Imaginary Couples: Villeneuve & Vallée

An unexpected treat from our neighboring country to the north and a hat tip to Kevin LaForest for sharing it with us.

Two of Canada's greatest directors Jean-Marc Vallée (Wild) and Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners) recently posed for the photographer Olivier Ciappa's anti-homophobia series which photographs heterosexual celebrities as gay couples. (For a long time I actually thought Vallée was gay because his breakout hit C.R.A.Z.Y., which Canada submitted for the Oscars back in its day a decade ago, was a fine LGBT coming out drama in addition to the other things it was good at, but it turns out he's straight.) 

Vallée is riding quite an Oscar wave at the moment post The Dallas Buyers Club and Wild and his next film Demolition with Jake Gyllenhaal premieres at TIFF. (It's planning on 2016 for its US release but don't expect that plan to stick if reviews are sensational.) Villeneuve's career has been building for some time as well. Canada has actually submitted his work three times in the foreign language film category and the last of them Incendies (2010) was nominated for the big show. His newest feature Sicario (see that intense trailer) stars Emily Blunt and Benicio del Toro in a drug trafficking drama and could be one of the fall's mightiest films and a possible Oscar player. We shall see. 

Do you like these directors?

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100 Things I Love About the Movies

I recently had the pleasure of participating in a group project for the Broken Projector Podcast's 100th episode in which several cinephiles were asked to list 7 things they loved about the movies. You should listen to it! I got a little carried away and was too longwinded (sorry!) but I highly recommend a listen because even though I do carry one, others are more succinct and the podcast also features various writers from Film School Rejects and our friend Katey Rich among fabulous others. I purposely didn't lean into geek culture titans like Star Wars and Spielberg classics and all of that because I new they'd be amply covered. But yes, I love early Star Wars and early Spielberg, too. I just rarely talk about it because it's all you hear about elsewhere. 

Anywayyyy... Not related but in a similar vein I chanced upon The Best Picture Project blog doing a 100 wide list, too, and... well, why limit myself to seven. So herewith, a mostly off the top of my head listing of 

100 Things I Love About the Movies 
(in no particular order and literally off the top of my head) 

 

1. The feeling of possibility in that moment when the curtains go up or, rather, expand to fit the wider screen
2. Opening titles that are their own short entity, not just overlayed on the movie
3. Musicals - for being the greatest of film genres and essentially combining every art form
4. Women Who Lie To Themselves™ - the greatest of subgenres
5. The Redford Theater in Detroit (which played old movies every other weekend on a massive screen with a live organ pre-show) which is where I first fell in love with Old Hollywood
6. That time exiting a revival of Singin' in the Rain as a kid when I swung around a pole in unbridled enthusiasm for the movies
7. The pride of learning every nonsense syllable of "We Go Together" from Grease
8. My mom's deep enthusiasm for Witness (1985) and her weird guilt about loving it so much
9. Dreading my dad's grumpiness when the family went to Titanic (1997) on a Christmas break only to realize he loved it. And how.
10. Liz Taylor doing Bette Davis "What a dump!"
11. When Dorothy Gale opens her door and leaves sepia tone behind for color
12. The complete works of Pedro Almodóvar
13. "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."
14. Moulin Rouge!
15. Catherine Deneuve's hair
16. Vivien Leigh's eyebrows
17. Marilyn Monroe's voice
    
    83 more things after the jump...
    
    

Click to read more ...

Beauty vs Beast: Mothers in the Storm

Jason from MNPP here wishing all of you a happy Monday and a happier August - where has the time flown? I've been off "Beauty vs Beast" duties for a couple of weeks because of real-world-stuff that's all quite boring, but I'm back now and rarin' to go. Positively rarin'. Today's pick it a little random but not really when I lay it out -- there was that article about Brokeback Mountain's upcoming 10 Year Anniversary last week which got me thinking about Ang Lee and then yesterday's Supporting Actress Smackdown got me thinking about Joan Allen and yadda yadda I re-watched The Ice Storm last night and yadda yadda here we are. See? Simple. More difficult I think will be the choosing... but let's reach in the bowl and fish somebody's keys out...

PREVIOUSLY Whilst I was away Nathaniel whispered my favorite siren song of sweet sweet Gyllenhaals and asked you guys to pick your favorite Jake flavor -- he's basically a box of Neopolitan Ice Cream; they're all so delicious, why choose? But choose we had to and straight-up Beautiful Jake (a la Brokeback and Love and Other Drugs) beat out his more Beastly iterations. Said San FranCinema:

"Had to vote for Beauty. Brokeback Jake...I just can't quit him!"

Uptown Link You Up

Guardian Amy Schumer taking up active role in fight for more US gun control
Variety in strange news MacBeth will be available to stream shortly after its December release
Empire Channing Tatum has only just now agreed to play Gambit in the upcoming superhero film. This is why i hate internet superhero culture. We've been hearing about this for about ten months. And he's only just made it official so now we get to hear about it again? 
/Film Relativity's bankruptcy has saved us from at least one reboot: The Crow (though as with Terminator the idea of rebooting it makes no damn sense since the very concept enables endless sequels with very little connective tissue to the originals
Playbill at least one cast member (Josh Gad) of Beauty & The Beast is done filming
The Matinee looks back at Her after reading Aziz Ansari's "Modern Romance" 
E! Online WHOA. Kyle Chandler played Coach Taylor (Friday Night Lights) again... albeit for just a few seconds

 

YNMS
We've done so many of these lately that to do them all would be a bit like becoming a trailers only site and no thank you... so a few that we missed are Alex Ross Perry's Queen of Earth starring Elisabeth Moss who was so so excellent in Perry's Listen Up Philip (it also has a great poster!),  the Oscar hopeful Brooklyn (which I loved at Sundance), Nancy Meyer's The Intern which we will obviously see because Anne Hathaway (♥), the Half Nelson directors returning with Mississippi Grind though they've moved from Gosling to Reynolds in the "Ryan" department, that continuous shot German movie Victoria (which Sebastian already talked about) and the latest trailer for the animated version of The Little Prince. 

Video To Go
"Uptown Funk" as sung by the movies. 

Cute. (I was wondering what they'd use for "Michelle Pfeiffer" and had no idea that she was referenced in The Bucket List) But wow is that a boy-movie montage. Even the dance breaks are sans-actresses!