Link on a Hot Tin Roof

AV Club RIP voice acting legend June Foray
Variety Amazon is moving into being their own distributor now after partnering with other distributors before. They'll try it out with Woody Allen's Wonder Wheel which they seem to have high hopes for.
Screen Crush It's official - Emoji Movie is worst reviewed wide release of the year

/Film a photo tour of the Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image
Deadline Anne Hathaway circling the Barbie movie that Amy Schumer abandoned
Coming Soon Warner Bros considering "formidable" Oscar campaign for Wonder Woman

off cinema
Variety Jack O'Connell talks about his nude scene in the new revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and why he hasn't watched Paul Newman in the film version
Playbill Ellen Greene shares a scrapbook from the original run of Little Shop of Horrors
Chicago Tribune recommended theater shows on a budget in Chi-town
Boy Culture the world's youngest living Madonna fan - a 13 year old violinist!
Exeunt a piece about that 'critics camp' I went to this month by one of the other fellows
NYT terribly sad debacle going on with The Great Comet of 1812 on Broadway. When I first heard about Mandy Patinkin's casting I was thrilled because I haven't yet seen the show and totally love that man. But it seems in order to accomodate him (in the role formerly played by Josh Groban) they were ousting their current leading man Okieriete “Oak” Onaodowan (from Hamilton) earlier than his scheduled final date. The optics look bad even though Broadway shows do these type of celebrity casting changes constantly. Patinkin has now dropped out and Oak won't extend and now the entire cast, which includes several actors of color (the show was previously praised for its diverse casting), could be out of jobs because they might close early due to the public outrage. 

Exit Video
The new Charlie XCX video "Boys" is a sexy blast. So many celebrity cameos including the internet's current boyfriend Riz Ahmed, diver Tom Daley, and a slew of musicians. There is a chainsaw in this video but as Charli states

NO BOYS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS VIDEO 💕 

Justice Link

Boy Culture want to see a web or tv series sequel to Boy Culture  (2006)?
Film School Rejects a new short film starring Oscar Isaac available to watch online
Deadline a huge list of in-development franchises - what's the next big sci-fi fantasy hit?
Coming Soon Nicholas Hoult is in talks to play the Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien in a forthcoming biopic. Those unfamiliar with Tolkien but for book jacket photos, Hoult seems like odd casting but the movie will be about his youth and service in World War I (which of course informed his iconic books)

 

AV Club Raising Arizona was on the cover of a Serbian biology textbook!
/Film Wonder Woman 2 is aiming for a December 2019 release date. Patty Jenkins still not confirmed to return as director
MNPP has a new crush in François Arnaud
Towleroad Ezra Miller kisses a male fan at Comic Con. Crowd goes wild
Ceros why are directors like Christopher Nolan enamored with 70 mm?
Variety Producer vows to "vigorously defend" Feud: Bette and Joan from Olivia de Havilland's lawsuit. But they might not want to harp on and on about "meticulously researched" since we spotted several errors without doing any research at all!
/Film contrary to reports Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) will not be appearing in Avengers: Infinity War

A Detour to the Stage
Playbill in an upcoming revival of Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece (well, one of them) Company, the genders will be reversed
Playbill Kathleen Turner's speaking voice is, of course, legendary but now comes word that she's going to sing on stage!!! What? She's debuting a cabaret show "Finding My Voice" in Philadelphia
Broadway Blog Mandy Patinkin is taking over the lead male role in Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 on Broadway for 3 weeks only. MANDY PATINKIN.
Theater Mania Frozen is deep in rehearsals now - Instagram pics of the cast

Stage Door: An Ode to S. Epatha Merkerson

Editor's Note: I've been away at the National Critics Institute in CT but will be back in a few days to regular blogging right here at The Film Experience. In the meantime please enjoy this review of one of the shows I saw in my absence, starring two of television's best actresses. The Roommate is playing through July 16th at the Williamstown Theater Festival and you should expect a transfer to NYC stages. - Nathaniel R

S. Epatha Merkerson in rehearsals. Photo by Daniel Rader

She wanted to be a spy… or a baker if espionage didn’t work out. It’s tough to square these  interchangeably silly abandoned dreams with timid Iowa retiree Sharon, standing right there in her well-stocked suburban kitchen. Sharon dreamt of being a spy? — Sharon!?!  Her new roommate doesn’t seem trustworthy but is right about at least one thing: Sharon shouldn’t “mummify” herself this early and needs to get out there and live.

I’m speaking like you know Sharon because I do. Sharon is fictional, you see, but the glorious actress S Epatha Merkerson and the playwright Jen Silverman have breathed such life into this rich idiosyncratic character in the new play The Roommate that for two hours I was convinced otherwise...

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i've got good news. that link you like is going to come back in style.

• Guardian Great interview with Holly Hunter about The Big Sick and her career. (People are already mentioning "Oscar nom!" in regards to her supporting work as Zoe Kazan's mother in the romantic comedy)

• Pajiba on what the new Defenders posters might remind you of

• Playbill Adorable John Benjamin Hickey, fresh off the revival of Six Degrees of Separation, thinks there should be a fine for people who leave their cel phones on in theaters. Agreed! 

• Screen Crush picks the 25 best LGBT films of the past 25 years. Happy to see Pariah and Bound mixed in with the usual titles like Brokeback Mountain and such. And the past few years have been so good for LGBT cinema. I mean: Carol, The Handmaiden, Moonlight, Tangerine. #Blessed

• Esquire Fun article by Tyler Coates on how he finally learned to love RuPaul's Drag Race which he had avoided for years and even bad-mouthed in print

• Theater Mania you don't see this often but there's an actual age restriction on the Broadway adaptation of George Orwell's "1984". No one under 13 will be admitted due to its intensity. The show stars Tom Sturridge, Reed Birney, Olivia Wilde, and TFE fav Cara Seymour (who previously did that lovely guest spot for us). I'm seeing it soon so will report back.

• IndieWire has issues with the "orientalism" of the new Twin Peaks. Add this to the onling Sofia Coppola controversy and... well... People I don't know what to do with all the outrage anymore at everything. There's got to be a line where, as an adult, you're just okay with what you're seeing and discarding the parts that irk you, or filing them under "I don't know about that but whatever" if they're not harmfully intended. Artists will always have their own peculiar obsessions and they'll always draw from a wide variety of influences (at least the good ones will) to craft their own stories and nobody really owns history; pop culture and the arts are giant beautiful melting pots of ideas and aesthetics from all over the world. Oh and also the Laura Dern hairstyle is not proprietarily Asian as the article seems to imply. I know this because I was obsessed with silent film star Louise Brooks as a teenager (Pandora's Box & Diary of a Lost Girl 4ever!). It was originally called the 'Castle Bob,' because Irene Castle (a famous NY dancer) debuted the then-shocking look in 1915. It was a very controversial look but became a sensation in the 1920s with flappers and silent film stars. Hollywood's first popular Asian American actress Anna May Wong, who the article references as an influence on Dern's look, actually had to get her hair cut like that because it was so popular.

• This is Not Porn great photo of Oscar winner Kim Hunter in makeup chair on The Planet of the Apes (1968)

Hilarious Reads and I Personally Needed the Laughs. You?

• The New Yorker "Tennessee Williams with Air Conditioning"... *fans self* I was cackling so loud by the end of this. Best article in forever.

• McSweeneys "11 Ways That I, a White Man, Am Not Privileged" Oops. Hee!

• Buzzfeed "25 Gay Pride signs that will make you laugh harder than you should" - so many of these are so wonderful I just want to hug all gay people for being funny and able to spell

• McSweeneys "An Oral History of Quentin Tarantino as Told to Me By Men I've Dated" 

What places are delivering right now? So, in the early ’90s, right around when Pulp Fiction came out, Quentin Tarantino and Mira Sorvino were dating. I always thought Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion was a dumb chick flick, but I caught part of it on cable the other day and there was an ad for Red Apple cigarettes in the background of one of the shots! Do you know about Red Apple cigarettes?

"Frozen" Gets a Cast for the Stage

Full casting for Broadway hopeful Frozen has been announced. The names have been trickling out for months but now it's all official. The out of town tryouts begin in August in Denver (so if you live there, do report back!). It's quite a high profile gig for all of the cast members none of whom have been Tony nominated and many of whom are in early stages of their careers.

This image, headshots for the two leads Caissie Levy and Patti Murin, is going around and though accidental I couldn't help but giggle a little. Do they share a hairdresser and colorist? Hopefully the differences in the stage sisters will be easy to read via acting and costuming. It's going to be weird to have it on Broadway where Wicked, which Frozen rips off so liberally from, is a Broadway mainstay. We'll see. One assumes Disney will add songs by already EGOTed team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez to the second half or that's going to be one lopsided stage musical with all the songs sung before intermission! [More on the cast after the jump.]

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