Links
Monday, February 9, 2015 at 2:00PM The Carpetbagger on the rising red carpet revolt. No more 'who are you wearing?' no more Mani-cams?...
Lainey Gossip ... but not everyone is okay with this. Here's an angry report on Nicole Kidman at the Grammys
Playbill Anna Kendrick will perform at the Oscars but they're not saying what. My guess is that they're doing a 50th anniversary Sound of Music tribute -- I just hope they make Best Actress Julie Andrews a part of it somehow.
Vimeo "Life Inside Jabba the Hutt"
EW longform goes 'sex lies and fifty shades of grey'
Film School Rejects allows for the non-story silliness of imagining Ava DuVernay directing a superhero movie
Hubpages how Franklin became the first black Peanuts comic strip character
Pajiba on the relatable marital awkwardness of HBO's Together starring Melanie Lynskey and Mark Duplass
AV Club remembers Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen in Starman (1984). It's a goodie
Wachowski World
Hitfix Motion Captured The Wachowskis interviewed on the insanity of Jupiter Ascending, Wizard of Oz and Brazil as influences and more
Variety thinks that Jupiter Ascending failed because it was too original
Hollywood Elsewhere ...but Jeff Wells thinks it failed for the opposite reason
LGBT Interest
Gawker Rich Juzwiak is brilliant as usual - a must read on Lance Bass's "masculine" Reality TV wedding
Women in Hollywood Lionsgate won the bidding war for Julianne Moore and Ellen Page drama Freeheld
In Contention redemption might be coming for the much maligned 54 (1998) with Mark Christopher's directors cut? I remember loving his Alkali, Iowa short which first won him attention but the version of 54 that hit theaters was weak. The new version which is said to contain 40 minutes (!!!) of unseen footage and excise 30 minutes of studio-forced reshoots premieres at Berlinale tomorrow!
Reader Comments (9)
I feel like if you don't want to play the red carpet game, then don't. Wear the same dress, buy off the rack at Target, whatever. But don't do press and preen for the cameras, and then get pissed at the superficiality of it all.
54: I want to see that Director's Cut, honestly. If they'd let it out as intended, maybe Mike Myers would have been approached by more outside talent and had more of a career beyond his franchises.
I still think that story of Nicole just lying motionless in the limo for an hour and a half to not wrinkle that chartreuse Dior dress is still one of the most delightful stories ever. That's dedication I can respect. lol.
I want to think there is more to the Kidman/Seacrest thing. The Grammy's are Keith's side of the business and this may have been her way to forcing the attention to Keith. Seacrest can be a jerk anyway.
I also understand why female stars, especially as they age out of their 30's, don't want to have their hands under a microscope. You can nip and tuck your face, but your hands (man or woman) always tell the truth.
I really wish another studio had gotten Freeheld. Lionsgate isn't very successful at waging awards campaigns.
Bia - I think the problem runs much deeper than that. Men get primped and dress up for awards shows and no one asks them about their suit or how long it took them to get ready.
Personally, I always get very frustrated when women are backstage answering press questions and actually get asked things like "How long did it take you to get ready?" "What was your inspiration for this dress?"
It just frustrates me because these women are amazing actresses and they're winning awards because they're being acknowledged for the work they're doing, and the conversation is still made about superficial things. The way you word it is very "asking" for it, like "well, if you dress up, expect to have that be the focus" when women have much more interesting things to say than just be fawned over for how they look. And I get it, to a certain extent they play the red carpet game. But when it gets to the point where the camera pans you up and down, you have to show off your shoes and your manicure, it's just too much. The whole interview becomes about what you're wearing and how you look when that should maybe be a quick question at the beginning of talking about real things.
My favorite reaction to this recently (obviously Cate Blanchett at the SAG Awards last year was amazing), is something I'm not sure many people noticed, but I know I did.
It was at the Oscar nominee luncheon...all these incredible actors and actresses answering questions about their films and acting and their careers, and this woman asks Reese Witherspoon about things she likes to do in the time leading up to the Oscars, like facials and massages... it's just kinda degrading to be simplified to that when a man would never be asked that. Like what do you get from her answering that? Anyway, she was clever enough to make her answer about her next project, by joking about her bruises all over her body from wrestling Sofia Vergara.
Anyway, obviously I'm not a woman but it's something I've noticed and I can completely understand the annoyance.
Suzanne: I guess that is a fair point about Lionsgate & Oscar campaigns however I was pleased to hear this news. First of all Ellen Page helped produce "Freeheld" and to have so much interest that it was sold for more than expected was good news for Page.
Lionsgate is good at marketing, they have shown profits on small films and I would rather see it be a commercial success above any awards considerations. They also produce the Hunger Games films that feature Julianne Moore, so they might be more open to bankrolling a bit of awards campaigning out of consideration to her. I'm sure her previous success with "The Kid's are Allright" was a factor.
I remember the battle between Last Days of Disco and 54 that year -- of course, I preferred Whit Stillman's movie, but I am curious to see this new version.
LadyEdith - That is all very true. To be fair, a lot of my favorites that they've had a difficult time campaigning (Happy-Go-Lucky, All is Lost, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, etc.) were probably hard sells to awards voters anyway, whereas Freeheld seems like a more straightforward awards movie - it's even based on a true story.