New Photos from "Theory of Everything" & "Big Eyes"

Three new stills for movies about complicated marriages among brilliant people. Expect trailers very shortly. First up is Theory of Everything coming November 7th and based on Jane Hawking's autobiography "Travelling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen"

A few thoughts I had... uncensored as they come to me. 

• Felicity Jones always makes me think of Like Crazy & The Tempest. I did not fall. Unless you mean like crazy annoyed with her. Can she suddenly be fascinating in this?
• This might easily fall into the stock "supportive wife" role syndrome (not that Oscar will mind. But we might) even if it is from her perspective?
• Is Eddie Redmayne the best-looking gawky nerdstar ever? There's something about him that shouldn't really work as a leading man onscreen and yet he sure does... work it. You know?
• ♥ Marius 
• I'm glad this isn't named after the book... people might be expecting a sci-fi time travel flick
• Golden light is shorthand for romantic aura / nostalgia

The other new stills are from Tim Burton's Big Eyes, coming Christmas Day starring Amy Adams and Christoph Waltz as the Keanes. The wife did the big eye paintings and the husband got credit for them. 

 • Whenever they show actors painting or drawing onscreen I am INSTANTLY looking to see if they're actually doing anything... kind of the way when an actor plays piano I stare intensely at the hands and dread the cut to closeup of their hands when the actor is replaced by a person who can do that thing. It annoys me that I do this, trust, but I can't help it.
• Closeups of actors hands...it's never them! Remember when Robin Bartlett told me she didn't scribble that note to Leo in Shutter Island.
• There's almost nothing I dislike more aesthetically (from disappointment rather than unattractiveness) than when redheads go blonde for movies. I want them ALWAYS ginger.

• Love the red light in this picture. The cinematography is by 4 time Oscar nominee Bruno Delbonnel in case you were wondering.
• I want this to be good so badly. But the odds... I'm just going to whisper Ed Wood over and over to myself and hope for the best
• Big Eyes would also be a good name for a documentary exploring the physiogonomy of actors since so many of them have unnaturally ginormous orbs. All the better to expose the inner humanity of their characters.
• I got a new computer! *

My new computer is so big I could trap Jeff Bridges in it for decades

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) August 4, 2014

What does this have to do with Big Eyes, you ask? Well, I'm slightly traumatized because even though it's gorgeously super-sized most of my old programs don't work anymore because it's so new, so I'm trying to come up with solutions so i can manipulate images and the Oscar charts again. IF photoshop was working I would be manipulating this image right now so that it showed them fighting over Christoph Waltz's two Oscars instead of a painting. He only deserved one of them, so surely he should give ONE to Amy who has way more range.

It's only right! 

* I know I already said this this morning but the excitement overfloweth. It's been like seven years since I got a new desktop!

"Share a Diet Coke with..."

Whenever I buy a Diet Coke I feel friendless because invariably I don't have friends in town with the random name I get. The other day I got a "Maddy" and a "Rick". But look what one of TFE's favorite loyal readers, Evan, saw in the deli!

How great is that?

Talk about accidental brilliance. Sadly these West Side lovers were discovered on the East Side. "East Side Story" just doesn't have the same ring to it. 

The most exciting "Share" I've ever gotten is this one. He's fictional but you can't have everything. 

Beauty vs Beast: The Monster From Mini Apple

JA from MNPP here, and I think we've got some Charlize Theron fans up in here, correct? While we ache away on our insides for Mad Max: Fury Road to get here (May seems so far away) let's give her one of her very own "Beauty vs. Beast" tributes to pass the time.

I contemplated going the Snow White route but that seemed kinda obvious so the best Charlize movie instead. Jason Retiman's 2011 too-cool-for-Oscar flick Young Adult is endlessly rewatchable... as long as you get off on cringing through your laughter and watching a wonderful actress wield her beauty like a weapon.

One that cuts both ways - watching Mavis be stripped of her beautification accoutrement (those sad silicone inserts) becomes a perverse sort of deglamming that would have made Aileen Wuornos blush. And Patrick Wilson's no slouch - he always gets taken for granted as the premiere amiable suburban object, but Buddy's a sharp portrait of a dude who's never had to give too much thought to things having a whole lot of thought smashed his way in way too short a time.

poll by twiigs.com

You have one week to cast your vote for the prom king or the prom queen and let us know why in the comments - and give Charlize your birthday wishes while you're at it!

PREVIOUSLY Even though we tried to bribe you a little bit by showing off Tom Hanks' surprisingly fabulous gams, you were having none of it on the occasion of Turner & Hooch's 25th anniversary - slobbery though he may have been it's just a general rule that you're never gonna beat an adorable doggy. Hooch bounded away with just short of 70% of the vote; said Henry:

"As a cat person, I would ordinarily choose the human......but my fourth (or was it fifth) husband was a neatnik. I'll take slobbery over Felix Ungernesseryness any day."

ICYMI & August's 'Year of the Month'

Since I spent the last week completely absorbed in Supporting Actress Smackdown '73 (with a side of Into the Woods spazzing) I didn't have as much time to write. I'm super proud of this month's two part event (written & podcasted) and I'm so tempted to make Dana Delany's impression of Sylvia Sidney my new ringtone. I thank StinkyLulu for letting me be the Whitney to his Dolly. But here's a handful of other highlights you may have missed if you too had a busy week where one project stole your life. The team jumped in since I was smackdowning.

A Dame to Shill For cosign Jason's bigscreen/smallscreen lust for Eva Green's talent
Bergman's Ghosts Cries and Whispers is the greatest haunted house movie. But who or what is doing the haunting?
Is Lucy racist? Matthew refuses to see it
Hepburn's Hair Anne Marie shares a hairography theory
A Most Wanted Man & Guardians of the Galaxy reviewed. Michael is joining me on weekly review duties so you get two each week now + the podcast reviews

UP NEXT: I just got a new computer (it's so big I could trap Jeff Bridges inside it for decades!) and though the size of the screen is beyond glorious and will help with my writing and whatnot (particularly the whatnot) immensely, it rendered many of the ancient software programs I use to create the various entertainments on this here site unusable. Sad face. I will try to recover quickly.

Liz whips her hair back and forth

 But in August you can expect Emmy coverage & Oscar season warmups, The Giver, Love is Strange, the final episodes of "Hit Me" (cannot wait for Suddenly Last Summer and Gone With the Wind!), Anne Marie on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and of course a celebration of 1989, our "year of the month" culminating in the Smackdown on August 31st.

• Brenda Flicker, My Left Foot
• Anjelica Huston, Enemies: A Love Story
• Lena Olin, Enemies: A Love Story
• Julia Roberts, Steel Magnolias
• Dianne Wiest, Parenhood

So queue up those four films and five performances and get your votes in (scale of 1 to 5 hearts) by August 24th. What other 1989 films should we discuss this month? 

Studio Ghibli is taking a break

Tim here. The story over the weekend as far as popcorn movies go might have been the monstrous over-performance of Guardians of the Galaxy, but for those of us who like a little more personal artistry and a little less big-budget sizzle out of our movies, Sunday's biggest news was the apparent revelation by Toshio Suzuki, general manager of Japan's Studio Ghibli, that the company is ceasing to produce animated films.

Or maybe not. The internet, in its glorious need for news, News, NEWS, has perhaps jumped the gun on some ambiguous words that have slightly different weight in Japanese than in English. They're merely talking about restructuring and re-evaluating their business and production strategies in the wake of Hayao Miyazaki's retirement. That certainly could mean that they're going to close; it doesn't mean they've closed yet (though that "yet" might well be nothing but diplomacy talking). What is certainly the case is that following the newly-released in Japan When Marnie Was There, Ghibli has no future plans involving animated features. So even if it's not The End, it's not a very good day for lovers of animation or just top-quality world cinema.

While we stew and wait for more news on the Ghibli front, I'd like to invite everyone to share their favorite movies from the studio. I'll start off: if I wanted to showcase to a newbie the breadth of Studio Ghibli's artistry (and today of all days, that's exactly what I want to do), these would be the five movies I'd pick:

• My Neighbor Totoro (1988) - a generous children's fable filled with a love of nature
• Grave of the Fireflies (1988) - a deadly serious examination of the human cost of war
• Porco Rosso (1992) - a clever spin on an animal fable and loving tribute to the beauty of flight
• Whisper of the Heart (1995) - a quiet, beautiful story of adolescent curiosity and self-knowledge
• Spirited Away (2002) - the perfect gateway drug: bold visions, fearless storytelling, impeccably clear characters

What are your favorite Studio Ghibli films? And how sad are you going to be if this really is the end?