While you are waiting for Star Wars...

... please enjoy this photo of JJ Abrams sharing a twizzler with Chewbacca.

This is not a still from the movie but will give you a feel for how much JJ Abrams loves Chewbacca. It comes through in the movie, trust! (Our review will be up sometime tomorrow but in short: it's good family entertainment fun and nothing like those awful awful prequels!)

Also here's Oscar Isaac singing that silly Star Wars theme song. Quoth Katey...

This video makes me want to throw my underwear at the screen ."

Watch this video on The Scene.

HBO’s LGBT History: Mildred Pierce (2011)

Manuel is working his way through all the LGBT-themed HBO productions.

Last week we talked about polygamy and homosexuality in Big Love, all the while singing Chloe Sevigny’s praises. This week, we focus on the “genius” Todd Haynes, who's obviously on our minds what with our infatuation with Carol. HBO, as we’ve seen, has always celebrated and supported out gay filmmakers, from Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (Common Threads, The Celluloid Closet) and Cheryl Dunye (Stranger Inside) to Gus Van Sant (Elephant) and Alan Ball (Six Feet Under). It makes sense that Haynes’s adaptation of Mildred Pierce, led by the incomparable Kate Winslet found a home at the cable network.

We could spend all day gabbing about this languid adaptation but I’ll keep it short and sweet today with 5 Reasons Todd Haynes’s Mildred Pierce is deliciously gay...

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Interview: The Actress & Director of "The Second Mother," Brazil's Oscar Hopeful

As 2015 winds down, let's turn a spotlight on one of the year's best foreign films, Brazil's Oscar submission The Second Mother. After a successful limited US release in late summer, it's now available to watch on VOD. And watch it you should. The film centers on a housekeeper named Val (a terrific Regina Casé) who is reunited with her estranged teenage daughter after many years apart. The daughter's sudden presence wreaks havoc on the the dynamics of Val's relationship to the family that employs her. It's a rich film with humor, sadness and insight.

This interview with writer/director Anna Muylaert and the film's star Regina Casé is edited for clarity because some of it was conducted through a translator. I hope you'll be intrigued enough to check out the film.

NATHANIEL: Anna, since you wrote and directed, let's start with you. What prompted you to do this? Was it personal interests in these topics like parenting, and socioeconomic divisions

ANNA MUYLAERT: It started with me when I had a son. I was interested in talking about the importance of the work of motherhood, and at the same time how it was not valued in our society. And then character of the nanny came about, and then of course, the socioeconomic issues came.

NATHANIEL: Was it hard to find Val? Did you have Regina in mind when you were creating her?

more after the jump...

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Best of '15: Music Videos of the Year

We'll begin our daily year in review partying with some music.

The best music videos are like short films. Or, rather, all music videos are short films. The best of them can give cinematic thrills, though. Not that you'd want two full hours of most of them. Still and all, here are 15 favorites of the year. Apologies to two tremendous auteurs who dabbled in music video this year (P.T. Anderson with Joanna Newsom and Xavier Dolan for Adele) but if you're a legit auteur with great films under your belt, expectations run too high to excited when the video is only "good".

Disclaimer: Endorsement of videos is not neccessarily endorsement of songs though it helps, sure.

Suggestions for what we missed are welcome in the comments since it's easy to miss great ones if a less than spectacularly popular artist makes them...

15 BEST MUSIC VIDEOS OF 2015
(after the jump)

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Academy's Make Up and Hairstyling Branch Triple-Down on Tom Hardy

Glenn here. If there's one thing we know about the Academy's make up and hairstyling branch it's that we know nothing about what they will or will not like. Evidence of that is quite clear in this year's preliminary shortlist of seven contenders, of which three will be selected as the nominees. As we are all aware, the make up and hairstyling category remains the only one with three nominees each year - give or take a slow year in the world of animation - despite every film having it in some capacity and despite being one of the few categories that doesn't have a predetermined sway towards prestige.

This year's field of seven is as wholly unexpected as we have come to expect from both the branch and from this year in general. The list of films in contention for a nomination who will get to present their works to the branch, include Tom Hardy, Tom Hardy, and Tom Hardy. [More...]

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