Sex & The Linky
Saturday, August 3, 2013 at 8:00PM Sound on Sight has a massive post about famous ongoing director/muse collaborations: Liv & Ingmar, Lynch & Dern, Fassbinder & Schygulla, etcetera...
Empire Chris Evans is becoming a director with 1:30 Train, a romantic caper about a woman trying to catch the 1:30 train (with the help of Chris Evans, who will co-star)
Pajiba celebrates the release of 2 Guns. "Boom, you've been Denzel'd"
In Contention 15 awards players still looking for distribution including one I hadn't heard of Tracks with Mia Wasikowska crossing the desert with John Curran (The Painted Veil) directing. I've been thinking that the Best Actress chart is leaning a little 'woman of a certain age' for Oscar's taste (if not for mine) so maybe Mia and are peers are just in hiding right now?
David Poland says that the bullshit myth is that originals don't make big money at the box office and it's only sequels that did. He backs it up with titles.
Variety Whoa. are the Weinsteins going to get Miramax back. A merger may be in the works
Cinema Blend on the list of possible Bale/Batman replacements for that Superman/Batman team up movie. Surprisingly they're not all super famous with Richard Armitage (The Hobbit) and Max Martini (Pacific Rim) both on the list. Weirdly there appears to be little thought of Joseph Gordon-Levitt despite that The Dark Knight Rises Robin set up.
You guys, I can't decide if this "What if Woody Allen directed The Wolverine" is funny or not. Help me decide.
I think I'm in the place of LOL without the OL part. So, maybe not? I like it in concept!
/Film Warner Bros is still trying to get that Akira Without Japanese People abomination made.
MNPP The Golden Girls dollhouse? Amazing!
Signs and Sirens hates on Blue Jasmine. My review will be up tomorrow.
Coming Soon Josh Trank says the rumors about Miles Teller being Reed Richards in the Fantastic Four are not true. Good -- I like Miles Teller a lot but he's about 90% wrong for that role -- but it's going to be terrible anyway. Why must Fantastic Four movies be so terrible?
Finally, I feel I've been remiss in not linking up to Emily Nussbaum's great great rescue piece on "Sex and The City" in The New Yorker. People have been discussing it online for a few days but I hadn't mentioned it. I'm so glad that a writer as scalpel-sharp as Nussbaum is a fan and performs this reputation resuscitation operation. It's too bad that the show's rep suffered after the two theatrical features drifted towards becoming what people always accused the show of being. Which it never truly was. I especially love her (correct) assertion that Carrie Bradshaw was the first female anti-hero on television. Carrie was of course reviled for it whereas her male counterparts in terrible behavior are regularly championed by fans and critics. I know people probably think I harp on gender politics too much here at the blog but what's happened to Sex & The City is a classic example of sexism at work. Canons are one of the best places to see the power of the heteronormative patriarchy thrown into obvious relief. "The greatest this!" and "The greatest that!" lists and the people who make them like critics organizations and awards shows and such often dismiss "feminine" identified films, tv, genre or entertainments as lesser than merely be excluding them from the conversation. But if you can't include "Sex and the City" as one of the shows that was instrumental in ushering in television's golden age -- just as crucial as "The Sopranos" -- you just weren't watching closely enough.
Reader Comments (20)
Yep. Seth Grahme-Smith. No matter how hard Trank tries, he's not going to be able to lift his way out of the awful.
(P.S. There can never be enough gender politics on The Film Experience! Never back down! [starring Maggie and Viola])
On some of the rest:
Cinema Blend: Okay. You keep thinking Man of Steel hasn't sunk this creative team's credibility.
/Film: Really? They're still pursuing this HORRIBLE idea, while also not just nutting up, ditching the backward "make Logan's Run successful" studio politics caveat, calling Refn and getting a Wonder Woman movie with the POSSIBILITY of being GOOD with the spare money that you'd just be burning if you went forward with this racist idea. And no, I don't think Joss' concept would have EVER worked. And as for Laeta "Alexander, Night Watch, Pathfinder, Shutter Island" Kalogridis'? FORGET ABOUT IT.
Coming Soon: Yeah, Reed's supposed to be...kind of a jerk. And smart in a "scientist" way. (Not Hank Pym levels of nastiness on the former aspect, but still kind of a jerk.) Miles Teller isn't really a jerk. Or smart in that occasionally distant "scientist" way.
Open floor:
What comic book franchises (Marvel/DC/otherwise) should get a movie but has had zero movement in development?
Wonder Woman
The Authority (Gay couple among a band of superheroes)
Aquaman (IT COULD WORK!!!!!!)
Preacher
Black Panther
Cyborg
The Runaways
Deadpool
Transmetropolitan/Spider Jerusalem
Animal Man
Wonder Woman: Yes.
The Authority: Maybe?
Aquaman: Yes, but only with Warners not chasing "Nolan-esque" in this genre. Self consciously "edgy" Aquaman has never really made sense to me.
Preacher: No. It's fairly dated, all over the place tonally and ultimately blasphemous. It's good, but it'll never get an adaptation.
Black Panther: Yes. Two options: Get an actual actor from Africa or get someone who isn't but has recently faked it. (Chiwetel Ejiofor.)
Cyborg: No for a solo. He's most noted as a member of the Teen Titans.
The Runaways: Maybe.
Deadpool: Maybe. Though you might want his personality tested in a team piece before you risk a solo film.
Transmetropolitan: Yes, but not a movie. Should be done as an HBO TV show with a built in "five year limit."
Animal Man: Maybe. The most famous run was ultimately Grant Morrison doing something heavily meta-textured and bizarre, ending with Animal Man TALKING TO GRANT MORRISON about why his life sucks. There ISN'T really a Hollywood tentpole in the idea of any single run on it's own. MAYBE some sort of fusion of Tom Veitch's concept and some of Grant Morrison's stories and thematics, but that's all I really got.
Michael Patrick King is the culprit responsible for SATC's demise. He kept Samantha a vapid cartoon instead of allowing her to see being a whore twenty-four hours a day isn't the best possible choice when you want to be listened to or held.
I'll always be a big defender of SATC; I think it's one of the top 5 or 6 shows of my lifetime. It really is a shame about the movies.
Don't stop harping on gender politics!
The films definitely messed with SATC's legacy, as well as those watered-down reruns on basic cable that play on a loop now. But when it was on HBO, I remember the thrill of watching something so different and truly witty.
Nat if that best actress line up happened it will be so dull, five former winners / bona fide stars in contention, I am guessing they will give it to Cate
They should do "SATC 3" and get the female writers to write the film instead of Michael Patrick King. Hes definitely gone senile with his writing.
Nussbaum's piece gets me a little bit nostalgic. I loved that show. Two things: I was never comfortable with the producer's obsession with getting Carrie married, and yes, the movies were totally unnecessary although, I must say, I bought my ticket to the first one with sheer enthusiasm.
Emily Nussbaum is such a phenomenal writer. Every piece I read by her provides form to the things you feel but don't know how to articulate while at the same time giving a whole new angle you never thought about before. And she's funny to boot!
More gender politics, please! It's appalling that almost no one ever brings up the blatant sexism of every Best-of-all-time list.
That said, I must confess SATC lost me after the first couple of seasons. The materialism and the saccharine just got too much. I'm not quite a hater, but I don't feel comfortable sticking up for it anymore.
Thank you for being a SATC defender, and for bringing up gender politics as much as I do. This is one of the many reasons I adore this site.
Yeah I agree, I really love reading about gender and sexuality on this site. On the subject of Best Of lists specifically, @goran you are so right and it is so frustrating. Even on sites or from writers I love, get them to make a Best Of list and watch them genuflect on the altar of Serious Straight White Dude movies. That's actually one of the reasons I love Team Experience so much. The diversity of opinion here is so refreshing.
It annoys me that this is considered a 'golden age' of television or that people, including movie people who should know better, are all TV>>>>> MOVIES now. To me it just seems to be a forum where it has become even less diverse (From the 70s to the 90s, hell we could go back to Julia in the 60s there seemed to be movement to equal representation with people of color and women). Writing rooms and those behind the directing chair in TV could not be more homogenous if it tried and all of these people who now are moving to the smaller screen are not really bringing that much diversification.
For every Orange is The New Black and The Wire there are the network TV shows that seem so removed from the Norman Lears and Bill Cosbys. I get pretty nostalgic watching re-runs of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and A Different World. They're not high-art but those shows had everybody watching them. Now every show seems so specific. The ones that go for diversity have such a small audience but are no different in ratings from the anti-hero TV critics always talk about (some are truly great TV while others **cough** Homeland **cough** just seem empire in new clothes) and the highest rated shows among scripted shows are where there are not even humans are the star.
And as said before, 'the male anti-hero' has now become so trope-ish. The specificity of a Walter White and Don Draper are lost on even people who watch them week to week (they are screwed up, fascinating characters, meanwhile there are bros who think they are so cool). People who want to make a TV show who seem to think 'white male anti-hero' is now a box that must be filled in meeting a certain criteria. It is no different than the cycles of where true breakout characters or formats were the vanguard and its successors seemed so trope-ish. Ray Donovan seems no purpose than for Showtime, after having so many shows specific to have flawed female characters (mileage varies on how effective those characters were), to finally get a male anti-hero.
Gosling as Batman yeah!
Signs and Sirens review ... ugh ...
What's wrong with the Signs & Siren review, Cinesnatch? Is it not okay to have a divergent opinion on a critically acclaimed movie? I could be biased since I suspect I'll feel the same way about BJ (!) based on the clips I've seen, but why the hate? (If I'm misinterpreting your "ugh" as reflecting disdain when it's actually expressing disappointment, my apologies.)