Link Out Your Dead

My New Plaid Pants a funny exchange between David Cronenberg and Robert Pattinson regarding Cosmopolis' prostrate exam scene
Pajiba 7 performances that changed our minds about actors this year
Movie|Line hey girl, it's the Ryan Gosling coloring book 
Serious Film chooses his Oscar ballot for Best Actor if the awards were only once an... ever. 

Hollywood Robert Pattinson will play TE Lawrence (of Arabia) in a new movie about Gertrud Bell which will star Naomi Watts. She's really, suddenly, fighting for that Oscar again what with all these biopic roles.
Movies Now A Mary Pickford revival is on the way
Arts Beat Raiders of the Lost Ark gets a week on IMAX screens in September. Yay! That'll be fun.

Sad News About Dead Projects
/Film says that Eastern Promises 2 is probably dead. Ugh. I so needed more Viggo as Nicolai in my life. I really did. 
Empire Henry Selick, who did such an excellent job shepherding Coraline to the screen had been working on another stop motion film for Disney. They've pulled the plug. God, hadn't they seen Coraline or The Nightmare Before X-Mas? This man is an amazing talent.

Happy News About Dead Projects
Finally Fox has turned the rights to Daredevil back over to Marvel (who'd like all their characters back, thank you) after not getting it together for a reboot (Joe Carnahan had been mapping one out). Daredevil was obviously Fox's sacrificial lamb because they didn't want to give anything Fantastic Four related back and (contractual) time was running out on both properties. It's really too bad that Marvel can't get all their characters back because they're better at the superhero movie making than the other studios are. Plus, imagine the crossover possibilities. This might be shortsighted on Fox's behalf though because Daredevil is not a bad franchise concept at all. It was just that Fox did a T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E job translating it to screens, with horrible casting, horrible movie making, horrible visualization of Daredevil's radar (he's a blind superhero, remember) and horrible everything. Worse yet they sullied the property by pissing away its best story arc on a subpar movie. The Daredevil vs. Bullseye vs. Elektra arc was nothing short of classic scary exciting unnerving in Frank Miller's hands in the comic books. On screen not so much... or rather not at all. If I were in charge (lol. I'm *so* not!) I'd give up trying to reboot Daredevil as a movie but relaunch him with a TV series, part legal procedural, part organized crime drama, part superheroics.  You'd only get to Bullseye and Elektra once the series had found its voice and sure footing because you don't wanna be fucking that storyline up; it's gold.

Yes, No, Maybe So: "The Trouble With the Curve"

Longtime Clint Eastwood collaborator Robert Lorenz (producer or first assistant director on many Clint features) rousted Clint out of the director's chair and in front of the cameras for a father/daughter baseball scouting drama The Trouble With the Curve. Or is it a comedy? Let's break down the trailer with our usual system.

YES

• Always up for a father/daughter drama... and Eastwood gave that relationship all sorts of interesting edges and nuances and softspots in Million Dollar Baby. Plus in the interest of selling Gran Torino 2 with all those shots of Clint "Get Off My Lawn!" Eastwood maybe we're not seeing some of the meat of the central relationship in the trailer.
• Amy! Just saw her in Into the Woods in Central Park. She got majorly swallowed up in her wig (so big that from my bad seat I could barely notice her face) but I like that even if she might not have limitless range she is able to adapt her screen persona for drama, comedy, and musicals. That's a type of range -- the movie star type of range which is nothing to scoff at.
• Hei John Goodman!

NO and maybe so after the jump...

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Ernest Borgnine (1917-2012)

The Oscar winning character actor, star of 1955's Best Picture Marty, died today at 95. His career was so healthy that his IMDb page requires much scrolling through 200+ titles. The prolific filmography obscures the fact that he didn't even get started until this thirties.  Starting late isn't always a drawback when you've got the goods... particular for character actors; you can't have matinee idol looks and sell an everyman schlub like "Marty". Borgnine's career was so enduring that his latest completed role was a starring one: The Man Who Shook The Hand of Vicente Fernandez (2012) just recently debuted on the festival circuit. 

A career that long is bound to have its rough patches, its controversies and divisiveness. Borgnine generated some deserved internet ire seven years back for publicly refusing to see Brokeback Mountain (2005) despite voting on the Oscars. [The Film Experience's position on this has always been that AMPAS members should be required to see all nominees in order to vote on a win in any particular category. Currently you have to for foreign film but most categories do not require that you actually watch the movies.]

Ernest Borgnine bullying Monty Clift in "From Here To Eternity"Borgnine had been very active for a 90something actor. In addition to Vicente Fernandez, he'd done a lot of television, voicework on Spongebob Squarepants and popped up in a memorable cameo in the action comedy Red (2010). But it's his work in the 1950s and 1960s that will be his legacy: McHale's Navy, The Dirty Dozen, The Wild Bunch and two best picture winners From Here to Eternity (1953) and Marty (1955) among them.

Have you ever seen Marty? What role first pops to mind when you think of Borgnine?

Halfway House 2012. Lead Actor (Thus Far)

It's part three of our Halfway Mark rundown as we survey the film year thus far from January through June releases. It's been crickets thus far in terms of possible Oscar players (with the exception of one of these men -- but we'll get to him in a minute.) but that doesn't mean there isn't work to appreciate.

If I was forced to draw up a ballot right now...

explanations and Team Experience commentary after the jump

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April Foolish Predictions: Best Actor

Every year on the 1st of April we begin consulting our well used crystal ball. It's like "the Oscars, again? Don't you wanna know winning lottery numbers or something?" It's foolish to predict the Oscars before practically any of the contenders have screened but foolish can be fun.

This year the contest might be between two men playing beloved US presidents, Bill Murray as FDR in Hyde Park on Hudson and Daniel Day Lewis as Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln, and even if it isn't that angle will get media play. Streep's win a month ago reminded us that Oscar has always loved political performances (if not overtly political films) and they literally can't go one year without having one of the four acting winners playing a real life character. (Benjamin Walker is also playing Abraham Lincoln this year but he's playing him as a vampire hunter so he doesn't figure into the chart.) 

Ryan Gosling has a few leading roles again this year but after the past few years it's clear that Oscar just isn't that into him. So we look to people they love nearly without fail like Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Master. It's possible that he'll overplay the role of a charismatic cult leader but that might actually help with Oscar. They love Clint Eastwood more as a director than an actor but one last chance to honor him for The Trouble With the Curve, a father/daughter road trip drama might be too much to pass up.

At this point I'm most curious about Hugh Jackman's chances for Les Misérables -- I'm guessing they're very good but I'm also guessing that that opinion won't be shared by all -- and whether John Hawkes can fend off dozens of upcoming contenders and keep the heat from his Sundance success in The Surrogate as a man in an iron lung. 

Numerous leading men are coming but only five of them can win Oscar love. Other possibly interesting lead performances are on the way from Bradley Cooper, Brad Pitt, Oscar Isaac, and of course Jamie Foxx as Django Unchained.

Who will it be? Here's my new guesswork.

How would you shift it?
Whose work are you most curious to see?