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You put that ice cream in your mouth and you are in very very very big trouble.
You guys. I recently gave up dairy for health reasons [insert huge hangry sigh]. Well, "gave up" in this case means severely cut down. An occassional piece of cheese is allowed and I also have two pints of Nina West endorsed ice cream still in the freezer which I'm veeery slowly metering out as rewards for the good behavior of not eating ice cream. But really --what is good about not eating ice cream? NOTHING. NOTHING AT ALL.
So after the jump let's celebrate ice cream at the movies...
Pixar's Up was released 10 years ago on this very day (the counterprogramming at movie theaters was Drag Me to Hell so you had a vertical choice that day). It seems hard to imagine it now, given that animated films rarely have the Oscar impact these days that they did in a very brief window in the Aughts, but it was nominated for 5 Oscars: Picture, Screenplay, Sound Editing, Score, and Animated Feature, winning the latter two.
Q1: Would you have voted for it in any of its Oscar categories?
Q2: If you could be dragged away by balloons today to your dream destination, where would it be?
Tim here. We're just a couple of days from the release of Inside Out, the 15th feature produced by Pixar Animation Studios, and by virtually unanimous consent, a return to the glory days of a company that has spent the last few years in search of its artistic mojo.
It’s a movie about emotions, the personification of Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear present in the mind of an 11-year-old girl. As befits its topic, virtually unanimous consent is also that it will make you feel lots. And it will make you cry. Lots.
Drawn Need Christmas Gift ideas! Here's favorite art books of 2011. Love to see "Hark! a Vagrant" and "Amazing Everything" listed, both of which we've linked up before. Several movie books also make the list including The Art of Pixar and Saul Bass. Movie|Line is still on Team Uggie (The Artist) even if the dog may soon retire. In Contention Andy Serkis on MoCap performances and Oscar. toh! Zoinks. I want to go to this restored Wings (1927) screening so bad. Someone buy me a roundtrip to Los Angeles. The silent classic was the first to win Best Picture and let's just say that ol' Oscar started on a high note. Especially since he essentially gave two Best Pic prizes that year and they other one Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is also wondrous.
Gold Derby on the opening weekend performance of a "need to see this" movie like Shame. Stale Popcorn the ladies who lunch with The Ides of March. Hear hear on the Giamatti/Hoffman business. Telegraph Daniel Radcliffe joins the bizarrely long list of actors to play Beat poet Allen Ginsberg . The Guardin Pixar House inspired by Up goes for $400,000 Pajiba 'movies that should've made an assload more at the box office than they did in 2011'. Interesting list though I'd argue that the gross that 50/50 did receive was much higher than one could reasonably expect given that it was a) a tearjerker for guys and guys aren't supposed to like tearjerkers and b) a comedy ABOUT CANCER. The movie should be proud of its gross.
The Wrap super-duper insanely great news for Meryl Streep fans. The living legend will reprise her guffaw-worthy Camilla Bowner character on the second season of Web Therapy. If you never saw the original Web Therapy shorts that played on the internet (before it was a Showtime series) she played a reparative therapist who was attempting to 'cure' Lisa Kudrow's character's husband of his homosexuality.
Top Ten o' the Day - David Edelstein I lurve top ten lists. It matters not whether I find them (individually) nonsensical, just right or aggravating. There's something in me that adores the cataloguing of each year's work. So in each day's link-roundup, I'll be bringing you my favorite bit from whichever top ten list I've just been reading. Here's Edelstein on Beginners:
Melancholy and madcap, Mike Mills’s inventive weave of past and present ushers you into the mind of its hero (a superb Ewan McGregor) as he agonizes over his emotional inheritance. As the dad who comes out of the closet at 75, Christopher Plummer is light and lithe, buoyed by his new life among the boys.
I also really dig his question-mark description of Alexander Payne even though The Descendants isn't coming anywhere near my list.
Refiner 28 James Franco's bookshelf analyzed. Hee. Crave Pixar's Up (2009) balloon house recreated in real life! Small World a follow up story to that bit about The King's Speech producer's daughter who dropped the Oscar. This one stars BANKSY. Rope of Silicon Rememeber that movie that 50 Cent lost all that weight for? I had forgotten all about it, too. Cinema Blend assembles / decodes all the news and rumors about Stoker which may star the impressive lineup of Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth Variety on Julie Taymor's possible departure from the Spider-Man Broadway musical and a shutdown for the show itself. Jacki Beat needs work, gurl! I love that Miz Beat is classy/funny/perverse enough to ask for work on her blog and threaten you with crimes simultaneously. The world needs more dangerous drag queens. I also need work but I have no funny jokes about it. Times is tough. Movie|Line talks to Jane Eyre star Mia Wasikowska about the book and working with both Michael Fassbender and Jamie Bell.
M|L: In terms of your other love interest, you got to reunite with your Defiance co-star Jamie Bell, which was fun for me as a viewer, thinking “Forest wife!” to myself in the theater. Mia Wasikowska: I know! We’ve already been married in a previous film! It was so much fun — Jamie is one of my favorite people to work with. We had a blast.
This casts a whole new light on that bit in Carrie's stage show mapping the complex tabloid-ready relationships of Elizabeth Taylor to her parents Eddie and Debbie.