Review: "Baby Driver"

by Chris Feil

Edgar Wright is back in action movie mode for Baby Driver, a crime caper just slightly enough on the offbeat side enough to stand out among the summer franchise entries. Ansel Elgort stars as Baby (no, seriously), a iPod-attached getaway driver wrapping up an undefined debt to his somewhat paternal boss Doc (Kevin Spacey). There is Wright-ian wit to spare in the set pieces and characterizations as Baby wraps up his final mission and falls for waitress Debora (Lily James), but Driver is also his messiest. With a solid supporting ensemble that features a delightfully unhinged Jamie Foxx and Spacey on his more understated side of hammy, the film is nevertheless a great launching pad for Ansel Elgort as a multitalented leading man.

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Links: Marnie, Pokemon, The Tempest, Emmys, and Squad Goals

MTV test your knowledge - is this person Miles Teller or Ansel Elgort? 
Forbes very positive piece on Suicide Squad's success. But what about the fact that it's a terrible movie and terrible movies aren't good for movie culture or franchise futures?
MNPP Gratuitous Robert Redford for his 80th birthday 
EW Catherine Zeta Jones joining the Feud miniseries. She'll play Olivia de Havilland
Comics Alliance Well we should have known this was coming. There's going to be a live-action Pokemon movie. Nicole Perlman, the Guardians of the Galaxy screenwriter is co-penning
Variety oops. a poster for Denis Villeneuve's Arrival has accidentally stirred up political trouble in Hong Kong 

MNPP's favorite movies of 1984
We Got This Covered Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon will reteam after Big Little Lies for a movie called Truly Madly Guilty, based on another best-selling love by Liane Moriarty -- I guess they all really liked each other!
Variety Lion starring Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman will be the centerpiece at the London Film Festival this fall
Tracking Board Marvel sure its spreading itself thin. Now Hulu will be making a Marvel series with Runaways. So that means they've got shows/deals with Netflix, Hulu, Freeform, ABC, and Disney.
Variety Speaking of spreading yourself thin: Lin-Manuel Miranda will write new songs for The Little Mermaid live-action remake. I love Miranda but that seems like a strange fit to me, given that The Little Mermaid's songs are so old school Broadway musical flavored
/Film why we shouldn't expect to see sequels from Laika. (Sigh. I would proclaim this as great news but we once thought Pixar wouldn't be defeated by regurgitation and we were wrong.)
Coming Soon Natalie Portman says she's done with Marvel movies
Playbill a mostly nude female production of The Tempest is playing this summers in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. For free. I bet it's better than the Julie Taymor version with Helen Mirren!
Good Morning America Amy Schumer explains how she got Goldie Hawn out of retirement for her new film 
New Yorker Richard Brody argues that Marnie, not Vertigo, is the film we should look to in regards to encapsulating Hitchcock's career...

The greatness of Hitchcock’s artistry, the musical sublimity of his images and the emotional power of his stories, isn’t separable from his carnality—rather, his greatness depends upon the worst and most bestial aspects of his character. Without them, he’d be the artisan of cinematic cuckoo clocks, and what’s all too often celebrated in the name of Hitchcock mania is precisely an abstracted craft that’s isolated from its source of power, from its dynamic principle, from its raison d’être.

Emmys
Variety Creative Arts Emmys will be split into two pre Emmys awards ceremonies
Vulture an extremely choice interview with RuPaul on his first Emmy nomination and everything being political... including politics. 

For Fun
Death and Taxes a kitty cat who really hates Donald Trump 
Ageist six secrets to outmaneuvering ageism and living your best life 
Towleroad "Greco-Roman wrestling at the Olympics is everything we wanted and more" 
Towleroad Pole vaulter defeated by his own pole -- oh, I'm sorry this one isn't "fun" but painful to watch 

Which is Yummier?

It's an Instagram battle. Which looks most delicious to you: Karl Urban's "tasty gum balls," Ansel Elgort's "milkshake," or Harry Shum Jr's "Roasted seaweed" which gives him wings*? Choose wisely.

*I'm not sure what that means but I think I'm for it because he woke up like this.

A photo posted by Karl Urban (@karlurban) on Jul 18, 2016 at 11:33am PDT

My Milkshake

A photo posted by anselelgort (@anselelgort) on Jul 23, 2016 at 9:02am PDT

Roasted seaweed gives me wings.

A photo posted by Harry Shum Jr (@harryshumjr) on Jul 25, 2016 at 3:30pm PDT

I Pledge Allegiance to the Red Carpet

Have any plans for moviegoing this weekend? I regret to inform that there isn't much new of note to choose from unless you hit the theaters that show limited releases. Though the Divergent Series has performed respectably at the box office it never remotely reached what it was going for: being the new Hunger Games in terms of loot and broad cultural reach. And interest does seem to be dwindling. The super unwieldy title of the third effort is The Divergent Series: Allegiant and it's sometimes called Allegiant - Part 1 (2016) -- at least according to IMDb. Strangely the fourth film is not called Part 2 but The Divergent Series: Ascendance. So perhaps even the studio has lost enough interest that no one is in charge of the details.

Anyway this is just an excuse to show photos from the handsome red carpet. The headliners Shailene Woodley and Theo James dressed like they were attending a funeral (perhaps they're in mourning that they still have to film another one?) so it was up to the supporting cast to bring the glitz.  

Naomi Watts (top left) provided some mature razzle dazzle (she loves silver, huh?) and here's how the young men looked: 

From left to right: Miles Teller (Whiplash), Keiynan Lonsdale (The Flash), Jonny Weston (Chasing Mavericks), Ansel Elgort (The Fault in Our Stars) and Joseph David-Jones (Legends of Tomorrow). Just as I was thinking "this cast looks very CW generic" I realized that it was no coincidence since two of them are currently in CW superhero shows. 

Which suit do you like best and what is happening with Ansel's collar? It's like he's wearing a mini towel after doing some cardio.

Jon Hamm is ready to become a movie star

Here's Murtada with news on what's next for Jon Hamm post-Mad Men.

He finally won his much deserved Emmy and now that Mad Men is behind him, it seems Jon Hamm is set on becoming a movie star. This week came the announcement that he’s joining Ansel Elgort, Lily James and Jamie Foxx in Edgar Wright's next movie Baby Driver. He’s reportedly playing “a former Wall Street trader turned cop killer” ie. the big baddie.

Driver is one of a few upcoming Hamm movies. Already in the can is the comedy Keeping Up with the Joneses alongside Zach Galifianakis in which he plays a government spy hiding in the suburbs. Maintaining the espionage angle he’s set to play a US diplomat working with a CIA agent (Rosamund Pike) in 1970s Beirut in High Wire Act which was announced a couple of months ago but who knows if it’s still happening. He’s currently shooting Marjorie Prime in which he plays a holographic recreation of an ailing woman’s (Lois Smith) dead husband as he looked in his 30s.

An intriguing mix of movies, genres and lead/supporting parts. Perhaps chosen to compensate for the failure of his first foray into leading man territory with last year’s box office bomb Million Dollar Arm. He’s got the talent and he’s got the looks. Lines between TV and movie stardom are getting more blurred everyday with more actors and directors straddling both mediums. Still a bonafide movie star has much more clout than even the most successful TV star. Hamm seems to want that as he pointedly has chosen not to work in TV. Understandably, there’s nowhere to go on TV after the huge succes and endurance of an iconic part like Don Draper.

Do you think Hamm has what it takes to become a big crossover star a la George Clooney?