Linkbury, Linkbender and Linkichatpong LLC
Friday, October 16, 2015 at 12:30PM 
• The Sheila Variations and Playbill are all celebrating the 90th birthday of Angela Lansbury today. What a long all-mediums career that woman has had. Sing her happy birthday today and emphasize the "...and many more" at the end of your song, mmmkay?• The Guardian on auteur Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul's fears about Thailand military dictatorship - he won't be showing his new film Cemetery of Splendour there for fear that harm will come to him.
• Indiewire Kate Erbland challenges you to read her interview with Olivia Wilde (Meadowland, Vinyl) without falling in love
• Murtada and Jason, two of our Teammates have very split reactions on Crimson Peak.
Finally
• Fistful of Films Andrew is taking a long hiatus from blogging but this is quite a finale: notes on his top 100+ favorite films. It's quite a range of countries, genres, styles and eras and I'm happy to see many Hit Me With Your Best Shot titles represented and if we even led them to a few of them then our series was a success. Though I must say that reading it, I'm sad he won't be there for our next two episodes - BUT DON'T LET THAT STOP YOU FROM JOINING.
TFE Housekeeping...
We will be hosting those last two Best Shot episodes this month but we've had to cancel that Smackdown '63 we planned. Both Best Shot and Smackdown will return in the Spring as per usual. I should've known better than to plan too much in September & October as it's impossible to do big projects during festival season, 100s of movies coming out, and the build up then countdown to Oscar.
Reader Comments (10)
Somewhere between Murtada and Jason about Crimson Peak, as I was somewhat disappointed with the plot and characters to be fairly conventional and transparent--and the ending is a bit of a letdown, but also, such fun, such voluptuous scenery and camp, and who doesn't love Jessica Chastain being super extra? Bring your English lit girlfriends, bring friends whom you can grab and shriek/giggle with. In the voice of Stefon, this movie has everything. Jason's description of Hiddleston in this movie as "Platonic ideal of Hiddleston" is perfect-- although now I'm worried about him getting out of his niche after this one.
OMG that clips of Bea Arthur and Angela Lansbury singing together is EVERYTHING!!! Made my whole day!
Hey, is someone making a film of Carter Beats the Devil? Awesome! Do you have any more details? The IMDB page for the site is "pro" only.
Well now I feel even better about not watching "Tom Jones"!
I think we both agree on the Hiddlebutt. I just didn't mention it in my review.
I hope the smackdown is postponed rather than cancelled. Still going to rewatch "Tom Jones," soon. The other two films almost put me in a diabetic coma. SO much corn.
I actually didn't like Jessica Chastain in CRIMSON PEAK. If that's her doing a Bette Davis impersonation then it's not a very good one. The film doesn't give her anything to do in the first two thirds, not really, other than look stern and then at the end which ought to be fun watching her eat the furniture, I wasn't involved in it the way I should be by an actress going full on gonzo over-the-top diva villain. Plus I was distracted by the CGI blood and the CGI ghosts. Fuck CGI ghosts, man. If this film were really NOT a horror movie like Del Toro (as well as many of the film's fans) have suggested, and rather a gothic romance with ghosts then the ghosts wouldn't be dripping with blood, their skin falling off, their skeletal jaws dropping as they scream and reach out at the camera. That's a horror movie. That's a horror movie failing to be scary, which was my biggest problem with the movie.
I read through Andrew's list, and, in the middle of it, in the text about The Passion of Joan of Arc, I've found a link to his favourite performances, and surprise!, what's his favorite female performance of all time? :)
The Shelia Variations is an excellent site. Thanks!
Glenn - I don't agree with what you say about the ghosts at all and I think that's a really very limiting way to look at what "horror" is and can be. Yes the ghosts were "horrific" with all of the details you list but they weren't meant to be scary, not in the way you seem fixated on, and the film goes out of its way to make that clear, over and over again. GDT was luxuriating in the design of the rotting flesh but he, at least with this movie (but in general too I think, given his previous ghosts in The Devil's Backbone), doesn't really fear it. He wants to look, and he has a tactile appreciation for death that has nothing to do with necessarily being "scary" -- and reducing all of horror to just whether it's "scary" or not is sooooooooooooo limiting.
Conversations about what is or isn't horror have gotten so boring to me - it's a non-entity, it's a Blockbuster Aisle. Fixating on genre when the most interesting movies don't fit into one category, I mean.