Links: Wings, 50/50, Serkis, Streep, Top Tens
Monday, December 5, 2011 at 10:02PM Drawn Need Christmas Gift ideas! Here's favorite art books of 2011. Love to see "Hark! a Vagrant" and "Amazing Everything" listed, both of which we've linked up before. Several movie books also make the list including The Art of Pixar and Saul Bass.
Movie|Line is still on Team Uggie (The Artist) even if the dog may soon retire.
In Contention Andy Serkis on MoCap performances and Oscar.
toh! Zoinks. I want to go to this restored Wings (1927) screening so bad. Someone buy me a roundtrip to Los Angeles. The silent classic was the first to win Best Picture and let's just say that ol' Oscar started on a high note. Especially since he essentially gave two Best Pic prizes that year and they other one Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is also wondrous.
Gold Derby on the opening weekend performance of a "need to see this" movie like Shame.
Stale Popcorn the ladies who lunch with The Ides of March. Hear hear on the Giamatti/Hoffman business.
Telegraph Daniel Radcliffe joins the bizarrely long list of actors to play Beat poet Allen Ginsberg .
The Guardin Pixar House inspired by Up goes for $400,000
Pajiba 'movies that should've made an assload more at the box office than they did in 2011'. Interesting list though I'd argue that the gross that 50/50 did receive was much higher than one could reasonably expect given that it was a) a tearjerker for guys and guys aren't supposed to like tearjerkers and b) a comedy ABOUT CANCER. The movie should be proud of its gross.
The Wrap super-duper insanely great news for Meryl Streep fans. The living legend will reprise her guffaw-worthy Camilla Bowner character on the second season of Web Therapy. If you never saw the original Web Therapy shorts that played on the internet (before it was a Showtime series) she played a reparative therapist who was attempting to 'cure' Lisa Kudrow's character's husband of his homosexuality.
Top Ten o' the Day - David Edelstein
I lurve top ten lists. It matters not whether I find them (individually) nonsensical, just right or aggravating. There's something in me that adores the cataloguing of each year's work. So in each day's link-roundup, I'll be bringing you my favorite bit from whichever top ten list I've just been reading. Here's Edelstein on Beginners:
Melancholy and madcap, Mike Mills’s inventive weave of past and present ushers you into the mind of its hero (a superb Ewan McGregor) as he agonizes over his emotional inheritance. As the dad who comes out of the closet at 75, Christopher Plummer is light and lithe, buoyed by his new life among the boys.
I also really dig his question-mark description of Alexander Payne even though The Descendants isn't coming anywhere near my list.
50/50, Beginners, Ides of March, Saul Bass, Up, Wings, books, box office, silent films
Reader Comments (4)
LOVED 'Wings' too, when I saw it on video years ago. I was all ready to hate it, because 'Sunrise' was such a stunner and 'Wings' was going to be the crass, commercial film that became known as the first Oscar Best Picture winner when it should have been 'Sunrise', etc etc. But it was enthralling and moving (MINOR SPOILER: the kiss near the end!).
I can't make it to LA (a round-trip flight from Australia costs a bit more!) but I look forward to the DVD release. Seems crazy that it's taken this long to surface on DVD.
I'm not sure from reading the article about Web Therapy whether or not Meryl Streep is actually filming new content, or they're just using the stuff they already shot of her. I'd be THRILLED to see more Camilla Bowner though, watched those episodes at least 20 times.
andrew -- now that you mention it it does sound suspiciously like they're just using the old episodes. Hmmmm. the wording is very noncommittal.
Coincidentally, I took in a double feature of "Moneyball" and "The Ides of March" last Friday evening and made the same observation as Glenn did, particularly about P.S. Hoffman. It's as if they equate serious acting to all those things the writer of the piece mentioned. And they each look a good ten to fifteen years older than they actually are. Is that on purpose? The entire shtick is tiresome and boring.