Showbiz History: American Hustle, Clue, and Dick Van Dyke

4 random things that happened on this day, December 13th, in showbiz history

1956 Historical drama Anastasia is released starring Yul Brynner and Ingrid Bergman. It will bring Bergman back into Hollywood's graces after her banishment due to her extramarital affair and win her her second Best Actress Oscar (though she doesn't attend the ceremony).

1957 Peyton Place which we discussed quite a bit this past summer premieres in NYC, becomes a smash hit and Oscar contender. The soapy drama about a mother and daughter and a small gossipy town is quickly adapted into a TV series...

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Links: Born Sexy Yesterday, Acting as Self-Actualization, and More...

Pajiba gird your loins - Dan Stevens is in everything
Tracking Board Diane Keaton, Jane Fonda, and Candice Bergen to co-star in a comedy about a book club reading 50 Shades of Grey? This could be awesome or terrible...or both. Whichever way it turns out, we're there!
Coming Soon Focus has acquired the new Jason Reitman / Charlize Theron collaboration Tully but we'll have to remove it from the Oscar charts. It's not coming until Spring 2018 now

AV Club NBC greenlights its first two series of the new year, one of them that used to be called Drama High (and sounds like it has potential) is now called Rise. Why does Hollywood love to go from specific to generic titles? Are their studies that show that generic titles do better or is it fear of specificity?
/Film the first cast photo of Marvel's The Inhumans has been released and boy is it underwhelming. I've always loved Medusa but you really shouldn't be able to tell that it's such an obvious and stiff looking wig since the character is so tied up in her hair! I mean, couldn't they have gotten RuPaul's wig designers to do it if they wanted something both outlandish and real looking?

Tony Season
Theater Mania hoping to dominate the original play Tonys next year, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has announced an opening for the tail end of eligibility in 2018
Playbill did you know that Audrey Hepburn won her Tony Award the same WEEK as her Oscar? Isn't that crazy? She won the Oscar for Roman Holiday on March 25th, 1954 and then the Tony for Ondine on March 28th!
Deadline Amélie, a New Musical, based on the Oscar nominated French classic, is the first casualty of the Tony nominations, announcing its Broadway closing date for May 21st after a short run and zero nominations.
Broadway World Despite a disappointing Tony showing (2 nominations) Anastasia, based on the 90s animated movie musical, announces a world tour. It helps to have that known "brand" going in. (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was savaged by critics and received zero Tony nominations, is still doing well and the box office and is already working on the tour)
THR Tony nominee anecdotes including Laurie Metcalf on the proposed Roseanna revival and Sally Field discussing the release she felt when she found her calling as a young girl:

It isn't something that I just decided one day or backed into it one day. I found a stage when I was 12 when I was lucky enough to be in a school that still had a theater arts department. And something inside of me changed, woke up, I could hear my own voice for the first time when I was onstage, and then when I would get offstage I had to be all the things that little girls in the '50s had to be, and all of that went back in the box. But when I got onstage I could be all the things I wasn't allowed to be anywhere else, so I could hear my own self.

Love ya Sally!

Exit Video
Got 18 minutes? That might seem like a lot but this video essay really is compelling. It names a sci-fi fantasy trope that I haven't personally seen named before but which is as familiar as they come. He calls it "Born Sexy Yesterday" and it's all about the way genre fiction infantilizes women so that men are their natural superior.

At the very least it will make you rethink mermaid and sexy android movies, The Fifth Element and Splash a little bit. 

Lukewarm off the Presses: Hamilton, Banks, Anastasia, Cloak & Dagger. Plus Tony Buzz!

Nathaniel, back from the Nashville Film Festival where I juried on the "New Directors" competition. More on that once our awards are announced. Until then, I'm under hush order. But let's catch up on all sorts of movie & entertainment news that happened over the past handful of days that we didn't cover here.

• Lin-Manuel Miranda won the Pulitzer for his Broadway smash Hamilton and, giddy squeal, The New Yorker's television goddess Emily Nussbaum won the Pulitzer for criticism. If you haven't read her, you must. She's just wonderful.
• The Golden Globes have clarified their rules for what drama and comedy mean in a probably futile attempt to get campaigns to stop trying to game the system.
• I forgot to mention that teen superhero duo Cloak and Dagger are getting their own TV show (yay! always loved them in the comic books) but Kate Beaton has two words for you "tit windows"
• Elizabeth Banks plans to direct a revival of the Charlie's Angels franchise and she's also playing the villain in the new Power Rangers movie resulting in a horrifying photo.
• Beloved bossy TV mom Doris Roberts has died. The supporting actress won 4 Emmys for her role on Everybody Loves Raymond and also had memorable roles on St. Elsewhere (another Emmy win), Remington Steele, and Angie. She was not only well loved by audiences but co-stars too.
• Carrie Fisher has officially blamed George Lucas for inspiring her writing career because his Star Wars dialogue was so terrible
• Johnny Depp and Amber Heard made some sort of weird apology video for that dog business in Australia
• Adapting animated features into Broadway musicals isn't just for Disney anymore. Anastasia (1997) becomes a stage musical this summer in London and is eyeing the 2016/2017 Broadway season
• There are some who are suspicious that this news is not really official but Nicole Kidman is supposedly returning to Broadway this fall with Photograph 51, after its London run
• Industry people got really excited about 3D high frame rate footage from Ang Lee's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk at a Future of Cinema Conference
• The Academy is STILL trying to explain their new voting rules. So do we get it now?

RANDOM CASTING & DATE SHIFTS
No links just news ICYMI: Daisy Ridley will headline a new film from Marielle Heller, director of Diary of a Teenage Girl called Kolma, a 'mystical' romance; Willem Dafoe joined Justice League (role unknown); Walton Goggins has replaced Joe Manganiello (they're so alike. um...) in History Channel's forthcoming Navy SEALs series Six; Naomi Watts will headline the Netflix psychological thriller series Gypsy (not the musical!) in which she plays a therapist who gets mixed up in her client's lives; Kurt Russell & Kate Hudson will star in the TV series Barbary Coast, a period drama about the gold rush in the 19th century; Kate McKinnon may star in the new back-to-school comedy Senior Year; Nicole Beharie, who was so amazing in Shame (2011) and then starred in TV's Sleepy Hollow, will play the lead female role in the remake of 90s thriller Jacob's Ladder; The Golden Globes will take place on January 8th, 2017 this coming awards season. 

THIS JUST IN
Slightly fresher news before we go

Two of Broadway's Funniest Ladies: Laura Benanti & Jane Krakowski, in "She Loves Me"

• Doug Kraner, a production designer on TV's "Gotham" and several movie hits including Uncle Buck, Sleeping with the Enemy and Enough, has passed away.
• A24 is on board a new James Ponsoldt (Spectacular Now) project a true story drama based on the book "I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution"
• The Tonys are coming. The Tonys are coming. That means precursor madness. Yes, as with the Oscars there are many precursors to the Tony Awards. The Outer Critic Circle Nominees and Drama League have already announced their nominees (with Drama Desk to come next week). Since all the groups have slightly different rules for eligibility Hamilton is out of the way for some of the precursors (though obviously not for Tony) since it was eligible while it was Off Broadway last season. With the 800 lb gorilla caged (for the moment) that means good news for other musicals: She Loves Me, American Psycho, Bright Star and The Color Purple all appear strong going into the Tony nominations. The schedule is as follows:

April 28th. Drama Desk Nominations
May 3rd. Tony Award Nominations
May 20th. Drama League Awards (Hosted by Megan Hilty & Zachary Levi)
May 26th. Outer Critics Circle Awards 
June 5th. Drama Desk Awards (Hosted by Michael Urie)
June 12th. Tony Awards (Hosted by James Corden)

P.S.
Meryl Streep also recently spoke at the "Women in the World" summit and at the end of her speech she sings a snippet from Hamilton making this an even better week for Lin-Manuel Miranda and the upcoming Tony Awards.

Reader of the Day: Paolo

It's Reader Appreciation Month so we're doing interviews with YOU. Well not you literally (although... maybe?) but you collectively. Here's Paolo from Toronto.

Nathaniel: Do you remember your first moviegoing adventure / obsession?
Paolo: Probably The Lion King, coming out weeks before the movie I actually remember watching first: Forrest Gump. We had a full row in the theatre, my artsy paternal grandma, me, my sister and like five cousins from my dad's side. I remember the bus stop interludes, "run Forrest run", meeting Jenny for the last time, but none of the Vietnam, hippie, black power, Gary Sinise, coked up whore scenes in between. I was seven. I don't even remember Forrest being special needs. Either the old country censored the hell out of the movie, I slept during some parts, or Lacuna exists.

My first movie obsession was with Anastasia, the cartoon. It's about a princess, what else could fuel a little gay boy's mind? That fueled my slight but ongoing interest in royal families. I also made my own fanfic that's probably sitting in a floppy disk in Quezon City somewhere.

Ha. That's great. When did you start reading The Film Experience?
Around 2009, the aftermath of the highway robbery that is the 2008 Oscars. Most film blogs are either fanboy-ish and/or snarky, and what TFE offered instead is Langlois-esque connoisseurship and well, love. I'm the kind of guy who cheated on his tests, so I looked up your site and the name I used to comment on. Apparently what caught my eyes was the April Showers series. As Juno's best friend would say, 'yum'.

That's coming back next month! Okay. 3 Favorite Actresses?
I love Kate Winslet like Josh from 30 Rock loves Elizabeth Taylor. Michelle Williams. And...blast from the past Bette Davis. As a person of colour, I'm kind of ashamed that I don't have an actress here of colour. I've seen three movies with Lubna Azabal on them. The perfs are great, but I can't knock my top three for her.

Take one Oscar from someone and give it to someone else.
Sandra Bullock's Oscar should have been Kim Hye-Ja's.

The movie of your life. Title, director, etcetera
Paoloisms, starring an unknown, directed by Charlie Kaufman with a soundtrack by whoever does the Lisa Cholodenko soundtracks.