just another linking ol' dirty birdy!

Bleeding Cool Heathers, Psycho and The Apartment (yes, The Apartment) all receiving TV spin-offs soon. Weirdly the Heathers series is supposed to be about the daughters of The Heathers. Um, they died as teenagers, stupids #23YearOldSpoiler
HitFix reviews Quartet and says Pauline Collins, not Maggie Smith, actually has the best part 
Awards Daily interviews the man behind the visual effects in Snow White and the Huntsman. Oscar bound? 
Unreality Tom Hanks cracks audience up at Michael Clarke Duncan's funeral 

The Hollywood Reporter looks at the way the awards race is shaping up: Argo, Silver Linings Playbook and The Master up front, Best Actress still anyone's game (for nominations)
Stale Popcorn spots an odd critic's pullquote on the Holy Motors quad 
MNPP pic of the day. Thor 2 ... literally
Unreality five lessons learned from Pee Wee Herman from a lifelong fan. I love this article alot but i strongly object to the intro which states:

I was born in 1983. I am currently straddling the border between old enough to know what “cool” is and too old to be writing for a pop culture site.

You're never too old to be immersed in pop culture. Pop culture is culture. It's ageless if you're doing it right. The real world is not Logan's Run ferchrissakes. Are people over 30 not supposed to enjoy anything or have any feelings about anything that's for entertainment? Boo!

Finally...

Please send out your warmest get-well wishes and prayers to Ms Kathy Bates who announced yesterday on Twitter that she had just had a double mastectomy. I personally miss her breasts more than "Harry's Law" (About Schmidt!) but I'm happy she has a sense of humor about it all, laughter being the best medicine. Our thoughts go out to the Oscar winning Misery star and all of her #1 fans.

Same Link Time Same Link Channel

Matt's Movies Harvey Weinstein is talking up movies he had nothing to do with and is not distributing. "Is this some sort of reverse psychology marketing strategy?"
Towleroad a filthy gay love song for Joseph Gordon-Levitt 
/Film Anthony Mackie could be up for the Falcon role in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. We could end up with two Hurt Locker guys in The Avengers 2

Press Play has a smart piece on the new Sigourney Weaver Clintonesque drama Political Animals.
Salon on the "adorable nihilism" of Bunheads with Sutton Foster. I keep wondering if I should write about this show. Are any of you watching? 
The Advocate on Bollywood's problem with gay characters
Cinema Styles warns us not to be alarmed by all the media pieces telling us that today's generation doesn't care about old movies.

It's Batman's World...
Interiors Film Journal analyzes the physical space of The Dark Knight's opening bank robbery. I love the concept behind this monthly journal.
Joblo compares the five actors who've put on the bat cowl to date
Hello Tailor isn't excited about The Dark Knight Rises for Catwoman-related reasons and here's why...  

Remember a few years ago when I just couldn't stomach the absolute blurb whore hysteria for The Dark Knight and posted things like this which pissed people off.

 I'm having a slightly easier time with The Dark Knight Rises (at least until I see it) partially because I'm too busy to contemplate and fully absorb the "Greatest! Movie!! Of !!! All!!!! Times!!!! [sic]" (yes, even the 'Of' gets exclamation points because... hysteria!). The huge undulating waves of excitement and attendant mob with pitchforks anger towards brave dissenters have already started again. Cheeky Eric D. Snider posted a fake negative satirical review, which was pulled before I could read it but it apparently ended by acknowledging that he hadn't seen the movie and that he was conducting a social experiment. The  fanboys aneurysms proved his shooting-fish-in-a-barrel point. RT freaked out and banned him from the site. Death threats for an authentic  negative review by Marshall Fine and both sane and über self-serious handwringing over the fake one ensued.

It's gonna get crazier. Especially once Awards Season rolls around. Steel yourself Gothamites.

The only thing I care about is Anne Hathaway's Catwoman. Bring it Hathaway. But perhaps you should steer clear of La Pfeiffer on your way to brought.

gifs via

Blurb Whore Overachiever of the Year

Top Ten List O' the Day: Peter Travers.
I don't know how many of you watch Rachel Maddow on MSNBC but during Herman Cain's brief presidential campaign she began to treat it, hilariously, as a piece of performance art i.e. This just can't be real! I feel much the same way about Rolling Stone's Blurb Whore Legend Peter Travers. I don't mean to fixate on him as much as I do -- every year I marvel for the same reasons --  but I grew up reading and loving his reviews and only later, as I began to read more film criticism did he come to embody the Film Critic as Film Publicist problem. The man can definitely turn a phrase which is why if he wasn't making the presumably big bucks he makes at Rolling Stone, he'd surely be a highly paid ad man.

But this top ten article made me laugh so much. It's performance art. It has to be. He begins with Drive and literally the first words are...

Screw Oscar..."

After which comes a top ten list that includes not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, not seven, not eight but  literally all the contenders you'll see on anybody's Oscar prediction top ten Best Picture charts barring the unscreened 'Extremely Loud'. Which is to say that The Artist, The Descendants, Moneyball, Midnight in Paris, Hugo, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and The Tree of Life... are all accounted for. To make sure he's covered all the Oscar bases there's a three way tie at #10 between War Horse, The Help and Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2. Seriously. 

I bow down to one of the greatest pieces of year-end list-making performance art that film criticism has ever seen. Peter Travers, you are genius.

DRIVE. "People will love it ten years from now!"

I only left the Drive screening two and a ½ hours ago at the time of this typing. But I feel like I have two thoughts I want to get out immediately. (Plus a second screening seems wise before reviewing as it has that further-riches- await-you vibe emanating from its dark surface.)

The film is super-stylish and idiosyncratic and though some critics already love it, I'm not sure that people by and large will. But in ten years, if it's not a surprise hit in September, people will be pretending like they saw on opening night and were part of its first rush of fandom when in fact they caught it on DVD or cable a year or more after it flopped in theaters. I'm not wishing it ill, trust, but it feels like a possible contender for a Big Lebowski type trajectory, if you know what I mean. It's an odd film but it sure does know itself. Yay!

People will love it ten years from now!
-Nathaniel R, The Film Experience

Listen to me... Yeesh! I'm never ever going to make it as a blurb whore.

The new posters like the one above -- they just keep coming -- keep using the pink font and at first it's like "what? pink for a noir about a bad-ass driver?" But then you see the movie and all is right with the marketing due to the movie's neo-noir-neo-neon-1981 stylization. (What?)  It's not exactly my type of film -- very bloody -- but I kinda loved it anyway. Or maybe admired/liked? I haven't decided. It's only been 2 and ½ hours. But my god can Nicolas Winding Refn compose a frame. I didn't see this coming when watching Bronson which was attention grabbing enough but hugely messy and undisciplined in comparison.

Truth in Advertising. FYC Ads

I had a hankering for some truth-telling. Sometimes I wish all advertising would just tell it like it is. Wrap a golden lasso 'round all marketing departments and see what bursts forth. Herewith my (photoshopped) reinterpretation of two recent FYC ads: Roger Deakins who has yet to win and Oscar and Dame Helena Bonham Carter Burton:

What fun!

If only I had time to do this for every FYC ad. How do you think this year's nominees should be advertised?

P.S. This post was inspired by The Shiznit's  amusing slideshow of truth-in-advertising posters for this year's Best Picture nominees currently hosted by The Wrap since The Shiznit is down. Here are my two favorites from their photoshop fun: 127 Hours and Winter's Bone.

Though their takes on Toy Story 3 and Black Swan are also keepers.