Links: Movies (and TV) Matter, Garrel Picks Pics, Oscar's Centennial

Thrillist "Why everyone was wrong about Warcraft" - the summer's most underrated movie?
MNPP great moments in movie shelves hits Young Frankenstein
The Wrap looks at Colton Haynes winning an HRC award. Why Colton, exactly?

Criterion Louis Garrel chooses movies from the Criterion closet. He likes Jacques Tati, Loves of a Blonde, and Amarcord among others
FlavorWire looks back at Madonna & Sean's Shanghai Surprise in its Bad Movie Night column
Telerama (in French) Alain Guirardie talks about his filmography - he thinks he can do better than Stranger by the Lake! 
SBS hilarious satire video on White Fragility in the Workplace
Slate pits Bad Moms against Ghostbusters because women have to be pitted against each other!
NY Times on current film restoration anxiety asking the following question which I swear is going to give me regular nightmares:

What happens to an art when its foundational medium disappears? 

Today's Must Read
Richard Brody at the New Yorker wrote a great piece called "Why Movies Still Matter?" that examines the critical circularity that leads people to write things like "Could This Be the Year Movies Stopped Mattering?” We're all inside this ororborus! Help. My favorite part is his contention that the rise in popularity of serial television is actually emulating the college experience. Interesting.

The experience that the watching and the critique of new serial television resemble above all is the college experience. Binge-watching is cramming, and the discussions that are sparked reproduce academic habits: What It Says About, What It Gets Right About, What It Gets Wrong About. There is a lot of aboutness but very little being; lots of puzzle-like assembling of information to pose particular kinds of questions (posing questions—sounds like a final exam), to explore particular issues (sounds like a term paper). For these reasons, television’s actual competition isn’t movies or museums or novels but nonfiction books, documentary films, journalism, radio discussions, and general online clicking. Serial television is designed to gratify the craving for facts to piece together and analyze. The medium seems created for the media buzz that’s generated by the media people who are its natural audience, and to whom the shows owe their acclaim, their prestige, and their success.

Then he goes on to investigate the personal versus the public in our cinema experience. Love this piece. So much to think about and not judgmental about those film or television! Or to quote another great writer...

TV and movies have been coexisting for decades, yet the number of people insisting one must vanquish the other remains constant.

— Farran Nehme (@selfstyledsiren) August 29, 2016

  

News
EW Emily Blunt hears what Julie Andrews says about her casting as Mary Poppins Returns
Guardian Anne Hathaway to star in Live Fast Die Hot  the adaptation of a bestseller about new motherhood and responsibility
Variety Richard Linklater is making a sequel (of a sort) to The Last Detail (1973) called Last Flag Flying
/Film early photos from Woody Allen's Crisis in Six Scenes, his new streaming series
Towleroad Matt Bomer has signed on to play a trans sex worker in a new film called Anything. They're still not casting trans actors for trans roles which is a shame. Especially since we actually have famous trans actors now, proof that there's no reason to not cast them or think they can't win media attention themselves 
Variety Stranger Things renewed for Season 2. (I liked Season 1 but a continuation of that story seems like a mistake to me. Better an anthology template!)
Comics Alliance Stranger Things' breakout "Barb" (Shannon Purser) will guest star on CW's Archie adaptation Riverdale
Awards Daily Warren Beatty's Rules Don't Apply will open the AFI Fest this year in November 

FINALLY
In case you haven't heard ABC and Oscar have extended their contract. The Oscars will now be held on ABC through 2028 now. In extremely related news: 2028 is when the 100th Academy Awards will be held so imagine that centennial. If you'd like TFE to be around for that (so far away) please consider joining our monthly donaters --see sidebar -- because it's so not easy to keep making this site work each year, financially speaking. 

Judy by the Numbers: "Let There Be Love/You're Nobody Til Somebody Loves You"

Anne Marie has been chronicling Judy Garland's career chronologically through musical numbers...

In 1957, a golden opportunity landed in Judy Garland's lap that looked, at first glance, like a lawsuit. In fact it was a lawsuit (and a counterlawsuit) concerning a contract she'd signed with CBS. Garland (on the advice of hubby Sidney Luft) had signed a $300,000 contract with CBS for three years of TV specials in 1955. However, only one special had ever aired. In 1957, Judy sued, which caused CBS to countersue. The result reads like something out of the rejected musical version of Adam's Rib: in 1961, Judy & CBS decided to put aside their differences (and lawsuits) to sign a new contract for two new specials. The first of these aired just a year later in 1962.

The Show: The Judy Garland Show (CBS, 1962)
The Songwriters: Lionel Rand (music), Ian Grant (lyrics)
The Cast: Judy Garland, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, directed by Norman Jewison

The Story: Norman Jewison (soon to be famous for directing, among other things the movie version of Fiddler on the Roof) got one thing very, very right about this TV special: when you have three legendary talents onscreen, you don't need much else. The whole series featured a very pared down aesthetic: little choreography, few costume changes, and a set featuring random pillars and lights that flew out to reveal an equally mustard yellow void. Of course, when you have Judy, Dean and Frank clowning around and stepping in time, you don't need much more.

The series would be nominated for 3 Emmy Awards and net huge ratings for CBS. This was good news for both network and star, who decided to continue to put aside their differences in order to do a weekly TV series.

Select Previous Highlights:  
“Zing Went the Strings of My Heart” (1938), "Over the Rainbow" (1939), "The Trolley Song" (1944), "I Don't Care" (1949), "Get Happy" (1950), "The Man That Got Away" (1954)

Making a "Splash"

I'll be doing that tomorrow as I've been under the weather today. But don't despair if you needed a fix of Ron Howard's best movie (you heard me), the charming fish out of water comedy Splash from 1984. Here are seven articles from Best Shot participants to enjoy. Click on the photos to dive into their takes on this romantic winner about a man and his mermaid. 

Scopophiliac at the Cinema

Antagony & Ecstasy

Rachel's Reviews

Sorta That Guy

Dancin Dan on Film

Christian Bonamusa

Allison Tooey

What to Watch When Your Brain Hurts and the World Makes You Sad

by Deborah Lipp

Professor Spouse and I watch a lot of TV. This is absolutely ridiculous, because our first “OhMyGodWhoIsThisWoman” conversation was about movies. But the fact is, the Professor and I rarely watch movies in the evenings, largely because she is a Professor. She comes home from school either fried, or needing to grade, or both. These conditions aren’t conducive to paying attention to a movie, so we turn on the TV. 

Lately, we default to the news, and, while Rachel Maddow is a television hero, sometimes the vileness of the current Presidential race is too much for our brains to process.  We often watch great TV, which can be challenging and dark. What do we do when we just can’t face the challenge? The West Wing.

If you aren’t familiar with it, The West Wing was a political drama that ran on NBC from 1999 to 2006, following the presidency of Democrat Jedidiah “Jed” Bartlett (Martin Sheen) and his staff through two terms...

Click to read more ...

Complete the Sentence

The last movie I saw twice in theaters was ___________  and I went twice because _________.