The Links with the Feuding Stars, Too

Baby Jane Mania
EW Ryan Murphy talks about the first season of Feud. He's already casting the second and hints that a lot of people want to be Prince Charles and Princess Diana. Hmmm. Didn't anyone see Diana with Naomi Watts. That's dangerous ground!
Boy Culture searches for any living actors from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?

Get Out
AV Club Jordan Peele (Get Out) has made history with the first $100 million grossing debut from a black filmmaker...
Vanity Fair Did you hear that Samuel L Jackson criticized the movie for casting a British actor in the lead? More on this and a great quote from the British star Daniel Kaluuya after the jump...

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Showbiz History: Topsy-Turvy, Quincy Jones, and Broadway Babies

On this day in history as it applies to showbiz...

1874 silent film regular Mary Carr (who played Auntie Em in the silent Wizard of Oz) born in Pennsylvania). She lived to be almost 100 and appeared in nearly 100 silent films
1885 The Mikado, Gilbert & Sullivan's beloved comic opera, premieres in London. The Oscar winning film Topsy Turvy (1999) depicts its production in exquisite detail...

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New Directors / New Films: Strong Island

New Directors / New Films which runs March 15th through the 26th is a festival of emerging international filmmakers here in NYC each year. We'll be covering a few titles including this unravelling of a Long Island murder in Glenn's weekly documentary spotlight.

Strong Island

“There’s one place that all the people with the greatest potential are gathered. One place. And that’s the graveyard. People ask me all the time: what kind of stories do you want to tell, Viola? And I say exhume those bodies – exhume those stories.”

I thought of these words from Viola Davis’ Academy Awards speech last week while writing about the ABC queer rights miniseries When We Rise; thinking of all the men and women lost over the years to AIDS and what they could have done and who they could have been. I did not expect to be thinking of them yet again so quickly, but here we are. I thought of Viola’s words while watching Strong Island because exhume is exactly what first-time filmmaker Yance Ford has done with this film about the death of his older, 19-year-old brother, William, at the hands of a white man who the courts sort little interest in seeking justice for.

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It's A Wrap on "A Wrinkle In Time"

Chris here. Over the weekend, Ava DuVernay wrapped filming on her big budget adaptation of family fantasy epic A Wrinkle In Time. While the happy news is that we're now that much more closer to the film, we now have a planet-sized crater on the joyful side of our social media platforms. If you've been paying attention, DuVernay has been treating us to a delightful behind-the-scenes treatment since filming began - and it's been such a bright spot over some gloomy days at the beginning of the year.

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Interview: Ritesh Batra on "The Sense of an Ending"

Ritesh Batra, a 37 year old director from Mumbai, is in New York when we speak, not far from the editing room. He's just finished a shoot in Colorado for what will be his third feature in four years (Our Souls at Night). He hasn't yet decided where he'll be next but he has a lot of options. His debut film The Lunchbox (2013), a bittersweet romance set in Mumbai starring Irrfan Khan, put him on the map. For his follow up, a somewhat surprising move: the British literary adaptation of Julian Barnes bestseller "The Sense of an Ending," which just opened in limited release. 

The Sense of an Ending concerns a divorced shop owner Tony (Jim Broadbent / Billy Howle) who is suddenly preoccupied with memories of his youth and his first love Veronica (Charlotte Rampling / Freya Mavor) after receiving news that her mother (Emily Mortimer) has died. His ex-wife and confidante Margaret (Harriet Walter) can't understand what's throwing him so much about this news as Tony turns the memories over and over again in his head. 

We spoke with Ritesh about the difference between working with movie stars and unknowns, and how to make memory work onscreen. The interview is after the jump...

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