Pepe for President!

Craig here with a small post for one of the smallest Muppets: the most appetising member of the crew, Pepe the KING Prawn. (Don’t call him a shrimp.)

Pepe (short for Pepino Rodrigo Serrano Gonzales) is one of the next, or later, generation Muppets. Obviously he doesn’t carry the cultural cache of Kermit and co., yet, but he’s eked out a place of singular significance for himself with fans of entertainment and seafood alike. He’s not called a Crustacean Casanova for nothing. He stands out from the crowd of other ‘Muppens’ and is living, swimming proof that four arms are better than two. His story is a true classic decapods to riches tale.

His behind-the-scenes work on film and TV makes him the most hard-working, the most alive-to-the-possibilities-of-the-business, Muppet there is. He’s a prolific profiler and an interviewer extraordinaire, one to test the resolve of any leading chat show host either side of the Atlantic (a place he’s quite familiar with). He’s an all-round auteur in my book. As an accomplished actor he’s a safe bet for a future Oscar win (For Your Consideration Best Supporting Actor 2012: Pepe as Pepe in The Muppets), but as an entrepreneurial entity he’s matchless. He interviewed Jodie Foster for Flightplan (which was miles better than actually watching Flightplan), shook his “bon bons” at Ricky Martin and has extensively worked the behind the scenes on The Muppets’ movies, producing riveting on-set insights next to none. Tireless, he is; talentless, he’s most certainly not. All that and he’s fathered 1,500 children. He’s busy and he’s happy, okay?

In a piece of radical casting perfection, Pepe was the first non-dog to star as Toto in The Muppets’ Wizard of Oz. This was my introduction to him. He gave the film’s best performance – he certainly out-acted Queen Latifah and Quentin Tarantino in the film – stealing the thunder right from under Kermit’s, Fozzie’s, the wizard’s and even Miss Piggy’s noses. Any sea creature who has the tenacity to confidently say, "Si, I'm so gosh darn sexy, it hurts," is worth a million. He’s quick-fire, he’s crazy, he’s capable of anything. I can’t wait to see him in The Muppets, okay? After that, it's certainly Pepe for President!

"Fifty Goodies"

A wonderfully fun illustration set by Robert Ball

"Fifty Goodies" by Robert Ball Can you name them all?

the list after the jump...

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Alice Doesn't Link Here Anymore

The Hairpin "Our Bella Ourselves" is one of the best pieces I've read on The Twilight Saga and the communal anger over its terrible central role model.
Paper Mag cute piece on future Oscar nominee Jean Dujardin, describing his character George Valentin in The Artist.
Nick's Flick Picks has revived his top 100 project
Inquirer Christian Bale praises Tom Hardy & Anne Hathaway on their work in The Dark Knight Rises
Towleroad George Michael hospitalized for pneumonia and not doing well. 
Sunset Gun "I Am One of Your Fans" on actresses playing other actresses
Little White Lies interviews Eddie Redmayne of My Week With Marilyn. I love it when actors actually talk about the career management portion of their job:

Informally you’re part of a group of up-and-coming British actors making waves in the States right now. Is there a sense within that group of having made it?

Yeah. Well… Working and spending time in the States, it’s interesting to see the group of actors and actresses from my generation, who all started around the same time, getting so much respect. It’s wonderful, and at some point I’d love to work with some of my mates in that capacity, because it’s exciting, having started off as jokers trying to get a gig, thinking that our paths could meet.

Who are we talking about, exactly?

Dom Cooper, Andrew Garfield, Ben Whishaw, Charlie Cox… We’re not best mates, I’d say more close peers.

And what a fine group they are, right?

It's a Marty Marty Marty Marty World
THR Hugo looks to be overperforming a bit at the box office in a nice surprise.
Awards Daily Samples from the Hugo soundtrack. Do you think Howard Shore will see another nomination? 

Finally, Sons of Norway reports that Martin Scorsese may take on the adaptation of the novel The Snowman soon. But a word of caution before you race out to buy the book in the hopes of getting a jump on a future Scorsese. This is one busy busy busy 69 year old man. The IMDb, while not 100% reliable on such things as future projects, lists over a dozen projects on his current docket and since he's not as fast as Eastwood and Allen, he'll be in this 80s before we've seen them all. I respect the author Jo Nesbø's approach to a film adaptation; he wouldn't sell without director approval. Scorsese was at the top of his dream list of five. 

Golden Horse Awards: Two Oscar Submissions Win Big

I'm so itching for a big American awards show to hit us. Soon, soon. But until then, let's look to Taipei where The Golden Horse Awards were just handed out.

As expected the hit Taiwanese film Warriors of The Rainbow: Seediq Bale took home Best Picture. There's the jubilant cast doing an aboroginal dance on the red carpet. Fun!

Andy Lau and Deanie YipThe big winners of the night are both Oscar submissions this year in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Taiwan's Seediq Bale which is a action drama about aboroginal tribes battling occupying Japanese forces won the top prize and four other statues including "Audience Choice". Hong Kong's caretaking drama A Simple Life must have been close to a surprise sweep since it managed three of the top four statues: Director, Actor and Actress.

Superstar Andy Lau won Best Actor for the second time. He'd previously won for an Infernal Affairs sequel (the original Infernal Affairs was remade into the Oscar winning The Departed where Matt Damon took on Lau's role). Lau then presented Best Actress a category wherein he'd worked with 3 of the 4 nominees. You can see Shu Qi, he calls her "the most huggable woman ever", grinning throughout the presentation. Best Actress went to Lau's costar and actual godmother Deanie Yip. She also won the Volpi Cup at Venice this year for this role as a grown man's lifelong help who he must then care for when she has a stroke.

Video, complete list of winners, and fashion after the jump.

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Q&A: Small Screens & Sex Workers

Since there were so many television centric questions in last week's "Ask Nathaniel" insert, I figured we'd have to give them their own Q&A post. We'll get to the movie questions on Tuesday. But for now let's handle all these questions involving smaller screens than we usually go for.

BENSUNCE: Like George Clooney, which current television actors would you see having a successful career on the big screen?

Expecting anyone to have Clooney-sized silver screen success after switching from the small screen is, well, a recipe for disappointment if not disaster. He's a 1%er. Most of the people I enjoy on TV now already had their movie shot and have gone small screen for better / bigger roles than they were getting at the movies. But the current small screen actors I think absolutely deserve and would ace major big screen opportunities are Christina Hendricks and Jon Hamm (Mad Men). On a riskier pipe dream note I hope Harry Shum Jr (Glee) gets at least one romantic comedy opportunity both because he's adorable and because Hollywood really needs to end their strange delusion that Asian men can't be romantic leads... or leads at all. 

SEAN D: If you were in charge of the Emmy awards how many nominations/wins would Buffy the Vampire Slayer have received?

I knew talking about Buffy earlier this month would get send us all spinning back in time to Sunnydale. It's always difficult to answer questions like this because so much of what should have been nominated and won in any given year in any given artform is contingent upon the competition that year. But I will say that I think Buffy's second, third and sixth seasons had no business whatsoever not being nominated for Best Drama Series and I think they should have won the Best Series Emmy at least once for Season 3. I'd probably have nominated the show itself for seasons 2 through 6 consecutively though I get why people have issues with seasons 4 through 6. But the standard lines of complaining about those seasons are wrongheaded ("it should have stayed in High School") and short sighted ("it got too depressing!"). In the first short season Buffy The Vampire Slayer was merely finding its footing and establishing its identity and the last season was a badly paced mess with a couple of wonderful moments but the rest is gold. As for writing Emmys, it's inexcusable that "The Body" and "Once More With Feeling" didn't have writing and directing nominations and in both cases you could make strong arguments for actual winged statues, too.

Shouldn't "Doppelgangland" have secured Alyson Hannigan an Emmy nod?For acting the show deserved the following nominations at least (Season #)

Actress, Drama
Sarah Michelle Gellar (2, 4, 6)
Supporting Actor, Drama
James Marsters (2), Anthony Stewart Head (6) 
Supporting Actress, Drama  
Allyson Hannigan (3,4), Emma Caulfield (5, 6)
Guest Actress, Drama 
Juliet Landau (2), Eliza Dushku (3)  
Guest Actor, Drama
Harry Groener (3) 

TOM M: Which recent film would make the leap to television and prove a MASH-ing success? And which television series has the bones to make a great film?

Crazy difficult question. The mediums are so different despite all the crossover these days. I don't know about M*A*S*H* level success ratios for anything but I would love love love or should I say I would ♥ a series based on I ♥ Huckabees that focused on the existential detectives Vivian (Lily Tomlin) and Bernard (Dustin Hoffman). I would fill my DVR with that nonsense and delete every other show taking up too much room. I could see a series based on Inception working fairly well and I think Scott Pilgrim vs. The World should have been a TV series to begin with.

Nathaniel's dream television series

MORE AFTER THE JUMP...

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