Her Royal Majesty, The Queen of Link

This collection was meant to publish some 24 hours ago. Enjoy these links you might well have seen already!

Decider tracks Channing Tatum's expanding neck 
MNPP Jason calls a Happy Hobbit Ending for Lee Pace within six months. I think this is optimistic. 
Pajiba thoughtfully creates an anti-superhero-movie-diversity Bingo board. Love it!
AV Club Jeff Goldblum participated in a Jurassic Park themed wedding photo. It's great
The Dissolve Epix is airing a color version of Alexander Payne's Nebraska. What the hell?

Arts Beat Helen Mirren to play the Queen again on Broadway. Will the third time be the charm for a first Tony? If she wins she will have won the Oscar, Emmy and Tony all for playing Queen Elizabeths I & II. Quite a specific niche, eh?
The Wire a very bad day for the creator of True Detective Nic Pizzolatto who doesn't handle criticism very well and is now accused of plagiarism as the Emmys approach
The Film Stage shares Akira Kurosawa's 100 favorite films list (originally published in a book from 1999 apparently). Like me his favorite Scorsese is King of Comedy!
The Wrap DC has adjusted its Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice schedule to avoid Captain America 3. That sentence would have unthinkable years ago but Marvel has really made it work.
MNPP "Gratuitous Teddy Sears" I 100% approve and I would like to point out that I raved about him all the way back during his very tiny role on Dollhouse and so glad he got such a plum gig on Masters of Sex 

Ooh look, Jeff Bridges and Beau Bridges (Emmy nominated for Masters of Sex) talking about their acting process at an event in LA. (There's also a clip of them talking about The Fabulous Baker Boys but it's not about Michelle Pfeiffer at all - sacrilege - so I lost interest)

There's no point in even linking to a story about this but how terrible is it that they've opted to call the next Terminator film, a needless reboot when time-travel narratives can reboot themselves while also not stupidly pretending that other films didn't exist, Terminator Genisys. That's the actual title, people, purposeful mispelling and all. 

Finally, i09 shares ten lessons we can learn from the surprising success of Guardians of the Galaxy. Even though I think the movie has really pulled off a conjob on critics (it's winning rapturous ignore-the-obvious-flaws praise I think because it gets a couple of important things very right), most of these are bullet points are true. But I have to shake my head and roll my eyes hard at this bit about its cross-gender appeal at the box office:

How can a movie appeal to both of these groups? Because they both want the same thing, more or less — fun adventures in which both the male and female characters are fully realized.

Oy. If Gamora is our new standard for "fully realized female characters" in blockbuster cinema our standards have hit rock bottom and the future is going to be BLEAK. The ongoing gender problems in mainstream cinema have really taken a toll on people's expectations. 

Snow Queens who have gone before us

It’s Tim, with a little bit of animation history for y’all. Not that you’d be able to tell from the details dribbled out so far (estranged sisters, talking snowmen, reindeer acting like dogs), but the impending Disney film Frozen began its development as a dramatic musical adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”, a story first published in 1845. By this point, Frozen has drifted far enough from Andersen’s fairy tale that it’s probably more of an honorary adaptation than anything else, but that’s not all that unusual for Disney animated features. In the meanwhile, anyone looking to get their fix with a more authentic, faithful version of the story can look to a lengthy tradition of Snow Queen animated films, stretching back more than half a century.

From Russia to London with Sigourney-Love after the jump...

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Link Runner

Indiewire has a handy guide for filmmakers of great perks you get from filming in various states
Maxim celebrates the influence of Die Hard 25 years after its debut
Vulture has the 25 best action movies since Die Hard
i09 shares a 60 second animated redux of Blade Runner. I normally live for this sort of thing but I don't really like this one. I think maybe it's because if you rob Blade Runner of its grandiose visuals and color and mood, you don't have much! 

Off Cinema Fun
Towleroad "the greatest shirtlesss popsicle ad ever" 
Thought Catalog "5 business lessons I learned on MTV"
Thrillist Twinkies are back! So here are great moments in the snack cake's history 

Helen Mirren © Kagan McLeodDiva Worship!
Saturday Evening Post talks to Her Fabulousity Helen Mirren 

Guardian on the exciting trend of actresses as co-writers. Greta Gerwig love for this:

Understandably, Gerwig has bristled at being described as Baumbach's "muse". "I'm OK with the term muse as long as you acknowledge the muse wrote the script, too," she told a recent interviewer. "I feel like I'm the loudest muse that the world has ever seen."

Love them both!

Monday Monologue: "The Perfect Servant"

Editor's Note: I am pleased to announce that Andrew Kendall of Encore's World has joined "Team Experience". Here is his first post, looking back on a truly fine performance in Best Picture nominated Gosford Park (2000) - Nathaniel R

I would not say that finding a monologue (or monologue adjacent) scenes for Monday Monologues is an impossibility, although it can get somewhat difficult when so many films seems to revel in single sentence conversations and the like. Finding a monologue in an ensemble film, though, is particularly daunting. For with ensemble films, at least in theory, no one character takes precedence and as far as ensembles of the last three decades are concerned I would rank Gosford Park near the top. Maggie Smith, Clive Owen, Emily Watson, Bob Balaban, Kristin Scott Thomas, and even Ryan Philippe all battle for my top honours depending on the scene even as the “resolution” of the film rests on a scene between two of the quieter characters of the film.

More often than not cinematic monologues tend to take on the role of a confessional – the character is bursting over with something, a secret, a regret, a plan – and it needs to be expelled. [more]

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Beauty Break: Horizontal Lovelies

From top to bottom chronologically: Natalie Wood, Jane Fonda as Barbarella, Burt Reynolds as The Cosmopolitan Man, Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia Organa, Miss Piggy, La Pfeiffer as Catwoman, Rollergirl of Boogie Nights fame, Charlize Theron as Aeon Flux, and Dame Helen Mirren.

P.S. If you would like to replay this post at maximum volume, might I suggest queueing up the Velvet Goldmine soundtrack whilst doing so?