Hello, I Must Be Linking

/Film Chris Hemsworth on the set of Ron Howard's Rush about race car drivers
Flavorwire Fun stories from Joss Whedon's SXSW Talk: The Avengers, Buffy, TV versus film, and more.
Ultra Culture puts 2012 releases thus far through the wonderful "Bechdel Test" in which a movie must have more than 1 female character and they must talk to each other... about something other than a man). Naturally most of them fail.

My Modern Met just incredible "Star Wars Identity" posters. I wish other films would inspire the kind of enduring creativity this franchise does from people... because given the developments of the past 30 years our global worship of this franchise is just, well, embarrassing.
THR Hello I Must Be Going, a hit at Sundance starring Melanie Lynskey (yay!), is getting a theatrical release later this year.
Wow Report ouch! (NSFW) A nasty accident for a son of a movie superstar. Guess who?
Movie|Line Tom Cruise is the latest star being talked up to play opposite Beyoncé in the A Star is Born. If it weren't a Clint Eastwood picture I'd assume this movie was never happening but since it's a Clint Eastwood picture some male star is eventually going to bite before Blue Ivy is old enough to take the role from Mama.

Oh look. It's Javier Bardem on the set of Skyfall. With blonde hair? 

Villains just can't be trusted with hair dye.

And I kept forgetting to post the Genie Award winners but Awards Daily did that duty. Here's Viggo Mortensen accepting Best Supporting Actor for A Dangerous Method. Good pick, Genie. He was great in that movie. Not that greatness is surprising these days from Viggo.

Viggo. Viggo. Viggo.

What's Going On At Sundance?

Parker Posey in "Price Check"If you're anything like me, you have trouble paying attention to Sundance unless you're actually there. It's not that it isn't a great festival. It's that it arrives during the explosion that is the Oscar Nominations. But nevertheless, a few crumbs about what's going on there, before they hand out their awards (the festival ends tomorrow). These are a few bits I found interesting from the vast amount of information that's pouring out of Park City. 

Parker Posey is baaaaack. She's starring in the dark comedy Price Check as an ambitious marketing head of a grocery store chain.  IndieWire talks to her about her various Sundance journeys which just gives me one more excuse to tell you that my fondest memory of Sundance ever was the time she danced with me on the dance floor at a party. That really happened. I sometimes think I dreamed it. She was as fun in person as she is onscreen.

Marc Webber's The End of Love is getting a lot of press by way of casting. The director -- who you'll know as an actor from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World -- cast his own two year old son Isaac as his co-star in this film about a widower and his son. Though it's based somewhat on his own life, Webber's is not a widower, he's a divorcee. Apparently people are l-o-v-i-n-g the toddler. Consider this tweet from Josh Dickey at Variety:

Awards season 2013 prediction: a viral supporting-actor campaign for 2-year old Isaac Love."

I could see that working in an Uggie for Best Supporting Actor kind of way. At the very least it's publicity.

One of TFE's favorite character actresses Melanie Lynskey (who recently shared her memories of Heavenly Creatures with TFE readers) has a lead role for once in Hello I Must Be Going. The film has been well reviewed, especially when it comes to her performance as a 30something divorcee who falls for a younger man. We'll see it the first chance we get. Go Melanie!

One comedy getting plentiful laughs and attention is the debut film Bachelorette which is a mean girls comedy starring Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan, James Marsden and Isla Fisher. I don't only bring this up because the cast sounds perfect/delicious.

I bring this up because the writer/director, first timer Lesley Headland is an old frienquaintance from here in NYC. She invited me to a workshop of one of her first plays here in NYC five years ago and I gave her one of her first quotes.

Hilarious. Forceful. Insightful. As a character (Leslye writes and acts the part) "Arden" has an infectiously raucous energy with that fascinating sexy and/or terrifying aura of a young Sandra Bernhard."

The play later opened in LA and then returned to New York. She even guest blogged for The Film Experience! And now she's directed a movie starring Kiki Dunst and I am still blogging. Oh christ. What have I done with my life?

The Surrogate is the film that's garnering the most Oscar buzz thus far but it's always hard to know with Sundance hits if they'll transfer once they're in lower altitudes. The film stars Winter's Bone Oscar nominee John Hawkes as a man with no movement below his neck (Oscar loves a disability) who loses his virginity to a sex therapist played by Helen Hunt. Fox Searchlight will distribute the film but since it's an Oscar hopeful, it might be 11 months until it's in theaters. (Sigh)

Helen Hunt and John Hawkes in "The Surrogate"

A Sample of The Deals from the Wintry Slopes of Park City
The Weinstein Co, usually a buyer, is mysteriously absent. But they have a ton of big name films already planned for 2012 including the latest from Tarantino so perhaps their schedule was already locked up. 

•Robot and Frank, "a sci-fi crowdpleaser" according to EW, stars Frank Langella as a man who develops an odd relationship with the robot his children gift him with. Sony Pictures and Samuel Goldwyn will partner on the release.
• How to Survive a Plague, an AIDS doc, purchased by Sundance Selects 
•For a Good Time Call... went to Focus Features.
•Beasts of the Southern Wild, a debut from Benh Zeitlin, purchased by Fox Searchlight
•Red Lights, a psychological thriller, will be distributed by Millenium Entertainment.
•Celeste and Jesse Forever was bought by SPC. It's a romantic comedy starring Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg.
• Liberal Arts is from writer/director/star Josh Radnor following up his happythankyoumoreplease with a romantic comedy costarring Elizabeth Olsen. I'm beginning to think she'll be the Jessica Chastain of 2012 or 2013. So so so so so so so many films.
•Arbitage, a financial drama starring Richard Gere that's been likened to Margin Call, jointly purchased by Roadside and Lionsgate
•Wish You Were Here, an Australian thriller starring Joel Edgerton, purchased by Entertainment One
•Simon Killer, from the collective that brought you After School and Martha Marcy purchased by IFC . Brady Corbet moves up to leading position after supporting roles in their other films.
•The Words starring Bradley Cooper, Dennis Quaid, Jeremy Irons, Olivia Wilde and Zoe Saldana is about a writer and a genius manuscript he finds. It went to CBS Films 

Melanie's Mini Memoir: Winslet, Jackson and "Heavenly Creatures"

Our Wednesday night series Hit Me With Your Best Shot resumes on May 4th with David Lynch's Eraserhead (see the May & June schedule here), but tonight we bring you A Very Special Episode.

We knew from Twitter that the actress Melanie Lynskey (Win Win) enjoyed this particular series. After our group gaze at Heavenly Creatures (1994), which happened to be her film debut, she sent us the following note with permission to publish it. How great! Melanie is currently in movie theaters as the troubled mom in Win Win but she's got two more films on the way. She's completed work on Eye of the Hurricane co-starring with Campbell Scott (another underrated actor) and Touchback, a sports fantasy starring Kurt Russell. 

Melanie takes it from here...

"So excited you did a Hit Me With Your Best Shot on "Heavenly Creatures". I loved reading what everyone had to say. I don't know if I can do a *best* shot, but the one that came to mind instantly as being the most symbolic of my experience on the movie as a whole is a small scene which is part of the montage in the early scenes of the friendship (you talked a bit about that montage). There's a shot where Diana Kent dabs her lips with a napkin at a dinner table and the camera swoops around the table and settles on me imitating the way she does that.

It's kind of a weird shot for me to choose; there are so many beautiful shots in the movie (the amazing Alun Bollinger, AlBol!) and so many moments I so clearly remember filming because I was so connected to Kate in that moment, or I was going through some crazy emotional turmoil for a scene and there it is, captured forever.

Filming that little dining room scene, to witness Peter's energy and how badly he wanted this tiny little moment to work out was about the most inspiring thing my little 15 year old self could see. He had this idea, and he wanted to make it work, and every take we did felt exciting, because we were all so invested in making that shot happen. I remember looking around the room and really feeling so grateful to be exactly where I was at that moment, with a group of frustrated people in a little room doing the same thing over and over.

I cant remember how many takes we did. We did it many times and I remember Peter just being so committed, even though it was proving very difficult to capture. The timing was very tricky.  The feeling of being part of a group of collaborators working together to create something was so powerful to me. I felt so fortunate to be part of the group.

The scene in the bathtub where it's all kind of blue - i remember that one like it was yesterday, it was so intense, the feeling in the room. And the shot of Kate is insane, about as beautiful as it gets. And any scene with Sarah Peirse feels extraordinary to me because she gave such a beautiful, honest performance. She just amazes me.

When I think about that shoot, the thing that I think about is how completely excited I was to be doing my first professional acting job, and how the most exciting times for me were those where I was sitting there thinking...

This is a movie. This is what it's like when people make a movie. This is amazing.

When Peter would get all excited about something, he would get like a little boy and it was adorable. Every camera move he and AlBol came up with was just mesmerising. The pieces would all click together and the chemistry of the scene would start to be created, and to me, it felt like magic.

They always wanted movement, and we as actors were always timing what we were doing to the camera move. Kate and I needed to have so much energy at all times, and Peter and AlBol and the way they were shooting really contributed to this sort of breathless, intense, excited headspace that we pretty much lived in for 3 months. Kate and I would go home at the end of a long day and hang out for hours just jabbering away to each other."

We sincerely thank Melanie Lynskey for this mini-window back to the making of one of the best films of the 1990s. [Here's the original post which prompted it.]

Next Wednesday on "HMWYBS" we're discussing David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977). Join us with your own choice or just be here for the discussion. Eraserhead is currently available on Netflix Instant Watch.

Best Shot: "HEAVENLY CREATURES"

Hit Me With Your Best Shot. Each week we assign a movie. Participants are asked to select its best shot and post it to their own webspace by Wednesday evening. Everyone is welcome to join in. Next week's topic is Beauty & The Beast (1991) and there had better be a big crowd. Who doesn't love that movie?

Today we're gazing at...

HEAVENLY CREATURES (1994)

With last year's mania for the dehumanizing Kick-Ass, this Spring's death-skilled Hanna and the internet's current casting obsessions with Hunger Games, in which a young girl Katniss (to be played by Jennifer Lawrence) becomes a killer to stay alive in a future that loves murder games, you'd think just about every other violent act in the world nowadays was committed by teenage girls. This type of violence can still shock onscreen -- and I hope it always will -- but it almost never arrives with both bludgeon force and emotional acuity the way it does in Peter Jackson's hysteric and hysterically imaginative Heavenly Creatures.

The problem that Heavenly Creatures poses with a "best shot" blogging experiment is not that it doesn't have these images, but that the images are rarely static and eager to be captured with your typical screen capturing devices. Only full on film clips would suffice. Peter Jackson loves the motion in his motion pictures and Juliet ("Introducing... Kate Winslet") and Pauline ("And Introducing... Melanie Lynskey") are about the most spastic female characters of the past couple of decades outside of maybe Molly Shannon's "Superstar!" They're constantly flinging themselves about. (read the full post.)

Click to read more ...