The Linkage

IndieWire takes the Verge to task for publishing a pro-torrent essay on Expendables 3
Nicks Flick Picks Nick & Joe Reid are doing Nick's trademark halfway'ish "Fifties" thing (which starts as soon as Nick has hit 50 movies in any given year. Delicious smart writeups on editing, screenplays, supporting actors and more
Comics Alliance the internet is all excited about this old test footage for that Deadpool movie that's not going to happen for some reason. Starring Ryan Reynolds.

Lincoln Center standby only for the John Waters and Isabelle Huppert event tonight. I'm sure the Q&A will be great but I didn't like that movie Abuse of Weakness much (my review)
CNN Money spends a day with a working Broadway actress
Newsweek explains the recent Buzzfeed scandal in the only way anyone should... through gifs of Shattered Glass
The Daily Beast has a great Susan Sarandon interview icymi where she talks David Bowie, drugs, politics and age discrepancies on film 
Variety Jessica Lange to be honored at the Santa Barbara Fest this year
MNPP who wore it best: Tom Hardy face masks
The Guardian the changing demographic of the movie audience that Hollywood is still ignoring in their quest for young white male dollars
AJ Bowen declares Melanie Lynskey the best actor of his generation 
Slate has an interesting review of two new sitcoms, one starring Judy Greer called Married 

Post Script
Remember The Village (2004)? It turns 10 years old today.

I remember so little about it but ten years turns out to be a long time. Back then people were still excited by the phrase "an M Night Shyamalan film," Joaquin Phoenix wasn't yet a Hallowed Serious Thespian (despite already being an Oscar nominee) and everyone thought Bryce Dallas Howard was THE FUTURE. How foolish we all were in 2004! Okay I remember a smidge more: people loved the score;  the colors red and yellow meant Something Significant (I enjoy my colorology); Sigourney Weaver and William Hurt were in it playing vaguely sinister intimidating stern "elders" - you know how they do for paychecks.

Do you have less vague memories of this one?

Shouldn't You Actually Start Filming Before You Have a Movie Poster?

They're now officially counting Kill Bill as ONE feature so that The Hateful Eight can be Quentin Tarantino's official "8th" film. Convenient, eh? But that's okay because they should've been one film all along. And oh what gross film-splittings have occurred in their wake.

QUESTION: Shouldn't you start filming before releasing a poster?

The movie is not scheduled to start filming until 2015... and the poster assumes everything will happen on schedule and it will be out by the end of that year. Good luck, movie! This reminds me of Amir's rants about all those opening day announcements for secret movies. Hollywood has a preemie problem.

 And may Quentin get this out of his system since this'll be his second consecutive nearly all male western. May he some day return to writing great female roles again because he's slipping into terrain that other writer/directors have covered sufficiently throughout time. Which is a bummer since he writes well for awesome actresses. (So cross your fingers that he's given Amber Tamblyn and Zoë Bell something interesting to do because he sure didn't offer Kerry Washington anything worthwhile in Django.)

FWIW my preference order of Tarantino's filmography

1. Kill Bill Vol 1 (2003)
2. Pulp Fiction (1994)
       ⇡ the ones i couldn't imagine life without 
3. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
4. Inglourious Basterds (2009)
5. Jackie Brown (1997)
6. Kill Bill Vol 2 (2004)
         ⇣ and the only ones I dislike... 
7. Django Unchained (2012)
8. Death Proof (2007)

'Mom! Streep & Julie are flirting again'

I can't resist putting these images in dialogue. Are the two esteemed actresses thinking of each other in their grey flat-ironed wigs, or is this a subliminal cry for a sequel to the sapphic wonders of The Hours? As Christian so correctly observed on Twitter, Nicole is never going to let a grey hair near her scalp. But she died in The Hours so she can't be in the sequel anyway.

This twinned image was fun to discuss on Twitter but after the fact it reminded me of an earlier conversation with Anne Thompson and Kyle Buchanan about why there are so many aged lady villains in YA adaptations. My contention is that it's their ageist way of playing both sides. So many stories about young girls that pay lipservice to "girlpower" are, just like stories centered on men and boys, still scared of the power and agency of (adult) women; these prejudices are deeply ingrained.

Visual Index ~ "Cries and Whisper" Best Shot(s)

Tuesday night means Best Shot. This week we're looking at Ingmar Bergman's biggest success stateside both at the box office and with Oscar voters. If Cries and Whispers is not quite his most famous classic today, it remains one of the true essentials within his celebrated filmography. This mysterious and utterly gorgeous film won Bergman's longtime DP Sven Nykvist the first of his two Oscars for best cinematography. It concerns three sisters, one of whom is dying, and the family's maid. Naturally it's very depressing. But great art always transcends.

If you're running late with your choice for Best Shot, take heart and finish watching. My own entry in this "best shot" party will be up tomorrow so yours can be too. I have a good excuse. Today I finalized all the prep work for both the '73 Smackdown festivities (running from Thursday to Saturday here) and all the bookings for this year's Toronto International Film Festival so that you can be assured coverage of that festival this year. This year I'll be staying for the entire festival so there will be more coverage than even last year. I'm so happy about that I practically broke into a hearty round of "O Canada".

But Canada can wait. Tonight we head to Sweden for an unmissable classic... 

CRIES AND WHISPERS - BEST SHOTS
9 participants. Click on the photos for the corresponding articles 
this post will be updated again tomorrow night with any late entries received 

a reprieve from the bold crimson but one which nevertheless shows the emotional damage...
-Lam Chop Chop

 

the single best film in Bergman's canon, merciless but profound, bleak but beautiful...
-Antagony & Ecstasy

Anna, the housekeeper, seems to be the only one capable of true human connection...
-Coco Hits NY

my best shot for purely aesthetic reasons... 
-Film Actually

 

Maria's flashback, though, finds yet another use for the color red...
-The Entertainment Junkie 

Bergman even stated that in the screenplay red represented the interior of the soul... 
-The Film's The Thing 

She tried to make her pain aware to the movie itself, but it did not hear her... 
-Pop Culture Crazy 

 

Tinted in crimson (the color of the soul, according to Bergman)... 
- Best Shot in the Dark

It's not the eyes that are the window to the soul so much as the face as the soul...
- The Film Experience 

... at least one more article to come but please do enjoy these a.s.a.p.

ICYMI last week's episode was very well intended as we looked at this year's most experimental arthouse hit, Under the Skin with Scarlett Johansson. Here's what's coming next. Only four more episodes left this season so join us. I promise it's both challenging and rewarding to participate.

Interview: Adapting "Guardians of the Galaxy" for the Screen

Anne Marie interviewed Nicole Perlman, the screenwriter of Guardians of the Galaxy which opens this weekend

Nicole Perlman, Screenwriter"Nicole Perlman" has been a name shrouded in mystery since Marvel announced Guardians of the Galaxy two years ago. Though the screenwriter has received awards for her writing, Guardians will be her first official screen credit. (She shares co-screenwriting credit with Guardians director James Gunn). I sat down with her over the weekend at Comic Con to learn a little more about the woman who turned Guardians of the Galaxy from cult comic hit to Marvel's biggest blockbuster experiment. We talked about Guardians, her new project with Cirque du Soleil, and how screenwriters make terrible movie audiences.

ANNE MARIE: You started with getting your Challenger screenplay on the Black List, which is really cool, and then did a complete jump into Marvel. Tell me about that!

NICOLE PERLMAN: I had moved to Los Angeles after Challenger. It was on the Black List, it won the Tribecca Grant for Science and Film, and I was getting a lot of science-related screenplay projects, which was great, and I love science-related stuff. So I was happy about it.

I did a Neil Armstrong biopic for Universal, and I was doing things in that realm. And I would go out and pitch on projects that were science fiction or action and I got a little push back about it. I got, 'This doesn't seem like your genre, or your world.' There was a little bit of that like 'This is a really masculine movie. We don't know if you could handle it.' And I'm like, 'But you thought I could handle it enough that I could pitch on it, so that's interesting.'  But it was mostly a feeling of [having a] question mark, of could I handle something like that.

When I was having a general meeting with Marvel Studios, they mentioned they had a writers program, and they wanted to know if I wanted to be a part of it. And of course I leapt at the chance, I wanted that stamp on my resume. And I also wanted to show that like I could do the fun big action movies that I loved, and the science fiction movies. And it worked out really well, so thank goodness! 

Yeah, clearly! The President of Marvel has stated he never thought of Guardians of the Galaxy as movie material until he read your stuff.

Oh that's nice! That's really lovely.

So what made you choose Guardians out of all of the list of options for projects?

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