It's a Linky Monday
Monday, December 8, 2014 at 10:45AM Manuel here to offer you a news link roundup to kick off this week.
ComingSoon Is it really possible all press materials (save this offical photo) for Thomas Vinterberg's adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd starring Carey Mulligan & Matthias Schoenaerts have gone unremarked here at TFE? Let's fix that by staring at this gorgeous poster.
Marvel In case you missed it last week, Marvel offered some more casting news for their ever-expanding universe, including Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones in its upcoming Netflix series and Benedict Cumberbatch (officially!) as Doctor Strange in the eponymous film due November 2016.
SlashFilm In other franchise news, Roberto Orci will no longer be directing Star Trek 3 which I'm sure is good news for some other first time white male director looking to make his big break. I kid! But only sort of.
The Guardian “My whole career is always a roller-coaster. I’m so random and spontaneous and unusual in my choices – I never expect anything.” - Nicole Kidman, Queen of understatements at the Australian Paddington premiere.
Screen Crush writes up a list of The Highest Grossing Actors of 2014 though, as they note they used "an extremely liberal definition of 'actor' and 'appearance'" which explains its rather silly #1 spot.
The Hollywood Reporter Natalie Portman's troubled Jane Got a Gun got a new release date. No longer will the western be released next February; we'll have to wait until September to see it. I can't decide whether that's an improvement or not.
Dwayne Johnson We were just talking about Disney's upcoming Moana and it now seems the erstwhile Rock will lend its voice to the animated film.
The Season Continues
BIFA It was a great day for TFE favorite Pride over at the BIFAs (the British Independent Film Awards) which nabbed the top prize while Imelda Staunton and Andrew Scott picked up supporting acting prizes for it as well.
Mother Jones If you caught Jean-Marc Vallée's newest film ths weekend, check out this interview with Cheryl Strayed on having Reese Witherspoon play her in Wild.
InContention David Oyelowo and the cast of The Imitation Game have been added to the increasingly exhaustive list of names to be feted by the Palm Springs Film Festival.
Time names its Top 10 Best Films (topped by The Grand Budapest Hotel but including some interesting titles like Lucy and Jodorowsky's Dune).
EW meanwhile singles out Whiplash as the year's best.
Videos of the Day
Check out A Most Violent Year co-stars Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain chat about acting while looking ridiculously pretty (of course), and below, find a video by yours truly focused on the way gay men are represented on screen, featuring clips from Brokeback Mountain, Angels in America, Skyfall, Rope and over 80 other films/tv shows.
Gay Men on Screen: A Place for Us (Supercut) from Manuel Betancourt on Vimeo.
Reader Comments (5)
At first glance, I thought the Maddening poster was another Into the Woods poster.,
The Time list is interesting, but so is their list of the Ten Worst and I had to laugh at the line in the Winter's Tale blurb: Please tell us Lady Sybil wasn't sacrificed for this." LOL
2 days til SAG noms, 3 til the Globes. What a week. That will separate the men from the boys.
The Gay Men in Film video was excellent;
Henry,
The red against the green does kinda look like an Into the Woods spinoff, doesn't it?
Jaragon,
Thanks! Needless to say it took quite a bit to get it to look the way it does in its final form!
Nat: As much as I disagree with you on Guardians, I agree with you about Winter Soldier and really hope it's put on far more top 10 lists than Guardians. Superhero as OTT Grim Tragedy is easy (and easy to make stupid). Superhero as comedy is easy. (Smart to do and I think Guardians does very well with it, but it's still EASY due to how goofy a lot of the esoterica is.) Superhero fare as a genuinely nuanced presentation of trying to be optimistic in the face of all counter-evidence and decently balanced but still critical commentary on drone warfare? Attempting that is hard from a writing standpoint. Especially considering the other time a film attempted "action movie with commentary on drone warfare" this year, the result was the RoboCop remake.
OT on this: I saw Lucy and...doubt I'd be so passionate as to put it in my top 10, but I'd see why people COULD put it there (it's glorious, insane and zippy enough for genuine passion). Comparing it to what I've heard of Interstellar: Though the science in both is really spotty, the difference is that Lucy is about something actually adult, specifically our relationship with technology, what with Lucy becoming Cyber God, and Interstellar is about love as a quantifiable force.