It’s 3 p.m.! Let The A.V. Club briefly make use of the waning hours of your productivity with some pop culture ephemera pulled from the depths of YouTube.

John Waters has never made any secret of his admiration and love for the films of Russ Meyer, the breast-obsessed auteur behind such berserk B-movie classics as Vixen, Mudhoney, and the immortal Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Those exploitation classics had an enormous impact on Waters’ own sex-and-violence-drenched…

Few would have predicted that a low-budget Australian comedy whose star was best-known from tourism commercials would become one of the biggest hits of 1986, alongside Top Gun and Star Trek IV. In fact, several major studios passed on the opportunity to distribute Peter Faiman’s “Crocodile” Dundee, an $8.8 million…

We need more women in football. Look no further than tonight’s Super Bowl for evidence. Historically, women have been relegated to the periphery of the game, most often as supplemental entertainment—whether as cheerleaders, sideline reporters, or one of a select few chosen to sing an anthem, or perform a halftime…

With all the Star Wars news coming out now, it’s easy to forget that the movies weren’t always so beloved. Looking back to the late ’70s and early ’80s, it would appear, from a certain point of view, that Han, Leia, and Luke were America’s sweethearts, but there were more than a few detractors. In this 1983 Nightline…

The Black Ensemble Theater in Chicago recently opened a new musical that tells the “epic love story” of Roger and Chaz Ebert. The production, The Black White Love Play, follows the Eberts through their courtship, marriage, and the film critic’s long battle with cancer. The show was written and produced by the…

Back in January, we reported that Josh Gad might play Roger Ebert to Will Ferrell’s Russ Meyer in Russ & Roger Go Beyond, the story of Meyer and Ebert’s misadventures in making Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls. At that time, Gad apparently hadn’t read the script for the project, but eight months later, Variety reports…

This is what we know about Russ & Roger Go Beyond, the proposed movie about Russ Meyer and Roger Ebert’s adventures making Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls. One, Emmy-winning Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons writer Christopher Cluess wrote it. Two, Will Ferrell will probably star in it. Three, it will almost…

In a delightful development for fans of Will Ferrell and/or boobs, Deadline reports that Ferrell is in talks to play America’s poet laureate of pneumatic protuberances Russ Meyer. Ol’ Uncle Russ is considered the godfather of nudie movies, having basically invented the genre with 1959’s The Immoral Mr. Teas. He was…

Should you ever find yourself hosting a TV show, remember that the basic tools of the format—cameras, lights, make-up—exist for the sole purpose of turning you into a character, and that said character is, by default, a prick. What no amount of coaching and tech rehearsal will teach you—what you end up discovering…

Roger Ebert was never afraid of being honest. The influential critic heaped praise on movies and directors that delighted him, regardless of what his peers thought, and was never slow to excoriate something he thought insulted his or his readers’ intelligence—going so far as to publish a collection of his most…

Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: In honor of the late Roger Ebert, whose life and career is celebrated in the new documentary Life Itself, we’re recommending a few films the critic loved and championed.

Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: In honor of the late Roger Ebert, whose life and career is celebrated in the new documentary Life Itself, we’re recommending a few films the critic loved and championed.

In the half century he spent writing about movies for the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave the field of film criticism some of its most useful principles—arguing, for example, that a picture’s value lay in how, not what, it’s about, and introducing the Law Of Economy Of Characters, an amusing tool for dissecting…

After Life (1998)

Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: In honor of the late Roger Ebert, whose life and career is celebrated in the new documentary Life Itself, we’re recommending a few films the critic loved and championed.

Here’s the trailer for Magnolia Pictures’ Life Itself, a documentary about the extraordinary life of the late Roger Ebert, ”the definitive film critic in America.” The story follows his career, from his days working at the Chicago Sun-Times and his authorship of Behind The Valley Of The Dolls, through his influential…