Don't You (Forget About Link)

Glory of the 80s (and 90s)
Stale Popcorn on the recent trend of movies referencing the heyday of teen cinema like Pitch Perfect's obsession with The Breakfast Club
Scott C details his process in creating his Back to the Future illustration for "The Great Showdowns"
Gawker on Tori Amos and Tim Burton's new projects (Gold Dust & Frankenweenie) which are essentially recreations of past projects
Mondo Musicals sees the directors cut of Little Shop of Horrors and lives to tell about it.

More Linkage 
Gold Derby thinks the Oscar race is over and it's a 'monster sweep' for Les Misérables.  So, essentially we're right back to our initial April predictions :) 
John August, famous screenwriter, is answering fan questions online about Frankenweenie
MNPP Daniel Radcliffe gets horny 
Cinematic Corner reminds us that it's Autumn and we couldn't be happier about that. Beautiful screencaps
Playbill Congrats to Broadway divas Audra McDonald and Will Swenson who were married yesterday
Pajiba 10 Actors You Probably Didn't Know Could Dance. I did know most of these as a musical actors obsessive but Chris Hemsworth's hips took me by surprise

Finally... and taking us full circle back to famous movies of the 80s, did you hear that Peter Gabriel had a surprise for audiences in California this weekend? He brought John Cusack out on stage for "In Your Eyes"!

But it was only for a delivery. It was Gabriel and not Cusack who lifted the boombox up high to echo the actor's famous Say Anything pose.

Liam Neeson Delivers Another Box Office Beatdown

Jean Grey, mysteriously having lost all of her mutant powers, relies on Liam Neeson for rescueLiam Neeson's surprising late career popularity continues. People love to see him putting the vicious beat down on evil types. Even if the film is as generically titled and redundantly plotted (from what I hear) as Taken 2. I wonder when we'll Neeson working a softer side again onscreen like he did in Nell, Husbands and Wives or Kinsey. Well I suppose he was more cerebral than soft in Kinsey, but the point stands. Kinsey was only 8 years ago but it seems like a different lifetime ago. It must be all those dead bodies he's left behind him onscreen since!

Box Office Dozen
01 TAKEN 2  $50 *NEW IN WIDE RELEASE*
02 HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA  $26.3 (cum. $76)
03 PITCH PERFECT $14.7 *EXPANDING* (cum. $21.6)
04 LOOPER $12.2 (cum. $40.3) review
05 FRANKENWEENIE $11.5 *NEW IN WIDE RELEASE* on the original short

06 END OF WATCH  $4 (cum $32.8)
07 TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE $3.8 (cum. $29.7)
08 HOUSE AT THE END OF THE STREET $3.6 (cum. $27.5)
08 THE MASTER $1.8 (cum. $12.3) Team Experience
09 FINDING NEMO 3-D $1.5 (cum. $38.9 this time around) 

I'm sad that the surprisingly worthwhile and funny Frankenweenie didn't seem to connect with ticket buyers. It's Tim Burton's best since Corpse Bride. (Maybe he should stick to animation for awhile?).

This weekend I went to Pitch Perfect with my two besties. The movie wasn't quite Aca-mazing -- I wish the filmmaking itself had been stronger -- but it was definitely a good time. Our favorites were Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) who the marketing campaign is forcing has chosen as everyone's favorite, and Lilly (Hana Mae Lee) who trusted that if you missed her barely audible punchlines, they were still funny. She was right.

I have to set fire to things to feel joy"

What did you see this weekend?

Oscar Horrors: Best Transformation Scene... Ever

[In the returning daily October series "Oscar Horrors" we look at those rare beasts. Film contributions in the horror genre that went on to Oscar nominations. Here's new contributor Peter Swanson...]

HERE LIES ... An American Werewolf in London, which won the 1981 Academy Award for Best Makeup, the first year that award was given in regular competition.

Peter from Armchair Audience here. A quick story first. As a film-obsessive I've tried hard to not be that guy (you know the one) who insists his/her friends watch all their favorite movies. However, a few years ago and in a mildly intoxicated state, I forced my wife and dinner guest to sit through An American Werewolf in London, accompanied by my own personal commentary track. When werewolf-bitten David Kessler (David Naughton) first turns into a hairy beast I (allegedly) repeated the phrase,"Best transformation scene ever," about twenty times. That phrase has come to haunt me through the years--my wife likes to spring it on me any time I suggest watching a movie to friends.

Here's the thing: It is the best transformation scene ever.

No amount of CGI wizardry will ever match Rick Baker's amazing use of latex and air bladders to convey the bone-popping pain of turning from man to beast. But even if An American Werewolf in London never had that transformation scene, it would still be deserving of the inaugural Academy Award for Best Makeup. There's so much good stuff, from the werewolf itself that rampages around on four legs, to the decomposing Griffin Dunne, to the Nazi mutants that appear in David's terrifying dream. 

Rick Baker has since gone on to receive eleven nominations in this category and to win seven times. But even his recent state-of-the-art digital work on the sub-par The Wolfman doesn't come close to matching the grisly perfection of what he did for John Landis's cult hit. It's crucial to the film, as well, since horror-comedy, now a staple of genre-filmmaking, was a pretty new concept in 1981. It wasn't just the notion that comedy would be mixed with horror elements (Abbott and Costello at one point cornered this market) but that the horror elements were so genuinely terrifying and gruesome. Griffin Dunne, playing David's ill-fated traveling companion Jack Goodman, kills in the movie because of his droll commentary, but his make-up work, especially the early scenes with his face half torn away are truly disturbing.

Make-up isn't the only reason to re-visit this film. Sure, David Naugton is a little hammy and stiff as the title character, but the movie works on all the different levels it aspires to: gothic tale, slapstick comedy, gore-fest, tragic romance. Griffin Dunne delivers his funniest role, and Jenny Agutter, currently playing a kindly nun on The Midwife Calls, elevates the material as a sad and sexy nurse.

And, of course, 'the best transformation scene... ever.'

First & Last: It might be a fantasy

the first and last images from a movie (barring the credits sequences)

bonus clue: the last line

...a world full of love, like yours and mine. Like home.

Can you guess the movie?

Best Actor Bait. The Key Word Being Bait.

The Oscar Prediction Chart Updates continue with the leading and supporting men. Best Actor seems especially confusing this year what with so many major stars or past Oscar nominees arriving with generally infallible bait right there in the roles. Let's do a quick chart. Here are, arguably, the five most infallible types of Oscar Bait and who is serving them up. (Obviously many of these men are still awaiting critical consensus on their performances or the fourth column would be larger.)

BEST ACTOR
In that chart right there I've only visually (and alphabetically) included  the top ten ranked men from my prediction chart. Now I'm even less enthused about Matt Damon's Oscar chances for Promised Land since he doesn't figure into these five columns at all. One might call him overdue if he didn't have that early writing Oscar (Good Will Hunting) but as it stands now he has no surefire hook for his Oscar campaign. This is not to say that "crisis of conscience" isn't a form of bait for leading men. That's a fairly common hook in leading roles but it's hardly the iconic carrot to dangled in front of voters like, say, debilatating suffering, addiction or ol' fashioned biographical dress up are.

If Anthony Hopkins is terrific as Hitchcock it's going to come down to the wire as to which of the top six men are given the boot on nomination morning since they're all packing serious bait as they fish for votes.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
The supporting categories are the last to lock down since so much what happens there depends on coattails from leading players and Best Picture nominations. Though you can safely lock up Philip Seymour Hoffman who is already a default Oscar player before you account for his enormous amount of screen time or the kind of reviews he won for The Master. Beyond Hoffman it's still anyone's game though reactions to Lincoln, which premieres Monday at the New York Film Festival, will certainly tell us whether David Strathairn is in the hunt for his second nomination. He's currently my only predicted Supporting Actor nominee who hasn't yet won the Oscar so if he's strong and the field really turns out that way, a win wouldn't be out of the question.

As for the men who have never been nominated, I'm particularly frustrated that Michael Fassbender who was so sublime in Prometheus is fading from the conversation but I expected as much since Oscar don't do sci-fi. I'm also frustrated that Matthew McConaughey who is inarguably having the best year of his career, isn't winning traction. Frustrated by not surprised. Though Oscar himself is famously nude and male and popular with the gays, He isn't generally turned on by the sexualization of male actors. That shiny Global icon is famously resistant to the matinee idol type ignoring them altogether or making them wait until they're gray and less sexually potent for their Oscar glory. Oscar just doesn't like leading men who trade on their own eroticism. Witness the Oscar fate of Michael Fassbender in Shame last year. McConaughey's selfploitation in Magic Mike (and to a lesser but more compromising degree in The Paperboy) is probably working against him no matter how much he's stepped up his game this year. 

Which actors are you banking on at this point? Where would you flipflop contenders on our charts?