Happy 50th to Jason Scott Lee

Jason Scott Lee in Rapa Nui (1994)A very happy 50th birthday to one of our favorite 90s stars Jason Scott Lee. The Chinese-Hawaiian actor burst onto the scene in May of 1993 with major leading man charisma playing Bruce Lee in the mainstream biopic Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story and co-starring in the arthouse romance Map of the Human Heart. He chased that double with another the following year with Disney's live-action Jungle Book and the Easter Island tribe movie Rapa Nui. Only the last of those films was a flop but then he vanished, only popping up occassionally in supporting roles in action films. The roles just weren't there despite three early consecutive successes...

Click to read more ...

Celebrity Mischief: Anne, Lin, or Mae?

• Anne Hathaway stealing a centerpiece from Dior
or
• Lin-Manuel Miranda copping a feel from Oscar
or
• Mae Whitman reading her former co-star's new book? 

Your choice after the jump! 

Click to read more ...

Review: "The Edge of Seventeen"

by Chris Feil

You may have already been reading plentiful superlatives thrown at the new teen comedy The Edge of Seventeen starring Hailee Steinfeld. Perhaps a lot of that love comes from its refreshing lack of condescension or cynicism - Seventeen definitely comes with its share of authenticity. The film is actually a (mostly) good time, thanks to Steinfeld delivering what feels like a second breakthrough after her Oscar-nominated debut in The Coen Brothers' True Grit.

Click to read more ...

Posterized: Ang Lee

By Nathaniel R

Ang Lee with one of his Billy Lynn stars, Vin DieselOne of our favorite directors has a new film going wide today. Unfortunately number 13 proves unlucky for the great Ang Lee as Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, a military drama about the way we use soldiers as propaganda pawns or blank slates to project upon, is hard to watch. Let us pray for a swift death to Hollywood's current unfathomable interest in the high frame rate technique. (The technique is ugly, expensive but looks cheap, and doesn't look like cinema -- that's lose lose lose or three strikes you're out. So what's the appeal Hollywood?)

Nevertheless Ang Lee has given us so many riches over his 24 year feature film career that we ought to appreciate his filmography this weekend.

How many of his pictures have you seen?
All the posters are after the jump... 

Click to read more ...

Fences, His & Hers

The adaptation of August Wilson's Fences is under embargo so we're not supposed to review it. I notice that hasn't stopped anyone but I play by rules (sigh). Let it suffice to say for now that it's super. Denzel Washington stays out of the play's way and the play is so grand that that's all you need. Can we reverse time and have him do this for August: Osage County and Doubt? They both derailed themselves with nervous attempts to jazz up the material to be A MOVIE.

There's no awkward attempts to "open" Fences up, and that tightness, that feeling of no escape informs this in the same way it informed the plays of August and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, which all use their single settings brilliantly to inform and confine and reflect the characters. Fences is just these characters (seven of them in total), this time (the 50s), and this place (Pittsburgh) and it's beautifully acted. 

P.S. So depressed that they aren't gunning for His & Hers Leading Oscars to match their His & Hers Leading Tonys.