Interlinker
Thursday, June 8, 2017 at 8:10AM 
Must See
EW has new images from Mary Poppins Returns. Oh please let this be good. Please let it be good.
Linkage
Decider the 50 most important LGBT characters in tv history - they'll be doing essays on the top 10. Two of our contributors were included in their polling.
The Guardian thinks Tom Cruise should ditch the heroics and play an unsavory character again. We heartily agree. He seemed to lose all his artistic ambition (if not his general ambition) right around the time of the Kidman divorce. It's been almost a two decade stretch of franchise heroes only now with rare exceptions like Rock of Ages and Collateral.
Deadline Donald Glover talks Atlanta and taking on the famous role of Lando Calrissian in the Star Wars franchise
Guardian Remember Blue is the Warmest Color? Director Abdellatif Kechiche is auctioning off his Palme d'Or and other memorabilia to pay for his next movie
Variety on the common thread that unites the shows that Netflix has recently cancelled. Guys, I'm so sad about Sense8. It wasn't perfect in any way but it was so earnest and original and sexually inclusive (sigh)
Coming Soon Ryan Coogler and Michael B Jordan are fast becoming a fiercely committed director/muse duo. They're going to make a school cheating drama Wrong Answer after Black Panther. It will already be their fourth movie together and they only made their first one, Fruitvale Station, four years ago.
MNPP Jason uncovers a mystery about the naked hustler in Six Degrees of Separation (1993)
Interview Matthew McConaughey interviews his screen son from Interstellar Timothée Chalamet, reportedly about to breakthrough to the big leagues with Call Me By Your Name
She's a Wonder... Wonder Woman
Variety Wonder Woman banned or delayed in a few countries
The New Yorker an intriguing review of Wonder Woman focusing on its restraint and the style of "no style" as well as the claim that it's not just a superhero movie but "an entry in the genre of wisdom literature"
THR Patty Jenkins not yet signed on for Wonder Woman 2. The internet at large seems convinced WB/DC will throw money at her. Was the internet not paying attention when other female directors were dumped after launching big grossing franchises (think 50 Shades of Grey and The Twilight Saga)? I'm not saying this will happen again. There's more pressure and scrutiny now on this topic. I'm just saying it's more of a possibility than people are admitting given Hollywood's history of treating female directors much differently than their male counterparts.
Theater Season
Time Out NY Tony Award predictions including potential surprises
Playbill Molly Pope is starring in a new one person musical Second to Nun -readers near Virginia Beach should definitely seek this out. She is an amazing talent
Variety looks at how an Oregon theater in a small town has become a major player in prestigious American theater
Exit Video
Rachel Bloom won't be campaigning for an Emmy *wink wink*
Reader Comments (12)
I share MNPP's passion for Six Degrees of Separation and male genitalia.
Nathaniel, you must read Vulture's interview with Margo Mardindale and Ann Dowd!
"He seemed to lose all his artistic ambition (if not his general ambition) right around the time of the Kidman divorce. "
Not the biggest fan of Cruise and I LOVE Kidman but this is an overstatement clearly from someone who needs to use Kidman as a stick to bash other stars with. Cruise has had his fair share of misfires but he made Collateral, the two most recent mission impossible movies which were almost universally thought the be the best of the entire series (and far superior the bulk of action films that came out around the same time) and Edge of Tomorrow. Not to mention his cameo in Tropic Thunder. Not the greatest track record to be sure but to criticize him for his lack of ambition while deliberately failing to point out that in the aftermath of winning an Oscar Kidman made The Stepford Wives, Bewitched, The Interpreter, The Invasion, The Golden Compus, Australia, and Nine (and more recently junk like Before I go the Sleep and Grace of Monaco) and, with the exception of Dogville and Birth, her few attempts at ambition (Cold Mountain, The Human Stain, and Fur) were mediocre at best until VERY recently, is total ignorance. The large majority of those films lost money and nearly all of them were panned to a far greater degree than the junk Cruise was making around the same time, which at least was entertainingly stupid junk. I think Kidman is great and I'm super happy to see that she seems to have gotten her groove back but her filmography from 2003-2010 easily reads as WTF project choices to same extent as Cruise's does.
I suspect Cruise was in a DiCaprio/The Revenant zone of gunning for an Oscar when he made The Last Samurai and Collateral back in '02/'03. This obviously didn't pan out for him (although his co-stars in both films *were* Oscar-nominated), but it was probably the back-to-back misfires of Lions for Lambs and Valkyrie that prompted him to retrench and focus on franchise-building work. It's a pity, too, because the actor who made Magnolia must be lurking in there somewhere, and if Paul Thomas Anderson had considered/cast him in There Will Blood, for example, I bet we'd be talking about Oscar winner Tom Cruise at this point.
The ambition and boldness of Sense8 is something I'm going to miss from my tv watching. Not to mention a cast of characters that were so easy to love. The show celebrated the diversity of the world in such a beautiful and exciting way. Not to mention it was so sexually positive.
I just saw the trailer for "American Made," and I think it looks promising. It's nice to see Tom Cruise playing a character for once, an anti-hero at that. He's a star, but Jerry Maguire looms large in his resume because he actually played a full-blooded character.
Patrick,
I don't think Nathaniel mean it the way you interpreted. I think he meant it's coincidental that TC seems to favor blockbusters all the time now instead of mixing them up. Of course both Nicole and Tom have misfires; they are both move stars; it bounds to happen.
Tom used to mix things up before; he worked with Scorsese, Mann, Neil Jordan, PTA; now it seems he just goes the action route all the time; which is fine if that's what he prefers but he is much better actor than that. Not saying just because he is in action movie, he is not a good actor; but he can diversify his roles.
Y'all! Michelle Pfeiffer and Sarah Jessica Parker just did an Actors on Actors segment. Must see TV... https://youtu.be/L25AXyaDJmo
Patrick has finally said it as it is when it comes to Kidman's career.
Tom Cruise... overrated. He rarely puts a good performance yet he just prefers doing the same old shit and playing characters that are much younger than him. He's like Adam Sandler and Johnny Depp. Guys who just do the same old shit that eventually becomes the derp-de-derp films.
Once Cruise became a stateside joke he chose his "faith" over artistic credibility. Concentrating on multiplex programmers keeps the empire money coming in. The foreign public who are never as sophisticated as we presume still eat up the garbage as though nothing has changed.
Just to clarify, I love Kidman, think she's consistently worth watching, and think that a lot of her project choices are intriguing. But it's an exceptionally uneven filmography with a TON of stinkers and films that look like they weren't even made. That's a terrific career by most standards and respect to her for continuing to work at it. It's clear she lets her intuition guide her and that she's eager to step outside her comfort zone and commit to risks. But I find it odd that certain stars who to my mind have yet to give a single poor (imo not even a really mediocre one) performance and whose filmography is comprised of mostly excellent films is treated agnosticly and yet somehow Kidman is the most important actress of recent times seems a tough case to make.
Patrick -what Drew said. I only mentioned Kidman because it was the time frame when it happened.This is not to suggest that it had anything to do with her. I dont use her as a stick to beat other stars with (oy) especially since I love movie stars in general... even Tom Cruise back in the day which is why its so disappointing that he's become a franchise man only. Yes, the Mission Impossible films are good. But that's not my point at all. A broken clock can be right twice a day.
Stars who don't practice variety (whether that's genre or types of projects or directors or whatnot) invariably end up as self-parodies and usually their careers change for the worse. One star who people think i hate (only because I won't throw hosannas at every moment she breathes) Meryl Streep is an excellent example of how to shift gears on occassion to keep people interested in your career and to keep the creative juices flowing. She has had several movements in her career and trust that if she had not shifting things up after that stellar run in the 80s she would not be where she is today. She became an even bigger superstar but continually surprising, first by moving into comedy and then musicals and occassionally reminding people of the dramatic prowess and then merely by working a lot at a time when most actresses disappear.
Cruise is not half the actor he once was which is just so sad because he's got so much star charisma and talent.