Friday, September 1, 2017 at 12:20PM by Murtada
Mother! is my most anticipated film of the fall. And it’s so good that we don’t have to wait that long for it. Just 14 days from today it will be everywhere. The obsession is real, and for the last few days it has become very specific.
Of course it has to do with Michelle Pfeiffer. There’s a new clip making the rounds where Pfeiffer intimidates Jennifer lawrence about having kids...
Friday, August 18, 2017 at 4:30PM MPAA "R" for language but it's also really funny. Check out these two guys watching and reacting to the mother! trailer [Thanks to Winston for the heads up]. It goes without saying that we co-sign the "don't show us the whole movie in the trailer!" complaints lodged at other movies (not this one).
Favorite line is when they're talking about how evil Javier Bardem always looks
How the fuck you look evil next to Jennifer Lawrence? I'd be the happiest negro in the US of A.
We must also rejoice that the sight of Michelle Pfeiffer starts a whole debate about how some things get more delicious with age (though that does not include beer!)
Tuesday, March 28, 2017 at 5:31PM 
We knew 2017 would be a big comeback year for our beloved and much missed Michelle Pfeiffer, with multiple films on the way. What we didn't know was that the press would start this early and emphatically to herald her return or that she'd be doing interviews since she's stingy with the press.
So it is with great pleasure we share the news that she's the cover girl for Interview magazine's April cover with a glorious sensual photo shoot by Mikael Jansson. Michelle turns 59 in one month and she's still got it...
Thursday, July 7, 2016 at 7:12PM Things we forgot to talk about but it's never too late.
Do You Love She Loves Me?
Did any of you manage to catch the Broadway livestream of She Loves Me June 30th? It was the first ever of its kind though I've heard no details on how well it performed (i.e. if we'll see more of them). They've extended the availability to rent it until July 10th on Broadway HD.
The Hours 2: The Return of Virginia Woof
Okay not really. Basically everybody committed suicide or got old in The Hours. But recently we got word that Virginia Woolf is coming back to the big screen in the adaptation of the play Vita & Virginia which is about Woolf's friendship and affair with another female writer. The most delightful part of this news may be that the play and its screenplay adaptation were both written by the actress Dame Eileen Atkins who was in The Hours (she worked in the flower shop in the Streep section). No word on casting but allow me to have a brief fantasy about Nicole Kidman reprising her Oscar-winning role before we hear who got the plum gig.
Winona is Back
Time Magazine recently published a solid interview with Winona Ryder on the eve of yet another comeback. This time via Stranger Things on Netflix. Of interest is a lengthy response when she's asked about the recent allegations against Johnny Depp. It's definitely the most levelheaded response we've read on any celebrity weighing in on the matter. But then we tend to like levelheaded responses and people who realize that they don't know what happened whatever their assumptions. That kind of response is almost impossible to find online from normal folks and it's also increasingly rare with celebrities.
But the best part of the interview was a question about the current nostalgia rage.
I get asked a lot, ‘What does it feel like to be a ’90s icon?’ And I’m like, ‘You think I sit around and think of myself like that?’ You can’t think about yourself in those ways, because who does that?
...I think because I started so young, I secretly wanted to be older all the time.
The interview is good but even better is that Stranger Things is getting really strong advanced buzz... especially for Winona herself who hasn't had anything work out that well for her showbiz-wise in aeons with the exception of that brief dark flash of Noni fever via her bit part in Oscar favorite Black Swan (2010).
Finally in confusing rumor alerts...
I don't normally share rumors (the internet is way too hung up on speculation when dialogue about things that actually exist is way more healthy/substantial) but I can't let this go without a mention. Remember the news that Jennifer Lawrence's Darren Aronofsky picture (working title Day 6) would co-star Javier Bardem, Domhnall Gleeson, and Michelle Pfeiffer? The story's logline is:
A couple whose relationship is tested when uninvited guests arrive at their home, disrupting their tranquil existence.
Most of the speculation on the internet was that Michelle Pfeiffer was playing Jennifer Lawrence's mother which seemed like a leap in logic -- why would they be related given that logline? A new rumor recently sprung up that the film would be titled Mother. Pass the fainting salts could this mean Pfeiffer was the actual lead -- but no, then that rumor was debunked by Paramount. It's all very confusing and typical internet (shut up everyone!) but any news of a Pfeiffer movie actually making it into production without her bolting is thrilling. And we are apparently getting three of them in relatively short succession, which all sound way more promising than that misfire The Family (2013) which was her last time before cameras. Two are already filmed - HBO's Wizard of Lies, and the indie drama Beat-Up Little Seagull (both due later this year though specific dates aren't announced) and Day 6 the following year unless she bolts from the set mid-production.
Thursday, June 30, 2016 at 2:42PM Reminder: You can watch the live stream of Broadway's She Loves Me tonight (one of the major Tony nominees this year) on "Broadway HD" for only $9.99 this evening at 8:00 PM EST (though I'd get there before 7:50 PM). The show stars Laura Benanti and Jane Krakowski, two national musical comedy treasures, and some talented men, too. It's the first time in history that a Broadway show has been livestreamed and since Broadway shows aint cheap $10 is practically free. If you check it out, let us know what you thought. Our review icymi.
Links
Variety looks back at the waves made by The Devil Wears Prada 10 years back
Vox has a very sound theory as to why the blockbusters suck this year - the disappearance of second acts in the three act structure
Shout Factory Carrie (1976) is getting a spiffy new Blu-Ray for her 40th anniversary
Birth.Movies.Death on the making of Clash of the Titans. Harry Hamlin was a handful!
IndieWire how YA stars have emerged as the saviors of American indie films
THR A24, perhaps emboldened by their first Oscar wins last year (Room + Ex Machina) is really hitting it hard for 2016. They've already released a few notable titles this year with more to come. Now they just picked up Mike Mills 20th Century Women. Can they win Best Actress two years in a row?
Gold Derby Alison Janney and Julia Louis-Dreyfus will both make history on Emmy night if they win
Birth.Movies.Death on the recent Cap is Hydra comic storyline and how serial storytelling works (it's only the response to serial storytelling that's really changed.)
Pride Source a fun LGBT themed interview with our new Tarzan Alexander Skarsgård
Boy Culture today is the 30th anniversary of Madonna's "True Blue" album
MNPP Miles Teller in leopard print thong for Bleed For This
Daniel Craig and Jason Isaacs in the London 1993 production of ANGELS IN AMERICAThis Week's Must Read
"Angels in America: The Complete Oral History" Let us all thank Slate profusely for this retrospective of Tony Kushner's two-part masterwork. Some of my favorite quotes from it.
George C. Wolfe [Director]: I think so much of what I did on Part 1 was keeping the hype out of the room and letting everybody play and discover. Because the hype was monumental, the hype was ridiculous, but you can’t work from hype, and you can’t create from hype. God knows you can’t discover anything new.
Joe Mantello: For a lot of us, that production was like going from zero to 100 in our careers, going from being unknown to the play everyone was coming to see.
Marcia Gay Harden: I’d walk through the West Village, and people would come up to me and say, “I took my parents to see the play, and then I told them I was gay.” Or: “I took my parents to see it, and then I told them I was dying.” And we would cry on the street. That happened once every couple of weeks.
Rocco Landesman: Personally, I think the show is a bit long, particularly in Perestroika. I was lobbying for cuts and got none of them. Tony was very gracious. He would hear me out politely and do what he wanted to do, which was not cut. It was like a conversation with August Wilson but worse.
And on Harper Pitt's very last transcendent bit in the play, her flight to San Francisco...
Marcia Gay Harden: I’m tingling right now thinking about it. The synchronicity of the immune system of the Earth, and that can be healed by the people who are suffering with the holes in their own immune system, the tragedy of the souls of those who have been hurt forming a web of protection around the Earth. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever said—or read—in my life.
Mary-Louise Parker: We shot it in an airplane hangar, and I was really trying to rein in my emotion. I just didn’t feel I quite reached it. I went to lunch, and I was so distraught, and I went to Mike [Nichols, who directed the miniseries] and said, “Can I do it again?” They were literally taking down the wall, and he said, “Oh, my child,” and turned to the crew and yelled, “OK, put the wall back up!”
Tony Kushner: It’s the best paragraph I’ve ever written.
