Oscar Whispers: Marilyn & Madonna

I've recently had two brief conversations with people who have seen My Week With Marilyn and Madonna's W.E. respectively. I was happy to have the conversations so closely together because it's always fun to pair Madonna with Marilyn and one doesn't get the opportunity so much anymore. Plus, aren't we all just itchy to see some real Oscar players emerge?

Left to Right: Michelle as Marilyn, Eddie Redmayne as Colin Clark (lead), Dougray Scott as Arthur Miller, and Dominic Cooper as Milton Greene

Bear in mind that these are singular tossed off opinions and the only opinions that matter in the Oscar race are the ones from the Opinion Makers within the voting ranks (the Julias, the Beattys, the Spielbergs you know the type), and any opinons marked "General Consensus" which take their time to form. The films are also far from release so they probably saw cuts that weren't final.

The friend who saw My Week With Marilyn was pretty cool on it, finding Michelle Williams difficult to adjust to as the blonde bombshell at first but eventually just fine. The film itself was judged to be lightweight. (Though one man's lightweight is another man's "frothy and charming", don'cha know? See: billions of examples through history... and Oscar history) Kenneth Branagh was singled out for praise for a showy spin as Sir Laurence Olivier. That may be worth noting since we all know that Branagh is a big ham and who better to receive that honey-glazed THESPIAN treatment than pompous Olivier?

But what of Judi Dench, I asked? "Better in Jane Eyre" was the only opinion I wrangled there.

Madonna is hands on with Andrea Riseborough's look on "W.E."The reader who saw Madonna's W.E., which looks at the famous affair of Wallis Simpson and Prince through the eyes of a modern woman in an unhappy marriage, really liked the film but she hopes it gets a new ending. High praise went to the costumes (which we'd already suspected would happen since Arianne Phillips is involved), William Orbit's score (interesting! You'll remember that the composer worked on Madonna's greatest CD "Ray of Light"), and Andrea Riseborough as Wallis Simpson who was deemed 'award-worthy' without any qualifiers.

To my surprise she referred to Riseborough as "supporting". I think I had assumed that like Julie & Julia, the obvious recent predecessor in 'two time frames at once, joined by the modern woman's obsession' that it would essentially be a two-hander with Abbie Cornish (in the present) and Riseborough (in the past) both having lead roles. Maybe it is. Everyone seems to have very different ideas these days about what "lead" and "supporting" means.

It's not much. Just some whispering but it's fun to fantasize about future Oscar players while we wait... and wait... and wait. Only 215 days until nominations! Hee.

Meryl Streep, Collecting Our Hearts For Decades

It's always staggering to really stop and breathe in the whole of her career, how long this screen giant has wowed and wooed us. Consider that in 1980 (I nabbed this old pic to the left from the wondrous Simply Streep site), she already had an Oscar and the world was already in love with her! And that was just the very beginning.

There have been bumpy patches in the marriage between audience and star, as there are in all relationships, but for the most part we've all lived happily ever after with Mary Louise Streep (Gummer). The moviegoing public, both domestic and international -- and probably even intergalactic if alien cultures have been observing our screens and stages -- has remained hopelessly besotted with Meryl since the late 1970s when she first sprang up, fully formed, an instant movie star.

Today is Meryl's 62nd birthday and she's been famous for just over half of those! We ♥ her.

Many movie stars peak just as they ascend (sad but true) and are defined by one to three (if they're lucky) signature roles. The beauty of Meryl's career is that she simply refused to peak. It's like she wasn't climbing any mountains of stardom but just floating above us all, serenely. Ironically, given her chameleon reputation, the world's most acclaimed actress's signature role is actually MERYL STREEP.

Here's a video The Film Experience crafted for her 60th birthday... time to share it again!

The eighth wonder of the world.

"Secret Messages From the Movies"

SERIES DEBUT!
"Secret Messages From the Movies" will alternate daily with "First and Last" (returning tomorrow for its fifth season), as its another "guess the movie" puzzle. Here's your first episode...

Can you guess the movie?

That's a lot of calculations... do you give up?

The answer is after the jump.

Click to read more ...

"Brave", We Need You

Behold the blurry teaser poster (courtesy of Pixar Planet) for Pixar's Brave an original story with their first female lead "Princess Merida"

I normally wouldn't post a blurry advertisement, but having just seen Cars 2, I'm going to rub this teaser all over me for soothing balm. I need this one to be great. Cars 2 stinks (more later) and the Toy Story short that proceeds it "Hawaiian Vacation" is also soul-crushing. Oh Pixar, you said farewell to these characters so beautifully last year. You had a whole world weeping under 3D glasses and then you bring the whole gang back instantly for such a disposable mediocrity? What are we going to do with you? We depend on you! Love - a concerned fan since that bootleg viewing of Tin Toy in the 1980s.

But soft! What link through yonder blogpost breaks?

Just Jared it's official: Aishwarya Rai, will finally pass her gorgeous genes on. She and star hubbt Abhishek Bachchan are expecting their first child.
I Need My Fix Ian McShane joins the cast of Snow White and the Hunstmen as the leader of the dwarves. Unless they've TOTALLY changed the story, I'm confused. Isn't he contractually obligated to only play evil characters?
Jewish Journal talks to James Franco about his new film The Broken Tower in which he plays gay poet Hart Crane. Good interview.
The Wrap interviews John Slattery on his fascinating Mad Men character Roger Sterling. Can he finally win the Emmy this year?
La Daily Musto [NSFW] claims these are Burt Lancaster nudes unveiled but it's hard to trust any nude photos in the age of photoshop.
Playbill Angela Bassett coming to Broadway with Samuel L Jackson for Mountaintop.

Booth & Steinfeld (maybe they're going for a brother/sister vibe this time?)Finally... In case you haven't heard it's contractual by law that every generation get their own Romeo and Juliet. Or thereabouts. There was kind of a big gap between Franco Zeffirelli's (1968) and Baz Luhrmann's (1996) but it's basically a perennial. Perhaps because it's Shakespeare it's never a grotesque matter of 'rebooting' so much as "hey, we haven't done that one in a while!"

Variety reports that we have our new Romeo and Juliet and it's 19 year old British actor Douglas Booth and 15 year-old Hailee Steinfeld for the new version, scripted by Julian Fellowes. If you ask me they're never going to be able to top Baz's psychovisual poetry or the doubleplusgood acting of Leo + Claire but here's a bright note: Holly Hunter as Nurse!!!