The Covers The Dreamers And Me

[Editor's note: It's Muppet Week! I asked  Team Experience to share their favorite Muppet memories. Like JA, I'm 1000% in love with this 1979 Oscar Nominee for Best Song. Feel free to sing along. - Nathaniel] 

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JA from MNPP here. Let's just get this outta the way right up front - "The Rainbow Connection" is my favorite song of all time. It's also part of one of my earliest memories, and definitely my very first movie memory - I couldn't have been more than three or four and I'd been dropped off at a babysitter's house for the first time ever while my parents took off to do god knows what. I was miserable, horrified, I distinctly remember the babysitter staring at me with terror in her eyes as I bawled like a maniac (so much time has passed and the only thing that's changed is now it's my boyfriend's face giving me that look).

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But it all changed as soon as the babysitter turned on the TV and whaddya know, there was The Muppet Movie just starting. Some little green frog was warbling his little tune on his little banjo on his little log in his little swamp, and magic - Muppet and movie alike - carried me away, and I've never looked back. When my parents showed up before the movie was over I refused to leave until it ended - a cinemaniac (with a secret felt fetish, shh) was born.

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Thirty years or so have passed since that life-defining moment, and  I will still break into immediate awestruck tears when I hear it. Lines like "I've heard it too many times to ignore it. It's something that I'm s'posed to be..." actually honestly helped me through the coming out process in my early 20s. The debt of gratitude for forming a basic piece of who I am - and a really basic decent part, I think I can say truthfully - that I owe to Jim Henson and songwriters Paul Williams and Kennth Ascher is beyond measure.

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So with The Muppets out in theaters this week, I figured we could take a look back at that song and the thirty years that it's been a living breathing beautiful thing in our lives. There are literally dozens of these to pick from but here are my five of my favorite covers!

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Yes, No, Maybe So: "Mirror Mirror"

We've never really imagined visually acclaimed director Tarsem Singh as the Evil Queen type but the release of the trailer to his next flick Mirror Mirror (included at the bottom of this post) so quickly on the heels of Rupert Sanders Snow White and the Huntsmen trailer (previously discussed) changes that immediately. Suddenly it's remarkably easy -- nay required! -- to imagine Tarsem all fussy, bejewelled and panicky with sweat in front of his own magic mirror when it declares Snow White and the Hunstman the fairest of all new Snow White projects. That's admittedly a small 50/50 type achievement, but still... 

Breathe deeply and put The Fall on loop in your home theater, Tarsem! Movie magic is temperamental even for the most skilled visual magicians.

But it's time for our Yes, No, Maybe So breakdown. As we do in this series, let's start positive...

YES...

• As in The Social Network, Armie Hammer seems more than perfectly cast as upper crust... in this case upper upper crust as in the royal family, as in Prince Charming.
• Birch trees are pretty and there seem to be a lot of them in this movie.
• Lily C... Ju... the se... the cos...vi... oh fuck it, let's move on. 

NO...

"Snap!" to quote Thor on Nurse Jacket. 'We don't say that anymore."

• Julia Roberts used to be so great at comedy. But it might just be true that if you rest, you rust.
• That "I believe I believe I believe in love" musical number is strangely off putting. Was it the smug way Snow White already thinks she's the fairest of them all with her dance move? Was it the Bollywood influence without really committing to Bollywood?
• Why does the whole thing look lower budget than even the cheeztacular Once Upon a Time on television?
• Why does the sound drop out for each Julia Roberts moment like an awkward silent laugh track?
• Being banished to the woods isn't very scary when the woods look like the soundstage adjacent to the soundstage you were just banished from.
• Why is Nathan Lane in this?
• Why did they release a trailer when the images aren't color corrected and they didn't even fix the green screen backdrop in the "you're not as pathetic as I thought" scene?
• Why is the dialogue so anachronistically modern?
• Why is Julia shouting all of her lines. Wouldn't the highlighting and underlining of 50% of each sentence be enough for a line delivery?
• "Snow White? Snow Who? Snow Way" 
• I think instead of Seven Dwarves they've given us Seven Jar Jar Binkses. *shudder*
• No, Julia... I don't think there's a happy ending coming your way here.
• "Say Hello to My Little Friend" ... seriously? SERIOUSLY?!? What is this Shrek only without animation and with hoarier lame pop culture jokes? 

MAYBE SO...

• If you're going to risk being laughed at, by all means wear swan dresses! Really go for it. Should your swan be pooping out your leading lady instead of casually draped around her a la Björk? WHY NOT!? Go for it Eiko Ishioka! Your cuckoo bravery is inspiring. We love you. 
• The Fall is awesome and maybe it looked like shit at some point during production? 

The atrocity in full is embedded below... Are you a No, No or Maybe No? Sound off in the comments.

Yes, No, Maybe So: "Snow White & the Huntsman"

Once upon a time there lived a blogger named Nathaniel R who feared all fairy tale reinventions after the gaudiest of poison apples that was Eyesore in Wonderland left him for dead, comatose. But then on the magical day of November the 10th, this trailer for Snow White & The Huntsmen arrived and woke him with something like true love's kiss.

Or is it another trap? Is this another gaudy brain-dead horror malevolently enchanted with a Prince Charming disguise? Dare Nathaniel dream of a happy ending?

YES

• It's never a bad idea to remind us of Madonna's "Frozen" (♥) and that raven form explosion did the trick for an opening and closing gambit.
• Though the title name checks only Snow White (Kristen Stewart) and The Huntsmen (Chris Hemsworth), the trailer promises that this is totally The Evil Queen Show. And we can live with that since Charlize Theron is delicious.
• "Beauty is my power" ...that creepy yet restrained image of the queen bathed in milk (?) rather than something more cliché like a pool of blood after her opening kill... is so "pop" (think Annie Leibovitz photoshoots) but also has a mysteriously disturbing simplicity. Is the whole movie going to be this visually smart? 
• My god this movie looks so beautiful. Let's see... [IMDb check] ZOMG, it's Greig Fraser on DP duty. No wonder. Remember what he did for Bright Star? He's our new favorite. And... oh... Colleen Atwood on costumes? Really? They look amazing but atypically less than alarmingly busy and fussed over (thank god) than what she concocts lately for Tim Burton.
• Did we mention that we love Charlize Theron?
• Did we mention that we love Charlize best when she embraces her inner outer beauty? When she does she's monstrously good.

No & Maybe So AFTER THE JUMP...

Click to read more ...

Absolutely Linkulous

THIS JUST IN: Brett Rattner has resigned as producer of the Oscar telecast after his gay slur this weekend at a Q&A. So we don't even need to link you to Mark Harris's sharp opinion piece about why they should fire him. Good. Let us wash our hands of this one and move on... although I'm still more worried about him ruining Wicked for all time than ruining the Oscars for one year. The Oscars survive everything.

Coming Soon we're going to get a youth-centric fictional film about the adventures of the young Leonardo da Vinci.
Hollywood Reporter interviews the recipients of the upcoming honorary Oscars including Her Oprahness 
Tom and Lorenzo object to this new pictorial of Chloe Moretz
VGL Bruce Weber shoots Weekend star Tom Cullen (left). I think this is the most clothed I've ever seen a Weber shoot but beautiful pics. I hope Cullen and co-star Chris New have the offers rolling in now. (For movies, not more photoshoots!)
Buzz Feed speaking of photoshoots -- that's three links in a row. it's all about eye candy today I guess -- here's Jonathan Lipnicki the tiny tot from Jerry Maguire more than all grown up.
Empire Stephen King's bizarre "Rose Madder" novel is coming to the screen with Naomi Sheridan (In America) winning screenplay duties.

Deadline an AbFab movie to follow three television specials. Patsy and Edina will live forever
Rookie Magazine Really really fantastic interview with Joss Whedon on his Shakespeare movie Much Ado About Nothing (see previous post), The Avengers, his fascination with tough and capable teenage girls, and how Wonder Woman was a bit Angelina Jolie-ish.
Twitch Film first stills from Rodrigo Cortes Buried follow up, a thriller called Red Lights with Cillian Murphy. Robert DeNiro, Sigourney Weaver and Elizabeth Olsen co-star. 
i09 has clips from Arthur Christmas, one of our animated feature contenders, and they label it "kind of fun" 

Quote of the Day from Vanity Fair

We’ve finally answered the question, ‘Apples or oranges?’.”

The opening of David Fincher's unused Best Director acceptance speech earlier this year. Ha! Perfection. I didn't think I could love him more but I was wrong. Aaron Sorkin wrote the article that's attached to so, duh, it's a great read.

Pip Pip Hooray For Helena

JA from MNPP here. I consider myself fairly well read, and yet lately the news has seemed stuffed with exceptions where I have to admit that oh, somehow that book that I'm supposed to have read slipped by me. Yesterday I felt that way with the news that Steve Buscemi is planning on adapting William S. Burroughs' book Queer (with the fantastic trio of Guy Pearce, Ben Foster, and Kelly MacDonald) causing me to realize and shamefully acknowledge the fact that I haven't read any Burroughs at all.

And today we have the first images from Mike Newell's adaptation of Charles Dickens classic Great Expectations, and as I considered writing a post on these pictures a thought occurred to me - I've never read this book either! My education was a farce. And, while according to Wikipedia the book's been adapted for various mediums dozens of times, the only version I have ever seen is Alfonso Cuarón's loose adaptation in 1998 with Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow and Anne Bancroft camping it up as "Ms. Dinsmoor," their take on book's infamously wackadoo jilted bride Miss Havisham.

Which brings us to this, the reason we're here:

Exclamation points!!! Love it. That's Helena Bonham Carter as Miss Havisham in Mike Newell's film-to-be, and it's an extraordinary enough thing to look at that I decided my knowledge of the source material or lack thereof be damned, this must be gawked at. Just the other day Nat was talking about how often Kirsten Dunst plays destroyed brides - looks like HBC's giving her a run for the money in that department. Bride wars, part two!

You can see one more picture over at Deadline, where the picture originated. The film's not out until next Fall; it also stars Sally Hawkins and Jason Flemyng and as head-boy Pip we've got War Horse's Jeremy Irvine. What do we think?