Thoughts I Had... While Looking at the Nymphomaniac Teaser

A day or two ago I casually linked to the first poster for Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac though this flippant "oh and..." way of dealing with it doesn't do its succinct brilliance justic. So, it gets a whole post.

• Classic Lars pranksterism
• Although... does Lars love or hate Charlotte Gainsbourg's punani? This is difficult to suss out. I mean he obviously hated it in Antichrist (rusty scissors anyone?) but despite this tagline "Forget About Love" this strikes me as a very affectionate nod to Charlotte's private parts
• Best use of the parenthetical since Me and You and Everyone We Know

))<>((
Back and Forth Forever

• Pedro Almodovar probably already has this poster framed... (The Shrinking Lover anyone?)
• I don't see how this would work for a matching penis poster. No, I was not just trying to figure that out on my keyboard. Shut up.
• There's been a lot of talk about "real sex" rather than simulated sex on the set of this movie but we heard that before with Lars von Trier's The Idiots and he actually used body doubles for that so who knows if the starry cast (Shia Labeouf, Willem Dafoe, Connie Nielsen, Jamie Bell, Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgård, Uma Thurman, etcetera) are being spared the grunt work (get it, "grunt" work? no, never mind) 
• Remember when Charlotte Gainsbourg was married to Heath Ledger in I'm Not There and how great she was in their scenes together? She's so undervalued as an actress but at least Lars gets her.
• In real life Charlotte is married to Yvan Attal who once made a picture co-starring Charlotte in which they played "Yvan" and "Charlotte" called My Wife is an Actress. The plot involved him worrying about her being unfaithful on set. I demand a sequel that takes place during the shoot of Nymphomaniac.

Julianne Moore... Rock Star?

Are you buying Julianne Moore as a Rock Star? (Click over to Vulture for "Hook and Line" from What Maisie Knew). She's not quite Juliette doing PJ in Strange Days but still pretty convincing, don't you think?

poll by twiigs.com

"Hit Me..." Summery Schedule

Every Wednesday we look at a picture together and choose our own "best shot" individually. It's a great way to see a motion picture through multiple sets of eyes. Join us...  Add eyeballs to our crazy blogging monster that just looked at cloned monsters, rotten to the core dames, and stars reborn. 

Summertime, Ripley, Fantasia, Hud

NEXT
5/8 Summertime (1955) David Lean shoots Katharine Hepburn in Venice
5/15 The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) Tom would really like Dickie's life, thank you very much
5/22 Fantasia (1941) a strictly conducted 'best shot' special. You have three options:

1) Beginners (or Short on Time?): In honor of the May Centennial of "The Rite of Spring", choose your Best Shot from that section of Disney's experimental early feature.
2) Apprentice: Choose from 'Rite of Spring' AND the movie as a whole. Two shots.
3) Sorcerer:  Your post will contain six screenshots, your choice for "best" from each of the movies major classical movements: The Nutcracker Suite, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Rite of Spring, The Pastoral Symphony, Dance of the Hours, and Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria

5/29 Hud (1963) 50th Anniversary! Nominated for 7 Oscars but outrageously not Best Picture. If you've never seen it, this is mandatory viewing before our Hit Me Hiatus in June. (Season 4 concludes in August)

The State of the State of Cinema

Hey everybody, it’s Tim, here to add my two cents to what has been, incontestably, the film story of the last few days: the sprawling, self-described “rant” delivered by Steven Soderbergh as his keynote speech on the State of Cinema at the San Francisco Film Festival on April 27. The San Francisco Film Society has made the video of his entire speech available, accompanied by a not-quite-accurate transcript; it’s worth checking it out in either form, though I found it easier to puzzle out what the director was getting at in the text version.

By all means, it takes some puzzling. I yield to no-one in my love of Soderbergh, but there’s no denying that his speech is very much a rambling, discursive piece, meant to be enjoyed as conversation, rather than analyzed closely for a structure it very much does not possess. It’s pure stream-of-consciousness (it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising to find out that it was predominately improvised), and that’s okay: anybody who has listened to one of Soderbergh’s DVD commentaries is well aware that when he gets to rambling, some very keen insights on the nature of the art form tend to come tumbling out...

Click to read more ...

Link 15

New York Times Deanna Durbin, juvenile Oscar winner and 30s/40s star, has died
Rope of Silicon the first suggestive poster for Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac ...
Nymphomaniac ...which also now has an official website
Us Weekly Reese Witherspoon talks about her arrest and taking responsibility for the crazy 
People Seth Rogen's mancrush on Zac Efron. I'm wondering what the "expletive" was but FWIW Zac is "very veiny" 
DP/30 David Poland talks to actress Alicia Witt
NPR the music from The Great Gatbsy (2013) 
Empire Logan Lerman joining Brad Pitt in the WW II tank thriller Fury 

All Superheroes All The Time. Must Be Summer
Vulture a practical guide to not hating Gwyneth Paltrow in Iron Man Three. This is amusing but Gwynnie is actually wonderful in the movie. Take that! 
YouTube a teaser for The Wolverine that I like more than that big trailer
The Playlist Quicksilver & The Scarlet Witch confirmed (sort of) for The Avengers 2. I'm confident that Joss Whedon can do right by witches (duh!) so yes, please. 
Movieline A sweded Iron Man Three parody from Thailand 

(Sort of) Off Cinema
The Stranger an excellent and funny piece about professional basketball's first coming out by heterosexual filmmaker Sherman Alexie (Smoke Signals, The Business of FancyDancing) 
ValleyWag an oblivious startup party from AirBnB themed on The Great Gatsby 
In Contention this is a few days old but fun. President Obama as Daniel Day Lewis as President Obama 

How Had I Never Seen This?
Meryl Streep with Adam Guettel ("Rain") 

As a lifelong Streep fan and also someone who loves Adam Guettel -- some of you may remember I recently saw him do a rare live performance -- how had I never even heard of this collaboration? Or is my memory going already? Thanks to TFE Reader Rene for pointing this out to me in the last Meryl post.