Bag O' Links: Pitt, Cruella, Annie, Viola, Lisi, Potter, Etc...
Friday, December 19, 2014 at 12:25PM We haven't done a link roundup in so long this one is super-duper-quadrupled size. Please to enjoy these articles or catch up with this news...
FAREWELL
NYT, BBC, Variety remembers the great Italian actress Virna Lisi who has died at 78 years of age. Best known stateside for the Jack Lemmon comedy How To Murder Your Wife (1965), and maybe that iconic Esquire cover by George Lois (left) which has been homaged ever since, this baby cinephile right here writing to you first fell for her in the French film Queen Margot (1994). She was brilliant as the most ruthless of royals. She won the Cannes prize for Best Actress for her supporting role which probably didn't make Margot herself Isabelle Adjani too happy but they were at odds in the film, too.
RANDOMNESS
Guardian doesn't like the new Annie but what makes that little orphan so durable in pop culture?
Comics Alliance a fresh way to illustrate "superhero fatigue" -- by spending a day with fatigued Joss Whedon on the set of Age of Ultron
Coming Soon walks you through Jon Favreau walking fans through the making of The Jungle Book. All I'm here for is the cute photo of ScarJo recording the voice of Kaa.
Grantland has a piece people like a lot on The Babadook. People aren't done talking about that
Playbill The Exorcist (1973) will be moving to the stage. Not a musicalized version. Well, it does all take place in one house so you don't have to worry about that part of stage transitions.
Pride Source adorably frank interview with Russell Tovey from Looking (and other shows) on his sex scenes with Jonathan Groff and what he wants for the show's drama
Playbill Audra McDonald will recreate her Tony winning "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill" for HBO. Here comes her Emmy!
Comics Alliance Viola Davis rumored to be joining the cast of the supervillain film Suicide Squad as Amanda Waller. FWIW this is the role that Angela Bassett was utterly wasted in in that piece of poo Green Lantern movie
Grantland Ugh. I can't believe i missed this oral history of Boogie Nights when it was first published
STAR WARS: THE INTERNET AWAKENS (THOUGH IT NEVER WENT TO SLEEP)
/Film Andy Serkis responds to speculation about his Star Wars: The Force Awakens role.
CHUD wonders what Star Wars fans will have to left to complain about when the original trilogy is released without all the fussy changes that messed with its purity on Blu-Ray
Nathaniel R and I sneak-peaked on Twitter that when I interviewed Oscar Isaac (coming soon) he assumed that's what I wanted to talk about. Haha
Pajiba believe it or not, the Star Wars trailer is NOT the most viewed trailer of 2014
The Film Stage the character names from the new film
OUTRAGE, CONT'D
Remember yesterday how I said I couldn't feel that outraged about this week's topic o' outrage (The Interview) but here are two topics that usually push my button but good and often enrage me.
1. Towleroad has a piece on author J.K. Rowlings recent admission that there were gay students at Hogwarts in her Harry Potter books.
If Harry Potter taught us anything, it’s that no one should live in a closet.”
I know how Harry Potter fans are and they'll applaud their icon for this but real talk: Saying after the fact that characters were gay in your mammoth culture-dominating best-sellers in which you could have gotten away with virtually any storytelling flourish is cheap lip service. It's wanting the gays to worship you without actually having supported them in any way other than in easy 'nothing to lose now' sound bites. It's also insulting to use the closet metaphor since that's where all of her supposed gay characters were!
2. Variety has an article on five things we learned about moviegoing this year. I agree with #2 about Women in Hollywood but I'm so sad that the writer ruins his point by again bringing up the foolish 'there aren't 5 worthy women for Best Actress' business. Dear reader, I don't know how to stop this internet wide self-perpetuating sexism epidemic. And, yes, I believe it's completely sexist to ignore the existing actual contributions of women in order to complain about sexism and the lack of contributions of women. The only thing I feel I can do is keep pointing at the lie and hopefully shaming a few writers here and there with "God, did you only see the marketed to teen boys movies this year or what?'
And if you're going to bitch that we need more female themed movies you're going to have to support the ones we have now by, you know, ADMITTING THAT THEY EXIST.
TODAY'S MUST-READ
Ayn Rand, that hard right conservative icon, reviews children's movies! A hilarious article from the New Yorker's Mallory Ortberg. Since it's impossible to pick a favorite I'm just picking two random ones to share but you must read the whole thing!
“101 Dalmatians”
A wealthy woman attempts to do her impoverished school friend Anita a favor by purchasing some of her many dogs and putting them to sensible use. Her generosity is repulsed at every turn, and Anita foolishly and irresponsibly begins acquiring even more animals, none of which are used to make a practical winter coat. Altruism is pointless. So are dogs. A cat is a far more sensible pet. A cat is objectively valuable. —No stars.“Toy Story”
At last, a full-length feature about the inherent value of possessions. —Four stars.
LIST-MANIA
Towleroad "80 Most Powerful Coming Outs of the Year" I love that they do this list annually and that the number of coming outs mentioned keeps growing. It used to be a big deal every time someone came out. it's like *yep, another one*.
Pajiba "10 Most Forgettable Movies of 2014" Ouch
Film School Rejects best movie music of year
Out "10 best TV gay scenes of the year"
Slate "10 best books of the year"
The Atlantic "Best TV episodes of the year" from Joe Reid and team
The Dissolve "Best Films of the year that made under $100,000"
— bobby finger (@bobbyfinger) December 17, 2014
FINALLY
Our beloved Brad Pitt (he was so good in Fury, wasn't he?) was recently released from Jury Duty in Los Angeles because jurors and lawyers would find him too distracting! In related news look at this unintentionally awesome paparazzi shot (above) from an Unbroken premiere. "Unbro" teehee
Reader Comments (17)
Relieved Octavia Spencer was not cast as Amanda Waller. Disappointed this is the best Hollywood could do for Davis considering it would have been fun to see Oprah in the role instead. Or CCH Pounder who provided the voice of the character for the animated series.
There are seven to eight plausible contenders in Best Actress this year. And one of them includes Hilary Swank. Julianne Moore is the default front runner and she's in her fifties --- making her number two in the history of the category. That says to me the people writing about this stuff aren't lying and they're not being sexist --- crying sexism when there is none ruins genuine discussions on the subject when it rears its ugly head.
Can we just say but for Wiest in 94 Lisi would/should have walked off with that trophy for supporting actress!!
What is your point on Swank,are you saying she is legitimate contender with a huge sweel of support for her role.
Nat: The real ending of an Ayn Rand review of 101 Dalmatians would be "this is a sympathetic portrayal of selfless pet owners and, in my view, ANY portrayal of that is inherently worthless." That's an actual joke on the actual philosophy and not a bad pun that doesn't understand the ACTUAL philosophy of objectivism.
I think you'll appreciate this TIME post re: JK Rowling then:
http://time.com/3637589/jk-rowling-harry-potter-news/
Lisi reeked of evil in Queen Margot. From her first action (shoving Margot to her knees at the marriage) to the end she nailed it. My favorite moment is a POV of her lurking in the shadows while keeping an eye on how her machinations are proceeding. I keep waiting (impatiently) for the full version to be released.
(not seeing a link to the Unbroken" pap shot)
We also lost the real Mandy Rice Davies.
Henry -- that's the tweet i included above that sentence.
Volvagia -- we gotta loosen up your sense of humor. That's a hilarious zing because we all have our hypocrisies and Ayn Rand was obsessed with cats.
Mark -- i'm afraid i dont know what you're talking about. I don't think I mentioned Swank in this article?
Ok. Didn't get the unbro pun.
I think Mark was commenting on 3rtful's rant. Which I totally don't understand either except for the love for CCH.
Brett Lang at Variety just proved he doesn't really like movies. How can he say there are only three Oscar-worthy roles this year for actresses? I can think of two from the same movie (Ida), and there's been plenty of love for one actress (Cotillard) for two different movies. He has pretty narrow vision.
I think the actresses themselves try to disabuse people like Lang of this backward thinking. Remember when Meryl Strep got a big award a few years ago and she rattled off the longest list of great actressing she'd seen that year. And Cate's speech at the Oscars, and Reese's desire to tap dance to raise awareness of Naomi in The Impossible -- these actresses seem to rally around each other.
(Rant done.)
I think that while the Variety article is stupid in saying there's only three Oscar-worthy roles this year, I do get a little bit bemused whenever people insist that a specific year isn't a weak year (or a specific year is a strong year). Inevitably there are going to be years that are weaker for a specific category than others-that doesn't mean that all of the films are weak, but if you're judging on a curve you have to have weak years otherwise you're admitting that every year is strong. I do feel that this specific year is a weaker one for Best Actress and while others may disagree, I think it's important to note that it can't ALWAYS be a strong year.
The problem (and where the sexism lies) is that we never hear about a weak year for Best Actor (it's ALWAYS a strong one) and we rarely hear about how strong a Best Actress year it is. I'd argue that, for example, this year is an average Best Actor year (whereas last year was a particularly good one and three years ago was relatively weak), but people are tripping over themselves to declare this a lineup for the ages. Much like they do every year.
Virna Lisi was awesome in Queen Margot. Hollywood wasted her. No surprise really, in the '60's they imported some really wonderful actresses, Romy Schneider, Claudia Cardinale, Catherine Deneuve and Virna to name a few, and used them as stunning mannequins. They had to return to their native lands to be properly showcased. The camera certainly loved her, just do a Google image search and there are masses of amazing photos of her. Gorgeous in her youth and regal in maturity.
Again, let's cast Viola Davis as Deadpan Motherbear. Urgh.
I now invoke my North Korean techies: please do-do-that-voodoo-that-you-do-so-well, and just x-out of our flaccid Hollywood execs already. I kindly, kindly ask.
YES. Thank you re: J.K. Rowling. Homoerotic subtext between Dumbledore and Grindelwald (two very dead characters by Book 7) is not good enough for anyone to be pleased about what she said. No casual same-sex side character couples? No teenager grappling with their (non-hetero)-sexuality AND the return of Voldemort? Books 4-6 gave us so much opposite-sex romance, and there's no reason a dash of the same-sex variety couldn't have been tossed in. Wouldn't the wizarding world (without religion) be more evolved? Even in the 90s (when they take place)?
Oh hells yeah, Audra, grab that Emmy/Globe/SAG trifecta!
Yeah, I have to admit I'm confused by Nathaniel's anger here. It seems to me that, in the narrowly defined corridor that is mainstream/Oscar-bound filmmaking, it was a weak year for leading ladies.