Links: Bette's bunny theory, Martin & Lewis all wet, and a follow up to "The Father"
Thursday, April 15, 2021 at 11:30PM • /Film Florian Zeller has already lined up the cast for his follow up to The Father. It's called The Son, also based on one of his stage plays, and will star Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern as ex-spouses dealing with a troubled kid. No word yet on who will be playing the step-mom or the kid
• Cinea If you've been missing Cláudio, here's an essay he just wrote on Jennifer Jones and David O. Selznick for a Flemish film culture site. (It's in English so happy reading!)
• /Film Trailer to Barry Jenkins upcoming Amazon series Underground Railroad
• MNPP They made a Funko Pop of John Waters?! On a related note The Film Experience will be doing a week long celebration of John Waters starting Sunday. Stay tuned!
Carey Mulligan, Billy Magnussen, Mariel Hemingway, another Let the Right One In adaptation, and more after the jump...
• Hyperallergic Kevin B Lee's new video essay on Minari and recent anti-Asian violence
• InStyle Billy Magnussen interviewed with a gorgeous photoshoot
• New Yorker a fun piece on both actress Oscar races from Michael Schulman which kicks off with Bette Davis's 'bunny theory' and gripes about her first Oscar win
• Deadline We thought Hollywood was done picking the carcass of the classic Swedish vampire flick Let the Right One In but we were very wrong! Next up it's becoming a Showtime series. Anika Noni Rose and Demián Bichir will star in the adult roles, a detective and the 'father' of the pre-teen girl vampire respectively. We love Anika and Demián but (sigh). No new stories eh?
• Coming Soon This is not quite terrible enough news to lose her the Oscar (it's a tight race so who knows) but Carey Mulligan has just signed on for what will surely be a lame role as Adam Sandler's wife in his next Netflix project. UGH. Hope the money is great.
• Deadline Gabriel Luna to play one of the main characters in HBO's The Last of Us, a video game adaptation. We keep waiting for Luna to be in something we're dying to see because we sure liked him in the first couple of things we saw him in.
• NYT Wesley Morris on this year's Oscar race, two films that didn't make it (Palm Springs and The 40 Year Old Version), and the looming crises of yet more cultural shifts around the movies
• Better Together Anne Heche's podcast talks to Mariel Hemingway about her Oscar-nominated work on Woody Allen's Manhattan (1979)
• Reverse Shot Matthew Eng on All About My Mother (1999) and the Italian American grandmother he often thinks of while watching Almodóvar films
• Towleroad Chris Crocker, who parlayed their viral YouTube fame into a gay porn career, has come out as transgender (a bit shocking considering the career if not surprising otherwise) and is funding their gender-affirmation care by selling their classic "Leave Britney Alone" video as an NFT
• The Verge ...explains what an NFT is and wow, I couldn't even begin to explain this so I can only link up. I can barely understand what they are after reading this and definitely can't understand why someone would pay thousands (or even millions) for videos or tweets which are free for everyone to view and embed.
Finally... How's this for a bizarre niche (and nude) story.
Brian Ferrarri's blog has naked pics of the very popular 1950s comedy film stars Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis together in both the sauna and shower. Though there are a gazillion bad fake nudes clogging up the internet and making any celebrity (even the ones who have posed for legitimate gorgeous artistic nudes) look like botched porn star frankensteins, these are apparently bonafide. They sold at auction from a collection of a friend of Lewis's. The most revealing of the photos (above) went for almost $4,500. The only telltale sign of photoshop interference in the online version is an attempt to remove a watermark that was placed across Dean Martin's dick. (That sentence just typed. *smh*)
Reader Comments (25)
Adam Sandler's on-screen love interests include Julie Bowen, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Aniston, Nicole Kidman, Kate Beckinsale, Salma Hayek, Marisa Times, and Winona Ryder. At least Carey Mulligan will be in good company.
The Mulligan/Sandler movie sounds like it could be quite good. From the director of Chernobyl.
I doubt she’d take a terrible project while she’s hitting a peak right now.
Conclusion: Florian Zeller wrote "The Father" and "The Son".
Me: Ha ha, I bet he wrote "The Mother" and "The Daughter" as well. Ha ha.
Also me - checking out: "The Mother" exists. No further jokes...
Sandler surprised with "Uncut Gems" and while I'm not a fan of that movie, he gave a memorable performance and proved himself as an actor. Let's give him benefit of the doubt and maybe it will be a nice change of pace for Mulligan too.
What was going on in Lewis and Martin's heads during that shower photoshoot, I wonder. Those pictures would be shocking nowadays so I don't know how they survived 1950s...
@TheDrMistery -- True, these are the names of Florian Zeller's plays. More than "The Father" and "The Son", I am actually interested if there will be a cinematic realisation of "The Mother". I saw it onstage with the fearless Isabelle Huppert as the titular character. This is the second time I've seen her onstage (the first one was in the very intense "Phaedra(s)" at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2016). For "The Mother", Huppert is kinetic, frighteningly alive, and heartbreaking. I hope Florian Zeller directs this film someday and hire Huppert. Maybe nomination #2 will happen to this endlessly fascinating actress.
@Cash -- add Emily Watson to the list in Punch Drunk Love and yes, Sandler has (mostly) good taste in his choice for love interests.
Demián Bichir is quite good in Land. Was it released this year or will it qualify next year? I actually don't know when films qualify in what year anymore.
I hope a director will create a movie centering on Anika Noni Rose; she is not only an excellent singer but she was aces as a dramatic actress in Broadway's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" a decade ago.
Owl -- Land qualified for this current oscar season.
re: anika. i saw her in an Off broadway production of Carmen Jones a few years back and she was just fantastic in that, too. And of course she was amazing many years ago in Caroline or Change.
Screw the bunny theory. If Glenn Close wins, she'll deserve it.
I need Florian Zeller to adapt THE MOTHER with Isabelle Huppert!!!
The story of Jennifer Jones is fascinating. I too have wondered what her career would be like without Selznik. It seems like they weren't the best for each other, despite whatever quality they brought to the screen together. He seems like an overworking perfectionist who needed a partner to calm him down and get him to relax. She didn't need to be molded but supported by a partner who could help her through her mental illness.
side note- it's interesting how history remembers things. In cases like this, the producer/director is better remembered then the muse (who is often female) Selznik is credited for making Gone with the Wind and Rebecca but Jones is barely remembered at all. Think of Woody Allen and Diane Keaton. He is so much more awards/citations/nominations then she does. And after Allen's personal life drama, his films might not be shown which eliminates about half of Keaton's filmography. Maybe this trend is changing. Other Jennifer and David O- Lawrence and Russell have a similar director/muse relationship but she has a career outside of him and is continuing to get work while his demons seem to have caught up with him.
Call me prurient but....Dean Martin had a great dick.
I hope the Sandler's project starring Mulligan will be more "Uncut Gems" and less "Murder Mystery" : in Uncut Gems both of his love interests (Julia Fox and Idina Menzel) were Best Supporting Actress material so, i give Carey the benefit of the doubt because she has such good taste !!
The Hyperallergic piece was great. There is also a powerful article by Peter Kim George.
Looking forward to reading the All About My Mother article. That movie makes me so emotional.
Have you seen In the Heights? Why is everyone talking about it like it opened?
How do you feel about this "Amanda Seyfried want to be in Wicked" news?
I think Let Me In is way better than Let the Right One In, actually, but in still surprised at its artistic malleability (also a stage play)
I love Wesley Morris. His podcast with Jenna Wortham, Still Processing, is excellent. I recommend everyone listen to their deep dive on Promising Young Woman from a few weeks ago - they did a great job of highlighting the film's strengths and flaws.
I also think that Mulligan/Sandler film will be quite good. The director has a long, impressive resume in tv and commercials and probably could afford to be choosy about his debut.
Lots of good points in the actress article. Incredible that what Bette Davis said about make-up Oscars was true almost from the inception of the awards. The one piece that it doesn't mention is those performers who are bypassed for even a nomination for their best work and then when they finally receive an acknowledgement nod for something that isn't truly deserving they win thereby taking someone who should have taken it in perhaps their only nomination.
Martin & Lewis naked.....file that under things I thought I'd never see!!
Amanda Seyfried is a wonderful actress but she's too old for Galinda.
Other than Gatsby and Wallstreet 2, I don't think Mulligan has ever really done a big budget film. I'm happy she's getting that kind of work now. She also has Bradley Cooper's Maestro coming up which seems like a big Oscar/prestige play. She's spent a decade basically avoiding Blockbusters, so I'm fine with her adding some balance.
Davis' Bunny Theory is right, even though I thought Claudette Colbert both better than her and won for some of her best work. I think the most egregious example of the theory is Jessica Lange winning for Tootsie. What's odd about how it works with Oscar, both in Davis' time and now, is that it's a combination of "this person is talented" and "this person has given so much to the industry" in terms of Box Office/Stardom. It's Leo was able to cruise to a win when so many others who are overdue aren't.
I understand the consternation about Mulligan teaming with Sandler. Even if the project is ultimately good, Sandler has contributed so much garbage to cinema. Even with the good notices for Uncut Gems I never saw it, just because of him. Most everyone has their Bridge Too Far actors and he's mine, I guess!
My thought for the day - in a sea of unfairly maligned (Hudson), unjustly dismissed (Beyoncé) and mildly overpraised (Murphy) performances, all of which are solid... I’d argue that it’s actually Anika Noni Rose who gives the best performance in Dreamgirls.
She’s the only person from that film to make my personal Top 10s in 2006.
Nat: Eh, I'd be hopeful on Spaceman. When Sandler isn't the producer/Happy Madison isn't the production company (and other people are in that role here), he ALWAYS shows up to WORK. Even in "the bad one" (The Cobbler) in that limited sample. (Receipts on that? This is his 11 tall, live-action, "Not involved with the producer role at all" prior filmography: Billy Madison. Happy Gilmore. Bulletproof. The Wedding Singer. Punch-Drunk Love. Spanglish. Reign Over Me. Men, Women and Children. The Cobbler. The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected). Uncut Gems.) It's his own production company where he often (not always, but often) sleep walks through lame shallow goof-off crap.
Oh my....That Billy Magnussen piece certainly got my engine revved up.
The Towleroad article is a dead link.
YT -- thanks. fixed.
Billy Magnussen is beautiful and talented should be bigger star... the Martin and Lewis photos should not be that shocking- in the the 1950s casual nudity was very common in locker room photos- maybe because there were no female reporters the boys felt more comfortable letting it all hang out
@Claudio
Thx for the very insightful and wonderful article on Selznick & Jones! It'd made a very interesting biopic covering their tumultuous love-hate relationship & the devastating effects he had on her career. Surprise tt thr's no movie was made abt them??
I alws feel it such a waste tt Selznick micro-managed her career until its hurts her reputation as an actress.
Watching Cluny Brown & Madame Bovary, one can't help but tink of the potentials she had, had not Selznick been controlling/sabotaging her image and career.
I'm just glad tt Selznick met her AFTER he made GWTW. Imagined he trying all his might to made her into Scarlett O'Hara. It'd been a very different movie! lol
Trivia. Jones was initially cast in The Country Girl but had to drop out due to pregnancy & Grace Kelly begs MGM to loan her out for the role, and the rest is Oscars history.