Poster for "Call Me by Your Name"

by Murtada

Call Me By Your Name, Luca Guadagnino's already wildly acclaimed gay romantic drama, was just announced for TIFF. It will probably play NYFF, too, on its way to a limited release on November 24, the sweet Thanksgiving spot for Oscar hopeful movies. And now the gorgeous poster for one of our most anticipated films of the year, has been revealed. See it in all its glory (plus more news about the film) after the jump...

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Barry Jenkins to Adapt James Baldwin

Chris here. Barry Jenkins is staying quite busy post-Moonlight: he directed the best episode of Netflix's already spectacular first season of Dear White People, has started developing a limited series adaptation of Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad for Amazon, and now has another film in the pipeline. Jenkins will begin filming an adaptation of James Baldwin's If Beale Street Could Talk this fall with Annapurna producing. The novel takes place in 70s Harlem as young Tish works to prove the innocence of her falsely accused fiance Fonny.

This obviously makes for an thrilling pairing, but no one is more excited than Jenkins, stating:

James Baldwin is a man of and ahead of his time; his interrogations of the American consciousness have remained relevant to this day... To translate the power of Tish and Fonny’s love to the screen in Baldwin’s image is a dream I’ve long held dear. Working alongside the Baldwin Estate, I’m excited to finally make that dream come true.

This news is exciting on many fronts, not least of which is that it will be the first major screen adaptation of Baldwin's fictional work. With Jenkins working with Baldwin's estate, their stamp of approval is further affirmation that Beale Street is in good hands. The writer/director wrote the screenplay at the same time he worked on his Oscar-winning screenplay for Moonlight, so the overlap has to guarantee as much emotionally intuitive care for his characters, right?

And if you haven't yet seen last year's Oscar-nominated documentary on Baldwin and his work, I Am Not Your Negro, it is streaming now on Amazon Prime!

Susan Hayward in "My Foolish Heart"

SUSAN HAYWARD CENTENNIAL WEEK

by Timothy Brayton

Yesterday, Eric did an extraordinary job of tackling Susan Hayward's performance in I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955), which I think a lot of us might agree was her all-time best performance. Today, I'd like to offer up what I consider to be her most Susan Haywardiest performance: as the good girl-turned-wretched alcoholic in 1949's My Foolish Heart, the film that netted Hayward the second of her five Oscar nominations.

It's a story tailored with laser focus on letting the lead actress show off Everything with a capital "E"...

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Director Joel Edgerton's "Boy Erased" Heads to Focus, While the Author of the Memoir Addresses Concerns

By Daniel Crooke

Give or take a big, broad Black Mass or two, Aussie toughie Joel Edgerton has proven himself to be a craftsman of restraint throughout his most recent crop of work, and continues to surprise audiences by subverting their expectations of how a man of his hulking size and stature should emote on the big screen. His performance in last year’s criminally undervalued Loving buries deep currents of sensitivity beneath the protective creases of his brooding face, and he manages to say more and speak louder through the locked intensity of his body language than the volume of his voice in Trey Edward Shults’s apocalyptic downer It Comes At Night. 

However, his most compelling work as an artist to date has been behind the camera...

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"Frozen" Gets a Cast for the Stage

Full casting for Broadway hopeful Frozen has been announced. The names have been trickling out for months but now it's all official. The out of town tryouts begin in August in Denver (so if you live there, do report back!). It's quite a high profile gig for all of the cast members none of whom have been Tony nominated and many of whom are in early stages of their careers.

This image, headshots for the two leads Caissie Levy and Patti Murin, is going around and though accidental I couldn't help but giggle a little. Do they share a hairdresser and colorist? Hopefully the differences in the stage sisters will be easy to read via acting and costuming. It's going to be weird to have it on Broadway where Wicked, which Frozen rips off so liberally from, is a Broadway mainstay. We'll see. One assumes Disney will add songs by already EGOTed team Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez to the second half or that's going to be one lopsided stage musical with all the songs sung before intermission! [More on the cast after the jump.]

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