The New Classics - 20th Century Women

Michael Cusumano here to thank you for making this post part of your own personal Mike Mills film today. I'm honored.

image via "books in movies"

To watch a Mike Mills movie is to continually ask, “Why don’t more people make movies with this much freedom?” 

His films deploy everything from news clips to rotating narrators to archival footage from a century ago. The screenplay will jump backwards in time, skimming through the characters’ biographies, or forwards to glimpse the details of their death. The focus can zoom in to the most granular details or out to encompass the entire cosmos. I doubt he will ever make a film that doesn’t include a shot of the stars. At least I hope he doesn’t... 

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Happy Links Are Here Again

For today's link roundup ONLY articles that made me smile over these past few holiday-smeared days even if a few of them have that melancholy undertow.

Jezebel Rooney Mara refuses Taylor Swift's pleas to hang out
Decider Joe Reid's top 16 of everything 2016
Idolator Deee-Lite's classic "World Clique" LP getting a deluxe reissue. I really cannot express how much I love that record

Adequate Man things that got stuck in people's orifices this year, via emergency room databases. LOL
New York Times fascinating article about Judy Garland and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" from Meet Me In St Louis which is incidentally one of my favorite movies of all time. Like ALL time. 
The Establishment "General Leia Organa is the Hero We Need Right Now" 
Playbill Adorable. Gifted Broadway darling Laura Benanti will be doing a cabaret show with her mother Linda "The Story Goes On" this summer. Want tickets. Now! 
Interview talks to Lucas Jade Zumann about his 20th Century Women breakthrough and auditions as a teenage actor. Ah the endearing often beautiful precociousness of goodhearted showbiz kids. Consider...

It's not that I don't plan on pursuing acting forever, it's just that my ultimate goal is to be a meditation guide and spiritual healer, along with studying plant medicine and stuff like that. I want to be able to do that without profit. I want to be able to provide medicine for people without them having to pay for it, since I think that's something that reduces the value of the medicine. I think that having an acting career and a different source of income would allow me to help people without having to charge them.