I M 3

JA from MNPP here. I'm sure this is something that Nathaniel has considered here on the site before, but it's fresh on my mind with that there fifteen second teaser for tomorrow's actual full-sized trailer for Iron Man 3 sucking all the air out of the room today. Ignoring it would be the best way to not give in to the micro-seconding of hype, but I'm so continually struck dumb by these teaser-trailer-for-trailers that it almost makes me kind of appreciative in a backwards sort of way? Of course that's where we were heading as a culture! Of course. It all makes sense now, so I thank you, harbinger of doom, for the clarity. It's like those screenings where you bring your iPads to play along, or the commercials that they force us to watch on YouTube. What do I say to that? Besides just packing up a bag and moving into a cave, of course. Next stop Honey Boo Boo: On Ice: The Movie. In summation, get off my lawn.

First & Last: Thomas & Jesse

the first and last image from a motion picture (and the first and last line of dialogue)

first

Thomas, I want you home by 3:00... not 3:30, not 3:15, but 3:00."

last

When Jesse was a boy, just a few years younger than you, his father..."

Can you guess the movie? Note. Bonus points if you can name the director who never made another film...

LFF: A Conversation On 'Lore', Australia's foreign Oscar bid

David here with another report from the 56^th BFI London Film Festival. Craig and I had a discussion about Australia’s entry for the Foreign film Oscar, Cate Shortland’s Lore.

David: A story about the children of Nazis struggling across a Germany occupied by Allied forces is several thousand miles away from what you’d imagine director Cate Shortland’s wheelhouse is. But Lore’s focus on the burgeoning sexuality and voyage to adulthood of a teenage girl is strikingly similar to Shortland’s debut Somersault - so much so that lead actress Saskia Rosendahl often reminded me of Abbie Cornish in her often abrupt movement and slightly displaced screen presence. That might be how I’d describe Lore itself - it never feels truly present or powerful. Instead it filters the story through meaningful objects and eerie poetic interludes, and while this is a method of storytelling I’m certainly not averse to, it didn’t work for me in this case.

Craig: I wasn't totally sold on Lore either, all things considered.

Click to read more ...

Madeleine Stowe

Confession: On Sundays I think of little else.

P.S. my apologies that I haven't written about Revenge this season. I feel so overwhelmed by every episode. Where to even begin?

Anna Kendrick for "The Last Five Years"

I've long dreamed of a film adaptation of Jason Robert Brown's possibly unfilmable The Last Five Years which is, frankly, my favorite original musical of this millenium (thus far). Only Michael John LaChiusa's The Wild Party and Adam Guettel's Light in the Piazza come anywhere near it in terms of my obsessiveness. I know every word backwards and forwards. Literally at that; half of this romance-gone-awry musical (Hers) is told backwards and the other half (His) is told forwards. 

Turns out a film version is very much in the works. Writer/Director Richard LaGravenese wants to make it and Anna Kendrick, she of the perfect pitch, plans to star in it. They'll have to get funding and a male lead still. The right male lead won't be easy to come by. He's got to be a) convincingly Jewish b) comedically and dramatically gifted c) blessed with enough sexual and intellectual charisma to have the audience buy into his sudden literary stardom and understand if not quite forgive his extramarital flings and he's got to be able to sell the show's single best dramatic song "Nobody Needs to Know". 

It's tough to imagine anyone surpassing Norbert Leo Butz and Sherie Rene Scott who originated the roles off Broadway but that's a problem that only those theater aficionados who were lucky enough to see it during its run in 2002 have to contend with.

One of Broadway's best - Sherie Rene Scott

I'm not sure what to make of this filmmaking combo. LaGravenese's work is all over the place quality wise from the sublime (The Fisher King's screenplay) to the let's-not-talk-about-that (two poorly received Hilary Swank vehicles for starters.) Anna Kendrick won't have any trouble selling the comedy or the vocals but it's tough to imagine Kendrick, who has made her career on scarily driven type A bitches (Camp, Up in the Air) who would eat Cathy alive, selling her frustrating doormat qualities and lack of confidence with the endearing comic neurosis and empathic sweetness that Sherie Rene Scott mastered. I love Kendrick's voice and y'all know I am thrilled that we're arriving in a place (possibly) where actors with actual vocal gifts are routinely cast in musicals, but the role is just such a 180º from the roles that made her famous.

Are there any other Last Five Years fans in the house? Speak up. Convince your fellow TFE readers to grab that CD.