Curio: Matryoshka Movie Night

Alexa here. The other night, as I watched my daughter play with a set of nesting dolls while watching Ponyo, I realized that it would be great to have a set inspired by the film (with all the characters inside Granmamare, naturally), and the artist to make them would be Irene Hwang.  Irene lives in Queensland, Australia (lucky lady) and spends her free time painting extremely detailed matryoshka dolls with a pop culture theme.  She is also something of a film buff, as these eclectic selections reveal. What makes these so special is her attention to detail, how she includes appropriate accessories for the characters. It is unsurprising that she is Wes Anderson acolyte. You can buy some here; she even accepts custom orders.

Click for more including Audition and The Princess Bride...

Click to read more ...

Linkpourri

Change.org a petition to get Lupita Nyong'o cast as Storm in the next X-Men movie. Too bad there's still one more round of Halle Berry!
Ellen TV somehow I hadn't see Cate Blanchett's post Oscar win visit to Ellen until just now. So funny and I love what she says about sleeping with her statue at the 4:30 mark 
Cinema Blend Kristen Bell planning to work with the Frozen songwriter team again. More musicals, yay! 

In Contention lessons learned from this Oscar season. I've been preaching the "don't open in December" thing for a long time but finally other pundits are coming round! 
Comics Alliance whoa. superhero figures are getting way more realistic than when I was a kid! Here's Black Widow -- I assume Scarlett Johansson gets a huge cut of this for allowing her likeness. Can you imagine the market if they could make sex dolls this realistic. Did I just type that aloud. My deepest apologies but it's Scarlett. She does things to people. 

small screen
Slate talks to True Detective's costume designer
The Guardian Lee Daniels and Gabby Sidibe of Precious fame are reuniting albeit not as spectacularly. This time she'll play the assistant to a lead character (Terence Howard) in a new TV series about a hiphop record label. 
The Week is there too much nudity on HBO?
TFE If you love Faith the Vampire Slayer than you must please stop goodie Buffy in this reader's poll. Buffy Buffy Buffy
Pajiba on dead TV characters they'd like resurrected
Comics Alliance Oh my Dark Phoenix. They're reviewing every episode of the 90s X-Men animated series
Salon the vague plans for Season 2 of True Detective 

Today's Watch(es)
For the adults... Strangers kissing for the first time, an experiment. (Weird that the gay guys are the most demure about it!)

)

For all ages... Sesame Street does Les Miserables with Cookie Monster taking up the lead duties

) 

Do you hear the cookies crunch?
It's really more than we can bear
That's the sound of Jean Bon-bon
He's the guy who would not share ♫ 

Happy 25th: Uma Thurman in a Half Shell

Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, also known as Uma Thurman Being a Literal Goddess For the First Time, opened 25 years ago today. Now, it's not technically true that this was Uma's cinematic debut since she appeared in two long forgotten movies (Kiss Daddy Goodnight, Johnny B Goode) and one well remembered one (Dangerous Liaisons) before March 10th 1989 when this film premiered (due to delays -- you know how Terry Gillian do). But it was meant to be her debut. And print the myth, you know? And Uma is enough of a goddess that she deserves the myth and not the truth.

Uma as "Venus, Goddess of Beauty and Love"

One of my favorite 80s anecdotes was Gilliam being furious that Dangerous Liaisons beat him to release in the two film contest of prestige costume pictures that could get the new jaw-droppingly beautiful starlet out of her costumes first for audiences. She was 18. I still remember this anecdote because Uma's breasts were among the first I remember seeing in a movie theater... and remaining among the finest.

It's somewhat strange that The Adventures of Baron Munchausen is so forgotten today. It was nominated for 4 Oscars in 1989: Makeup, Costumes, Art Direction and Visual Effects, making it the second most honored Gilliam film in Oscar's books (after The Fisher King) but maybe AMPAS was apologizing for only giving Brazil two nominations in 1985? Terry Gilliam hasn't been a major cinema presence in a very long time for reasons that are well documented but wouldn't it be sweet if he managed one last major artistic triumph in his 70s? 

Anyway...

Happy 25th anniversary (of sorts) to Uma Thurman and the Movie Camera! They've had a volatile affair but they were meant for each other. I guess this means we should all watch Nymphomaniac Pt 1 as soon as possible. 

"True Looking," HBO Finales

With two HBO series ending their first season runs last night, I thought an open thread to discuss both was in order. Mass reactions to both "True Detective" and "Looking" have been somewhat mystifying to me, so I need you as sounding board.

Gross generalities and spoilers ahead. Ready? 

Click to read more ...

Box Office: "Budapest" En Route to Becoming Anderson's Best?

Amir here with the weekend’s box office report, or the interesting part of it at least.

As expected, 300: Rise of Even More CGI and Mr. Peabody and Sherman and Non-Stop topped the charts, so we’ll skip right past them and get to the interesting stuff. Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel entered the all time top ten list for per screen average on an opening weekend. On four screens alone, the film has raked in $800,000 dollars already and will probably pass the one million mark later today. That’s an incredible coup for the director and Fox Searchlight already, but can we gauge anything about the film’s final box office performance from this number? Well, maybe...

Click to read more ...