Links, 11

NYT Amanda Peet on why she doesn't read reviews
Variety Ron Howard to produce and direct much discussed political book Hillbilly Elegy. A very odd fit if you ask us, since Howard is skilled at broad-stroked popcorn pictures, not nuanced thematic drama
NYT Radley Metzger, erotic cinema pioneer (The Lickerish Quartet, Score) has died at 88

Shadowplay looks back at Joan Crawford in Torch Song with some notes on Feud
Interview Mag talks to Pilou Asbaek (A War, Ghost in the Shell) 
MNPP John Waters still making trouble onscreen and in print 
Theater Mania Provincetown's got an amazing lineup of concerts this summer including Sutton Foster and Megan Hilty
Coming Soon Some Scarlet Witch action from the Avengers: Infinity War set. It's always amusing to see how strange these things look before visual fx
i09 reviews the direct to video animated feature Teen Titans: Judas Contract, based on the classic 80s storyline
Cinematic Corner the best and worst of 2016. Yes, it's still okay to post these. I know I need to finish up some categories in the film bitch awards

Finally, please do check out the Pulitzer Prizes for 2017. Winners and finalists have been announced. Nothing movie or TV related this year among the winners except, eventually, the fiction winner Underground Railroad, which is Barry Jenkins next project as previously discussed. There are two theater related winners so congrats to Lynn Nottage who is the first black woman to win two Pulitzers for Drama (her new play "Sweat" which stars Feud and The American's Alison Wright alongside Johanna Day and Michelle Wilson) and to Hilton Als of the New Yorker for his theater criticism. Among the finalists that didn't win is one worthy voice for movie lovers: Ty Burr of the Boston Globe was honored with 10 of his columns noted.

Animated Feature, the April Foolish Oscar Predictions

If only Laika had waited until 2017 to release Kubo and the Two Strings -they might finally have won that elusive Oscar that almost always goes to Disney or Disney/Pixar.

Owen Wilson poses with a life size McQueen for "Cars 3"

As previously discussed this year's animated slate doesn't look too promising in terms of American studio features, and there's also a complete absence of stop motion features *sniffle* from abroad as far as we can tell. What's worse, the Academy's just-announced a rule change for voting on the animated features that might well make the category less penetrable for brilliant work from across the ocean. But we'll have to wait and see if our worst fears materialize.

First Oscar Predictions for 2017's Best Animated Feature

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Two Oscar Rule Changes: One great, the other tragic

by Nathaniel R

The Academy announced some a few rule changes today. You no longer have to have only one composer to be eligible for Original Score, and producing partnerships will be considered a single entity now -- meaning more people could be nominated for producing Best Picture nominees. But the two big changes are about the Documentary and Animated Feature races and one of those changes we applaud and the other makes us want to riot to protect a beloved artform...

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2017 Animated Tease

With two new teasers out from two of the most reliable animation studios, Pixar's Coco (their last original for the next few years -sigh), and Aardman's Early Man, it's time to begin speculating about what the animated medium will bring us this year? What might Oscar fancy? 

The tentative schedule and teasers are after the jump...

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Revisiting Beauty and the Beast (1991) - Rank the songs!

By Lynn Lee

With the live-action remake of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast just around the corner, what better time to revisit the original animated masterpiece and its endlessly hummable songs?  If you saw the movie when it came out in 1991 and happened to be a bookish, musical theater-loving little girl (or boy) at the time, odds are you got the soundtrack and learned it by heart.  (I plead guilty on all counts.) 

While I have no idea what happened to my copy, every beat and lyric – by Alan Menken and the late Howard Ashman, respectively – are still firmly etched into my memory.  I never saw the Broadway musical, which restored a song that had been scrapped from the movie (“Human Again”) and added several new songs by Menken and lyricist Tim Rice, but reportedly the new movie isn’t including any of the latter.  Instead it’s adding four newly new songs by Mencken and Rice.  However, fear not, fellow original Disney B&B enthusiasts: it appears that all of the Mencken-Ashman songs from the 1991 movie will be in the mix.  As Cogsworth would say, “If it’s not ba-roque, why fix it?” 

We’ll have to wait to debate the merits of the new songs but we can discuss how the original ones stack up against each other.  With the caveat that this feels a bit like picking one’s favorite kid, here’s my ranking from lowest to highest...

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