Link is the Longest Blog Post
Saturday, May 25, 2013 at 4:00PM Flavorwire 15 great female film critics you should be reading
IndieWire Before Midnight has a great opening night in an unfortunately tiny amount of theaters. If I ran the world this would make $100 million this weekend ;)
Funny or Die "the reviews are in for Behind the Candelabra" LOL
Grantland Wesley Morris on two Cannes entries Claire Denis' Bastards and Nicolas Winding Refn's booed Only God Forgives
My New Plaid Pants Allegedly Ewan McGregor
/Film interesting. Jon Stewart's directorial debut Rosewater will star Gael García Bernal and is about a man who was held in an Iranian prison
Twitter Bryan Singer announces Evan Peters as Quicksilver. I've always thought the X-Men franchise was marred by sloppy casting (especially the further you get away from the centerpiece roles) and this one strikes me as no exception. The actors chose beyond the Magneto/Professor X/Wolverine trinity always seem "off" for the roles. Am I just too connected to the comic books? It's worth noting that Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver (twin siblings in the comics and two of my personal favorite characters in all of the Marvel Universe), due to complicated legal situations, can be used by both Marvel Studios and Fox but cannot reference the other so we may see a different actor play Quicksilver if Joss Whedon decides to use him.
Variety ...which he has according to this interview
Coming Soon an extremely annoying motion poster for the new Carrie
Variety Blue is the Warmest Color wins Fipresci prize at Cannes
In Contention ..speaking of lesbian dramas. Todd Haynes finally has a new movie project. It's called Carol and it's based on Patricia Highsmith's novel "The Price of Salt". Cate Blanchett is Carol, a married woman, who has an affair with a shopgirl Therese (Mia Wasikowska)
i09 DC heroes invade George Seurat's famous sunday in the park painting
anniversaries and goodbyes
The Film Doctor happy 5th anniversary to a film blog I quite enjoy!
Drawn is closing its doors. sniffle. i love this tumblr which was always a great way to stay connected to illustrators on the web
Awards Daily Sasha's last entry from Cannes - missing buzzy Blue ... and attending the Nebraska press conference. Although I'll admit the reveal of a 30 minute time frame to file a review filled me with abject horror. It takes me SO LONG to write reviews. Are other critics really done with them in 30 minutes? How!
Reader Comments (16)
And Harvey Weinstein is ALREADY planning ahead for 2014:
He picked up Cate Blanchett's CAROL, Michelle Williams' SUITE FRANÇAISE, Natalie Portman's JANE GOT A GUN and the new David O. Russell.
http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=104766
Ha.
Cate Blanchett plays Carol !!!
And by the way, Brad over at the Rope of Silicon has just KILLED-TRASHED-SMASHED "The Immigrant":
http://www.ropeofsilicon.com/the-immigrant-movie-review-2013-cannes-film-festival/
How bleeping big is the bleeping Avengers 2 hero roster going to bleeping be!?
Here's what I'd have guessed before this announcement (and, at 9 members with no one who needs to really be introduced, this is really a solid sized team for them to continue subplots and introduce new character dynamics):
Captain America
Hulk
Thor
Iron Man
Winter Soldier
Black Widow
Hawkeye
Falcon
Rocket Raccoon
But now Joss is announcing that he plans to use Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver? 11 team members (with two that need full intros, instead of the partials the original gave us on most of them (Banner got a full one, though, but that one mostly existed to confirm that Ed Norton's film is all but excised from the canon)) is, maybe, getting a bit thick, isn't it? That would probably necessitate cutting three members. (Because now he has to spend the time on introducing two, instead of starting us off with them fully formed.) My bets: Winter Soldier (White guy), Rocket Raccoon (Alien raccoon) and Hawkeye (White guy) are treated as fat (possibly with a joke on the latter that he wants to "start a West Coast branch") to dodge any accusations of racism and sexism.
Hollywood ignored me yet again and gave a plum Iranian role to a non-Iranian. Come on Stewart!
If it makes you feel better Amir, Scorcese also cast Andrew Garfield as a Portuguese Jesuit priest in SILENCE.
I'd take Gael Garcia Bernal as Portuguese over Garfield any day. Garfield does not look Portuguese at all.
Man that Sasha Stone write-up is frustrating. As much as I agree with her that cinema needs more voices--female voices, black voices, gay voices--I absolutely abhor the assumption that the only reason male critics could have for liking a lesbian drama is because they're getting off on it. As if men are incapable of empathy, as if men all have the same experience of viewing women's stories. As a woman, I find it reductive. As a queer woman I find it as regressive as the male objectification she is rallying against. Nothing like a straight woman telling you the only reason someone could be moved by your experience is because they see you as an object.
That all said, thank you so much for that first link! I'm always on the lookout for more women in film to read.
Thanks, Nathaniel. I enjoy your work as well.
That trailer was hilarious! If I were Damon or Douglas I wouldn't even bother to answer those questions about the kissing.
Volvagia -- where are you getting this 11 character number? He's still writing the screenplay and he plans to add the twins but there's no guarantee he'll be adding other characters as well (and no guarantee he won't be dropping some of them from before -- isn't the rumor that Hawkeye is out... and isn't RDJ threatening to quit?). I guess this is a long way of saying I think Whedon is too smart to do what Bryan Singer seems to be doing and what so many other bad superhero films have done where they attempt to do like 20 characters at once.
Yavor - fixed. sorry about that. oy my mistakes this week.
This X-Men film just seems to be too much. Do all these people just work a couple days? Does Jennifer Lawrence hate that she has to do this now that she has the Hunger Games franchise?
And I am so sick of people crapping on January Jones as Emma Frost. It appears that all the bitching lost her that role this time around, which is ridiculous. For godsakes, the woman was basically called to just stand around in her underwear!
Bia -- right? if anything she was smarter casting than Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique (all wrong for the role and not least because she's nothing like Rebecca Romijn Stamous in any way...)
If it makes you feel better Amir, Scorcese also cast Andrew Garfield as a Portuguese Jesuit priest.
Hell, I'd take Gael Garcia Bernal as a Portuguese priest anyday over Garfield. It's just that he doesn't look Portuguese or Mediterranean AT ALL. At least Gael could pass as Iranian or at least Middle Eastern...
Nat:
The 9 character initial guess:
Potential returning heroes:
Iron Man, in some form (Probably safe. Even IF RDJ goes through with quitting, it could still be Cheadle)
Hulk (Safe. It's Mark Ruffalo. He's not drawing RDJ dollars and he'll take the money.)
Thor (Safe. It's Chris Hemsworth.)
Captain America (Safe. It's Chris Evans.)
Black Widow (safe. If she's cut, there'll be cries of sexism. Deserved, but they'll happen.)
Hawkeye (under threat of cut. West Coast joke to explain absence.)
Captain America: The Winter Soldier additions:
Winter Soldier (under heavy threat of cut with this plan)
Falcon (safe. If he's not included, there'll be calls of racism.)
Guardians of the Galaxy Addition:
Rocket Raccoon (50/50 shot. Unless Guardians of the Galaxy ends up keeping them all space bound, I can't see Joss being uninterested in this weird concept. Unless it seems too much like, oh, Eric Cartman, for his tastes. Though I admit I wouldn't put some variant of that joke above Stark. Still, could be cut.)
Joss Whedon's planned additions:
Quicksilver
Scarlet Witch
One way the Cartman joke could go, if Stark's still in it:
Stark: Banner and Thor, head east. Wanda and Pietro, head west. Steve and I will be heading north. Sam and Natasha will go south. Eric
Rocket: (clears throat)
Stark: I'm not calling you that. ERIC will be our last line of defence and in charge of the SOS beacon.
TB- I agree. Normally, I like to hear Sasha's perspective but I abhor the fact people sit from the sidelines and get butthurt about art that they had not yet seen and worst of all, assume exactly what you said about critics or in some cases audiences who like such art. Honestly, I did not hear a lot from female critics about the movie, I know either Stephanie Zacharek or Karina Longworth liked 'parts' of it but overall praised the performances but found the run-time a chore. I do not know many queer female critics but the queer male critics who were at Cannes seemed to like it (and usually they call BS). I can only imagine her doubling down on that if Blue wins the Palme d'or. Then again, if it has Spielberg's seal of approval she might calm down.