Linking on Empty

• Washington Post reviews a new book on Elizabeth Taylor & Montgomery Clift's friendship
• TFE <--- in case you missed it we discussed every one of Clift's films for his centennial this past fall
• Vulture To say we're thrilled to hear that Todd Haynes will be reuniting with Julianne Moore for his next film, is an understatement. It's a psychodrama called May December in which Natalie Portman will play an actress who is playing Moore's character in a movie based on her scandalous love affair.
• IndieWire Why Brooke Smith is running an Emmy campaign on her own without the studio's blessing (I mean she has a point about paying your dues. But we know from years of experience and category fraud that Hollywood cares very little about non-leads.

Queer horror, Jane Campion's latest, Harrison Ford, fav musicals, Sex and the City, and more after the jump...

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Happy Pride: Queer cartoon characters abound! (sort of)

by Nathaniel R

The website Insider has compiled a list of 259 LGBTQ characters in recent American cartoon series. Despite all the research it's still highly debatable since the database includes dozens of characters that are only queer via creator statements and not in-show confirmation (and as we know from the JK Rowling's Dumbledore debacle, that is weak-sauce as representation goes; creators shouldn't get credit for pushing boundaries if what they're doing is much much closer to virtue signalling than true activism). Of course these things are more complicated with children's shows since, naturally, sexuality is less explicit than in adult television (apart from the prevalence of mom & dad units of course).  While we watch a lot of animated movies we aren't that familiar with animated TV shows so many of these characters are unfamiliar to us...

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1946: Anna Magnani in "Rome, Open City"

Each month before the Supporting Actress Smackdown, Nick Taylor suggests alternatives to the actual Oscar nomination ballot.

by Nick Taylor

I gather that folks will have different ideas about whether Anna Magnani’s work in Rome, Open City belongs in the leading or supporting category. Magnani holds down the first half of her film similar to the way Janet Leigh leads us into Psycho, appearing as an indomitable central player until a cruel exit halfway through her film. Unlike Leigh, Magnani isn’t the only character driving her film, sharing a comparable amount of narrative focus as Aldo Fabrizi’s priest and Marcello Pagliero’s Resistance fighter, to say nothing of the other characters threaded through the first half who only grow more important as the film continues. Still, her presence is so strong that, like Leigh, you can’t forget about her even after she’s gone. It’s a bit gratifying to learn this question has been hanging around the performance since the film was originally released. Magnani won the second ever National Board of Review award for Best Actress as well as the inaugural Nastros d’Argento Award for Best Supporting Actress back home in Italy. Rome, Open City’s lone Screenplay nomination is certainly significant enough to indicate that American artists noticed the film, as well as the fortuitous relationships Magnani, Rossellini, and Fellini would go on to have with Hollywood, but I’d be fascinated to find any writing about whether she was thought to have a chance at a nomination that year.

So yes, there will be readers who will justifiably argue she shouldn’t be considered as an alternative to the supporting actress lineup that will soon be discussed. I’d be happy to hear those arguments, and would be even happier to start from a place of recognizing her brilliance within this revolutionary film. Magnani’s Pina, the heavily pregnant fiancé of a high-ranking Resistance fighter in occupied Italy, is embodied with such fierce, unvarnished power that she remains the film’s most memorable face among its many tragic figures...

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Emmys Watch: Who will fill seven empty slots in Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series?

Our team is breaking down the top contenders in all the major Emmy races and highlighting some of our favorites over the next few weeks. Today, we’re looking at Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.

How many men from "Ted Lasso" can earn nominations for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series?

By: Christopher James

In terms of precursors and returning nominees, we are flying blind with Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, which is exciting.

We only have one returning eligible performer this year (Kenan Thompson - Saturday Night Live). Both the SAG and Golden Globe Awards didn’t nominate a single eligible comedy supporting actor performance. Both went all-in on Schitt’s Creek and last year’s winner, Dan Levy. The Critics Choice TV Awards pointed out some dark horse favorites that could have a shot in this wide open category. However, this is a wide open category that will likely be a key place where new shows can demonstrate their strength and rack up nominations. Shows like Ted Lasso and The Flight Attendant could make a big splash here, or the Emmys could just nominate a majority of the Saturday Night Live cast. 

Read on to see who is in contention this year...

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Movie review: "Censor"

By Tim Brayton

Giallo homages, modernising the sordid, stylish vibe of Italy's cultishly beloved, violent and colorful 1970s thrillers, have gone from being an odd little niche project to a veritable cottage industry over the last decade. It takes more than just dousing a movie in candy colors to stand out, and so that's the first thing to praise about Censor, the extraordinarily self-assured debut feature by Welsh director Prano Bailey-Bond, is that it has so much to offer. Though it is very candy colored.

The film, currently open in limited release, isn’t exactly a giallo homage, to be honest. Above all else, it's a love letter to the Video Nasties, the notorious list of movies targeted for prosecution on home video by the British government’s Department of Public Prosecutions in the 1980s, when the film is set...

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