She's Gotta Link It

Deadline Happy news! Billy Magnussen, who is fabulously funny on Broadway in Vanya & Sonya & Masha & Spike (I reviewed it) will play Rapunzel's Prince in the film version of Into the Woods
Variety I started with happy news because ABC Family cancelled Bunheads which is just killing me right now. Another singular piece of entertainment shuttered too soon because networks don't have the guts to support shows that aren't entirely formulaic and interchangeable with other shows concurrently airing. They say "we took extra time to try and find ways to bring the series back for another season" but I see no evidence that they did that. 
Signs and Sirens a provocative think piece on Melissa McCarthy's aggressive rise to the top of film comedy

Los Angeles Times RIP Actor Dennis Farina (Get Shorty, Midnight Run, Law & Order)  
AV Club bless them for publishing this list of 22 Best Picture winners that were released in the first six months of their years. This topic is dear to my heart and I'm always trying to sell it to Hollywood and nobody seems to believe me. Maybe people will believe the AV Club? 
New York Times on Woody Allen's gift with vivid female characters 
Cinema Blend The Freddie Mercury biopic is falling apart because surviving Queen members want it to be PG clean? Oy. Best that this project falls apart!
Movie City News David Poland does some thinking aloud about Netflix. I love reading about this even though he loses me once he starts getting into a fast food analogy. But I wish someone would address the issue of accessibility. I really am having nightmares about this post-Netflix world when suddenly it's so complicated to find movies again. For a short while, the first few years of Netflix it seemed like ANY movie was available for watching and for only one monthly price. It was heaven. Now it's constricting again and you have to really search for movies and pay per view instead of subscription fees. I hate it! I do not want to have to look at Hulu, Amazon, iTunes, and Netflix and godknows what else every time I want to seek out a piece of Oscar history. Each new technology change we lose pieces of the history of the movies. It happened with VHS to DVD and it's happening now with DVD to the splintering market of Streaming. It saddens me. 

Finally...
Another day, sorta disingenuous Kickstarter plea to get a rich celebrity funding for a movie that they claim they couldn't make within the system even though they got a lot of shit made through the system in years past!  Spike Lee is the latest millionaire asking his fans for cash. Now, I respect Spike Lee as a filmmaker far more than the guy who popularized this trend - Lee has made several provocative ballsy movies outside of and within the system that only he could have made. Some of his joints are even incredible movies (Do the Right Thing, 25th Hour) and even his failures tend to be interesting!

This is a mothafuckin body of work right here 

I like Spike Lee and  I am not against asking for money as my sidebar reminds but asking for money is for people who don't have it ;) People who earn a substantial living doing what they do -- should they really be the same ones shaking tin cans on the street? It's a distortion of the point of crowdfunding. The people who can't get movies made within the system are the ones that Hollywood doesn't know exist, not the ones Hollywood already supports with paychecks. I wouldn't find this trend so distasteful if even one of these celebrities would just speak the truth which is this:

'I COULD get the movie I wanted to make made within the system and get paid for it but it might take a longer time than I'd like and I heard this is an easy way to do it and I don't want to part with my own money  -- remember when Francis Ford Coppola went bankrupt with 'One From the Heart'? So just give me some, okay?

You know?  

Rita! Rita! Rita!

Rita made the cover of "Life" in 1954 Congratulations to "Anita" herself, Rita Moreno. The EGOT winner, West Side Story MVP, and showbiz legend will be honored with the SAG Lifetime Achievement Award this coming January at the SAG Awards Ceremony live on TNT and TBS on Saturday, Jan. 18, 2014. Unlike the Academy Awards (for shame) the Screen Actors Guild still understands the importance of honoring the giants of showbiz history each year on their broadcast, bless them.

Rita was the third actor to win the coveted "Triple Crown" (Tony, Emmy, Oscar) and coincidentally also the third performer to manage an "EGOT" (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony). What's most impressive about both achievements is that the awards were spread out over two decades and came for entirely different things (it's possible, after all, to win Grammys and Oscars for the same film and theoretically possible to win Emmys for performing on a Tony Awards show ;). This indicates true staying power and a lovely capacity to evolve. And, in Rita's case, she did this in an industry that was notoriously difficult for actresses of color to navigate. It still is to some degree but less so thanks to people like Rita. 

The Puerto Rican triple threat first made waves via movie musicals -- Singin' in the Rain (1952), The King and I (1954), West Side Story (1961, Oscar) -- but maintained her fame through work on stage (The Ritz won her the Tony in '75), and television in such memorable shows as The Muppet Show (Emmy),  Electric Company (Grammy), HBO's Oz and so on and so on. Children's Television, Immortal Musicals, and Racy Maximum-Security Drama; that's some range! And she's still working. She recently wrapped filming on a little movie called Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks which co-stars other wonderful older actresses like Gena Rowlands and Jacki Weaver. 

Now about the award... while my personal preference is to give lifetime achievement and honorary prizes to people who haven't logged a lot of hours holding golden statues up in triumph, we all know this is not how Hollywood works. They love a winner so you have a lot better shot getting a lifetime achievement for your career if you've already won prizes for that career over the years and don't need the lifetime honor for anyone to remember you. In this case we don't mind so much since Rita is a truly special figure and breakthrough in Hollywood history. Bring this on.

Rita celebrating WSS's 50th anniversary a couple of years back

Anita's gonna get her kicks,  SAG Nii-iiii-iiiight ♩ She'll have a private little mix, SAG Nii-iiii-iiight

Tell us how much you love Rita in the comments. You know you do. 

Stage Door: "The Nance" and How I Wish It Were a Movie

In Stage Door we tell you about our latest theatrical experiences here in NYC through our movie-mad filter

As you may recall I was out of the country this year when the Tony Awards happened and thus out of the theatrical loop. I didn't even realize until leaving the theater recently that the 'playsical' I'd just seen had been a multiple winner: Sound Design, Scenic Design, Costume Design (the great Ann Roth), and Original Music. Like one of those Oscar winners everyone thinks is exceedingly handsome but no one quite rapturously loves enough in the marquee categories. 

I'm referring to The Nance as a playsical because it is a play with music, all of the music being performance-based. The incidental music and the main talk-sung song -- a disposable come-on "meet me round the corner in a half an hour" performed multiple times by strippers and The Nance -- plays a key minor role since the story takes place in the final days of the waning vaudeville circuit in NYC in the 1930s and one theater in particular which becomes a target of right-wing politicans. [more...] 

Click to read more ...

"I Am Legend" Predicted Meeting of Superman and Batman

Glenn here. Long before it was announced at Comic-Con that the Man of Steel would join forces with The Dark Knight, Superman and Batman were already joining forces on the big screen...

That's a shot from Francis Lawrence's 2007 apocalyptic zombie flick I Am Legend. The timeline proved to be a little off - Legend is set in 2012, but the Superman/Batman flick won't reach cinemas until sometime in 2015 - but that's still pretty good foreshadowing, don't you think? Even the artwork they revealed is virtually identical.

What do we think of this news, anyway? Rash damage control after audiences proved less enthused about Man of Steel than initially hoped (I very much enjoyed it for whatever that's worth), or genuinely exciting meeting of the brawn ala The Avengers? And was Warner Bros just being cheeky when they inserted this fake billboard easter egg into I Am Legend or was it their sly their plan all along?

The Brotherhood of Evil Magnetos

The single greatest celebrity photo that could ever be taken at Comic Con. We love them both so much, in or out of protective headgear

Sir Ian McKellen & Michael Fassbender at Comic Con

poll by twiigs.com

They're also co-starring in a teaser poster together.