The Wolf on Link Street

Parade 10 movie locations worth visiting from Walter Mitty to Sideways to Harry Potter and more...
Cinephilia and Beyond has links to all 2013 screenplays available for download legally direct from studios
New Yorker the best movies of the year
Slant best posters of the year
Variety The Santa Barbara Film Festival is celebrating the Before trilogy with screenings. I love that trilogy but what ISN'T Santa Barbara celebrating? I swear they have some tribute to every single contender... they're like the NBR, carefully giving out enough awards to get EVERY studio to their annual dinner

The Onion "9 Photos Of Jennifer Lawrence That Will Make You Reassess The Scope Of The 1986 Vienna Convention On The Law Of Treaties Between States And International Organizations"
Deadline Brie Larson and Jessica Lange are joining lead Mark Wahlberg in the James Caan lead role in a remake of The Gambler (1974)
Vulture John Ridley on the toughest scene to write in 12 Years a Slave, the one with Alfre Woodard 

Wolfy
Dealbook how do Jordan Belfort's victims feel about The Wolf of Wall Street?
In Contention counts down Leonardo DiCaprio's best performances. Wolf scores pretty high
The Wrap a Wolf of Wall Street Academy screening gone berserk. Scorsese gets a "shame on you" from a voter.
Awards Daily Sasha Stone also chimes in with a "this is why we can't have nice things" though I'm like "this is the last time anyone is going to call the movie 'nice'. 

It's been the talk of twitter today but I love David Poland's truth-serving response most...

@Matthew_Lucas But I hate these hyped up stories about Academy screenings that are always f-ing Rashomon with slight dementia

— David Poland (@DavidPoland) December 23, 2013

An Oscar question
Here's a new spot for Dallas Buyers Club trumpeting its prize haul thus far. That awards loot is somehow more than what's sunk in if you know what I mean... but it's been a noisy season and Focus is relatively quiet. Is Dallas Buyers Club something we're underestimating outside the obvious places (Actor & Supporting Actor)

12 Things I Learned Attending The Julie Delpy Q&A At The 92nd St. Y

Hey everyone. Michael Cusumano here. At the risk of spoiling the finale of my best of the year rundown I have only handed out one perfect "10" score for 2013 and that was in the review for Before Midnight. So when I had the opportunity to see star and co-writer Julie Delpy in person as part of the Reel Pieces series at the 92nd St. Y I jumped at the chance. For all you Before Trilogy obsessives, here are a dozen highlight discoveries from the evening: 

1. The first thing I learned is that Delpy’s writing credits on Before Midnight and Sunset are not a courtesy toward an actor who improved around the edges of someone else’s screenplay. One only needs to listen to Delpy speak for a few seconds to realize her piercing intelligence is part of the DNA of the trilogy. The authorial voice is unmistakable.

2. On that score, Delpy noted that while she and Hawke were not credited as co-writers until Before Sunset they were also substantial contributors to Before Sunrise, a script that had numerous scenes left as TBD which were filled in by the actors. Delpy says by the time they started the second film in the series she and Ethan Hawke were experienced enough to know to obtain screenwriting credits.

3. Much like a Mike Leigh production, after extensive workshopping between director and actors the finished scripts on the Before films are tightly scripted, down to the dialogue overlaps.

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Interview: Julie Delpy on the ideal way to watch the "Before" trilogy

Julie Delpy speaking in West Hollywood in NovemberStargazing sometimes leads us to believe that we really know the faces who act out our human dramas onscreen. Or that we know the characters they portray as if they were neighbors. It’s a false intimacy and a fantasy, fiction being fiction and strangers being strangers, but sometimes the illusion is too perfect to deny. Such is the case with Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke as Celine and Jessie in the “Before…”  trilogy. The actors cowrote and costarred in the decades spanning trilogy under the guidance of Director Richard Linklater and the films, perfectly spaced out every nine years, have allowed audiences to age along with them, which has only added to their ephemeral mystique. The films are grounded in reality through their short single day stories and long takes - real life happens one day at a time and without a lot of fussy crosscutting – and the only fantastical element is that every day conversations are rarely this thrilling and this wide ranging and this funny simultaneously for 90 minutes straight without some dud moment or mundane distraction breaking the spell. For that kind of perfection you need miraculous writing and great acting.

Julie Delpy is not, of course, Celine. And though I know this as I settle into our conversation over the telephone I’m temporarily stunned when she, unasked, repeats her trilogy’s most famous line when I bring up the ending to Before Sunset (2004, for which she won a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination though not, tragically, the Best Actress nod she deserved as its companion). She sounds just like Celine… only somehow not...

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A Look Ahead at the SAG Award for Best Cast

It’s Amir here. Nathaniel and I have both previously shared our frustration about the way this prize is handled. Theoretically, this should be one of the best awards of the season. Imagine celebrating directors who can bring together an ensemble of actors with exciting chemistry, films that develop several characters in equal measure, and actors who find their footing by playing against other members of the cast. As previously stated, the award should be more about a collective achievement than multiple individual ones. Sadly, that’s not how it works in the real world.

Slumdog Millionaire's win remains baffling to this day.

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Podcast: Blue is the Color Before Midnight

Blue is the Warmest Color, the erotic French drama, has moviegoers and film bloggers talking. Hear what Katey, Joe, Nick and Nathaniel have to say about it in the new podcast (we held the conversation for a week to give more of you a chance to see it). We also revisit the trilogy capping Before Midnight starring screenwriter/actors Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke.

This week's podcast also features affectionate (?) sidebar shoutouts to acclaimed documentary Call Me Kuchu, cranky moviegoers and ushers, Disney's Frozen, John Cassavettes Faces, the Israeli drama Late Marriage, the Ridley Scott classic Thelma & Louise, Sarah Paulson & Queen Latifah, and movie characters we'd like to drop back in on. 

You can listen at the bottom of the post or download it on iTunes. Join in the conversation in the comments.

Supplemental Reading / Listening:
Blue Is...-Nathaniel's review
These Sapphic Superstar tweets ... referenced in the podcast
Operation Kino - Nathaniel guest stars on Katey & Mister Patches's podcast. We're talking Dallas Buyers Club 

Blue is the Podcast's Color