Tweetweek: Multiverse Madness and Patti Lupone Worship

Amusing and/or thought-provoking showbiz tweets curated for you so you don't have to waste time on twitter!

All movies should be rated R so that children can't go to them.

— Eric D. Snider (@EricDSnider) May 10, 2022

  More after the jump including Toni Collette, Top Gun Maverick, multiverse mania, and responses to that story about Patti LuPone ranting at a maskless theatergoer on Broadway after Stephen Sondheim's Company...  

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The Link Stuff

• Salon remembers the 'gentlemanly gruffness' of Fred Ward (Tremors, The Right Stuff), who has passed away at 79. We will remember him best from Henry & June, Big Business, and Short Cuts. 
• IndieWire interesting report on how the streamers are all doing. It was a rough quarter given the expensive (to streamers and viewers) content wars but HBOMax is holding steady and AppleTV got an enormous boost from CODA's Best Picture Oscar win.
• Harvard Film Archives posters of queer movies over the decades from multiple countries

Character actor James Hong, Stephen King adaptations, a royal role for Christopher Walken, smoking hot silent film stars, and more after the jump...

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Interview: Director and star of the essential new film 'Happening'

by Nathaniel R

HAPPENING French poster (left), Actress Anamaria Vartolomei and Director Audrey Diwan in Venice (right)

Last year The Film Experience had two teammates in Venice for the first time. The Power of the Dog emerged as the buzziest title given its legendary director and a never better star. Another legendary director guided his celebrated muse to a Best Actress win with Parallel Mothers. But the revelation of the festival, since no one saw it coming, proved to be the intimate drama Happening from French writer/director Audrey Diwan. Elisa and I both raved about it in our festival coverage. When the festival came to a close Happening triumphed taking home the top prize, the Golden Lion. It's finally in US movie theaters courtesy of IFC Films. You shouldn't miss it.

The film, based on Annie Ernaux's memoir, is about a young gifted student who experiences an unwanted pregnancy in the 1960s. She doesn't know who to turn to for help or what can be done (abortion was then  illegal in France). The filmmaker Audrey Diwan also came, initially, from the world of literature "I know this character. I've been reading about her forever since Annie Ernaux's work is always autobiographical." Diwan's own journey as an artist wasn't as clear to her at first. "I told myself I had to take my time in order to figure out exactly what matters to me and what I have to say." That patience and her clarity of vision has served her well in her breakthrough feature. I recently sat down with her and Happening's 23 year old tremendous leading lady Anamaria Vartolomei for a chat about their movie...

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The next Oscar Night will be March 12th, 2023

We finally have the dates for next Oscar season. Things aren't quite back to normal since we're still not back in early February (which the Academy had been working towards for years, finally getting there the year of Parasite) but at least it's a bit earlier than last season.

Governors Awards (Honorary Oscars) - Saturday, November 19th, 2022
Voting on Categories with Shortlists - December 12th through the 15th, 2022
Shortlists Announcements - Wednesday, December 21st, 2022
Nomination Voting - January 12th through the 17th, 2023
Nominations Announced - Tuesday January 24th, 2023
Nominee Luncheon - Monday, Febriuary 13th, 2023
Final Oscar Voting - March 2nd through the 7th, 2023
95th Annual Academy Awards - Sunday, March 12th, 2023

TRIVIA NOTE: This is the first time ever that Oscar night will be held on March 12th so those of you with March 12th birthdays finally have the ceremony on your birthday. (The dates when the most Oscars throughout history have been held is a tie between March 25th and March 29th each having had five ceremonies.)

We can finally set those countdown clocks. It's just 256 days until Nomination Morning and 303 days until Oscar night.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Happy Together (1997)

by Nathaniel R 

I first saw Wong Kar Wai's Happy Together at an arthouse cinema in Utah where I went to college. Though enthralled by its saturated colors and amazing performances, it left me very depressed. I had only been out for a couple of years, was wildly inexperienced with relationships, and chafed a bit at "sad gays" in the movies. Mostly because they were the only kind of cinematic gays regularly on offer back then. Nevertheless I devoured the "New Queer Cinema" of the 1990s wherever I could find it (i.e. arthouse theaters or Blockbuster rentals). And this particular movie lingered. I thought about it often. Seeing it again in 2022, twenty-five years after its Cannes premiere, it felt brand new. It wasn't... but 25 years of life experience later, it was. It wasn't devoted to gay misery as I'd remembered but merely a fascinating emotionally precise account of a particular romance. Not that the title isn't wildly ironic.

"Starting over means different things to him," is one of the saddest lines ever spoken in a movie and it hits early...

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