Welcome to the Academy (2017 Invitee List)

The Academy continues its diversity push this year with a record 774 new invitations for membership including people from all over the world. The youngest this year is Elle Fanning and the oldest is Betty White. The list is 39% female this year and 30% people of color.

Chinese superstar screen partners Maggie Cheung & Tony Leung Chiu Wai are finally invited!We must also note that AMPAS's diversity push is also doubling as a major expansion. They're not just inviting differently (i.e. less white men and more women and people of color) but MORE in general. If all of the invitees accepted the invites from this year and last that's 1400ish new members in two years for an institution that previously kept its ranks steady around the 6,000 member mark. 

Everyone's gagging over Gal Gadot being invited but that's obvious. She's in a phenomenon sized hit at the moment and timing is everything -- see also Riz Ahmed whose career is also white hot at this very second and who is also invited... 

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"Werk Werk" The Beguiled does Hamilton

You may think you didn't need to see Colin Farrell doing his best hair flip to "The Schuyler Sisters" from Hamilton, but you'd be wrong.

Our hearts are bursting. It turns out the little girls of The Beguiled made a Hamilton lipsync video while goofing around on set to accompany a donation to Lin-Manuel Miranda's "immigrants get the job done" coalition (we mentioned the contest the other day)... May this challenge others to donate, too! Oona Lawrence leads us as Aaron Burr, with Emma Howard as Angelica, Angourie Rice as Eliza, and little Addison Riecke as Peggy.

You may think you're loving the video in the first minute but wait til the rest of the stars start popping up. Everyone is in this! Heaven.

Yes No Maybe So: "The Greatest Showman"

by Nathaniel R

A big moment in Trailerville has arrived! We have the first taste of the second annual Pasek & Paul musical / Christmas Oscar hopeful. Yes, we're pretending it's a franchise now post-La La Land. After the jump let's obsessively break down the first trailer for the Hugh Jackman party known as The Greatest Showman. We'll do it the way we sometimes do it when we're really excited about something since I maybe just watched this 7 times in a row but who's counting?

Curtains up. Hit the lights... 

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Soundtracking: "Drive"

It's Chris Feil's weekly column on music in the movies! This week is the techno mythmaking of Drive:

So there’s a new musically-infused motorist crime tale on the block? While Baby Driver tries to take space on your headphones, it may still have to take a backseat to something even more moodily effective (if less uplifting): Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive.

Refn is no stranger to using music (mostly in original scores from frequent collaborator Cliff Martinez) to help build his films’ elusive auras, but he has never been so successful as using this tool as he is here. This film’s musical identity is inextricably linked to the protagonist in ways that inform the audience of his psychosis as much as the subtlety of Ryan Gosling’s performance. Just as Gosling pulls us into the mind of a lovable psychopath, the song choices help make this grim pulp landscape something beautiful.

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Review: "Baby Driver"

by Chris Feil

Edgar Wright is back in action movie mode for Baby Driver, a crime caper just slightly enough on the offbeat side enough to stand out among the summer franchise entries. Ansel Elgort stars as Baby (no, seriously), a iPod-attached getaway driver wrapping up an undefined debt to his somewhat paternal boss Doc (Kevin Spacey). There is Wright-ian wit to spare in the set pieces and characterizations as Baby wraps up his final mission and falls for waitress Debora (Lily James), but Driver is also his messiest. With a solid supporting ensemble that features a delightfully unhinged Jamie Foxx and Spacey on his more understated side of hammy, the film is nevertheless a great launching pad for Ansel Elgort as a multitalented leading man.

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