American Link Story

Playlist Adam McKay (The Big Short) planning a Dick Cheney biopic which may star Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Steve Carell
LA Times comedian Don Rickles has died at 90
Vulture Interesting observations: blockbuster filmmakers are making the same single parent family drama inbetween their visual fx movies
Movie City News on the tired false notion that 'movie stars don't matter anymore' in terms of box office which we're seeing a lot of post Ghost in the Shell opening and which we see every time a star driven movie fails essentially. Movie stars obviously do still matter but the economics of movies are always changing.

/Film in this week's strangest news: Actor/Hunk Joe Mangianello has written a Dungeons & Dragons movie
Washington Post another 'Nicole Kidman is awesome and always has been' essay. Glad we're getting a wave of these but kind of annoyed that people haven't taken our word for it all these years ;) 
Billboard Adele's "21" album from 2011 just broke a record long held by Carole King's "Tapestry"
IndieWire ranks the top 14 female action stars. The top three are unassailably major (Jolie, Johansson, Theron) but the list gets weird and debatable thereafter even including Cara Delevigne who's not yet headlined an action film at #14
Yahoo American Crime Story's Versace murder cast keeps growing and it's always celebrities. Ricky Martin has signed on as Versace's longtime partner Antonio D'Amico
Telegraph Stage star and sometime screen actor Tim Pigott-Smith has died at 70. Screen credits include V For Vendetta, Downton Abbey, and The Jewel in the Crown (BAFTA award)
Variety Angelina Jolie rumored to be buying a $25 million estate (less than two miles from Brad Pitt's home) that used to belong to Cecil B DeMille 
EW Alexander Skarsgård worries he won't get work after Big Little Lies because Perry was such a monster 

P.S. A follow up yesterday's "on this day" post. VOTE!

For his birthday, What's Francis Ford Coppola's greatest creation

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) April 7, 2017

P.P.S. Have you begun thinking of the Emmy race yet?

We're still in the eligibility period and the nominating doesn't begin until early June but the campaigning has already begun in force for many shows, both Emmy darlings and other.

Last nights #FYC for #crazyexgirlfriend was #bonkerballs As if performing live with our cast and having our creatives, executives, writers and casting director there wasn't enough of a love fest, we even got these swanning tote bags WITH Season 2 soundtrack CD!! 😮🎁🎉 #TotesTotes #ILoveSwagBags #TeamCrazy #crazyexfyc

A post shared by Vincent Rodriguez III (@vrodrigueziii) on Apr 6, 2017 at 10:25am PDT

It must be frustrating to be on great TV shows that the television Academy ignores. History has shown that they don't change course unless they're basically forced to which they will be this year at least in one category: Best Drama Series has a single new opening since Game of Thrones isn't eligible for the very first time. The Emmys would be so much more exciting, and frankly mean a lot more, if the nominations were done by special committees forced to watch a bunch of things. Imagine if the nominations actually shifted per season depending on quality. All series have ups and downs! 

Big Little Lies MVPs: Episode 3 "Living The Dream"

Editor's Note: To get us all caught up for Sunday's 4th episode (we'll start covering the series as it airs now), and so that I can get to "Feud" and the latest episode of "Pfandom," I'm handing over the reigns to episode 3 to our new contributor Spencer Coile for a fresh set of eyes.

Top Ten MVPs of Big Little Lies. Episode 3 "Living The Dream" 
In the third episode, Madeline finds out that her oldest daughter Abigail (Kathryn Newton) wants to move in with her dad (James Tupper) and Bonnie. Celeste and Perry (Alexander Skarsgård) attempt to give a another go at counseling. And after a botched family tree project leads Ziggy (Iain Armitage) to ask who his father is, Jane reveals to Madeline that Ziggy was the resut of forced sex with a man supposedly named Saxton Banks. 

"Living The Dream" is Big Little Lies' finest installment thus far, and a list of the episode's major players follows after the jump...

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Big Little Lies MVPs: Episode 1 "Somebody's Dead"

by Nathaniel R

She's delicious!

Why yes she is, Alexander, she is. So's the show.

Sometimes, on particularly dark-mood days, as your editor sits in the Film Experience HQ, a lonely room high atop a tower, he worries that he'll spot a mob of angry actressexuals with torches gathering on the road below. They scream "Why haven't you written about _________???"

Such has been the feeling each Sunday night when Big Little Lies has aired on HBO, resplendent with actressing and yet, crickets. So before the mob gathers, we'll try to catch up really quick so we're on the weekly schedule...

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Summer Movie Season Surveyed

This article originally appeared in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It is reprinted here in a revised TFE specific but abridged version...

While summer didn’t technically begin until June 20th and isn’t technically over yet, “Summer Movie Season” is not beholden to the solstice and equinox but to The Blockbuster. Summer has long been the most lucrative season for Hollywood and so they’ve stretched it out to start earlier each year. It now tends to begin sometime in April with the release of the first movie that feels like a Summer Blockbuster proper (this year that would’ve arguably been The Jungle Book on April 15th) and ends on Labor Day, aka Any Second Now. It’s no secret that it’s been a rough summer for the quality of blockbusters. But if you’re lucky enough to live in a big city or smart enough to seek out films without gargantuan ad budgets, there was still plenty of cinema to get excited about. So herewith the Best & Worst of 2016’s Summer movie season…

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Review: The Legend of Tarzan (2016)

Editor's Note: This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. Our "Swing Tarzan Swing" column, investigating the shifting portrayals and quality of Tarzan films over pop culture history will resume next weekend. We'll circle back to Skarsgård at the end.

You know that antipiracy text that sometimes appears on movie screens now post-credits? "The making and legal distribution of this film supported over X-many thousands of jobs." This message kept bothering me the day after seeing The Legend of Tarzan (2016). Yes, piracy is bad but you know what else is terrible? That none of those jobs were for animal trainers! I swear that not a single real animal appears in the new film, which has to be a first for a Tarzan film. And hopefully a last. It's all computer generated imagery for this jungle adventure...

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