Wintry Hit Musicals and Anna Kendrick To The Rescue!

This time last year the instant if much-hated hit Les Misérables (2012) was topping Billboard's Top 100 Albums chart, powered largely by Anne Hathaway's belting through hacking fits from freezing pneumonia (or whatever she died of - she certainly wasn't dressed for the snow!). Fast forward one exact year: the instant and much-loved hit Frozen is topping Billboard's Top 100 Albums chart and at the same time it's crossing an incredible $300 million at the box office. That's quite a feat. No Disney toon has topped Billboard since Pocahontas 18 years ago and no Disney toon (sans Pixar) has crossed that box office threshold since The Lion King (1994)... though if you adjust for inflation it's closer to a Beauty & The Beast (1991) level of audience rapture. But still... that's quite a lot of rapturizing!

Fast forward to Christmas/Early January next year. Will it be Annie or Into the Woods moving the most discs/downloads? Both of them are opening for Christmas but -- happy news -- they're not the only movie musicals hitting us in 2014...

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Meryl Loves Herself(ie)

Glenn here taking a little break from arguing about The Wolf of Wall Street and debating just who is best in show from American Hustle to talk about Meryl Streep's love of selfie photos. The most recent one of Meryl with her August: Osage County co-star Margo Martindale on the red carpet at the Palm Springs International Film Festival seemed to go viral this week, meaning more people have seen that than have been allowed to see the film they're plugging (August finally goes wide tomorrow).

Lest we forget, however, that Meryl loves a selfie... there's more of them after the jump

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A Year with Kate: Christopher Strong (1933)

ICYMI - New Series! - Episode 2 of 52

In which Katharine Hepburn plays another British lady, and her acting gets better even if her accent doesn’t.

If Katharine Hepburn has one problem in her early career (besides her infamous intractability) it is her inability to be anything other than herself. That odd quality that made her a star in A Bill of Divorcement also plagued her through her career. She’s too stubborn to be an ingénue, too young to be a dame, too androgynous to be a femme fatale and too fascinating to be a character actor. What then to do with her? Once she hits MGM she definitely hits her stride, but sadly that is seven years, twelve movies (and for us, twelve very long weeks) away.  First we have to get through the trial and error period of Kate’s career, where she tried on many hats.

The next hat is this:

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Link is the New Blog

Salon Laverne Cox (Orange is the New Black) continues to be a great spokesperson for trans people, shutting down Katie Couric's indelicate questions 
HitFix the composers from Frozen working on Bob the Musical for Disney. Sounds like a silly/fun project. 

Gawker Neil Patrick Harris has many margaritas in Mexico. LOL. #12 is my favorite, for the text as much as the picture 
Variety Meryl Streep's ode to Emma Thompson and Walt Disney diss at the NBR gala 

NYFCC Aftermath
Film Society of Lincoln Center has the audio of Harry Belafonte's moving speech in honor of Steve McQueen 
Variety reports on the damage control the critics circle is doing now 
The Carpetbagger on official apologies and Armond White's own denials that he heckled. Since I know people who were there, I know he's lying about other people lying about him.

Julianne Moore & Liv FreundlichFinally...
We never talked about Carrie (2013) after it hit theaters, primarily because I didn't see it. I guess it's on DVD next Tuesday? Up until very recently I had seen everything that Julianne Moore ever made after falling in love with her in [safe]. Yes, even that straight to DVD horror flick with Jonathan Rhys Meyers. I have only met two people in my entire life who love Brian dePalma's Carrie (1976) more than I do: drag superstar Jackie Beat (who told me it was her all time favorite film) and my friend JA at My New Plaid Pants. He finally saw the misbegotten studio cash-in remake and lived to write about it. He predictably hated it but actually found one nice thing to say about Chloe Moretz so that... surprised me. 

The photo to your left is of Julianne and her daughter so you can see that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree and also because theyre so pretty and wouldn't you rather look at that glorious matching set than a still from Carrie (2013)? You're welcome. 

It's Lucky Number Seven for the ASC

Jose here. As if this year wasn’t already complicated enough in terms of finding "the one" frontrunner (don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining!), now the American Society of Cinematographers has gone and made matters worse (in a totally beautiful way) by having their first three-way tie in history which led to a whopping seven nominees for their Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in a Theatrical Release Award. Joining usual suspects 12 Years a Slave, Gravity and Inside Llewyn Davis were much less “obvious” choices including The Grandmaster (which our friend Michael has been championing) and Prisoners (which is kinda obvious...) and for those who think this means a snub for American Hustle should remember that none of Russell's movies have ever been nominated for a cinematography award by either ASC or AMPAS. 

The full list of nominees:

• Sean Bobbitt, for 12 Years a Slave
• Barry Ackroyd, for Captain Phillips
• Philippe Le Sourd for The Grandmaster
• Emmanuel Lubezki, for Gravity
• Bruno Delbonnel, for Inside Llewyn Davis
• Phedon Papamichael, for Nebraska
• Roger Deakins, for Prisoners

So far, Gravity and Inside Llewyn Davis have been racking up the critics awards in this category, so it’s interesting to see what an actual guild has to say. We could say that five of these will be our Oscar nominees, especially since the ASC and Oscar rarely agree in their nominees or awards (in 27 years only 10 ASC winners have gone on to win the Oscar).

TRIVIA and more after the jump!

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