The Plane! The Plane! The Link! The Link!

As your host begins his final busy day at the Middleburg festival, here are some news tidbits and amusements to enjoy elsewhere...

• Variety Highlights from the Jane Fonda Masterclass at the Lumiere festival
• EW Peter Dinklage on playing Hervé Villechaize on HBO and disputing the claims of whitewashing 
• Vulture amazingly accurate collection of faux headlines about 'how the media would have covered the events of A Star is Born'
• New Now Next cute interview with Judy Greer about her gay fans and Jawbreaker
• Variety our hearts go out to Selma Blair who has announced that she has multiple sclerosis
• Out Cate Blanchett adamantly defends straight actors playing queer characters. I totally understand her reasoning and I think identity politics can sometimes feel anti-art and anti-creativity BUT actual gay actors are discriminated against so this is kind of tacky to be so aggressive about
• The Playlist Cannes and Netflix meet... perhaps 2019 will have a different outcome?
• MNPP Glen Powell photoshoot worth gawking at
• /Film Netflix seems to be on a cancellation spree. Now it's Luke Cage getting the chop
• io9 Turns out Disney wouldn't let Wreck-It Ralph make a joke about Kylo Ren from Star Wars. Or as Gerry Canavan so wisely stated on twitter...

maybe we should have more than one entertainment company

Tweetweek

A collection of random tweets for your (hopeful) amusement...

"One for the new Dianne Wiest, please!" — me at AMC on opening weekend of The Mule pic.twitter.com/dXcb91KudI

— Matthew Eng (@Eng_Matthew) October 4, 2018

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Podcast: First Man, Colette, and A Star is Born

Nathaniel R and Murtada Elfadl talk three new films in theaters.

Index (54 minutes)
00:01 Intro & Festival fatigue
02:00 First Man Nathaniel is pro and Murtada mixed
14:30 We both love A Star is Born (but aren't rooting 4 Gaga to win)
35:00 Backlashes at the Oscars and what happens.. or doesn't
38:00 Best Picture randomness and Roma
42:35 Keira Knightley as Colette
48:20 Please look out for Border and Shoplifters which are opening soon

Referenced in this discussion
• Roma review
• NYFF Reviews
• Best Actress Chart 
• Best Actor Chart

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Colette, First Man, A Star is Born

Soundtracking: "A Star is Born (2018)"

Chris Feil wraps up his look at the musical legacy of A Star is Born...

Bradley Cooper has kept with the 1976 A Star is Born’s arena template, largely correcting many of that film’s pitfalls for his directorial debut. Most obvious, the songs don’t mostly suck. And though it does lose sight of the perspective of Lady Gaga’s emerging singer somewhat, it’s more of a two-hander in terms of musical responsibility.

That shared weight is evident in the film’s showstopper “Shallow”, the song that already defines the film’s iconography and identity. It matches the “yes-and” nature of falling in love: Ally’s lyrics and soaring melody presenting the fear of taking the leap, Jackson orchestrating it to something cohesive and singular, both of them contributing the personal and universal essential to any ballad worth its luster. They’re both observational and confessional, with “I’m falling” being the most terrifying admission. Like love, the song begins with a simple feeling, and its eventual rush of emotion builds until it must be submitted to.

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Everyone needs to calm down about "A Star is Born" winning all the Oscars

You guys. Everywhere I look there are articles or tweets positing that A Star is Born is going to sweep the Oscars, or win 3/4th of the acting categories or whatnot.  This is unlikely. It's only because it's the biggest contender currently playing that people are losing their minds. Well, that and because the movie is a terrific piece of big studio entertainment aimed at adults that's also a hit at the box office. You know, the exact kind of movie that people pretend doesn't exist (it does almost annually) and also pretend that Oscar doesn't like (they do almost annually) whenever they write those dumb articles proclaiming "the Oscars are irrelevant!" 

A Star is Born is just about at $100 million domestic at this writing but people are acting as if its earned one billion; I definitely wasn't expecting to hear it compared to Titanic today. So, let's all relax for a bit and talk about what is probable/possible since we've just barely finished UPDATING ALL THE OSCAR CHARTS. 

BEST PICTURE
I think it's too soon to call A Star is Born the frontrunner. It's just the first big Best Picture possibility to open since February (!) so that's a lot of time since Black Panther to bottle up armchair punditry feeling... bring on awards season! I dont currently believe Star will win (the remake stigma will catch up to it eventually) but let's say for the sake of argument that it does. That's one Oscar. Let's look at the other categories...

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