"Seasons of Bette" Coming Soon

Surprise! As a side bar series to Anne Marie's brilliant "A Year With Kate" project, I present to you "Seasons of Bette". Together with Streep, who we talk about a lot, Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis form the Holy Trinity of Oscar's Best Actress category, with 41 nominations and 9 statuettes between them. Streep is bound to have another big year in 2014 with The Homesman, The Giver and Into the Woods all arriving but we're finally giving the other two their due. 

"Seasons of Bette" won't be a comprehensive film-by-film study like Anne Marie's (Bette made 80+ features and a ton of television so, uh, no.) but I will personally be visiting each of Bette's Oscar nominated star turns, as they come up within Kate's timeline. When Anne Marie pitted them against each other in her last episode, I realized that they'd only squared off four times at the Oscars but that I had not seen all of Bette's nominated work. So join me. It's the perfect opportunity for us to fill in Best Actress viewing gaps together. Titles in red represent the years where Kate & Bette competed head on for Oscar gold. If you'd like to play along that means you've got to watch Of Human Bondage (1934) right away on Netflix Instant, Dangerous (1935) by February 24th, Jezebel (1938) by March 30th, Dark Victory (1939)  by April 14th, The Letter (1940) and The Little Foxes (1941)  by April 21st, Now Voyager (1942) by April 28th, Mr Skeffington (1944) by May 19th, All about Eve (1950) by June 30th, The Star (1952) by July 14th, and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) by August 18th.

Join us?

Open Thread

We haven't done one of these in so long. Here's an open thread so tell us: What's on your cinematic mind?Any movie topic is welcome. I'm cooking up some things for you to take us through the Oscars and into March -- I think you're going to love March and April if you stick around so please do.

I myself keep fantasizing about this version of Frozen they were thinking of with a Bette Midler style Elsa. Just try to imagine it... Suddenly "Let it Go..." is a comic diva number of some sort and "Do You Want to Build a Snowman?" gets turned into a bitchy retort duet.

Link Vision

Clothes on Film on the suits of The Wolf of Wall Street
The Playlist Snowpiercer directors cut will come to the US in limited release
Vulture guess the Mean Girls line quiz. I scored 12/12 and I only had to use a hint once. 
Variety six college students chosen to deliver Oscars to presenters as "Team Oscar" - Channing Tatum helped handpick them. If this had happened to me in college I would have died of joy. Possibly before the ceremony thereby robbing me of the experience. I hope they survive and love every second of it. 

Jimmy Kimmel Live celebrities reading mean tweets about themselves. My favorites are Sarah Silverman, Tim Robbins, Bob Balaban, John Goodman, and Cate Blanchett
Empire Lots of Captain American Winter Soldier character posters
Coming Soon Johnny Depp and probably Tom Hardy for Black Mass, a true story organized crime drama. That worked terrifically (Donnie Brasco) and fine but not great (Public Enemies) for Depp in the past but at least it's not another cartoon character.  
Bent Philip Seymour Hoffman's key gay roles. I really thought he was awful inFlawless but good clip choice
Peter Knegt shares an awesome press conference moment with Greta Gerwig. Oscar fanatics will need to watch  

I made this and it's remarkably easy to transpose Bettany's face onto The Vision

And Finally...
Some superhero casting news I can actually get behind for a change. It looks like Paul Bettany will be The Vision to Elizabeth Olsen's Scarlet Witch in The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Too bad about Aaron Johnson as Quicksilver (although at least he's better than the looks-to-be ghastly interpretation of the character over in X-Men: Days of Future Past)  but one excellent choice, one fine choice and one questionable but better than it could have been choice in a trio of famous characters is a pretty good ratio for superhero casting! So well done Joss Whedon and team. 

P.S. for those who are unaware The Vision is the android husband of The Scarlet Witch (don't ask) who is the sister of Quicksilver who are the children of Magneto. At least that's what they were saying when I read comic books (but they love to rewrite histories).] 

Sharon Needles Does Anjelica Huston

Photo via April Wahlin

Sharon Needles, who you know and love as champion of RuPaul's Drag Race a couple of years back, donned an Anjelica Huston The Witches mask in performance the other night. Just in case you bitches weren't already in love with her. 

The new season of RuPaul's Drag Race starts the last week of February and those queens have nearly insurmountable odds against them. How does one follow Sharon Needles and Jinkx Monsoon, exactly?

Related: Anjelica Huston in The Witches, an appreciation

USC Scripter Prize

As discussed on the podcast this past Monday, we like it when guilds and specialty groups have slightly different rules of eligibility than the Oscars. This prevents everyone from choosing the same five everything and draws attention to other noteworthy accomplishments. For example, The Spectacular Now and What Maisie Knew, two good films that haven't been mentioned at all for months, won nominations at the USC Scripters.

The Scripter Prize is basically a version of Adapted Screenplay but the nominees are determined by a small panel each year (Leonard Maltin was on it this year) and the award goes to both the screenwriter and the original author. Naturally the original authors don't always show; we won't be hearing an acceptance speech from Henry James should What Maisie Knew surprise. The Scripters require that you're actually be based on previously published material, not just "previously established characters" which is the sequel-friendly insanity that started just in the past ten years or so and by which the Before Sunset and Before Midnight films won well deserved Oscar nominations albeit in the wrong categories. The only thing those films are "based on" is the imagination of Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, and Ethan Hawke.

This year in addition to Spectacular and Maisie they selected three Oscar nominees 12 Years a Slave, Philomena, and Captain Phillips. Have you read any of these books and which would you vote for? The winner will be announced tomorrow. Their winner matches Oscar's just under 50% of the time... though like all awards bodies they seem to be moving closer to correlation of late.