Soundtracking: "Frances Ha"

Lady Bird is a hit, so Chris is dancing in the street with Greta Gerwig to Frances Ha's soundtrack!

There aren’t many films that use music to capture a state of transition better than Frances Ha, particularly growing out of immature idealization. The film uses its heroine Frances’s addresses as chapter markers, but the flourishes of music notate her waning optimism and intensifying self-actualization. It’s like a variation on Woody Allen’s Gershwin obsession, but here it’s the character glamorizing her life rather than the film itself.

Music is an integral part of creating her internal fantasy. The twinkling, carefree instrumentals provide the lens with which we experience Frances’s world - or at least a more gilded version of how she envisions herself living in it. In tandem with the film’s precise editing and Greta Gerwig’s tremendous performance, the music choices make her everyday life a daydream that’s headed towards an inevitable collapse.

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76 days 'til Oscar nominations

Lately we've been telling you how many days it is until Oscar night. But we're still more than two months away from Nomination Morning, or as we like to call it, Christmas. (That makes Oscar night the big New Year's Eve party which is correct since the new film year starts thereafter... at least symbolically).

So for today's trivia, the number is 76! So let's talk one of our all time favorite Best Picture losers Network which fell to the rousing hugely popular Rocky in 1976. It didn't go down without a fight, though, taking home more Oscars than the Best Picture winner! How often has that happened, exactly?

It's happened 18 times in Oscar history all told. How many of the years can you guess before clicking after the jump to see the list Tell us how well you did in the comments.

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Gloria Steinem to be played by Carey Mulligan and Julianne Moore

by Murtada

2018 might become the year of Gloria Steinem at the movies. We’ve already told you about Dee Rees’ plans to make a film about the feminist movement’s fight to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment, An Uncivil War. The project has lead parts for Steinem, activist Flo Kennedy and fundamentalist organizer Phyllis Schlafly. Rees has decided to continue collaborating with her Mudbound star Carey Mulligan and cast her as Steinem.

Director Julie Taymor (Frida, Across the Universe) and Playwright Sarah Ruhl will adapt Steinem’s memoir My Life on The Road. Their choice for the lead part is Julianne Moore. It looks like the Rees/Mulligan project will go before the cameras first, in March 2018. The Taymor/Moore film is still at the writing stage.

There is no reason why both movies could not be successful as they're telling different stories. One is about a particular moment in time with Steinem as one of three protagonists. The other centers squarely on her and is based on her memoir. Which of the two interests you more and why?

Link Trip

Decider this Tiffany Haddish Oscar nomination could happen. 'Let's do this!'
Guardian when should cinemas turn their house lights on? During credits? After them?
Movie City News Jodie Foster talks at length about The Silence of the Lambs 
NathanielR... you've maybe already seen my anger about this topic when it comes to Call Me By Your Name, which is absolutely not over when the credits begin no matter what the house lights or your fellow moviegoers think. Stay in your seat. Respect the art. 
IndieWire Paul Thomas Anderson explains why there will be no cinematographer credited on his new film Phantom Thread

 

EW interviews Beanie Feldstein who is so wonderful in Lady Bird
GQ Dacre Montgomery on his shirtless dancing audition tape for Stranger Things 2
Guardian a new exhibit on 100 years of Australian film in pictures from the silent pictures through The Babadook
Variety Critics Choice Awards return to the CW. January 11th. 
Boy Culture reviews the new production of Harvey Feirstein's Torch Song
Coming Soon Jessica Chastain for the It sequel. Sure sounds plausible
TFE... in case you missed it: the full awards calendar for the rest of the season
Awards Daily Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit is getting a rerelease with a new FYC trailer to try to generate awards buzz
Tracking Board in the worst idea we heard this week news, there's a discussion about making The Lord of the Rings into a TV series. make it stop make it stop. Not everything needs to go on eternally. Let some things be. 
Variety Swords and Scepters, a historical epic about an 1857 Indian rebellion led by the Queen of Jhansi, is assembling a great cast including Rupert Everett, Devika Bhise, Derek Jacobi, and Jodhi May. There's also a Bollywood picture coming about the same story

Must Watch Video
Uma Thurman on the recent Hollywood flood of sexual harassment stories.

Uma Thurman's response when asked about the flood of sexual misconduct allegations....wow. pic.twitter.com/Sw5Br1GwFg

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 4, 2017

If she can channel this rage (it's so audible despite her careful reflective words) into a performance, she'll be Oscar worthy again. Have always loved her. Hoping for another classic role soon to go with Mia Wallace, The Bride, Mrs H, Cecile de Volanges, and June Miller. 

Doc Corner: Tales of the City at DOC NYC

by Glenn Dunks

The massive DOC NYC festival begins this week in – would you believe it – New York City. The festival runs from November 9 - 16 and showcasing over 250 films and events. We’re going to look at some of the films screening there that will hopefully make their way to theatres and VOD over the next year. This edition of our weekly Doc Corner is devoted to three films about cities and the way people interact within and around them.

12th and Clairmont
It is inevitable that Brian Kaufman’s 12^th and Clairmount will be compared with Kathryn Bigelow’s Detroit considering both focus on the 1967 riots of the city. But whereas Bigelow’s production zeroed in on just one incident of the five-day series of violent and destructive action on the streets of the city, Kaufman’s film examines a much larger canvas, covering the time before, during and after the city's people responded to the significently white police force's swarm of brutality.

It’s a tactic that proves essential to beginning to understand the events that one person in this often compelling documentary describes as “the days of madness in July”...

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