'just link a prayer, your click can take me there... 🎵

• Guardian has a really fascinating interview with Sean Penn about his novel (yes he wrote one), his ex-wives, his humanitarian work, the Me Too movement and more
• AV Club Netflix suggests it's going to back away a bit from its war against the movies... or at least from competing on the awards battlefield. Does this mean they're abandoning their Oscar campaigns? This statement is quite vague.
• Boy Culture connects two of my favorite things of all time: Madonna's "Like a Prayer" phase and... Natalie Wood?
• Time Can Oceans 8 bring back the glamourous caper?

• EW Uma Thurman willing to work with Quentin Tarantino again
• W interviews Grace Jone about her fierceness "I pack a good wallop"
• Variety YES! A24 is planting the seeds for an Oscar campaign for Toni Collette in the horror film Hereditary
• Coming Soon For some reason Monty Python's Spamalot is going to become a movie
• Variety Olivia de Havilland talks about being Cannes very first female jury president decades ago
• Electric Literature "storytelling" in WestWorld and how literary it actually is
• Awards Daily Academy votes to expel Roman Polanski and Bill Cosby
• AV Club Steve Martin and Martin Short are actual best friends
• i09 beautiful posters for King Kong's Broadway musical debut
• Playboy "Hollywood's pansexual moment" - interesting points in this article but I'm really quite annoyed that we've jumped from gay rights to "let not define ourselves and let's explore fluidity" and are acting like homophobia is solved / gays are accepted. There are literally still laws being pushed in the US to discriminate against queer people - even this very week! 

Click to enlargeAvengers Mania
<-- This Captain Marvel poster going around looked so official I thought it was. Apparently it's actually fan art by a Brazilian illustrator Fabio Rodrigues

• Vulture Infinity War facial hair rankings
• Monkey See Glen Weldon coins a genius term for the ending of Avengers: Infinity War. Well worth a close read.
• Crooked Marquee Eric D Snider wins the award for "best headline to an Avengers Infinity War review"
• /Film Black Widow's solo film actively looking for a director (even though no screenplay is written yet. Hmmm)
• AV Film how are we supposed to care about Ant-Man and the Wasp post the brutal ending of Infinity War
• Coming Soon Infinity War has been out just one week and it's already nearly at a billion dollars globally. Jesus.
• Express a very elaborate theory on how Captain Marvel and Ant Man could save the day in Infinity Wars Part 2

Beauty vs Beast: The Charm About You

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" - this Wednesday marks 118 years since the birth of the dancing legend Fred Astaire, light as air, and so let's tackle (with as much grace as we can muster) his greatest film opposite his greatest co-star, 1935's Top Hat with Ginger Rogers. The story, as much as is there one is a case of mistaken identities - Jerry (Astaire) tap dances his way into the heart of Dale (Rogers) while she thinks he's somebody else, yadda yadda, they bicker and they dance and they make eternal movie magic.

PREVIOUSLY The monkey won! Last week's King Kong competition ping-ponged between the ape and the blonde but in the end twas the Beast that finally killed the Beauty this go-round with 55% of your vote. Said Edward L:

"I call this a tie. Kong is the mightiest film character...but all he wants is Ann, so she's got to have something too."

Beauty vs Beast: Monkey Business

Jason from MNPP here for another round of "Beauty vs Beast" - today is the 86th anniversary of the grand opening of the Empire State Building, aka the most famous building in the world. And so in its honor we're finally tackling the movie that not only birthed its legend but also gave this series its name...

"It was beauty killed the beast."

The Empire State Building was opened on May 1st 1931. President Hoover pushed a button in the White House in DC and the lights to the tower in NYC flicked on for the first time. Just under two years later the movie King Kong would be released (director Merian Cooper supposedly came up with the idea of the plane battle at its top), immediately branding the iconic skyscraper and its most famous big monkey occupant - and his little blonde friend (Fay Wray) - onto every human brain, and forever thereafter.

PREVIOUSLY Last week's contest faced down the mother-daughter duo of Postcards From the Edge and once again proved you should never bet against Meryl Streep - she stomped right over birthday gal Shirley MacLaine with 61% of your vote. Although forever1267 really summed up my own thoughts on the question:

"Where is the "Both" button?"

Was King Kong a Box Office Monster?

What did you see this weekend?

check out that monster-sized beard on KONG SKULL ISLAND director Jordan Vogt-Roberts!

After catching up on TV shows like Big Little Lies and Feud, I went to Kong: Skull Island with a friend. Afterwards I eagerly read Chris's review, nodding a long at most of it. It's an easy-sit with surprising charm (mostly by way of John C Reilly's ad libbing... he seriously saves the movie from its paint-by-numbers blockbuster strategy) but wow was it disposable. Will anyone remember anything about it in a year's time?

And this to build a whole franchise on? Not too many of my audience members stayed for the stinger after the credits but that it was an enjoyable visual tease of other iconic kaiju like Godzilla, Ghidra, and Mothra. While the film opened at #1 it seems likely that Warner Bros was looking for much bigger numbers to launch a whole franchise on. The last installment of Godzilla, for example, opened to over $90 million.  Perhaps by pairing them in Kong vs Godzilla (due in 2020) they can get closer to $100? Box Office charts for the weekend and some related news items are after the jump...

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On This Day: Globes for two goddesses. Plus a non-jolly green giant

On this day in history as it relates to showbiz...

1892  One of Old Hollywood's most undersung but talented 1930s directors Gregory La Cava is born. Classics include Stage Door and My Man Godfrey
1913 Famed abolitionist and American hero Harriet Tubman dies of pneumonia. So glad she's getting biopic treatment soon. And twice over!
1938 The 10th annual Oscars are held with The Life of Emile Zzzzzola winning Best Picture and Louise Rainer taking her consecutive Best Actress prize but the most enduring anecdote was of course the theft of Alice Brady's Oscar for In Old Chicago.
1958 Sharon Stone is born in Pennysylvania

The 1959 Golden Globes (and more) are after the jump...

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