The Once and Future Link

• /Film Tom Hanks to play Elvis Presley's shady manager Colonel Tom Parker in Baz Luhrmann's upcoming Elvis biopic. Thankfully Baz is looking for a complete unknown for Elvis himself
• Towleroad this is awesome. Gay rights hero Harvey Milk is now on the tail fits of Norwegian Airlines. And to think he can't even get a national holiday in the US. We are so behind sometimes!
• Shadowplay some fun thoughts on John Boorman's Excalibur as "The Ridiculous"
• MNPP "do dump or marry" Matrix anniversary edition

More after the jump including the awesomeness of Eva Green, the fate of X-Men movies, an Alien high school production, and filmmaker interviews...

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Beauty vs Beast: Bad Girls

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" which is tackling the 49th birthday of one of modern cinema's more obscure and under-rewarded actresses, maybe you've heard her name in passing -- a Cate Blanchett? If you have you're one of the lucky few in the know! Okay okay so she's currently swanning around southern France in millions of dollars in fabrics being the grande dame of the movies, so you probably have.

But this week's competition is facing her down with a real buried gem, somebody only the mosy diligent of cineastes has heard of and whose film adaptation of a serious difficult piece of theater just hit theaters this past weekend... a Saoirse Ronan? Rack your brains, maybe that name sounds familiar. Anyway in 2011 these two forces of nature faced down in Joe Wright's (still under-appreciated if you ask me) film Hanna, and here we are...

find bike trails

PREVIOUSLY Last week also tackled a bad mother figure situation with the monsters of the Alien franchise and I think since it was Mother's Day you made the right choice, giving Mama Queen Alien Bitch 70% of the vote. Said AmandaBuffamonteezi:

"No better time to say YAAAASSSS KWEEEENNNN!!!!!"

Beauty vs Beast: Acid Queen

Howdy, Jason from MNPP here with our Mother's Day edition of "Beauty vs Beast" - it's maybe becoming a bit cliche to talk about the Alien franchise for Mother's Day at this point... but that's not going to stop me, for two reasons. First off today is the 42nd birthday of the actress Carrie Henn, who played "Newt" in 1986's Aliens - click here to see a picture of her with Sigourney Weaver a couple of years ago. She's a grown lady! Time is weird, you guys.

And secondly we're doing Alien because I got to see the film on the gigantic screen of the United Palace Theater here in NYC yesterday and a million wows. Never have I more envied the moviegoers of yesteryear who got to watch films in these literal palaces. United Palace does a movie screening every month and if you're in New York you owe yourself the experience of seeing something there, it is absolutely grand - see their whole schedule right here. Anyway we've faced down Ripleys for this series once before so this time let's face down her foes! Which came first, the Egg or the Queen...

polls

PREVIOUSLY Last week we sup from the throats of the haute couture bloodsuckers in Tony Scott's The Hunger and it was ice-blonde Catherine Deneueve who came out on top to the tune of nearly 80% of your votes - said thevoid99:

"I vote for Miriam although.... my heart and soul will always belong to David Bowie's character in that film. Still not over him."

Beauty vs Beast: Bad Romance

Howdy, everybody - Jason from MNPP here with a brand new round of "Beauty vs Beast" for you on this first Monday of June. Coming up on this first Friday of June a movie called My Cousin Rachel is coming out (you can watch the trailer right here) that stars Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin and is adapted from the 1951 book by Daphne du Maurier (who also wrote The Birds and Rebecca). The book was already turned into a movie once in 1952 with  Richard Burton and Olivia de Havilland (which I have never seen; have you?) - anyway it's one of my favorite genres, the overheated gothic romance, brimming with lace and poisons, and I can't wait.

So in the spirit of such things this week we're tackling one of the greatest of all when it comes to these stories - Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre. There are a couple of film adaptations but let's go with the most recent, Cary Fukunaga's 2011 film starring Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender, since I found it a grand adaptation.

PREVIOUSLY We spent last week trapped in that damn cryogenic container so we've got to skip back two weeks to our last competition, which pit the Ellen Ripley of Ridley Scott's Alien against the Ellen Ripley of James Cameron's Aliens. And it was the bigger badder bitchier (her words not mine!) version of the latter who stomped away with 67% of your votes. Said markgordonuk:

"Alien is my favourite movie but the Aliens performance is something else, the looks and glances, the fear, the physicality, the line readings, the no bull attitude, I could go on, such an Iconic performance, everyone knows who Ripley is."

Beauty vs Beast: All About Ellen

Jason from MNPP here with this week's All Sigourney edition of "Beauty vs Beast" -- everything should always be All Sigourney, don't you think? Most especially Alien movies. I can't tell you how much I missed the grounding presence of Ellen Ripley this past weekend, whiplashing around Ridley Scott's scattered Covenant. If only we were getting Neill Blomkamp's proposed sequel, I kept thinking. An Alien without a Ripley is a body without a heart or a brain - an exo-skeleton full of acid.

So that's where I stand on Covenant. And even if they're more positive than I am most (if not all?) reviews continue to point to the first two films as the franchise's high-water mark. But instead of facing Ripley off with Giger's literal Beast I thought it would be more interesting to do a variation on the eternal "Alien or Aliens" question, and face off Scott's Ripley against James Cameron's Ripley, as the low-key smartypants of the first movie is in many ways quite a different beast altogether from the ass-kicking maternal Cassandra of the second. Which Ripley's your jam, and why?

PREVIOUSLY We tackled Alfred Hitchcock's personal fave Shadow of a Doubt (1943) last week for Joseph Cotten's birthday and it was Cotten's Uncle Charlie who triumphed over his niece Charlie (Teresa Wright), although it was close (as it ought to be with such doubling going on). Said Dancin' Dan:

"This is impossible, pitting one of my favorite Hitchcock heroines against one of my favorite Hitchcock villains. But I'm going to give an EVER SO SLIGHT edge to Young Charlie, for the sole reason that, as much amazing work as Cotten does in the role, Hitch helps him with Uncle Charlie's creepiness much more than he helps Wright (never better) in building Young Charlie's character."