Linkpourri
Tuesday, March 11, 2014 at 11:03AM Change.org a petition to get Lupita Nyong'o cast as Storm in the next X-Men movie. Too bad there's still one more round of Halle Berry!
Ellen TV somehow I hadn't see Cate Blanchett's post Oscar win visit to Ellen until just now. So funny and I love what she says about sleeping with her statue at the 4:30 mark
Cinema Blend Kristen Bell planning to work with the Frozen songwriter team again. More musicals, yay!
In Contention lessons learned from this Oscar season. I've been preaching the "don't open in December" thing for a long time but finally other pundits are coming round!
Comics Alliance whoa. superhero figures are getting way more realistic than when I was a kid! Here's Black Widow -- I assume Scarlett Johansson gets a huge cut of this for allowing her likeness. Can you imagine the market if they could make sex dolls this realistic. Did I just type that aloud. My deepest apologies but it's Scarlett. She does things to people.
small screen
Slate talks to True Detective's costume designer
The Guardian Lee Daniels and Gabby Sidibe of Precious fame are reuniting albeit not as spectacularly. This time she'll play the assistant to a lead character (Terence Howard) in a new TV series about a hiphop record label.
The Week is there too much nudity on HBO?
TFE If you love Faith the Vampire Slayer than you must please stop goodie Buffy in this reader's poll. Buffy Buffy Buffy
Pajiba on dead TV characters they'd like resurrected
Comics Alliance Oh my Dark Phoenix. They're reviewing every episode of the 90s X-Men animated series
Salon the vague plans for Season 2 of True Detective
Today's Watch(es)
For the adults... Strangers kissing for the first time, an experiment. (Weird that the gay guys are the most demure about it!)
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For all ages... Sesame Street does Les Miserables with Cookie Monster taking up the lead duties
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Do you hear the cookies crunch?
It's really more than we can bear
That's the sound of Jean Bon-bon
He's the guy who would not share ♫
Reader Comments (22)
I hope Hollywood will take notice of how much people love Lupita and give the woman some good (leading) roles.. I am 100% sure that she can open a movie and she could very well be America's/Kenya's/Mexico's next sweetheart.
By the way..we really could do without another remake of [insert comic book title].. and so could Lupita!
This Week too much Nudity on HBO: I love HBO, it reminds me how my life used to be!!!! (I wish)
I have to watch what I eat and my doctor would "Prefer" I do no drugs, no booze, and NO CHIPS....
I have a NEW BAD HABIT, TRUE DETECTIVE, it was brilliant....
Plus I am KEEPING Nudity, thank you very much
"When nudity appears in film and television, it should be used to drive the story and respect the humanity and intelligence of both the cast members and the intended audience"
THIS. I'm not against nudity in TV shows, but only if it makes sense. On the other hand, Kit Harington and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau are two very pretty men. If we're going to go the gratuitous nudity route, let's at least give the rest of the audience some naked eye candy.
Anne Marie is a wise woman.
Why thank you, Paul!
Nat: Fox's X-Men has always been an underperformer in the genre. It'll fall back to Marvel Studios if this newest entry fails. And after that ill-advised character poster reveal? Yeah, Fox? Don't hold your breath that this will be successful enough.
New central cast for X-Men? Well...I'd go with a four member central "field team" and one villain/villain team (X-2, for comparison, was a messy and overpacked movie with a seven member field team, starting out, plus Magneto's team AND Stryker), just to keep things focused and relatively cheap.
Jean Grey: Brie Larson
Cyclops: John Gallagher Jr. (Why these two? 2 reasons: 1. Pre-existing warm chemistry from Short Term 12 and 2. Brie Larson played Grace, someone who was intensely guarded and warmly passionate and caring. Basically, she's played someone very close to Jean Grey already, so I can see this working.)
Storm: Lupita Nyong'o. (In 2000, not going with Angela Bassett was CRAZY. Halle Berry, though she can be good, is too...SMALL...in terms of her screen presence to work as a comic book heroine. If Marvel Studios X-Men is going to happen (and it probably will), it'll be filming in 2018 or later and Bassett is WAY too old by that point. Lupita'd be about right.)
Nightcrawler: Daniel Bruhl. He's German, but can speak English, lending, at the bare minimum, an air of authenticity that wasn't there the last time (though Cumming didn't really do as bad a job at approximating it as has been accused), which would be interesting for Hollywood.)
Villain: I'd suggest starting off with ONE villain. Let's get an actual AWESOME Juggernaut down this time, not the meme spouting clown of Vinnie Jones in The Last Stand.
Yes, I'm not including Wolverine. Why? The first X-Men film series has been so chokingly focused on Wolverine that it's been growing increasingly LAUGHABLE. At the very least the second, third, fourth, sixth and seventh movies (if not also large parts of the first) are all LOVE LETTERS to the character in general (and Hugh Jackman in specific). Let's not start off with that guy on the team, okay?
volvagia -- oh, volvagia. Fox is NEVER going to give up The X-Men. they make money even when they're terrible (see the huge huge gross for The Last Stand). No major corporation is ever going to throw away that kind of automatic franchise money. worst comes to worst they'll just figure out a way to make them more cheaply.
and they're also never going to give up wolverine as he's the most popular character (and that was true before Hugh Jackman)
Fox and Sony will never let X-Men and Spider-Man revert back to MARVEL. Even they underwhelm in Domestic Box Office, they continue to make money in International Box Office.
Nat: The Last Stand was, relative to it's budget, NOT THAT SUCCESSFUL. Multiply the budget ($210 million) by two ($420 million), subtract that from the gross ($459 million), 1/2 the remainder ($39 million). That's what it EARNED.
The Last Stand's EARNINGS, then, are around $19.5 million. I am calling that what it is: PATHETIC. I'd concede The Last Stand being a big enough earner if it stood at $620 million or more, but it DOESN'T. They're GOING to disappoint (possibly even BOMB) and they're GOING to get BOUGHT OUT. Having superhero movies that are both serious AND relatively unashamed on the market makes this X-Men series dated, passe and kind of embarassing to watch. And I don't even want to think about what ATROCITY the FF's already battered reputation are going to have to take the NEXT TIME.
As for "giving up Wolverine"? No, I know they're only going to leave him off-stage for one film, max. But at least give us that film BEFORE re-introducing him? Pretty please with a cherry on top?
The Infamous: I was talking about a flat-out aggressive buy-out, NOT a reversion. Let's say Days of Future Past's budget is announced as being, oh, $260 million, due to the re-shoots and production problems. Say even if, after international tickets are counted, it still tops out at the $459 million gross total of The Last Stand, the current max gross for a Fox X-Men production. (Probably a lot less than that, due to those TERRIBLE character reveal posters.) Even AT that max gross, that's STILL running a loss of $30.5 million, but I'd guess the likelihood is, instead, something closer to $350 million, a MINIMUM loss of $85 million. (It might earn even less than that, but I'd doubt anyone saying that until all the tickets are counted.) Considering the uncertain budget (and, thus, uncertain earnings) of First Class, the films have, cumulatively, earned SOMEWHERE in the range of $320-360 million. Assuming the expense of "aggressive buyback" is double the total earnings (if any), that means the franchise would, before this new one drops, cost $640-720 million. At $30.5 million in losses, that reasonable method of price calculation drops it to $579-659 million, at $85 million in losses, it drops to $470-550 million. Expensive if that's all Fox loses? Sure. (The ideal situation for Marvel Studios would be a gross of $250 million, losing Fox $185 million, putting the reasonable cost at in or around the $300 million area. But I know how unlikely that is.) But when you've earned $1.6 billion across ALL your movies (and are about to earn EVEN MORE with two additional films), like Marvel Studios has, you can SPLURGE a little on unquestionably protecting your reputation.
Spider-Man, though? It's not reverting (it's earning too much), and it's not getting bought (it's earned too much).
volvagia -- but theatrical gross is not the end of earnings. Theatrical is now a commercial for future profits in terms of cable, dvd, bluray, theme parks, merchandising of all sorts. If a film is in black by the end of its theatrical run -- even if only by a few millions, it's going to be very profitable for the studio.
Marvel is never getting those properties back BUT at least they still have most of their characters (just not two biggest x-men & spidey). Poor DC, owning none of its characters with WB controlling everything and doing such a shoddy job of it, having no interest in the continued success of DC as a brand, just continued profit margins from its already famous characters.
that first kiss video is quite charming
Lupita as Storm would be perfection. That's all I have to say about that.
It seems I'm playing contrarian all the time lately, but I can't with the article on nudity on TV. I'm also sick of seeing unknown women naked on tv, and I'd rather see men (I second, Anne Marie's suggestion), but I least I don't hide as feminism. If you're a prude, you're a prude. There's also an article to be written about the artificial lack of nudity in main networks and in films. It seems to me there's now an entire generation who''s grown up with no representation of naked human bodies in any mainstream media, and that's why the vision of a little bit (cable TV as compared with the rest of the media is just a tiny little portion of the entertainment industry) of flesh seems too much.
Nat: You're probably right that they'll probably never get the X-Men back. The Fantastic Four are ASSURED, though. Speaking of DC's stupidity, I just found out about Paul Feig's Wonder Woman pitch AND...I don't quite know what to think. First thought was that it's obvious from his pitch that he couldn't POSSIBLY have watched Man of Steel. Light action-comedy and something building on THAT crushingly depressing film would go together like Chinese food and chocolate pudding, whether or not you liked it. Second thought: Wouldn't that glass ceiling thing be a much better concept to be at least SLIGHTLY dark and bitter and applied to a first film of a female character with either NO SUPERPOWERS (like, say, Renee Montoya as The Question) or genuinely RIDICULOUS ones (like Squirrel Girl (her powers revolve around controlling squirrels, but she's, in Marvel Comics canon, actually beaten Doctor Doom (NOT retconned to be a Doombot, out of respect to Steve Ditko) and Deadpool))? Wonder Woman's supposed to be superpowerful and her powers are mostly normal for superhero fiction, so you would only REALLY be able to do straw misogyny, as opposed to the uncomfortable kind where you can MAYBE see what the other side's problem is aside from sexism, even if sexism does ALSO factor in a little bit.
iggy -- i didn't know i needed to specify but the links are not the same thing as endorsements. I don't always agree with the articles i link to. it's usually just a combo of news i'm not going to write about myself and articles I found interesting.
i also dont think there's enough nudity in movies -- it's so unnatural how covered up people always are in sex scenes especially... but cable has its own problems cuz it's ALWAYS women. which is its own kind of sexism and also shows that its merely for pleasure and not narrative because the common wisdom is that people dont want to see naked men but want to see naked women.
I remember growing up I thought American men must be very strange and don't like breast because in US-movies women always had their bras on in sex scenes.
My bad, iI guess. I thought it was clear I was only referring to the article. I know you don't necessarily endorse what you link, i've been reading for a while.
Nevermind, it's time to shut up.
I am always excited for any casting for Sidibe, remember when people kept saying she'll never be cast in anything ever again post-Precious, she sure proved them wrong.
Rami -- i love that she's sassy about that fact too.
iggy - sorry i misunderstood. dont shut up :)
My dream is for Angelina to play Wonder Woman.