Links: Batgirl's Unexpected Demise, Bong's Mickey Clones, and Melanie's Just Rewards
Thursday, August 4, 2022 at 9:00AM • The Guardian An excerpt from Sarah Polley's new memoir concerning her child actor days on Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
• IndieWire Marcel the Shell is submitting as an Animated Feature. Will the Oscars accept it?
• Coming Soon The First Lady, which was meant to be an ongoing anthology series with new leads each year, has been cancelled. At least we got another tremendous Pfeiffer performance out of it!
The current Warner Bros / HBOMax Batgirl nightmare, our beloved Melanie Lynskey on Yellowjackets, Bong Joon-ho's next film, and Dev Patel as a real life hero after the jump...
• The Advocate an interview with Shirley Maclaine!
• The Envelope great interview with Melanie Lynskey about the success of Yellowjackets
• AV Club Season 2 of The White Lotus is coming in October (not too long to wait) with Jennifer Coolidge the only returning cast member
• IndieWire Bong Joon-ho has started shooting his first movie since Parasite. It's based on the sci-fi novel Mickey7 and stars Robert Pattinson as the titular clone. Steven Yeun, Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette, and Naomi Ackie costar
• The Guardian staff chooses their favourite action movies
• Deadline Shea Couleé of RuPaul's Drag Race fame has joined the cast of Marvel's Ironheart series
• Banana Guide no that wasn't Neil Patrick Harris' actual dick in the Uncoupled dick pic scene
• IndieWire NEON is looking to sell to a deep pocketed buyer
• Deadline Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery will close the BFI London Film Festival
Batgirl concept art. The film had finished filming but wasn't through post production yet
This Week's Big Movie New Nightmare
• THR The new merger between Warner Bros and Discovery is leaving bodies everywhere. Several series were cancelled and A Scooby Doo movie and a Batgirl movie, both very far into production were scrapped altogether and won't be released -- even on streaming services
• Los Angeles Times the makers of Batgirl are reeling from the news
• IndieWire ...and the bleeding doesn't stop there. HBOMax is also removing titles (without warning) from their streaming service which were HBOMax exclusives but aren't performing well. Also for tax write off purposes (it's complicated).
In short, BUY PHYSICAL MEDIA IF YOU LOVE A MOVIE. The studios, which are now all owned by media conglomerates, do not view film as an artform. They simply do not care if any particular film exists or not. The impedning collapse of the streaming bubble will surely mean a new wave of "lost films"... it's the same kind of mentality (just under new lingo "content") that resulted in studios trashing or torching or losing negatives to thousands of films from the early days of the artform.
Offscreen
• Humanizing the Vacuum - insightful piece ranking all of Kate Bush's albums. "Hounds of Love" will always be #1 for me (favourite album of all time, any artist) but other than that quibble...
• Poorly Drawn Lines "A Brief History of Humans"
• Variety Dev Patel broke up a knife fight in Australia yesterday and the actors rep are using it to spotlight larger systemic issues so good on them.
Reader Comments (7)
One of my learnings from this week is that Dev Patel and Tilda Cobham-Hervey are a couple, and they live in my home city.
Sarah Polley's memoir has been out in the US for awhile. I borrowed it from the library, read it, and then bought myself a copy, because I was certain I would want to refer to it in the future - it was that good.
Funny how the decision of HBO Europe to cease all local productions made no waves just two weeks ago. Entires shows disappeared with completed second seasons pending, nowhere to be seen.
I fear for the future of film,I find there's just too much on now,you'd spend your whole life watching buzzed about series and films you can't see anywhere else,I still buy old dvd's.
Peggy Sue -- what? first time i'm hearing this.
Sad to hear The First Lady will not have a 2nd or other season. La Pfeiffer was great as Betty, loved Viola Davis (always do) and Gillian Anderson was having a grand time as Eleanor Roosevelt.
I think it's very odd they would just decide not to release Batgirl. But then I can be quite naive and this type of thing happens all the time.
I have issues with Uncoupled. People are calling it Gay Sex and the City and it's really not like that show very much. SATC didn't start with a big breakup and realtor doesn't have much in common with newspaper columnist. I find Neil Patrick Harris not the greatest actor, and they seem stuck on what to do with the more minor characters, especially his gay friends. I suppose I will slog through. I know I have some internalized homophobia and maybe this is the show to work that out on. Thanks for listening.
Why does Warner always get themselves into bad mergers? More than 20 years ago, Time Warner did a merger with AOL that ended up being a massive money loser as people now barely or rarely use AOL. For fans of pro wrestling, that merger really sped up the death of World Championship Wrestler as it kicked Ted Turner out of his empire.
I was hoping to get HBOMAX in my smart TV as my mother and I are already thinking about getting rid of cable for good but now... I don't know. I have no interest in Discovery and I heard bad things about their presentation and searches. I hate what happened to Batgirl as I feel bad for all of those people who put their heart and souls into that film as I was interested in that project. Michael Keaton as Batman again with J.K. Simmons as Commissioner Gordon. I feel awful for Leslie Grace as I'm sure she would've rocked as Batgirl.
So they can a $90 million as a tax write-off yet are still thinking about releasing a $200 million plus film with an actor who already has a lot of baggage with more news about his abusive antics? That's some fucking bullshit here. Plus, I don't buy test screenings as I don't recommend attending one. It's one of the most unpleasant experiences ever whether it's a finished product or an unfinished film. It's not worth going to.
I am one of those that do purchase physical media and I'm glad I still do. I take pride in creating a library of all sorts of films in the hope that someone would find something and go to places they've never been to.
Melanie Lynskey rocks. I don't like all of these body-shaming comments towards her as I think she is incredibly attractive.