'I Want Love'... and Actors in Music Videos, Please

Justin Timberlake as Elton John in 2001Ten years ago right about now, Elton John's "Songs From the West Coast" dropped. I bring this anniversary up because...

a) I love to celebrate anniversaries
b) music videos are short films
c) an irregularly curated side-obsession of mine is tracking film actors who've appeared in music videos.

For the videos from the album, his last hit-parade album (though not his last album), he used actor/musicians rather than himself, including a pre comeback Robert Downey Jr back when everyone still worried for the actor's very life and he seemed like an open wound... which really worked for this video.

Just love that one, don't you? It was directed by Sam Taylor-Wood before the days of her award winning narrative short Love You More and before she graduated to features with the John Lennon early-years bio Nowhere Boy (starring her future babydaddy Aaron Johnson).

In the follow up videos "This Train Don't Stop Here Anymore" and "Original Sin" Elton John used two pre film-stardom singers: Justin Timberlake as Elton himself and Mandy Moore as a devoted fan. In the latter Elton does appear and drags Elizabeth Taylor along with him in pink-turbaned cameo as "Doris" because, you know, Elton does love to flaunt the company he keeps. Was "Doris" an inside joke of some sort between them? 

Maybe JT got a taste for his acting future right here because he keeps playing important men from the music industry (Sean Parker in The Social Network and now Neil Bogart in Spinning Gold)

What's your favorite Elton John song? And if you were celebrity-aware back in 2001, did you ever dream of such enormous movie stardom waiting just around the recovery corner for Robert Downey Jr.?

All Male Revue: Brad, Andy and Ryan (who is just too Ryan).

The Film Experience is known the world over for its actressy devotions but for this quickie link-list, we've gone Men Only for some reason. Must be all that Best Actor talk in the air... or rather in the internetz. On that front I would like to note that my Best Actor chart is HAUNTING ME. It went the way of the dinosaur once Moneyball hit... rendering past speculations moot and the html coding is suddenly acting up, too. Yes, Brad Pitt vaults up when the charts are all redone on Friday. Weekly updates, however minor, follow from then on. Aren't you excited?

Okay okay. Enough screams and tears of joy for weekly charts. Settle.

Hello Giggles a must-read letter to Ryan Gosling. "You have to stop. Just stop. It’s getting to be too much."
Oscar Metrics Mark Harris in the lonely outfield, doubting Brad Pitt's nominatability for Moneyball.  
In Contention surveys the crowded Best Actor field and talks Michael Fassbender and Michael Shannon.
Cinema Blend  Justin Timberlake has already played one man who rocked the rock world (Napster founder in The Social Network.)  Next he'll play Neil Bogart who introduced 70s acts like KISS and The Village People to the world in Spinning Gold.

Towleroad Actor Sean Maher (of Firefly and The Playboy Club) comes out of the closet.
Movie|Line talks to Corey Stoll of Midnight in Paris career-boosting.

Oh and only because I know I'll forget. A very happy 50th birthday to Andy Lau tomorrow. He's been super busy lately what with festival appearances, multiple new films and headlining the Hong Kong Oscar submission A Simple Life which stars Deannie Yip (Best Actress Venice) as his life long nanny who suddenly needs him to caretake. Please to remember that Lau was Matt Damon before Matt Damon was Matt Damon in The Departed by way of the original film Infernal Affairs. Have you ever seen that one?  

Here's the subtitled trailer to his Oscar entry A Simple Life.

Linknesses

Just Jared The Rum Diary gets a Johnny Depp-centric poster, opens in October... "absolutely nothing in moderation" tagline. What'cha think?
IndieWire Millenium buys Rampart and aims for an Oscar push for Woody Harrelson this year. My my my Best Actor is getting crowded, right?
Fandor's blog Keyframe just hosted a Guy Maddin blog-a-thon. Check it out.
Movie|Line talks to Sigourney Weaver about supporting Taylor Lautner through the action genre minefields with Abduction. (What a world, right?)
Wow Report Mia Farrow makes a LOL. Best tweet ever?

Cinema Blend Katey interviews Andrew Haigh the writer/director of Weekend. I really enjoyed talking to him too (my interview if you haven't seen it) but I love the bit about his dialogue writing that she gets him to discuss 9/10 minutes in. Very interesting process he has! I should've asked him about that. The bane of interviews is always thinking of things later that you really wish you'd asked.
MNPP James Dean's brotherly love screentest for East of Eden. 
Ultra Culture makes a funny with the Meryl Streep poster for The Iron Lady 

OffCinema
Sociological Images Elizabeth Warren is my new hero. Finally, a Democrat who can convey message in a clear, confident, convincing way.
Drawn If you're an artist reading, this lengthy video on celebrity caricature is super interesting in terms of technique and how to capture likenesses that are always so manipulated. This bit on Conan O'Brien's hair is choice.

I will draw his hair how we expect it to look, as if it had its own anatomical structure."
-John Kascht 

75th Anniversary! 
Have you played with this current Google Doodle honoring Jim Henson's birthday yesterday? (Shame I forgot about this one for blog purposes. Grrrr).

It's fun to play with though it's a bit difficult to replicate the two best surprises. 

Shanghai Surprise?

Last night while Lady Gaga was living through an entire MTV VMA evening as "Jo Calderone" her male alter ego, I began to wonder if she could ever transfer to the big screen? In the past I'd always dismissed the notion but I think she pulled off that bit of theater last night. At the very least she sure is committed. And doesn't it seem that every major pop star eventually tries the silver screen. Britney Spears, who was also honored last night, did. Remember Crossroads? She didn't. For every Cher or Justin Timberlake who make a real honest go of it, there are dozens and dozens of musicians that fail at it or do okay but move on any way and their efforts are, generally speaking, quickly forgotten.

Which got me to thinking about Shanghai Surprise, which opened 25 years ago on this very day. No joke!

Madonna and Sean Penn, the early years

...though many thought the movie was.

Shanghai Surprise was Sean Penn and Madonna's first and last film together and it premiered just a year after the media explosion that was their wedding and subsequent volatile marriage. I haven't seen Shanghai Surprise since the 80s and the only thing I remembered about it before I took a wee peek today was that Madonna played a missionary who at one point just stripped into a white slip and seduced Sean Penn.

As missionaries do.

The reason Madonna was never much of an actress is that she was always too aware of the camera. It's a bit of an irony, since great film acting is all about an actor's relationship with the camera, but they really can't show that they're aware of it unless they're wildly talented and doing so on purpose. Otherwise, the audience just gets uncomfortable. 

God Nathaniel, why are you reminding people of a rare failure?!

Still, for all of Shanghai Surprise's badness, whenever two colossal careers meet in some disastrous way that's recorded for posterity, it's kind of fun to witness / remember. Take the moment Madonna first sees Sean Penn above. She is prim and proper and he is a totally drunk, half naked man who's screaming at people in Chinese.

Madonna's only had a couple of lines before this, all of them entirely wooden. But when she stares at him in disgust and confusion, it's hard not to feel a bit sympathy as soon as you are also staring at him. Penn was already, by 1986, an acclaimed and wildly confident actor.  

And he's ACTING enough for both of them, trust.

Look at that. [Displaying tattoo] He didn't even finish the nipples on my little sweetheart!"

Have you ever seen Shanghai Surprise? Do you ever think about which pop stars could make it as actors?

Introducing... Armie Hammer

Let's celebrate the Quarter-Century mark of one Armie Hammer... (happy birthday!) also known as Armand Douglas Hammer. 'He's 6'5", 220, and there's two of him.' Well, actually just one. But his twinned Social Network role as Cameron and Tyler, "the Winklevii", sure doubled tripled quadrupled    okay greatly multiplied the size of his acting career. Hammer has the Prince Charming role in Tarsem Singh's upcoming Untitled Snow White picture but we'll next see him in Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar as Clyde Tolson, the alleged longtime lover / official longtime employee of Leonardo DiCaprio's J Edgar Hoover. So there's two of Hammer this time too in a sense.

Just for fun given his newness on the scene, I thought we'd look at how Armie has been introduced in each of the feature films he has made thus far (excluding Billy Graham the Early Years which I couldn't find. Inbetween the first few features andThe Social Network he had recurring guest roles on Gossip Girl and Reaper but we've seen neither television show.) 

Introducing Armie Hammer in...

... Flicka (2006)

In Armie's film debut you can see him walking down the school hallway as "Male Prefect" as the credits are still going. In just seconds he's right near the camera and Alison Lohman is looking up at him. Them's long legs; tall people walk fast.

He says.

Catherine McLaughlin, you need to come see the headmaster.

And that's it! The whole role. Movie line = SAG card. In the credits he's sandwiched between a couple people who actually get names "Mrs Masterson" and "Gracie" just before the rodeo announcers, puppeteers and stuntmen. Auspicious beginnings.

... Blackout (2008)

Just two years later he gets his own title card, third billed, as "Tommy" in an indie thriller about three people trapped in an elevator. He's introduced mysteriously, his back turned away from the camera. Maybe he's killed the girl in the bed behind him? It's unclear but her back has some weird bloody marks on it and he's wrapping his own bloody fist. And then he dresses and loots her apartment (not nice!) before heading out to jump on his motorcycle. Armie abandons his usual preppy film look. It's amazing what a difference a haircut, earring, and tattoos can do for your look. 

... Spring Breakdown (2009)

Amy Poehler to Crowd: We're going to blow your mind with a little thing called Electric Slide."

Armie is back to namelessness in his next film as "Abercrombie Boy". He appears out of focus and all judgey in the background with one of "the Sevens", the mean sorority girls that Amy Poehler's 35 year old dog trainer is hanging with. But he eventually cheers up and starts dancing; no lines.

In the scrolling credits Armie appears between "Teen Dude" and "Hookers" (LOL) but despite the esteemed company he's keeping he does actually gets to share Amy Poehler's actual title card wherein she directly adresses him and then tongues him.

You are a pretty puppy."

Shouldn't he have have been credited as "Poehler's Pretty Puppy" instead of "Abercrombie Boy"?

... The Social Network (2010)

EXT. CHARLES RIVER - DAWN

The Harvard Crew is practicing on two-man sculls. There are three baots that are running roughly even with each other and the two-man crews are rwoing with all they've got. We're gliding along with them in the water --

A CREW MEMBER
Those guys are just freaking fast.

And we PULL BACK TO REVEAL that there's a fourth boat which is already five boat lengths ahead of the other three.

The fourth boat is being crewed by CAMERON and TYLER WINKLEVOSS -- identical twins who stepped out of an ad for Abercrombie & Fitch.

They know that the others aren't in their class and even though they're highly competitive athletes, they don't like showing anyone up, least of all their teammates.

CAMERON
Is there anyway to make this a fair fight?

TYLER
We could  jump out and swim.

CAMERON
I think we'd have to jump out and drown. 

Oh those smug Winklevii... Their Ivy League / Human Specimen superiority established we immediately cut to the news of a real competitor. The rest is movie (and legal) history.

 

When did your eyeballs first meet Armie Hammer? Are you looking forward to further introductions?