Belinda the rain is falling. Belinda your link is calling ♪ ♫

The Onion "I only like movies where the whole cast dances in the end credits"
Pajiba Hayley Atwell continues to enjoy her Agent Peggy Carter awesomeness even without news of a renewal yet
Esquire an interview with Chris Evans who talks his friendship with the other Chris and his insane Marvel schedule
NY Times Actress Jayne Meadows (1919-2015) RIP
In Contention the moment Michael Keaton knew he would lose the Oscar
Interview talks to Sam Shepard, still acting, writing, and being cool 

Sesame Street The Aveggies: Age of Bon Bon. The Avengers spoof peaks early with the line reading "What happened to my asparagus!?" which sent me into lolz
The Dissolve looks back at Ang Lee's Hulk (2003) 
Variety looks at Netflix streaming data. Daredevil S1 being the biggest immediate hit but House of Cards having a longer tail for streaming. Or something? What does it all mean? It's meaningless without Orange is the New Black data if you ask me.

Happy They're Working But... Sigh
Film School Rejects Wild Tales Damian Szifron's next project is... writing The Six Billion Dollar Man reboot movie for Peter Berg. Frustrating because he can direct circles around Berg if Wild Tales is any indication
Jezebel Viola Davis to star in a Harriet Tubman biopic. Sadly for the Viola Needs An Oscar Fan Club (President: Nathaniel R) it's for HBO and she'll probably already have an Emmy by then

Beefcake
MNPP Why does Zac Efron have a huge bumblebee on his crotch -- What the hell?
Boy Culture Joe Magianello Magic Mike XXL Poster. Co-sign on the blog post title! 
MNPP sharing gifs and the trailer for the Magic Mike ripoff Chocolate City 

Bruce Jenner (in half shirt) and friends in Can't Stop the Music (1980)Former Beefcake
Kenneth in the (212) dedicates "Belinda" (i had totally forgotten about this song but used to love it) to Bruce Jenner
Boy Culture on Bruce Jenner coming out as a... Republican. 

The unfolding Bruce Jennfer story is another reminder, like the superb documentary Prodigal Sons by former high school football star turned trans documentarian Kimberly Reed, that external presentation does not always equal internal truth. Bruce became famous as such a traditionally masculine person in the late 70s, gold medal athleticism and all, which is I think why this whole thing surprised so many people. Including myself. In case you missed it we revisited Bruce Jenner's 1980 movie Can't Stop the Music this very month last year.  

Speaking of Hit Me With Your Best Shot.... does anyone know what happened to the guy RJ who ran "(Home) Film Schooled"? The blog vanished some time ago without a trace but there was good writing there!

Bright Star is Brightest Thursday Night/Friday Morning...
Because of a forgotten scheduling conflict involving, um, superheroes (mom, they're oppressing us again!)  I had to postpone Jane Campion's poetic flowery romance for 'BEST SHOT' which was originally tonight. But here are 4 early entries for A Fistful of Films (which you have to agree is one of the best blog titles ever), Lam Chop Chop, Coco hits NY, and Zitzelfilm to whet your appetite for its visual splendor. 

Drag Race: "Divine" John Waters Inspiration

Manuel here to talk about that wonderful Drag Race episode this week which was dedicated to, as Ru called him, “the Sultan of Sleaze, the Baron of Bad Taste,” Mr John Waters! Seeing RuPaul and legendary auteur John Waters together judging drag queens on their “ugly dresses” was many a gay cinephile’s wet dream.

How does she manage to look this AMAZING every week?

John Waters: She was not afraid to play not glamorous. A lot of drag queens I know, they’re afraid to do that.
RuPaul: You were looking at me when you said that!

And, can you blame him?

RuPaul, the drag superstar par excellence is glamor (or, her latest incarnation is, as “No RuPaulogies” taught us back in season 5). Even when she camps it up (look at that dress!) she is glamor incarnate. Now in its seventh season, RuPaul’s Drag Race has, for better or for worse, created a seemingly new kind of drag, one that insists on glamor above all else (or in addition to everything else): how many times have we heard Santino, Michelle Visage, Ru herself or any of the rotating cast of guest judges complaining that a certain girl’s look wasn’t “couture enough," "not high fashion" or that “it didn’t look polished enough”? Even when challenges call for camp, humor, and/or stylized aesthetics, glamor has remained the requirement on the runway. It’s not for nothing Ru has coined the term Glamazon to refer to her queens.

Not this time, though...

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Tribeca: Suffer the Little Children

Here's Jason with a real pair of downers to conclude our Tribeca Coverage. Thanks for reading along. Next up in the festival game: Cannes...

Bridgend -- I'm a little perplexed about Bridgend winning half of the awards at the fest; besides a few arresting visuals I found the film moribund on arrival. The film fictionalizes the true-life story of a town in Wales where a mysterious rash of suicides has plagued the hills. Lead actress Hannah Murray (best known in the US as Gilly on A Game of Thrones, although I didn't recognize her once while watching the movie and I'm a big Thrones fan) gives us a vivid enough slide into Crucible light hysteria but I never really bought what the movie was selling - it skims over too many unreasonable plot holes in deference to its stifling mood, and at times is downright silly with trying too hard. A literally shitty sex-romp on a dirty mattress in the woods is somehow played straight, even as visions of Divine in Female Trouble flood our minds.

Meadlowlands -- Also suffering from all outward signs of Film Festival Depression, where people suffer beautifully, so beautifully, Meadlowlands does have a few nice performances even as it wrings every manipulative drop out of Dead Kid Grief it can. Olivia Wilde and Luke Wilson play parents whose cookie-munching moppet gets snatched at the start of the first reel; the kid's never more than a plot device through which we can watch them suffer, and suffer they do, beautifully. Wilson gets the less overbearing arc to play which is good since he's an actor I appreciate for his low-key style; Wilde smartly under-plays her over-drawn hand (cutting and autistic kids, oh my) but man alive by the time the elephant shows up all I could think of was "Don't think about elephants."

OUR COMPLETE TRIBECA 2015 COVERAGE
18 reviews. A round of applause for Joe, Jason, and Abstew

• Adderal Diaries with Amber Heard & James Franco - Joe Reid
• Anesthesia starring Glenn Close & Kristen Stewart - Abstew
• Applesauce starring Onur Turkel - Jason
• Backtrack starring Adrien Brody - Jason
• Far From Men starring Viggo Mortensen - Abstew
• Good Kill starring Ethan Hawke - Jason
• Grandma, the new Lily Tomlin - Joe Reid
• Hungry Hearts with Adam Driver & Alba Rohrwacher - Joe Reid
• King Jack starring Charlie Plummer - Jason
• Mojave starring Oscar Isaac & Garret Hedlund - Abstew
• The Overnight starring Adam Scott & Taylor Schlling - Abstew
• Sleeping with Other People from Leslye Headland - Joe Reid
• Slow West a Michael Fassbender western - Jason
• Stung a midnight movie - Jason
• When I Live My Life Over Again starring Amber Heard - Abstew 
• The Wolfpack, a buzzy documentary - Joe Reid

Mad Men 7.11 "Time & Life"

go speed racer, goLynn Lee, reporting for Mad Men at the Movies.

This should be a short report, considering there were no movie references this week – unless you count Lou Avery’s surprise bonanza with storied anime studio Tatsunoko Productions. But that sounds like a TV deal, especially with Lou’s reference to the studio’s best known serial, “Speed Racer.” (Which the Wachowskis did try to make into a movie almost four decades later, starring Emile Hirsch. It flopped spectacularly.) Still, this was the kind of character-rich, office-centered “Mad Men” episode (directed by cast alum Jared Harris, aka the late lamented Lane Pryce) that begs for discussion.

In a sense, there wasn’t time for the movies because there was so much going on, as Sterling Cooper tries yet again to reinvent itself and preserve its independence from the big bads. We’ve seen this particular movie before, and as the players keep reassuring each other and others, it can happen again...

We’ve done this before. You know we can.”

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Tribeca: "Anesthesia" and "When I Live My Life Over Again"

Pardon the onslaught but now that Tribeca has concluded we're wrapping up our coverage. Here's Abstew on two more star-heavy flicks. - Editor

Anesthesia 
Populated by familiar faces (Sam Waterston, Glenn Close, Kristen Stewart, and Gretchen Mol to name a few), actor turned writer/director Tim Blake Nelson (most recently seen as Kimmy Schmidt's bumbling stepfather on the Netflix comedy series) has assembled a multi-story film that revolves around a bloody mugging that happens in the first moments to Waterston's University Professor. As is usually the case with films that involved multiple storylines, not all of them are as compelling as others and some of them simply take too long to reveal how they connect to the main story. But Nelson, perhaps because he is an actor first, gives his fellow thespians meaty roles to play with such tough-hitting issues as drug addiction, self mutilation, infidelity, cancer, and even lose of virginity. But his hyper-intelligent dialogue often times threatens to overshadow the story he's telling (and sometimes reaches too far like a clunky bit that compares a character's wants to an everything bagel).

But it's the strong work of the actors that keep the story afloat...

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