Links: Best Picture Field, Highest Paid Actresses, The Departed on TV?
Thursday, August 25, 2016 at 11:52AM 
It's link time which also doubles as news catch up! (Yes, Oscar Chart updates are currently in progress. So more on that and the foreign submissions very soon)
Think Pieces, List Mania, Celebrity
• Movie City News launches another "Gurus of Gold" season where all of us have named our current top 20 "general field" predictions. Yes, I'm updating my charts over the next three days! Manchester by the Sea and Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk are expected leaders
• Gawker Rich Juzwiack says goodbye to one identity through a George Michael lens. It's wonderful
• MNPP Paul Bettany is vacationing in Ibiza
• NYT talks to Kirsten Dunst about life after Fargo and her Emmy nomination
• Mind of a Suspicious Kind Martin Scorsese's Silence is supposedly his longest ever (over 3 hours) but is it actually coming out this year?
• Cinema Enthusiast polled film twitter on their favorite films of 1982. The results are interesting but weird. The Thing at #1? Erm, okay. Star Trek II above Victor/Victoria? NO. I have to admit that I'm quite spotty on early 80s cinema though because I couldn't drive myself to the cinema back then.
• Forbes on the easy-to-predict failure of the new Ben-Hur and how it's a fitting end to this particular summer
• Little White Lies wonders if there still a place for eroticism in cinema while watching shorts in Montreal
• i09 what went wrong with this summer's blockbusters
• AV Club talks to Clea DuVall about past roles on the eve of her directorial debut with The Intervention
• MNPP Dagmara Dominczyck's Patrick Wilson appreciation social media game
• ...TFE we interviewed her once and she is stunningly gorgeous herself
• Slate that nude Trump statue hitting various cities is not amusing to everyone
• ...EW including actress/author Amber Tamblyn
News & Miscellania
• The Guardian more trouble for Birth of a Nation. AFI cancelled screenings and Q&A
• ... icymi TFE previous handwringing about this scandal and film
• Forbes Jennnifer Lawrence & Melissa McCarthy top the annual highest paid actresses list this year. Two actresses outside of Hollywood made the list this year: Deepika Padukone (India) and Fan Bingbing (China). Figures include not just films but endorsement deals and such. The Zeéeeee apparently banked a lot for returning to her signature role in Bridget Jones's Baby since she almost made the list.
• /Film Blade Runner 2 adds Jared Leto to the cast and Jóhan Jóhannsson as composer
• Theater Mania Jennifer Holliday joining the cast of the Broadway revival of Color Purple. I guess they've decided to make Shug Avery the short-term award-winning star draw (they've already been through Jennifer Hudson and Heather Hedley)
• Screen Daily undervalued British actor Andrew Scott has a lead role. He'll star in the thriller Steel Country
• Kotaku Ghost in the Shell supporting cast photos leaked
• Towleroad on Frank Oceans new video Nikes
• Coming Soon Amazon developing a TV series based on The Departed. Hmmm. Isn't that an odd fit for long term storytelling. It would imply we can never move past the double crossing discovered stage
• Playbill Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher documentary will premiere at the NYFF
• Film Stage the first image from Euphoria with Alicia Vikander & Eva Green
Madonna Mania - It's Around This Summer For Some Reason (not complaning)
• Boy Culture on a star studded Truth or Dare screening in NYC...
• People ...Madonna even showed up super briefly!
• Village Voice Michael Musto recalls his up and down relationship to the material girl through their very long contemporaneous careers
And I'll leave you with the new La La Land trailer. (If you missed our discussion of the first trailer, that's here.) This movie can't open soon enough!
Reader Comments (28)
That is SO cool Madonna showed up at the Truth or Dare screening... I wish she were more open/approachable to her legions of fans :)
The response to Frank's video was irksome. What was your response Nathaniel?
That La La Land trailer is GORGEOUS!
Germany thankfully submitted Toni Erdmann for the foreign language Oscar.
YEEEAASSS!!!
Shouldn't everyone watch Punch-Drunk Love again to prepare themselves for La La Land?
With the first trailer for LA LA LAND, they put its song ("City of Stars") on iTunes immediately, but not this one ("Audition")? Cruelty!
Not excited for La La Land nor am I expecting it to be good. A Generic Romance Musical with Generic White Actress Emma Stone and Even More Generic White Heartthrob Ryan Gosling? Bleh.
beyaccount -- wow. i want to live in your world where there can even be such a thing as a "generic" musical. we get so very few of them!
There are precious few stories that can't be told effectively in under three hours. That Scorsese thinks his are the exemption has become deeply vexing, especially considering that his movies haven't been good lately.
The one word that comes to mind regarding Jennifer Holliday as "Shug Avery" is "grotesque." Take that however you want it.
CLEA DUVALL! I have such fond memories of her from late 1990s/early 2000s teen flicks.
I doubt Silence is coming this year. There's no trailer. There's no teaser. There's no POSTER. It's late August. Plus, the priest casting seems pretty bad from a racial standpoint. We called Ridley Scott out for Exodus, so why not Scorsese for this?
$46 million for Jennifer Lawrence? I suppose that's right based on the box office, but it seems unsustainable for any actor, unless he/she keeps doing big budget, special effects spectacles. I am glad they recognized foreign actresses, but what about the others below those ten? Enquiring minds want to know. And in my mind, Amy Adams > Julia Roberts, but I know that Julia has a name that matters to studios.*
*Perhaps more to studios than audiences, based on Julia's recent films, but I give her the benefit of the doubt and I know that she strives like anyone to make good movies.
This was my comment on your post for the first LA LA LAND trailer:
"I'd also like to think the film will be more balance and that the second trailer will be from Stone's characters point of view (with a song of hers). But that's just my wishful thinking."
So I'm VERY HAPPY that's exactly what they did. I'm SO DAMN excited!
With Jennifer Holliday joining the cast, I'm gonna have to fly to NYC. OMG, I'm pretty sure I will die when I see it!
I know people have soured on Ryan Gosling quite a bit but I'd love nothing more than to have him nominated again, for a light weight musical no less!
Clea Duvall's character in Veep was quite funny.
Volvagia - The Portuguese people are actually Caucasian (Like most of the European) and even some people of the northern Portugal (And close to Galicia) have celtic roots like Britons (And that's saying from close approach). So, it's not exactly the same issue as Scott did with Exodus.
i09: The big problem is that, outside of Batman, Captain America and, to an extent, Star Trek, you can't really point to many of the adapted tentpoles of the past ten years or so and definitively say "Yeah, they BUDGETED that to oblivion". More time (including less date posting) and more original ideas are probably the two most important things, but also letting iterations of franchises die when consensus has said they've really worn out their welcome can help. Singer X-Men? Burton Alice? Bay Turtles? Roland Emmerich? The two DCXU features? WarCraft, aka another entry in the video game movie masochism tango? That those were relative failures shouldn't surprise that much. Ghostbusters and, to an extent, Pete's Dragon are probably the two big sigh moments. Another thing that might help? Push the government for an "every month, some prestige" mandate. (Notes: 1. Only wide releases would count, 2. This would come with absolutely no interference otherwise, so as not to cloud it with anything free speech related and 3. Multiple prestige drops in non peak months would be incentivized with $1 million payments per each drop above the first.)
Carpenter's " The Thing" is a movie that has gotten better with age- a true masterpiece of sci-fi horror- "La La Land" looks like pure visual magic
I just read in The Hollywood Reporter that Sarah Paulson may be joining Oceans 8! YES!!! Carol and Abby reunited!
I know people have soured on Ryan Gosling quite a bit...
Who are these wrong people? He was EXCELLENT in THE NICE GUYS, which was in turn one of the best movies that came out this summer.
"The Nice Guys" was very satisfying action buddy comedy
Paging Nathaniel! The trailer is out for Nicole's new movie, 'Lion': https://youtu.be/xNstK5rbzcw
Watching the trailer for LA LA LAND, Emma Stone's acting seemed distractingly apparent in every scene. Nothing about her affect in that trailer seemed natural.
Stone has never been a natural actress and that is ok. Not her style. I agree she is bad/average more than she is good, but when she's good she's hot. She and Portman would oddly enough make a good comparison (talented but inconsistent) albeit Stone is much more often bad/average in a good film than Portman is. Portmans bright spots also shine brighter. Although stone as a celebrity clearly whoops Portmans butt
I agree. She is inconsistent as an actress but she can be very good. I actually thought her acting in the trailer looked good.
Annony: this is random, but when I read your comment, I assumed you were talking about Sharon Stone! I'd just scrolled down to get to the newest comment (since I'd read the other comments yesterday). So many tabs open that I guess I forgot this post was partially about La La Land.
The thought of Sharon Stone vs. Natalie Portman is hilarious, in any context.
OMG! I cried. That's all.
LaLa Land seems perfect. Fingers crossed.