It's a Linky Monday

Manuel here to offer you a news link roundup to kick off this week.

ComingSoon Is it really possible all press materials (save this offical photo) for Thomas Vinterberg's adaptation of Far From the Madding Crowd starring Carey Mulligan & Matthias Schoenaerts have gone unremarked here at TFE? Let's fix that by staring at this gorgeous poster.
Marvel In case you missed it last week, Marvel offered some more casting news for their ever-expanding universe, including Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones in its upcoming Netflix series and Benedict Cumberbatch (officially!) as Doctor Strange in the eponymous film due November 2016.
SlashFilm In other franchise news, Roberto Orci will no longer be directing Star Trek 3 which I'm sure is good news for some other first time white male director looking to make his big break. I kid! But only sort of.
The Guardian “My whole career is always a roller-coaster. I’m so random and spontaneous and unusual in my choices – I never expect anything.” - Nicole Kidman, Queen of understatements at the Australian Paddington premiere.
Screen Crush writes up a list of The Highest Grossing Actors of 2014 though, as they note they used "an extremely liberal definition of 'actor' and 'appearance'" which explains its rather silly #1 spot.
The Hollywood Reporter Natalie Portman's troubled Jane Got a Gun got a new release date. No longer will the western be released next February; we'll have to wait until September to see it. I can't decide whether that's an improvement or not.
Dwayne Johnson We were just talking about Disney's upcoming Moana and it now seems the erstwhile Rock will lend its voice to the animated film. 

The Season Continues

BIFA It was a great day for TFE favorite Pride over at the BIFAs (the British Independent Film Awards) which nabbed the top prize while Imelda Staunton and Andrew Scott picked up supporting acting prizes for it as well. 
Mother Jones If you caught Jean-Marc Vallée's newest film ths weekend, check out this interview with Cheryl Strayed on having Reese Witherspoon play her in Wild. 
InContention David Oyelowo and the cast of The Imitation Game have been added to the increasingly exhaustive list of names to be feted by the Palm Springs Film Festival.
Time names its Top 10 Best Films (topped by The Grand Budapest Hotel but including some interesting titles like Lucy and Jodorowsky's Dune). 
EW meanwhile singles out Whiplash as the year's best. 

Videos of the Day

Check out A Most Violent Year co-stars Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain chat about acting while looking ridiculously pretty (of course), and below, find a video by yours truly focused on the way gay men are represented on screen, featuring clips from Brokeback Mountain, Angels in America, Skyfall, Rope and over 80 other films/tv shows.

Gay Men on Screen: A Place for Us (Supercut) from Manuel Betancourt on Vimeo.

Team FYC: "The Boxtrolls" for Costume Design

Editor's Note: We're featuring individually chosen FYC's for various longshots in the Oscar race. We'll never repeat a film or a category so we hope you enjoy the variety of picks. And if you're lucky enough to be an AMPAS, HFPA, or Critics Group voter, take note! Here's Andrew on The Boxtrolls.

Will an animated film ever get a fair chance of making it into Oscar's costume design category?  

This past decade alone, the stop motion wing of animated film has impressed with characters from Corpse Brides to Foxes Fantastic. It's a shame to ignore fine costume design simply because it's not happening in a live action setting. Enter: this consideration for The Boxtrolls for a myriad of reasons.

The intricate designs amaze with their attention to period detail - there’s almost no question that were this a live action film Cook’s work would emerge as a significant contender. The levels of eccentricity, too, push it up beyond your standard period fare.  I’m moved to think of Jacqueline Durran’s Oscar-winning work on Anna Karenina (2012), which wasn't just ornate as period work but also overwhelmingly in touch with the idiosyncratic tone of its film and the characters inside it. From Winnie to Lady Portley-Rind to Mr Trout and onwards The Boxtrolls is an impressive case of costume actually informing character. When a character's costume is so specific it couldn't work for another character, you know it's on to something. For The Boxtrolls, costumes are not incidental (which makes the ommission of Cook's name from the credits for her work on IMDB's page for The Boxtolls that more egregious).

Laika Inc (the studio that brought us ParaNorman and the excellent Coraline) seem to be campaigning hard for Deborah Cook's work to make Oscar history. It’s an ambitious goal and, like acclaimed motion capture acting, it's probably a long road before this becomes an Oscar reality, but the fact that her work is being acknowledged and publicly discussed is a step in the right direction.

If we were to ask you to name five films this year where character attributes are so reflective in and dependent on the specificity of the costumes, wouldn’t The Boxtrolls be on your list? For sheer beauty and innovation wouldn't it make your top three? That’s a good enough reason to launch a rousing campaign for Cook’s work.

Podcast: Special Behind-the-Scenes LAFCA Episode

For this unedited edition of the podcast, Nathaniel, Joe and Nick speak with Justin Chang from Variety about the Los Angeles Film Critics Association's annual voting, their commitment to voting their hearts free of the golden "O" word, their runaway favorites like Boyhood and the unlucky but well loved films like Grand Budapest and Birdman that were always in the mix but didn't win big. We also talk diversity of choices on the acting ballots and how surprises like Tom Hardy (Locke) and Agata Kulesza (Ida) come to happen in their two tiers of voting. How do they decide things like the Gena Rowlands career achievement prize and how close did Marion Cotillard come to this, the first critics prize of the season that eluded her. 

Have you even begun to digest this intense critics awards weekend? Did those long drawn out announcements Sunday stress you out? Unwind with this relaxed conversation about the Los Angeles third of the big day. You can listen at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes starting Monday night. Continue the conversation in the comments! 

LAFCA 2014 Discussion

A Second Look At "Still Alice"

Michael C. here to sort out a few mixed feelings at the prospect of the impending Julianne Moore juggernaut. Let me cut to right to the matter on everyone’s mind and say that any Academy voter who checks a box for Julianne Moore for Best Actress next year will have no reason to feel anything but pride in his or her choice. Her performance as Alice Howland, a 50-year-old linguistics professor suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s is every bit as good as billed. But let us also acknowledge the plain truth that Moore’s work here is all the more impressive because she is doing the heavy lifting for a script and direction that are not operating at anywhere near her level. 

To point out that there is little exceptional or even all that much better than competent in Still Alice outside of Julianne Moore’s performance is to risk coming off like some sort of stone-hearted gargoyle. Who doesn’t feel the urge to pull some punches when presented with such an earnestly good intentioned film? And that is to say nothing of the reluctance to rain sour disapproval down on the Best Actress parade currently gaining steam on its march toward the Oscar podium. Who wants to spoil a perfectly good Julianne Moore coronation? Not this critic. [More...]

Click to read more ...

Who Would You Vote For as "Best Young Actor/Actress"?

Each year when my BFCA ballot arrives I stop in my tracks, stumped, when I get to "Young Performer". Categories that aren't Oscar correlative are often trickier.

Oh dear. How uneasy I feel..."

That's not because you're free of predicting (anyone trying to predict with their own ballot really ought to find a new profession -- criticism: ur not doing it right) but because it's a subsection of acting you probably haven't been discussing at all. You suddenly remember that you need to have been considering it with as much seriousness as you have made your other selections.

I imagine that Ellar Coltrane, the now 20 year old star of Boyhood, will be tough to beat since this category is for the 21 and under set. But even if the category were adjusted downward to 17 and younger (which we strongly support as a rule change -because it's always weird when an adult wins like least year when the prize went to the very explicit Blue is the Warmest Color... in a kid's category!) he'd surely be considered an exemption since he spent 12 years in front of the camera in his childhood for that movie. But who will the other nominees be? Who should they be?

As a BFCA member I'm often frustrated by the choices made in this category since they don't feel carefully considered but "which big ticket movies have prominent teenage or child roles?" or, barring that, which movies did famous teen actors make? Fame ≠ Best so each year moving forward I will try to help my fellow critics by reminding them who is actually eligible... and not just from the Oscar seeking pictures. 

I hope you'll FYC your favorites in the comments and give voters some options to truly consider:

ELIGIBLE "YOUNG PERFORMERS" IN 2014 FILMS
(if we've missed any key players - make sure to shout them out in the comments)

GIRLS
Chloë Grace Moretz (17) in Equalizer, If I Stay, Muppets Most Wanted or Laggies
Elle Fanning (16) as "Aurora" in Maleficent
Hailee Steinfeld (18) in Begin Again or The Homesman
Joey King (15) as "Grace" in Wish You Were Here Gotham Nominee
Kaitlyn Dever (17) in Men Women and Children or Laggies
Lilla Crawford (13) as "Red Riding Hood" in Into the Woods
Lorelei Linklater (20) as "Samantha in Boyhood 
Mackenzie Foy (14) as "Murph" in Interstellar WAFCA Nominee
Odeya Rush (17) as "Fiona" in The Giver
Saoirse Ronan (20) as "Agatha" in Grand Budapest Hotel 
Quvenzhané Wallis (11) is Annie 

John D'Leo, Jordan Scott, and Mackenzie Foy are among several eligible candidates who play "younger" versions of key characters

BOYS
Alex Lawther (19) as "Young Alan Turing" in The Imitation Game
Ansel Elgort (20) in Divergent, The Fault in Our Stars or Men Women and Children
Antoine-Olivier Pilon (17) as "Steve" in Mommy
Blake Cooper (13) as "Chuck" in The Maze Runner
Charlie Tahan (?) as "Joey" in Love is Strange
CJ Adams (14) as "Young Ford" in Godzilla
C.J. Valleroy (?) as "Young Louis" in Unbroken
Connor Corum (7) as "Colton" in Heaven is For Real
Daniel Huttlestone (15) as "Jack" in Into the Woods 
Ellar Coltrane (20) as "Mason" in Boyhood  Gotham Nominee, WAFCA "Youth" Winner
Emjay Anthony (11) as "Percy" in Chef
Ghilherme Lobo (19) as "Leonardo" in The Way He Looks 
Jacob Latimore (18) as "Jeff" in The Maze Runner
Jaeden Lieberher (11) as "Oliver" in St. Vincent WAFCA Nominee
Jamarion Scott and Jordan Scott (?) as "Little James Brown" in Get On Up
John D'Leo (19) as "Young Pete" in Unbroken 
Kodi Smit-McPhee (18) as "Alexander" in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Noah Wiseman (7) "Samuel" in The Babadook WAFCA Nominee
Pierce Gagnon (9) as "Tucker" in Wish I Was Here 
Samuel Lange Zambrano (?) as "Junior" in Bad Hair 
Tony Revolori (18) as "Zero" in Grand Budapest Hotel  WAFCA Nominee

Noah Wiseman, Tony Revolori, and the Boyhood kids have huge roles. Will they make it?

WHICH YOUNG THESPIANS WOULD MAKE YOUR BALLOT?
I hope you'll FYC your favorites in the comments and give the Broadcast Film Critic voters some options to truly consider rather than making this the annual Chloe Moretz Shortlist. Which younger actors do you think have big things in their futures as they grow into young adult roles?