9 Days 'til Emmy Awards: Spin Offs & Ideal Hosts

As we approach the Emmy Awards, a little questionnaire silliness. I polled Friends of TFE and the staff, too. 

1. Which character on which show would you kill to see get their own spinoff series?

Joe Reid: That American Horror Story's Myrtyle Snow never got to be a Project Runway judge is the real shame. But if we're talking whole-cloth spinoff, I really honestly think that Mad Men has stopped being able to give to Joan what Joan gives to the show. Watching her navigate the '70s would be amazing.

 Mark Blankenship: Can we please, PLEASE follow the further adventures of Lincoln (Hannibal Buress) from Broad City? Maybe he can open a free dental dental clinic, and every week, we can see his zany adventures with his patients and their jacked up teeth.

Nathaniel R: I'd follow anyone from Mad Men through the 1970s... and I do mean anyone but I want to focus on shows that are so rich that even the outer periphery characters are awesome so can I pitch shows for?: Nurse Jackie's slutty new drug dealer (Michael Esper); Dawn & Shirley (Teyonnah Paris & Sola Bamis), the new secretaries of Mad Men; that gay hooker from Masters of Sex (Finn Wittrock); Archer's cyborg lovers Katya & Barry

Anne Marie: Freddy from House of Cards gets his own show where he turns his hole-in-the-wall restaurant into a food empire by taking advantage of the shady political maneuvering he's overheard for the last decade.

Jose: Anyone from The Big Bang Theory...oh sorry, I stopped reading after you said "kill". 

Dancin' Dan: All I want for Christmas is "The Taystee and Poussey Make Fun Of White People Show".

How many binge-watching hours would you give that one?

2. Which reality host would you choose to host your real life?

Mark Blankenship: Tim Gunn. Obviously. Because he'd be proud of me if I put together a good look for brunch.

Anne Marie: Betty. Freaking. White.

Nathaniel R: Heidi Klum... but only if she invites me to her annual Halloween bash.

Joe Reid:  This is not a question. This does not need more than a half-second's worth of thought. Cat Deeley now. Cat Deeley tomorrow. Cat Deeley forever.

YOUR TURN... who would host your life and which minor or central characters would you gladly follow up into their own spinoff series?

"Sing out (Madonna), Louise!"

A happy 56th birthday to the Queen Herself. I was out for drinks with two friends the other night (Hi, Sue & Jordan!) and somehow the conversation turned to Madonna -- I can't remember how it got there -- and the Best Actress for Evita Golden Globe was discussed. 'Her one shot at an Oscar' ...but then of course she wasn't nominated. (1996 was an overstuffed year in Best Actress of course but even if it hadn't been, The Academy probably would have resisted.) But of course it wasn't her only shot at Oscar. They've snubbed her repeatedly in that Best Original Song category though two songs she sang but didn't write won the actual gold man ("Sooner or Later" from Dick Tracy by Stephen Sondheim and "You Must Love Me" from Evita by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber). 

Her original songs from the movies in preference order:

1. "Into the Groove" for Desperately Seeking Susan (1985) 
2. "Live To Tell" for At Close Range (1986)
   I'm not sure if this was officially disqualified but it would have been for the same reason as the infamous rejection of "Come What May" from Moulin Rouge! (It was written for another film altogether but switched movies) 
3. "Crazy For You" for Vision Quest (1985)
4. "Die Another Day" for Die Another Day (2002) - Golden Globe nod
5. "Beautiful Stranger" for Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) - Golden Globe nod
6. "Who's That Girl" for Who's That Girl (1987) - Golden Globe & Grammy nods
7. "This Used To Be My Playground" for A League of Their Own (1992) - Golden Globe nod
8. "I'll Remember" for With Honors (1994) - Golden Globe & Grammy nods 
9. "Causing a Commotion" for Who's That Girl (1987)
10. "Masterpiece" for W.E. (2012) - Globe win
    disqualified from Oscar - too late in the end credits 

And I don't even want to talk about Truth or Dare (1991) not winning a Best Documentary nomination when it's one of the best docs ever made... or at least in the top 5 most entertaining. And while we're Oscar dissing, how is it that Stephen Sondheim's rousing "More" from Dick Tracy missed a nomination? Did they only submit the one song or was it the way Warren Beatty edited its production number to smithereens so there was barely any of it there -- one of the weirdest directorial decisions ever when there was clearly a big festive Madonna/Sondheim production number filmed?

Madonna having a bit of a Joan Crawford moment in her recent "Revolution of Love" short film which I'll admit I didn't 'get' at all. Rare for me with a Madonna project.

Madonna's dreams to become "A Real Actress" (I love that she has a Moulin Rouge! "Satine" connection!) seem to have ended at the same time her marriage to Guy Ritchie wrapped and the only movies she's made since have been behind the camera with Filth & Wisdom and W.E. But she'll always have the music. If you haven't yet read it you should check out this excellent essay from Savage Garden's Darren Hayes on 'why the world needs another brilliant Madonna album'. And hat tip to Erik at Awards Watch (who've been holding a Madonna Week) for pointing that one out. I hope she writes a killer song for a movie again soon, a song so strong that it would be shameful for the Academy to ignore. 

Review: The Giver

Hey, folks. Michael Cusumano here fresh from having Jeff Bridges impart the wonders of humanity directly into my brain.

It’s an amusing irony that Phillip Noyce’s film of Lois Lowry’s beloved middle-school staple The Giver feels like an afterthought following the recent glut of Young Adult adaptations. It was Lowry’s vision of dystopia which helped launch the army of teenage Chosen Ones currently clogging multiplexes nationwide. Now, not only is The Giver late to the party, but the richly imagined worlds of Lowry’s literary descendants have left her story feeling undercooked. I can’t imagine teenage audiences who have spent the past few years steeped in the sprawling, detailed insanity of Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games books will be rapt with attention watching Jeff Bridges shambling around his library, triggering the occasional lame stock footage montage meant to portray humanity in all its myriad wonders.

Noyce’s film version might have had a fighting shot if it had tapped into the elemental power of the story’s spare allegory, but alas, even with a plotline of this simplicity, The Giver can’t make the pieces fit. The logic begins to fall apart right from the opening narration. We are told that this is a society where all the highs and lows of humanity have been wiped away and people live in a serene state of medicated blankness. Everyone strolls around grinning like they lost a fight with a body snatcher. We meet our hero Jonas (Brenton Thwaites, a monument to blandness) on the day of the great Ceremony where he and his two equally personality-free friends are to receive their lifetime job assignments. Yet no sooner does the narration tell us that this world is free from competition and envy than we hear the trio chatting about how they hope they get a great job, crossing their fingers that they don’t get put on the janitorial staff. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t this indicate that they are A) competitive and B) envious.

Get used to this confusion...

Click to read more ...

Nicole's Return. The Dates Are Ever Changing.

When will our beloved Kidman return to us? For someone who works so consistently, doesn't it seem like it's hard to find Nicole Kidman in a movie theater? Grace of Monaco keeps threatening to arrive but never does leaving us to wonder if it will ever play in regular movie theaters after its shaming at Cannes (that place can be brutal). Any big dreams for the quality of Paddington (it comes from charming source material at least) her Christmas film, have been dashed by that hateful slapstick trailer and Colin Firth's exit as the voice. The wait is soon over though. For those of you who missed The Railway Man in theaters, it's just out on DVD and Blu-Ray. [Warning: Nicole's part is small enough that when the climax arrives, she's literally a blurry figure in the background.]

 

Next up though is the thriller Before I Go To Sleep which has a new poster (above) and a new release date: Halloween to be exact. Let's just hope it's better than The Invasion or Trespass. (It's apparently really hard to make a good thriller post-Hitchcock because not that many filmmakers are skilled at making them.)

After that picture all us Kidmaniacs will wait again for her other completed films to play the release date shell game. Most promising by far is Werner Herzog's Gertrud Bell biopic Queen of the Desert both because Herzog is an amazing director (another feather in Kidman's auteur-fetish cap!) and because the role is big and central. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Queen of the Desert is doing the fall festival circuit so maybe they're waiting until 2015?

CAST THIS!
This is one of those stories that was so obviously a Film Experience type of story that I pretended to myself that I'd already covered it on the blog. Like those dreams you have where you already went to class or work so there's no need to jump up and go when you wake up! Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon are now attached to the film adaptation of Liane Moriarty's comic best seller Big Little Lies about a group of three mothers whose kids are in the same Kindergarten class in a beautiful Australian seaside town (with secrets, natch). A sprained ankle sets off a series of events which eventually leads to a school riot and a murder. There are three major characters (and apparently a lot of broadly drawn but possibly scene-stealing supporting casts). No word yet on which of the moms Nicole & Reese are planning to play but obviously a third star will be joining them.

These are the characters...

Madeline: gleefully extroverted, fashionable, and still a "glittery girl" at 40. Her broken Dolce & Gabbana heel sets the plot in motion. She's happily married but still having trouble with her ex and his younger "new age-y" wife
Celeste: a nervous very beautiful mom with twins, who is married to a wealthy man
Jane: shy, plain and uncomfortable in her own skin. New in town but Madeline and Celeste befriend this single mom when her son gets in trouble the very first day of school

YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO PICK THEIR ROLES FOR THEM AND ADD A THIRD ACTRESS IN THE COMMENTS!

Let's just pray this wasn't doesn't go the way of The Danish Girl which Nicole was attached to for quite some time until development hell took it from her plate. The film is still trying to get made but instead of an actress in the transgender lead role it's now Eddie Redmayne with his Les Miz director Tom Hooper guiding him through the transformation. 

Tim's Toons: Remembering Williams & Bacall in animation

Tim here. In case you’re just tuning in, it’s been a brutal week for celebrity deaths (and in the world at large, but let’s not start getting into that or I’ll be too depressed to function). Nathaniel has already written lovely pieces remembering both Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall, so I hope you’ll permit me to go much smaller, to share with you a couple of animated curios paying tribute to those stars’ respective gifts.

Befitting a great vocal contortionist, Williams played several parts in animated films over the years, most famously Aladdin in 1992, though that wasn’t his first (he was in FernGully: The Last Rainforest earlier the same year, as I expect readers born within a very narrow window of years know well, while everyone else is wondering “FernWhat?”). And even that wasn’t his very first brush with animation, which I believe was his part in a short movie that played at what was then called the Disney-MGM Studios theme park at Walt Disney World, in an attraction demonstrating, broadly, how the animation process works. It’s a short film called “Back to Neverland”; several bootlegs are available on YouTube, of which the best one I could find is here. Pending Disney’s lawyers marching through with their cease-and-desists, of course

It’s playful nonsense, with most of its charm coming from the interplay between Williams and Walter Cronkite at his most warmly authoritative, of course. Though the animated sequence is awfully sweet itself, I’ve always found, with Williams keeping the manic energy dialed down and instead simply stressing the sweetness and innocence of the character. It’s a lovely and gentle performance, all childlike joy and heart, and one of my favorite bits of Williams ephemera.

Lauren Bacall didn’t voice any animated characters until 1999’s direct-to-video Madeleine: Lost in Paris, but her voice and sharp features made her a natural for caricature in cartoons during her peak years of popularity. The first of these is the 1946 Bacall to Arms, which also happens to have been one of the very last Merrie Melodies directed by the great Bob Clampett. There’s a lousy version here, and a very good version with historian Jerry Beck chatting over the audio here. But before you watch either one, a brief caution that it’s alarmingly dated: the details of post-WWII society are historically intriguing; the mother-in-law gags are corny and tired; the film-ending blackface joke is arbitrary and awful.

As for the Bacall material, it’s an odd but compelling bit of pop culture history and self-appreciation. Functionally, the film is basically an advertisement for Warner’s hot new commodity. Watching what’s not so much a parody of To Have and Have Not as it is an animated copy, a typical horny cartoon wolf very nearly dies of erotic excitement while watching Bacall slink around and speak in the very un-Bacall tones of Sara Berner, called in when the animation crew learned that they couldn’t use the original To Have and Have Not audio.

One of the unifying themes of all the Bacall obituaries of the last week has been amazement at how perfectly she emerged into the movies, already-formed, a self-assured sex goddess and woman in full control of her own mind and expression in a male-dominated world from the second she stepped onscreen. Bacall to Arms is confirmation that this was already something people were aware of just two years into her career. She was a completely new and bold form of movie star, dominating the screen and the audience from her first entrance, a novelty who also clearly had staying power and the kind of presence that only the best of the best film icons have ever enjoyed. And that’s as clear as the nose on a grotesquely distended cartoon wolf face.