Linkshift

Leonardo Nam photographed by Ricky Middlesworth for Los Angeles Confidential

Golden Globes interview Westworld's fab Leonardo Nam
MTV Teo Bugbee on the texting in Personal Shopper
Inverse interesting interview with composer Hans Zimmer who is swearing off superhero movies. Sounds like he had a bad time on Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
Playbill celebrates Sutton Foster with a gallery of all of her stage work
Variety random selection of drunk scenes in honor of your St Patricks Day hangover
/Film Alicia Vikander to headline Ben Wheatley's Freakshift. Is the director about to break out with Free Fire?
The Guardian Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson has 26 (!!!) films in development
People Surprise! Film star Amanda Seyfried and stage and tv screen star Thomas Sadoski eloped! She'll be giving birth any day now, being 8+ months pregnant
Boy Culture Paris Jackson is looking more like Madonna than Michael Jackson 
The Guardian The great Tony Kushner on T****'s proposed cuts to the Arts
This is Not Porn Jim Carrey on the set of The Mask. Just because
MNPP drools on Justin Theroux (it's only right) and shares the season 3 Leftovers trailer 
Tracking Board on how the design aspects of Beauty & the Beast (2017) lack a cohesive vision
Variety Weinstein Co's Oscar prospects this year include the biblical drama Mary Magdalene (Nov 24th) and the historical Thomas Edison drama The Current War (Dec 22) starring Benedict Cumberbatch

Exit Video
In honor of Sutton Foster's birthday, a great moment from Bunheads, a show we greatly miss (but at least we have Younger in its place for Sutton fixes) 

Oscar's reigning quartet to present, as is the tradition.

I've somehow never seen this photo of Mark Rylance trying not to step on Brie Larson's train. Adorable.

AMPAS has announced that last year's acting winners will each be presenting on Oscar night. One assumes they will present their corresponding opposite-sex category as is the tradition, but who knows. Perhaps Oscar will mix it up. I'm all for tradition at the Oscars, don'cha know, but I don't mind a curveball now and then. You?

Alicia Vikander is back on screens February 24th (Oscar weekend!) with long delayed costume drama Tulip Fever  in which she dumps Christoph Waltz for Dane DeHaan because who wouldn't.

Brie Larson is back on screens April 21st in the ensemble crime comedy Free Fire, from Ben Wheatley (High-Rise).

Mark Rylance is back on screens July 21st in Chris Nolan's WW II epic Dunkirk.

...and Leonardo DiCaprio is back on screens in... 2018? 2019? 2020? He appears to have taken a whole victory year off after winning the Oscar and still has no immediate plans to be in front of the camera. It was just announced that he'll headline The Black Hand because what the world really needs more of is mafia movies (sigh) but in truth that one is a long way off since there's no screenplay yet. There's also the possibility of the Olympic bombing movie The Ballad of Richard Jewell which Leo was once set to star in but might only be producing now. Whatever happened to The Devil in the White City with Martin Scorsese? That project was announced just over a year ago and not a peep since. If they've dropped it, I hope it becomes a miniseries instead because that book is dense with information, history, cause and effect through lines, and reams of characters. 

Summer Movie Season Surveyed

This article originally appeared in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It is reprinted here in a revised TFE specific but abridged version...

While summer didn’t technically begin until June 20th and isn’t technically over yet, “Summer Movie Season” is not beholden to the solstice and equinox but to The Blockbuster. Summer has long been the most lucrative season for Hollywood and so they’ve stretched it out to start earlier each year. It now tends to begin sometime in April with the release of the first movie that feels like a Summer Blockbuster proper (this year that would’ve arguably been The Jungle Book on April 15th) and ends on Labor Day, aka Any Second Now. It’s no secret that it’s been a rough summer for the quality of blockbusters. But if you’re lucky enough to live in a big city or smart enough to seek out films without gargantuan ad budgets, there was still plenty of cinema to get excited about. So herewith the Best & Worst of 2016’s Summer movie season…

Click to read more ...

Quickie Reviews: The Light Between Oceans and The Jungle Book

by Nathaniel R

Apologies that there's no big review this weekend but I do hope you'll check out the Fassbender & Vikander flick. Here are two quick takes on movie options this weekend.

IN THEATERS

The Light Between Oceans (Derek Cianfrance)
Story: A war veteran (Michael Fassbender) takes a position as a lighthouse keeper where he falls in love with a local girl (Alicia Vikander). Their lives change irrevocably when they discover an orphaned baby in a boat.
Review: A pop quiz. Which is more ravishing?

• Real life romantic chemistry that translates intact to movie screens.
• Romantic dramas that don't stop at sexy but get across how comforting and life-changing love and companionship can be.
• Picturesque rocky islands and lighthouses softened at their edges by grassy tenderness and the windswept beauty of two definitely cinematic brunettes.

Trick question -- they're all super ravishing! I've heard the complaints that The Light Between Oceans is "dull" or "has no edge" and it's definitely soggier and lacking in the instantaneously memorable moments of Cianfrance's previous outings Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines. But I kind of loved it while I was watching it. At least the first half. It loses its way a little in the third act as the tragedy stretches out and the film shifts to Rachel Weisz but it's uncommonly gorgeous to gaze upon and cry through. 
Grade: B+ (maybe B towards the end)
Oscar Chances: Perhaps it's not potent enough to hold on for months to win acting nominations -- though Fassbender & Vikander are both excellent -- but I'm crossing my fingers for Best Cinematography. Take a bow, Adam Arkapaw. (His previous credits include Macbeth, Lore, and Animal Kingdom). It also feels like a possibility for Score (Alexandre Desplat) though that's a little overbearing. 

JUST OUT ON DVD / BLURAY

The Jungle Book (Jon Favreau)
Story: You know this one already. A boy is raised by animals in the jungle. No, not that white one with the apes. The little Indian boy raised by wolves and panthers and bears, oh my. The problem: a tiger wants him dead.
Review: Can you believe we never reviewed this? Though it's somewhat ravishing to look at as a technical achievement, in truth I was not particularly fond of it and found it difficult to write about. The problem was that it doesn't have an identity of its own to discuss. Favreau trusts that fond memories of the Disney animated classic it apes (pun not intended) will win your love. He and his team trust in this so completely that they even graft on two and a half highly uncomfortable musical numbers despite the fact that this Jungle Book definitely does not self-identify as a musical, it's one characteristic that immediately sets its apart from the original. Until it doesn't.  Great voice work by Idris Elba as Shere Khan. 
Oscar Chances: Most definitely. At least a visual effects nomination. Perhaps sound as well?
Grade: C/C+   

P.S. If you liked it more, I'd love to hear why. Its long legs at the box office indicate that it wasn't just brand recognition but actual audience love that made it an enormous hit.

Derek Cianfrance: the Now and the Next

by Josh Forward

Derek Cianfrance, the man who made cinema fans everyway sit bolt upright with excitement at his stunning debut Blue Valentine is about to release his third feature The Light Between Oceans. Both films, and his second, the multi-generation epic The Place Beyond the Pines, show his preoccupation with the dark intricacies of doomed romances and families pouring out into gripping cinema. His talent with actors is evident again: Reviews are mixed to positive for the film overall, but leads Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander, along with supporting player Rachel Weisz are all solidly praised.

Opening wide and based on a popular novel, this is Cianfrance's first dalliance with what could be considered a "mainstream" film. As much as his cinematic fascination with the mucky and the unflinching darkness in human nature can be mainstream at least. But it does have a more traditional narrative and sweeping landscapes to match. The words "sentimental" and "soap opera" are even being bandied around.

His next project, announced this week, may prove a progression of this trajectory. It's another literary adaptation, this time of S.C. Gwynne’s “Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History". The scale of the story is epic, and it could be his biggest movie yet. Although this is a story without tortured lovers (at least as its driving force), when Cianfrance discusses it, it still sounds firmly in his wheelhouse...

The passing of the torch, passing of pain, and decisions, and the ripple effect of decisions".

The same quote could easily be said about The Place Beyond the Pines.

This film has taken a long journey to screen. A screenplay based on the same book was developed in 2010 by Diana Ossana and Larry McMurtry, the Oscar winning screenwriters of Brokeback Mountain. This would have been their first film since that masterpiece in 2005, but this adaptation appears to have nothing to do with this development, with the script written by Cianfrance himself with his Pines co-writer Darius Marder over the last three years. It's a shame we won't see another script yet from current one hit wonders McMurty and Ossana, but Cianfrance has certainly earned his auteur stripes and screenwriting chops. 

No actors have been attached yet, but cross all fingers and toes that some great Native American actors find representation on our screens.