The Link Where It Happens

Link love time.

• Vulture Michelle Pfeiffer's ten essential roles
• Prizeo Lin-Manuel Miranda offers up the chance to win VIP tickets and a meet and greet at the opening night of Hamilton in Los Angeles with a donation to "Immigrants Get the Job Done Coalition". (And FYI two former Tony nominees Joshua Henry as Aaron Burr and Rory O'Malley as King George are in the company) 
• Vanity Fair on how difficult it is to get a gay film made in today's Hollywood. The headline to this is a bit misleading since it's like "in a post-Moonlight world" but let's be reasonable. Moonlight only made its dent a handful of months back. So most of the films cited didn't have Moonlight to point to when seeking financing

• THR More dirt on what happened behind the scenes on the troubled Han Solo movie
• Nerdist Why Megara is the MVP of Disney's Hercules
• Playbill The glorious Audra McDonald finally makes her West End debut, no big deal after 6 Tony Awards, reprising her Tony winning / Emmy nominated  Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill Billie Holiday role
• Buzzfeed the hardest game of 'would you rather' with hot cartoon dudes. I don't know. Most of these were easy for me but your mileage may vary.
• Variety offers up a franchise report card on the various series that are taking up so much of Hollywood's time and capital. But shouldn't Bond and Tarzan have been included in this roundup?
• Decider lists the '20 best foreign films on Netflix'... though the list would have been more exciting had they editorialized rather than just pulling the RT scores to determine which 20 to feature
• MNPP pic of the day with Edgar Wright at a Baby Driver screening

Exit Video
Check out this glorious montage of NYC (hat tip to Gothamist) as seen through the movies.

New York in Cinema - Supercut from Sergio Rojo on Vimeo.

God, I love living here. And one of my fav things in movies is city street scenes where the main character is just part of a huge walking crowd (the most classic visual example being Tootsie I think). How many movies did you instantly recognize?

Link Link Land

The Daily Beast Michael Musto talks to an anonymous Oscar voter about who they're voting for. They're very unhappy with Meryl Streep's 20th and La La Land's 14
/Film Barry Jenkins chooses movies from the Criterion Collection -wonderful. (And people forget how obsessed people were with La Haine when it came out)
Variety ABC picked up a pilot starring Toni Collette. Please let it be good. Miss her so much. Totally the best actress that directors aren't using which I will NEVER understand
Cinematic Corner Sati falls for The Handmaiden

Film School Rejects on Stranger Things SAG acceptance speech and season two
MNPP Jason lets Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) take him on a train of thought and it is a joy as is that movie or at least Gable and Franchot Tone in it
Village Voice Bilge Ebiri's 10 favorites from Sundance include Where is Kyra? and Mudbound
World of Reel Ben Affleck will no longer be directing The Batman movie 
Pajiba has news of an incredibly problematic sounding new Mel Gibson movie about police brutality.
Four Two Nine good piece on LGBT characters still being stuck in the "best friend" / "helper" mode despite many more gay characters in film and television  
Tracking Board HBO developing a movie about the behind-the-scenes on The Godfather (1972). I mean who gets to play Marlon Brando and Diane Keaton. Those seem like tall orders (lots of people can do a decent Al Pacino)

Off Cinema
Playbill Hamilton is doubling the amount of seats in its lottery starting... yesterday. Good luck!
Village Voice fascinating piece on the billionaire subgenre within romance novels
Los Angeles Times on how the travel ban is worrying Hollywood the business aspects of Hollywood and the talent pool
The Guardian Johnny Depp is suing and being countersued... and he's spending money as wildly and foolishly as Nicolas Cage once did (if you're wondering why they both make so many bad movies) 

Dune Again
As was previously rumored but is now true, Denis Villeneuve has signed on to direct Dune. He mentioned this as a possibility in our interview recently and sounded very excited about it, having been a fan of the novel his whole life. But still, TWO reboots of two beloved sci-fi properties back-to-back with Blade Runner 2049 up next? And right after your Oscar nomination after such deserved momentum from doing your own thing (Enemy-Prisoners-Sicario-Arrival)?! I guess this is cashing in while also fulfilling a dream but it worries this fan of Villeneuve doing his own thing.  

Though the David Lynch film from 1984 had its issues it also had some deeply memorable imagery so at the very least it will be interesting to see how his version measures up.

There Will Be Link

Storify okay, this woman Nancy Wake needs a biopic. Amazing WW II story
Coming Soon production has started on Can You Ever Forgive Me, which sounds like an interesting vehicle for Melissa McCarthy to show her range. She'll play a celebrity biographer who made her name in the 70s and 80s but resorts to deception when her career tanks. It's directed by Marielle Heller who was behind Diary of a Teenage Girl
Vulture Which Sundance debuts will be Oscar contenders this time next year? 
Comics Alliance Aubrey Joseph and Olivia Holt have been cast in the TV adaptation of the superhero comic Cloak & Dagger

 

Cigarettes & Red Vines photos from the set of Paul Thomas Anderson's new movie which stars Daniel Day Lewis but has no title as of yet
Variety Remember when Viola Davis played best friend to Julia Roberts in a thankless part in Eat Pray Love? They'll co-star again in Small Great Things, a racially charged drama about a nurse who is sued by a white supremacist couple.
/Film James Cameron gets the rights to Terminator back soon and the franchise will be revived. AGAIN.
EW The Schuyler Sisters from Hamilton will perform at the Superbowl! 
Slate A tribute to Mary Tyler Moore's feminist influence
Vice So as it turns out the Kevin Costner character in Hidden Figures was made into more of a 'white savior' in the narrative then he was in the real life story. 
Playbill Clive Owen will return to Broadway in a revival of M. Butterfly - no word yet on who'll play the Chinese opera singer he doesn't realize is a man despite a long affair. B.D. Wong who works frequently on television these days instead of the stage won the Tony as the opera singer in the original production with John Lithgow originating the lead role that Clive Owen will now play
Jezebel on Ryan Gosling's cooking in La La Land
Interview has a gallery of the rising stars from Sundance 2017 
Towleroad new clip from Call Me By Your Name in which Armie Hammer tries to massage the tension out of Timothee Chalamet  

City of Link

ET First pic of Pixar's Coco though the text is greatly irritating as they seem to be very anti-musical "Don't call it a musical!"
Filmmixtape "if 2016's worst films were drag race competitors"
Playbill George S Irving, the voice of Heat-Miser for the Bankin Rass TV classic "The Year Without a Santa Claus" has died at 94. 
The Guardian why 2016 was a big year for female sexuality in film and on television 

Carrie Fisher & Debbie Reynolds and infinite list-making after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Oceans 8. Links 16

• Variety we now have seven of the names for the Oceans Eight gender flipped movie: Blanchett, Bullock, Hathaway, Bonham Carter, Kaling, and two musicians who moonlight as actors Rihanna and Awkwafina 
• NYFF the 54th annual festival has released the main slate titles - Opening Night: The 13th (Ava Duvernay); Centerpiece: 20th Century Women (Mike Mills); Closing Night: The Lost City of Z (James Gray); plus their usual array of buzzy titles from other festivals only this time there are a lot of female leads (which is a huge change) including Aquarius, Toni Erdmann, Personal Shopper, and an Isabelle Huppert double in L'Avenir and Elle.
• Pajiba debates Suicide Squad's interpretation of Harley Quinn
• Variety a new lawsuit about Out of Africa's profits. That's timely! (People forget that it was a giant hit at the time)
• Deadline David O. Russell pitching a TV series with Robert De Niro & Julianne Moore. What the what now?

 

• Variety FX executive on Peak TV, Netflix and when the "Peak TV" bubble will burst
• Vulture Matt Zoller Seitz on the problems with serial-dramas on TV right now -- the model is shifting yet again
• Pride Source Meryl Streep talks her discomfort being imitated (!), Florence Foster Jenkins, sequels, and her connections to the LGBT community 
• IndieWire Greta Gerwig writing another screen version of Little Women - we get one every generation it seems
• /Film a Ghostbusters sequel with the ladies seems unlikely as the film will record a theatrical loss due to that ginormous budget
• Comics Alliance breaks down the Luke Cage trailer
• i09 Black Manta will be the villain in Aquaman 

Off Screen
• Playbill Tony Danza names his favorite stage performances. Somewhat surprising but cool list featuring Mare Winningham, Mark Rylance, Faith Prince and more...
• GQ "Stop trying to get perfect abs." Love this -  Define your personality instead.  
• The Adequate Man "Steve Martin is My Body Icon" on looking like the same exact person for ages 

Today's Must Read
Todd VanDerWerff has a gorgeous personal essay up on Vox called "Hamilton isn't perfect. But it's *perfect." I couldn't write for a month after I saw it". That's a mouthful but cozy up and be moved. It's on seeing Hamilton, the power of who is telling your story, and Todd's birth parents.