Pfeiffer Next Pfriday... "People Like Us"

I'm not supposed to talk about the movie yet but Pfans rejoice. I can't resist telling you that Michelle Pfeiffer enters the new drama People Like Us with a bracing cold snap. The movie has been racing along rather manically to set up its plotty-plot-plot and suddenly she's there slapping it with a "snap out of it!" move. Settle down, movie, settle down. 

Pfeiffer's Confession in PEOPLE LIKE US

She's wonderful in it. Three friends were seen afterwards arguing about how wonderful and no one agreed. Friend A: She's special in it if you haven't seen her seminal performances. Friend B: I thought she was great but there's no part... ugh, there's no part! Friend C: [unintelligble drooling] Pffeifffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffferrrr.

I confess. Friend C was me. (I'm not especially verbal immediately post-screening.) My point: It's easily her best work since Chéri. Not that there's been much work since Chéri. Shut up!

Pfeiffer hits the media circuit (Good Morning America) to promote People Like UsBut as for her current state of work. She promises more now that the empty nest looms in just one year's time. She recently made a rather grandiose statement in a Zap2It interview...

I’m always feeling that my best performance is still in me. And I think all artists feel that whether you’re a painter, actor, a musician — I hope so. I think it’s what keeps me going... I’ve noticed a lot of people who win the Academy Award — Best Actor, Best Actress — they go through a long period where they don’t work for a while and I worry about them. There’s sort of that wanting to achieve that, which keeps you going, and then when you achieve it, it’s like, ‘Well, what now?’ I don’t ever want to lose that fire that I have for it.”

Pfeiffer talking Oscar? Whoa. In a better entertainment world, that'd be leading story everywhere.

If this quote is indication, something has shifted in her headspace. I like to imagine that it was that campaigning for Jeff Bridges' Career Oscar (aka Crazy Heart) a few years ago. Does this mean we'll see her chasing the gold man again in prestige pictures and meatier roles?  I've learned not to expect too much face time from the elusive goddess but it sure would be a welcome sight.

Are you planning to see People Like Us? Or are you waiting for a great picture or a great role before welcoming her back.

Current Top Paid Actresses

Forbes ranks the working actresses in order of assumed income for the past year (May to May) and Queen Theron, who has been absent way too long, jumps back in the game with her recent burst of acting and activities. Forbes counted guesstimated residuals, endorsement deals and profit participations and such. The list goes like so. (Dollar figures are in millions)

01 Kristen Stewart $34.5 Twilight finales + Snow White
It'll be interesting to see if she can hold "a top earner" status post Twilight what with Jennifer Lawrence next in line for the absurd franchise riches.
02 Cameron Diaz $34  huge profit sharing on cheaply made Bad Teacher
03 Sandra Bullock $25 ...not sure how she scored this high with only Extremely Loud as a new element but... okay.
04 Angelina Jolie $20
05 Charlize Theron $18 -thanks in large part to Dior, surely
06 Julia Roberts $16
07 Sarah Jessica Parker $15 the latest movie flopped but the perfumes are totally selling
08 Meryl Streep $12
09 Kristen Wiig $12
10 Jennifer Aniston $11 

I'm not greedy at all. Would totally settle for, oh, half of one week's worth of Aniston's income as my annual salary. Too pricey, huh? Okay, okay. I'll take three days worth as annual salary as long as joint custody of Justin Theroux is on the table. Who can arrange this? Please and thanks.

You know what would make a fun list? Yours. Rank your top ten if you ran the world. Which actresses would you gift with the most endorsements and the biggest incomes this past 12 months. Whose name and face and merchandise do you want to see plastered everywhere?

Link Highway

Scanners on the tributes to legendary film critic Andrew Sarris (RIP) who helped make the auteur theory the big deal it still is with movie buffs.
NPR Monkey See says goodbye to Matt Groenig's hugely funny and enduring "Life is Hell" comic strip (RIP... so many endings lately) 
The Playlist Aw, look at who's suddenly ambitious. Mr. Ryan Phillipe. He's planning to direct his first feature Shreveport (about a has been movie star who is kidnapped and tortured) and he'll star in it, too. We hope it's a metaphor for his actual career because what would be more awesome than a elaborated staged celebrity pity party in the shape of a "Riveting Thriller"
Rope of Silicon Pixar unloads Monsters University concept art 

24 Frames August: Osage County is really going to happen I guess. George Clooney is producing now and he gets things done.
Movies.Com unexpected appearances of Presidents in Movies 
In Contention Kris Tapley picks the 10 best Pixar films on the eve of Brave's release. It's as good a time as any though I might practically flip the whole rankings 180˚
My New Plaid Pants Barbarella as a TV series? I don't know what to say...
The Mary Sue fashion ilustrations inspired by The Avengers
Awards Daily has the winners of the Broadcast Television Critics Awards... i.e. the counterpart to those "Critics Choice" awards. Showtime's Homeland is the clear favorite this past year 
Comics Alliance What if Blade Runner (1982) were entirely animated in watercolor?  

And in another auteurial revision... "What if David Lynch had directed Rock of Ages?" Ha! Very well executed imaginings here, particularly the Paul Giamatti riddles.

...would you see that movie?

Burning Questions: What Is Your Stand Alone Film?

 Michael C. here to do his part to shake up the conventional wisdom.

It’s a big step for any budding cinephile when one learns to value one’s own opinion over the established consensus. If you were like me, when you were an adolescent film lover, you tended to take certain movie’s masterpiece status as gospel. If, for example, TV Guide said that Cecil B DeMille’s The Ten Commandments was a four star movie than that's the way it was. After all, you could see how great it was just by counting the extras.

Hopefully one grows out of this and learns to approach pre-certified classics with healthy skepticism. As a college student working his way through the greats of cinema, I clearly remember concluding that Dr. Zhivago’s 200 minute running time was roughly 195 minutes longer than necessary, give or take a few beautifully framed shots of snow.

But it is not much of a challenge to poke sticks at the bloated reputations of certain “classics”. More daunting is defending work that has the majority of scholarly opinion aligned against it. Just as we learn to be wary of movies that come bearing the stamp of approval, at some point we all end up falling madly in love with a title that is greeted by the rest of the world with at best polite acknowledgment, or at worst outright hostility. So on this subject I am curious to know: What movie do you stand alone in considering a masterpiece?

Any true film lover has at least one minority opinion...

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Yes, No, Maybe So: Anna Karenina

Hello Happy Peppy Cineastes. Beau here again (I recently wrote about The Exorcist) at the request of Nathaniel to discuss the delicious new trailer of Joe Wright's Anna Karenina starring pretty British people in fur coats.

YES
I like Joe Wright. With the exception of The Soloist, which didn't grab me, he has delivered a fairly fascinating filmography. Pride and Prejudice sauntered across the screen, lackadaisically, in love with the prospect of love. A true achievement, it managed the rare feat of cinematic adaptations of beloved novels by satisfying the devoted Austinphiles, while causing those of us less inclined to 19th century romantic literature to swoon in spite of ourselves. Atonement, a much more problematic feature, still holds in my memory thanks to its exquisite craftsmanship (that emerald dress!) and the sweltering chemistry between McAvoy and Knightley. Even Hanna proved to be a fascinating film... [more after the jump]

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