The Link and I

Link time. Here we go...

Screen
/Film Deadpool 2 and X-Men Dark Phoenix have both wrapped, both due in 2018
/Film Turns out Beyoncé was offered Plumette before Gugu in the recent Beauty & The Beast movie. Insane that they offered Beyoncé a teensy part when Belle was right there. WTF, Bill Condon?
Coming Soon Gong Li will lead Martin Campbell's next thriller Ana -- the tone is said to be similar to La Femme Nikita.  We'd be super excited because Gong Li is always welcome in leading roles but Campbell's new one The Foreigner with Jackie Chan isn't exactly winning raves
Film Society Helen Mirren named as the honoree at next spring's Chaplin Award Gala in NYC. Robert De Niro was the honoree earlier this year

 

Into Todd Haynes talks about Wonderstruck and about meeting with Barbra Streisand to talk Gypsy !!!
Variety it's official The Current War has moved to 2018 as the Weinstein Company sorts itself out
Tracking Board Sandra Bullock's Netflix thriller Bird Box casts Patti Cake$' breakout Danielle Macdonald 
Variety Alfonso Cuarón talks about the Lumière festival, The Shape of Water, his new Mexican film Roma his first since Y Tu Mama Tambien
Coming Soon the young cast of those four Avatar sequels hit Disney World (only one of them is playing a human character). 

Page Turners
The Guardian Tom Hanks has written a book of short stories
NPR there's a new book out on the ultimate screen classic Casablanca

Stage 
Playbill Sir Ian McKellen will provide the voice of the demon in a new stage adaptation of The Exorcist
Playbill Kelli O'Hara likely to reprise her Tony winning performance in the West End production of The King and I next summer in London
EW Whoopi Goldberg & Maggie Gyllenhaal to star in a Damn Yankees concert, how fun!

More Sexual Harassment Stories
NYT Sarah Polley on the switch she felt moving from actress to director in terms of respect
Variety Eva Green has joined the chorus of women who have awful Weinstein stories to tell
BBC Woody Allen reacts to the Weinstein allegations
TFE Björk's harassment story (in case you missed it)
Boy Culture model/actor Ronnie Kroell speaks about how harassment happens to men in Hollywood, too. There are gay Weinsteins out there

and something a little lighter to end with...
Medium a hack for men (using The Rock as a mental example) who dont want to be accused of sexual harassment

Linker

movies

• Deadline we didn't believe this would ever actually happen but supposedly James Cameron starts shooting today on his FOUR consecutive Avatar sequels with an estimated budget of over 1 billion dollars
• Cartoon Brew this year continues to be weak for animated features but next year's trailers are already popping up. Peter Rabbit anyone? And, in case you missed it...
• TFE Isle of Dogs trailer
• Cinematic Corner Sati always keeps us up to date on what Hugh Jackman is doing. Apparently he's making a movie called The Front Runner but, alas, it is NOT an adaptation of that famous gay novel that has never managed to get a movie made despite numerous rumors that it would become a movie over the decades. Instead it's a movie about the politician Gary Hart.

• Out how's this for an odd sounding project. Moonlight's writer Tarrell Alvin McCraney is going to script a musical for David Oyelowo and Disney that is a cross between Othello and Cyrano. What the what now?
• Coming Soon Julianne Hough and Tyler Hoechlin among the cast of the new biopic about the fitness pioneer family the Weiders called Bigger
•  Deadline potentially big news for anyone hoping for a Sharon Stone comeback. The actress, previously with Gersh, has now signed with CAA for representation in all areas
• The Atlantic mother! as a descendant of Antonin Artaud’s 'Theater of Cruelty'
• my new plaid pants Luke Evans new film Professor Marsden will be part of New Fest, the LGBT film festival. That's potentially awkward given his history!

tv

• The Ellen Show Sterling K Brown strips down and drives a tractor (?) for Ellen DeGeneres
• The Daily Beast Dynasty's Gordon Thompson comes out in his 70s. But he didn't play the often victimized gay character Steven Carrington on that 1980s blockbuster TV show but his evil half brother Adam.
• Vulture some fun comic nuggets about the new season of Will & Grace

randomness

• Londonist body art of famous painting on five models walking around Britain. The text keeps saying they're naked but they're not. They're all wearing pasties and underwear but it's still a neat art project if not cool "body painting". Give me Keith Haring in the 80s or Demi Moore in the 90s in their altogether. That was awesome body painting!

exit video

• Here's a cool video essay on the scoring of Wonder Woman

How Wonder Woman's theme music went from bombastic to smart from Dan Golding on Vimeo.

Disney World's Pandora

Nathaniel popping in from a vacation I forgot to tell you about at Disney World to say hello. (Thanks to the team for keeping you occupied!) Disney opened "Pandora – The World of Avatar" just a week back and the lines are loooong. It's two to three hours for the Avatar related rides and pricy gift shop purchases. The most popular of the souvenirs are banshee puppets that sit on your shoulder. All the little kids seem to be wearing them but it seems like adults might like them even more. They're gorgeous and have a ton of realistic movement you control with a small device in one hand. There are also custom made Avatar action figures that are meant to look like you. That's an exceptional audience-friendly concept for a toy but I personally didn't see enough resemblance in the examples to justify the $80ish price tag.

We fast-passed the "Flight of Passage" ride and it is breathtaking. You mount motorcycle like contraptions and wear some form of 3D glasses for the ride. For a hot minute or so in the middle of the 4 minute ride, I literally forgot I was at an amusement park I was so caught up in it as if I actually were flying a banshee in Na'vi form. James Cameron, never one to shy away from hyperbole, has described the ride as "dreaming with your eyes open” and that's not far off. In theory it's not so different from other rides which are more "virtual" than purely physical (like, say, old school rollercoasters) but this one is the most immersive and transporting ride of its kind that I've ever experienced.

Stage Door: Toruk - The First Flight

Errisson Lawrence © 2015 Cirque du Soleil

Jose here. While worldwide audiences wait for the impending Avatar sequels, the folks at Cirque du Soleil are aiming to quench their thirst with a new spectacle called Toruk - The First Flight, which bills itself as being “inspired by” the James Cameron film, but feels more like just another chapter in what’s become a “universe”. Imagined for those who maybe don’t like video games, are too passive for amusement parks, and have deep admiration for the human body, the show is a two hour long arena extravaganza in which Pandora comes to life in “real life 3D”.

Avatar borrowed elements from films like Pocahontas, Dances with Wolves, Fern Gully, and to an extent some of Cameron’s own oeuvre (Aliens star Sigourney Weaver was two seats away from me and was always the first to applaud, during a particularly complex sequence she held both her hands near her face and sighed in relief when the acrobats gracefully pulled it off...

Click to read more ...

On This Day: Marilyn Mania and Sarah Connor x 3

May your 19th be beautiful.

On this day in history as it relates to the movies...

1536 Anne Boleyn is beheaded. Her tragedy is later reenacted by hundreds of actresses on tv, stage and film including Natalie Portman, Vanessa Redgrave, Helena Bonham Carter, and Genevieve Bujold (Oscar nomination).
1836 Cynthia Ann Parker is kidnapped in Texas during an Indian raid after her family is slaughtered. That's a tough break but not many people get to live on in history through multiple classics albeit under pseudonyms like "Debbie Edwards" (Natalie Wood in The Searchers) and "Stands With Fist" (Mary McDonnell in Dances With Wolves). 
1925 Malcolm X is born. 67 years later Denzel Washington wins his second Oscar playing him (Shut up! This is our preferred version of history because Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman. Ugh, really?)
1941 Nora Ephron is born spewing witticisms.

1958 Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is released in movie theaters.
1962 Marilyn Monroe, who looms larger than 50 Feet in the American consciousness, sings happy birthday to President John F Kennedy 
1978 Thank God It's Friday released. Out-discoed in collective disco-movie memories by Can't Stop the Music, two years later.
1982 Rebecca Hall is born. Remains underappreciated 34 years later

1984 It is a very very bad day to be named "Sarah Connor" in Los Angeles. Unless you're unlisted. [src]
1989 Legendary bad movie Road House opens in theaters
1992 Sam Smith is born. 24 years later he tortures global audiences with an off-key rendition of a song no one likes and Hollywood hands him the Oscar -anything to make him stop.
1999 Star Wars: the Phantom Menace opens in theaters which is something like discovering a razor blade in your Halloween candy. Jar Jar Binks is the razor blade. Nostalgia is the candy.
2017 Baywatch: The Movie opens. God help us all.

and finally...

2154 Jake Sully will arrive in his wheelchair on Pandora and meet his Avatar. Just in time for James Cameron to be cryogenically unfrozen and announce that he's starting production on Avatar 2 and Avatar 3. For real this time, promise.