Anna Kendrick for "The Last Five Years"

I've long dreamed of a film adaptation of Jason Robert Brown's possibly unfilmable The Last Five Years which is, frankly, my favorite original musical of this millenium (thus far). Only Michael John LaChiusa's The Wild Party and Adam Guettel's Light in the Piazza come anywhere near it in terms of my obsessiveness. I know every word backwards and forwards. Literally at that; half of this romance-gone-awry musical (Hers) is told backwards and the other half (His) is told forwards. 

Turns out a film version is very much in the works. Writer/Director Richard LaGravenese wants to make it and Anna Kendrick, she of the perfect pitch, plans to star in it. They'll have to get funding and a male lead still. The right male lead won't be easy to come by. He's got to be a) convincingly Jewish b) comedically and dramatically gifted c) blessed with enough sexual and intellectual charisma to have the audience buy into his sudden literary stardom and understand if not quite forgive his extramarital flings and he's got to be able to sell the show's single best dramatic song "Nobody Needs to Know". 

It's tough to imagine anyone surpassing Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott who originated the roles off Broadway but that's a problem that only those theater aficionados who were lucky enough to see it during its run in 2002 have to contend with.

One of Broadway's best - Sherie Rene Scott

I'm not sure what to make of this filmmaking combo. LaGravenese's work is all over the place quality wise from the sublime (The Fisher King's screenplay) to the let's-not-talk-about-that (two poorly received Hilary Swank vehicles for starters.) Anna Kendrick won't have any trouble selling the comedy or the vocals but it's tough to imagine Kendrick, who has made her career on scarily driven type A bitches (Camp, Up in the Air) who would eat Cathy alive, selling her frustrating doormat qualities and lack of confidence with the endearing comic neurosis and empathic sweetness that Sherie Rene Scott mastered. I love Kendrick's voice and y'all know I am thrilled that we're arriving in a place (possibly) where actors with actual vocal gifts are routinely cast in musicals, but the role is just such a 180º from the roles that made her famous.

Are there any other Last Five Years fans in the house? Speak up. Convince your fellow TFE readers to grab that CD. 

Thoughts I had while staring at these "Django Unchained" character posters

Presented as they arrive without self-censorship (but for the first, redacted as the MPAA slapped me with an NC-17 for thinking it out loud...)

 

• Kerry for Breast Actress. 
• Every time I read any plot synopsis of this movie it says something like 'Django must rescue the beautiful Broomhilda Von Shaft from the evil clutches of Calvin Candie' all I can think of is how I can't wait to play the video game. These names! How many game levels until you're fighting Calvin Candie?
• Every time I look at Kerry Washington I feel guilt for having been a fan since Our Song -- god, what a find she was for the casting directors (well done y'all) -- and still not watching Scandal because I only allot so much time for TV and her beauty is pure big screen to me.
• More and Actress-Free thoughts after the jump

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007 Femme Fatales

Deborah Lipp, author of "The Ultimate James Bond Fan Book" continues her countdown to "Skyfall" with lists of 007 things!

Author Ian Fleming, creator of the James Bond series, had no interest in the archetype of a femme fatale—a seductive, beautiful, dangerous woman. The femme fatale is Freud's ultimate woman, combining sex and death. Fleming's women were either love interests, usually fragile and in need of rescue, or—if villains—hideously ugly. But the Bond films introduced us to the sexy villainess. As it happens, there have been exactly seven such villainesses in the course of Bond film history.

In chronological order, then, here's a run-down of the femmes fatale that have passed through Bond's films and bed...

Miss Taro

001 Miss Taro, Dr. No (1962)
A secondary villain, Miss Taro sleeps with Bond to keep him at her house long enough for compatriots to come and kill him. Unfortunately, he knows her plan, and in a rare gesture of mercy, has her arrested. She's the only character on our list who survives the encounter! She's also not terribly interesting; she seems uneasy in her role as villainess and the film relies far too heavily on "inscrutable Asian" stereotypes.  

What should I say to an invitation from a strange gentleman?"
-Zena Marshall as Miss Taro 

Fiona Volpe

002 Fiona Volpe, Thunderball (1965)
This one's the best, ladies and gentlemen, the prototype, the mold upon which all other seductresses are based. 

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LFF: Sightseeing British talent

David here reporting on three homegrown participants in the 56th BFI London Film Festival.

Steve Oram & Alice Lowe in 'Sightseers'A distinctly British melding of comedy and horror grew from the roots of Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, and it’s telling that Wright has an executive producer credit on Sightseers, director Ben Wheatley’s follow-up to his terrifying, schizoid Kill List, which made it to US theatres earlier this year. Sightseers proves similarly unclassifiable, but the black magic horror of Kill List is replaced by a crunching absurdity. Co-writers Steve Oram and Alice Lowe star as Chris and Tina, a young couple who leave behind Tina’s demanding, cruel but dependent mother and set out on a sightseeing tour around England that quickly becomes a killing spree after Chris reverses over a tourist he witnessed littering. Justifications for the killings range from a rambler’s “smug complacency” to Tina’s sexual jealousy, removing any kind of social agenda from Oram and Lowe’s anarchic, cruelly witty script. Instead they parody usual clichés – Tina is still affected by the loss of her dog, who meets an unfortunate end by knitting needle in flashback – and affectionately mock bullshit social rhetoric. There’s a guilty pleasure in our enjoyment of the escalating brutality of the situation and how the pair’s romantic entanglement evolves through this. Despite their obvious issues, Chris and Tina are genuinely entertaining people to spend time with, and the surreal, morbid flourishes of humour combine with dark flares of blood to make for a generic hybrid that has been deftly melded together. Sightseers is worth making tracks to see. (A-)

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Reader Ranking Announcement: James Bond!

I meant to follow up February's very popular Meryl Streep Reader Ranking with another participatory countdown that's turned over to you! But I've been slow about it. Here's a perfect opportunity. Let's do everyone's favorite spy, James Bond. Deborah has been listing her favorites as we count down to Daniel Craig's third outing as 007, Skyfall on November 9th. 

The official James Bond films as a reminder... 

1. Dr. No (1962) Connery 
2. From Russia With Love (1963) Connery 
3. Goldfinger (1964) Connery 
4. Thunderball (1965) Connery 
5. You Only Live Twice (1967) Connery 
6. On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) Lazenby
7. Diamonds Are Forever (1971) Connery 
8. Live and Let Die (1973) Moore 
9. The Man With the Golden Gun (1974) Moore
10. The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) Moore 
11. Moonraker (1979) Moore 
12. For Your Eyes Only (1981) Moore 
13. Octopussy (1983) Moore 
14. A View To a Kill (1985) Moore 
15. The Living Daylights (1987) Dalton 
16. License to Kill (1989) Dalton
17. Goldeneye (1995) Brosnan 
18. Tomorrow Never Dies (1997) Brosnan 
19. The World is Not Enough (1999) Brosnan 
20. Die Another Day (2002) Brosnan 
21. Casino Royale (2006) Craig 
22. Quantum of Solace (2008) Craig 

Confession: I have a soft spot for Octopussy (1983) which most people think is terrible, because it's the first Bond I ever saw.How to play along: 

• Send me a ranked list of every James Bond film you've seen by November 1st with "BOND RANK" in the subject line. Your list could be as short as 3 films or as long as 22 -- I'll take any size list but the lists are weighted to prioritize the readers who've seen the most (just like we did with Streep). If you need help remembering which film is which here's a handy compendium.
• Bonus Points: If you include a list of your 7 favorite Bond Girls in the e-mail, I'll add more weight to your film rankings if you do.
• Feel free to include soundbytes. I might publish them if they're relevant to the final rank.
• Feel free to include links to something you've written about the franchise if you have a blog. I might link them if it's relevant to the final writeup.
• Depending on your enthusiasm we'll know how Bond crazy we should get in early November when Skyfall premieres.