Sweet 16 Links: Colette, Noni, Gaga, and a Lynch Reunion

Variety Keira Knightley in talks to star in the biopic about the French writer Colette. Crossing my fingers about this one. Colette is fascinating (she wrote Cheri!)
Comics Alliance on Marvel, politics, and why corporations are not your friend
Towleroad TitanMen has offered disgraced Congressman Aaron Schock (the one with abs and a Downton Abbey fetish) $1 million to star in a porn film. LOL
Variety Clive Owen, Alba Rohrwacher, and more join Meryl Streep's competition jury at Berlinale

Kenneth in the (212) Shirtless Russell Tovey reportedly causes a Broadway audience member to faint. Ha!
Pajiba checks in w/ the Trainspotting cast, 20 years on 
i09 Naomi Watts reunites with Lynch for Twin Peaks S3
i09 Noomi Rapace not returning for the Prometheus sequel
IndieWire thinks "The Chickening," a short film remix of The Shining is insane and genius. Definitely the first part. As for the second... 
Towleroad a first for ESPN, actor Matthew Wilkas (Gayby, You're Killing Me) labelled "Gus Kenworthy's Boyfriend" during the X Games 
Coming Soon Tony winner Annaleigh Ashford (we ♥ her) has joined the cast of The Rocky Horror Picture Show the next TV musical (though this one won't be "live") 
Salon "Where are all the women in American Film?" a SAG-AFTRA member reviews her screeners

I had seen four films, 75 percent of which completely leave women out of the story. But maybe women really don’t feature in West African war zones. Or in the history of NWA. Or in finance.

But of course we feature. It just depends what story you want to tell.

TODAY'S WATCH
Lady Gaga performering her and Diane Warren's Best Original Song nominee "Til It Happens To You" at the PGA Awards

LEFTOVER SUNDANCE BUZZ
Variety 19 breakthrough performances from the festival
Film School Rejects talks to the cast and filmmaker of the LGBT Korean-American drama Spa Night
The Guardian Oscar buzz from the fest including Manchester by the Sea, Ira Sach's Little Men and Rebecca Hall as Christine 

TODAY'S MUST (LONG) READ
"Winona Forever" by Soraya Roberts for Hazlitt. It's a great history of the star's youth and her sudden generational iconhood. And how we've trapped her adolescence ever since. 

Winona Ryder arrived at the perfect time. Film scholar Timothy Shary characterizes the teen genre as “cyclical.” Ryder’s first film, Lucas, was released at the end of the hyper-hormonal Porky’s era (AIDS and teen pregnancy ruined it for everyone), five years before the release of Boyz N the Hood. In the period between 1986 and 1990, during her teen career, there were about 250 American films about adolescents, the most memorable being nostalgic thefts of innocence such as Dirty Dancing (1987), Hairspray (1988) and Dead Poets Society (1989). Three of Ryder’s films—Great Balls of Fire, 1969, Mermaids—adhered to this theme. She was in a sweet spot: post sex-crazed, pre-violence crazed—the ideal landing pad for a wide-eyed alien.

“You’d be hard pressed to say who was an average girl in teen movies after the mid-80s,” says Shary. The Brats had moved on, and so had John Hughes (his last teen film, Some Kind of Wonderful, came out in 1987), though no one forgot about them. “[Hughes] showed that you could make sensitive teen films that didn’t have nudity that didn’t pander to the supposed teen sex urge,” Shary says. He thinks this was “a contributing factor in helping set up an actress like Winona Ryder who could come along in the later ‘80s and be taken seriously as a teen actress.” While Hughes muse Molly Ringwald pined for the rich guy, Ryder merely pined for herself...

It's a delicious read and for those of you who didn't live through the Depp/Winona years, a fine encapsulation of the generational fascination with their relationship.

15 Great Moments Inside Movie Theaters in '15

Confession: I am extremely terrible about keeping a calendar, or even a letterboxd list which I update sporadically from time to time before forgetting again. In short the only "diary" of any sort I have is this ode to movies you're visiting now... The Film Experience. Nevertheless in reviewing the film year I realized that I haven't been frequenting NYC's wonderful repertory theaters as much as in past years. Must fix.  And I really have to do a better of keeping track of what I'm seeing in general lest I actually forget I saw something and it's missing from LISTS. *gasp*

But I  ♥ going to the movies. And if you're reading this it's safe to assume that you do too. So it's list time. Please share your favorite moments of moviegoing this year in the comments. 

15 Favorite Moments Inside Movie Theaters in '15
because it's the best place to be!
 

15 The Incredible Hulk (2008) 
April 29th: That moment when my best friend and I suddenly realized that we could leave anytime during the Marvel Movie Marathon (preceding the premiere of The Age of Ultron) and still get the same seat. What a relief. I mean... nobody should have to sit through Iron Man 2 ever again!

14 Clouds of Sils Maria (2014)
April 6th: Sitting down for a special invite-only screening of Clouds of Sils Maria and seeing so many actors I loved in the audience (Diane Lane, Parker Posey, Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin). Turner was surprisingly willing to make conversation afterwards, her voice miraculously even lower than onscreen in person; she kindly ignored my fairly obvious terror at finally meeting one of my all time favorite goddesses.

13 Hateful Eight (2015) - INTERMISSION ONLY!
Dec: Though I've admired Teo Bugbee as a writer for over a year (and she's written for the site on rare occasion) we finally met recently and every time we managed to sync up our schedules (lunch, drinks at a bar, a screening of Hateful Eight) it somehow become an extra imaginary screening of Carol we talked about the movie so much. Basically Teo is the only way I made it through Hateful Eight. 

Carol, Chi-Raq, two older classics and more after the jump...

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"By the Hoary Hosts of Hogarth, it's hard to keep up!"

Lukewarm off the presses! Herewith a collection of very brief thoughts on this, that, and the other things that we haven't had time to comment on but definitely wanted to note. Please to discuss in the comments. 

• By now you've seen Entertainment Weekly's gallery of Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange. The film arrives in 311 days which means most movie blogs have about 622 more articles left to write about it in "anticipation" BLARAARGGGH! How to reverse the equation and get people to write the bulk of their thoughts on movies AFTER seeing them? Even Marvel's Sorcerer Supreme probably can't cast a spell that powerful. I have three things to say about these photos. 1) I still find Cumberbatch's casting weird because his face is so non angular / eyeberowless both of which are complete opposites of traditional depictions of the sorcerer 2) can't anyone ever find a way to represent magic that isn't shapeless CGI color beams. I beg filmmakers to try something new since this is literally the only way it's been done since CGI took over the cinema. 3) Marvel superheroes are always trying to make wing-tip hairdos happen --- see also Wolverine -- but it never translates into the real world trends. 

• Tired of movie awards yet? Too bad. You've still got two months of it to go. The latest critics orgs to throw their hat in the ring is the Austin Film Critics. They chose Mad Max for top hours but Room won the most prizes (3) taking Actress (Brie Larson), Breakthrough (Jacob Tremblay) and Adapted Screenplay (Emma Donoghue)

• Since Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been seen by 25% of the Earth's population already (we're guessing) we're getting the usual raft of what might be in the next film articles (including the silly/wonderful Poe & Finn are gay for each other fanfic wishful thinking) and a flood of info on what could have been... the post-movie release equivalent of the what-might-be speculation articles the internet is a hardcore junkie for. (ANYTHING TO NOT TALK ABOUT ACTUAL AS-THEY-EXIST MOVIES!) But I will say this: according to /Film our heroine Rey's original name in the script was "Kira" and we should all breathe a huge sigh of relief that they changed it. It's already unfortunate enough that Daisy Ridley stole Keira Knightley's face, clenched jaw stress, and speaking voice (do you think she trapped it in a seashell necklace Ursula style?). If she also had a homophonic name it'd be even more disastrous. Is it silly that I'm really worried about what the Daisy Ridley explosion will due to Keira's Knightley's career?  We've grown so fond of Keira over the years and really admire how much she's pushed herself to grow as an actress taking on challenging roles and stage work and so on.

• The internet is having a field day suggesting that Chris Nolan just can't handle his lack of Oscar nominations at this point and will embark on a World War II film next. Mark Rylance, Kenneth Branagh and Tom Hardy are the first announced cast members. 

• November and December are punishing insatiable mistresses. There are SO MANY new trailers we haven't even managed to do a DIY Yes No Maybe So on including but not limited to Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them, Star Trek Beyond, Midnight Special, The Legend of Tarzan, The Nice Guys, Mojave, Storks, Gods of Egypt, X-Men: Apocalypse, and Terminus. Which have you watched and wanted to discuss? I don't even think I said anything about Captain America: Civil War in November and you know how I feel about the good captain. (Hint: pretty much how he feels about Bucky Barnes.) 

new roles for Oscar Isaac

• FINALLY... we're really proud of our web friend Angelica Jade Bastién who's getting a lot of attention for her Atlantic Essay "The Case Against Colorblind Casting" which is a really fascinating read about acceptance versus erasure. It kicks off with the of the moment example of Oscar Isaac, riding high at the moment (and working constantly) on his considerable talent. 

It would be nice to believe that someone as talented as Isaac could have done as well without colorblind casting or an ability to be seen as “ethnically flexible.” Isaac has steadily increased his profile in recent years by bringing intensity and intelligence to vastly different roles...

But his success hasn’t come without compromises. Isaac is open about the choices he’s made in his career including dropping his last name, Hernández. “Starting out as an actor, you immediately worry about being pigeonholed or typecast,” he said to the magazine In. “I don’t want to just go up for the dead body, the gangster, the bandolero, whatever. I don’t want to be defined by someone else’s idea of what an Oscar Hernández should be playing.” His tendency to play characters of different backgrounds extends to his new Star Wars character, whom Isaac has described as “non-ethnic.” Notably, he didn’t say “white” or “racially ambiguous,” instead referring to his character’s absence of ethnicity.

Give it a read! 

Is Marvel Recruiting Cate Blanchett?

Yesterday, fresh off her Golden Globe and SAG nominations, Cate Blanchett was reported to be a potential candidate for an unknown role in Thor: Ragnarok, another high profile star to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Twitter has not been pleased.

BUT! Before you get out your pitchforks and scream of heresy, let's note a few things about the third Thor entry that might change your mind:

1. Taika Waititi is taking over directing duties. If you haven't watched his vampire mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows from earlier this year, fix that! The film excels at the kind of farcical character humor that was the strongest element of Kenneth Branagh's original installment and was mostly absent from the sequel.

2. Mark Ruffalo is also starring in his Hulk's first time outside of an Avengers film, so the film is already giving us something we've been asking for.

3. Galadriel! Blanchett isn't afraid of genre material, and when she's having a ball, so are we.

4. Let's not forget how the MCU works with potential crossover characters - think of the possibilities. How about this one: none other than Tilda Swinton is in the forthcoming Doctor Strange. One can dream!

5. As we were reminded with her recent W Magazine spread, fun things happen when she gets to be a little kooky.

There's plenty reason to be optimistic!

Nothing is known of the role yet (please be a villain, please be a villain, please be a villain), but this and the assembled team thus far at least point toward Marvel making this one feel a little more special than what we got with Thor's round 2. Thor: Ragnarok is coming November 3, 2017.

Small Screen MVPs: Damaged Surgeons, Haunted Houses, Coming Out

Who or what was your MVP of this past week on your tv screens?

A couple of weeks ago we polled Team Experience to share their MVPs from shows they were currently watching. You liked it so we'll attempt to do it weekly or at least bi-weekly. In this new world of infinite screens and schedules, whether you're bingeing, right up-to-date, or on demand surfing, we're all probably on different time tables so please do share yours as well.

If you watch these shows would you pick the same most valuable player?

MVPs of the Week

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Director
It's taken this show a while to get to a place where it feels confidence in taking artistic risks, but last week’s episode, ‘4,722 Hours’, saw the once meek show taking its most audacious move yet under the helm of director Jesse Bochco. When Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) was snatched by the Monolith in season two’s brutal stinger, I never expected that the show would tackle the aftermath in such sober, thoughtful form. Bochco even dares to omit the regular title card, using a simpler, more elegant logo atop a vista of the deep blue planet.

Immediately, then, Bochco marks ‘4,722 Hours’ as a singular artistic endeavour, a quite remarkable thing in a Marvel Studios empire that has continually driven away individualist directors. Alright, so the episode still fits within the show’s larger template and is constructed with tropes familiar from many lone survivor sci-fi tales, but it feels full of personality, submerged in the midnight blue light of eternal night, allowing Henstridge to dig into Simmons’ psychological trauma that the show had presented to us in the previous episodes. It’s an episode full of confidence and trust in both character and audience. Let's hope it’s one that signals an even brighter future for a series going from strength to strength. - David Upton

The Walking Dead's Executive Producer
Thank you, Robert Kirkman, for backing the hell off. [More...]

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