Emmy FYC: Supporting Actress (Comedy) - Constance Zimmer in UnREAL

Emmy nomination voting begins Monday. For the next week or two we'll be sharing FYCs of some kind. Here's Anne Marie...

If you've watched TV in the last ten years, you've seen Constance Zimmer. She was the snarky hot chick in Entourage, the snarky hot campaign spokesperson in The Newsroom, and the snarky hot secret agent in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Constance Zimmer has made a career using her trademark wit, smoked-three-packs-of-cigarettes voice, and deadpan delivery, but it took a role as a cruel, cold, and possibly murderous TV showrunner on Lifetime's surprise breakout hit UnREAL to show audiences Zimmer's full potential as a character actress.

 If you haven't seen UnREAL yet (in which case you should head to Hulu right now and finish this article later): Constance Zimmer plays Quinn King, the executive producer of a reality dating show called Everlasting a la The Bachelor. While most of the season revolves around the poor life choices of Rachel Goldberg (Shiri Appleby), Zimmer steals scenes with so-awful-they're-fun lines like:

Alright people! You get cash bonuses for 9-1-1 calls, nudity, catfights! Go!

Click to read more ...

Interview: 'Diary of a Chambermaid' Director Benoît Jacquot on Léa Seydoux and Literature

With the release of Diary of a Chambermaid, which reunites the director and star of the great Farewell My Queen, here's Jose with a new interview...

Octave Mirbeau’s 1900 novel Diary of a Chambermaid has been turned into a film no less than two times before, with filmmakers like Luis Buñuel and Jean Renoir taking on the task of bringing to life the tale of feisty, tragic chambermaid Célestine. Now, director Benoît Jacquot (Farewell My Queen) has re-teamed with Léa Seydoux to bring Célestine to life one more time. Jacquot’s adaptation injects Célestine with an even stronger sense of self awareness, she is often granted the power of breaking the narrative to address the audience, or herself even, and is given a sexual agency that forces audiences to see Mirbeau’s heroine under a different light. I had the opportunity to sit down with Mr. Jacquot to discuss his take on the novel, working with Léa Seydoux, and how literature influences his work.

Read the interview after the jump.

Click to read more ...

I'm linking out... ♫ I want the world to know, gotta blog it so...

Guardian Carrie Fisher is doing an advice column? What happy potentially hilarious news
Salon They're prepping a Rumi biopic and the filmmakers want Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr for the leading roles of Rumi and his mentor Shams. Those were real people and Persian muslims. Here we go again with Hollywood's tone deaf casting imperatives... (sigh)
Coming Soon Jennifer Lawrence to star in a movie about Elizabeth Holmes, once estimated to be worth $4.5 billion and now nothing. Adam McKay to direct so we're guessing he got a taste for Oscar with The Big Short and wants more.

MTV Teo Bugbee looks at the career of James Wan from Saw (2004) to The Conjurer 2 (2016)
Village Voice Angelica Jade Bastién on the female gaze of American Psycho
Pajiba gets vicious with a list of 'female equivalents of Sam Worthington' (i.e. generically attractive & completely unmemorable but they keep getting big roles) including Zoey Deutch, Britt Robertson, and Lily Collins (who Warren Beatty will try to make happen again soon in his Howard Hughes movie). But I have to admit Lily James is growing on me so I wouldn't have included her   
Pride Source actress Lea Delaria (Orange is the New Black) thinks "LGBT" needs to go and be replaced by Queer. Actually we're kinda for it as there are more and more letters attached "LGBTIQA"
/Film Helena Bonham Carter and Mindy Kaling are joining Bullock & Blanchett in that Oceans Ocho movie we were fantasy casting earlier 
The Tracking Board ... and speaking of Oceans 11, that movie's director Steven Soderbergh is making a new heist movie himself called Logan Lucky. The cast will include Hilary Swank, Adam Driver, Seth MacFarlane, Daniel Craig, Katherine Heigl, Channing Tatum, and Riley Keough. 

Tony Season
Playbill in counterprogramming for the Tony Awards, TCM will play Alexander Hamilton (1931), the biopic starring George Arliss. Haha.
Gothamist good god, I'm seeing Hamilton just in the nick of time. They're upping the price of premium seats to $849 each and orchestra seats to $179-199. That is insane. I sometimes wonder what would happen if everyone just refused to go to theater priced over $50 for an entire year. It might make the art more accessible / popular. I'm seeing the show next week 

P.S.
And look, two of the greats met each other! President Obama and Madonna. As Madge points out they're both Leos so it's "a cosmic convergence"

A meeting of the Leo's! 🦄. A Cosmic Convergence!! . 2 ❤️#rebelhearts @jimmyfallon

A photo posted by Madonna (@madonna) on Jun 9, 2016 at 1:24am PDT

Sydney Film Festival: Tickled

Josh reporting on a hot find at the Sydney Film Festival.

When the credits rolled at the screening of Tickled at the Sydney Film Festival, the frantic dumbstruck reaction from the audience was palpable. You could see everyone turning to each other, wide eyed and picking their jaws up from the floor. The proceeding Q&A with the filmmakers had hands flying into the air with exasperated questions. And all this from a documentary about tickling!

Directed by Dylan Reeve and David Farrier, the latter who is also front and centre in the film, the film unravels the bizarre and gripping story surrounding Jane O’Brien Media and its non-monetised website generating videos of young athletic men tickling each other.

Click to read more ...

Posterized: Duncan Jones

Duncan Jones has had a tumultuous few years so we wanted to honor him with a quick Posterized today. In January the 45 year old filmmaker lost his father David Bowie (he's the superstar's only son). His first child is due this month. His other new baby, the long-gestating video game big screen adaptation Warcraft is getting savaged by the critics.

And yet...

It wasn't so long ago that he was getting 'Hot New Director' drooling from the media, starting off strong with the sci-fi drama Moon. His second film Source Code wasn't as ecstatically received but performed decently. Three films isn't much to go on so we shall maintain high hopes. Do you think he will rally with a fourth film and make good on that initial promise? His next sci-fi film -- he's not straying from his preferred genre -- is called Mute, and stars Alexander Skarsgård as a silent bartender and Paul Rudd as some kind of mysterious doctor.  We don't generally think of Paul Rudd as mysterious but we're willing to give it a shot. (There's some internet speculation that Sam Rockwell will reprise his Moon character -- which would be very intriguing given the ending of Moon -- since Jones has indicated that Mute takes place in the same universe.)

How many of his films have you seen?
And if you've seen the first two, are you planning to hit Warcraft despite the reviews?