Happenings: Jackman, Spacek, Turner, Fillion, Kidman

I'm losing patience with today's scientists. The world has changed so rapidly in my lifetime but there doesn't seem to be any progress with teleportation. I don't know about you but I need to be in several places quite often and in quick succewssion. Who has time for planes, trains or automobiles? Look at how much there is to experience near you at unreasonable distances from each other.

War of the Roses (1989)

TORONTO
Today! Kathleen Turner will be honored today with a mini free film festival at the Carlton Cinema: Peggy Sue Got Married and Romancing the Stone this afternoon. The War of the Roses and Body Heat this evening. If you're near there, why miss it? I'd totally hit The War of the Roses because and Body Heat because I haven't seen it in ages (the former) and have never seen it on the big screen (the latter). I think the great lady is in town with her recovery drama High on stage. That closed quickly here on Broadway but they're sure pushing the tour which they can do if a star is willing to tour.

LOS ANGELES
Today Plus! The Getty is hosting a film series "What Becomes a Legend Most"  kicking things off with Rudolph Valentino's The Sheik and the incomparable Pandora's Box starring Louise Brooks (which we've covered in our "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series previously. If you're in LA and have never seen it, do not miss the opportunity to see it on the big screen. Other classics coming in the Getty series include two more "Hit Me" alums A Streetcar Named Desire and Rebel Without a Cause. 

EDINBURGH
Monday The Railway Man, a new World War centric prestige drama about a traumatized soldier and a woman helping him confront his past, starts shooting. The film will star Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, and Stellan Skarsgard (incidentally a friend of the book's author). Kidman's role is apparently being beefed up from what it was on the book's pages. 

CANNES
May 16th-27th The world's most important film festival begins with an opening ceremony hosted by recent Oscar nominee Berenice Bejo and a screening of Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom  and closes with the late Claude Miller's Therese Desqueyroux starring Audrey Tautou. Many significant things will happen inbetween. I love MUBI's easy to follow Cannes guide.

LOS ANGELES
May 18th-23rd marks the second annual Hero Complex Film Festival via the Los Angeles Times. They always show geek friendly movies with special guests like the actors of filmmakers. The most exciting day this year, according to me, is Sunday the 20th when they'll show WALL•E with Andrew Stanton there to discuss and preview Brave followed by Serenity (which we were just talking about) with Nathan Fillion appearing.

SEATTLE
June 7th  "An Evening With Sissy Spacek" ! The screen legend is being honored for Outstanding Achievement in Acting via the Seattle International Film Festival. I wonder what she makes of all the Carrie revisionism these days? I'm sure people will ask.

NEW YORK AND ON YOUR TELLY
June 10th The Tony Awards (more on these later) hosted by Neil Patrick Harris and undoubtedly featuring many screen and stage stars. 

NEW YORK
June 23rd Hugh Jackman will be hosting Trop Fest, the world's largest short film festival in Bryant Park. The festival is 20 years old and began in Australia, hence quite possibly the presence of our favorite musical theater mutant. You can reserve a space here -- the event is free but it will obviously "sell out".

What special events are happening in your town in the near future? Should we teleport there as well?

"It's Her Year"

I think you have to hand it to both Meryl Streep and Viola Davis during this pre-season. The former co-stars (Doubt) and friends are constantly being pitted against each other by eager awards gurus and Oscar fans alike but they're both staying classy in regards to what may or may not be an epic upcoming battle for the Best Actress crown. Perhaps one of them will take the lead this week and never let it go starting at the Critics Choice (Thursday) and Globes (Sunday) but last night at the New York Film Critics Circle dinner they were their usual classy selves. Viola presented Meryl her Best Actress prize.

It’s a testament to her that she’d do this in this year, which is her year."

Meryl reportedly said when accepting the honor. 

"It's his/her year"

We hear that each and every year though the faces change. It's fascinating that it looks like it's coming down to Meryl or Viola when they're such gracious vocal fans of each other. Meryl even asked Hollywood to give Viola a big role when she won prizes for Doubt. Here we are a few years later...

Whose year is it anyway? 

Anne Hathaway Sings "She's Me Pal" to Meryl Streep

The Kennedy Center Honors were a good hagiographic time last night on CBS (unless you were expecting something different in which case... where ya been? This is how lifetime tributes are). Musical theater fans would have had to enjoyed that endless Parade of Amazement when they trotted out a healthy cross section of Broadway's best female voices for the Barbara Cook homage (Sutton, Rebecca, Kelli, Patti, Audra + Glenn Close doing "Losing My Mind" !) but as for me.... as for me...

I got both my musical theater kicks and my 80s nostalgia and my Streep Mania and a current actress obsession (Hi, Annie!) all rolled up in one gift as Hathaway repurposed Streep's most indelible moment from Ironweed* (1987) to serenade Streep herself.

The line "her heart is as big as a ham" is accompanied by the splits, marking Anne Hathaway once again as a true kindred spirit PERFORMER/actress -- both ladies woulda been in vaudeville if they'd been born 100 years ago.

A+

I love that Hathaway can make her eyes well up with tears totally on cue. Acting is magic. The complete video is below. Hathaway comes in at the 11:40 mark.

*Ironweed was a flop in its day and I know so few people who have seen it but I still remember sitting in the movie theater absolutely electrified / paralyzed when Meryl belted out that "He's Me Pal" number for Jack Nicholson. At the time Meryl's musical-theater chops were a complete shock! It's easily one of my favorite moments from her entire lauded filmography.

top o' the linkin' to ya

Sydney Morning Herald production halted on The Great Gatbsy (briefly). Baz Luhrman hit on head just before Christmas. Ouch.
Listen Eggroll Mike D'Angelo's Christmas movie viewing history. Hee.
Rope of Silicon on that revolving director chair for Thor 2. What will it mean for the movie?
Indie Wire Ninety-seven Original Scores that are eligible for Oscar this year. Only five can be nominated of course. A notable omission is Alexandre Desplat's work on The Tree of Life but we figured that would get disqualified due to the abundance of non-original music in the film. As Hans Zimmer promised, he did not submit his wonderful Rango score. (sigh)

Coming Soon Charlize Theron discusses her role in Prometheus
Wider Screenings [NSFW]  in terms of budget to profit ratio the most successful film of all time is... Deep Throat.
Horror Asylum the Whedon-less reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is apparently dead. Yay!
Scene Stealers Trey Hoch really hates War Horse. He's not playing around with the hate.
The Wrap finds a silver lining in some not-so-great 2011's fare: good characters in forgettable movies.
THR Scott Feinberg's top ten. 
Hollywood Elsewhere on the strange omen of movie poster defacement in NYC, Mark Wahlberg's Contraband in this case. I also believe in this theory. The more a poster is defaced the more angry or irritated people are with its star or existence for any number of reasons.
Guardian has a Q&A with Samuel L Jackson. His greatest fear is "not working" which explains a lot about his film choices! 

War Horse Premiere. Oscar Updates Soon.

Just a quick note that tonight -- er, last night -- was a big night. It was the World Premiere of War Horse here in NYC. After I sleep on it, I'll finish updating the Oscar charts for the week. The red carpet was long but, as you know, most of the War Horse cast are relative newcomers.

And most of them took to the stage to introduce the film. It was particularly exciting to see Emily Watson looking great and Tom Hiddleston being ridiculously sexy in what I think was a velvet suit (?). Steven Spielberg apologized that he didn't bring the horse "Joey" on to the stage to introduce the movie but joked that it would not be fair since several horses played the role.  The audience was filled with luminaries as well. Spotted: Phyllicia Rashad, Tyler Perry, Celia Weston, Stephen Daldry (adorably huggy with David Kross who he directed in The Reader and who appears in War Horse), Stephen Lang, Cathy Moriarty and many more but the names or faces are escaping me since there was free liquor. What?

Yesterday it was The Iron Lady. Today War Horse. Tomorrow, it's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo... though as you may have heard online today that one is under strict tetchy embargo. So we'll just pretend I'm not seeing it yet, okay? In short: It must be December. So many movies. So little time to write about them but I'll get to everything as soon as I can! Thanks for your patience.

What did you see this weekend?