Short Link 12

Awards Daily early twitter reactions to Gravity
Gold Derby uncovers a beautiful piece of trivia I totally didn't know (that happens less often than I'd like with awardage). If Homeland's stars both win Emmy again it will be the first time ever for a dual lead consecutive win! 
Film Doctor 12 unanswered questions about The World's End. I haven't spoken much about the movie but I thought it was the weakest of its trilogy, funny in parts and especially strong in its middle but I thought the opening and closing acts were weak.
Pajiba on Mandy Patinkin (Holla!) coming to grips with his past bad behavior. True little known story: I am a huge Mandy Patinkin fan so this renaissance has been wondrous for me.

Deadline the HFPA have made the wisest of decisions and have asked Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to host the Golden Globes again. Let's all pray they say yes because the alternatives (*cough* Ricky Gervais) have been ghastly!
Forbes Madonna tops the biggest earners list in Hollywood this year with Steven Spielberg in runner up position
CHUD the Pompeii teaser, skewered in two sentences.
Pop Bytes Alexander Skarsgård is an awesome drunk cheerleader. På Svensk!
Guardian President Obama joins the plus column for Lee Daniels' The Butler
Cinema Blend wonders who Joss Whedon will kill off in The Avengers: Age of Ultron 

Finally...
I don't normally post straight up advertisements as news as most movie sites do (it feels shameless and also "abuse-me!" crazy since the studios aren't paying you but you're still airing their commercial!) but I hope this week's double feature from Paramount is really successful so I'm sharing it!

click on the pic to investigate this 2 for 1 offer

(Is this their sneaky way of getting WWZ over the $200 million mark which its been inching towards for weeks)

Double Features, which you almost always have to program yourself as Unofficial pairings, are one of the great joys of moviegoing. It's one reason we use to twin them up in that Best Pictures series. It would be so perfect if they became a thing again in theaters. Two movies for the price of one! I missed Star Trek Into Darkness (not that I felt its absence) but I liked World War Z far more than my review indicates. I must have been so crabby when I wrote that because it's one of the stickiest movies from summer 2013 with many strong sequences that more than make up for its wobbly seams and the rather blank protagonist... at least he's got the face of Brad Pitt! 

And while I'm providing free adspace please know that Short Term 12 (my pet cause of the summer) expands in or to all of these 12 cities on Friday...

Click on the pic for the official site

So do the right thing, make me proud, and round up 12 friends and go see it.

for entertainment purposes only
while we're on the subject of 12, here's an, uh, 13th link, for a 12 year old vine genius. The cat licking vine is the best thing evah.

Wanna Help Me Plan My TIFF Schedule?

I am pleased to report that I'll be covering TIFF for the first time since (gulp)... I don't even want to talk about how long it's been though I love that city dearly. TIFF has been kind enough to grant me accreditation but because the news came so late i've only been able to carve out about 4½ days for movie watching. I'll cram in as many movies as I can. Amir will also be there to help bring you TIFF festivities. If it goes well this year, we'll carve out 7 to 10 days next year. How's that? Have you looked at their massive slate? Which movies are you most excited to read about? 

Yes, No, Maybe So: Dallas Buyers Club

We've been waiting for this one. Jean-Marc Vallée's biodrama about rebel cowboy Ron Woodroff who started an illegal drug ring for AIDS victims in the 80s has long had Oscar buzz for the emaciated slip of what was once Matthew McConaughey but now we can put the buzz to the test with the trailer. Let's break it down into Yes No Maybe So categories. As we do. All right All right.

YES
The cast first. At the very least one feels that a ticket purchase for this movie might help Matthew McConaughey on his road to recovery. He's been pushing himself with such commitment into the actor everyone wanted him to be right after A Time to Kill but which he never became until now. We owe him a thank you meal! Jared Leto looks amazing in his brief snippets as Ron's liaison with the gay community who were hit the hardest by the plague in the 80s. It's nice to see Jennifer Garner loosed from Ben Affleck's arm for a couple of hours. 

Newsflash for y'all. There aint nothing that can kill Ron Woodroff in 30 days."

The story sure looks compelling in this well cut trailer. There's lots of room for McConaughey to show off and as an actor, that's kind of what he does best, right? That moment where Matthew as Ron falls to the ground and the moment when he cries look gut wrenching in the good way.

Plus C.R.A.Z.Y., Canada's Oscar submission in 2005, showed that Jean Marc Vallée was a director capable of harnessing great chaotic rock n roll energy into compelling personal journey cinema 

NO
The Young Victoria, which won Oscar nominations in 2009, suggests that Jean Marc Vallée gets a little duller when he's aiming for the prestige market with personal journey cinema. (But then, who doesn't?)

Jared Leto waits for drugs

An unfair "No" aside: No matter how great the true story is, I don't particularly relish yet another civil rights struggle story being coopted to honor yet another brave white straight person. Yes, I know it's a medical drama / biographical film rather than a gay drama but given the way AIDS spread into an epidemic due to governments ignoring it during its infancy as a minority problem, a  "gay cancer" as they put it, the topic will be inextricably linked to the gay struggle in history. I have reason to believe this will eventually change given that we've seen a few historical dramas recently which were told from the point of the view of the minority (The Help, mostly, and The Butler and Milk) but for the first century of film this was largely not the case and we always had to look at history and breakthrough triumphs for minorities through a heteronormative white prism. 

MAYBE SO
In all the descriptions of the story, Ron Woodroff is described as a homophobe and there is room to explore this in an interesting way without cheaply praising him, as some movies do with their jerk heroes for making baby steps towards being a better person (Philadelphia arguably had problems with this with the Denzel character). Let's hope Jared Leto and his film friends are portrayed in a well rounded human way and that the "you sayin' I'm a homo!?" element and conflict is handled with surgical precision and not implicitly endorsed as

THE TRAILER

Are you a Yes No Maybe So ???  Let's take that question three times
1. On the movie?
2. On its Oscar chances?
3. On crazy weight loss/gain as shortcuts to acting glory? (i.e. should movie stars really risk their health this way when visual effects have come so far?)

Introducing... Five Nominees From 1952

I've always been interested in the way characters / stars are introduced within their films. Sometimes you can feel the filmmaking underlining the moment: look here, you will love this character! At other times their intro is either sneaky or nonchalant as the actor waits for their key moment later on to really sell their character. We must make this a regular series I think! Let's use it now to plug this Saturday's Supporting Actress Smackdown. 

Consider the way the Oscar nominees of 1952 are introduced...
I've ranked them according to the quality of their filmed entrance though this should not be construed as a comment on their eventual ranking in the Smackdown.

Colette Marchand and Jose Ferrer in Moulin Rouge (1952)

Monsieur Monsieur, please! Say I'm with you."
-Marie's first line in Moulin Rouge

a prostitute, a  student, a nurse, a society wife and a movie star after the jump...

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Curio: Murat Palta's Classic Film Miniatures

Alexa here. I realized recently that I've been remiss, that I've failed to post on the amazing work of Murat Palta in this column.  Well, today I'll make up for it! For his senior thesis, the Turkish student strove to blend traditional Ottoman miniature book illuminations with classic Western cinema. Rightfully so, these amazing compositions received a lot of attention outside his academic circle. The blend is a perfect one: Ottoman artists used abstraction to highlight the transcendent in the stories told. What's more transcendent than these scenes, so familiar to our modern eyes? 

I won't caption them, as the fun comes in the moment of recognition. How many do you recognize? More after the jump

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