Babs getting verklempt over Hathaway is too camp for even me.
I mean. Between those two tweets who can we think of anything else now? Okay we'll try after the jump with tweets on tv feminism, Sully anticipation, Sally Field's range, and finding Mr Darcy...
A somewhat quiet week for moviegoing as all eyes turn towards the Superbowl. Well, not all eyes. I don't know who's playing other than Beyoncé. Kung Fu Panda had no trouble fending off newcomers. Star Wars recently crossed the $2 billion mark worldwide (though it's still behind Titanic and Avatar globally) but the new movies didn't make enough of an impression for ticket buyers. Unfortunately Hail, Caesar! opened significantly below the gross of the last widescreen comedy from the Coen brothers Burn After Reading.
BOX OFFICE 01Kung Fu Panda 2 $21 (cum. $69) 02 Hail, Caesar!$11.4 newCoen Brothers - 17 Films, Interview: Score 03 The Revenant$7.1 (cum. $149.7) Interview: Costumes, Interview: Production Design 04 Star Wars: The Force Awakens$6.9(cum. $905.9)Review, Podcast 05 The Choice$6 new 06 Pride & Prejudice & Zombies$5.2 newReview 07 The Finest Hours$4.7 (cum. $18.3) 08 Ride Along 2$4.5 (cum. $77.2) 09 The Boy $4 (cum $26.8) 10 Dirty Grandpa $4 (cum $29.3)
What did you see this weekend? I rewatched Silence of the Lambs (for our 25th anniversary celebration which starts tomorrow!) and also hit Pride & Prejudice & Zombies. Some friends asked me to wait for them for Hail, Caesar! and I agreed. This is always a bad decision because they are never in the hurry that I am to devour new movies
This review originally appeared in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad...
Lily James, from Cinderella to Zombie Slayer
“Pride and Prejudice,” Jane Austen’s classic novel about the Bennet sisters and their suitors, has one of the most famous opening lines in all of literature.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an adaptation Jane never could have seen coming despite her gifts, twists the opening line so that we’re no longer talking courtship but hunger; zombies in want of brains. So let’s twist the line again. ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that pop culture, possessed by the love of fanfic, must be in want of works in the Public Domain!’
EW Marisa Tomei joins the cast of Empire as a lesbian billionaire - whoa. Please let her throw down with Taraji Nicks Flick Picks is also on the halfway mark, year in review beat with a lot of movies I haven't seen (sigh) Jane Fonda on her summer screenings and returning to work on Grace and Frankie - she got an acting coach! EWPride & Prejudice & Zombies photos. Yikes. What's with the lingerie ad costumes? Awards Daily thinks Scorsese's Silence might be ready just in time for Oscar. I personally hope he takes his time and we get it next year. I like having breaks from the Oscar regulars or Oscar just becomes too much like the Emmys!
Slate thinks Rolan Emmerich's Stonewall looks too much like a cheap musical Playbill reminds us that Magic Mike (2012) is being made into a stage musical. What isn't... but still I'd totally forgotten Business Insider here's an area you never see covered: the weapons department on a studio picture. Terminator Genisys in this case Comics Alliance new pics from Batman vs. Superman. One of them seems to have Superman surrounded by a bunch of zombies so.... Twitter cracked me up when looking at that picture
Yes No Maybe So Queen of the Desert trailer has arrived, asking the question "Who the hell is Gertrud Bell" - I can't give it its own post because there are too many trailers these past couple of days. But you should YNMS in the comments if you're in the mood. So jealous of Robert Pattinson when he's holding those lion cubs. Awww.
Show Tune To Go Showtunes to Cherish For All Time These couple of weeks have all been about City Center productions for me. Every summer they do these amazing staged readings. Last week I saw Jonathan Groff and Ana Gasteyer do William Finn's "A New Brain" which is a terrific underperformed musical. (Gasteyer as it turns out was born for the musical stage, SNL aside). Next up is Sutton Foster doing "The Wild Party" so naturally I'm quite excited.
In between those two shows, as you may have heard, Ellen Greene reprised her "Audrey" role in Little Shop of Horrors this week at a staged reading at City Center. Jason went. I went. Joe Reid was wayyyyy up front (I was green with envy and confused since I bought my tickets the second they went on sale!). The New York Times Ben Brantley raved. Everyone was there. Or everyone will pretend to have been there years from now when people are still talking about this.
Ellen, who is now in her sixties, was in fine form and wearing her original costumes no less. She was a shameless ham, milking her every line, pose, and big notes for maximum audience pleasure. Whenever a singer with a gargantuan voice has a signature tune that they've sung for decades the tunes always get a little more affected every time, possibly to keep them entertained. (Have you heard Jennifer Holliday do "And I'm Telling You" lately? It's just a series of abstract vowels and growls now, it's so weird.) Ellen nearly took "Suddenly Seymour" there but still brought the house down. "Somewhere That's Green" on the other hand was just so tender and yearning and funny... my god the goosebumps. That voice can still send shivers all over you of aural pleasure, innate empathy, belly laughs. She's a treasure.
FWIW Jake Gyllenhaal played Seymour and he was very funny when ad-libbing (it's a staged reading with limited rehearsal time so some flubbed lines allow actors to embellish or get the audience on their side) and his voice ain't half bad either.
Ellen Greene's standing ovation was so epic and rumbling I feared the balcony would collapse and kill us all. Which would, come to think of it, be a fitting end for this grim comedy. The movie (be very grateful that her performance was preserved for all time) granted Audrey and Seymour a happy ending but they die in the musical. And then they sing their warning tale.
Whatever they offer you, don't feed the plant!
Picking a favorite song from this musical is impossible, I've listend to it so often over the years, but "Skid Row" is the one that doesn't get any attention that I cherish so here that is.
Village Voice is Frozen the first Disney movie about girls rather than for them? The New Yorker asks Richard Brody, film critic, to explain himself. Cute video but omg his desk is cramped Jezebel somehow I missed this interview where Bryan Singer blamed women for the failure of Superman Returns (2006)... Jezebel, predictably, has words for him. The Dissolve has a piece about the toxicity of twitter and its effects on intrafeminist battles. Really interesting and ties into what's been going on with the Dylan Farrow letter I think VF George Clooney's advice for posing on the cover of Vanity Fair Coming Soon interesting. Dakota Fanning to headline the next film from Miss Bala director Gerardo Naranjo. She'll play a roadie on the way towards self discovery
NY Times Phedon Papamichael, nominated for his cinematography on Nebraska shares his favorite things of the moment from Instagram to the Polish film Ida Pajiba on the beautiful casting of a new Netflix show: Linda & Kyle & Sissy oh my Coming Soon got 10 free hours? Amazon Instant Watch debuts 10 new series pilots we've never heard of today but one of them called Mozart in the Jungle has a great team and cast i09 a movie version of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamboat produced by Elton John, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber? Sure why not. But they better get a costume designer that's on point
Cinema BlendPride and Prejudice and Zombies is actually on track towards filming again. Ha. The saga of this movie is probably more exciting than the movie could ever hope to be. Lily Collins will star. Coming Soon the original Fantastic Four movies were just terrible and I have literally no optimism for the reboot either despite admiring director Josh Trank's Chronicle and virtually all of the actors individually just not the in roles he's considering them for.His casting is too young, too arbitrary, too non-WASPy. I know it's foolish to lament the lack of role opportunities for hot blondes in Hollywood - Hahaha - but if any superhero role ever was meant for a WASPy blonde and a WASPy blonde alone it was Sue Storm. Kate Mara and Emmy Rossum don't fit the bill and isn't Miles Teller way too young and fun-loving for the science genius gravitas of Mr Fantastic?
Finally You know how much we love the topic of age and acting here at TFE. Well on this recent HuffPo conversation they discuss the earning power drop for actresses which comes, they say, at 34. With men their power doesn't drop until their mid 50s.
I started the video aggravated that all the panelists seemed clueless about the disparity when it came to the men... I mean it's so obvious since male actors don't even start their reign until their 30s usually (Leonardo DiCaprio is not the norm, he's a rarity. What's far more common is the Channing Tatums and Brad Pitts of the world who kick around for a bit winning some attention and then *BOOM* supernova at about 30)... but I'm glad they ignored the men and discussed the women. It's an interesting conversation and Lisa Rosman is a critic I liked and she's good on the fly discussing this. I would need to read more about this study to believe the results fully though because from where I sit it does seem to me that actress careers are lasting longer, even in terms of lead roles, than they once did. Obviously Sandra Bullock, even more successful than she once was as she approaches 50 -- and she was pretty successful to begin with! -- is a rarity. And yet in general it does seem to me that the major actresses are having longer shelf lives than they once did. They don't seem to just vanish until their mid to late 40s early 50s now (notice the quick fades of Hunter, Allen, Linney, Clarkson, etcetera) rather than the late 30s early 40s it once was.
Friday, September 2, 2016 at 8:30AM 
