Sudden Flashback: Ladies in Waiting

I always forget that Emily Mortimer and Kelly Macdonald were Cate Blanchett's right-hand (and left-hand) girls in Elizabeth (1998).

(And Daniel Craig was in it, too!)

None of those ladies had to wait long for their careers to blossom... though in the case of Emily & Kelly maybe the careers should've blossomed more spectacularly. Aren't they great? Lovely & Amazing Emily can next be spotted in the comedy Our Idiot Brother (opening in August) and Kelly is playing "The Grey Lady" (aka Helena Ravenclaw) in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (opening... well, you know when.)

Man vs. Link

Grantland Molly Lambert's incisive piece on Shia Labeouf's star persona "Tears of a Fighting Clown"
Super Punch "Zombie Snow White MacBook Stickers" Eeek and Yay!
i09 wonders which DC characters could save DC's miserable movie track record. I voted for "Aquaman but only if James Cameron directs it" because James Cameron is awesome. The end.
PopMatters muses on Marvel and whether or not they can sustain their own coherent movie universe.
The Awl "30 Ways to Say 'I Want You'"

xinmsn Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Carina Lau are trying to get pregnant. A fan snaps them having lunch with Faye Wong. I personally think Wong Kar Wai should film all such too-starry lunches.
Towleroad Reason #21,318 to Love Brad Pitt. He's still fighting the equality fight with mouth and money.
Critical Condition would like to know what you think of this new serenity in the face of death as seen in Restless, The Big C, 50/50 and the like.

And the season premiere of Man vs. Wild is nearly upon us (July 11th) with Jake Gyllenhaal hitting Iceland with Bear Grylls.

Jake's technique is looking good. His body is relaxed which means his trailing leg is hanging well down, making it easier to keep his balance.

?!?

New on DVD. Reader Request Poll

I'm no longer sure how to cover new DVD releases. Just as I'd decided we needed more coverage of them -- acknowledging that this is how most people watch movies -- and just as I'd decided on this biweekly format of "you choose!" Netflix went and signed some month long delay deal on new releases... but only some of them.

So now the subject of when something is or isn't available on DVD is nearly as confusing as whether or not a movie is or isn't available to people theatrically, which is something I don't think any of us ever wanted to see happen. Why can't the movie business learn what all other businesses seem to know in the modern age: if people want something, you agree to sell it to them! Curse you corporate deal-makers.

So I'm no longer going to be remotely completist about covering which DVDs are out which makes my little OCD self really sad but there it is. So since you're only getting a portion of what's available anyway, I will now only list movies I am curious about in some way (sometimes for healthy reasons, other times not). You can choose between the following movies... (If you don't have an immediate preference, let someone convince you to vote for something in the comments.)

• 13 ASSASSINS -Takasi Miike plays with his samurai dolls. Supposedly the 45 minute action sequence which concludes the film is epic epicness.
• BATTLE: LOS ANGELES -Aaron Eckhart, cleft chin champion, battles aliens in Pacific Central Time.
• CEREMONY -Indie romantic comedy in which Michael Angaro falls for Uma Thurman who is already engaged to Lee Pace.
• HAIR (1979) New on Blu-Ray Hippies sing and dance in Central Park in this stage to screen adaptation.
• HALL PASS -overpaid stars pretend to be average suburbanites who are allowed to cheat on wives. We're guessing heteronormative-monogamous values prevail & nobody actually does the extramarital deed and/or realizes it was a mistake to even have the fantasy. There's no place like home!
• NEW YORK NEW YORK (1977) New on Blu-Ray Martin Scorsese's post WWII musical about the on again off again romance of a saxophone player (Robert De Niro) and his chanteuse girl (Liza Minnelli).
• RED RIDING HOOD -Amanda Seyfried is color blind, pairing the famous red cloak with a lavender dress (yuck), as she visits her grandmother with very big teeth.

Previously you forced Nathaniel (c'est moi) to write about The Other Woman, The Rescuers and Biutiful. What will it be this time?

poll by twiigs.com

First and Last, Dublin

the first image and the last line from a motion picture

Let's drink to Dublin because ______________ was born there. 

Can you guess the movie?

Check your answer after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Biutiful Interrupted

It's not my habit to skip an Oscar nominee. But things happen. So it was that I missed Javier Bardem's Oscar nominated Best Actor turn in Biutiful (2010). This seems to happen to me about once a decade, so I've already used my "get out of jail free" card for the 'teens.... or the ten's... what are we calling this new decade? (In the Aughts the only nominee I missed was Tommy Lee Jones in In The Valley of Elah.) As the movie began with its somber first notes and black screen the words "Alejandro González Iñárritu" struck dread in my heart. I quickly remembered why I hadn't wept when the film had given me the slip before the nominations in January. Iñárritu's insatiable appetite for Miserabilism has been killing my mood since Amores Perros way back in 2000. I will forever be grateful that he introduced me to Gael Garcia Bernal but beyond that he hasn't done me favors.

I was no great fan of Babel and I openly hated 21 Grams. In fact the only Iñárritu I've ever enjoyed was the short film "Powder Keg" which is very typical of his oeuvre despite being a BMW commercial so maybe I can only handle his aggressive Feel Bad omnipotence in short doses?

It's not my preference to balk at a Reader Request. But this happened: as I began to watch the film, I suspected very quickly that I wasn't going to be able to handle it. A shot of Bardem's smiling face framed by wintry whites and cool blues immediately upset me; the saddest smile I've seen onscreen in many a year. Bardem is such a fine actor but more than that he has almost the perfect movie face, it's hugely memorable without being limited by its specificity: Is he handsome? Is he ugly? How can he be so imposingly monolithic in profile yet so human and fleshy head on?

I've always loved Javier Bardem but by the time his "Uxbal" was in a doctor's office getting a prostate exam and being an asshole about the needle for a blood test (is Uxbal a drug addict?) my mood was crashing. The last two funerals I've been to were both cancer related and one of them, very very recently, was for a dear friend's father who happens to be the exact same age as my own father (thankfully still with us).

I wasn't expecting the follow up scene, wherein Uxbal visited a funeral home where three little dead boys lay, one of them (ostensibly) haunting him. Nor was I expecting Uxbal to prey on the boy's family for money (something about his ability to commune with the dead -- fake or real?). By the time his sad looking son (like father like...) was having a bedwetting episode and Uxbal was pissing blood the next morning, I had to turn the damn thing off.

Note to filmmakers: never ever show a closeup of the contents of a toilet bowl. There are some things we see every day in real life that we need never see onscreen.

I looked at the DVD clock and realized I was only 20 minutes in and I had a full 128 minutes to go and opted for self preservation. I have been struggling with a particularly strong stubbornly escalating bout of depression and I didn't want to welcome more of it in. I had heard from the film's naysayers that the movie is relentless about piling on -- to the point of Job-like cruelty. And if cancer, addiction, poverty, ghosts, blood, and preying on grieving parents were just Iñárritu's opening reel gambit, it was going to be beyond my coping abilities in my present state.

I am not one of those sad and limited moviegoers who yearns for all movies to be happy -- a boyfriend of a good friend once complained about the sad movies we were dragging him, too "do you like any happy movies?" he asked in exasperation. And it's true that I do quite love a good tragedy. But I know my limit-testing buttons and Biutiful pushed nearly half of them in its first 20 minutes, including a peculiar uncommon one... toilet bowl closeups. Were I convinced that the world revolved around me, I'd suspect that Iñárritu was created in a lab just to test me. For this test, I have laid down my pencil and admitted defeat.

Have you ever fully intended to watch a movie and bailed from mood crashing?

Previous Reader Requests:
The Other Woman, The Rescuers and Beauty & The Beast