Linkmeter

• Vulture Every Kirsten Dunst role ranked. Wonderful piece by Matthew Jacobs though crazy/beautiful is too low!
• Letterboxd The Writers Guild of America's 101 best screenplays of the 21st century (thus far)
• Interview Colman Domingo interviews Zendaya
• IMDb top 100 stars of 2021 (by their STARmeter rankings) topped by Elisabeth Olsen (WandaVision). The lsit leans heavily into stars from popular shows or movies like everyone from Bridgerton, Ted Lasso, Mare of Easttown, the MCU, and even the star of Squid Game (though the list is heavy on blonde American women). Surprisingly high ranking for Alexander Skarsgård given that he had a mostly quiet year and Kathleen Turner somehow made the list, too, not that we're complaining as longtime fans.

More after the jump including a Shang-Chi sequel, West Side Story plus Steven Spielberg's next film, a big Alessandro Nivola get,  the teaser to Across the Spider-Verse, and the top ten list seasonal kickoff...

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Yes No Maybe So: "Just Mercy"

by Ben Miller

Festival season is in full swing and there are just a few complete unknowns left in the game.  One of those, which could turn out to be a big awards player, is Dustin Daniel Cretton’s Just Mercy starring Michael B. Jordan and Oscar-winners Brie Larson and Jamie Foxx.  Let’s dive in with a Yes, No, Maybe So after the jump...

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Review: The Glass Castle

This article was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

‘This would be easier to take on the page.’

That thought kept striking me from odd angles all during the new movie THE GLASS CASTLE  now playing nationwide. In 2005 the writer Jeanette Walls turned the rags of her childhood into adult riches with her memoir “The Glass Castle.”  The book won several awards and sold millions of copies. It was translated into dozens of languages. The big screen, however, has a tricky vocabulary and grammar all its own.

The Glass Castle flashes back-and-forth between adult Jeanette Walls (Brie Larson), a gossip columnist ashamed of her oft-homeless parents (Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts), and her memories of her difficult nomadic childhood...

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but all I know-oh-oh is down inside i'm lii-iiin-king ♫

Empire exciting project alert! Writer/director Destin Cretton of Short Term 12 fame will guide Michael B Jordan in Just Mercy, a memoir adaptation about a young lawyer who fought for the wrongly convicted
Balder & Dash looks back on the exciting sci-fi curveball Attack the Block (2011)
Variety Alan Parker (Midnight Express, Bugsy Malone, Evita) receives BFI Tribute
Kenneth in the (212) is rewatching Woody Allen movies and has time for Diane Keaton singing
Cinematic Corner really loves Ant-Man and since I was kind of hard on it, I figure a more positive review should be shared
NPR talks about getting the ants right with the help of "myrmecologists" on Ant-Man
Pop Culture Crazy on Paper Towns (2015) and "Manic Pixie Dream Girl nonsense"
Comics Alliance Green Lantern Corps (2020) may feature Tyrese Gibson as the John Stewart iteration of Green Lantern and yes I feel dirty that I typed a sentence about a movie that's not due for another 5 years and might never even be made. Apologies. We really are living in a sick movie culture at the moment

LOL
Karen Carpenter Died For Your Sins finds Angie Dickinson in a "white mood" 
/Film Jake Gyllenhaal cried when his parents wouldn't let him star in The Mighty Ducks in 1992. Hee!  

Off Cinema (Sort Of)
The Hairpin on kissing and 'disgusting intimacy'. Interesting article but be warned of really gross photos that may or may not be from an X-Files episode that's name dropped. (I love kissing. I once toyed with starting a series on it with this classic post on Jake Gyllenhaal but good god that was a ton of work.)
i09 need some reading suggestions? Here are nominees for the British Fantasy Awards
Boy Culture 30 minutes (!!!) of unseen outtakes from Madonna's classic "Vogue" video have surfaced. It's so weird to see Madonna at the end of takes all dissatisfied with herself for milliseconds. Don't you miss David Fincher making music videos. He should do that inbetween his films
Playbill casting complete ono the West End production of "Photograph 51" starring Nicole Kidman. Her first time on the UK stage since "The Blue Room." Performances start in just 2 months. me want! me want! donate to the site (see sidebar) so I have funds to go see her. *sniffle* 

Showtune to Go...
Feeling oppressed by superheroes of late, I suddenly remembered one of my very favorite songs from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I seriously love this song (Yeah, I went through a Rocky Horror phase one year as a teenager) and strangely YouTube has very little use for it. Is it because of its lack of fame since it was axed from the original cut of the movie? I found one good clip from a performance in Jacksonville Florida with Ross Frontz and Jessica Alexander doing Brad and Janet... good voices!

Link Flood

Slant Gravity, IMAX, and the horrors of front row seating
The Guardian a Carrie promotion stunt here in NYC. Imagine seeing this in real life.
The Verge the original teaser trailer to Star Wars is curiously light on Han Solo
Variety Destin Cretton, hot off the empathetic and special Short Term 12 may direct Glass Castle based on the bestseller with Jennifer Lawrence in the starring role
Deejay Italia Cher on Italian television calls Madonna a "magic bitch"

My New Plaid Pants Bubble Boy and Prisoners? Twins!
Boy Culture Josh Hutcherson is "mostly" straight
CHUD undeterred by those Prometheus reviews, Ridley Scott is moving ahead with Blade Runner 2 and may bring Harrison Ford along with him
/Film Darren Aronofsky promises huge complicated visual effects for his biblical epic Noah ... does that mean Matthew Libatique can finally win a cinematography Oscar? (that question is inspired by this recent divisive post on Gravity)
/Variety Toni Collette romantic comedy Lucky Them gets a distributor. This is how massive the TIFF selection  is each year. I did not even know that Toni, one of my very favorite actors, even had a movie playing there!

Finally, /Film shares the shortlists for the new Fantastic Four cast. The weird thing is that though I like nearly every actor and actress mentioned I think most of them are pretty terrible choices for those roles. Except for maybe Margo Robbie as Sue Storm. Interesting that her career is suddenly hot after a failed tv show (Pan Am). It's gotta be buzz about her sexcapades in The Wolf of Wall Street, right? I think my problem in picturing a successful Fantastic Four movie is that that comic book property has, like Wonder Woman, a retro feel. I don't mean that as a bad thing but Hollywood definitely does and they're always worry about how to young down that type of property. But that doesn't work. Some things are just "square" you know, to use an antiquated term. They need to think more along the lines of that bang-up job Marvel did interpreting Captain America for the 21st century by rooting him first so boldly in the early 20th century where he feels so natural.