Stage Door: Toruk - The First Flight

Errisson Lawrence © 2015 Cirque du Soleil

Jose here. While worldwide audiences wait for the impending Avatar sequels, the folks at Cirque du Soleil are aiming to quench their thirst with a new spectacle called Toruk - The First Flight, which bills itself as being “inspired by” the James Cameron film, but feels more like just another chapter in what’s become a “universe”. Imagined for those who maybe don’t like video games, are too passive for amusement parks, and have deep admiration for the human body, the show is a two hour long arena extravaganza in which Pandora comes to life in “real life 3D”.

Avatar borrowed elements from films like Pocahontas, Dances with Wolves, Fern Gully, and to an extent some of Cameron’s own oeuvre (Aliens star Sigourney Weaver was two seats away from me and was always the first to applaud, during a particularly complex sequence she held both her hands near her face and sighed in relief when the acrobats gracefully pulled it off...

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Beauty Break: Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt covers the New York Times Magazine in which he wears as assortment of Giogio Armani gear and talks to Man Booker prize winning author Marlon James about Brexit, Trump and Mel Gibson. And of course gives great face while doing it.

As far as magazine celebrity profiles go, this is a very innocuous one. Pitt comes in as a nice and affable guy, but doesn't really offer any interesting tidbits. Except for what he says about Mel Gibson. In the course of discussing a potential film he wants to make about Pontius Pilate, he says that his movie "certainly won’t be for the ‘Passion’ crowd". Then for good measure, adds about Gibson's box office juggernaut:

 “I felt like I was just watching an L. Ron Hubbard propaganda film.”

Brad Pitt, nice guy, movie star, expert at throwing shade.

Meryl Says Yes to TV but Shailene is a Definite No

by Murtada

Meryl Streep is not a TV neophyte. She has appeared in two of what is now called a limited series, the first time at the beginning of her career in Holocaust (1978) and then in Mike Nichols’ adaptation of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America (2003), she won an Emmy each time. So it’s no surprise that she’s making another limited series, particularly in this era when they are so in vogue with movie stars. The surprise here is who she’s collaborating with; J J Abrams.

Sadly however it's not Felicity:The Later Years. The project is The Nix, an adaptation of the bestselling first novel by Nathan Hill about a woman who gets national press exposure for throwing rocks at a conservative governor on the presidential campaign trail. Sounds like it would be right in Meryl’s wheelhouse.

Meanwhile that proposed conversion of the last book of the Divergent series from film to TV hit a bump in the road...

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What Does Tom Hanks Have to Do to Receive Another Oscar Nomination?

by abstew

The world was a very different place in January 2001. George W. Bush was being sworn into office for the first of his two terms as President, people used disposable cameras and brought the film to be developed at...drug stores, and the main places to watch new films was in the actual movie theater (where the average ticket price was $5.39) and then later going to the nearest Blockbuster to rent it. It also happened to be the last time that Tom Hanks was nominated for an acting Oscar.

With a total of 5 Best Actor nominations for Big (1988), Philadelphia (1993), Forrest Gump (1994), Saving Private Ryan (1998), and Cast Away (2000) and back-to-back wins (only the second Best Actor to accomplish the feat after Spencer Tracy almost 60 years before and only one of five actors (the others are Luise Rainer, Katharine Hepburn, and Jason Robards) to have achieved the distinction in the Academy's 88 year history) it's not like Hanks is hurting for accolades. And if that weren't enough, he's even taken gold for television, winning 7 Emmys so far as a producer and director on multiple miniseries.

The Academy often has brief but passionate affairs when it comes to actors...

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A Brief Note on Moonlight's Oscar Buzz

Nathaniel R reporting from the Toronto Film Festival

I'll need more time to process Moonlight, a stunning triptych about a black gay man named Chiron at three stages in his life (played by Alex R Hibbet as a child, Ashton Sanders as a teenager, and Trevante Rhodes as an adult). A full review then is yet to come. Barry Jenkins' film inspired by the play "In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue" is beautifully calibrated to explore its central theme of finding your identity. It provides no easy answers as to how to do that and no simple catharsis which could make it a difficult sell. If anyone is up to the task it's the distributor A24 who will platform release the film beginning on October 21st. 

As to the reductive topic of all the Oscar buzz, I am uncertain. Yes, it's going to be a huge critical success and some people's favorite of the year. Barry Jenkins has most definitely announced himself as a exciting formidable writer/director. Yes the cast is performing the material gorgeously particularly Mahershala Ali as a complex father figure to Chiron in the first act, and Trevante Rhodes who pulls all the Chiron's together with heartbreaking interiority in the last act. (Of note: Naomie Harris as Chiron's drug-addicted mother is the only actor to appear in all three chapters but she's impactful each time). But, how to put this... it's definitely an art film that's going to work best for audience members for whom identity politics resonate (*raises hand*). It's also a double minority story about being black and gay.

Juan (Mahershala Ali) teaches Chiron (Alex R Hibbet) to swim in Moonlight's first chapter "Little"

Oscar is, rather infamously, a majority instution if you get me. They normally need some "in" for LGBT or black stories, in the form of an already renowned director for the former or a famous historical event or famous actor in celebrity bio or some such for the latter. We'll see.

I repeat: If anyone is up to the task it's the distributor A24!