Stop Trying to Make Link Happen

Next Movie can you recite all of Mean Girls in half an hour? This guy in a pink shirt can. 
AV Club Netflix knows you're lying about all those highbrow films you claim you watch!
Pop Matters this is a pretty great interview with Courtney Love about her short but fascinating career as an actress with The People Vs Larry Flynt as its focus
The Playlist Woody Allen needs the right idea for his eventual "shot in Sweden" film -- he's already done his Bergman riff (Interiors) so what could he do? 
Dark Horizons on how they're filming Quicksilver (Evan Peters) super-speed for the new X-Men flick 

Playbill It looks like Clint Eastwood's A Star is Born has been shoved aside for a different musical he's interested in since he's set to start filming his take on Jersey Boys later this month. Several cast members have been plucked from the stage show including Tony winning John Lloyd Young
Empire a new Legolas still from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (I shudder every time I type that title. Such a horrible title) 
Esquire What I've Learned: Woody Allen Edition

YouTube you've heard that 8 year old Nicki Minaj-addict Sophia Rose Grace got the Little Red Riding Hood role in Into the Woods right? This furthers my wariness about the movie.  That's actually kind of a tricky part which is usually cast older since uh... her whole plot is kind of a sexual metaphor
Coming Soon filming began today on Black Sea, the latest from Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland) an treasure-hunt thriller starring Jude Law
In Contention reminds that This is Martin Bonner comes out this week. I thought it was already out but no matter. Go see it. It's good.
MovieWeb a television series based on The Exorcist may be on the way. No word on what happened to the previous series based on The Exorcist (from Martha Marcy May Marlene's Sean Durkin) that was supposed to be heading our way.

Yes, No, Maybe So: "Monuments Men"

Weep not for the embedded trailer I was going to use to discuss Monuments Men which vanished moments before I hit "publish". Trailers are not works of art we must protect from the Nazis so it's okay if they regularly get yanked or are seen in non-embeddable ways. They are but commercials for movies that we hope are works of art themselves. If you'd like to see the trailer to George Clooney's latest Oscar missile, click here.

I keep meaning to read the bestseller this film is based on but it basically about a group of older men on a special war time mission. They make like thieving soldiers to steal art from the Nazis before its destroyed.

YES

• Run, Jean Dujardin, run!
• Shoot Nazis, Bob Balaban, shoot 'em! [more...]

Click to read more ...

Reader Spotlight: Angelica Jade Bastién

The Reader Spotlight series features you, The Film Experience community out there in the dark, watching movies and commenting or silently absorbing the conversation right here. I started this interview series because a) I'm grateful for your patronage and b) you're fascinating! Today we're talking to Angelica Jade Bastién who writes Madwomen and Muses.

TFE: Hi Angelica, do you remember your first movie?

ANGELICA: Honestly, I don’t. In my youth (can I say that when I am only 24?) films weren’t that important to me. I was quite a raconteur (which continues to this day) but I told my stories through poetry and painting. It wasn’t until I went to an art high school that I fell in love with film turning to words to tell my stories through scripts, essays and prose. The three films that changed my life and sent me into a heady love affair with cinema, particularly classic cinema, are To Have and Have Not, The Sting, and The Third Man. I haven’t been the same since. 

Why do you read TFE?

Even when I don’t agree with your conclusions I feel you bring such a fascinating perspective to looking at film. I started to look at why I love (or hate) certain films and actresses differently and was able to articulate my beliefs just a bit better from engaging with your site. 

a few of her favorite things

Three favorite actresses? 

Fuck me gently with a chainsaw, this is difficult. I will have to go with my cinematic spirit sisters/madwomen Bette Davis, Gina Torres and Barbara Stanwyck. Ask me tomorrow and the answer will change, although Bette Davis will always be in the lineup.

Take away an Oscar. regift it.

Funny enough, I am not at all obsessed with the Oscars. They’re on my periphery vision.

Babs in "Clash By Night"Since you're so into classic cinema, what's the last one you watched before this interview?

The last classic film I watched was Clash by Night (1952). I am currently writing an essay called Viper Slut: Reclaiming the Sexuality of the Femme Fatale. I am circling around the femme fatale archetype and how she has permeated into other genres and also been used to characterize real women (Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner, for example). So, I have been rewatching a lot of my favorite films that have that character type some are noirs, some aren't. Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis and Gloria Grahame films have been playing a lot in my home because of this essay. Which isn't out of the norm! I also delve into my own history, sexuality and being a woman who has been labeled as transgressive. In essence, I believe that the femme fatale is a woman trying to gain power in a world that wants to make sure she wants none. 

Which movie would you want to live inside of?

I am already a walking, talking Douglas Sirk film. So I would say Written on the Wind crossed with The Lady Eve seen through the lens of Some Like It Hot. Just more diverse, since someone who looks like me didn’t exist in the classic films I love!

Other lovely ladies interviewed for this series:
Grace Mao, Mysjkin, Lynn Lee, Ester, Leehee, Jamie and Dominique 

Where My Girls At? Blonde Edition

Let's check in with some of our favorite ladies to see what they're up to, shall we? When I daydream I sometimes imagine Actresses sitting near piles of scripts in eeny-meeny-miney-mo fashion though some of them have larger stacks then others.

AMANDA & CHARLIZE
Amanda is on my brain because she had the good taste and self awareness to agree with the world very recently that Mean Girls is still her best performance. She'll next be seen in the porn drama Lovelace, which might have some legal trouble brewing. After that she has a lot of movies lined up but the one I'm curious about at the moment is the western comedy A Million Ways to Die in the West.

Seth MacFarlane managed to nab two of the most beautiful and busiest actresses in Hollywood for the film. While he was super annoying as an Oscar host it's important to remember that his last effort Ted was more hilarious than we were expecting and in more varied ways than its high-concept synopsis suggested. "Western Comedy" doesn't generally scream "great roles for the ladies" and the plot synopsis doesn't help in determining whether Charlize Theron and Amanda Seyfried will have anything of note to do:

A cowardly farmer seeks the help of a gunslinger's wife to help him win back the woman who left him.

That could mean that they're both "the girl" aka...just there to be pretty and maybe sassy/badass but basically just facilitate the man's journey and his heterosexuality. But let's hope the roles are fun even if they're non-dimensional since both Charlize & Amanda have wicked comic timing.

AMANDA'S MAMMA MIA MOMMY
First Truth: I not-so secretly wish Meryl Streep, The Undisputed Queen of American Cinema, would step down from her throne for a two-year hiatus aso I could be REALLY excited about seeing her again the way I was in 2002-2003 when she surged back to artistic dominance with not one not two but three of the best performances of her career back to back to back. Second Truth: Even though I feel this way I rarely miss a Streep movie, so I'll be there for Into the Osage County Woods but I must admit that I am considerably less excited to hear about the two films she'll follow those up with.

She'll be reteaming with Robert DeNiro for the fourth time for the adaptation of the novel The Good House. The stars were romantically paired in The Deer Hunter (1978, beloved and best-picture winning) and Falling in Love (1984, modest but worth it for, well, the modesty of Streep just playing a normal woman) but I honestly can't remember their roles in Marvin's Room (1996) which is the last time they shared the screen. The last time I remember thinking about Marvin's Room was in 1997 when I was puzzled on nomination morning that Diane Keaton snagged a nod for it.

Meryl is also in talks to join Jeff Bridges in the adaptation of the dystopian novel The Giver as "the society’s Chief Elder, an authoritative and antagonistic woman who assigns the young their tasks".  [Temper Tantrum] Sounds like a perfect role for Michelle Pfeiffer. I realize it's useless to hold on to the now 24 year old dream that that Fabulous Baker Boy and his Susie Diamond would one day reunite onscreen. If they never do they're dumb and I hate them. [/Temper Tantrum]

SPEAKING OF...
Meanwhile La Pfeiffer has nothing in the immediate future after this year's The Family but here's her new character poster.

"___ is One Bad Mother" sounds like a tagline for a Julianne Moore flick.  

Michelle might co-star with Tim Robbins in Man Under about a couple thrust into the art world. I would be VERY excited about this one since Robbins is a good director and all three of his previous films have the smartness going for them which is, frankly, something Michelle's filmography could use. But Robbins hasn't actually directed a feature in over 12 years so who knows if financing will come together before the famously skittish Pfeiffer bolts. 

how did i miss Kate being honored at Buckingham Palace last year?We end with...

KATE THE GREAT
Things went silent for Kate Winslet on the big screen post-Oscar win (The Reader, 2008) but she's back at Christmas with Labor Day and after that, something infinitely more exciting on paper: The Dressmaker with the one and only Judy Davis (who really ought to get a few of the roles that Streep/Mirren/Dench get if you ask me). The pairing of two world class actresses piques interest but this description from director Jocelyn Moorhouse is everything:

the tale of love, revenge and 1950s haute couture... “Unforgiven with a sewing machine.”

I'll just be over here mopping up gray matter because my mind is blown.

First Jay-Z... Now Lady Gaga?

...Marina Abramović really wants to be a household name.

After her hugely popular The Artist is Present work a few years back she's just collecting the celebrity proteges. Jay-Z just paid homage and now Lady Gaga is studying The Abramović Method to prepare her for "durational work".

This video is NSFW. Lady Godiva Gaga... sans horse. 

The Abramovic Method Practiced by Lady Gaga from Marina Abramovic Institute on Vimeo.

(Gaga is apparently determined to relive Madonna's career at higher speeds. She's basically already been through the 1983-1990 catalogue of light dance pop followed by more ambitious records, constantly shifting wardrobe, and complete global domination. Perhaps with Artpop we'll be entering her own deeply polarizing naked phase. She seems to have skipped over the "trying to be an actress" phase...)