Links
Tuesday, June 23, 2015 at 10:01AM 
Good luck finding an actress today that looks like thisFilm School Rejects a biopic of Ingrid Bergman during the Notorious era might be coming from James Mangold. I'm always hoping they'll cast unknowns rather than stars for these things, so that they'll look more like their subjects
Decider really funny ranking of all of Meryl Streep's Oscar nominated work, judged by accents, struggles, co-stars, and random intangibles
Movies Now the box office wealth gap between blockbusters and everything else - interesting piece and worrisome, too
ArtsBeat Smash's "Bombshell" musical MIGHT (sigh) actually become a Broadway musical. Yes, they're still dangling that carrot since the one night only cast reunion of Smash went so well
MCU Exchange the deal is done and Ava DuVernay (Selma) will direct Marvel's Black Panther film
/bent is thrilled that Inside Out passes the Bechdel Test so easily on all counts
A Must Read
"The Decline of the American Actor" is a really engaging piece about today's leading men, the "Chris"es and beyond and the struggles they face without challenging roles or all that much in the way of training like their foreign counterparts. It's really fascinating and the writer Terrence Rafferty only threw me out of it once when he makes a very strange rather off topic dig at Masters of Sex's second season which had me questioning his sanity (I couldn't disagree more on all counts of what he's saying in that section). It also has a nice little detour into current 20 and 30something actressing by clever way of Clouds of Sils Maria... that movie sure did get a lot of people talking so it's a mystery why it didn't break through in a more major way since actual stars were involved.
RIP - Exit Music
The film composer James Horner died in a plane crash at age 61 yesterday. He was a favorite of James Cameron and Ron Howard, and moviegoers of course. He composed so many well liked movies that it's tough to name a favorite though I remember always liking the scores to Aliens, Avatar, Apollo 13 and Willow. We will be treated to his three final scores this year with Southpaw, Wolf Totem and the Chilean Miners movie The 33. The Oscar favorite won both of his Oscars from the phenomenon that was Titanic (for score & original song) and was twice nominated for movie songs. So here's a little Celine at the Oscars and a little something from An American Tail, too.
Reader Comments (11)
James Horner makes three for Star Trek III personnel who died this year.
Leonard Nimoy (Actor, Director); Harve Bennett (Producer).
Sad news. I remember that "Somewhere Out There" performance. It was a huge musical number with all the nominated songs amazingly introduced by Bernadette Peters.
R.I.P. James Horner. His score for The House of Sand and Fog is my personal favorite, while Titanic is the best-selling score of all time, which is really something.
Regarding who could play Ingrid Bergman, it's too bad her granddaughter, Elettra Rossellini Wiedemann (Isabella Rossellini's daughter), doesn't resemble her more as she's the right age and that could be terrific stunt casting. How about Eva Amurri? She's not "unknown" (Susan Sarandon's daughter) but actually does have a similar look and is the right age as well. Just a thought.
I've always loved the hairdo from 'Notorious' you have pictured up top. It looks like she has giant hot rollers on either side of her head, and yet she is pulling it off. I love that movie.
Thank you for the LINKS you add weekly... I really do go to some of them and enjoy.
the Decider link was very enjoyable about rating Streep's Oscar role for various reasons.
Jennifer Lawrence is so going to be offered the Ingrid Bergman biopic.
RIP James Horner. His Star Trek II score is pretty much my all time favorite (or very close), and aside from John Williams, I can't think of anyone whose name was more synonymous with great movie music in the 80s and early 90s.
That box office article is a bit off in it's assumptions/correlations. It complains of the recent "Top 5-heavy"-ness of the box office compared to the rest of the top 15 in recent years (currently estimated at 55% for 2015. (It also estimates Jurassic World's box office through June 30 at 350 million, a figure it passed on Saturday, and puts Inside Out having a "good chance" of passing 250, a figure it is sure to fly by).
Nevertheless, if you go back to 2004, 1993, and even 1982, you can find correlating Top 5 percentages of 52%, 55%, and 60%. Those top few films have always held the same percentage hold over the box office; the biggest difference between then and now is the types of films that explode to the top. Taking 1993 for example, sure, there's Jurassic Park at the top and Mrs. Doubtfire in the runner-up spot. But the top 5 also holds titles such as the R-rated July 4th weekend (!!!) thriller The Firm (over 300 million in today's B.O.) or rom-com Sleepless in Seattle (250 million in today's B.O.). In fact, you'd have to go all the way down to Sister Act 2 at number 19 to find something that wasn't an original non-franchise film.
Nathaniel, and others, do you know of this Tumblr?
http://sunsetgun.tumblr.com/
It's nothing but photos and .gifs of famous people mostly of the 60's and 70's, from all over the world map. She seems focused especially on Brigitte Bardot and Edie Sedgwick and Marilyn Monroe, but all kinds of stars and famous and notorious people are on it.
And it definitely has posted some photos of stars I have never seen before (Monroe, Jane Fonda, Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Sandy Duncan). Actressexuals should love it!
For the Ingrid Bergman biopic: Alicia Vikander :drops mike on stage:
Although I liked Terrence Rafferty's piece, I do think that there are many excellent under-employed young American actors. And not all of the current popular American actors are man-boys.
I'd bet there are at least a couple thousand young actors in the US who would read this article and think "I could do that". And they'd be right. Please hire one of them instead of a white celebrity.