This Link Goes to 11

Movie City News Gurus of Gold update post TIFF/Telluride
Mind of a Suspicious Kind Jordan on Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners
AV Club Joss Whedon airlifted in to punch up Thor: The Dark World. (awesome photoshop) 
Deadline Matt Bomer set to play Montgomery Clift... hmmm. But I have to say this article sounds like it was written by someone who has a very vague inkling of Clift, like a Wikipedia inkling. Seriously read it. It reads that generic. 

In Contention Cate Blanchett to make her directorial debut with The Dinner, based on Herman Koch's bestseller
/Film that Labor Day poster I was talking 'bout the other day finally made it online
Variety four people will be honored by the Cinematography guild including Kris Tapley. Congrats, Kris 
Awards Daily the US trailer for Blue is the Warmest Colour 
i09 8 ways to make a female led superhero movie work 
Slant Magazine excellent piece on "the IMAX cancer" and the rerelease of The Wizard of Oz... only not the one you know. 
Happy Nice Time People Embarassing Person Glenn Beck is really upset about the possible movie about Woodrow Wilson that Leonardo DiCaprio might possibly be starring in 

The Link (To Be Retitled)

The Guardian I have to admit I'm mystified by this MPAA ruling against TWC's The Butler using that rather generic title. They'll have to rename it but any random search on IMDb will prove that a ton of movies have the same title. Why is it an issue this time - especially with a century separating the titles?
Variety The Venice Film Festival will open with Gravity (albeit out of competition). Nice get there on the Lido
Empire Steven Spielberg beats Robert Redford to the rights to remake The Grapes of Wrath which is a pity really because Redford wanted to make it into a miniseries which would at least not be competing directly with the 1940 film classic

MPAA is excited about the Veronica Mars movie with this pic from the set. Confession: I have never been able to tell the cast members of this series apart. (I'm having the same problem with the third season of Teen Wolf in which all the women except Lydia have long dark and relatively straight hair)
Tribeca Joe Reid picks the five best performances of the year from Brie Larson to Greta Gerwig
/Film looks forward to The Wizard of Oz 3D/IMAX makeover with a trailer
Playbill asked readers which films Disney should give the Broadway stage treatment to. Good, unexpected and terrible choices mingle among the suggestions. FWIW I could totally see Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Hocus Pocus working theatrically. You?

After Link: Blue Jasmine, Red Wedding, Emerald City

Stranger Than Most encourages you to see these 20 underseen masterpieces. Lot of great films mentioned though I shall limit my "seconded!" shouting to Summer Hours, Three Women and [safe] today
Guardian Joss Whedon "I kept telling my mom that reading comic books would pay off"
Gawker volcanic imagery aside, After Earth is not scientology propaganda, just a crap movie
Hollywood & Swine after After Earth's rough opening weekend, Sony cancels "take your kid to work day" LOL
The Atlantic when did men -- other than George Clooney of course -- lose their charm?
Cinema Blend pages from Heath Ledger's Joker diary. CB claims this is from a German tv series but the narration is in French so I'm not sure what's going on

WSJ Speakeasy Interesting... turns out Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine is a riff on the Bernie Madoff scandal and Speakeasy claims that Alec Baldwin's performance will be talked about. (Perhaps I should change that supporting actor chart?)
Salon The internet is losing its collective mind over Game of Thrones. As I said on twitter, I am more and more convinced that fans are victims and George R R Martin and the HBO series are their abusive lover. FWIW I quit reading the books after the Red Wedding. It's just not for me. Don't need the gore and the abuse!
Playbill sings the praises of Broadway breakthrough Annaleigh Ashford from Kinky Boots. Is she the next Goldie Hawn? 
Cinema Blend The Wizard of Oz (1939) is converting to 3D and IMAX for its 75th anniversary next week.
/Film ruh roh. The screenwriter of Green Lantern is signing on to the Blade Runner sequel. It was already a bad enough idea, lightning rarely striking twice.

Watch & Listens
YouTube Patrick Stewart speaks out on domestic violence and mental health awareness - lovely
KCRW - The Business interviews (literally) naked Mitchell Hurwitz on the challenges of continuing the Bluth story for a 4th season of Arrested Development

And did you see this fun video tribute above to Cyndi Lauper whose show Kinky Boots (just discussed) has a ton of Tony nominations? Various morning shows and current Broadway casts contributed for the 30th Anniversary of her classic hit "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"

Review: "Oz: the Great and Powerful"

This review was originally published @ Towleroad in my weekly column

You're basically asking for a trouble with that title, you know? OZ: THE GREAT AND POWERFUL. It doesn't take a crystal ball to predict how this will turn out. If the movie is neither great nor powerful, tomatoes will be thrown. It feels weird to abbreviate the new picture as simply Oz, since it's a derivation rather than an original, so we'll call it Great and Powerful moving forward despite the misdirection. The filmmakers would approve since the movie begins with a clear and charming admission that James Franco's "Oscar Diggs" is no wizard at all but a travelling con-artist. So I come not to throw tomatoes (too easy), at least not at first, but to marvel at how red they are as they fly through the air.

The trailer brags that the movie comes from the producers of Tim Burton's Eyesore in Wonderland, a gargantuan box office success but one of the worst films of the new century, so there was cause to worry. Could any film be as simultaneously garish and muddy to look at? The happy answer is no. 3D technology has come a long way and director Sam Raimi (most famous for the Spider-Man and Evil Dead trilogies) has far more taste and control of his color palette than Burton has had recently. 

more...

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Visual Index ~ The Wonderful Best Shot(s) of Oz

can you believe that no one chose this shot?Do I plug this series too much? "Plug! Plug!"

The next Hit Me With Your Best Shot is Barbarella (1968) on Wednesday March 13th (join us!) but I wasn't quite ready to let The Wizard of Oz go just yet. My review of the 2013 prequel of sorts will be up at Towleroad today and here tomorrow. By Monday we'll undoubtedly be sick of Oz and let it rest... at least until its 75th anniversary (August 25th, 2014!). But in the meantime I thought it might be fun to do a...

visual link round up experiment

After the jump, see all 22 favorite shots from the awesome bloggers who participated.

Narrative! I've arranged in linear order as they happen in the movie. Click on an image you're intrigued by and it'll take you to the corresponding article. Or read them sequentially to experience this movie through 23 different sets of eyes!

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