I'll Link to That: Dune, Teen Wolf, and The Gilded Age

• Interview Kirsten Dunst interviews her Melancholia costar Alexander Skarsgárd about the demands of making his Viking period epic The Northman. Fun banter!
• Gr8ter Days takes a 40th anniversary look back at the first mainstream gay movie, Making Love
• Cartoon Brew struggles over abusively low salaries for artists in Japanese anime

Dune Part Two, The Gilded Age, Teen Wolf, Anders Danielsen Lie, Teen Wolf, and a new Luca Guadagnino project after the jump...

Click to read more ...

What's Streaming from 1985?

by Nathaniel R

Most streaming platforms don't have great search capabilities. As we've long complained, they're much better for casual viewers who'll watch whatever is curated for them than devoted cinephiles who often give themselves projects (I know I'm not the only one!) to watch a certain set of films of some ilk, year, awards race of yesteryear or from some filmography. Since 1985 is our "year of the month" -- the Smackdown is just one week away! (have you voted yet?) -- I thought we'd play our streaming screengrab roulette game (wherever the scroll bar lands we take that photo - no searching for cool images or key scenes) with film titles from 1985 that are streaming currently on one of the major services. These weren't super easy to look up but here's what I found on Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. 

Will any of these random screengrabs inspire you to watch a movie? Please do speak out about anything related to any of these movies in the comments. It's more fun when you we're not just typing into the abyss.

Okay, ready here we go...

Click to read more ...

LifeRide Celebrities Are ♥️

While there are surely terrible things about being famous one of the things that is not terrible at all (unless you're just a negative person who can always find a dark cloud) is that fame gives you such massive platform to do good in the world. With a built in audience charitable appearances, fundraising ability, and fighting for pet causes are all so much easier!

Actor Gilles Marini, riding for charity. Photo Credit: Travis Shinn

Currently there are a bunch of celebrities doing the multi-city Kiehl's LifeRide for AmfAR, The Foundations for AIDS Research (which started August 3rd and runs through August 14th, ending in Philadelphia) including actors Jay Ellis (The Game), JR Bourne and Ian Bohen (Teen Wolf), Kurt Yaeger (new series Quarry), Scott Patterson (Gilmore Girls), and three... uh... longtime personal favorites of mine:  Gilles Marini (Sex & The City), Teddy Sears (Masters of Sex, The Flash, Dollhouse) and Michiel Huisman (Black Book, Wild, Game of Thrones). More photos after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Misc: Suffragette Colors, Cruise Stunts, Karl Shows, Jake Trains

Look, Suffragette finally got a poster. [src]

Unfortunately it's fugly (not Carey. She pretty). Incidentally purple and green are my favorite colors but I never like them in combo unless I'm looking at The Joker. 

Film/TV
Pajiba marvels that 'Tom Cruise does his own stunts' is way more than just lip service
Southpaw a Featurette as Jake Gyllenhaal trains for the movie
Towleroad Rob Lowe dubsmashing The Sound of Music
AV Club Oscar Isaac headlines Show Me a Hero for HBO, which now has a trailer 
AV Club hating on Teen Wolf's current season - I'm finding the show more and more incomprehensible every year. Considering quitting
The Guardian in "current weirdest movie news" Mel Gibson is now a "Creative Adviser" on a Chinese WW II epic The Bombing

Off Arts
I'm really struggling to be more well rounded as a person - i only think of the arts! - so every once in awhile i must share current and extremely random items of fascination
New Yorker "The Really Big One" -- this article on the fault lines in the Pacific Northwest is more terrifying than any disaster movie 
Slate investigates the tails of seahorses -- they're actually square unlike the traditional round 

Showtune to Go
I saw On the Twentieth Century a couple of weeks ago starring Kristin Chenoweth (one-of-a-kind amazing as usual) and you only have a few more days to see it (it closes on the 19th). The show was a little too manically staged for me but Chenoweth as a movie star and Andy Karl as her coattails riding actor boyfriend were both delicious and sensational and more than the sum of their parts. Unfortunately there's precious little quality video of Andy Karl online so here's a promo for his turn in "Rocky The Musical" in 2014 which seemed to prophesy the revival of that franchise - Creed coming at you soon. 

For whatever reason Karl barely ever does TV or film (unlike a lot of other stage stars) so his profile is weirdly low with the general public considering he's funny, sexy, good-looking, traditionally masculine, talented and all  of that. I was enraged all over again watching his extremely funny work in "On the Twentieth Century" as a narcissistic actor that Christian Borle won a generous second Tony for "Something Rotten" when his category was filled with so many better and truly inspired performances from Tony-less men (one of them even in his own show). The Emmys tendency to love the same people over and over again is much documented and groused about online, but the Tony habit of the same is even more mystifying since they're dealing with different shows and characters altogether each time. With the exception of a few people as default nominees, I'm deeply grateful that Oscar voters have somehow not inherited this usually* awful and stingy gene!

* there are people who have deserved multiple Tonys of course (Cheno, McDonald, Foster, Bernadette, etcetera). But... generally spread the wealth is a wiser and more justified impulse.

Who You Gonna Link?

Samuel Adams has the only appropriate response to news that Ben Affleck will direct and star in a stand-alone Batman movie
Hayley Atwell (and Emily VanCamp) were flirting awesomely @ Captain America himself on Twitter and he didn't respond! Resulting Conclusive Fact: Chris Evans is bad at social media
THR sad. AMPAS lost their swanky screening room in Manhattan

Film School Rejects on Han Solo and other characters who don't need original stories, backstories or prequels. In my opinion that's roughly "all" characters. I need my mystery. I like my introduction to stay an introduction. Hollywood and lemming-like audiences keep stealing the mysteries away!
Guardian in the absolute grossest news of the week Federico Fellini's estate is licensing La Dolce Vita for a remake. Nothing is sacred.
Conan O Brien Jennifer Lawrence does a growly impression of Cher's "Believe"
Movie Dearest gives an advance take on hot tickets at OutFest in LA. I wanna see some of these
Out interviews a very intimidating RuPaul. It's amazing
Variety Teen Wolf renewed for Season 6. Danger! It gets more incoherent each season and they're about to graduate high school, a clear time to end it! 
JoopaDoops awesome Muppets/Mad Max Mashup. I love Animal so much. Always have.
Harper's Bazaar interviews Natalie Portman who isnt so sure about the #AskHerMore red carpet trend

I get asked so many questions about the Middle East, and I'm like 'Can you please just ask me about my dress? Let's just talk about the dress!'"

Theatah People
Time Out this is sad. Jan Maxwell, super duper talented stage actress -- I've seen her in two shows and she was best in show both times despite sharing the stage with people I was otherwise obsessed by -- is retiring from acting citing lack of interest in the type of work you can make a living doing!  
Gothamist Patti LuPone continues to be a hero destroying badly behaving theatergoers -- she's had it with your cel phones!
Broadway.com The Lovely Laura Linney and Bernadette Peters on "Watch What Happens" they talk Downton Abbey, Into the Woods and more 
Playbill John Cameron Mitchell compares each Broadway Hedwig to a Superhero - Fun.

Who You Gonna Call?

Oooh, look. It's the first image of your new Ghostbusters in costume: Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones,Melissa McCarthy and Kate McKinnon. IMDb has no information on who did the costumes yet but Paul Feig has never worked with the same costume designer on a movie twice for some reason so it could be anyone.  

On a scale of 1 to 100 how excited are you to see this movie in 378 days when it opens? Frankly, I'd be a lot more excited about remakes of any kind if they gender-swapped like this. If you're not rethinking, why remake?

Magic Mike XXL x 5
RH Reality Check on why straight men should see Magic Mike XXL 
Variety Guy Lodge argues that its summers "most subversive studio pleasure"
Pajiba on Channing Tatum & Joe Mangianello's reaction to hearing the movie called "feminist"
Same Same and Glenn Dunks loves it too, Jada Pinkett Smith and all

This is all a way of saying that even though my review (icymi) was somewhat south of completely satisfied I did enjoy it and the positive reviews have left me wanting to see it again (since they liked many of the things I didn't) and the negatives have not convinced me to lower my solid grade (B).