Late Night Link
Wednesday, December 18, 2013 at 11:20PM The Wrap the new triangular Oscar logo
French Films About Trains "Category is: 2013 Realness"
i09 Paul Rudd to play Hank Pym aka Ant Man in the future Marvel movie for Edgar Wright
Digital Spy... and Edgar Wright shares his ten favorites of 2013 (and Short Term 12 is on it so I love him even more now)
Cinema Blend Hugh Jackman to play the villain in the new Peter Pan film for Joe Wright... but he's not Captain Hook
Deep Cuts the best music scenes in movies this year
Film School Rejects 3 films getting Oscar rereleases and 3 that deserve to get the same treatment
Variety 'how American Hustle conned the critics' a scathing review of... um... either the movie or its reviews.
Vanity Fair David O. Russell's last minute decision to cast Jennifer Lawrence
Vulture Taylor Kitsch on The Normal Heart, Lone Survivor and his resistance to doing a Friday Night Lights movie
Cinema Blend Superman heirs still seeking back the rights. So much drama with superman. (Shouldn't he be in the public domain soon anyway? Damn corporate America and its perversion of copyright laws!)
National Film Registry
Finally, the Library of Congress announced the 25 new titles they're adding to their list of culturally important films. The honor is mostly symbolic since nothing actually happens to the films in question. It doesn't grant them funding for cleaning of their negatives or restoration or guarantee a Blu-Ray release or any some such but it's still a lovely tradition. Mary Poppins is included this year which only prompted "that wasn't already in there?!?" from me followed by a 'well, that's suspiciously good timing for its 50th anniversary Blu-Ray release and the Oscar campaign of Saving Mr Banks." But I love Mary Poppins (here is evidence) so i'm thrilled.
The 25 Films: Bless Their Little Hearts (1984), Brandy in the Wilderness (1969), Cicero March (1966), Daughter of Dawn (1920), Decasia (2002), Ella Cinders (1926), Forbidden Planet (1956), Gilda (1946), The Hole (1962), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), King of Jazz (1930), The Lunch Date (1989), The Magnificent Seven (1960), Martha Graham Early Dance film (1931-44), Mary Poppins (1964), Men & Dust (1940), Midnight (1939), Notes on the Port of St. Francis (1951), Pulp Fiction (1994), The Quiet Man (1952),The Right Stuff (1983), Roger & Me (1989), A Virtuous Vamp (1919), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), and Wild Boys of the Road (1933)
Which ones that you haven't seen are you most curious about? I'm thinking I should finally get around to The Quiet Man because Maureen O'Hara. And though I've seen it already I should probably revisit / write up The Right Stuff because it's so good and people just don't talk about it enough.
Reader Comments (24)
The Right Stuff is one of my favorite movies of all-time. It was just released on blu-Ray for its 30th anniversary.
I'm also very happy to see Roger and Me on the list - it's the movie that made Michael Moore and his best.
The one I haven't seen and I'm most curious about is Midnight. Almodóvar loves it. It made his s&s list, I think.
Of the films I haven't seen, I'd say Midnight (1939) looks most intriguing because Claudette Colbert is one of my favorite actresses and Don Ameche never disappoints.
I feel like I should have seen Roger & Me by now but I haven't gotten around to it.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is probably the one I need to revisit the most since I haven't seen it in maybe 9 years.
The Academy logo revamp is ok, although I wonder what type of submissions a public competition would've produced.
"The honor is mostly symbolic since nothing actually happens to the films in question. It doesn't grant them funding for cleaning of their negatives or restoration or guarantee a Blu-Ray release or any some such but it's still a lovely tradition."
This is such a shame! As much as we harp on the Academy for dubious choices, dedicating podcasts AND commentary to blingring-esque housebreaking and Oscar snatching/regifting, I think we can all agree that AMPAS is deserving of praise for its restoration and preservation efforts. If only the many other organizations who join in on the "predict the winner" aspect of the race also took part on the effort of assuring that future generations have access to culturally relevant movies in danger of loss/deterioration. I am looking at you Association of Film Critics of Southern Indiana!! What have you done for Martha Graham Early Dance Film??
"The honor is mostly symbolic since nothing actually happens to the films in question."
This shocked me. I'd just assumed that "registry" meant archive, which meant keeping the film(s) preserved. The preservation of our motion picture heritage is something I, like many of us, take mostly for granted.
OMG - Variety dared to publish a negative review of American Hustle. I too saw this after reading 4 to 5 out of 5 star reviews and heaps of awards and nominations. I was expecting something terrific and I too left the cinema scratching my head. Sure the overall production was first rate and the performances were what we expect from these actors. The screenplay tries to endear us to the characters but I found them all totally unpleasant. I actually hoped for a Bonnie and Clyde finale where they were all eliminated. And boy oh boy was this unnecessarily long. 140 minutes when a tighter 100 minutes would have sufficed. I struggled over whether to give it a low rating or just follow the herd and give it a high rating. I ended up giving it 5/10 - and I am still trying to justify it. American Hustle is overrated, NOT funny and yes it has definitely conned a LOT of critics and of course will con the Academy. I am predicting it will get about 11 Oscar nominations - same as 12YAS - and hope to god that it wins only Make Up and Hair. A truly overrated film.
I don't like the new logo. The Oscar looks tiny and it like it big.
The Quiet Man is pretty great. Definitely worth checking out.
I saw The Right Stuff for the first time last year and was pretty impressed by its formal style. Gorgeous camera and cinematography work and tho the film runs a steep length, it never really drags which I was impressed by. It's pretty funny in bits as well. I remember it also had this really cool, intelligent masculine vibe to it without being macho or misogynistic. I dug it. I also saw it back to back with Apollo 13 (also for the first time) and that definitely made an interesting compare/contrast experience.
Yay Paul Rudd, this is a pretty cool get for both him and Marvel. And he could be a match made in heaven for Edgar Wright so bonus points for that.
This is about the fifth major Peter Pan-related project to infest pop culture since the start of this new young century. Between the PJ Hogan version, Finding Neverland, Peter and the Starcatcher, I'm getting over it. Anna Karenina and Hanna jointly and firmly cemented my faith in Joe Wright so I'll watch anything by him now but why isn't he following what's clearly his destiny of making a fabulous movie musical instead? WHY.
peggy sue - size queen
Bette Streep: I'm not being snide, but why would you struggle over whether to follow the herd and give a good review to a movie you don't admire, or give it a middling grade that you still can't justify? That's not American Hustle conning you - it's you conning yourself. And I think it's something happens a fair bit in professional criticism, when writers trust consensus at the expense of their own opinions. (I'm thinking of Peter Travers.)
That said, I totally resent the Variety review. If you can't review a movie without attempting to discredit the people who like it, you're doing nothing to convince me.
The Variety piece wasn't even a review. Their original reviewer liked it a lot. De Bruge decided to put out a bad faith piece on the people who praised it, which included one of his own colleagues. De Bruge always came across as a smarmy person compared to Foundas and Chang, good critics who I just respectfully disagree with, but this really showed his real colors. Sorry, inferring that David O. Russell has a mental illness with no hard evidence or thinking that was an appropriate topic to broach in that piece says a lot.
But anyway, yay! Paul Rudd!!!! Preferred him over JGL but that might be residual effects from watching Don Jon- yikes!!!!! Rudd seems like a person who would be in a Wright film and it's pretty surprising it took this long to put him in a superhero movie.
I keep reading this thing about JLaw having a "timeless quality"... but the fact that she was way too young for her character in SLP was one of the main things that didn't sell it for me... and I think it'll happen again with American Hustle .
Reading that Variety article plus the comments section is 15 minutes of my life I'll never get back! Yikes.
Another link of note is to Elvis Mitchell's fantastic conversation with Scott Cooper on The Treatment. While OUT OF THE FURNACE is a movie I'll wait to catch on DVD, the interview with the filmmaker is terrific. http://www.kcrw.com/etc/programs/tt. I really liked what Scott Cooper said about filming on location.
P.S. I visited the lovely Irish village of Cong, where much of The Quiet Man was filmed, and vaulted over one of the stone walls to run across some random field. "Here's a stick to beat to the lovely lady with!" So classic. A family favorite.
that variety person is such a special snowflake. of course people do it all the time (don't understand why something is so well liked and think those who like it are 'wrong'), but it's pathetic to actually write a piece about how everyone was conned and you were not. maybe he's being paid to do this.
Wow. The James Dean in Giant parallel that David O. Russell draws to Lawrence in American Hustle is a pretty interesting one to consider. I'm still not convinced that she was "right" for the part, though her age had very little to do with that for me, surprisingly. Maybe it was a little of how the character was written, but I just didn't believe that this was a person who had raised a child. And that's not something that I think Jennifer Lawrence is incapable of doing. She convincingly sold for me in Winter's Bone someone who had been raising children (if not necessarily her own) for years.
It makes me think of Scarlett Johansson technically being way too young (at 18) to play a newlywed, Yale graduate going through the quarterlife crisis in Lost in Translation. But Johansson totally sold that for me very convincingly. I know they have a history (obviously), so Jennifer Lawrence was probably always in play, but if Russell was going younger than written in terms of casting for Rosalyn, I would have loved to see what someone like Mia Wasikowska could have done with it because I think that is an actress (more than Lawrence) who projects both wisdom and existential uncertainty beyond her years. Also Evan Rachel Wood, who I think needs a career shake-up and who I also think would fit right into the crazy way Russell likes to unlock new facets of performers we thought we were familiar with. Or, turn the casting totally on its head and put in Jurnee Smollett Bell who I think would be a blast and knock it out of the park AND I'm still selfishly waiting for that breakthrough to happen. I'm fine with casting outside of the box, but the further out I get from American Hustle, the more the casting of Jennifer Lawrence (who I really like) feels like a default. Both a default in terms of David O. Russell and in terms of her position in the Hollywood stratosphere.
Speaking of ScarJo, I am thinking after her whole Barbara Sugarman turn that maybe she could've played the JLaw role in American Hustle. Older and more age-appropriate for the role, her affectation of that regional accent feels more natural (I have family from that area and even ScarJo's regular voice sounds as one of them- obviously because she actually hails from there as opposed to being like any other actor who moves to NY/LA after getting their BFA), and I also have to believe that even if American Hustle were a disappointment it is better than Don Jon.
Honestly though if JLaw's star quality is pulling people into theaters, I can understand the decision process behind it. As shown with Out of the Furnace, Bale sans Batman is questionable BO as are Adams and Cooper in general. It probably would've made it to the black with those players being a prestige picture that seems like an entertaining, agreeable movie for a lot of people but JLaw probably helps it do SLP numbers.
Oh do watch The Quiet Man! One of the most purely pleasurable movies ever committed to celluloid. Plus it's really thorny and complex about gender representation in a way that you might not expect from one of his movies--it makes for an interesting companion to The Searchers in that way.
On the Paul Rudd news: I REALLY hope that he's actually Scott Lang and the people reporting that it's Pym are wrong on that. Because, if he is Pym, that's going to be painfully limiting, not allowing them to do the most iconic Hank Pym story. (I'd personally choose Aaron Paul or someone similar for Pym) But I don't like the Rashida Jones rumors for Wasp. She's black, Jewish and 37. Wasp needs to be, at minimum, ten years younger than their Pym, possibly more if they cast an older Pym like Rudd. And white. And not Jewish. Because her superhero name is kind of a pun on the acronym for White Anglo Saxon Protestant. Brie Larson, meanwhile, would be a PERFECT Janet Van Dyne, ESPECIALLY if Pym is actually Aaron Paul, and they're NOT casting themselves into a corner.
off topic, but Nat, will we hear your thoughts on Her soon? Or at least a grade?
I'm happy to see " Forbidden Planet" on the list- it has aged very well and is still more thought provoking than many recent sci-fi movies.
@CMG Oh, god! ScarJo in JLaw role, yes please!!
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