Mad Men @ the Movies: From Here To Eternity & A Star is Born

In Mad Men at the Movies we explore the cinematic references of television's finest drama. So good to have the SCDP gang back on our small screen dreaming about their big screens. Naturally mild spoilers follow...

6.1 "The Doorway"
Vague Synopsis: The sixth season of Mad Men begins just before New Year's 1968 (?). A client has paid for the Drapers to vacation in Hawaii assuming that the trip will inspire Don to come up with a brilliant ad campaign to sell their hotel. They don't quite get what they were expecting since Don Draper is perpetually gloomy and unknowable even to himself -- 'The Inferno? just a little light reading on the beach!' Later both Peggy & Don run into trouble with their latest individual ad concepts due to uncomfortable associations - Peggy's ad rubs up against the world's worsening Vietnam problems, Don's ad reminds his clients of suicide. Meanwhile, perpetual child Betty Draper Francis obsesses over her daughter's friend (this isn't the first time!) and continues to need more therapy even more frequently than lost playboy Roger Sterling is getting it.

As ever not all of the movie references on Mad Men are spelled out with movie titles. more...

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Jesse Unleashed. And Other Links

i09 the best critical responses to Safe Haven's batsh*t ending (spoilers, obviously)
Natasha VC the Boogie Nights premiere photos are debilitating. (amen)
Cinematic Corner expresses disatisfaction with The Master. I think the qualms expressed here are very imply put the problem a lot of people have with the second act of Paul Thomas Anderson's career. I wonder if he'll change again?
Awards Daily salutes the hard working Oscar publicists as ballots close
MNPP Judy Garland's A Star is Born even wins over JA! She's just brilliant in that film. One of the worst Oscar losses ever. 

Coming Soon on a new Bruce Lee biopic in the works. I read a few articles on this last night and not one of them mentioned that there already is a Bruce Lee biopic, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story which came out in the 90s and starred the hotness that was Jason Scott Lee (no relation)
Playbill Les Misérables will be returning to Broadway in 2014, just 11 years since the original long running show closed. Meanwhile the show has never closed in London and has now been playing for 27 years
Jesse Williams the actor (the hottie from Cabin in the Woods) doesn't pull punches detailing his issues with Django Unchained's treatment of race and slavery
Advocate Kelly McGillis will reminisce about Top Gun generically but she won't talk about Jodie Foster's coming out!
Lainey Gossip checks in with the pre-Oscar gingers Jessica Chastain & Nicole Kidman
In Contention looks at Sound Mixing which I personally think is terrifically hard to predict this year 

Finally... if you believe that math can predict the Oscars check out Ben's Oscar Forecast. He's a Harvard student who's trying to predict them with formulas. He's predicting the usual suspects that have been winning everything for acting but for best director... Ang Lee (!?!)

Mad Men @ the Movies: Charlton Heston Starkers and "A Star is Born"

In "Mad Men @ the Movies" we look at the best show on television through the lens of its movie-loving ways. Obviously there are spoilers.

5.3 "Tea Leaves"
In the third episode of the season Betty Draper Francis (January Jones) returns and there's more of her to love to hate! She's been packing on the pounds. At first there's a thyroid scare but it turns out Betty is just depressed and fat. The episode ends with Betty helping herself to a second ice cream sundae (to the tune of The Sound of Music's "I Am Sixteen"). Why not? 

One of the themes of the new season is aging and the rise of youth culture is evident. Betty is referred to as middle-aged by her doctor. Don, previously an icon of cool, is now 'so square he's got corners' to both his younger wife (she's 20, he's 40) and the young teenagers he meets at a Rolling Stones concert (he's there with Harry Crane on business). When the teens hear that the men are in advertising they instantly think of Bewitched. "You're Derwood and He's Mr. Cravitz."

Later after smoking a joint Harry is trying to impress the teens with celebrity stories. 

Charlton Heston and Esther Blodgett after the jump

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Hello, I Must Be Linking

/Film Chris Hemsworth on the set of Ron Howard's Rush about race car drivers
Flavorwire Fun stories from Joss Whedon's SXSW Talk: The Avengers, Buffy, TV versus film, and more.
Ultra Culture puts 2012 releases thus far through the wonderful "Bechdel Test" in which a movie must have more than 1 female character and they must talk to each other... about something other than a man). Naturally most of them fail.

My Modern Met just incredible "Star Wars Identity" posters. I wish other films would inspire the kind of enduring creativity this franchise does from people... because given the developments of the past 30 years our global worship of this franchise is just, well, embarrassing.
THR Hello I Must Be Going, a hit at Sundance starring Melanie Lynskey (yay!), is getting a theatrical release later this year.
Wow Report ouch! (NSFW) A nasty accident for a son of a movie superstar. Guess who?
Movie|Line Tom Cruise is the latest star being talked up to play opposite Beyoncé in the A Star is Born. If it weren't a Clint Eastwood picture I'd assume this movie was never happening but since it's a Clint Eastwood picture some male star is eventually going to bite before Blue Ivy is old enough to take the role from Mama.

Oh look. It's Javier Bardem on the set of Skyfall. With blonde hair? 

Villains just can't be trusted with hair dye.

And I kept forgetting to post the Genie Award winners but Awards Daily did that duty. Here's Viggo Mortensen accepting Best Supporting Actor for A Dangerous Method. Good pick, Genie. He was great in that movie. Not that greatness is surprising these days from Viggo.

Viggo. Viggo. Viggo.

"A Star is Born"... or, will be *after* the Star's baby is born.

Beyoncé announced her pregnancy at MTV's VMAs last night. I switched channels after Gaga's drag king opening number so the news got to me secondhand.

There be film fallout. The fourth feature film version of A Star is Born (2013? 2014?) is now delayed for at least nine months as Beyoncé gestates and welcomes her first child into the world. The musical, meant to be Clint Eastwood's post J Edgar project, had hoped to go before the cameras early in 2012 and with the speed that Eastwood tends to work we would have probably seen it as a Christmas 2012 release.

But now that Beyoncé is pregnant (and considering also that Leonardo DiCaprio has turned down the male lead role), this won't be happening just yet. The Beyoncé/Jay-Z babe will be born first.

Oscar-obsessives should keep a close eye on this one -- the film, not the babe. While the project seems ridiculous on the surface for both "another one?" superfluity and Eastwood + Beyoncé odd-coupledom, A Star is Born is a durable cultural object. It's always a major morphing showcase for the gifts of its leading lady. The first three incarnations resulted in 17 Oscar nominations and 3 Oscars all told including bids for Best Actress for both Janet Gaynor (1937) and Judy Garland (1954) and a Best Original Song Oscar for Barbra Streisand's "Evergreen" (1976).

Will we see Beyoncé as a Best Actress nominee in 2013 or 2014... or will she have to "settle" for a Best Song Oscar?