And the Links Go To...
Wednesday, March 7, 2018 at 8:00PM Team Experience has been sharing favorite moments from Oscar night but we must slowly ween ourselves off of Oscar (*sniffle*) and back to the new year in progress. Link time!
• Vulture The Oscars should always be long (I love this piece with all my heart)
• Liza Donnelly her collection of live drawings from Oscar week
Miscellaneous Screen
• Indie Wire how fun is this? A theater in San Francisco is hosting a screening of Isle of Dogs in which moviegoers can bring their dogs into the theater!
• Deadline apparently there are competing projects about Sharon Tate and the Manson murders. Tate's surviving families are supporting a version starring Kate Bosworth and they're upset with the other two projects (one of which is Quentin Tarantino's)
• AV Club hilarious story -- a teen broke her retainer biting down on it while thirsting for Michael B Jordan in Black Panther. He's now offered to buy her a new one
• MNPP Jason reminds us that David Robert Mitchell (of It Follows promise) has a new movie coming out starring Andrew Garfield
• The Muse how many more non-hits can Jennifer Lawrence's career withstand?
• Straight Outta Crouch End A fascinating take on A Fantastic Woman and its references to Orpheus and Eurydice.
Off Screen
• Vox on MoviePass's fuzzy business model
• Slate Russell Crowe holding a "divorce auction". Do the items paint a "strange and mesmerizing portrait"?
• Out Actress Cynthia Nixon is laying the groundwork to run for Governor in NY
• TodayTix "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" on Broadway has $40 lottery tickets -regular seats are hundreds of dollars so competition will be fierce. Friday morning entry only!
• NYT "The Shed," a newperformance space in Manhattan is looking to mash art-forms up from film directors staging concerts to collaborations between actors, poets, and opera stars? Sounds exciting.
Reader Comments (24)
@Nathaniel R
If you have reservations for long movies, why embrace a long Oscar telecast?
If every comment you make on a website is contrarian to its spirit and regular content, why embrace routinely dropping into threads to be a needless killjoy?
I know we're all sick of celebrities flirting with running for office, but I actually think Cynthia Nixon would make a great politician. If I lived in New York, I'd probably vote for her over Cuomo.
Re: Jennifer Lawrence--she's part of a major franchise (X Men) which will give her a few more bankable hits even if people stop liking the films themselves. She'll be fine. She's young and her fan base adores her. She'll continue to have her pick of roles for some time, and it seems inevitable that she'll click with the right vehicle in the near future.
It's actually probably to her benefit that she's taken on some riskier fare that isn't quite landing--love it or hate it, people talked about mother and will for some time to come, I imagine. It'll be a more notable entry in her filmography than, say, Passenger. Plus, EVERY movie star has commercial disappointments.
I am not sure about Jennifer. It seems unlikely she can keep demanding $20 million per film when she can’t carry it to box office success. Red Sparrow cost $69M but will be lucky to gross $45M in the USA. So, her fan base is shrinking. What happened to her project with Spielberg? Seems like that was shelved.
So...the linked article about jlaw is less about her career choices and more of a takedown on thef current film (which I’m sure is terrible). Not really worth reading. I think she’s made some terrible choices and I hope things turn around... or she won’t be around.
Lots of thoughts on the Lawrence piece. Find it weird and definitely sexist to a degree how often female actresses seem to get punished a lot more, or at least scrutinized for their box office appeal and ability to sustain it.
Do we really need to go over how many genuine flops male actors get before this is even asked of them? Just off the top of my head Tom Cruise hasn't had a single box office success carried on his name in over a decade outside of his franchise films (MI). Most of them saved by the international gross but even then not really going into the "hit" territory.
It seems since she became huge she's been placed on the spotlight to see how she does there and if she can live up to it. Which is is funny in itself cause Lawrence has never genuinely been a box office pull, not on her own and she got crowned that way. Other than SLP she's never had that ability to draw in audiences on her name alone, so it's almost as if she was bound to fail in that aspect, even if she was (and probs continues to be) the most famous actress in the US.
It's good JLaw is taking a year off. The 60 Minutes piece comparing her to Katharine Hepburn and Meryl Streep was a bit much.
The ceremony should be as long as it should be. We spend all year talking about the Oscars, and then when the night finally comes so many people complain it's too long. Like, you can spend another hour watching the ceremony. Don't act like you've got better things to do when you spend hours upon hours upon hours reading websites like these and making predictions and listening to Oscar podcasts and watching all the movies.
A $17m opening for J.Law's RED SPARROW would have been good if it didn't cost $69mil. How many original movies can open to that much on Oscar weekend?
My Lady Bird blu-ray arrived today, I just finished rewatching it and it was sublime. I'm still so in love with it. Probably even more so.
That's all I really have to say. My comment doesn't really apply to this particular post but..you know, this is The Film Experience after all and where else would I say it? Thanks.
Anyway..
The Vulture piece failed to recognize that this year's Oscars telecast really did lean into its length, for the first time that I can remember. Jimmy Kimmel said that long acceptance speeches would not be cut off, and offered the jet ski as an incentive to keep remarks brief.
I did hear the orchestra start a couple of times, but it was when there were multiple winners on stage, and it's not obvious whether they've chosen one person to speak for them, or if each of them expects a turn at the microphone.
Kimmel's Celebrity Field Trip was the expected sequel to Kimmel's Tour Bus Detour from last year. This one was more painfully overlong, and even greater evidence that regular people have no business getting screen time on Oscar night.
Come on. JLaw is having her I Love Trouble/Mary Reilly phase. Then a My Best Friend's Wedding happens and everything is alright again.
Why is it ok to try and take down a succussful white woman,It feels like the internet is desperate to see her fail.I really don't understand it,especially now at this time for women,shouldn't we be praising her for not getting to were she is through nepotism or connections and doing it on hard work and talent.
Cal,So right on about this subject,Mary Reilly and I Love Trouble were misfires but have good stuff in their esp MR.
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The vultures were circling for Julia in the mid 94 - 96 the "How Dare She" attitude,to a lesser extent it happened with Demi around 97,Sharon Stone around 96,Bullock in 2003,Diaz just a few years ago even as far back as Meryl in the late 80's and early 90's,Meg in 2003 and now Jennifer.
Lots and lots of male actors have many many flops i'm not going to name them.
Then we wonder why the women of Hollywood have to stand up at the Oscars to be heard and respected.
Mother wasn't a hit but is that discussion piece a lot of actresses have on their resume.
I love and respect J-Law's bold choices (Red Sparrow and Mother) as of late - it has made her a lot more interesting in my book - I like actress who take chances.
Don't listen to the critics. J-Law, continue to be fearless!
That article didn't point out the fundamental difference: the Super Bowl is almost always over by 11pm Eastern, the Oscars are rarely over before midnight. I loved a long Oscars show... until I moved to the East coast.
JLaw is great. We need all the movie stars we can get
Matthew McConaughey's last four live-action movies were The Dark Tower, Gold, The Free State of Jones, and The Sea of Trees. He was still somehow invited to present at the Oscars this year and no one has commented on what a flop his career has been since he won Best Actor four years ago. If he were a woman, there would have been 4-5 thinkpieces since the ceremony about what an embarassment his Oscar was.
That said, by all means, please keep harping on Jennifer Lawrence's choices.
My only complaint with her is that she seems to hog the universe of attention, when she is really not that great. If you look at her work in her movies, she is kind of bad.
That piece by Kyle Buchanan is music to my ears...We love the Oscars and as long as she show can be exciting, then it should luxuriate in movie love for as long as it can. The producers of the Oscars need to make the show for those of us who love cinema, not the casual TV viewer who doesn't even know who Rita Moreno is. Shame on them.
Regarding the Michael B. Jordan story, if I weren't classy, I would tell of how I broke my jock strap. But I am, so I won't.
The Oscars were too long this year the bit in which Kimmel took the stars to visit the audience should have been cut- less politics and more celebration of cinema next year please
I don't care what people say. I love J. Law. I do she goes back to playing against type (aka, miscast). I know that brings out the grrrrs in everyone here. But she's best when she's not playing some version of "hot chick." Winter's Bone, American Hustle, Joy, SLP ... in all of them she's a little miscast, and yet, she makes it work even if the movie doesn't work. If she has to do "hot chick," then she's literally just another attractive woman onscreen. But in interviews, she seems completely charming, and she seems to have a cultural awareness that allows her to tap into the miscast roles. Just my $0.02. Break out the knives ...
I think Lawrence is a marvelous actress, decent person and Jezebel and their fake woke feminist asshole clique can go fuck themselves at their earliest convenience.
Honestly, they claim to be a site built by women for women and yet, they do nothing but tear successful women down. I like that Jennifer Lawrence is taking more risks in her career-isn't that what great actors do??. By the way, how many underwhelming to flat out bombs have some high profile A-list male actors had??- where is Jezebel's thinly veiled hit piece masquerading as "think piece" for those men?.
Let's not forget that there was a huge article tearing down Armie Hammer's career not that long ago. And the NYT published a piece that was basically like "Why is Orlando Bloom a Star?" when he was at the height of his fame, also questioning his box office appeal vs. his paychecks/opportunities.
These kind of articles have been happening for a long time and yes, sometimes they focus on women.
(Having said that, I don't think Lawrence deserves it. mother! was NEVER going to be a giant hit and Red Sparrow's release date - Oscar weekend, so close to Black Panther still dominating audience's desire for action films - is a bigger problem than whether or not Lawrence is a draw.)