Showbiz History: The biggest Oscar nomination shock ever + the "Before" trilogy begins

5 random things that happened on this day, January 27th, in showbiz history

1939 Idiots Delight starring Norma Shearer and Clark Gable opens in theaters. It was their final picture together but Mr Gable had in fact become a star IN a Norma Shearer picture: A Free Soul (1931). Jesse James starring Tyrone Power was also released on this day during "Hollywood's Greatest Year"...

Click to read more ...

Posterized: Where'd ya go with Richard Linklater?

by Nathaniel R

Richard Linklater directing Cate Blanchett on the set of "Where'd Ya Go, Bernadette?"

Richard Linklater, who burst on to the indie film scene as the voice of the "Slacker" generation, has had quite an eclectic career all told. He's made 19 theatrically released narrative features of a wide variety of genres and been instrumental in launching new stars (Matthew McConaughey, Parker Posey, and Miranda Cosgrove) or adding significant lustre and awards notices to other filmographies (Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, Jack Black and Patricia Arquette chief among that list). The Austin-based filmmaker's latest is the adaptation of the best-seller Where'd Ya Go Bernadette. Cate Blanchett stars as the artist in self-imposed exile. 

Linklater's films have ranged from perfect gems to little seen oddities, director for hire gigs, weird and funny larks, remakes, misfires, and ambitious personal projects. How many of them have you seen? All 19 posters are after the jump...

Click to read more ...

What Link Gets Wrong About Blog

AV Club deep screen capture to reveal how well constructed shots in Divergent dont make for a good film
BuzzFeed great essay on the current relevancy of Before Sunrise (1995) and instant nostalgia
Heat Vision Tyrese Gibson obsessed with playing Green Lantern in a film that's at least 5 years away based on a character already ruined by the movies 
Decider 10 essential movies about nuns from our beloved Black Narcissus to less impressive but famous offerings like Doubt

HuffPo Adam Scott and Jason Schwarzmann discuss their prosthetic penises in The Overnight. (Takeaway: no actor will ever truly be naked again onscreen. That's only for actresses) 
THR talks to the director of Book of Life - though disappointed by the lack of an Oscar nomination, he cherishes stories from fans about how it effected their families
Towleroad arts teacher in Texas does "Uptown Funk" with students. Cute. But I only share it because I love Uptown Funk because you know why (first verse) 
Playlist Paul Thomas Anderson loves Edge of Tomorrow and The Grand Budapest Hotel
THR Why Me and Earl and the Dying Girl did not choose the highest bidder at Sundance 

This Week's Must Read
You undoubtedly know already that Mark Harris is one of the best writers on movie culture and the awards beat in general (if for some insane reason you haven't read his first book Pictures at a Revolution, it's the most invaluable Oscar book since "Inside Oscar") but I think his latest column for Grantland is one of his all time finest. He goes deep on "How Selma Got Smeared: Historical Fiction And Its Malcontents" I only wish this essay had broken sooner before Oscar nomination voting.  Now you may be thinking 'please, Nathaniel, I have read enoug about Selma's LBJ problem' and you may even be thinking (as I have been) that complaints about Selma's "Oscar snub" are starting to feel weirder and weirder as the season progresses. Fact: Selma will now go down in movie history as a Best Picture nominee, something only 8 movies from hundreds and hundreds released in 2014 can claim.  But trust me you need to read this anyway.

Here's a part I particularly love (bold is mine) that is really illuminating about historical fiction:

About a third of the way into Selma, Coretta Scott King (Carmen Ejogo) has a private meeting with Malcolm X (Nigel Thatch) in an Alabama church (this is not an invention of the movie; the two met in Selma on February 5, 1965, two weeks before Malcolm X was assassinated). The scene is introduced with a shrewd recurring device — an onscreen teletype legend that tells moviegoers what’s happening, but only through the warping prism of FBI surveillance. “C. King in Selma to meet with Negro militant Malcolm X. 03:46 p.m. LOGGED.” The description denotes the assumption of white law enforcement that a conspiracy of one kind is taking place — a clandestine meeting in which King may be moving closer to throwing in with a more militant, potentially violent faction of the movement. In reality, the “conspiracy” that’s unfolding is exactly the opposite; Malcolm tells the wary Coretta that he is not in Selma to impede her husband’s work, but to allow himself to be used, even to be misrepresented, to further King’s goals.

...

DuVernay’s view of the uses of history and of (mis)representation is not careless in this scene or in the movie; it’s clearly thought through. The onscreen typed summary is a perfectly deployed example of how something can be factually correct (meeting with a “Negro militant” is, literally, what Coretta King is doing) without being true; the movie, by contrast, finds many ways of being true without being strictly factual. That is exactly what good historical drama must sometimes do, and must be given permission to do, including in this scene itself, in which DuVernay has a character express an understanding that his presence and his motives may have to be slightly distorted in order to achieve a greater truth and justice.

And Harris illuminates it, strategically, in a scene not even involving LBJ.

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...

Click to read more ...

Those Who Have Gone "Before"

Hi all, it’s Tim, here on the eve of what is, by far, my most-anticipated summer release of 2013. Not, shockingly, The Hangover, Part III. Not even Epic. No, like most right-thinking people, 2013 for me is all about Before Midnight, the third film in one of cinema’s most unlikely series, in which we revisit lovers Celine (Julie Delpy) and Jesse (Ethan Hawke) every nine years to see what they’ve been up to. The first time we met them in Before Sunrise, they met by accident on a train into Vienna, then in Before Sunset they had an afternoon to walk around Paris, and in this third entry- I have no idea, I’m on completely spoiler lockdown with this film, to the level where I won’t even look at the poster. But I’m willing to guarantee that whatever they’re up to, it’s going to have some very deep resonance and profound truth to speak about the lifespan of romantic relationships.

For the benefit of anyone who hasn’t had the chance to see the earlier movies yet – please change that as soon as possible, I beg you – or to get series veterans riled up for its imminent return (like that’s even necessary), I wanted to share five reasons that, for me, the first two Before… movies are some of the finest romantic dramas in the history of cinema. [more...]

Click to read more ...