THR Shin Godzilla wins really big at the Japanese Oscars while massive anime hit Your Name takes 3 prizes. A film called Her Love Boils Bathwater (????) took both of the actress awards. Gimme.
TFE ... ICYMI Shin Godzilla came in at #18 at the US box office in terms of foreign film success last year (just behind critical darlings The Handmaiden and Elle)
Two Dollar Cinema had a fun blog-a-thon called 'Mt Rushmore of Movies' in which bloggers could just any fourpart tribute - I only hear about blog-a-thons after the fact but I'm happy some people are still doing 'em. Entries include: four characters with great beards, best movie cameos, movies where romantic leads don't end up together, and more
Much more film & TV news, videos, and linkage as well as Barry Jenkins & Damien Chazelle's friendship after the jump because this is a super long post. It's impossible to keep up as of late!
Pajiba investigates the weird easter egg in that Deadpool teaser
Film School Rejects looks back at the obsessive David Fincher picture Zodiac for its 10th anniversary
/Film Donnie Yen joining Sleeping Dogs movie after career boost from Rogue One
/Film inside the prop comics featured in Logan
The Chaser has the absolutely most perfect headline for the whole Beauty & The Beast has a gay character "scandal"
Variety a sci-fi short Rise which starred the late Anton Yelchin is being developed for a feature. Here's the short...
RISE from David Karlak on Vimeo.
ICYMI Though Maybe You Wanted To...
Disney has a nasty habit of cannibalizing their own legacy (though always while laughing inside of their money printing bank) so maybe you don't want a Tangled sequel but they made one anyway called Tangled Before Ever After and here are the first five minutes of that...
Sad News
Boy Culture sad news: early 90s pop star Tommy Page has died of a suspected suicide, survived by his husband and three kids. He was only 46. Remember this song?
TV & Stage & Randomness
/Film Did you know that Alejandro G Iñárritu was working on a TV series? I'd completely forgotten this. It's called The One Perecent and it will star Hilary Swank but there's production trouble. It already lost one leading man and now it might lose a supporting actor (Ed Harris) and it's also lost its cable channel Starz
Broadway World interviews the choreographer who did Newsies on Broadway and will do Frozen on Broadway and also guided Channing Tatum's tapping in Hail Caesar
Variety One Day at a Time renewed for a second season on Netflix
Comics Alliance lots of casting news for Marvel's Inhumans and yes that giant teleporting dog Lockjaw will be in the series (via CGI of course)
The New Yorker good piece on the "This is the future that liberals want" meme
Oscar Aftermath
Story One: In 'probably shouldn't have gone there' news, Kenneth Lonergan was super pissed off about a student oped on Casey Affleck in his alma mater's magazine and penned his own fiery reply. Here we go again... (sigh)
Story Two: In much much happier news (that people initially misunderstood and reacted negatively to, because that's how people do) Damien Chazelle and Barry Jenkins shared the post Oscar Variety cover / interview this week
@shaehag We won best picture. We stand in no film's shadow. And I'm not afraid to celebrate another's achievements beside my own. Exhibit A pic.twitter.com/hFogPMiQ3D
— Barry Jenkins (@BandryBarry) March 1, 2017
I was disappointed to see on Twitter that people were attacking Variety for "making Barry Jenkins share the cover" with Damien Chazelle. The truth is that it's a (new?) tradition for Variety to feature the Best Director winner on their cover after the Oscars and the Chazelle shoot had already been planned. Chazelle invited Barry. See, Barry Jenkins and Damien Chazelle are less petty than Oscar watchers and apparently like each other a whole bunch. Barry reminded his hurt fans that he was the guest on the cover, not the one 'forced to share it,' nor was Damien forced to share; it was reportedly his idea. Chazelle may look sinister and have that Devil Baby name, but he's actually very nice (I met him thrice in 2014 at various movie parties before he was this famous and he was friendly to this nobody right here all three times)
Barry Jenkins has also rightly pointed out that it's cool that the last three Variety post-covers before his shared one, were also for men of color. (Variety smartly gave Lubezki the cover last year since Iñarritu had just been on it the year before and he was at least as responsible for those Best Director wins, don'cha think?)
@shaehag @Variety When I win BEST DIRECTOR I'll get the morning after cover. Let's not forget the last 3 post-Oscar covers were Latino men
— Barry Jenkins (@BandryBarry) March 1, 2017
As someone who loves Oscar season with all of my heart I love discovering that a super talented director is this generous and chill and smart about the whole thing. Frankly it's not the Oscars themselves that force people into these silly "to love one film you must hate this other one" but people themselves doing that to themselves and each other.
Both Jenkins and Chazelle surely have bright futures in Hollywood and as a fan of both films I hope they both blow us away again next time so that this year's strange fusion of Oscar fates looks merely like round one of two great careers that happened to go supernova at the same time.