Gone Girl Got Ben

JA from MNPP here with some hot-off-the-presses movie news - multiple Oscar winner Ben Affleck (I trust I'm not alone in gagging a little at that phrase) has just signed on to play the lead (of sorts) in David Fincher's adaptation of Gillian Flynn's hit novel Gone Girl. 

.

You can't really even talk about the novel without diving into spoilers for it, so I'm not going to even try. You can read that elsewhere. I'll just say I found the book to be an engrossing page-turner when I read it last year, and if you haven't read it yet it's perfect Summer reading - not so demanding you'll feel guilty getting sand in the creases, but you won't want to stay in the water too long and so you won't get sunburned because you'll want to get back to it.

.

That said I'm not a fan of Affleck the actor - I thought he was absolutely terrible in Argo, enough to keep what I found to otherwise be a solid entertainment well off my favorite movies of last year list. And so I'm pretty bummed that Fincher's choosing to work with him, but I suppose bankability wins out.

.

Any fans of the book? What do we think of Affleck for Nick? And who would you cast in the, ahem, other roles?

.

I Link You and Link You and Link You

You Should Be in Sweden attends the Stanley Kubrick exhibit at LACMA. It ends in June so go see it!
JazzT here's another enticing image from the exhibit. Oh Nicole. Any mask you'd like me to wear is fine
Pitchfork Another new David Bowie video starring an Oscar winning actress. Marion Cotillard instead of Tilda this time 
Mother Jones a 17 year old coder invents a program to block spoilers on Twitter
NY Post Producer Scott Rudin lashes back at NYT critic. These stories always embarrass me for the showbiz people - (remember when James Cameron wanted someone fired for the thumbs down on Titanic?). Being criticized is just part of show business. You always look silly when you freak out about it. It's an honor to be so well employed / watched that you are even susceptible to bad reviews, don'cha think? 

Empire Dominic Cooper joins the cast of the new Dracula starring MNPP's favorite punching bag lust object Noted Homosexual Luke Evans. I'd be excited for this since I like looking at both of them but I'm so worn out on vampires. Which I never thought I'd say but here we are post the Aughts when vampires are more ubiquitous than they've ever been as if they're still trying to wrestle back the Ubiquity Crown from the hordes of brain-dead zombies who don't even know that they won some pop culture battle.
Electric has an infographic comparing The Great Gatsby to the wealth of the stars of the movie
Pajiba on Netflix's current strengths and weaknesses as it attempts to become both a distribution platform and a content creator 
Observations on Film Art Kristin wonders whether or not studios understand the power of fanbases and direct access to filmmakers they can get via Twitter and set visits and the like
In Contention Ben Affleck's follow up to Argo doesn't betray any steroided auteurly confidence. It's just another Denis Lehane adaptation of the novel "Live By Night". It's almost like something he woulda signed on for before Argo.
MNPP Today's mood via Barbara Stanwyck and Clark Gable 

Oh and Also... James McAvoy on the set of X-Men Days of Future Past via Bryan Singer's active picture-snapping Twitter account. He tweeted this one with a Pacino-style "Serpico!" descriptor. When last we left the X-Men they were in the swinging sixties and Professor X had just been paralyzed and hate yet to go bald. Here we are in the seventies I suppose though it's probably not worth getting hung up on time periods since Days of Future Past (one of the great X-men arcs) is all about messing with them.

poll by twiigs.com

P.S.
And if you still can't get enough of our "Greatest Best Actress Losers" poll, check it out: Tim, Michael and Glenn shared their individual ballots on their fine blogs Antagony & Ecstasy, Serious Film and Stale Popcorn.

Reader's Choice Factoids & Acting Oscar Trivia

I thought I was done posting about the 85th Academy Awards but here's one last takeaway post. See I realized we hadn't yet discussed YOUR votes and it is Reader Appreciation Month now (more to come). Plus one Best Actress Supremacy battle I think you'll like to ponder! 

Reader's Choice Stats Takeaway
Biggest Landslide: Anne Hathaway (Supporting Actress for Les Misérables) was the only Oscar winner to nab more than 50% of reader votes here. Though she was obviously the most polarizing actor, male or female, during Oscar season that didn't stop her from crushing her competition at the Oscars or here.
Poorest Showing: Denzel Washington's (Actor) return to form in Flight (seriously he's so good in that film) was, remarkably, in last place only 2% of the votes in his field. Yes even Jacki Weaver 4% and Alan Arkin 3% in the supporting categories won more of your love. What gives?  
Poorest Showing from an Oscar Winner: Though Christoph Waltz was also only third place in your ballots for Supporting Actor, Jennifer Lawrence actually had a weaker 3rd place showing - she took only 19% of your votes in Best Actress
Most Divisive Polling: Best Picture. Votes were all over the place with the winner (Argo) only managing 19% of the votes which was a very slim margin among the top four vote getters (readers also loved Amour, Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty)
Agree to Disagree: Best Actress, always our marquee category here at The Film Experience, had the most votes of any of the polls and there was no agreement between Oscar, Nathaniel and The Film Experience readers: Oscar chose Lawrence; Nathaniel chose Riva; Readers chose Chastain. 

Ben Affleck's odd stats and Jennifer Lawrence vs. Joan Fontaine after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Happy Oscar Eve!

Is this really happening?"
-Anne Hathaway winning the Golden Globe 

Yes, yes it (finally) is. The Oscars are less than 36 hours away. Eeeee! I'm SO eager for this film year to be over but I'm also just so excited for the Oscar ceremony. It's not that I'm a Seth MacFarlane fan -- the choice of host is always one of my areas of least interest -- but that so many categories are genuine cliff-hangers. Particularly these six (adapted screenplay, production design, supporting actor, director, and both sound categories!). Wheeeee

I was trying to finish up my own awardage but now I'm being yanked away by CNN International for an Oscar segment later this afternoon (stage fright!) so while I make a damn fool of myself talking Foreign Film please to enjoy these links and this video in my absence.

links 4 fun
ABC Australia I did a little segment on Oscar Acceptance Speeches with their host Julian Morrow. 
The Playlist shameless Ben Affleck-related product placement 
Movie Dearest wonders what the Best Picture nominees would have been like in another era. Madonna as Fantine. HEE!
Deadline in 50 years time will Oscars 2012 still look as rich and argument worthy as Oscars 1962?

Today's Must Watch
Ryan Gosling getting embarrassed and giggly when he sees his own face on dish towels...

Three Reasons Why "Argo" Became the One To Beat

You can't always know how the future will treat each year's awards recipients. Will their strengths will come into sharper focus as time erodes the particulars of the movie culture and conversation they arrived into or will that erosion grind a movie or performers appeal down with it? What will we make in five year's time of this moment when Hollywood threw awards at Argo instead of, say, Lincoln? That's what happened again last night at the Producers Guild Awards when Ben Affleck's 1970s CIA rescue tale took the top prize.

We don't have to wait for hindsight clarity when it comes to Argo's sudden rise in the previous deadheat Oscar race.  I'd say that three things are responsible, two of which no one could have predicted.

1. I'd been saying from the very start that Argo's narrative subtext, embedded into its truish story of a fake movie being used to rescue Americans from a hostile regime, that 'Movies Save the World!' feel would be irressistible to the back-patting awards season mentality in much the same way it was for the documentary The Cove some years ago.

The other two factors were not things anyone could have predicted though....

2.  Zero Dark Thirty emerged to somewhat reductive "so much better than Argo!" laudatory soundbytes (they both involve CIA meddling in the Middle East so they must be compared incessantly!) and for about a week it looked like The Real Oscar Deal but what happened next with it was very kind to Argo. Zero became the media's most slobbered on and teared at rag doll with everyone tsk-tsking and fuming and eventually subtly equating the making of it with condoning torture. By extension voting for it felt unpleasant to some, too. Suddenly the "better than Argo" conversation died and was replaced with just "...Argo", a rebooting if you will of where the Oscar conversation had previously been. Sometimes opening early helps and it's more than helped Argo.

3. The last, and most shocking turn of events was Ben Affleck's omission from the Best Director lineup. I'd long been predicting him to win that statue even though I hadn't viewed Argo necessarily as the future Best Picture champ, suspecting that we were in for a split year. The best thing that ever happened to Argo in terms of its Best Picture prospects was Affleck's "snub". And conversely, that's the worse thing that happened to Lincoln. Whatever one makes of the quality of the Best Picture nominees (have you voted for your favorite here?), Lincoln previously had the strongest narrative arriving as it did in this historic year of President Obama's reelection and the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Affleck's over-mourned "snub" (people keep conveniently forgetting how strong the Best Director lineup is without him!) handed Argo an underdog narrative in a season where the narratives -- those tricky hooks that make a person or movie so irresistible in the Story of the Year's Entertainments -- weren't all that strong even if the movies were.

Reason no. 3 is in some ways the most understandable now that it's happened and the most baffling. If you really step back for some perspective Ben Affleck is an enormous waste of a Sympathy Vote. He's already an Oscar winner. He's an Oscar nominee even when he's snubbed (he'll win the Oscar if Argo wins Best Picture since he produced) - fancy that. He has a happy Hollywood marriage. He rose to fame with his best friend who is still a huge power player in Hollywood, too. He's risen from the ashes of a weirdly shaky leading man career to become a respected director and a... uh... leading man again. He's super handsome and aging well. He's made only three films all of which received Oscar attention, the latter two of which were big big hits. If anything he's a true golden boy of showbiz with a hugely enviable career and awards run and yet, you'd think he were dying! To this Awards Season he's suddenly treated like the Fantine figure in Les Miz on her death bed; the one to cry over "if only life weren't so cruel!", the one to promise everything to in order to make amends.

And all because he missed out on an expected Best Director nomination?

Mrs. Affleck at the PGAs. Oh, you know she makes this pose at home while mock scolding BenTHE WINNERS

Outstanding Producer, Film: Ben Affleck, Grant Henslov, George Clooney for Argo
Outstanding Producer, Documentary: Malik Bendjelloul, Simon Chinn for Searching for Sugar Man
Outstanding Producer, Animated: Clark Spencer for Wreck-it Ralph
Outstanding Producer, Longform TV: Gary Goetzman, Tom Hanks, Jay Roach, Amy Sayres, Steven Shareshian, Danny Strong for "Game Change"
Outstanding Producer, Episodic TV (Drama): Henry Bromell, Alexander Cary, Michael Cuesta, Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon, Chip Johannessen, Michael Klick, Meredith Stiehm for "Homeland"
Outstanding Producer, Episodic TV (Comedy): Cindy Chupack, Paul Corrigan, Abraham Higginbotham, Ben Karlin, Steven Levitan, Christopher Lloyd, Jeff Morton, Dan O’Shannon, Jeffrey Richman, Chris Smirnoff, Brad Walsh, Bill Wrubel, Danny Zuker for "Modern Family" 
Outstanding Producer, NonFiction TV: Prudence Glass, Susan Lacy,Julie Sacks for "American Masters" PBS 
Outstanding Producer, Live TV: Meredith Bennett, Stephen Colbert, Richard Dahm, Paul Dinello, Barry Julien, Matt Lappin, Emily Lazar, Tanya Michnevich Bracco, Tom Purcell,Jon Stewart for "The Colbert Report" 
Outsanding Producer, Competition TV:  Jerry Bruckheimer, Elise Doganieri, Jonathan Littman, Bertram van Munster, Mark Vertullo for "The Amazing Race"

Outstanding Sports Program: "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel"
Outstanding Children's Program:  "Sesame Street"
Outstanding Digital Series: "30 Rock: The Webisodes"