Wednesday, June 29, 2011 at 10:01AM secret messages from the movies
I saw your photo from the Vogue shoot. This dress belongs to you! ♥
Can you guess the movie? check your guess after the jump
Secret Messages Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 11:45PM 
Willow Smith: Daughter of WILL SMITH in case you forgot!You guys...
I was going to talk about this last week but decided against it under the umbrella "if you don't have anything nice to say..." But now Willow Smith had to go and remind me by wearing her dad when she hit the red carpet for the BET Awards. Just in case you forgot why you should care about her!
It wasn't enough for Will Smith to foist his son upon the world by way of co-starring roles when he was 9 (Pursuit of Happyness) and a leading gig (The Karate Kid) by the time he was 11. Now, he wants his daughter to be equally famous: cue record deals and movie contracts; she's 10.
You've heard by now -- though some of you may have blocked it out -- that Smith is hiring Emma Thompson to adapt the musical "Annie" for his daughter to whip her hair back and forth in in the starring role.
♫ The fame'll come out tomorrow
Bet Will's billion dollars,
that tomorrow
there'll be fame. ♪
How long before we start hearing disturbing things about this family? His kids just seem awfully young to be pushed so aggressively towards global fame. There are many famous Hollywood dynasties of course -- nothing wrong with following in your parents footsteps -- but how often does the second generation get this big a push this early?
Okay, maybe I did just spend way too much time watching Ryan O'Neal talk up Tatum O'Crazy the other day. But believe me when I say that if Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie suddenly decided that they needed to produce movies to star each of their children before they hit puberty, I'd worry about that family, too.
Carol Burnett as Miss Hannigan in "Annie" (1982)Or maybe I'm just annoyed that one of the great actresses of the past century -- that'd be Emma -- has been relegated to behind the scenes scripting duties for the vanity projects of another star's offspring. Vulture suggested last week that Emma would make an awesome Miss Hannigan (played by Carol Burnett in the last movie version and Kathy Bates in a telefilm) and we concede that if that happened, we'd totally be interested. I hope Will Smith is going to pay Emma very very well but the thing is ...I'm starting to think that we should get compensation pay from someone for every year that we don't have Emma Thompson on our movie screens (sans Nanny McPhee makeup, I mean).
Hopefully Emma's "Oh" character in next summer's Men in Black III is a fun one.
Annie, Emma Thompson, Screenplays, Will Smith, Willow Smith, child stars, musicals, remakes Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 9:00PM "Malkovich! Malkovich! Malkovich!"
John Malkovich was just honored at the Munich Film Festival in Germany with a "CineMerit Award" so herewith a very impromptu top 4 performances. I loved him in his Oscar nominated work in Places in the Heart (1984) back when I was a kid but I don't remember the movie at all so I left it out.
Nathaniel's "Best" Malkoviches
YOUR TURN!
John Malkovich, Oscars (80s), Oscars (90s) Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 5:46PM 
Raise your hand if you think it was more sneaky-strategic than any secret intelligence spy movie move ever was to release the trailer to Brave (2012) at the exact same moment when the world was painfully realizing that Pixar is fallible while watching Cars 2. (Yes, yes, the people of Planet Earth ought to have caught on to this during the snoozefest that was Cars but feeling very very sleepy has a less damning quality than feeling very annoyed; people do like a two hour nap now and then.) Redirect the conversation to a happier place!
So herewith the teaser to Brave which opens next June ...alas, not this one. This one is the one where we get Cars 2, damnit. We can't really break it down like Yes, No, Maybe So since it's only a teaser. We wait until the full trailer for that. But here's the gorgeously verdant tease.
We're all YES thus far.
Plus you know how we feel about red-headed heroines. Haven't been this excited to see a head of hair animated since Tangled was first announced... or maybe even since the first peak at Pocahontas back in the 90s ... that luscious windswept black mane. Oh what a sight it was.
P.S. If you can't get enough animation talk now that you're skipping Cars 2 (you are, right?) you might consider listening in on the Animation Fascination podcast which is talking to the animators Chris Chua and Austin Madison about their work on various Pixar films. That's them in kilts below while working on Brave.
Chris Chua & Austin Madison
It's an interesting background listen. Like, I'd never stopped to think how earworm irritating it would be to hear the same line reading over and over again for days on end while you're animating a movement within a scene!
Austin: For me it was Toy Story 3 working on the Potato Head characters, Mrs. Potato Head in particular. She's -- it's George Constanza's mom (Estelle ). That 'Georgie stop playing with yourself' -- that sort of voice. I had to hear 'MY EYE! IT'S BACK IN ANDY'S ROOM!!!' for about a week straight. You can mute it when you're working on blocking but as you get into the polishing phases you really have to listen to it over and over. I was ready to jump off the nearest bridge. Horrible.
Interviewer: Does that ever ruin the experience when you watch the full film?
Chris: All the time.
Austin: It's tricky because working on a film -- it's really hard for us get perspective at all on a film and how good it is or isn't. To us it is -- you see it almost like a photo album. When I'm seeing scenes I'm thinking about all the dailies of that scene that's been playing in front of me dozens and dozens of times. I feel like only now I'm getting to the point where I can watch Ratatouille (2007) and fully enjoy it. It takes about five good years to get any perspective on a movie.
Can you imagine?
Brave, Cars, Pixar, animated films Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 3:47PM June Weddings (reprinted from the TFE archives)
Excerpted from a June 1944 edition of the Hartford Courant, "America's oldest continuously published newspaper".
Fourteen years later, the couple divorced. No clipping available but the following photo is believed to have been taken during the couple's 1957 Christmas party.
I've never seen Frank so soused.
This tragedy need never be repeated in Hartford or Iowa or Massachusetts or New Hampshire or Vermont or D.C. or New York now either.
FAR FROM HEAVEN (2002)
Far From Heaven, LGBT, weddings 
