Happy Birthday, Goldie!

She definitely doesn't look it, but Goldie Hawn is turning 68 today! She has many roles worth celebrating - The First Wives Club, Death Becomes Her, Private Benjamin, this jazzy Beatles cover - but today I'd like to shine a light on that zany show where she first got her start, the short-lived but always incredible Laugh In.

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In Clip #6 Goldie... by RetroCafe

Like Judy Holliday before her, Goldie Hawn turned Blonde Ditz into an artform. Happy Birthday, Goldie, no matter what time zone you're in!

All is Link

Village Voice great piece on BAM's retrospective of Karen Black (happening right now!) by Stephanie Zacharek
Vulture All is Lost, Robert Redford and taking stardom for granted
AV Club "100 Episodes" takes on Homestar Runner - great piece about the evolution of Web TV. 
Guardian talks to Chris Hemsworth about Thor consuming his life and what he learns from film to film

 

My New Plaid Pants begins "The 13 Snakes of Halloween" festivities with The Witches and Anaconda. Oooh, what comes next? 
Coming Soon Avatar sequels start filming in one year's time. Happy Halloween so don't throw away your blue body paint just yet.
i09 on 11 misanthropic horror movies from Cabin in the Woods to Frankenstein
LA Times Scarlett Johansson, winning fresh raves for her voice work in Her, is mystified by the awards process.

I don't even know how it works. And I'm an Academy member!" 

Exit Image
Here's our first image of Reese Witherspoon from Wild which she tweeted herself...

Here's first pic of me as Cheryl Strayed in WILD. So excited to play @cherylstrayed in a movie! http://t.co/t00BFeR5nX

— Reese Witherspoon (@RWitherspoon) October 18, 2013

Her very own less grim Into the 127 Hours sorta one-man kinda show about a actress who hiked 1000 miles after losing her mojo. No I kid I kid, it's the true story of a woman who did that after her divorce and her mother's death. It started filming last week. I sincerely hope Reese packed her Oscar in that napsack just to remind herself about ACTING. It's unwise to share the screen with Laura Dern if you haven't reminded yourself of that.

Yes, in the oddest casting news for this movie Laura Dern who is but 9 years older than Reese will be playing her mother. 

American Horror Story Coven: "Bitchcraft" & "Boy Parts"

So Brad Falchuk and Ryan Murphy have finally done it. After years of wooing me with meaty roles for actresses of a certain age (meat served bloody raw) in their American Horror Story anthology series, I am down for watching it as it airs. It's been clear for some time that the creative team's orientation is fully aligned with the Actressexuality™ named and promoted by TFE for several years now. Thus, a natural kinship exists even if yours truly is squeamish about horror. I have been mostly agnostic when it comes to Jessica Lange my whole life (though I thought her "Sister Jude" on Asylum was easily her best work since the 80s) but when it comes to two-time Oscar winner Lange paired with Sarah Paulson, Oscar winner Kathy Bates, Oscar nominee Gabby Sidibe, Lily Rabe, AND Oscar nominee Angela Awesome Basset? Uncle! I surrender to your casting voodoo. 

Kathy Bates in "Coven"

Please to Note: I did try to watch the first two seasons but in both cases, I eventually bailed after a few episodes from the gore and the, how to put this, unwatchable epileptic fits of lensing and editing and framing. Listen, I can live with frenetic editing (you kind of have to since the late 80s) knowing that when I need a fix of long takes that let me enjoy great acting, I can always seek out auteur films. (Odd that it would be auteurs, who so thoroughly OWN their pictures, that would be the only ones to just hand said pictures to the actors on occasion). But it's not just the genre or the typical short attention span in cutting that has previously made AHS unpalatable for me.

The show, or at least the first handful of episodes of its previous seasons, often appeared to have been shot and edited and framed by a group of wild, bug-eyed, A.D.D. addled 12 year old boys... albeit uniquely pervy pre-teens who were raised in asylums and jacked off to photos of grande dame actresses while horror movies were projected on continual loop on the grey walls of their prison. The only break in horror programming was obviously the complete filmography of Jessica Lange.

...or at least the lobotomy scenes from Frances (1982).

It wasn't just quick cutting but canted cameras, baroque flash cuts, inebriated camera swerves, you name it. But let's put that behind us and move on to Season 3's first two eppys after the jump. Spoilers ahead obviously.

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I, Linkenstein

Big Screen
Artsbeat Alfonso Cuaron talks us through a dizzy-making scene in Gravity
Flick Filosopher "Hollywood, you are 300 movies away from making me want to marry you" The manic pixie dream guy bit is fab. It's so hard to imagine... which is the point. 
Guardian Olivier Hirschbiegel reacts to the terrible reviews to his Diana biopic 

David Poland 22 weeks to Oscar. He correctly sees that there are very few locks but bizarrely thinks Forrest Whitaker is a lock for Best Actor for The Butler
BuzzFeed live action footage (and actors) that helped created The Little Mermaid 
i09 thinks I, Frankenstein might be the most insane movie of 2014
Movie City News asks a great question about Amy Adams in American Hustle 

Small Screen
Salon interviews Adam Scott on his television breakthroughs and his new film A.C.O.D.
i09 Honestly I did not see this coming. Halle Berry, whose big screen career is still going well (consider how much her ermegency call center movie made), will headline the tv series Extant about an astronaut whose baby might be half alien

Look! A new Halloween opening for The Simpsons courtesy of Guillermo del Toro so naturally there's a fair amount of Pan's Labyrinth up in there. Lots of movie referencing but the funniest bit I think is that misanthrope naughtiness of the Alfred Hitchcock cameo via The Birds. 

Finally, can I just say "amen" to this Vulture piece requesting a moratorium on anti-heroes as the leads of television series?  I mean you're not going to top Don Draper, Tony Soprano, Walter White, Carrie Bradshaw (yeah, she was one. deal with it) and Nurse Jackie... so let it die a natural death now instead of death from ubiquity. Mark Harris has also wisely noticed that this trend has now poisoned the broadcast networks without the antidote of the artistry that made this type of protagonist so popular on cable television in the first place.

NYFF: World on Fire in The Czech Republic's Oscar Submission

TFE's 51st New York Film Festival continues with Jose on Burning Bush

The morning of January 16, 1969 seemed like it would be a regular Thursday in Prague, that is if there was anything "regular" about living in a country that had been occupied by the Soviet Union. On that day, 21 year old student Jan Palach decided it was time to remind his countrymen that they were being demoralized by the occupying forces, his mean of protesting was to set himself on fire in the middle of busy Wenceslas Square. Palach's self immolation was part of a collective protest, which warned the government that more young men would repeat his actions until the Soviets left Poland. 

Renowned filmmaker Agnieszka Holland was a college student around the time and the event left such an impression on her that she chose to make it the starting point to build the epic Burning Bush. The four hour long film (it was broadcast as a miniseries in Europe) is one of the most impressive chronicles of modern history captured on film and it was rightfully chosen as the Czech submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. Holland talked about the making of the film during a press conference at the New York Film Festival. 

 

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