Link It On

Lenny Amy Poehler interviews her teen fan, the Tony nominated Sydney Lucas who was so brilliant in Fun Home: The Musical (she just left the show *cries*)
AV Club in terrifying news: Disney is fast-tracking a Cruella de Vil picture from the 50 Shades screenwriter called simpley Cruella
The Guardian interviews Benicio del Toro on Sicario and music as part of his acting process

Playbill Broadway and music giants are uniting on December 3rd in NYC for a Centennial tribute to Frank Sinatra: slated to appear are Bernadette Peters, Sutton Foster, Sting, and Christina Aguilera. More names TBA
Comics Alliance & Superhero Hype celebrate the best Cosplay at New York Comic Con this weekend - that Marvel Girl is something else. Straight outta the X-Men pages I tell ya.
Boy Culture cuteness - Carol Channing with teddy bear
Pajiba yes, Natalie Dormer is aware that people think Kermit the Frog's new pig girlfriend Denise looks like her
Detroit News my hometown paper interview Tippi Hedren (The Birds, Marnie) for some reason so check that out
Awards Daily Sasha on Aaron Sorkin and the art of the symbol in Steve Jobs 
Variety MTV's adaptation of Terry Brooks "The Shannara Chronicles" is coming in January. I read a couple of those books a million years ago and none of this even sounds/looks vaguely familiar. But maybe I just don't remember it?
Variety ...and BBC is doing "The Last Kingdom" because YA fused with fantasy is hot right now after the cultural dominance of Hunger Games / Game of Thrones the past handful of years.  

ICYMI
The first 10 days of October were so crazy busy: final reports from NYFF, the opening of The Martian and a sneak of Carol, wild acclaim for Steve Jobs and the opposite for Pan on their shared opening weekend, that we're sure you've missed some choice goodies. Be sure to check out the Hail Caesar! teaser, our interview with Victoria star Laia Costa, Photograph 51 with Nicole Kidman hitting the stage, and a list of Ridley Scott's favorite actors.

The biggest news for us here at The Film Experience was the announcement of the 81 movies in competition for Best Foreign Film. We've already interviewed directors from or reviewed 11 of them: Argentina's The Clan, Austria's Goodnight Mommy (now in theaters), Colombia's Embrace of the Serpent, Dominican Republic's Sand Dollars, France's Mustang, Germany's Labyrinth of Lies (now in theaters!), Hungary's Son of Saul, Norway's The Wave, Portugal's Arabian Nights Volume 2, Sweden's A Pigeon Sat on a Branch, and Taiwan's The Assassin with more to come. 

Reboot the World. Bring it On
Remember when Bring It On (2000) made our top ten list of Best High School Movies Ever Made? Don't you wish that they hadn't made all those terrible straight-to-dvd sequels for Bring It On so that the world could demand an actual Bring It On sequel? EW reunited the principle cast for their latest issue.

Eliza Dushku, Gabrielle Union, and Kiki are still sexy. And cute. and popular to boot. Okay maybe less popular (sigh) but still awesome. And to quote our friend Joe Reid:

Congratulations to Jesse Bradford, Nobel Prize winner in the field of Could Get It 

Video Du Jour
I'm sorry but Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman on the same couch being embarrassed about their childhood names? The Graham Norton Show is always a delight for actressexuals. Please someone gif the part w/ Meryl's glasses askew or any of Nicole's dorky grimaces.

And, because, a bonus video: Julianne Moore cracking us up doing Taylor Swift lyrics on "the Late Late Show"

Always the years.
Always the love.
Always The Hours Ladies.

NYFF: The (Prettiest) Assassin

Nathaniel returning to life, albeit to watch a film about someone who ends it, on the closing weekend of the 53rd New York Film Festival

If you believe in cinema as a reflection of reality then every college should offer at least undergraduate courses in Becoming an Assassin because that profession is always hiring! According to the movies, there are more assassins in the world than accountants. Full disclosure: I'm no fan of this overflowing subgenre. Assassin movies, like their counterparts Gangster Dramas and Serial Killer Thrillers, often glorify death-dealing or at least cast their protagonists as noble "anti-heroes" or admirably gifted / committed to their criminal art. [More...]

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NYFF: My Golden Days

Manuel reporting from the New York Film Festival with an improbable prequel among this year’s selection.

No one does brooding romantic despair like the French. Arnaud Desplechin’s My Golden Days, a pseudo-prequel to his 1996 My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument so revels in it that you could just as easily title it “The Sorrows of Young Esther.” And while yes, that title would be aping a German novel, Desplechin’s Esther (Lou Roy-Lecollinet) merits being name-checked alongside the most famous romantically bereaved character in all of literary history, and not only because Goethe’s novel, like Desplechin’s film, depends on the epistolary form.

Esther, who falls for Paul Dédalus (Quentin Dolmaire playing the younger version of Mathieu Amalric’s character from Desplechin’s earlier film), spends most of the time daring the camera to turn away from her sorrows, her tears, her despair, all of which she channels into the letter she sends Paul while he’s off at university in Paris. She cannot bear being away from him. Cannot bear her life without him.

Can you blame her? Dolmaire is beautiful!

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Posterized: Joe Wright's "Pan" and Peter Pan Movies

Jackman and Wright talk on setYou have to admit that Joe Wright was asking for it. He went and titled his Peter Pan epic, Pan, which is functioning like a command for the nation's critics who have done so mercilessly. It probably didn't help that he uglified one of our most handsome movie stars (no one needs to see Hugh Jackman going the Johnny Depp route). Worse, he truly stepped in it early on by casting the very white Rooney Mara in one of the few iconic roles meant for a Native American actress. (This issue has been discussed at very high volumes in the past few years since moviegoers and the media are sick to death of Hollywood's white-washing. But Hollywood is still wearing ear plugs.)

Will you see his latest despite the reviews?

And how many Peter Pan related movies have you seen? (More on Peter and Joe after the jump)

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Interview: Laia Costa Talks "Victoria" and Her Favorite Actresses

Jose speaks with the star of the must-see one-take German drama Victoria (now in theaters!)

 Few performances this year have been as electrifying as Laia Costa in Sebastian Schipper’s Victoria. Playing the title character she combines innocence with determination in thrilling ways. When we first meet Victoria she is dancing the night away at a club unaware that before the night is over she will be part of a high stakes heist with three men she just met. Schipper’s film is notorious because it was shot in a single, uninterrupted take, no digital trickery in this one, although people have been comparing it to 2014’s Best Picture Birdman all over,  “comparisons are inevitable” but “Victoria is punkier”, says Costa when we speak on the phone. “Someone said that everything has already been invented, we can’t invent anything new” she adds laughing.

Talking to the actress you get a sense of the camaraderie she developed with the cast and crew of the movie. She refers to her director and co-star by their last names, and you can tell she has endless anecdotes about the challenging shoot. Costa will be familiar to fans of the television series The Red Band Society, but Victoria is her biggest screen role to date and has already won her the German Film Award for Best Actress (the first time a Spanish actor has won this accolade). Audiences in Spain can currently see her in Carlos, Rey Emperador where she plays Mary of Austria, a process she calls “more artificial, they’re interested in facts about Spanish history not seeking truth in the characters”, but very necessary because as an actress she seeks to learn by working in as many genres as possible.


JOSE: How many Red Bulls and espressos did you need to shoot Victoria?

LAIA COSTA: Not a single one. It was all just concentration (laughs).

JOSE: You’ve mentioned that making the film was like being on drugs…

LAIA COSTA: Yes, because it was a shooting style I’d never done before, which allowed me to live Victoria’s life for two and a half hours, and go on a “trip”. [More...]

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