Ava DuVernay, the Year's Best Christmas Gift

One of TFE's cinematic heroes Ava DuVernay -- she made our top ten list with both of her recent films in 2012 & 2014 respectively -- had a tremendous year in 2015. She kicked it off with a Golden Globe Best Director nomination, a hit film in theaters (Selma) and she ended it immortalized in collector Barbie doll form via Mattel. The Mattel doll sold out in less than an hour earlier this month. And when Amazon briefly offered more of them they sold out just as quickly. 

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Kieran Gives Thanks

Kieran, here wishing all TFE readers a very Happy Thanksgiving.  Being part of Team Experience these past few months has been a sheer joy. I’m thankful for a place to share my writing where the discussions are always interesting, thoughtful and fun. Thanks to our gracious host, Nathaniel for providing this space.

I'm thankful for

...Shameless and more specifically Emmy Rossum on Shameless. After her breakthrough in 2004’s Phantom of the Opera, it seemed that Rossum found herself underutilized and underserved in a lot of films. After that rocky slate of film roles, seeing her cast against type on Shameless and doing some of the best, criminally ignored work on television today is absolutely thrilling.

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Linkinator

Awards Daily set pictures on the new film from James Marsh (Theory of Everything) this one starring Colin Firth & Rachel Weitz
Bloomberg Steve Wozniack love the Steve Jobs trailer
Slate Dana Stevens on the particular appeal of Channing Tatum, film star
The Dissolve on Ava DuVernay's hard pass on The Black Panther. I'm so relieved she's not doing this. Now she can make more movies like Middle of Nowhere or Selma. Why lose great individualistic directors to Marvel when what Marvel wants is journeymen to realize their Cinematic Universe goals?
EW Mila Kunis & Ashton Kutcher got married

Theater Mania has an interest piece on why so many musicals disappear in the development stages 
The Film Stage looks at MoMA's Scorsese exhibit of film one sheets
CHUD an editorial on why we need gays as main characters in mainstream blockbusters - written by a straight man 
Guardian Hilary Swank scaling back career to care for her ailing father. Best wishes to the family 

TV
Salon comprehensive list of booze consumed on True Detective S2 
Vulture thinks True Detective Season 2 owes a lot to David Lynch 
Empire Fatal Attraction to become a TV miniseries - good luck finding a Glenn Close replacement 
Birth Movies Death Marvel/Netflix may be struggling with how to do Iron Fist for the small screen. Whatever direction they go in, please make the character Asian as he always should have been considering his origins

Terminate the Terminator Franchise
Forbes on why Terminator: Genisys opened weak in the States -- curiously no one ever mentions that Emilia Clarke is not a strong actor and she's up against memories of Linda Hamilton's Oscar nomination worthy work!
The Daily Beast interviews Alan Taylor (who has not had much luck as a feature director after proving a hot commodity on TV) and he has curious "just go with it" opinions on how messy his movie is
NYT profiles producer David Ellison (Megan's brother) on his struggles getting Terminator Genisys going and building a multiverse like Marvel. This was a good read but the title is truly bizarre. How is investing solely in mainstream tentpole franchise moviemaking an example of 'not playing it safe.' That's exactly what playing it safe is. Not playing it safe is what Megan Ellison does with her risky art films. 

Look, I am one of the biggest Terminator fans that exists. I saw the first two a ton of times, and think they're veritable masterpieces of their form. They still play today and their action sequences are more exciting (still) even knowing every beat than anything in any of the ill-begotten sequels. Enough already. This franchise was already complete when James Cameron was finished with it twenty-plus years ago. Making money is perfectly fine as one goal but if it's the only goal when making a movie, you've already failed. Movies made solely for money (and for no other reason) are never good. 

Are you watching True Detective Season 2? Do you also wish Skynet would stay down after being defeated for the fifth time? 

Links

Good luck finding an actress today that looks like thisFilm School Rejects a biopic of Ingrid Bergman during the Notorious era might be coming from James Mangold. I'm always hoping they'll cast unknowns rather than stars for these things, so that they'll look more like their subjects
Decider really funny ranking of all of Meryl Streep's Oscar nominated work, judged by accents, struggles, co-stars, and random intangibles
Movies Now the box office wealth gap between blockbusters and everything else - interesting piece and worrisome, too
ArtsBeat Smash's "Bombshell" musical MIGHT (sigh) actually become a Broadway musical. Yes, they're still dangling that carrot since the one night only cast reunion of Smash went so well
MCU Exchange the deal is done and Ava DuVernay (Selma) will direct Marvel's Black Panther film 
/bent is thrilled that Inside Out passes the Bechdel Test so easily on all counts

A Must Read
"The Decline of the American Actor" is a really engaging piece about today's leading men, the "Chris"es and beyond and the struggles they face without challenging roles or all that much in the way of training like their foreign counterparts. It's really fascinating and the writer Terrence Rafferty only threw me out of it once when he makes a very strange rather off topic dig at Masters of Sex's second season which had me questioning his sanity (I couldn't disagree more on all counts of what he's saying in that section). It also has a nice little detour into current 20 and 30something actressing by clever way of Clouds of Sils Maria... that movie sure did get a lot of people talking so it's a mystery why it didn't break through in a more major way since actual stars were involved. 

RIP - Exit Music
The film composer James Horner died in a plane crash at age 61 yesterday. He was a favorite of James Cameron and Ron Howard, and moviegoers of course. He composed so many well liked movies that it's tough to name a favorite though I remember always liking the scores to Aliens, Avatar, Apollo 13 and Willow. We will be treated to his three final scores this year with  Southpaw, Wolf Totem and the Chilean Miners movie The 33. The Oscar favorite won both of his Oscars from the phenomenon that was Titanic (for score & original song) and was twice nominated for movie songs. So here's a little Celine at the Oscars and a little something from An American Tail, too.

Mad Links on Furiosa's Road

Animals The Film this addiction romantic drama opens today in 8 cities. Go see it!
...David Dastmalchian, who so kindly guest-blogged for us, stars (and wrote it). He'll be doing a Q&A at tonight's screening at Village East 7:45 PM for those of you in NYC.
AV Club Anne Hathaway to star in a sci-fi monster movie called Colossal wherein she'll be psychically linked to the big monster
The Screenblog  Interview with the costume designer on Kate Winslet's The Dressmaker

Weekend Must Read
I know you shouldn't feed the trolls but this article from the MRA blog "Return of Kings" about why you should boycott Mad Max Fury Road because it's feminist is great great comedy. Unintentionally but that hardly matters when there are so many laughs to be had. My favorite part is the whining about ruining this great "piece of American culture" [slaps forehead] D'Oh. It's an Australian franchise, dumbass!

MNPP in a 'Ways Not To Die' post celebrating Mad Max, Jason sneaks in a little 'George Miller always cared about women' message 

Hollywood's Ongoing Diversity Issues
Moviefone More embarrassing news for Hollywood's anti-woman issues. Sam Waterston and Martin Sheen, supporting players on Grace and Frankie, are making the same thing as Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, the star attractions. What the F***?!? 
Heat Vision Fox developing The New Mutants, which was an X-Men spinoff back in the day. I wouldn't expect them to stick with its extremely diverse original lineup, because Lord knows when the X-Men was adapted it got a lot less diverse and way more narrowly obssessed with three alpha (white) males: Wolverine, Professor X, and Magneto
Women in Hollywood The DGA is part of the problem when it comes to underemployment of women
The Guardian Ava DuVernay might direct Marvel's Black Panther. since Marvel is looking for something more "diverse" and that word is apparently an actual quote? She seems like a weird fit since she excels at performance and humanistic drama and surely she has better things to do. Still, just when you hoped you could stop caring about superhero news this comes along. Obviously we'd watch it despite waning interest from the superhero glut.

Mad Men List Mania
Arts.Mic has a "definitive" listing of best characters with Peggy Olson, Don Draper, and Joan Holloway right where they belong in the top 3.
Rolling Stone same concept but with a different order and much love for Roger Sterling and the long departed Sal Romano in the top ten!
Esquire 100 Ways Mad Men might end. It says a lot about the show that with only 1 episode left it still retains its mysteries
Salon the 10 best Mad Men episodes from 'The Other Woman' (Joan showcase) to 'Babylon' (Peggy showcase)

Showtune Hot Song To Go
Matthew Eng reminded me of this. God I love this. Wouldn't it be great to see Maya Rudolph's PRINCE(ss) live?