This & That: Ant Man, Early Emmys, List Mania
Monday, August 18, 2014 at 4:13PM 
Elisabeth Bergner, who started in German silents went on to a Best Actress Oscar nomination for Escape Me Never (1935)Schweigen a fine collection of 1920s and 1930s postcards of film actors. I loved looking at it despite my Richard Dix aversion. And this postcard left makes me desperate to see Escape Me Never, one of the 30s Best Actress nominations I still haven't seen
Cinema Blend profiles the 5 pilots from Amazon Studios including Hand of God with Dana Delany and Ron Perlman
E! Online Neil Patrick Harris responds to rumors that he and David Burtka are breaking up. It ain't so.
Pret-a-Reporter Inside Madonna's 56th birthday bash
THR Cinematography Gordon Willis who died earlier this summer, was memorialized in Hollywood this weekend
List Mania
Rope of Silicon every death in a Quentin Tarantino movie thus far
Cinema Enthusiast has been investigating 1992 cinema. Loves Howards End, The Player, Batman Returns and more
Do You Remember Movies names the 20 top female film stars of the 70s. I'm not sure what the criteria is but whatever it is, shunning Shelley Duvall ain't right! It ain't ever right.
Creative Arts Emmys
By now you've probably heard that the kiddie table awards for the Emmys have been handed out. (Theory #1: If you have too many awards to fit them all into one big awards show, you have too many awards. Theory #2: Awards shows should be longer but if you still can't fit them into a 4 hour event, you have too many awards). Todd VanDerWeff, TV expert, reminds us that the Creative Arts Emmys don't really predict the major Emmys with quite the precision by which the craft categories on Oscar night can signal an impending Best Picture win. But it was a very good night for Orange is the New Black, Sherlock and True Detective among others. Here's a complete list of winners and the guest acting prizes went like so:
Guest Actress, Comedy: Uzo Aduba, Orange is the New Black
Guest Actor, Comedy: Jimmy Fallon, Saturday Night Live
Guest Actress, Drama: Allison Janney, Masters of Sex (her 5th Emmy but the first for something non-West Wing)
Guest Actor, Drama: Joe Morton, Scandal
Congratulations to the winners. But I'm definitely shedding tears that the Mad Men curse continues (no acting winners ever in its entire run). Even Robert Morse's transcendent song & dance farewell couldn't break it.
Bliss
You may have already seen this Hello Kitty gallery of superheroes
I've never been more attracted to the Winter Soldier
In which Earth's Mightiest are modified for maximum cuteness and sparkle. But I hadn't seen it and now my life is complete. Well nearly complete. My life will only be complete IF they make Thor 3 this way. At least then it'd be infinitely more watchable than Thor: The Dark World.
Ant-Man
While we're on the topic of superheroes I do want to note that the long troubled Ant Man is finally out of the gate as filming has commenced. I've gone in and out of interest in the project over the years but unlike most of the internet, the last minute hiring of Peyton Reed in the director's chair was the best possible news I could have heard after the unfortunate exit of Edgar Wright. Peyton Reed is so undervalued (see Bring It On and Down With Love and be embarrassed for every ignorant person who has ever called him a hack.)
David Dastmalchian photographed by Caleb Condit
And now one last cherry on top. The rest of the cast has been announced and among the awesome ensemble cast which includes people we know and love like John Slattery, Bobby Cannavale, and Judy Greer, I have to personally congratulate David Dastmalchian for getting another big deal film. I've had an eye on the actor since nominating him for a cameo prize for The Dark Knight and he did super work again just last year in Prisoners in a small but key role. His upcoming film Animals, which gives him a rare leading role, was this year's SXSW sensation. So happy for this fine actor. You should expect to hear more from him. And very soon.
Exit Video
"Female Superhero Pitches a Movie" - this one has some pretty great lines in it as she keeps meeting roadblocks and narrowminded executives. I wish the pace was faster and the video shorter for more viral pleasure but, still, it's funny.
Reader Comments (15)
I'm rooting for Kate Mulgrew, but I'd love to see Allison Janney win Emmy #6 this year. Mom is just so terrible and beneath her, that she deserves some consolation besides the network TV paychecks. I'm glad to see her closing in in Cloris Leachman's record of 8, and I don't see why Janney won't meet and exceed that in the decades she has ahead.
So often Emmy is good to actresses as they age. Kathryn Joosten, Ellen Burstyn, Blythe Danner, Tyne Daly, Diane Wiest, Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren, Margo Martigndale, Holland Taylor, Doris Roberts, Jessica Lange, Eileen Atkins, Gena Rowlands, Ann Margaret, Kathy Bates, Betty White, and Elaine Stritch have all won competitive Emmys in the last 15 years, several more than once.
Theory #1: If you have too many awards to fit them all into one big awards show, you have too many awards. Theory #2: Awards shows should be longer but if you still can't fit them into a 4 hour event, you have too many awards
So you propose to pretty much completely eliminate the technical categories? Because that's what you would have to do to get the Emmy ceremony into 4 hours.
Sean C -- I don't propose that at all. The Oscars manage to have technical categories and do them all the night of. My pooint is this: The Grammys and Emmys have diluted their brands by having literally 100s of prizes and usually several variations of the same prize -- Why should the entire movie industry need only 24 categories when TV needs HUNDREDS (and even more hundreds if you include the daytime emmys and the sports emmys and the local emmys and so on) I mean the Emmys make the Grammys, who last i read had reduced to just under a 100 categories look sane!
Just so you know, the Cinema Enthusiast link about 1992 cinema actually leads to the Madonna 56th birthday bash article... I think someone is too obsessed ;)
I certainly support technical awards but can someone please explain the difference between hairstyling for a single camera series as opposed to hairstyling for a multiple camera series? And there are several like categories.
Shelley Duvall and Julianne Moore should play mother and daughter in a Paul Thomas Anderson vehicle.
Julianne Moore looks like a classic Hollywood movie star in Magnolia while saying the most unflattering contemporary dialogue.
I've been watching Paul Thomas Anderson movies in anticipation for Inherent Vice. The ones I don't bother with: Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, and There Will Be Blood don't invite the revisiting the more esoteric and divisive Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love and The Master warrant.
That's a very striking photo of Bergner. I've only seen her in one film "As You Like It" and it was long ago. As I remember she was fond of declaiming rather than relating to her scene partners but she was much more of a stage actress and didn't seem that comfortable in film.
She is considered the actual inspiration for Margo Channing and the whole All About Eve story. She and her husband were friends with Mary Orr and she had a very Eve Harrington like understudy, a story she related to Orr who shaped it into The Wisdom of Eve.
One could easily argue that Meryl Streep belongs on the top female film stars of the 1970s, albeit the late 70s. Julia, The Deerhunter and Kramer (all best Pix nominees), plus Manhattan and Holocaust and Joe Tynan. All within three years.
Bensunce -- thanks. corrected. oopsie.
/3rtful - i can't comprehend a world in which repeat viewings of Boogie Nights don't reap rewards. Still my favorite Anderson movie and the most rewatchable, too
Okay, full guesses on the unannounced Ant-Man cast:
Michael Pena: Tarantula/Black Tarantula (Yeah, two very similar characters with very similar code-names who both happen to be appropriate for him. Yeeeeeah. Still, these are the likely bets.)
Abby Ryder Fortson: Cassie Lang (becomes a superhero in her own right so, let's hope she's not just a generic "cute kid.")
John Slattery: Howard Stark (This would place Ant-Man's flashbacks as, roughly, in the 80s.)
Judy Greer: Janet. (I was honestly hoping they could use M.E. Winstead and Aaron Paul for the parts of young Pym and Janet (they've worked together before, so likely have at least some chemistry, and Paul would almost certainly be able to handle playing a young Pym/possibly match being a young Michael Douglas) and use comic book style super science for de-aging coolness (maybe with Gena Rowlands or someone like that as old Janet), but once they all but confirmed that she's dead, that hope shrank, and this casting clinches it.)
Wood Harris: Bill Foster
T.I.: Tom Foster
Bobby Canavale: ? (Probably the one holding Cassie Lang hostage. Single film role.)
David Dastmalchian: Richard Fisk (It's an easy way to foster interconnection with the Marvel Netflix stuff, and you can imagine him flitting between scenes with little to nothing in the way of lines and we'll see him report his observed findings to daddy in the Netflix Daredevil show.)
Gregg Turkington: Young Hank Pym (We're not going to be seeing a young Hank Pym in any major capacity if him or Dastmalchian are Young Hank. Shame, because we almost definitely NEED young Pym in a major capacity if a future director wants to helm an Ant-Man's Big Christmas adaptation.)
Nathaniel R – Our taste are very different. I like Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut and Fur and you don't.
Hello Kitty Superheroes? YOU MADE MY DAY!
Hello Kitty Captain America. Have I got some Catnip for you............
Top 20 Female Film Stars of the 70s:
Burstyn: Solid
Julie Christie: Solid
Faye Dunaway: Solid
Sally Field: Shaky (only the selling point on ONE MOVIE (Norma Rae) in the 70s, but, okay, it did win her the Oscar.)
Carrie Fisher: Whyyyyyyyyy!? For one bland supporting performance that's the precursor to ScarJo's Iron Man 2 to The Avengers quality jump (yes, both of Fisher's 80s Revisits of Leia are better than the original stab) or for that much better 2 minute performance in Shampoo? Either is a huge stretch.)
Louise Fletcher: Shaky. (That one big movie she was in is still remembered today and that helps with perception.)
Jodie Foster: Solid.
Jane Fonda: Solid.
Pam Grier: Solid.
Glenda Jackson: Okay. Not secure, but not "shaky" either. Not that remembered these days, but I can see that she was big at the time.
Diane Keaton: Solid.
Ali McGraw: Shaky.
Liza Minnelli: Okay. Not secure, but not "shaky" either.
Olivia Newton-John: Shaky.
Tatum O'Neal: Okay. Not secure, but not "shaky" either.
Vanessa Redgrave: Solid.
Diana Ross: Okay. Not secure, but not "shaky" either.
Cybill Shepherd: Solid. (Would be okay, but Taxi Driver alone tips her over into Solid.)
Sissy Spacek: Solid.
Barbara Streisand: Okay. Not secure, but not "shaky" either.
So:
1 "Whyyyyyyyyy!?"
4 Shaky.
5 Okay.
10 Solid.
Volvagia-As someone who grew up in the 70's I'd agree with all your rankings except for Glenda Jackson and Barbra Streisand.
Jackson was one of the prestige actresses of the decade especially the early years and was very much a household name. She did a mix of popular and art house films so they weren't all huge box office but she was definitely considered a top star.
Streisand was IT. She was the top female star of the 70's, ranking in the top 10 money makers eight out of the ten years of the decade. All her films except Up the Sandbox made money, several of them enormous amounts of it.