Sundance Kills Your Darlings In Interior Leather Bars

"Sex. Sex. Sex." That's a far more accurate and truer statement than the clichéd "Sex Sells" isn't it? Sex often emphatically doesn't sell. Sometimes it severely limits your market penetration... excuse me, saturation. So "Sex Sells" is an overstatement with lots of conditional clauses. But "Sex. Sex. Sex." that's just true, unequivocally! I'm not saying this because of this Kill Your Darlings trio's photo op I've just posted...

Daniel, Dane, and their Director John

poll by twiigs.com

...even though yes, director John Krokidas is totally 100% sexable based on this photographic evidence. (Tangent: Dane DeHaan turns 27 next month. Is he going to look like he's 30 when he's 60?).

I began this post with "Sex. Sex. Sex." because that's all I keep reading about from Sundance. Yesterday we covered the Cougar Island sexcapades of Two Mothers but apparently Sundance just keeps presenting the world with future MPAA challenges. Quoth Carpetbagger:

“I’ve seen five movies today, and it has been nonstop,” said a senior executive at a major Hollywood studio on Saturday night. “I’m no prude, but it’s a little much.”

NSFW James Franco, Amanda Seyfried, and Gay blah blah blah after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Djackman Unlinked

Hugh Jackman was honored at the Museum of the Moving ImageReviews Under the Influence on Pitch Perfect. I LOL'ed. Hence the share
Movie|Line talks to Christopher Nolan at the tribute to Hugh Jackman at MoMi
ET Amanda Seyfried on Channing Tatum "everybody wants to have sex with him" and her own reputation. Amanda is fun!
/Film Clint Mansell will score Noah for Darren Aronofksy - YES
Ultra Culture hates on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and its drip-fed storytelling; only nine hours until the protagonists meet the antagonist!
Hollywood Reporter Sean Penn is mouthing off again. Not that he isn't partially correct. He just doesn't have enough of a sense of humor about his self-seriousness to always pull it off.
Advocate Our beloved Sir Ian McKellen's long battle with prostate cancer.
Gawker Hunger Games themed reality tv is on its way. Without the death. But still, i don't think we're that far away from a Series 7 world, do you?

Today's Watches
Quentin Tarantino's epic introduction to Django Unchained here in NYC. Courtesy of Gothamist.

Tarantino from katie sokoler on Vimeo.

and Amy Poehler & Tina Fey's first promo for the Golden Globes

List Mania
Eric Kohn at Indiewire Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning & Amour. Yes, they can co-exist on a list
Film Doctor chooses his worst films of the year from Savages to Battlefield (poor Taylor Kitsch!)
Stale Popcorn on the best movie posters of the year from The Paperboy to Gayby
New Yorker terrific year-in-review via Anthony Lane. Love the shout-out to Eva Green in Dark Shadows

Awards Mania
Split Sider The Globes ignore all your favorite comedies again
In Contention looks at category fraud. I'd love to believe I coined the term and maybe I did since I've been the loudest voice complaining about it for 11 years but who knows.
In Contention Sony still thinking Amour is going to happen. Me too.
Oscars the 104 eligible Motion Picture Scores and some composers have multiple chances including Alexandre Desplat (4) and Danny Elfman (4), and James Newton Howard (3)

♩lovely ladies come along and join us ♬

Fantine & Cosette at the Les Miz premiere

Les Miz needs to just open already! 

Dying to see it in the theater with an adoring crowd again. An adoring crowd of two at home results in off key sing-alongs and that doesn't have quite the same effect.

I Dreamed a Dream That The Film Version of Les Miz Would Be Awesome.

It came true.

Tom Hooper, looking very confident, took the stage at Alice Tully this afternoon to welcome everyone to the screening with a Happy Thanksgiving and a confession that he had finished the film at 2:00 AM in time for today's all guild screenings, the very first! If we were sitting there "It must mean I've finished it," he quipped.

Though reviews are embargoed until December 11th, let it suffice to say (for now) that my fears about the film adaptation of the classic musical were alleviated quickly. MORE...

Click to read more ...

Thanksgiving Linkovers

Good afternoon! I only had one piece of pumpkin pie last night so it absolutely cannot be counted as an unqualified success of a Thanksgiving. So, desperate for leftovers (I wasn't even sent home with any spare pie!), I turn to good blogs, the whip cream of this internet pie.

Film Dr. a pictorial primer on Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2
MNPP JA's living vicariously through Amanda Seyfried fixation continues unabated
Towleroad homoerotic Skyfall poster 

In Contention the first of countless top ten lists, Cahiers du Cinema finds Holy Motors at the top
DP/30 Jake Gyllenhaal talks End of Watch. Which I still haven't seen. I am a bad Gyllenhaalic this year. (I also missed Won't Back Down) 
Awards Daily Sasha interviews Ang Lee (Life of Pi)
LA Times Tracy Letts says he didn't alter much about August: Osage County for the screen in his screenplay. So... it's three hours long then? 
MovieLine Noomi Rapace does her best Mick Jagger in a new music video. But is it Mick Jaggery enough? 
Empire Marisa Tomei may co-star in a new Hugh Grant romcom. I can see that pairing totally working.

Finally...
Timothy Brayton, easily one of the best (and most completist-friendly) online film critics, has ranked every single Bond film (with each link going to a new review) the Bond Girls and each James Bond. That's a lot of 007. 

Yes yes. I'll post the results of the readers poll here soon -- sorry for the holiday delay -- but before we are totally Bonded out, knock back a martini with Tim's reviews and lists.