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• The Playlist Tenet pushed back to August. Shouldn't they just push it back to November at this point? What will change in one month's time?
• Variety Zoe Kravitz talks playing Catwoman in The Batman (2021). La Pfeiffer gave her blessing!
• Awards Daily interviews Tim Blake Nelson of Watchmen

After the jump a new Princess Diana movie, Big Mouth changes, new roles for Keke Palmer and Michael Keaton and a Gone With the Wind discussion...

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Vintage '57 (and what if there had been 10 nominees)

by Nathaniel R

The next Smackdown will be posted on Sunday July 7th. But first let's have a little context on the year that was: Dwight Eisenhower began his second term as President, an influenza epidemic that killed 1 million people worldwide began, Elvis Presley made his final appearance on the Ed Sullivan show (shot waist up only), and the Frisbee was introduced. here's more context for that year in a pop culture sense.

Great Big Box Office Hits: Bridge on the River Kwai, Sayonara, and Peyton Place were the top grossers (and competed for the Oscars). Other hits included Old Yeller, Raintree County, and Gunfight at the OK Corral...

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How Had I Never Seen..."Hard Eight"?

by Cláudio Alves

Paul Thomas Anderson turns 50 today, making this a good time to remember how his film career began. Weirdly enough, despite being a longtime fan of the director, I had never seen his first feature, a little indie by the name of Hard Eight, which hit Sundance and Cannes in 1996 but would only get a commercial release the next year. That made 1997 quite the occasion for Anderson. In February, he opened Hard Eight to good reviews and, in October, Boogie Nights made him one of the most critically acclaimed directors of the moment. The latter movie went on to conquer him his first Academy Award nomination, for Best Original Screenplay. What's fascinating and what most surprised me about the pair is how distinct they are, showing two very different sides of their director's craft…

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1957: Another Iconic Year for Deborah Kerr

by Camila Henriques

The mid 50s were huge for Deborah Kerr. She followed up the huge hit The King and I (1956) with two leading roles the following year in Heaven Knows Mr Allison and An Affair to Remember.

1957 brought Oscar nomination number four to Deborah Kerr. It happened for her turn as a nun in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison. She lost to Joanne Woodward’s intricate work in The Three Faces of Eve. She would applaud, sitting in the Academy audience as a gracious nominees, twice more until the Academy gave her an honorary award in 1994 (presented by Glenn Close, who has since then inherited the forever bridesmaid mantle, *le sigh*). But, for me, it was another movie she did in '57 that truly cemented her as a Hollywood icon. 

Leo McCarey’s An Affair to Remember put Kerr in the same frame as Cary Grant. It wasn’t a first time partnership for them, as they had worked together in 1953’s Dream Wife...

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Familiar Faces: The P.T. Anderson Players

We're celebrating PTA this week for his 50th birthday!

by Nathaniel R

Famed auteur Paul Thomas Anderson is not, perhaps, the creature of habit we expected him to be after his first three films made him a legend-to-be and suggested a steady stable of actors shifting guises with each film like a Scorsese or an Altman or an Allen. Since that magnum ensemble opus Magnolia (1999) his films have shifted closer to the traditional one or two man focal point employed by most auteurs even as they've gotten more experimental in other ways. It's as if he was purposefully shaking off the Altman-progeny tag.

That's a wee bit disappointing since auteurs who are particularly genius at assembling a whole mess of actors and watching the idiosyncratic group dymanic spark are few and far between. With PTA's next project set to be a drama about a famous child actor in high school, it's unlikely we'll see many repeats from his troupe, though there's always a possibility one or two of them show up as a teacher or parent or co-star on set.  Let's look at the actors he's used the most in his filmography thus far...

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