Links

Rain Perry interesting and fun article comparing Crazy, Stupid, Love. with... Biutiful. (via AD)
Tom Shone on the elitism of magic and power in modern entertainment. It's a curious question really.
THR Nobody can quite let go of Sex and the City Movie 3. It still might happen.
Corduroy (via JJ) talks to Josh Hartnett about his career (post acting hiatus). I thought I'd share this since we were just talking in that Taylor Lautner post -- I realize they're not exactly interchangeable ;)  -- about the limited shelf life of young male actors who get hired for a lot of big roles and big projects before they've truly proven themselves. Isn't that essentially what happened to Hartnett?  

Hartnett photographed by Peter Ash Lee for Corduroy

When you first start really young and you have some success, they want to take away your edges and make you into this proto-typical movie star... people don’t like to be boxed in and actors are no different.”

He also says:

I started when I was 17 and when you’re that age, you’re a bag full of nerves. I was a little bit freaked out by the whole industry. But now I’m actively looking for things that scare me; things that push me outside my comfort zone. As an actor, that’s the only way you grow and the only way you create something truly interesting for yourself and the audience as well.”

...which is code for rebuilding his once bright career through the indie film circuit, isn't it?

"Would you like one of my flowers" (Illustration by Scott C)The Great Showdowns simple concept movie illustration tumblr that yields very cute results. I love that the references are from several decades, not just the overplayed 80s ...though there's quite a lot of that as there always is online. Check it out.
ioncinema talks about the next project from I Am Love's brilliant director Luca Guadagnino which looks like it may star the ubiquitous duo of Mia Wasikowska and Jeremy Renner who plan to be in every movie of the next 5 years (along with Fassbender & Mulligan)

The Awl asks "what makes a great critic?" 
IndieWire Michael Fassbender offered the lead role in Prisoners. But his docket is so full now, who knows. 

"Avengers Assemble" at D23

God, I hope people didn't wait in line hours and hours for this. So short.  It's cute how Jeremy Renner bounces out at 1:05ish though. 

I guess they only really showed a teensy tiny clip between Samuel L Jackson's Nick Fury and Tom Hiddleston's Loki which i09 loved. I'd hoped to post a counter opinion from someone who was not at all impressed (it's important to maintain some balance in our fanboy ruled world) but have misplaced the link. Drat.

P.S. Totally eager to see how Tom Hiddleston's career develops. He was great to look at as F Scott Fitzgerald in Midnight in Paris and I suspect he did about as fine a job as anyone could have done making sense of his confusingly written character in Thor. Eager to see what's next for him?

To 2014, and beyond!

Andreas here, with a scoop courtesy of The Pixar Blog: a few tantalizing details have been released about two original, untitled projects on the Pixar slate, due out in 2013 and 2014.

The first, from Up co-director (and voice of Dug) Bob Peterson, will be about "a world where dinosaurs never went extinct." Pixar's already proven their aptitude for speculative fiction (i.e., WALL•E) and dinosaurs, especially when voiced by Wallace Shawn. And after seeing The Tree of Life's prehistoric interlude, who doesn't want more sensitively rendered big-screen dinosaurs?

The second, to be directed by Pixar mainstay (and unqualified genius) Pete Docter, "explores a world that everyone knows, but no one has seen: inside the human mind." I have no idea how to react to this, other than to squeal with childish glee. The Playlist adds that it's "wildly ambitious" -- and coming from the creators of The Incredibles and the Toy Story saga, that means something.

Between the abomination that was Cars 2 and the announcement of Monsters University, many of us had begun to fear that Pixar was entering a long, self-cannibalizing slump. But maybe they were just messing with us? That's what this news, coupled with the oh-my-god-it's-gorgeous teaser for Brave, seems to suggest. Ohh, Pixar, you were just lowering our expectations so that you could raise them absurdly high again, weren't you?

So, which of these Best Animated Feature nominees-to-be whets your appetite the most? The one with the dinosaurs, or the one that sounds like Inception, Pixar-style (but better)?

That Barton Fink Feeling Turns 20

Michael checking in.

My first introduction to the brothers Coen was viewing Fargo on VHS at age 16 and nothing since that memorable night has been able to dislodge it as my favorite of their films, although a college-aged love affair with Milller’s Crossing came closest. But even as Marge and Jerry have remained secure on their pedestal, I have returned to none of the Coen brothers films more often than 1991's Barton Fink. Not even the compulsively rewatchable Big Lebowski has kept me coming back more consistently.

So as Barton Fink turns twenty years old (tomorrow), I wonder what it is about the Coen's Cannes-winning, surreal, showbiz fever dream keeps me so fascinated?

I certainly don’t return compulsively to solve mysteries of the story, that’s for sure. The Coens may plot their stories with a Swiss watch precision that suggests all the answers are there if you look hard enough, but the ambiguity the brothers place in their movies is deliberate, and not meant to be puzzled out to a solution. The Coens often feature unanswerable questions prominently in their stories. What did, after all, happen in the hotel room in No Country for Old Men where Javier Bardem seemed to vanish into thin air? What motivated Gabriel Byrne’s character in Miller’s Crossing? What was the meaning of the prologue in Serious Man? Or the epilogue in True Grit?

Written, the brothers say, as they struggled to untangle the plot of Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink is the story of a lefty playwright in the early forties who has one hit on Broadway and promptly goes to Hollywood to sell out only to find himself facing an epic case of writer’s block. Taken simply Fink would earn a place in the canon as one of the most wicked Hollywood satires ever put to film. But, as most everybody knows, Barton Fink cannot be taken simply. At the three quarters mark Fink takes one of the all time most jawdropping plunges into surreality, and audiences to this day are still trying to make sense of it all, from the contents of Barton's mystery box to the beach painting on his wall.

Barton Fink theories are numerous and fun and I could fill a book debating them all. The most obvious of course is that Barton is in Hell. The clues for supporting this range from obvious like the omnipresent heat to subtle like the repetition of the number six in the elevator. Once you start looking for clues you can find them everywhere. On my most recent viewing I just picked up on the suggestive names of wrestling pictures  - “Hell Ten Feet Squared” and “Devil on a Canvas”.

Do you see what happens Larry?"

Then there are the theories about Barton Fink being about the rise of fascism represented by Charlie Meadows with Barton as the intellectual too feeble to notice or stop it. The most glaring red flag in the movie is Goodman’s pronouncement of “Heil Hitler” before he kills one of the detectives which is certainly no accident. But if Goodman represents evil why does he kill the detectives who, with their noticeably German and Italian names, clearly represent the Axis powers? I for one have always read his delivery of "Heil Hitler" as sarcasm before killing the anti-semitic detective, but what does it matter? We should take a cue from the character in Serious Man and “embrace the mystery” or it will lead you in circles like walking an MC Escher staircase.

Once you give up trying to solve what needn’t be solved you can settle in and get the full Barton Fink experience. The film is genuinely hilarious and every word out of Michael Lerner’s mouth as the vulgar studio boss is solid gold. Fink also contains what I consider to be John Goodman’s all time best performance (I know that is saying a lot). Lerner got the nominatio but Goodman would have been my choice to win the trophy that year. And speaking of Oscars, when everyone was bemoaning that Roger Deakins lost an absurd ninth time this year for the cinematography of True Grit they might just as well added that it should have been his tenth, because he was royally screwed out of nod for Fink.

Or maybe you can just forget all that and just groove on all the endless supply of haunting, weird touches the Coens place in every scene of Fink, my favorite being the endlessly humming bell that Barton rings to summon Buscemi’s Chet from the Underworld. There is also the strange dying bird at the film’s end, which is supposedly  just a moment of happenstance caught on film, or the bizarre fact that it is clearly John Turtorro’s voice as one of the actors in the play that opens the film. What are we to make of that?

Slate magazine recently did a retrospective of the Coen’s body of work complete with a poll ranking the films. I was chagrinned but not surprised to see Barton Fink languishing in the lower half of the poll. This is always the way with the connoisseur’s choice. Barton Fink is the Coen’s in their purest most undiluted form, and film’s like that never win the popularity contest. They do however win the test of time as they draw audiences back over and over again to explore their depths.  

Complete the Sentences (Favorite Scenes)

My fav' scene in The Help is the one where ______. Best-in-show is totes  _________ .  

My fav' scene in Rise of the Planet of the Apes is _____________ .

The best scene in [insert favorite movie of 2011 thus far] is when _____________ . I want it to be nominated for ___ Oscars.

The best scene in [insert last movie you watched] is when _____________ .  

 Complete these sentences in the comments.
You know you want to!