probably wind up on your mom's iPod sometime in October. It would have to be immediately catchy, evocative of the season, and as universally loved as last year's de facto warm-weather anthem, "Umbrella" by Rihanna. Annoyingly, a consensus has not yet been reached, and at this point we are still unable to declare a definitive winner. Even so, we felt it our duty as patriotic Americans to name our top summer jams so you could bump something in your ride with confidence over the upcoming Fourth of July holiday.

We've ranked each of the serious contenders using Vulture's patented Summerability Formula™, which quantitatively adds up a track's radio airplay, iTunes sales, and magnitude of pop-cultural penetration, then multiplies that number by how awesome we find the song's chorus. After the jump, you'll find Vulture's Top Five Songs of the Summer.

Read more »

The List

6/26/08

5:00 PM

What’s the Best Pixar Movie of All Time?

Courtesy of Pixar

Well, soon it'll be 2009 Academy Award winner Wall-E, but which of Pixar's eight previous wonders of the movie world will this week's apparent masterpiece be supplanting atop the list? Every Pixar movie has its proponents: Foodies love Ratatouille; sentimentalists love Toy Story; dads love Finding Nemo; cars love Cars. But which is actually the best? And which is the worst? And what does "worst" mean when you're talking about Pixar? Vulture breaks it down, after the jump.

Read more »

The List

6/20/08

9:55 AM

Unscripted Apocalypse: The Twenty Worst Reality Shows of Summer

Courtesy of ABC, NBC, G4, TLC

The three-month writers' strike of 2007–2008 may have cost the American economy $2.5 billion, and Lost fans two hours of inscrutable entertainment, but that's nothing compared to the fallout still on the way. Next week, we'll see the first wave of awful reality-TV shows green-lit when network scribes were still picketing. Competitive vomiting! Baby borrowing! Joey Fatone! You are now entering the unscripted apocalypse. After the jump, Vulture's list of the Twenty Worst Reality Shows of Summer.

Celebrity Family Feud! A new Gong Show! Something called Hurl! »

The List

5/23/08

12:40 PM

Our Top Ten Questions After Seeing ‘Indiana Jones’

Courtesy of Paramount

Now that many of our readers have a chance to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, we can finally talk about it openly. Sure, like Conan O'Brien, we liked the ants, and we've already made clear that we thought Shia LaBeouf was better than we expected. But we had plenty of questions about the movie, too — moments that confused us, angered us, or made us wonder if we or George Lucas had gone totally crazy. (And we say that as the Vulture editor who liked the movie.) After the jump, our ten most pressing (and spoilery) questions about the movie that's likely to break every box-office record ever this weekend. Maybe Spielberg will stop by and answer some! Probably not, though.

And please suggest more in the comments! »

The List

5/14/08

9:00 AM

Meet the New Goody-Goodies

View Slideshow

It is a dearly held belief among many young, city-dwelling adults that the threshold to adolescence is paved with gangsta rap, slasher flicks, and hard-core pornography. Like most adults, these people have no clue what’s happening with kids today. The great tradition of clean-cut teenage entertainment — long elbowed to the pop-culture margins by the likes of James Dean, Cheech and Chong, and Kurt Cobain — has roared back to life in the digital age, fueled by tweens with disposable allowances and high-speed Internet connections. And fascinatingly, it has spawned a new breed of young stars: the Goody-Goodies. This slideshow presents the top ten churchgoing, non-drinking, promise-ring-wearing singer-actors from inside and outside the Disney universe — along with their great shames and potential for corruption. You probably know Miley Cyrus, the 15-year-old Hannah Montana star with so wholesome an image that Vanity Fair created an uproar merely by publishing a picture of her (um) bare back. Before you start pooh-poohing the goody-goody lifestyle, just remember: You’re old, and no one cares what you think anyhow. —Nick Catucci

The List

5/ 9/08

2:45 PM

Ten Other Sayings That Hollywood Should Turn Into Movies

what happens in vegas is a stupid title

Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

With the release today of What Happens in Vegas…, the Cameron Diaz–Ashton Kutcher comedy that proves romance isn't dead in American cinema ("There isn’t anything to say other than to note its insulting ugliness and ineptitude" —Manohla Dargis), we see that Hollywood has once and for all moved past its once blinkered view of movie titles — that they must be a funny pun or a witty turn of phrase, or the name of the main character in the movie, or come from a deathless line of dialogue, or Shakespeare/the Bible, or maybe at worst a classic-rock song lyric. What Happens in Vegas… signifies that it is totally okay for a screenwriter to think of just a thing that people say — maybe sort of an advertising catchphrase! — and then write an entire movie around it.

Well, why stop with What Happens in Vegas…? Here are ten other sayings we hope Hollywood adapts into movies soon. Feel free to borrow our pitches, after the jump!

"Can You Hear Me Now?, the movie!" »

More The List posts

Madonna's Five Worst Videos of All Time

4/22/08

|
2:00 PM

| Tags: madonna, music, music videos, video

Ten Terrible Musical Slumps

4/ 1/08

|
12:15 PM

| Tags: aretha franklin, bob dylan, elvis costello, madonna, music, neil young, prince, r.e.m., red hot chili peppers, sonic youth, u2

Ten Rock-Star Stunts Even More Ridiculous Than Flying to Antarctica

3/28/08

|
3:15 PM

| Tags: 50 cent, david bowie, fall out boy, jack white, jamiroquai, kanye west, madonna, michael jackson, mick jagger, music, nirvana, prince, u2

Ten Questions Left Unanswered by the ‘Wire’ Finale

3/10/08

|
7:45 AM

| Tags: david simon, hbo, the wire, tv

Ten Beloved Characters, Ten Ignoble Deaths

2/28/08

|
12:15 PM

| Tags: . the big lebowski, 24, alan tudyk, ally mcbeal, anthony edwards, beverly hills 90210, coen brothers, deep blue sea, gil bellows, john travolta, joss whedon, mel gibson, movies, pulp fiction, roger cross, samuel l. jackson, scatman crothers, serenity, stanley kubrick, steve buscemi, the passion of the christ, the shining, the wire, top gun, tv, video

Ten Shows From the Eighties We'd Actually Like Ben Silverman to Revive

1/25/08

|
11:30 AM

| Tags: american gladiators, bay city blues, ben silverman, bosom buddies, hardcastle and mccormick, knight rider, lede, max headroom, misfits of science, police squad, remote control, sledge hammer, small wonder, tenspeed and brownshoe, the equalizer, tv

Ten Movie Vaginas Even Scarier Than the One in ‘Teeth’

1/24/08

|
4:00 PM

| Tags: aliens versus predator requiem, basic instinct, famous wangs, little shop of horrors, lord of the rings, movies, poltergeist, return of the jedi, sharon stone, teeth, the thing, transformers, vaginas, video, videodrome

Ten Other Cities We’d Like to See Hollywood Destroy

1/10/08

|
5:25 PM

| Tags: cloverfield, i am legend, movies

Vulture's Critics' Poll: What Was the Worst Movie of 2007?

1/ 3/08

|
1:45 PM

| Tags: 300, because i said so, critics, evan almighty, Hostel 2, i now pronounce you chuck and larry, license to wed, movies, norbit, pulitzer prize winner stephen hunter, southland tales, the bucket list, the number 23

The Ten Best Hip-Hop Mixtapes of 2007

12/20/07

|
5:01 PM

| Tags: dirty harry, dj clue, dj noodles, dj premier, fabo, freeway, jay-z, lil wayne, music, notorious b.i.g. don cannon, saigon, stack bundles, young dro

The Ten Best Movie Destructions of New York City

12/13/07

|
5:29 PM

| Tags: a.i., armageddon, deep impact, gangs of new york, ghostbusters 2, godzilla, i am legend, king kong, movies, the day after tomorrow, the siege, video

The Ten Most Anti-Christian Movies of All Time

12/ 7/07

|
9:45 AM

| Tags: carrie, dogma, footloose, jesus camp, lyra is awesome, monty python's the meaning of life, movies, philp pullman, priest, the boys of st. vincent, the canterbury tales, the golden compass, the magdalene sisters, the name of the rose

The Ten Video Games That Should Be Movies (and the Directors Who Should Make Them)

11/14/07

|
3:49 PM

| Tags: ang lee, coen brothers, david lynch, duck hunt, grand theft auto, larry clark, lars von trier, m. night shyamalan, metroid, michel gondry, monkey island, second life, super mario galaxy, terry gilliam, tetris, the oregon trail, video games, wes anderson, world of warcraft

The Seven Best Movie Weapons of 2007

11/ 8/07

|
2:32 PM

| Tags: balls of fury, bourne ultimatum, christopher walken, death proof, eastern promises, famous wangs, grindhouse, javier bardem, live free or die hard, matt damon, movies, no country for old men, planet terror, quentin tarantino, robert rodriguez, viggo mortensen

The Lamest Pop-Classical Crossovers in Music History

10/31/07

|
5:31 PM

| Tags: asian dub foundation, billy joel, elvis costello, glenn danzig, laaaaaaaame, michael bolton, music, paul mccartney, roger waters, sting

The Ten Best Single-Artist Soundtracks Ever

10/26/07

|
8:59 AM

| Tags: about a boy, air, badly drawn boy, curious george, curtis mayfield, ghost dog, jack johnson, josie and the pussycats, lift to the scaffold, matthew sweet, miles davis, movies, music, one from the heart, prince, purple rain, rza, she's the one, superfly, the virgin suicides, tom petty, tom waits

Ten Other Fictional Characters Whose Outings Won't Shock Us That Much

10/23/07

|
12:01 PM

| Tags: books, cheers, comics, frasier, harry potter, movies, muppets, peanuts, sex and the city, small wonder, star trek, star wars, the flash, the golden girls, tv

The Ten Worst Movies Directed by Actors

10/18/07

|
12:45 PM

| Tags: andy garcia, ben affleck, ben stiller, beyond the sea, braveheart, crispin glover, duplex danny devito, eddie murphy, gone baby gone, harlem nights, john turturro, kevin spacey, mel gibson, movies, nicolas cage, romance & cigarettes, sonny, star trek v, the cable guy, the lost city, what is it?, william shatner

The Ten Most Incomprehensible Bob Dylan Interviews of All Time

10/ 4/07

|
11:30 AM

| Tags: bob dylan, i'm not there, music, todd haynes

Ten Commercials That Would Make Even Worse TV Shows Than the Geico Cavemen

10/ 2/07

|
11:20 AM

| Tags: abc, cavemen, commercials

The Ten Greatest Pop-Culture Devils of All Time

9/25/07

|
6:01 PM

| Tags: al pacino, angel heart, bedazzled, billy crystal, dave grohl, deconstructing harry, futurama, jack nicholson, jon lovitz, peter cook, ray wise, reaper, robert de niro, snl, southpark, tenacious d, the devil's advocate, witches of eastwick

Ten Directors Who Could Make an Even Unsexier Sex Movie Than Quentin Tarantino

9/20/07

|
1:35 PM

| Tags: larry david, m. night shyamalan, mel gibson, movies, noah baumbach, oliver stone, paul greengrass, paul haggis, quentin tarantino, stanley kubruck, woody allen

Ten Annoying Child Actors We'd Love to Send to ‘Kid Nation’

9/19/07

|
6:15 PM

| Tags: ashley olsen, big daddy, cole sprouse, dakota fanning, dylan sprouse, full house, haley joel osment, henry thomas, home alone, jake lloyd, jerry maguire, jonathan lipnicki, kid nation, macaulay culkin, mary-kate olsen, michael oliver, possible child labor violations, problem child, ron howard, star wars, the andy griffith show, the cat in the hat, tv

Our Ten Favorite Beatles Covers of All Time

9/14/07

|
12:30 PM

| Tags: aretha franklin, beatles, cornershop, echo & the bunnymen, elliott smith, julie taymor, rufus wainwright, sonic youth, stevie wonder, the breeders, the libertines, wilson pickett

The Buddy List: The Fifteen Most Dynamic Duos in Pop Culture History

8/ 9/07

|
2:32 PM

| Tags: andre 3000, artists and models, big boi, bill watterson, butch cassidy and the sundance kid, calvin and hobbes, danny glover, dean martin, elaine may, geena davis, gene wilder, j.r.r. tolkien, jerry lewis, laverne and shirley, lethal weapon, mel brooks, mel gibson, michael chabon, mike nichols, nichols and may, outkast, patrick o'brian, paul newman, peter jackson, richard pryor, ridley scott, robert redford, samuel beckett, sesame street, stir crazy, susan sarandon, the amazing adventures of kavalier & clay, the lord of the rings, the producers, thelma & louise, waiting for godot

Third Time's the Charm: The Best Part Threes in Movie History

8/ 2/07

|
9:21 AM

| Tags: a close shave, alfonso cuaron, chanwook park, day of the dead, final destination 3, george romero, harry potter and the prisoner of azkaban, j.k. rowling, krzysztof kieslowski, lady vengeance, matt damon, movies, nick park, once upon a time in mexico, paul greengrass, peter jackson, robert rodriguez, sergio leone,