i know all there is to know about the linking game... 🎵

Your host (c'est moi, Nathaniel) is weeks behind his movie game. So here's part 1 of a massive link roundup to try to catch up. Twenty-five mini stories in this one, let's go...

EW celebrates Idris Elba on their cover
The Vulture a profile of the screenwriter of The Post who was inspired to write it after reading Katherine Graham's memoir "Personal History" Meryl Streep will play Graham in the film (which is not based on that memoir but on one event in Graham's career.)
Awards Daily laments that big box office hits like Get Out and Wonder Woman are not considers shoo-in for Best Picture nominations
Variety Darren Aronofsky tapped as keynote speaker for next spring's SXSW festival
The Hollywood Reporter Disney is not moving forward with its Jack and the Beanstalk animated film named Gigantic
Playbill Glee's Lea Michele finally met Barbra Streisand
People Dan Amboyer who plays the twin of Hilary Duff's deceased fiance on Younger (long story) has come out as gay
Mirror Rob Collier believes his gay under-butler role on Downton Abbey has made it difficult for him to find other roles

More after the jump including  Weinstein harassment fallout, agressive Netflix recommendations, Jonathan Groff's penchant for singing on set, and more...

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The Martyr Mothers of Darren Aronofsky

by Jorge Molina

With his latest film mother!, Darren Aronosfky immerses us in a hellish landscape of biblical allegories, nightmarish house parties, and scenery-chewing performances. It's his most polarizing film so far, and he takes the audience to emotional and visceral places he hasn’t before (hello, newborn baby).

And yet, something remains hauntingly familiar about it. Aronofsky has mommy issues. Throughout his filmography, mothers are figures of unflinching and painful devotion. Women who lose themselves in the love they have to give, a trait which ultimately becomes their doom. They are designed to bestow upon...

 

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Some love mother! Some don't.

by Murtada

The studio behind mother! has pivoted their second week marketing towards the bad word of mouth that the film has been receiving from moviegoers. They stopped selling it as a home invasion horror thriller and instead decided to embrace how polarizing it is.

Some people love it......some people don’t

It’s a bold move and we like it. What they don’t do though, is mention the F cinemascore that the film recieved. CinemaScore is a company that exit polls moviegoers’ opinions on opening night. They have been storing data since 1986, and in that time only 11 other films received the infamous F. Those so honored include Steven Soderbergh's Solaris (2002) and Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly (2012). And make no mistake Darren Aronofsky thinks it's an honor, he told The Frame:

What's interesting about that is, like, how if you walk out of this movie are you not going to give it an F? It's a punch. It's a total punch. And I realize that we were excited by that. We wanted to make a punk movie and come at you.

Did you enjoy Aronofsky punk move? Where do you stand on the mother! conversation?

The hyped mysteriousness of "mother!" pre-release

Ongoing adventures at TIFF

During Oscar season awards journalists often receive little bits of swag in the mail, cupcakes when Jennifer Aniston was trying to get nominated for Cake, a lux coffee table book on Los Angeles when La La Land was in the race, a stuffed Olaf during the Frozen year. That sort of thing. My favorite mail came from the creative and memorable campaign for Black Swan. The first thing to arrive was a black envelope with no return address. Inside were three black and white feathers. That was it. No message, no card, no return address, no explanation. Creepy. By the time the season was in full swing and the movie was familiar a mirrored music box was the perfect curio to arrive. 

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Top Ten: Black Swan's Best Shots

by Ilich Mejía

TFE is highly anticipating Darren Aronofsky's upcoming mother!. The film welcomes a reunion between Aronofsky and American cinematographer Matthew Libatique, shortly after they last collaborated on 2014's Noah and 2010's Black Swan. A lot of parrallels have already been drawn across the latter and mother!, including similarities between their cracked-doll posters and doesn't this bloody rug remind anyone of a certain mirror-sharded dress? 

To show how desparetely we can't wait to see what new images Aronofsky and Libatique will sear into our psyches when mother! premieres, we're going to look back and pick our ten favorite shots from Black Swan. Libatique's gorgeous, dark cinematography earned him his first Academy Award nomination. Presumably, the Academy was as impressed as we were by his interpretation of the film's theme's of duality and control. 

Let's dissect our favorite frames from the psychological drama after the jump...

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