Happy Birthday to the One and Only Michelle Pfeiffer

by Nathaniel R

Pfeiffer last week at the Scarface reunion screening in NYCHappy 60th birthday to Michelle Pfeiffer! Looking as perfect as ever.

It's been so thrilling to witness the RePfeiffal this past year beginning with her stealing the gonzo show in mother!, to pulling some focus in the box office hit Murder on the Orient Express, receiving an Emmy nod for Wizard of Lies, and then winning rave reviews for the very bleak Where is Kyra? in which she plays a destitute woman suddenly in a very dark place when the only thing keeping her going (caring for her ill mother) is gone. Next up is something lighter for the masses with the role of Janet van Dyne (the original Wasp) in Ant Man and the Wasp. This will be her first superhero outing since her indelible Oscar worthy star turn in Batman Returns (1992) and will surely be added to her pile of $100 million plus domestic hits...

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Five Lingering Questions About the Globe Nominations. Do share your answers!

By Nathaniel R (and guests)

Okay last Globe conversation frenzy for a bit with SAG nominations happening tomorrow. We'll save a few truly silly questions about the Globes until the Golden Globe week hits but for now the rest of our informal polling of friends and TFE contributors now that you've read the Big Sick / All the Money / Snubs responses (you read that, right?). Join the conversation in the comments won't you?

Five questions and special guests answering them after the jump starting with this one. What's the "surprise" you don't think is surprising at all?

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YNMS: Tomb Raider

Seán here. Another day, another reboot, another Academy Award Winning Supporting Actress. And not unlike Angelina Jolie at the time, Alicia Vikander is aiming to capitalise on an Oscar with a leading role in a big star making vehicle. Vikander has an advantage compared to Jolie at this time, with some notable credits like Ex Machina and A Royal Affair to upsell her Oscar. Angelina Jolie has had one of the patchiest filmographies for anyone supposedly a mega-famous superstar. The two Tomb Raider films Jolie starred in were snoozefests, making the 2018 reboot something no one is going to be precious about, while raising the important question "why bother?"

The reason is that - at least on paper - Lara Croft is a perfect action heroine.

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Meet Joe Link

good morning!

• /Film amazing story behind that funny "he's a friend from work" line in the forthcoming Thor: Ragnarok
• Variety talks to five members of the HFPA, aka the foreign press who vote on the Golden Globes
• Interview fun Q&A with Kathy Bates using ol' Andy Warhol questions. She reveals that she's a huge fan of Asghar Farhadi (yes!) and, uh, Meet Joe Black (noooo!)
• BuzzFeed Charlize Theron is a "broad" - how the actress charted her own course, while cashing in on her considerable beauty

• Financial Time amazing sit down with Isabelle Huppert who gives great quote over a 12 course meal
• Vanity Fair Lindsay Lohan's new publicist and how he's changing the conversation about her (as she works towards a comeback)
• Variety Broad Green Pictures, which started off strong with the hit A Walk In the Woods, is laying employees off. Uhoh
• Head Over Feels has a really fun alternative Emmys (and other categories) you can vote on
• Awards Daily on the Emmy's most competitive race: Outstanding Drama Series
• IndieWire Angelina Jolie upset that people have misinterpreted a casting exercize she used to choose child actors for auditions for her new film First They Killed My Father

Off Screen
• The Independent if you're in the UK this summer, snag tickets to see Tom Hiddleston as Hamlet for a limited fund-raising stage production in a tiny theater (160 seats only!) helmed by Kenneth Branagh himself (you may recall that Branagh already did a Hamlet movie in 1996 that was four hours long and nominated for four Oscars.
• Modern Love Actor Andrew Rannells on a night of casual sex that coincided with a family tragedy
• NPR the 150 greatest albums made by woman. This is an awesome list. Must listen to the ones I don't know
• Onion "Twitter Introduces Red X Mark To Verify Users It’s Okay To Harass"
• Cosmopolitan repainted Barbies as RuPaul's Drag Race queens. The Valentina and Trixie Mattel's are amazing
• Theater Mania last block of tickets on sale for Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly! (through January)
• Playbill the original stars of Kinky Boots (Stark Sands and Billy Porter) will return to the show in late September (hmmm, does this mean a closing date soon?). Since I've already seen the show twice, I'll skip... unless they can also lure awesome Annaleigh Ashford back in which case, I am there with bells (and heels) on.
• Gothamist the legendary Algonquin Hotel in NYC is getting a new cat-in-chief. This one's a ginger rescue.

And This Just In...
Jessica Chastain will be playing Empress Lilandra of the Shi'ar in X-Men Dark Phoenix. A kind of Catwoman to Xavier's Batman if you will (at least in the comics) because she's not exactly evil but not a hero either... and in this here classic storyline -- which I have little hope they can pull off in the movie but was so damn awesome back in the day in the comicbooks -- Lilandra was in direct conflict with her lover Xavier. So it's a mini The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her reunion as Jessica reminded with this cute photo of her and her former and now future co-star...

Hey @jamesmcavoyrealdeal you ready for me up in Montreal? Im gonna make you cry so hard 😈 #xmen @simondavidkinberg

A post shared by Jessica Chastain (@jessicachastain) on Aug 1, 2017 at 3:29pm PDT

Today's 5: Batman Begins, Dick Tracy, Lara Croft...

Happy Thursday!

Five mood-boosting ways to celebrate this day (June 15th) in movie history

2005 Batman Begins opens, taking Christopher Nolan from critical darling to mainstream sensation, particularly for the fanboys. It also reignites the Batman franchise which we'll never be free of. In short: it's a good movie but it basically doomed us to countless retellings of origin stories we already sat through and reboot culture. Thomas and Martha Wayne have now died so many times... (sigh) 

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