Three Terrible Ideas Involving Lesbians, Vampires, and Lennons

Hey, Let's Remake a Hitchcock!
While some of us enjoyed Gus Van Sant's maligned Psycho (1998) experiment in "recreation" (hey, it's more honest than "reboot") -- generally we're forgiving of artistic experiments in comparison to parasitic cash-grabs --  remaking Hitchcock movies is never a good idea in the strictest sense of the word "good". Think of the relief on the internetz when that new version of The Birds didn't take flight. See, Alfred Hitchcock is not like so many great auteurs of yore that today's audiences aren't familiar with. If there is any classic Hollywood director that contemporary mainstream audiences still 'get,' isn't it Hitchcock? The latest of his features someone wants to remake is Rebecca (1940). Maybe there should be a law against remaking Best Picture winners? I do not trust anyone in 2012 with "Mrs. Danvers". Back away from the apparitional lesbians*!

Hey, Let's Keep Making Vampire Pictures!
Doesn't anyone in Hollywood worry about bankrolling trends long past their sell-by date? While it's true that vampires never go completely out of style they do sometimes hibernate, burrowing deep into the ground until they're ready to engage again (a la The Vampire Lestat), in terms of pop culture popularity. So after two plus decades of vampire madness doesn't it seem like that bubble could burst at any moment and someone will lose bazillions of dollars? As far as I can tell 2012 and 2013 are already so stuffed with vampires onscreens both large and small that eventually audiences will be wearing garlic when they approach the TV or multiplex. But they've decided to make another one called Harker in which Jonathan Harker is no longer a Keanu Reeves like lawyer but a Russell Crowe like investigator for Scotland yard.

Hey, Let's Adapt Movies No One Saw Into Broadway Shows That Are About Famous Musicians Whose Songs We Don't Have the Rights To!
Remember that biopic about John Lennon's pre-fame years called Nowhere Boy? It had one of those long torturous 'what year does this film belong to' releases 'round the world but never caught on. It's the film that introduced us to Aaron Johnson (Kick Ass, Albert Nobbs) who we now seem to be stuck with. It also introduced him to director Sam Taylor Wood and they're happily co-habitating and child-rearing three years later. But I'm losing the point. One of the distracting things about the movie, which made narrative but not emotional sense was the absence of Beatles. Now moneyburning people are adapting it into a Broadway musical. Who pray tell would spend $100+ a ticket to see an original musical about the founding members of the Beatles that is not a Beatles jukebox** musical???

*Nick introduced me to the term apparitional lesbians. I'm forever grateful because it's so damn useful. And fun to say. Try it.

** I hate jukebox musicals. I'm not suggesting someone should make one here, just that that's what audiences would want if they went to a show about John Lennon.

Eiko Ishioka (1939-2012)

Deneuve with Ishioka on Oscar night 1993The cinema lost one of its few truly unique visionaries this week. We've paid homage before and multiple times. 73 year old costume giant Eiko Ishioka, who didn't work in the cinema frequently enough for our tastes succumbed to cancer on Thursday.

We first fell in love with her work via Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992) and it was hardly an idiosyncratic crush. Millions were instant converts and she won the Oscar for her spectacular creations, from inside out red musculature armor to dazzling perverse lizard-like bridal wear for vampire brides. Just stunning stuff.

I'd be very disappointed/surprised if some goth girl somewhere hasn't tried to copy Sadie Frost's indelible vampire bride look for her wedding night.

Sadie Frost in Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Best single costume of the 1990s? Maybe.

In the past decade Ishioka wowed again through Tarsem Singh's filmography (The Cell, The Fall, and Immortals)

Bjork, Grace and a few more film pics after the jump...

Kellan Lutz filming a scene from Immortals (2011)

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10th Anniversary Top Ten: "Once More With Feeling"

One of the all time best episodes of anything ever turned ten just a week(ish) ago... but I wanted to celebrate on a Tuesday.

Dawn's in trouble? Must be Tuesday."

That means for the past week and for many weeks after circa 2001 I had the songs from Buffy the Vampire Slayer's "Once More With Feeling" in heavy rotation in my head and or ipod. 

One of my favorite moments of any awards season, obscure though it be, is the moment during the AFI's one and only televised award ceremony in January 2002 (anyone remember that? They combined TV and film like the Globes do) when Buffy the Vampire Slayer was nominated for best drama series. When they announced the category a clip from this very episode played proudly alongside clips from its three fellow nominees, all traditional awards heavyweights: The West Wing, The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. This is the sort of company Buffy should have been keeping during its run though Emmy voters just couldn't see it*.

For today's top ten, because I can never find a good excuse to talk about my #1 favorite TV series of all time, here's a top ten of that historic episode, in chronological order because the episode is so beautifully constructed.

TEN BEST MOMENTS IN "ONCE MORE WITH FEELING"

• Intro Once More With Feeling proclaims itself 'a very special episode' immediately, dispatching the usual credits for an overture style opening credits with each cast member smiling inside the (spot)light of the moon. It then surprises by 'going through the motions' of a typical day without dialogue before getting to its first number "Going Through the Motions", instantly recalling the gold standardepisode Hush. It's a ballsy confident move and, as it turns out, telling: Aren't those two episodes essentially fraternal twin classics, each riffing imaginatively on the difficulty of truly communicating with the people we love most?

• "Going Through The Motions" manages to answer all the complaints about Season 6's Sad Sloggy Buffy Summers and respond with a knowing and compelling cry for help. And it performs this dramatic spell with hilarious little sung asides (Demon Just Realizing He's Been Killed: "She's not even half the girl she --owwww!" | Hot Guy Rescued: "How can I repay... " Buffy: "Whatever...")

♫ I don't want to be... going through the motions
Losing all my drive
I can't even see, if this is really me
And I just want to be
Aliiiiiiiiivvve ♪" 

The best part is the ending which reworks a now excessively familiar sight, a vampire being dusted, into something newly magical; Buffy emerges from the cloud singing beautifully, like it's fairy dust not ashes. 

8 other 'best' moments & grudge-holding Emmy bitching

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Oscar Horrors: Redressing Dracula

HERE LIES … Eiko Ishioka’s costume work for Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), which smothered the rest of the nominees with reams upon reams of flamboyant fabric to slither away with the statue that year. And it damn well deserved it, too.

JA from MNPP here. In the fall of 1992 I was fifteen years old and had found myself in the first blushes of cinemania, and as a budding horror enthusiast I was obsessed with Francis Ford Coppola’s film before it had even come out. It was more difficult way back then before the internet so we relied on things called “magazines” to keep us in the know, but I went one step further where this movie was concerned – I bought the “pictorial moviebook,” as it calls itself on the cover, and I studied it like the bible. And with its heavy focus on Ishioko’s work it was the first time I’d ever given much thought to a film’s costuming.

As Coppola had said, he wanted the costumes to be the set…

And are they ever. Ishioka was a visual artist and had done some memorable work for the stage version of M. Butterfly and Paul Schrader’s 1985 film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters before this, and she brought with her an eccentric batch of influences, to put it mildly. From the human musculature that influenced Dracula’s armor in the opening scenes…

Visual splendor and bizarre influences after the jump...

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We Need To Talk About Linking

MTV Tom Hiddleson singing the praise of his new Thor 2 director Patty Jenkins. He just loves Monster (2003) and Kenneth Branagh assigned it to him as prep before Thor 1; how weirdly coincidental.
Go Fug Yourself has kind words for Amanda Seyfried and hilarious words for Justin Timberlake.
Awards Daily Sasha thinks this has been a weak year for cinema -- I'm guessing because of the lack of consensus on a single masterpiece. I'd say the opposite. I can't get over how good this year is. It's so exciting to be looking at an awards season that might not have a frontrunner. Consensus makes it boring. Bring on the passionate discussion of what is "Best" please!

Acidemic in praise of crazy "chicks of death" dangerous women from Flash Gordon (1936) through Rosemary's Baby (1968) to Trouble Every Day (2001)
Reelizer How beautiful is this poster for The Iron Giant by Kevin Tong? Me want.

"The Iron Giant" © illustrator Kevin Tong

Movie Morlocks Kimberly from Cinebeats on Werner Herzog's excellent adapation of Nosferatu starring Klaus Kinski. Such a good movie. 
MNPP JA loves Carey Mulligan and thinks you do, too. Exciting projects she's lining up. 
/Film taking storyboarding to the next level with Darren Aronofsky's Noah's Arc movie.  

Ultra Culture bitches about Rotten Tomatoes in order to praise Terri (which was recently nominated for one of Gotham's prizes)  
Towleroad Zachary Quinto to play a gay ghost on American Horror Story. 

Empire offers up a final We Need To Talk About Kevin poster with "Joker" coloring. I love movie posters but when a movie makes this many and keeps changing it up I start to worry that they don't know what they're selling anymore. 

Finally...

The Lost Boy thinks that Viola Davis is going to win the Best Actress Oscar. That seems to be going around. Here she is at the Women in Hollywood Awards.

The imagination is so potent. And that's really why we're actors because it's the power of transformation, the power of not being you, of going into a world that is different but ultimately real. And I always felt I had that I had that power even as a little black girl with the afro and using the crisco for moisturizer for my skin. I always felt that everything was possible. That I always had the power to be anything i wanted to be.

As I was walking the red carpet someone asked "What sets you apart from everyboy in the room?"

"Well... I'm black."

[Laughter] and then she launches into an honest and beautiful speech about Cicely Tyson "throwing her a rope" as a young dreaming girl and the need for stories about women of color in the movies. She is awesome.