Cheers, Frannie. And Other Links
Wednesday, October 7, 2015 at 1:33PM Awards Daily pays tribute to Jane Fonda (Youth) and Lily Tomlin (Grandma) as we all should. Weekly. (Daily? Hourly?)
People introduces new princess 14 year old Auli'i Cravalho who voices Disney's Moana
Jezebel "Today we are all Frances McDormand drinking wine on a toilet" Amen!
Interview Magazine has really been really topping itself lately. Now they've got Jeff Bridges talking to the iconic cinematographer Roger Deakins (Sicario). Thus begins the hard push to get him his long overdue Oscar I suppose. We interviewed him for True Grit and he was a good chat!
The Bitter Script Reader thinks The Martian screenplay is a great example of how to write obstacles for characters that engage the viewer in the same "oh shit" living of them as plans fall apart
Film School Rejects tears up over Room and appreciates the Mother & Child thread running through many films this year
i09 is (rightly) horrified by what Frank Miller has done to Superman in a new comic book cover
Variety thinks its time Oscar voters caught up to Love and Mercy and Straight Outta Compton
Taylor (left) and Rodriguez (right) the stars of TANGERINEP.S. First Trans Actress Oscar Campaign
You may have heard (from everywhere) that Magnolia Pictures is launching the first ever Oscar campaign for transgender actresses - the spirited girls from the awesome Tangerine (a film which we've recommended often). TFE actually broke this news first (albeit in early "we might do this" planning stages) but we were asked to remove the reference to it, post publication, from our James Ransome interview since he wasn't supposed to talk about just yet. We get no respect I tell you -- even when we heartily support a film from its first screening!
Anyway, if you haven't seen the film yet do so the first chance you get. Kitana Kiki Rodriguez (who plays vengeful hot-tempered Sin-Dee) will be pushed for Best Actress and Mya Taylor (her much calmer best friend Alexandra) will be campaigned as a Supporting Actress but... you know how these same gender movies go, that's total Category Fraud bullshit since you can't have one without the other. They're like a trans Thelma & Louise only with less of a crime spree and no wheels of their own; these girls have to settle for the indignities of public transport (those bus scenes. LOL) and walking in L.A.
Reader Comments (10)
Love & Mercy is so terrific, and I will be so vlerklempt if Elizabeth Banks isn't nominated. What an extraordinary performance. She ripped out my guts.
I've thought of Frank Miller as sort of a Brando of comics, in that like Brando he seems to have have two settings: zenith where few are his equal and nadir where he's only good for unintentional comedy. And that cover is straight up Island of Dr. Moreau.
The TANGERINE news is interesting because, well, obviously they're not coming anywhere near Oscar, yet they distinctly say "Oscar campaign" in the press release. I could see Taylor scoring at the Indie Spirits (as might the film). Lest we forget the Indie Spirits have already nominated a trans actress before - Harmony Santana from GUN HILL ROAD. I wouldn't object to the Academy's cinematography branch suddenly getting a sense of humour though since it is obviously a landmark film for the form.
moe - great analogy.
glenn -- ooh, good memory. watch people ignore that and say 'first!" if one of the trans girls gets an indie nod.
I'm seeing Tangerine this weekend at the London Film Festival thanks to your recommendation!
Seeing Tangerine at the LFF on my birthday! (the 9th)
Love and Mercy is one I just do not get. Everything about the story seems very questionable (the villainized doctor, the insistence that the car sales girl whom he married was NOT interested AT ALL in his money, the gorgeous and sociable woman who is head-over-heels in love/intrigued by someone who seems intolerable to be around--see also "The Railway Man"...).
It also smelled to me like a story that would have a variety of WILDLY different tellings based on whomever's memoirs we read and this was just the one they picked. It just seemed way too cut-and-dry good guys/bad guys to have been real life. Also, thinking back, I feel like the Cusak/Dano parts were completely different movies (one a typical "tortured/hard-to-work-with-genius" tale, the other a second rate and hokey made-for TV "thriller"--IS THE DOCTOR COMING HOME?!?! RUUUUUNNNNN.... ummm...).
catbaskets -- i definitely some of those reservations. Love & Mercy is obviously closer to Hagiography than Biography considering the smoothed edges and cleared villains but I love Dano & Banks in it. (agree on the cusack/giamatti stuff being a mess though)
I'm very much pulling for Kitana Rodriguez and Mya Taylor. They're such vibrant, lived-in, but completely different from each other performances. They're operating at different registers, but it completely works somehow (like performances in the best David O. Russell films).
At first, it didn't seem like such egregious category fraud to me to have Taylor in Supporting actress but then I remembered that there are long stretches of the movie where we're focusing on Taylor's character and not Rodriguez's. Will we ever see two lead performances from a film nominated again?
Kieran -- probably not since no one campaigns that way.
catbaskets, either your birthday is October 9th or you're the most mature 9 year old ever.
Regardless, happy (early) birthday.