'just link a prayer, your click can take me there... 🎵

• Guardian has a really fascinating interview with Sean Penn about his novel (yes he wrote one), his ex-wives, his humanitarian work, the Me Too movement and more
• AV Club Netflix suggests it's going to back away a bit from its war against the movies... or at least from competing on the awards battlefield. Does this mean they're abandoning their Oscar campaigns? This statement is quite vague.
• Boy Culture connects two of my favorite things of all time: Madonna's "Like a Prayer" phase and... Natalie Wood?
• Time Can Oceans 8 bring back the glamourous caper?

• EW Uma Thurman willing to work with Quentin Tarantino again
• W interviews Grace Jone about her fierceness "I pack a good wallop"
• Variety YES! A24 is planting the seeds for an Oscar campaign for Toni Collette in the horror film Hereditary
• Coming Soon For some reason Monty Python's Spamalot is going to become a movie
• Variety Olivia de Havilland talks about being Cannes very first female jury president decades ago
• Electric Literature "storytelling" in WestWorld and how literary it actually is
• Awards Daily Academy votes to expel Roman Polanski and Bill Cosby
• AV Club Steve Martin and Martin Short are actual best friends
• i09 beautiful posters for King Kong's Broadway musical debut
• Playboy "Hollywood's pansexual moment" - interesting points in this article but I'm really quite annoyed that we've jumped from gay rights to "let not define ourselves and let's explore fluidity" and are acting like homophobia is solved / gays are accepted. There are literally still laws being pushed in the US to discriminate against queer people - even this very week! 

Click to enlargeAvengers Mania
<-- This Captain Marvel poster going around looked so official I thought it was. Apparently it's actually fan art by a Brazilian illustrator Fabio Rodrigues

• Vulture Infinity War facial hair rankings
• Monkey See Glen Weldon coins a genius term for the ending of Avengers: Infinity War. Well worth a close read.
• Crooked Marquee Eric D Snider wins the award for "best headline to an Avengers Infinity War review"
• /Film Black Widow's solo film actively looking for a director (even though no screenplay is written yet. Hmmm)
• AV Film how are we supposed to care about Ant-Man and the Wasp post the brutal ending of Infinity War
• Coming Soon Infinity War has been out just one week and it's already nearly at a billion dollars globally. Jesus.
• Express a very elaborate theory on how Captain Marvel and Ant Man could save the day in Infinity Wars Part 2

Toni Collette meets superfan John Early

Chris here, tiptoeing out of the bubble I've placed myself in to avoid Hereditary plot details. The horror film is coming this summer and, per Sundance audiences, is best entered completely in the blind about its scares - including a raved-to-the-heavens performance from Toni Collette. To get the promotional ball rolling on the film, distrib A24 had Collette sit down for their podcast with none other than genius comedian and noted Collette superfan John Early. To those unawares, one of Early's signature bits is recalling his teenage years when he created a fansite for the actress on GeoCities. Stars, they're just like us!

While A24 seems to be stoking the potential for an Oscar campaign for Collette that some reviews have begged, we'll do our best to keep hopes at bay. (She already pulled off the uncommon feat of an acting nomination for a horror film once, so twice is all the more uncommon.) But I suspect the performance will be one we'll be talking a lot about once the film arrives on June 8. Listen to Toni and John talk fandom and Hereditary here.

New episode of The A24 Podcast tomorrow! @bejohnce tells Toni Collette all about the Geocities fansite he ran for her as a not-yet-openly-gay 13 year-old. Tears are shed, gifts are exchanged, @HereditaryMovie is hyped pic.twitter.com/X9ahUYiMIb

— A24 (@A24) April 25, 2018

"Hereditary" and Toni Collette Lurking

by Chris Feil

This year has made for a quiet Sundance Film Festival, no? While there seems to be less word on major deals and potential Oscar players in the year to come, one premiere that has quickly become must-see material is Ari Aster's horror debut Hereditary. Cryptic reviews have promised genuine genre scares and (much to our excitement) a worthy showcase for Toni Collette. Collette's co-stars include Ann Dowd and Gabriel Byrne.

The film centers on a family after the death of their not-so-beloved grandmother. Her artist daughter (played by Collette) deals with the increasingly spooky fallout...

Click to read more ...

Q&A: Pretty Boys and the best of Tomei / Collette

It's part two of this week's Reader Questions. If you missed the first installment in which we covered topics like Cynthia Erivo's film future and Star Wars favorites, click here.

Six more reader questions? YES PLEASE. Let's go... 

BHURAY: What are your 5 favorite Toni Collette performances?

I love her so much I have to do a top ten. Hers is surely the star career with the single biggest disparity between how much talent she provides versus how often and well deployed she is by Hollywood. My favorite performances are hard to rank as I think she's the same amount of wonderful consistently but it might go something like this...

Click to read more ...

And the Link Goes To...

Daily Mail Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman reunite... but for an interview series, not a film
The Muse Rich Juzwiak talks to Anne Hathaway about Colossal and the very tired subject of 'Hathahaters'... as I've always said: their loss, she's awesome.
Deadline omg Toni Collette has a lead role again (opposite Thomas Haden Church)
Criterion Director Amy Heckerling (Clueless) visits the Criterion Closet. She loves Federico Fellini, the story of Billy Wilder and Tokyo Story

Coming Soon Director Sam Mendes is considering a movie based on the graphic novel My Favorite Thing is Monsters  about a little girl trying to solve her neighbors murder
Towleroad there's a new documentary about Heath Ledger
This is Not Porn and speaking of... polaroids from the set of Brokeback Mountain
Hollywood Reporter 4 Japanese actresses discuss Ghost in the Shell. This is a fun conversation but I wish they'd engaged more with the central twist of the Scarlett Johansson character because that's something I would love to hear people discuss apart from the white-washing issue. It is a separate thorny issue actually and not entirely unlike Get Out's existential horror about race relations and bodies at odds with souls... or "ghosts" in this film's parlance.

Oscar Dates 
I'm not sure why the internet treated the news that the next Oscars would be held on March 4th, 2018 as "news" today but they did. The Academy announced the date two or three years ago (they normally announce multiple dates at once). For example: in the latest press release they've added the next four Oscar ceremony dates. It's the other dates (nominations, luncheon, etcetera) that we never know until we're in the film year

Next Four Oscar Nights

• 90th Academy Awards - March 4th, 2018 (nominations on January 23rd)
• 91st Academy Awards - February 24th, 2019
• 92nd Academy Awards - February 23rd, 2020
• 93rd Academy Awards - February 28th, 2021  

Off Cinema
MNPP on the subtle importance of Zachary Quinto's public romances
Variety the Lucille Lortel nominations (Off Broadway)
Theater Mania I've been so bored that NYC's free summer theater tradition Shakespeare in the Park has been strictly Shakespeare for a few years now. Despite the name they used to mix in non-Shakespeare stuff which made it less basic. But they get good casts. This summer: A Midsummer Night's Dream with two of Broadway's very best performers (Danny Burstein & Annaleigh Ashford) and Julius Caesar with Corey Stoll, Nikki M James, Elizabeth Marvel and more
Vox interesting piece on Sanrio's most popular character since Hello Kitty
Mic new study suggests cats like humans more than food. Great article punchline.
EW Lots of online furor when Marvel VP suggests that their recent diversity push has hurt comics sales. Oh Marvel. That is not the problem. You have so many of them but that ain't it.