Links: Mike & Maleficent & Marvel & The Mother

• Spirit Airlines are decorating their planes to "soar" with Dumbo. That seems like a costly promotion, there!
• Slant ranks all the Marvel films. I found this interesting because it's a) insane and b) the people they've assigned to write up the movies dont necessarily agree with their ranking in the list so it's weirdly schizophrenic
• /Film confusing and bizarre history of Captain Marvel in the comic books
• THR Idris Elba in talks to replace Will Smith in the Suicide Squad sequel

After the jump Maleficent 2's teaser poster, Gregg Araki's new series, Rock Hudson, Magic Mike casting, and more...

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I ❤️ Oatmeal

I had this theory ¾th of the way through Russian Doll that Oatmeal was responsible for the time loop. Cats, man. Cats. You never know what's really going on with them and multiple lives are no big deal.

P.S. Natasha Lyonne is an incredible actress and I think it's time the world spoke it as one.

Jennifer Jones Centennial: "Indiscretions of an American Wife"

We're celebrating Jennifer Jones's centennial. By your request (you voted on which two movies we'd cover), here's Nathaniel R...

Your viewing assignment should you choose to accept it, and you really should, is Vittorio de Sica's Indiscretion of an American Wife (1953), a floridly emotional 65 minute drama (you read that right) in which a very thirsty Jennifer Jones engages in some illicit behavior because what else can you do when confronted with the beauty of Montgomery Clift in the 1950s?

Though 1953 was arguably Monty's peak (he also starred in Hitchcock's I Confess! and the Best Picture winner From Here to Eternity that year), this melodrama from the Italian master Vittorio de Sica is Jennifer Jones's film from fussy indecisive start to farewell heartbreak finish...

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Nathaniel's Ballot: Supporting Actress

Another chart! This afternoon, Best Supporting Actress in which we find a desperate Polish call girl, a formidable astronaut's wife, a life-saving night nanny, and two survivors/mothers, one creating her own makeshift family, the other trying to save hers for her future grandchild.

Awards Pg 1: Director, Screenplay
Awards Pg 2: Acting NEW
Awards Pg 3: Visuals
Awards Pg 4: Sound
Awards Pg 5: Extra Acting Categories
Awards Pg 6: Character Prizes
Awards Pg 7: Best Individual Scenes

Note: Despite the late-late arrival of these awards they are generally drawn up in list form before the Oscar nominations so they're not unduly influenced by the Academy's decisions. It just takes forever to get them posted and often to argue with myself over the 5th and 6th slots, a murderously awful/arbitrary distinction which should not mean "best" / "also ran" but somehow does. (Only Actress and Picture left to go before we can wrap up with the medals.)

Soundtracking: "Watchmen"

by Chris Feil

Ten years on and Zack Snyder’s Watchmen is remembered as a overly loyal misfire. But originally our hopes were sky high for this adaptation, a long-awaited superhero take for adults sourced from one of the most lauded tomes in graphic novel history. Maybe when it arrives this year, Damon Lindelof’s incoming HBO “continuation” series can satisfy our passion for Alan Moore’s original creation - however unlikely it is that is satisfies Moore himself.

Perhaps the single thing that set the film up for failure was the very one that made us think Snyder had pulled off the impossible: it’s stunning teaser trailer set to The Smashing Pumpkins’ “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning”. It was one of the best teasers of an era when that still mattered, and we fans went crazy. But ultimately the song choice was writing checks musically that the film itself couldn’t cash...

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