Links: Poitier & Tarantino, Poppins & Gaga, Miyaga & Felt?

Movie|Line Quentin Tarantino loves Sidney Poitier.
Cineuropa Tarantino and Christoph Waltz will reteam for period film about an escaped slave Django Unchained.
IndieWire Focus Features will distribute Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom.

Salon on hot actresses pandering to fanboy culture.
Playbill gets quotes from the Tony Nominees
i09 wonders what this summer's surprise hit will be. I'm confused about how Super 8 could count as a surprise though. So much huzz on that one.
/Film Cameron Crowe reveals We Bought a Zoo images.
TOH! The Webby Award winners: Angry Birds, The New Yorker, Funny or Die, Web Therapy, etc...
MTV Keanu Reeves sidesteps the  'James Franco My Own Private Idaho Art Exhibit' question; he hasn't seen it.

Pretty Pictures
You may have noticed I've renewed my love of illustration of late. So here's a piece from the artist SAUL ZANoLARi called "Echnography of Change" which is using Lady Gaga and Julie Andrews to represent tradition and transgression. My first response is only that Gwen Stefani is going to be so jealous of Gaga [cue "Lonely Goatheard" yodelling]

"Echonography of Change" by Saul Zanolari

Anyway... Remember that "lesson" I drew up, about rewarding students with chocolate, a grand lesson delivered by Michelle Pfeiffer herself? Well I was clicking around to see other Illustrations for that same theme (it's a weekly art party) and I did find one other piece that used movies as a jumping off point. When2FeltEm has a really fun almost tangible looking take on The Karate Kid's Mr Miyagi. Love it.

I also enjoyed this bittersweet universal lesson from Letile and two funny efforts from Vhrsti, lord of the flies, and Hello Auki. Bunnies are always trouble!

MTV Movie Nominations

Whenever I hate on the Oscars and their very limited range of movie-love, I have only to glance at the annual MTV Awards to remind myself that some groups have an even teensier worldview. Once again the MTV nominations are a weird mix of movies that are actually good (Black Swan, The Social Network) movies that are super popular despite themselves (The Twilight Saga) movies that whether or not they're good or bad or better than usual or worst than usual it would never matter (Harry Potter) and movies that are deemed acceptable by virtue of either hipness, mainstream popularity, youth appeal or household name ubiquity of its stars (Kick-Ass, Easy A, Inception, Just Go With It) or movies that the MTV viewers didn't see but they like the star so it's okay to nominate him or her (Ryan Reynolds in Buried) and still look sufficiently populist and not like some stuffy film blogger. Mix and match!

Y'all know I approve of weird awards since i do pages of them myself each year so I've always been happy that the awards existed. I just wish they were more discerning. Take Inception. Makes total sense in all ways of looking at it that it would get a ton of nominations with MTV. But the KISS between JGL and Ellen Page? That was ice-water on a scale of hot, like a brother/sister makeout. Nomination that made me the happiest: Amy Adams vs. The Sisters in The Fighter for Best Fight. Maybe it's protecting their own -- SHE'S AN MTV GIRL -- but it's still a perfect decision as nominations go.

I already voted on all categories. Will you?

Curio: Thor's Special Helmet

Alexa here.  I must admit I am more than a little intrigued to see Kenneth Branagh's take on Thor. I think his bombast is really suited to a superhero flick, especially one based in Norse mythology, with all the Wagnerian melodrama that implies. Chris Hemsworth certainly looks the part, although we'll see if he can top a bleached Vincent D'Onofrio in Adventures in Babysitting. With Vince in mind, here are some special helmets to transform you into a hero, just in time for Friday.

Sweet hand-knitted Thor helmets!  Buy 'em here and here.

Or, if you prefer to go full-throttle, for a cool $400 you can have this flaming Thor helmet. 

Stage Door: Oscar Flashback = Tony Prophecy?

I promised you a stage|screen colum each Tuesday. With the Tony Award nominations out this morning (see previous post), we already have so much to discuss but how is this for a twist on the flashback.

Remember this moment from the March 1995 Oscars? Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner won Best Costume Design for the epic outback drag comedy The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Sharon Stone with Oscar winning costume designers in 1995

Lizzy's credit card dress was all anybody could talk about the next week in fashion reviews, outside of nominee Uma Thurman's lavender Prada that is.

Several Tony winners have gone on to repeat their wins at the Oscars when the stage plays or musicals transferred to the bigscreen (think Yul Brynner, Shirley Booth, etcetera) but it doesn't usually happen the other way around. Trivia Expert Question: would this be the first time that someone won a Tony for reprising an Oscar triumph?

OTHER SILVER SCREEN CONNECTIONS!
Let Them Double as Rental Suggestions If You Don't Have Access To the Stage Plays

Screen-To-Stage
Best Musical Nominees Catch Me If You Can, Sister Act and Best Musical no-shows that were nominated in other categories like Priscilla and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown are all stage adaptations of hit movies.

Stage-To-Screen and Back Again
Both Musical Revival nominees How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Anything Goes have made trips to the big screen in 1967 and 1956 respectively. How To Succeed is a typical adaptation but the Anything Goes film bears extremely little resemblance to the stage musical apart from some of the same songs. Driving Miss Daisy wasn't a big success in these Tony nominations but Vanessa Redgrave was nominated for reprising the Jessica Tandy role, a role that started on the stage.

Compare and Contrast
War Horse, one of the big tickets in town, is based on the book. The book is also the source of the upcoming Oscar Bait film War Horse from Steven Spielberg. It's not an adaptation of the stage play but they're both adaptations of the book. Got it?

If you can't see the plays, read the books or see related films

I've Seen That Face Somewhere Before
Mark Rylance, nominated for Jerusalem is a superb and acclaimed stage actor but unfortunately he doesn't work in movies very often. But some of you may remember him from his brief stint as  leading man of controversially explicit films like the beautiful period piece Angels & Insects (1996) or the stinging drama Intimacy (2001). Lily Rabe, nominated for her Shakespearean work in The Merchant of Venice, is the daughter of Jill Clayburgh and you may have seen her in the movies No Reservations, Mona Lisa Smile or as Ryan Gosling's loyal friend in All Good Things.

Ellen Barkin in "The Normal Heart" which has strangely never been made into a movieAnd though it pains me to admit it this, I've discovered recently that many younger readers are quite unfamiliar with Ellen Barkin. She's playing the stressed doctor in The Normal Heart, another revival of Larry Kramer's devastating AIDS drama (I saw the last revival which was great but people have been completely insane for this one so apparently it's unmissable.) Barkin's  screen heyday was in the late 80s (notably The Big Easy with Dennis Quaid and Sea of Love with Al Pacino). Her last high profile studio movie gig was Oceans 13 (2007). She's also Julianne Moore's bestie though that's neither here nor there, just a fun factoid.

Mother Gothel!
Donna Murphy, who hopefully won an army of new fans with her great work in Tangled, is Tony nominated again for Best Actress in a Musical for playing a woman from youth to old age in the tearjerker The People in the Picture. Murphy is  a two-time winner already.

Oscar Winners On Stage
Frances McDormand, Vanessa Redgrave and Al Pacino are all nominated for lead roles.

Will Any of The New Plays and Musicals Be Made Into Movies?
Your guess is as good as mine. Hairspray is a recent example of a movie that became a stage musical and then became a movie again based on its stage musical. Back and forth it goes. It's hard to know. Kander & Ebb's The Scottsboro Boys in particular might make an interesting transfer and we all know what happened with Cabaret and Chicago. Good People from David Lindsey Abaire has already had one of his acclaimed plays transferred (Rabbit Hole) and he's also a working screenwriter (his current gig being Oz: The Great and Powerful.) so maybe that show about a poor southie in Boston could make some sort of move.

Tony Nominees 2011

Matthew Broderick and Anika Noni Rose announce the nominees

Bright and early, that's how all awards nominations are announced. Tony winners Matthew Broderick and Anika Noni Rose, read the names at 8:30 AM. Broderick, who had a very famous run as a movie star in the 80s, actually won his Tony in 1996 for the musical revival of How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. Sixteen years later, another revival of that same musical opens with another famous young movie actor, the boy wizard himself Daniel Radcliffe. But he wasn't nominated so no history repeating itself this time.

New musicals The Book of Mormon (from the South Park guys), The Scottsboro Boys and the raved revival of Anything Goes with Sutton Foster and Joel Grey (still doing 8 shows a week at 79 years of age) lead the nomination tally with 14, 12 and 9 nominations respectively.

Notable Celebrity Snubs: The Tony nominating committee has gotten a lot of flak over the years for valuing performers with off-stage celebrity over those with impressive Broadway credits. But this year maybe they're slightly working against the FAME trend. Celebrities Robin Williams (Benghal Tiger) and Kathleen Turner (High) were both left off their category's lineups and obviously Harry Potter fans won't be happy to see Radcliffe snubbed. James Earl Jones was also snubbed for his Driving Miss Daisy performance. 

Swenson, Butler and Radcliffe. All snubbed for roles you've seen at the movies!

Stage-Star Snubs: Will Swenson (Priscilla) and Aaron Tveit (Catch Me If You Can) were undone by competing against their co-leads (who were nominated). Future movie star Benjamin Walker, who ruled the nation onstage with huge charisma inBloody Bloody Andrew Jackson should have been recognized. Former Xanadu headliner Kerry Butler, who is always a joy to watch, did not win a nomination for Catch Me If You Can (she was in the Amy Adams role) continuing her rough relationship with Tony. Xanadu aside, she's been snubbed the other three times she's been eligible despite well received work or hit shows. What's that about?

Triple Crown Alerts? None that I see on first run through. Vanessa Redgrave, nominated for Jessica Tandy's Oscar winning Driving Miss Daisy role, already has the Oscar-Emmy-Tony triple. So does Al Pacino who is nominated again for The Merchant of Venice. Frances McDormand, nominated for Good People, only has the Oscar so she'd still need an Emmy if she wins this year's Lead Drama Actress prize.

Sutton Foster Break! I'm sorry but I just l-o-v-e her. Seeing her onstage is always a thrill. Here she is rehearsing with Oscar and Tony winner Joel Grey.

A complete list of nominations is after the jump divvied up into Plays and Musicals.

Click to read more ...