Links: Marnie, Pokemon, The Tempest, Emmys, and Squad Goals

MTV test your knowledge - is this person Miles Teller or Ansel Elgort? 
Forbes very positive piece on Suicide Squad's success. But what about the fact that it's a terrible movie and terrible movies aren't good for movie culture or franchise futures?
MNPP Gratuitous Robert Redford for his 80th birthday 
EW Catherine Zeta Jones joining the Feud miniseries. She'll play Olivia de Havilland
Comics Alliance Well we should have known this was coming. There's going to be a live-action Pokemon movie. Nicole Perlman, the Guardians of the Galaxy screenwriter is co-penning
Variety oops. a poster for Denis Villeneuve's Arrival has accidentally stirred up political trouble in Hong Kong 

MNPP's favorite movies of 1984
We Got This Covered Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon will reteam after Big Little Lies for a movie called Truly Madly Guilty, based on another best-selling love by Liane Moriarty -- I guess they all really liked each other!
Variety Lion starring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman will be the centerpiece at the London Film Festival this fall
Tracking Board Marvel sure its spreading itself thin. Now Hulu will be making a Marvel series with Runaways. So that means they've got shows/deals with Netflix, Hulu, Freeform, ABC, and Disney.
Variety Speaking of spreading yourself thin: Lin-Manuel Miranda will write new songs for The Little Mermaid live-action remake. I love Miranda but that seems like a strange fit to me, given that The Little Mermaid's songs are so old school Broadway musical flavored
/Film why we shouldn't expect to see sequels from Laika. (Sigh. I would proclaim this as great news but we once thought Pixar wouldn't be defeated by regurgitation and we were wrong.)
Coming Soon Natalie Portman says she's done with Marvel movies
Playbill a mostly nude female production of The Tempest is playing this summers in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. For free. I bet it's better than the Julie Taymor version with Helen Mirren!
Good Morning America Amy Schumer explains how she got Goldie Hawn out of retirement for her new film 
New Yorker Richard Brody argues that Marnie, not Vertigo, is the film we should look to in regards to encapsulating Hitchcock's career...

The greatness of Hitchcock’s artistry, the musical sublimity of his images and the emotional power of his stories, isn’t separable from his carnality—rather, his greatness depends upon the worst and most bestial aspects of his character. Without them, he’d be the artisan of cinematic cuckoo clocks, and what’s all too often celebrated in the name of Hitchcock mania is precisely an abstracted craft that’s isolated from its source of power, from its dynamic principle, from its raison d’être.

Emmys
Variety Creative Arts Emmys will be split into two pre Emmys awards ceremonies
Vulture an extremely choice interview with RuPaul on his first Emmy nomination and everything being political... including politics. 

For Fun
Death and Taxes a kitty cat who really hates Donald Trump 
Ageist six secrets to outmaneuvering ageism and living your best life 
Towleroad "Greco-Roman wrestling at the Olympics is everything we wanted and more" 
Towleroad Pole vaulter defeated by his own pole -- oh, I'm sorry this one isn't "fun" but painful to watch 

Elisabeth Moss Rocks The Bleeder

by Murtada

A clip should give us a small taste that makes us want to see the movie it’s from. Unlike trailers, clips can’t be manipulated with mood and music, which is why sometimes they are jarring and don’t work out of context. But not this clip.

This clip from The Bleeder has it all. It’s like a short film with a complete story. Even if you knew nothing about the movie, you’d still get a full portrait of two of its character. One is a philandering husband (Liev Schreiber), the other is his wife (Elisabeth Moss) catching him in flirting with another woman in a diner. We know the setting because of the spot on accent from Moss. And watching Moss talk we understand a lot about this marriage.

The Bleeder is a biopic of boxer Chuck Wepner who is the real life  inspiration behind Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa. Schreiber is Wepner, Moss is one of his wives, Naomi Watts is another. The director is Philippe Falardeau (Monsieur Lazhar). The film will be playing both Venice and Toronto film festivals in the coming few weeks. However before this clip it was very low on my radar of upcoming movies. Now I really want to see it. If only to spend more time with that intriguing character Moss plays. Let's hope there's much more of Moss insulting Schreiber and telling it like like it is in that fabulous accent.

This clip rocks, and it did its job well selling the movie. Are you now sold on The Bleeder as well?

John Turturro Set To F--- With The Jesus

In the 7-10 split of having your cake and eating it too, John Turturro is trying for a spare. Which is to say, after nearly two decades of zealous celebration over his scene-stealing (and very small) performance in The Big Lebowski as the crotch-swaddling bowling-ball licker Jesus Quintana, he's doubling down on that legacy and directing a feature film that stars Jesus at the wheel. After a few years of Turturro's titters, he's finally making his own spinoff movie, Going Places, and he's already in production.

Currently starring in HBO's The Night Of, a very different kind of crime story, Turturro reprises his role as Jesus Quintana alongside a cast including Bobby Cannavale, Susan Sarandon, and Audrey Tautou. Notably absent from this project are the original creators of the role themselves, the Coen Brothers, but perhaps they'll attach their names as producers as they have for their last grand-brainchild, FX's Fargo.

If you could give any iconic supporting character their own standalone movie, who would you choose?

120 Nominated Performances, Ranked. Who's Next?

As you will undoubtedly understand, I'm not up to speed at the moment. But I find a weird comfort in list-making and cine-dreaming, wondering what our next batch of Oscar contenders will look like. Will it be a great vintage or a weak one? Or, more usual, a weird combo of both. It's far too early to tell though we're hopeful. As I was wandering aimlessly around the web this morning I found this very enjoyable video from Ali Benz ranking all Oscar acting nominees this decade. Like a moving scrapbook of Oscar's classes for the past six years (2010-2015). Some things about the order make me so crazy but that is the joy and discussability of list-making. 

Here's the video and after the jump I'll rank them all myself. Busywork is good for me today.

120 Oscar-nominated Performances of the Decade - RANKED - from Ali Benzekri on Vimeo.

Click to read more ...

1984: John Cassavetes' Farewell "Love Streams"

by Bill Curran

The story of an irredeemably chaotic, forever ailed pair of siblings—Robert (John Cassavetes), a louche, bestselling (but never working) author and alcoholic, and Sarah (Gena Rowlands), his troubled, manic sister just divorced and now separated from her daughter—Love Streams doesn’t care much for a Story, capital “S”.  There is no dissolution or sea change in Cassavetes’ swan song*. If one of the chief pleasures of any good narrative is the suggestion of lives lived before and after the story itself, it’s striking to note that, unlike previous Cassavetes works like Faces and A Woman Under the Influence (with their forever altering moments), Love Streams exists on a continuum. We know Robert and Sarah will never really change. And there is a poignant resignation in realizing at the film’s end, as a thunderstorm pounds the windowpanes of Robert’s home and Sarah’s new companion’s car, that we’ve witnessed only a beautiful stepping stone in their zigzagging roads to nowhere.

Instead, the film achieves a dreamlike intensity, moment to moment, by giving free reign to Robert and Sarah’s thoughts and associations...

Click to read more ...