Posterized: Fast & Furious

Furious 7 went from 0 to 4004 (theaters) today and is certain to collect huge box office bounty this weekend. The other films have been hits and then there's the morbid curiousity factor of saying goodbye to Paul Walker which may lure back moviegoers who haven't really been paying attention. That would include me. I only realized today, looking over this list, that the first film is the only one I've seen in theaters... though it seems like I've seen them all (is it cable showings, or their interchangeability as suggested by their very similar posters, minor variations in titles, and cast lists?)  

Cast List by numbers: Vin Diesel & Paul Walker (6 films); Jordana Brewster & Sung Kang (5 films); Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges & Gal Gadot (4 films); Dwayne Johnson & Elsa Pataky (3 films); Lucas Black, Luke Evans, Eva Mendes, Laz Alonso, Don Omar, John Ortiz, Matt Schulze, Shea Wigham (2 films)

The Fast and The Furious (2001, Rob Cohen)
2 Fast 2 Furious (2003, John Singleton) - aka the only one without Vin Diesel. 
The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006, Justin Lin) - aka the only one without Paul Walker... but its the biggest detour as the cast list is mostly different. Only Vin Diesel shows up of the originals and one the fourth film hits, everyone seems to be back for good.
Fast & Furious (2009, Justin Lin) - the principle cast all returns
Fast Five (2011, Justin Lin) - aka the one where The Rock joins
Fast & Furious 6 (2013, Justin Lin)
Furious 7 (2015, James Wan) aka Paul Walker's swansong

So how many have you seen?  And are you hitting the seventh entry this weekend? 

Winnie The Tweets

It's our semi-weekly collection of Most Awesome Tweets if you don't have twitter or you can't possibly catch everything. The topic of the week was the bizarre news about a live action redo of Winnie the Pooh (after the jump)...

Mad Men's return is also reigniting Mad Men mania and you should expect the next seven weeks online to be Mad Men Manic. Question: can AMC's awards campaign PR team keep the heat on for an Emmy Farewell/Comeback?

Let's start with some real creative fan commitment -- a full manicure set! 

LOOK AT MY NAILS! Mad Men-icure ALERT! http://t.co/KUGTQwsTD2 (cc: @MadMen_AMC) pic.twitter.com/6wOuZeVef5

— Akilah Hughes (@AkilahObviously) April 2, 2015

Tweets on Winnie the Pooh and more after the jump... 

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Cast This: NBC's "The Wiz Live"

Margaret here. Earlier this week, NBC announced that this December they will be following the surprise ratings smash that was The Sound of Music Live and the more modestly-rated Peter Pan Live with a third simulcast musical: The Wiz! Producers Craig Zadan and Neil Meron (fresh off their third and likely final Oscar ceremony) are returning, with Harvey Fierstein on board to augment William F. Brown's original book. The team is also partnering with Cirque du Soleil for the production, with plans to later move it to Broadway.

The 1975 "Super Soul Musical" is, for many reasons, an excellent choice. Because it's a pop musical, the network heads' desire to stunt cast with big stars will actually serve the material. And it's become a staple in high school productions because of its generosity with its musical parts- it requires a deep cast, with 9 characters who have their own show-stoppable numbers.

Like with most pop music, the score to The Wiz is only as strong as the people performing it, and the right actor can take even the least crucial number and make it into a sensation. That makes casting especially crucial. We owe it to the good people of NBC to make their jobs easy!

Here's my dream cast:

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Another look at "World of Tomorrow", now available online

Tim here. First things first: you won't spend a more worthwhile $3.99 or use up a more gratifying 16 minutes and 29 seconds this week than you could by watching World of Tomorrow, the newest short by animator Don Hertzfeldt. You perhaps recall it as one of the most rapturously received films of any length coming out of this year's Sundance Film Festival, including a rave from the Film Experience's own Michael Cusumano (a rave that popped up in the short's official trailer), which traditionally means a long crawl through the festivals until eventually most people get a chance to see it a year or more after the hype has worn off. But on March 31, Hertzfeldt made it available on Vimeo, in a continuation of the filmmaker's first experiment in an all-digital environment. So now the rest of us get to see what made so many critics lose their minds.

The answer is genius. Pure, uncut genius is what made those critics lose their minds.

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Michelle Pfeiffer to Return to Television

True story: I have had this tab open for 6 hours and 14 minutes and this is the first sentence I have typed. I am a bundle of inchoate feelings about this news and may never fully process it. Reports have been coming in since last night that TFE's unofficial goddess (aka Nathaniel's all time favorite Michelle Pfeiffer) is heading to the small screen where she started 36 years ago in "Delta House" (1979), a sorority comedy trying to capitalize on the success of Animal House and "Bad C.A.T.S" (1980) a drama about young undercover cops and car thieves. 

More...

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