Link Bonanza
Monday, December 7, 2020 at 6:00PM • The Guardian interviews Anya Taylor-Joy on her passion for acting, Emma, and The Queens Gambit
• AV Club Oscar Isaac to play Solid Snake in the film adaptation of video game Metal Gear Solid
• Atlantic a wonderful interview with David Fincher about grievances with Hollywood, the death of midbudget movies, and Mank
After the jump our streaming future, Catherine O'Hara, rising Egyptian cinema, MTV Movie Awards, new Christmas albums, and more...
• Coming Soon 10 best Catherine O'Hara faces. She does pull indelible comic faces though sadly this post doesn't really screencap the best ones.
• Variety India's Milestone and Georgia's Beginning (an Oscar submission) win the Singapore Film Festival
• Variety why an all streaming movie world won't look how you think it will
• The Guardian it was a big year for lesbian love at the movies
• Deadline MTV Movie Awards pivoted this year to be about "all time" rather than the film year which basically mean giving prizes to Nineties and Aughts movies and very recent Marvel and DC movies
• Advocate ... and speaking of these GOAT awards: Selma Blair and Sarah Michelle Gellar reenact their infamous Cruel Intentions kiss for MTV
• AV Club Disney+'s Hawkeye series is revving up adding Vera Farmiga and Florence Pugh to its cast list
• Coming Soon 20 new cast members revealed for Lord of the Rings series (geez, how large is this cast anyway?) including Benjamin Walker
• Variety despite US problems, some theatrical markets are booming. Saudi Arabia opening to cinemas has resulted in bigger audiences and bigger budgets for Arabic language and Egyptian fare. Kira and El Gen, about the Egyptian resistance to British occupation in 1919, is set to be the biggest budgeted of them all but before that, three of the current Arabic language Oscar submissions have found local distribution, too.
Tis the Season
• Broadway World best stage star Christmas albums this year including new records from actors Leslie Odom Jr and Megan Hilty
• Slate okay this book sounds like a great gift for the 80s music lover in your life "Can't Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop's Blockbuster Year"
• Theater Mania an interview with Matthew Morrison about making the NBC musical The Grinch, airing on December 9th
Reader Comments (10)
That list of the 10 best Catherine O'Hara faces is, unforgivably, missing SCTV's Lola Heatherton--"I love you Juul Haalmeyer. I want to BEAR your CHILDREN, ha, ha, ha!", not to mention AFTER HOUR's Gail--"I'm just TRYING to entertain you!"
I'm sick of Hollywood A) modeling bad behavior B) flaunting the fact that they have $$$ and access to tests and operating permits most people don't have and C) acting self-righteous about the pandemic. People are dying and others haven't seen loved ones in over a year but resources were marshalled to have Selma Blair and Sarah Michelle Gellar do a weird COVID joke. There's no plexiglass in the establishing shots of them breathing in each other's faces, but I guess that didn't matter to them or they hoped it wouldn't read on camera.
Nathaniel, if you need a boost of optimist re: movie theatres, read the interview with Steven Soderbergh in The Daily Beast.
I thought the Variety link was interesting, so thank you.
Nat: That Variety article is almost EXACTLY my expectation if streaming only is actually the future. It's not going to happen (of course), but that's exactly my expectation. Only difference: A lot of the former blockbusters being made as 2-D animation.
OK, that Sarah Michelle Gellar/Selma Blair reenactment is funny. Plus, they still look good. Yet, that whole MTV Movie Awards thing is shit. They really don't understand the concept of GOAT. They've only seen a few hundred movies but realize how little they've seen as there's so much more dating back to 1895.
I blame Christopher Nolan for HBO Max. He wants to put his movie in the theaters during a fucking pandemic yet is upset that Warner Brothers realize how much money they lost so they decide "hey, we'll put out all of our new movies on HBO Max the same day it's playing in theaters". Yeah, this is Nolan's fault. Thanks a lot asshole. As if the pandemic wasn't enough.
I feel Focus has to build on the buzz for The Queen 's Gambit and get Emma in the Oscar conversation. There is definitely a path there.
This isn't Nolan's fault. WB is playing the long game here and jumping at the opportunity to cut out the middleman. Do you think if it wasn't for Tenet they'd just have calmly sit back the entire year and gone "Oh well, let's cut our losses, it's gonna be back to business as usual by 2023"?
Not getting the handwringing about the Blair/Gellar shoot either. They practically live together anyway and this was obviously shot at one of their homes. And the plexiglass wouldn't have gone to the needy anyway, I'm afraid.
There's more to the world than America and delaying these films until 2022(?) will only kill the industry everywhere else, too. I'm not sure what people expect studios to do exactly.
Glenn Dunks -- I may be optimistic about the fate of cinema, but I'm not jumping with joy at WB's decision either. However, like you, I wonder what people want these studios to do. At least, like this, they may hope to distribute the movies in theatres of countries where cinemas have re-opened.
I do know that Portuguese distributors are desperate for a chance to bring these movies to cinemas but the delays in the US means delays everywhere else. WONDER WOMAN 1984, for instance, is coming to theatres this month over here.
The studios need to make money from these movies now! Yes I would love to have them in the theater but in NYC they are closed.