Beauty Break: St Patrick's Day Stars

After the jump a gallery of Irish stars or stars pretending to be Irish for the holiday -  Happy St Patrick's Day everyone!

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TIFF: Strange Weather and Handsome Devil

Nathaniel R reporting from the Toronto International Film Festival

Despite the buzz from festivals usually circling around pre-sold films and major Oscar hopefuls, there are always minor gems to be found amongst the clutter which are still seeking distribution. Here are two I hope get picked up, a very accessible Irish boarding school drama (without the benefit of any big name to sell it) and an American indie starring Oscar winner Holly Hunter.

Strange Weather
(Dir. Katherine Dieckmann, US)
Take a look at that still above. Now look way to your out of focus far right. See the girl in pink tank and jean shorts? That's Carrie Coon (Gone Girl, The Leftovers), one of the best actresses working who is still not a household name or an Emmy or Oscar nominee! But, yes, movie still providers to festival guides, Holly Hunter is the draw here. She plays Darcy Baylor, a bohemian mother of meager means (a Holly specialty - see also Thirteen) who lost her only child to suicide years before the film begins. She has never quite been the same and her fierce best friend (Carrie Coon), her best friend's girlfriend (Andrene Ward-Hammond who is also in Loving this year) and her ex-boyfriend (a soulful Kim Coates from Sons of Anarchy) are concerned about her all over again when a couple of chance encounters reveal something she didn't know about the day he died. Though the plot can be (okay is) convoluted, the writing is otherwise strong with well defined characters, great conversations (it's partially a road trip movie), and a ineffable central arc that Holly Hunter has no trouble selling because she is Holly Hunter and goddamnit we don't appreciate her enough. Though there are a couple of bumpy patches in this road with wonky cuts, shots, and transitions -- perhaps budget trouble? -- and that aforementioned convoluted story might be difficult if you're not into the actresses. But if you aren't, your loss! I could have watched these characters/actors for another hour. I'll take a spinoff series with Carrie and her lesbian lover please! B/B- 

Handsome Devil 
(Dir. John Butler, Ireland)
This Irish boarding school drama about a redhead student who cares nothing for sports at a rugby-mad school is sweet goodhearted fun. It risks being a little 'This is a Teen Movie!' annoying and unrealistic in its construction (complete with occasionally snarky narration) but the friendship at its center between music-loving Ned (Fionn O'Shea) and strong and silent rugby star Conor (Nicholas Galitzine) is really well done and fills up the heart of this accessible mainstream charmer about "otherness." The undervalued / always terrific Andrew Scott (Pride) plays the gay teacher who encourages Ned & Conor in their odd couple friendship and their off-sport pursuits. You know we've come a long way when a movie with a rather large LGBT element is not even listed with a key word of LGBT in the festival guide! (Director John Butler made one previous feature called The Bachelor Weekend which we reviewed a couple of years ago which also starred Andrew Scott. He's made a leap forward with this second feature.)  B

Links: Best Picture Field, Highest Paid Actresses, The Departed on TV?

It's link time which also doubles as news catch up! (Yes, Oscar Chart updates are currently in progress. So more on that and the foreign submissions very soon)

Think Pieces, List Mania, Celebrity
• Movie City News launches another "Gurus of Gold" season where all of us have named our current top 20 "general field" predictions. Yes, I'm updating my charts over the next three days! Manchester by the Sea and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk are expected leaders
• Gawker Rich Juzwiack says goodbye to one identity through a George Michael lens. It's wonderful
• MNPP Paul Bettany is vacationing in Ibiza
• NYT talks to Kirsten Dunst about life after Fargo and her Emmy nomination
• Mind of a Suspicious Kind Martin Scorsese's Silence is supposedly his longest ever (over 3 hours) but is it actually coming out this year?

• Cinema Enthusiast polled film twitter on their favorite films of 1982. The results are interesting but weird. The Thing at #1? Erm, okay. Star Trek II above Victor/Victoria? NO. I have to admit that I'm quite spotty on early 80s cinema though because I couldn't drive myself to the cinema back then.
• Forbes on the easy-to-predict failure of the new Ben-Hur and how it's a fitting end to this particular summer
• Little White Lies wonders if there still a place for eroticism in cinema while watching shorts in Montreal 
• i09 what went wrong with this summer's blockbusters
• AV Club talks to Clea DuVall about past roles on the eve of her directorial debut with The Intervention
• MNPP Dagmara Dominczyck's Patrick Wilson appreciation social media game
• ...TFE we interviewed her once and she is stunningly gorgeous herself
• Slate that nude Trump statue hitting various cities is not amusing to everyone  
• ...EW including actress/author Amber Tamblyn 

News & Miscellania
• The Guardian more trouble for Birth of a Nation. AFI cancelled screenings and Q&A
• ... icymi TFE previous handwringing about this scandal and film
• Forbes Jennnifer Lawrence & Melissa McCarthy top the annual highest paid actresses list this year. Two actresses outside of Hollywood made the list this year: Deepika Padukone (India) and Fan Bingbing (China). Figures include not just films but endorsement deals and such. The Zeéeeee apparently banked a lot for returning to her signature role in Bridget Jones's Baby since she almost made the list.

• /Film Blade Runner 2 adds Jared Leto to the cast and Jóhan Jóhannsson as composer
• Theater Mania Jennifer Holliday joining the cast of the Broadway revival of Color Purple. I guess they've decided to make Shug Avery the short-term award-winning star draw (they've already been through Jennifer Hudson and Heather Hedley) 
• Screen Daily undervalued British actor Andrew Scott has a lead role. He'll star in the thriller Steel Country 
• Kotaku Ghost in the Shell  supporting cast photos leaked
• Towleroad on Frank Oceans new video Nikes 
• Coming Soon Amazon developing a TV series based on The Departed. Hmmm. Isn't that an odd fit for long term storytelling. It would imply we can never move past the double crossing discovered stage
• Playbill Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher documentary will premiere at the NYFF 
• Film Stage the first image from Euphoria with Alicia Vikander & Eva Green 

Madonna Mania - It's Around This Summer For Some Reason (not complaning)
• Boy Culture on a star studded Truth or Dare screening in NYC...
• People ...Madonna even showed up super briefly!
• Village Voice Michael Musto recalls his up and down relationship to the material girl through their very long contemporaneous careers 

And I'll leave you with the new La La Land trailer. (If you missed our discussion of the first trailer, that's here.) This movie can't open soon enough!

YNMS: Denial

Manuel here with yet another sign of the Rachel Weisz renaissance we all so spiritedly discussed a few weeks back. When the trailer for The Light Between Oceans surfaced I was probably not alone in earmarking her supporting role in that Vikander/Fassbender weepie as a chance for the actress to nab her second Oscar nomination (which most of us had vainly hoped she’d net with her beautiful work in The Deep Blue Sea). Well, there may be a clearer path for the actress with Denial which is, after all, squarely focused on that most Oscar-ey of topics: the Holocaust.

Rather than focus on the event itself, the film centers instead on a very public libel suit in the UK in the 1990s between a writer, David Irving (Timothy Spall), and a historian, Deborah E. Lipstadt (Weisz) after she accuses him of denying the Holocaust. Let’s break down the trailer YNMS-style after the jump...

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Most Eligible Links List

Gurus of Gold rank the Best Pictures and possible surprises with a handful of days of voting left
Playbill At Roundabout Theater's Spring Gala "There is Nothing Like a Dame" a who's who of awesome Broadway stars will honor Helen Mirren
Playlist filmmakers who disowned their movies. I didn't know the hilarious Screenplay Oscar trivia situation with Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984) , a movie I really loved as a kid
New York Times America's Sweetheart Tom Hanks writes an ode to the value of community colleges.

 

Henry Cavill's Site interviews the actor's stunt man Alainn Moussi who is getting his own lead role in the Kickboxer remake
AV Club HBO's brilliant comedy about nurses in an elderly care ward Getting On is getting one more very short season and then its bye-bye. 
Towleroad Laverne Cox cast in a CBS legal drama pilot Doubt as a trans lawyer. Too bad its not the lead role. That'd really be something.
Cinesnark has a good review of the most recent episode of Agent Carter which has proven itself as a fast, kicky, well acted and really fine TV show. I kinda love it. Agents of SHIELD has improved over its run but Carter's short run has only emphasized how weak it still is; I'm sad it's coming back because that mean Carter is over!

This Week's Must Read
Tilda Swinton gave a glorious wise speech about art and cinema and inspiration at the Rothko Chapel. Here's the full transcript  and I really urge you to read it.

It occurs to me on a regular basis that the cinema carries the potential to be perhaps the most human of all gestures in art: the invitation to place ourselves, under the intimate cover of darkness, into another person's shoes, behind another set of eyes, into another's consciousness. The ultimate compassion machine, the empathy enging.

Here is the darkness.

Here comes the light.

Beautiful. Just beautiful, don't you think?

Andrew Scott (Sherlock, Pride) one of our best out actors. Today's 'What Does This Word Mean?' Curiousity
Out revealed their 100 Most Eligible Bachelors list and it's wonderful to swipe through it realizing how many out actors we have now (I knew that once we had a few brave ones people would calm down about it and the floodgates would open) though the list is hardly actors-only. Thankfully the list has plentiful ethnic, age, and national diversity.

But the list is not without controversy because not all of the men are "Out" as it were like Ronan Farrow for example or the actor Jussie Smollett (who plays the gay son on Empire and is the brother of Jurnee Smollett from Friday Night Lights & True Blood). There might be other examples. I hadn't heard that the model Jon Kortajarena was gay either but maybe I just missed that somewhere. Most hilarious is their inclusion of famously NOT out Hobbit actors Luke Evans (Dracula Untold) who has a long history of being back in the closet which My New Plaid Pants lampoons constantly and Lee Pace who has a long history of not being out and recently denying the everyone-assumes Elf-Dwarf love affair with co-star Richard Armitage.