Links

Fistful of Film Fisti is sharing 100 reasons why Xavier Dolan's Mommy is his all time favorite film
Buzzfeed has an extensive interesting essay on Jennifer Garner's transformation from promising actress to magazine-celebrity mom
Tracking Board Bong Joon-Ho (Snowpiercer, Mother) is doing a monster movie for Netflix that will star the Gyllenhaal, Tilda, Kelly Macdonald and Lily Collins. Somehow they chose the only boring cast member in that list for the photo

Pajiba 11 examples of terrible singing in movie musicals - fine list except for including Christian Bale & Ewan McGregor - love both of those performances and I'm a total nitpicker with movie musicals
Demanders great piece on The Flash's vision of masculinity (so different than other superheroes, thank god)
Ali Benz "Reasons why Nicole Kidman is a legend"
Towleroad wide ranging Sir Ian McKellen interview with Owen Jones
Playbill The Fosters had a musical Romeo & Juliet episode
AV Club an archive of unsold TV pilots
Variety Jenna Dewan Tatum (Mrs Channing Tatum) will host a new dance competition series for ABC
The Russo Brothers show "Chris Evans" the finished Captain America: Civil War and get his reaction. What's his favorite part?
Guardian has a very oddly timed screed against the mediocrity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Oddly timed because a certain DC behemoth is opening right now and...
Rotten Tomatoes... reviews are abysmal for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Titles / Release Dates:
Woody Allen's 2016 picture (starring Steve Carell, Kristen Stewart, Parker Posey and more) takes place in the 1930s and is called Cafe Society. It might debut at Cannes; Ben Affleck's next Oscar hopeful as a director, the Prohibition era drama Live by Night (which he also stars in) will open October 20th, 2017 

OffScreen For Fun
Cracked 10 Facts to make you feel better about the upcoming presidential election
Kenneth in the (212) a catty meme
The Gaily Grind  Easter Egg Butts (nsfw)

Important!
Goldie Hawn has joined Instagram.

My happy hour cocktail 🍸#greenjuice

A video posted by Goldie Hawn (@officialgoldiehawn) on Mar 9, 2016 at 6:37pm PST

 

What do you suppose Nicole gave Reese for her birthday?

Awww. Reese Witherspoon celebrated her 40th birthday yesterday with Nicole Kidman. They've been filming the miniseries Big Little Secrets of late. Curious that the photo makes it look like the wine is where the birthday candles go.

Over the weekend she also had a big star studded birthday bash so she was doing 40 right. What do you suppose Nicole gave Reese? What would you give Reese for her birthday? 

Judy by the Numbers: "I'm Nobody's Baby"

Anne Marie is tracking Judy Garland's career through musical numbers...

Today's clip is a plea for the importance of audio preservation. Unlike last week's short, which survives as only 3 minutes of grainy footage of Judy Garland singing to a statue, Andy Hardy Meets Debutante has been remastered and restored several times since its 1940 release. However, Judy completists who watch the movie may be surprised at what a musical it's not. That's because two songs are missing from the film.

 

The Movie: Andy Hardy Meets Debutante (MGM, 1940)

The Songwriters: Benny Davis, Milton Ager, and Lester Stanley
The Players: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Lewis Stone, Ann Rutherford, directed by George B. Seitz

The Story: Judy Garland only sings two songs in the entirety of her second Andy Hardy film. Unlike most Mickey/Judy pairings, Andy Hardy Meets Debutante does not follow the "let's put on a show" plotline. Instead, the film follows Andy as he goes further and further into debt trying to woo the heart of a New York debutante. This means two terrible things for Judy Garland fans: less Judy, and less singing. In fact, the movie was originally supposed to have four songs by Little Iron Lungs. Unfortunately, "Buds Won't Bud" and "All I Do Is Dream Of You" were recorded, but cut before being filmed. (Both were eventually reused in later films: "Buds Won't Bud" was sung by Ethel Waters in Cairo, while "All I Do Is Dream Of You" used as Debbie Reynold's excuse to pop out of a cake in Singin in the Rain.) Here's the good news: both Judy versions were saved as studio recordings, and have since been remastered and released. Sometimes even restoration stories get a happy ending.

previous highlights: "The Land of Let's Pretend" (1930), "Dear Mr Gable" (1937), "Got a New Pair of Shoes" (1937),“Zing Went the Strings of My Heart” (1938), "Over the Rainbow" (1939)

Hit Me With Daredevil Season 2's Best Shots

I asked Hit Me With Your Best Shot participants to choose an episode or multiple episodes from Daredevil's second season on Netflix -- however they wanted to do it -- and write up their choice for a Best Shot. Because the second season has been available for less than a week, we're eschewing the traditional Visual Index so you don't have anything spoiled for you. Read with caution and quit on the episodes you haven't yet seen.

9 heroic blogs
Blue Canary (S1) 
Awards Madness (S2. Episode 1)
The Film Experience (S2. Episodes 1-3)
Sorta That Guy (S2. Episodes 1-3)
Cinematic Corner (S2. Episodes 1-6) 
Magnificent Obsession (Entire Second Season)
I Want to Believe (Entire Second Season)
Wick's Picks (Entire Second Season + a little Jessica Jones) 
Movie Motorbreath (Entire Second Season) 

NEXT TUESDAY:  We're a little early for April Fool's Day but we're still doing a notorious bad movie from a respected director, the psycho sexual sci-fi Zardoz (1974) directed by John Boorman and starring Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling

The Signage of the Lambs

Can we get a round of applause for Daniel's great work on the new series "The Furniture"? I'm loving it so much and we're only two episodes in.

Consider this a spin-off one-off. I thought I'd share a particular movie obsession that we haven't yet dived into in all these years of blogging - signs. Shove a professional sign or any diegetic text or hand-scrawled message in front of the camera and I go all bookworm eyes. Are they subliminal subtitles? That's surely up to the set decorator, prop man, production designer and director. But on our recent revisit to Silence of the Lambs (1991) its signs felt newly purposeful.

Probably because the film begins with such a bold aggressive dare, nailed right to a tree. [More...]

Click to read more ...