"Inconceivable!" ~ a Princess Bride Reunion for NYFF

Hot off the presses! And given our wee Carol Kane tangent recently, we'll have fun storming this castle...

The director and cast of the adventure comedy classic The Princess Bride (1987), including Rob Reiner, Billy Crystal, Cary Elwes, Carol Kane, Mandy Patinkin, Chris Sarandon and Robin Wright, will reunite for a 25th anniversary special screening and Q & A at the 50th New York Film Festival on Tuesday October 2nd at 8:00 PM! Tickets will undoubtedly go fast for this one.

Oscar Trivia: It's worth noting that the Academy's bias against "light" movies can often cast them in an unflattering light historically. The Princess Bride only enjoyed one nomination -- a Best Original Song nomination at that -- in its year. It didn't even get a screenplay nomination which seems to strain all belief in hindsight. 1987's Oscar favorites were far from an anti-populist crop (Two Best Picture nominees, the wondrous Moonstruck, which definitely holds up in 2012, and the thriller Fatal Attraction were both blockbuster hits and Broadcast News was a major success, too) it's arguably The Princess Bride that remains 1987's most universally beloved film.

Miracle Max (Billy Crystal) and his wife (Carol Kane) in The Princess Bride (1987)

Does it make your top ten list from 1987? It made mine.

Gene Kelly (& My 50 Favorite Actors)

Happy Centennial to Gene Kelly (and all film fans who love him)!

100 years ago on this very day Eugene Curran Kelly was born in Pittsburgh. His mom pushed him into dance class but he didn't commit to becoming a dancer until the age of 15. At 29 fame hit with Broadway's "Pal Joey." Almost immediately thereafter he accidentally (or at least halfheartedly since he intended to return to stage) lept from the stage to the screen and stayed, starting with a co-starring role in For Me and My Gal (1942, previously covered -- he credits Judy Garland with teaching him how to act for cameras). Kelly remains the best silver screen song & dance man of all time (sorry Astaire!) and since musicals are the perfect genre, making full use of every tool available to filmmakers aurally and visually, he also happens to be one of my ten favorite movie stars ever of either gender. I'd hoped to celebrate Kelly all month long but time gets away from you in the dog days of summer. Ah well, at least we had Singin' in the Rain (1952)!!!

So herewith a quick semi-revised list...

Nathaniel's 50 Favorite Male Movie Stars of All Time

Tier 1 - Yin and Yang
neither my life nor the movies would be complete without them
MONTGOMERY CLIFT
GENE KELLY

48 more after the jump

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50th Anniversary: Marilyn's Death

50 years ago today Marilyn Monroe left us. You've undoubtedly noticed that her lovely ghost is more active than ever, always haunting popular culture. In the past ten months alone, we've been inundated with Marilyn resurrections and references: My Week With Marilyn, Smash, that Dior commercial with Charlize Theron, James Franco and Channing Tatum in Marilyn drag at the Oscars and in Magic Mike respectively. You could call that a symptom of this major anniversary or the current Mad Men inspired 60s fanaticism were it not for the fact that Hollywood is always attempting Marilyn resurrections in one form or another.

Marilyn on the beach in 1962 shortly before her death 50 years ago. She was 36 years old.

Strange then that the actress who is most comparable to her these days in terms of über charisma, sex appeal and body type, the great Christina Hendricks, can't manage to excite Hollywood enough for them to give her showcase movie roles.  She's a hell of an actress and the only thing she hasn't yet shown us that's Marilyn-related is superb comic timing.

Marilyn Monroe is like Hollywood's Jesus. If they actually came back to us the people who blab on and on about them the most (Hollywood and Christians respectively) would be the first to reject their reality. Hollywood doesn't really want actresses to be as powerfully voluptuous as that!

Marilyn is now only a fantasy, and paradoxically perhaps that makes her closer to the "Marilyn" that Norma Jean intended all along given that she was (to some extent) fictional to the woman playing her. People have always preferred the fantasy to the reality with Marilyn and now moreso than ever I think. But she seems so real from ubiquity that her spirit verges on the corporeal. [Actresses, Memories and Fashion after the jump]

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Happy (Belated) 50th to Tony Leung Chiu Wai

I can't believe I forgot yesterday. He's only one of the world's best movie stars. He celebrated without me with a tiny balloon and modest cake.

How do you say "I love you Tony!" in Cantonese and/or Mandarin?

The Lord of the Links: The Return of the Link

whoa. no link roundups in forever. time to catch up on movie news and/or must see web droppings

Yahoo Movies Fine Thelma Adams piece on Prometheus' "foreign object" sequence. [shudder]
24 Frames Noomi Rapace and Sigourney Weavers' Alien franchise screen tests
IndieWire six life saving tips for cinematographers from the great Darius Khondji (Se7en, Evita, Midnight in Paris, and more...)
Empire Penelope Cruz will star in her fifth Pedro Almodóvar movie Fleeting Lovers (title may change) which starts shooting this summer. Yay! Double Yay! All About My Mother star Cecilia Roth is also in the cast.
YouTube if there's anything I hate about YouTube it's the ability to name your videos "official". But this "Official" Les Miserable trailer starring (gulp) Katie Holmes is kind of a good prank... I mean Nightmare!
In Contention production designer J Michael Riva (Django Unchained, The Color Purple) has passed away at 63.

Awards Daily Singin' in the Rain is getting a 60th anniversary rerelease on July 12th. Just in time for the Gene Kelly Centennial. And yes, if I can manage it here at the Film Experience July and August will house a big Gene Kelly retrospective right here at the Film Experience. He's up there with Montgomery Clift in my favorite (male) movie star charts after all.
Life of Pi the tiger growls memorably for the first time on the official website. Also he looks amazing.
Movie|Line Better three years late than never. Xavier Dolan's award winning debut film (and Canadian Oscar submission in its year) I Killed My Mother is FINALLY getting a US theatrical release. 
Guardian hears that The Avengers might get a three hour version for theatrical rerelease this fall. Considering Joss Whedon's comments on the deleted material (indulgent, killing the rhythm) and his own feelings about different versions of the same story (no) perhaps this is a very bad idea.
Queerty the red band ass abundant Magic Mike trailer.

filmmaking tips
IndieWire six life saving tips for cinematographers from the great Darius Khondji (Se7en, Evita, Midnight in Paris, and more...) 
Movie|Line twenty-two pieces of storytelling advice from a Pixar artist
LA Times offers up awards show tips for the Oscars (hey, that's sorta filmmaking tips) via the Tony Awards though I will continue to hate everyone and especially every writer who suggests very publicly that we don't need to see Costume Designers winning their prizes. A pox on all your craft-hating houses!

casting news we don't have much to say about but we should probably share anyway...

Greer takes over for Buckley in the Carrie remake

• Jean Dujardin is in talks to join Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street
• Amy Ryan and Dane DeHaan may join an upcoming non-documentary take on West Memphis Three currently starring Colin Firth and Allesandro Nivola (my god how many movies will this story inspire by 2020?)
• John Madden's "Exotic Marigold" follow up is a comedy called Murder Mystery and may star Charlize Theron
• Judy Greer (recently interviewed right here) wins the gym teacher role in Carrie, previously played by the great Betty Buckley. I only wish I weren't so dreading the movie.

off cinema
Gawker an alligator eating a croc? 
Sound Cloud she may have lost the Tony but Jayne Houdyshell keeps giving it from Follies. She rerecorded "Broadway Baby" as a solo for a compilation. It's wonderful! 
Cinema Blend an amusing piece about that George Bush head on spike story from Game of Thrones 

Zachary Quinto, Claire Danes, Chris Rock, The Fanning Sisters... and that's just a tiny sample.Finally...

 Have you seen the Paramount Pictures celebration? They gathered 116 stars together -- NOT photoshopped, actually there -- for a Centennial Photo.

The photo is so big you have to scroll to get the whole thing on your computer. You can mouse over it to enlarge see who's in the shot but without doing so I spotted George Clooney, Jamie Lee Curtis, George Takei, Julianne Moore, Meryl, Mark & Marty, Jane Fonda and Eddie Murphy straightaway. Watching the video gives you a closer look at the star networking. Watching stars mingle is the best part of starry events... though they never share enough.

It makes you wonder who knows each other and who doesn't. And who really does or doesn't want to be talking to whom. Did the stars who haven't had a good role in decades bee-line to the directors present (Lynch, Fincher, Scorsese, etcetera) or have they given up but for anniversary shindigs to honor their past glories? All I know for sure is that photo events like this make me happy.