First and Last, Fire & Ice

First and Last now without visual clues. We've blinded you.

Can you guess the movie from these audio clues?

First and Last Fire and Ice

Linkbringer

GWB finds Raúl Esparza all villainous

big screen
Broadway.com Raul Esparza, one of our favorite song & dance men, channels his inner gangster for the new film GWB
Pajiba the fifth annual "most bangable celebrities" list. Fun writeups on everyone from Tom Hardy to Emma Stone to Fassy, who tops the list.
In Contention fans can finally choose between Magneto & Professor X for the X-Men First Class Blu-Ray. Nice covers but obviously I'd have to go with Michael Fassbender.
Scene Stealers chooses a top ten of movie super soldiers to celebrate Captain America's arrival. Hey, that's probably what I'm watching right as you're reading this. Wheeeee.
Little White Lies interviews director Mike Mills on his personal and beguiling film Beginners. I love this bit on whether he's nostalgic for old time Hollywood...

Well, I’m obsessed with history. We are the latest chapter in a long story and if we want to figure ourselves out of get out lf the prisons that we’re in then you need to figure out the past. So I’m always looking back. And I do love Louise Brooks and I do love old Hollywood through the teens, ’20s and ’30s, because it was being invented then, it was like this whole new entrepreneurial world that was just being discovered. ...I like these cultures that were born from punk, too. I was around and I watched these things make themselves a little bit and I related a lot to that. Actually Louise Brooks was a fucking punk, man. She was a really interesting, subversive person.

That she was.

Have you seen this new poster for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy?

It's nifty, yes?

I like that it feels secret messagey and that it isn't loud. But perhaps mileage will vary. I still don't know what to make of it in the Oscar predictions but it's an interesting wild card sight unseen.

small screen
My New Plaid Pants Black Book's wondrous Carice van Houten will play the sorceress Melisandre in Game of Thrones. I wish I loved Game of Thrones because between them giving Sibel Kekilli a plum role and now this (Melisandre is a totally sick character) it's like they're trying to fill their cast with my foreign film harem. Who's next: Franka and Ludivine?
Vulture Lisa Kudrow talks about Web Therapy which she's bringing to regular TV now. My greatest related dream is that she convinces Meryl Streep to reprise her sex-crazed reparative therapist Camilla Bowner because it's so topical now what with those crazy anti-gay Bachmanns flitting about on the news.
Towleroad Where in the world is Anderson Cooper?

Posters Should Be Seen and Not Heard. And Other Grievances.

So Annoying! Let it be known: I'm not going to post the leaked teaser to The Amazing Spider-Man. I didn't even watch it despite it popping up everywhere. I don't understand the internet fascination with getting everything before you're supposed to even if that means crappy quality fuzziness. Why spoil a first view with a bad copy of something? 

So Annoying Part 2! That Hunger Games motion poster that everyone is posting. I opted to just screengrab it for y'all because it's so NOISY. At one point with all the windows I open up when I'm working it sounded like my whole apartment was on fire and it's already hot enough up in here.

In addition to setting your computer aflame virtually -- thus denying you marshmallows to make up for it --  the poster counts down the days until the movie opens which will unfortunately NOT put an end to the constant publicity and internet jabbering about it since it's going to be a quadrilogy or something and if Harry Potter taught us anything it's that the world likes television more than the movies and would like the movies to just become television series with new seasons lasting 2 1/2 hours opening for as many years in a row as possible. The minute that Season One of The Hunger Games opens people will just start speculating about Season Two of the Hunger Games. 

Y'all know I love the movie posters and anything Hollywood can do to liven them up is appreciated. Only please do so very quietly. Like you're in the library. Or a church. The Holy Church of The Cinema.

The movies aren't silent anymore but posters still should be. 

"The Grand Masters" Teases

The teaser trailer for Wong Kar Wai's 代宗師 (The Grand Masters), a biopic of sorts about Ip Man, a famous martial arts teacher who taught Bruce Lee among others has arrived renewing interest in the movie.  It's been an easy movie to forget about since the gestation period has been so long. (And, yes, there's already been a competitive movie on the same topic that's already opened and closed.) I can't remember when they started filming but you may recall that one of our favorite movie stars on the entire planet, Tony Leung Chiu-Wai broke his arm early on in the production and we sent lustful sympathies. Here he is in training again after recovery.

Several websites are speculating about when this will be finished and open (late 2011 fest circuit? cannes 2012?) but we're guessing not until 2012. Since it reunites the acclaimed and very long-absent director with his longtime muse, we're excited no matter how long we have to wait. So long as we can remember it exists that is. (Tony broke his arm two whole years ago!). 

 

The teaser isn't much to go on -- your typical battle scene -- and people have been stealing WKW's style for so long that this tiny tease even looks quite derivative but WKW's films are so stylish that there's every reason to hope this will be yummy eye candy. And with Leung at the center, it could be a new classic. They've already made so many great films together: Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood For Love, etcetera.

Bonus Points: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon's young lovers Zhang Ziyi and Chang Chen co-star, though they don't appear in this teaser.

Confusion: This title is printed differently everywhere you read about it: sometimes singular, sometimes plural, sometimes with spaces and sometimes as one long word "Grandmasters"

Curio: Sir Anthony Hopkins, Painter

Alexa here. I was lucky enough to vacation in Hawaii a few weeks ago. While walking down a particularly touristy street, a video projected in one of the shops caught my eye: there was Anthony Hopkins, standing in an artist's studio, talking about painting. Suddenly I was thinking of Surviving Picasso and how frustrating I found it that Picasso's paintings were only partially visible. Yet here was Hopkins, standing in front of a full canvas. Of course, this wasn't Guernica, but one of the actor's own alternately brooding and peaceful works. 

Hopkins has said that looking at his paintings, "what you're observing is my state of mind." He has also attributed himself a Van Gogh-type personality, especially during his drinking days.  Certainly something about his artwork mirrors his acting roles: alternating the garish (Instinct, Freejack) with the understated (84 Charing Cross Road, Howard's End). Here's a sampling. You can see more here.

More samples follow.

Click to read more ...