Goodbye, Bunheads

Andrew here with a eulogy. Nathaniel just can't.

You have heard by now that ABC Family has officially pulled the plug on the comedy musical series Bunheads. It’s been five months since the show aired the final episode of its first, and only season, ironically titled “Next”. Since then the network has failed to definitively address the issue of whether or not the show was done for good. The statement the network released Monday afternoon reads, thus:

“Bunheads is a wonderful series that we are very proud to have aired," ABC Family says in a statement. "The series had amazing storytelling, the most talented cast and a passionate and loyal fan base. Recognizing all of this, we took extra time to try and find ways to bring the series back for another season, but in the end it simply wasn’t possible.  We wish the cast and crew the best in their future endeavors”

It’s difficult to speculate on the veracity of a claim like “we took extra time to try and find ways to bring the series back” but to the outside eye the line reeks of the disingenuous. [more...]

Click to read more ...

You MUST See This Movie: "Short Term 12"

It's one month away from opening (August 23rd) but I can no longer resist the urge to start the drum-beating...

Mark your calendars and call your local indie-friendly theater to make sure they're scheduling it and see Short Term 12. It's the moving story of a supervisor at a foster care facility (Brie Larson) and her relationships with her boyfriend and the kids she works with. It's the single greatest marketing-hook-free directorial debut feature I can think of since, oh, Raising Victor Vargas (2003). If that doesn't ring a bell (too few people saw it) let me just say that it's the most moving low key indie since Weekend (2011). If you love either of those movies or know how much I love them you'll understand that this is basically my highest recommendation. 

I promise you it'll be on my top ten list and I plan to beg all of you to see it. Don't make me have to catch a plane and rent a car and drive to your house and take you myself. That'll get pricey!

TV Character Mashup Fantasies

Andrew was kind enough to poll Team Experience about their joy, bafflement, and dreams regarding last week's Emmy nominations but we saved one question for last since their was so much to read and parse already. We asked one final question of the team and we thought we'd share it with you here. Bonus points to the reader who comes up with the best spec script to make any of these fabulously impossible unions happen!

Which Emmy-nominated TV characters would you love to see paired up?!? 

The Dowager Countess was a constant presence in the answers...

mashup fun after the jump 

Click to read more ...

Number Crunching & The Crowded Oscar Pundit-Sphere

Nate Silver Sometimes, often even, I curse the heavens that I wasn't better at the business side of things when I started on my course as an Oscar pundit. I was one of the first handful to arrive and being 'first' (or among them) is helpful as any business major will tell you. The fabulous life I was meant to lead *sniffle*. But each year the small pond of Oscar prognostication grows ever more crowded with big fish. This is not to say that when Salon reached out to me to discuss famous statistician Nate Silver becoming an Oscar pundit I was all [rough translation] "grumble. grumble. sour grapes"-- so I hope my quote doesn't read that way! In fact I really respect the size of Silver's career (since he didn't scream natural TV presence at all when he first emerged and I myself am terrified on camera so points for perserverance!) Plus, as a matter of basic pride, I love it when out gay men who don't easily fit any particular mold make it big. But the truth of the matter is that long before Silver became the go-to statistician for everything, statistics have been my least favorite aspects of Oscar punditry.

Many people have tried pure numbers-driven predictions and obsessive formulas in the past. Those works to a degree (especially with eventual winners) but one area they're terrible at is "there's a first time for everything" excitement and, surely, navigating the ever changing rule book. Predict the temper of the race especially in the lead-up to nominations is the fun movie-loving part and it doesn't have much to do with numbers. In my mind you can separate true Movie-Lovers from mere Oscar-Watchers merely by observing whether they care more about nominations than wins. Even people in your office pool can predict the winner as well as professionals do because they become obvious a month or two out in the headline categories (the only categories professional pundits get asked about anyway).  

But now that I've been forced to think aloud about the crowded punditry game -- with someone famous like Nate Silver in the mix I'll never get back on CNN, damnit! -- you should think along with me. Do you think there are too many of us? Who do you listen to in all the noise? What value do numbers hold over narrative?

She's Gotta Link It

Deadline Happy news! Billy Magnussen, who is fabulously funny on Broadway in Vanya & Sonya & Masha & Spike (I reviewed it) will play Rapunzel's Prince in the film version of Into the Woods
Variety I started with happy news because ABC Family cancelled Bunheads which is just killing me right now. Another singular piece of entertainment shuttered too soon because networks don't have the guts to support shows that aren't entirely formulaic and interchangeable with other shows concurrently airing. They say "we took extra time to try and find ways to bring the series back for another season" but I see no evidence that they did that. 
Signs and Sirens a provocative think piece on Melissa McCarthy's aggressive rise to the top of film comedy

Los Angeles Times RIP Actor Dennis Farina (Get Shorty, Midnight Run, Law & Order)  
AV Club bless them for publishing this list of 22 Best Picture winners that were released in the first six months of their years. This topic is dear to my heart and I'm always trying to sell it to Hollywood and nobody seems to believe me. Maybe people will believe the AV Club? 
New York Times on Woody Allen's gift with vivid female characters 
Cinema Blend The Freddie Mercury biopic is falling apart because surviving Queen members want it to be PG clean? Oy. Best that this project falls apart!
Movie City News David Poland does some thinking aloud about Netflix. I love reading about this even though he loses me once he starts getting into a fast food analogy. But I wish someone would address the issue of accessibility. I really am having nightmares about this post-Netflix world when suddenly it's so complicated to find movies again. For a short while, the first few years of Netflix it seemed like ANY movie was available for watching and for only one monthly price. It was heaven. Now it's constricting again and you have to really search for movies and pay per view instead of subscription fees. I hate it! I do not want to have to look at Hulu, Amazon, iTunes, and Netflix and godknows what else every time I want to seek out a piece of Oscar history. Each new technology change we lose pieces of the history of the movies. It happened with VHS to DVD and it's happening now with DVD to the splintering market of Streaming. It saddens me. 

Finally...
Another day, sorta disingenuous Kickstarter plea to get a rich celebrity funding for a movie that they claim they couldn't make within the system even though they got a lot of shit made through the system in years past!  Spike Lee is the latest millionaire asking his fans for cash. Now, I respect Spike Lee as a filmmaker far more than the guy who popularized this trend - Lee has made several provocative ballsy movies outside of and within the system that only he could have made. Some of his joints are even incredible movies (Do the Right Thing, 25th Hour) and even his failures tend to be interesting!

This is a mothafuckin body of work right here 

I like Spike Lee and  I am not against asking for money as my sidebar reminds but asking for money is for people who don't have it ;) People who earn a substantial living doing what they do -- should they really be the same ones shaking tin cans on the street? It's a distortion of the point of crowdfunding. The people who can't get movies made within the system are the ones that Hollywood doesn't know exist, not the ones Hollywood already supports with paychecks. I wouldn't find this trend so distasteful if even one of these celebrities would just speak the truth which is this:

'I COULD get the movie I wanted to make made within the system and get paid for it but it might take a longer time than I'd like and I heard this is an easy way to do it and I don't want to part with my own money  -- remember when Francis Ford Coppola went bankrupt with 'One From the Heart'? So just give me some, okay?

You know?