Link Block Tango

HAPPY HANGOVER DAY. I kid I kid. I never drink on St Patrick's Day because who wants to be a cliche? I was too caught up in The Quiet Man but I also got stuck on a subway for hours. Oy so I'm off to a very late start today and last night's roundup post didn't go as well and I missed a few. So make sure to check that out again for all the updates. Definitely check out I/fwp because we always love it when we get a newbie set of eyeballs to this series, so here's a loving cinephile husband on this movie that he wouldn't have seen if not for his wife.

THE LINKS
W Magazine Alicia Vikander photoshoot by Willy Vanderperre. I'm so anxious to see her in Ex-Machina. Loved her breakout parts in Anna Karenina, A Royal Affair. Can she keep it up?
Playbill a new TV sitcom for Megan Hilty in which she plays a former Tony-winning musical star adapting to life as a soccer mom. Ummm... unless she sings every episode this will make me crazy
BBC wonders if sexual fantasy can be filmed looking at 50 Shades of Grey, The Duke of Burgundy, Eyes Wide Shut and more
A Fistful of Films looks back for his birthday to his formative films in this epic post. I love personal blogging like this 

In Contention with Suffragette and The Danish Girl, will Focus Features on the forthcoming Oscar season?
Variety John Williams is not doing Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies due to a health issue "that's been resolved". But then why is he also not doing the new Star Wars (with Alexandre Desplat taking over). John Williams is 83 years old so this worries. Best wishes for a speedy recoveries.
The Dissolve looks at The Jinx and wonders why Andrew Jarecki's Robert Durst fascination worked so much better than it did back in All Good Things (2010). I didn't watch The Jinx because a) I'm not that into documentaries, b) I didn't like All Good Things and c) I'll miss Kirsten Dunst too much who was so excellent in Jarecki's first attempt at the story
Pajiba predicts the date of the end of the superhero craze. Ostensibly this post is about Jason Momoa and silly comic book wards
Variety on the Paley Center's celebration of the women in American Horror Story. Connie Britton and Kathy Bates quotes
Empire because Hollywood cannot leave the 80s alone we'll soon have a remake of that Roy Scheider helicopter movie Blue Thunder. This is not what that article is about but it's what we're always about: the one subsection of 80s hits that the studios don't seem to be mining for remakes are all the the actressy ones, you know the Goldie Hawn / Sally Field / Debra Winger / Kathleen Turner type blockbusters.
The Guardian on Disney's Princess franchise box office and the strong first weeks of The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
cinematically insane on The Smartest Girl in Town (1936) and Pre-Code love (though this one isn't) in general.

MNPP celebrates Jai Courtney. Confession: My favorite part of Jai Courtney (and there are a lot of good parts) is Jai Courtney's nose. I was sad that it lived to smell no more after the plane crash in Unbroken.
MNPP actually Jason celebrates Jai Courtney twice over. But in this second link it's Jai Courtney celebrating Jai Courtney but Jai Courtney isn't focused on his nose. How many times do you think I can type Jai Courtney in this post? Jai Courtney.

Speaky of hunky deliciousness.. two more takeaways. The first is a new quad teaser poster for 007's next outing Spectre. Craig's first three outing got him in a bathing suit at least once. (Or wait, did Quantum of Solace skip that? -- if so, no wonder it's the worst of the three) but will Spectre? 

Finally...
From the annual Broadway Backwards concert, which raised almost half a million dollars, an all male rendition of Chicago's classic "Cell Block Tango" -- Pop! Six! Squish! Uh uh, Cicero, Lipschitz!

My favorite is #17 the Spread Eagle but L-O-V-E the linguistic swish/switch-up to "uh uh" -hee!

From the Archives: Kirsten Dunst Interviewed

I've been racing around this week from interview to interview. You'll start seeing them as soon as I can catch my breath. For numerous reasons my mind kept leaping back to last year's precursor season when I met with Kirsten Dunst while she was on the promotional circuit for the true crime romantic drama All Good Things. Her name popped up Wednesday while I was talking with Ben Foster (Rampart) -- he's a past co-star and endearingly describes himself as "a silly fan of Kirsten" -- and Melancholia is never far from my mind as one of the most provocative and essential films of 2011. Her mysterious bewitching lead role as a severely depressed bride has, at this point, not garnered as much Best Actress traction as the performance merits, but there's little doubt that her career is most decidedly back on track. I read yesterday that she'd just joined the cast of Red Light Winter which will reunite her with Mark Ruffalo. This interview was already on my mind, and that sealed it since she had such happy memories of working with him.

So let's travel back in time a year to a pivotal re-energizing moment in her career when neither we nor Kirsten knew what to expect from Melancholia and the rollercoaster of the film's Cannes debut, controversial press conference, and Best Actress win was still future tense.

The Return of Kirsten Dunst (A Very Good Thing)
***Originally Published in December 2010***

It might sound silly to say, but seeing her in the flesh is something of a shock. Kirsten Dunst has been in the movies for many years, and she's made an indelible mark in them, whether as a child vampire, an unknowable teen dream, a disciplined cheerleader, a superhero's better half and so on; one half expects her to flicker when one meets her, as if she's being projected still. But there she was earlier this month at a New York City luncheon honoring her heartbreaking work in All Good Things. Her image did not fade or dissolve but remained steady in medium shot. She ate, she sipped, she walked around the room talking with reporters, friends and peers.

There was, however, a close-up. We shook hands and exchanged a few pleasantries. Then she was whisked off, not by a sharp edit, jump cut or a quick pan, but by her people taking her to the next reporter. Imagine it!

I reminded her of the busy luncheon a few days later over the phone. She's already thousands of miles away.  This time, she's a disembodied voice which is surprisingly more familiar, like a movie image. "You were so in demand," I say, reminding her of the crowd and well-wishers.

"You know...," she says, and I do having been there, "A lot of babies to kiss. A lot of hands to shake."

It's good to hear the smile in her voice and remember her amiable presence in the room that day. Especially considering the sadness that lingers from her fine work in All Good Things. People have won Oscar nominations for giving much less to their films than she does here, in one of her finest performances. She starts out sunny and delightful, the girlish woman we sort of recognize from numerous other films but she's soon torn apart by her husband's (Ryan Gosling) dark almost alien soul.  The film is based on a true story, the unsolved mystery of the disappearance of Katie Marks (Kirsten), the bride of the heir to a wealthy New York family.  I've followed her career enthusiastically for many years, once even referring to her as "the future of the movies" but naturally we start with the present and the subject at hand.

It's not the first time she's played a real life character but how did she tackle someone who isn't easy to research, someone who went missing? Here Kirsten cedes most of the credit to her director, who knew the case inside and out.

KIRSTEN: Everything that we knew about [Katie] is in the script. She's not a public figure. Yes, she's a real person but not someone that we know her mannerisms. It was really about making her feel like a whole person that was unravelling, as he was in a way, someone with her own strong motives so it wouldn't just be The Victim of this crime.

Nathaniel: You have to have the full range of their romance.

KIRSTEN: That was so important. You have to believe these people were completely in love with each other in order for her to stay and to excuse the behavior

Did anything change a lot from filming to the finished movie?  You're acting piecemeal and the movie takes place over a really long span. Did anything surprise you about the finished product?

KIRSTEN: With every movie you kind of never know how exactly it's going to come together. I had an idea but obviously I wasn't there for the last half of the movie. [She pauses briefly, considering] ...I only saw Ryan in drag once on the set so I wasn't sure how all that was going to come together.

While we were working we played things very differently; we improvised a lot. The scene where he asked me to marry him was very different in the script. We got to play around a lot which was exciting. But you never know what it's going to end up being.

I thought it was interesting that this movie  opened so close to Blue Valentine, another unravelling Ryan Gosling marriage, and then I remembered that you've worked with Michelle Williams before on Dick. Hollywood is a small world.

KIRSTEN: It is a small world. I'm friendly with Michelle. That's funny. [Pauses considering the two movies]  Ryan... he loves a good love story, that one! [laughs].

With some movie stars chemistry is a hit-and-miss thing but I've always felt from your films that you have a dependable connection to your co-stars/scene partners. What do you attribute that to? 

[Kiki's answer and her favorite films after the jump]

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