Oscar Non-News, Taye Hewdig-Diggs, and Link Roundup

Before we get to the link roundup a bit of Oscar Housekeeping. There are no significant changes to the rules this year so we're stuck with "somewhere between 5 and 10 nominees" in terms of Best Picture (I'd been hoping for a set number, no matter what that set number was, as I like the awards to have proper comparative pleasures in the grand scheme of history). Wisely though in minor changes, the visual effects category gets an expanded finalist list before nominations (smart), and  the shorts category get longer finalists lists to choose from and the number of nominations per category is set at a concrete five (it's usually five but sometimes it's less depending on how voting goes, currently). I do like the consistency but I wonder why they're still holding out on Makeup and Hair -- EVERY FILM USES IT which is more than you can say for a lot of categories. The makeup branch should get 5 nominated slots like every other Oscar branch category. Sucks to be them.

Links
MNPP Flaunt and Jason try to convince us to love Aaron Johnson. Hey, no one else will.
A Fistful of Films reviews Inside Out from a parental perspective and cries all the way through it 
Dissolve David Tennant takes over a Robin Williams voice role in the animation adaptation of Chew. I didn't actually know they were making this but that comic, which a friend of Anne Marie's turned me on to, is SO good and weird. So I'm excited for this 
Towleroad somehow I missed this Magic Mike XXL clip of Matt Bomer singing. When perfect gets more perfect it's just so not fair, you know?
Kenneth in the (212) RIP Dick Van Patten. Remember "Eight is Enough"?  
Mike's Movie Projector looks back at Dirk Bogarde in 1960
Movie Mezzanine looks back at The Blues Brothers (1980) -- I knew so many people who loved this movie growing up but I never "got" its appeal
The Hot Blog David Poland talks Inside Out's "Bing Bong" 

Screen to... Other
Theater Mania 45 years after Love Story (1970) Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neal are working together again -- they'll tour with the play "Love Letters" which had a short run on Broadway recently with rotating older celebrities
AV Club Fight Club (1999)... for kids? 
Playbill Michael C Hall (Dexter) will star in a new Off Broadway David Bowie musical based on The Man Who Fell To Earth this fall. It's called "Lazarus"
Deadline Emmy winning Laurie Metcalf, so brilliant currently on the underseen sitcom Getting On has replaced Elizabeth Marvel in the upcoming Broadway adaptation of Misery (1990). So she does the Bruce Willis hobbling honors now

Showtune to Go...
The first photo of Taye Diggs as Hedwig has been released to excite you for his theatrical run in one of the great roles! So naturally our Showtune to Go this time is a Hedwig toon.

Ten Movies To Watch (To Play Along With Tony Awards At Home)

Gene Kelly and Ann Miller are unofficial Tony Players this yearGiven that not everyone can live in or even visit New York regularly and even those of us who do, can't see all the Tony nominees given our budgets, here's a list of ten plus smart movie choices if you'd like to feel tangentially invested in the upcoming Tony Awards (Sunday night! - should we live blog?) without actually having seen any of the shows! If you only have time for one movie make it an Ann Miller, Leslie Caron, or Gene Kelly movie as they're the unofficial mascots of this Tony season each having starred in two of the movies related to current Broadway hits.

TEN MOVIES
If you can't make it to Broadway

Congratulations! You've already won. You don't have to watch the super dull Finding Neverland (2004) again because it's Broadway adaptation didn't earn a single nomination! On a sadder note if you want to play along at home and you love good movies, the Doctor Zhivago (1965) adaptation has already shuttered since the Tony voters shunned it (yeah, it wasn't good) so you don't get to watch that classic again at home ...at least for this project.

10 Saved! (2004) + Meet the Feebles (1989)
If you can't make it to NYC to see the blasphemous/hilarious Hand To God about a confused young man living with his religious mother who believes his hand puppet is possessed by the devil, try a religious satire and a filthy puppet movie instead. For maximum effect play these movies simultaneously side by side. (You may substitute any preferred religious comedy in place of Saved but dirty puppet movies are hard to come by)

Nine more movies (and Tony thoughts) after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Review: Far From The Madding Crowd

In Far From the Madding Crowd, a new film adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel, every eligible man wants Carey Mulligan’s winsome Bathsheba. But she cannot be tamed! (Funny how commitment phobia reads as strength in a female protagonist and weakness in a male protagonist). Or at least she won’t “settle” for less than what she’s already planned for herself. Nevertheless the wanting continues and the camera, observes her, often at a distance as with a memorable shot of Bathsheba laying back from her saddle, as if enjoying the tactile and visual sensations of the powerful creature beneath her and the vibrant foliage and sky above her.

(This review contains a general trajectory ending spoiler but it is based on a 151 year-old classic novel.)

Three bachelors and Bathsheba's issues after the jump... 

Click to read more ...

A Letter to Todd Haynes

Dearest Todd,

Never ever under any circumstances take another 8 year break from the cinema. The reviews for Carol (2015) read at times like an ecstatic mirage, dehydrated desert critics stumbling upon a Haynes-flavored pool. Its weird ½ an actress prize at Cannes, for the unexpected ½ at that, feels somehow fitting given the prismatic way you like to view identity (Velvet Goldmine, I'm Not There, etc).

I can't tell you the joy I felt this morning waking up to the news that you've added a third project (!!!) to your upcoming slate after so much hibernation. Of the two we already knew about a TV series set in a 1970s commune sounds the most promising; it's an underexplored rich topic in terms of time period and political content -- you're counter culture enough to do it justice. The other project, the Untitled Peggy Lee Biopic is a swell idea, too. You're the one filmmaker who is creatively incapable of making a dully traditional biopic (Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story / I'm Not There) and Miss Peggy Lee lived through all your favorite eras. We already know that its star Reese Witherspoon can sing thanks to her Oscar winning role as June Carter Cash and though we can't quite picture her as one of your muses a la Moore (Far From Heaven / [safe]) or recently Blanchett, we can picture her as a Barbie doll and we know you like those. At any rate, the part is a good fit for her. Peggy has so many classic songs, she was indominatable enough to serve as one of the original inspirations for Miss Piggy and that six decade career / four failed marriages surely contain plentiful dramatic fodder.

But the happiest news may well be the newest. You're planning to adapt Brian Selznick's children's book Wonderstruck for Killer Films??? How wonderful. That bifurcated tale featuring a boy in the Seventies pining for his father and a girl in the Twenties dreaming of an actress should provide ample spark for your formidable creativity. 

an image from Wonderstruck

You're 54 now, Todd. There are only so many years in a life. I'm not telling you to rush through these next projects but please never ever under any circumstances whatsoever take an eight year break from the cinema again in which we only get a remake of something that was already more than wonderful enough to begin with (Mildred Pierce). It was a painful drought.

Your forever fan, xoxo

Nathaniel R

Cannes Review: Carol

Our friend Diana Drumm is in Cannes and will be sending a few reviews our way. First up, Todd Haynes hotly anticipated Carol... (note: this review contains a couple of spoilers for those who haven't read the book)

Within a year of publication, Patricia Highsmith’s first novel “Strangers on a Train” became a seminal Hitchcock thriller. After half a century, her second novel “The Price of Salt” (published under the pseudonym of Claire Morgan) is now a Todd Haynes romantic drama (under the succinct title Carol). Whereas the former concerns two male strangers duplicitous in murder, the latter is about two women finding love in constrictive 1952 New York City. Turning the pulp novel into a palpable parable, Carol is a master stroke in Haynes’s 21st century oeuvre (Far from Heaven, Mildred Pierce, et al.), and harkens back to the pressurized strength of Safe and the sexual fluidity of Velvet Goldmine - both capturing and throwing off the starched restrictiveness of postwar America, and deftly upgrading the melodrama with social relevance.

Inspired by Highsmith’s own stint at Macy’s (and her affair with Philadelphia socialite Virginia Kent Catherwood), 20-something shopgirl Therese Belivet (Rooney Mara) waits on and is struck by elegant “blondish woman in a fur coat” Carol Aird (Cate Blanchett). A friendship builds between the two, to the jealousy of Therese’s huffy square boyfriend (Jake Lacy), who dismisses it as schoolgirl crush, and the consternation of Carol’s matinee-handsome, soon-to-be ex-husband (Kyle Chandler), who uses it as ammunition in their ongoing divorce negotiations. [More]

Click to read more ...