On this day: Gloria Swanson, Typhoid Mary, and Sacheen Littlefeather

On this day in history as it relates to showbiz...

Gloria Swanson surrounded by herself in SUNSET BLVD

1898 Oscar winning costume designer Norma Koch is born. She designed the costumes on both of the main movies that Feud: Bette and Joan revolves around, winning for Baby Jane though Feud seems to hand the costuming credit on that movie over to Bette Davis
1899 The iconic Gloria Swanson (Sunset Blvd) is born...

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Links: New Musicals, Life Tips, Netflix vs Hollywood

Variety Cher has dropped out of her expected return to acting with Flint, a TV movie about the water crisis in Michigan citing "serious family issues" (sending her good vibes)
Coming Soon Joseph Gordon-Levitt & Channing Tatum will team-up for an R rated jukebox musical called Wingmen about two pilots who crash land in Vegas
Variety Lola Albright film actress of the 1940s and 1950s and know for TV's Peter Gunn has died at 92

NPR there's a way to search IMDb now for movies that are female created or female focused... but it's tricky
Vanity Fair life tips from Shirley Maclaine
/Film Soderbergh's Cinemax series The Knick has been cancelled. :( 
AV Club Wonder Woman pees fire
Interview shares an old interview / photo session of Penélope Cruz from '99
Playbill recaps 'everything we know (so far) about Mary Poppins Returns' but they leave out the most important news that we covered here that the world's best costume designer is behind the new magical nanny looks 
Playbill Kelli O'Hara singing "Toyland" - staged concert version coming up in April
Guardian can Hollywood fight back against Netflix who wants us to get over our "romantic" notions of moviegoing. NEVER, NETFLIX, NEVER.
CHUD 'movies no one mentions' on Copycat (1995). Uff, I miss Sigweavie & Holly leading movies
Screencrush new Spider-Man: Homecoming poster, Spidey just chilling (note Avengers tower in the background)
Tracking Board Robert Rodriguez to direct a remake of John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981) 

Small Screen MVPs: Damaged Surgeons, Haunted Houses, Coming Out

Who or what was your MVP of this past week on your tv screens?

A couple of weeks ago we polled Team Experience to share their MVPs from shows they were currently watching. You liked it so we'll attempt to do it weekly or at least bi-weekly. In this new world of infinite screens and schedules, whether you're bingeing, right up-to-date, or on demand surfing, we're all probably on different time tables so please do share yours as well.

If you watch these shows would you pick the same most valuable player?

MVPs of the Week

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Director
It's taken this show a while to get to a place where it feels confidence in taking artistic risks, but last week’s episode, ‘4,722 Hours’, saw the once meek show taking its most audacious move yet under the helm of director Jesse Bochco. When Simmons (Elizabeth Henstridge) was snatched by the Monolith in season two’s brutal stinger, I never expected that the show would tackle the aftermath in such sober, thoughtful form. Bochco even dares to omit the regular title card, using a simpler, more elegant logo atop a vista of the deep blue planet.

Immediately, then, Bochco marks ‘4,722 Hours’ as a singular artistic endeavour, a quite remarkable thing in a Marvel Studios empire that has continually driven away individualist directors. Alright, so the episode still fits within the show’s larger template and is constructed with tropes familiar from many lone survivor sci-fi tales, but it feels full of personality, submerged in the midnight blue light of eternal night, allowing Henstridge to dig into Simmons’ psychological trauma that the show had presented to us in the previous episodes. It’s an episode full of confidence and trust in both character and audience. Let's hope it’s one that signals an even brighter future for a series going from strength to strength. - David Upton

The Walking Dead's Executive Producer
Thank you, Robert Kirkman, for backing the hell off. [More...]

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With Six You Get Link-Roll

Pajiba Max Headroom was in The Knick ?!
Variety Jacob Trembly impresses opposite Brie Larson in Room which may have an awards future
NPR interviews Patricia Clarkson on her screen evolution from The Untouchables (1987) to Learning to Drive (2015)
AV Club Chris Evans happy to renew Marvel Studios contract - remember when he was considering not taking the role?
Awards Daily & Variety both love Steve Jobs and its "enthralling" leading man Michael Fassbender. I only skimmed (since I don't like to read reviews before seeing a picture) but most promising is that both reviews suggest that every actor brings it and that it's not at all a typical biopic in its construction or moods. Yay

And given the fresh spate of reviews and festival excitement, I've updated the BEST ACTOR PREDICTION CHART with Depp, Elba, Hardy, Fassbender, and others rising with strong reception to their work. More charts to follow

New DVD: The Knick, Hot Pursuit

Still annoyed that Reese Witherspoon blew her post Wild goodwill on Hot Pursuit, to be honest. Was hoping for a Legally Blonde level mainstream comedy, though that's an admittedly high bar to clear. It's too strenuously acted to be truly fun though it might well play better on cable and DVD when it will likely be seen in pieces because some of it is funny. Its part of this week's DVD/BluRay batch which includes:

• Hot Pursuit (reviewed) 
• I Am Big Bird: The Carol Spinney Story  -documentary
• I Am Chris Farley - documentary
• Match (reviewed) - Patrick Stewart as a gay ballet instructor
• Police Story: Lockdown - with Jackie Chan
• Unfriended - group chat horror flick 

But the big news this week is that The Knick's 1st Season is finally available which means that if you don't get Cinemax you can finally see what the fuss was about Steven Soderbergh's series and why TFE was so thrilled to have Cara Seymour guest blogging earlier this summer to celebrate her terrific work as a tough talking complicated nun. 

It's a hospital show but not, thankfully, a procedural. Instead it's about scientific advances, urban madness, and the state of public heaelth and medicine at the turn of the 20th century. Clive Owen plays a brilliant Chief of Medicine who is also a junkie. It's an uneven show all told (though the design team does a super 1900s New York, not all of the performances are eager to go for period texture so it sometimes feels out of time) but when its on it's really on. Perhaps the show aired too long ago to catch Emmy's attention or perhaps Emmy votesr just won't look at Cinemax when they're too busy with HBO and Showtime series, but it did win a Globe nod for Clive's performance and one Emmy nomination for Soderbergh's direction of the pilot.