The Linking Dead

Towleroad Jack O'Connell will star in Andrew Haigh's Alexander McQueen biopic. Good casting
MTV Is Jon Hamm funny... when the punchline is always just, "Jon Hamm"
Guardian Tom Hardy to play famous Antartica explorer in 1914 set film
/Film Scott Derrickson says he wants to make a Doctor Strange sequel 'in the vein of The Dark Knight'. First the Inception inspired visuals than this? Someone take his Chris Nolan dvds away pronto!
Tracking Board Catherine Keener joins Del Toro & Brolin for the Sicario sequel called Soldado
The Talkhouse Filmmaker Bruce LaBruce sings the praise of...wait for it... John Travolta & Lily Tomlin in infamous Moment By Moment (1978)

Express Susan Sarandon in costume as Bette Davis for Feud
Interview talks to rising star Alden Ehrenreich - great photoshoot too
Comics Alliance shares concept art from Suicide Squad that wasn't used. Too colorful and fantastically gorgeous (Enchantress) - not grimy and ugly enough for Warner Bros / DC comic aesthetic!
Nerds of Color grades the reviews for Doctor Strange on how they deal with the Swinton casting as The Ancient One 
i09 Star Trek: Discovery just lost Bryan Fuller as its showrunner
Variety Apparently Jude & Robert are going to make yet another Sherlock Holmes movie. Wasn't 2 enough? 
/Film Shaun The Sheep Movie is getting a sequel. Hopefully this one will have a less awkward title 
Coming Soon lots of photos from the set of Thor: Ragnarok as it wraps filming 

Gay Gay Gay
People Trevante Rhodes talks about playing gay in Moonlight (straight stars are getting much better at these interviews but one wishes gay actors could get a crack at some of these key gay roles) 
Variety Will & Grace considering a possible TV revival after their election special reunion
THR Sean Hayes apologizes for not coming out sooner while receiving a prize from OutFest
Kenneth in the (212) Stonewall Fundraising Event gets help from icons like Cher, Madonna & Steve Nicks 

TV
Playbill Patti LuPone on joining Crazy Ex Girlfriend
YouTube John Cleese recap of The Walking Dead's first six seasons - it's funny and I don't even watch the show
Vulture reminds me why I don't watch the show by discussing its more exploitative qualities when it comes to the violence
Fusion a great piece on the non-sexualized dude robots on Westworld 

Just 4 Fun
Gothamist best dog costumes at Halloween in Thompson Square Park including movie spoofs like Human Centipede, The Little Shop of Horrors, and Harry Potter
Vulture remembering the best Celebrity Vines

...And Lady Gaga on Carpool Karaoke 

Tweets and Where To Find Them

Before we get to this week's best and most amusing tweets on topics like HBO's Westworld, film reviews, Ben Affleck, Hillary Clinton and more after the jump, let's start with a few tweets on the next franchise no one has seen yet but is still eager to spend billions on... Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them. (sigh)

The direction I'd take the Harry Potter franchise in... #LetsGetWiested pic.twitter.com/JzuaWRtYzV

— Mark (@dublin_zoetrope) October 16, 2016

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The "Bad Moms" Sequel You Don't Want Is Coming

Chris here. One of the biggest success stories of the past summer was Bad Moms. The film's strong word of mouth and box office staying power flew in the face of the more macho movies that came and quickly went during this lackluster season. With a fun cast of likeable stars including headliners Mila Kunis, Kathryn Hahn, and Kristen Bell you can see how distributor STX Entertainment would want to replicate their biggest success yet. They've just announced a sequel is being fasttracked, but don't get too excited.

Next year's sequel will flip the script in the lamest of unexpected ways: Bad Dads.

Call me crazy, but isn't the concept Bad Dads exactly the kind of film we get all of the time, the antithesis of which made Bad Moms's concept so appealing to audiences? This flies in the face of exactly how the film was able to financially merit a sequel in the first place, not to mention denies us a potential franchise of Hahn being hilarious.

There's no word yet if Dads will be a direct offshoot and keep any characters, or if writer/directors Jon Lucas and Scott Moore will return, but STX is planning several films, reality shows, and consumer products. Does this film have any chance of being unique next to the bawdy manchild likes of Old School and The Hangover?

Power Link and Iron Fist

Vanity Fair interviews reclusive legend Warren Beatty. He talks Annette, his trans son Stephen and
i09 Forest Whitaker is joining the ever-expanding cast of Marvel's Black Panther movie
Vulture Daniel Craig, newly platinum blonde, is warming up to returning to the 007 gig. Money money money. Money money money. ♫ Money money money. If you happen to be rich - .......Ooooh -- and you feel like a Night's entertainment, you can pay for a gay escapade.

 

Antagony & Ecstacy catches up with The Neon Demon and loves it more than he knows he should
MNPP it looks like Nicolas Hoult will be playing Nikola Tesla in the costume drama Current War about the fight over monetizing electricity co-starring those actors of endless ubiquity: Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon.
The Playlist Guy Ritchie will direct Disney's live action Aladdin. Weird.
/Film Boyd Holbrook will play the cyborg villain Donald Pierce in the third Wolverine movie, now titled Logan
AV Club Ron Perlman has finally given up his dream of Hellboy 3 

Power Man and Iron Fist
I don't know how many people who are into Marvel's modern universe of TV and movies knows this but Luke Cage was always paired with Iron Fist in the comicbooks. That's hard to imagine now because Luke Cage has been portrayed as such a loner in both Jessica Jones and on his own show.

I know this because I was kind of addicted to that duo as a kid. When I heard they were adapting it for television I wanted Marvel to quit whitewashing the Iron Fist character. Yes Danny was always white but since he grew up in Tibet and is a master of martial arts it would make sense that he were Asian. What's more the common narrative of the white man being better than all the Asians at the super powerful stuff they picked up over in Asia (see also Dr Strange's sorcery) is inherently a racist trope. We were not alone in this thinking. Apparently the handsome actor Lewis Tan, who will play one of the villains in the show, actually wanted to play Iron Fist but Marvel was adamant that he be white (sigh). So we get Finn Jones in the lead role who is most famous for playing Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers in Game of Thrones.

In happier casting news, after Iron Fist premieres we'll eventually get the team up series The Defenders (which will feature Sigourney Weaver as their big bad (yes!))  Here's the new Comic Con teaser for Iron Fist in case you missed it.

Review: Bridget Jones's Baby

by Eric Blume

Everyone’s favorite contemporary British heroine is back:  Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) is now successful, at her ideal weight, and alas still single.  In Bridget Jones’s Baby, she has two surprising one-night stands with different men:  an American dating guru (Patrick Dempsey) and her former flame Mark Darcy (Colin Firth).  Then she’s pregnant:  who could the father be?  Will we see misunderstandings and shenanigans along the lines of a typical Three’s Company episode?  Unfortunately, yes…yes, we do.

The original 2001 Bridget Jones’s Diary remains a mini-classic of its kind:  one of the most dignified and intelligent of its genre (romantic comedy), yet it also transcends the genre, truly plumbing some depth (as mainstream movies go) about accepting who you really are, and understanding what love actually is.  It went beyond your typical “boy and girl like each other because they’re in a movie together as leads” mentality and went to the heart of the characters’ specifics.  With sharp, interesting acting from its three leads (Zellweger, Firth, and Hugh Grant), the film had snap and verve; it felt vital.

Diary’s skilled director, Sharon Maguire, didn’t return for the first sequel (Beyond Reason) but is back in the chair for Baby...

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