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Brad’s Status, the new film from Mike White (the creator of Enlightened and the writer of Chuck And Buck) is about a forty-something man’s emotional crisis. That information made me giddy with anticipation. Could White have come up with the male version of Amy Jellicoe in Ben Stiller’s Brad Sloan? Are we in for an emotional ride with a polarizing but endearing character with rough but compulsively watchable qualities?
Alas, no. If you were expecting all that, I’d say go in with tempered expectations...
The Academy has announced the names of many presentersfor the big night on February 28th. The list includes the best actress nominee who gave us this often used gifable funny moment, reacting to the makeup in The Wolfman (2010).
A few writers from The Film Experience share 7 more favorite moments from the presenters after the jump, including Meryl, Jim Carrey and Emma Stone...
• AV Club loves on the dearly departed Bunheads • Guardian Cynthia Nixon, who plays Emily Dickinson in a new film, thinks she'd have loved social media • E! Online Dakota Johnson wants Jamie Dornan to bare all in Fifty Shades sequel. (I mean, why not? It's not like he's NSFW shyaboutit.) • EW looks at a handful of AMPAS ballots Supporting Actress and Picture votes are all over the place
• Awards Daily on two previous shakeups in Hollywood (the late 1920s) & Academy (the late 1960s) business • Towleroad Gay Iconography: All About Bette Davis • Film School Rejects Ben Stiller's most iconic characters from best to worst • Coming Soon Ghostbusters gets a teaser poster. Don't get excited. It's basically just the old logo. Trailer coming on March 3rd • Coming SoonSalt, Angelina Jolie's would be franchise that never became one headed to TV in series form - without Angie of course • /Film Alexander Payne lines up his next next film. It's called My Saga, a road trip movie. He still hasn't shot Downsizing with Reese Witherspoon though.
Today's Watch Daredevil Season 2 Trailer - Pt 1
Elektra and The Punisher get their own trailers, looks like. I'll be disappointed if we don't get a follow up on Madame Gao though, since she was fierce/mysterious.
• And finally, Star Wars Episode VIII: As Yet Untitled began filming this morning at Pinewood Studios in the UK aiming for the Christmas friendly release date of December 15th, 2017. All the major players, sans Harrison Ford of course, will return. The film is written and directed by Rian Johnson (Brick, Looper) and all the major cast members return (sans Harrison Ford *sniffle*). New cast members will include Benicio Del Toro, newcomer Kelly Marie Tran and 'The Face,' herself Laura Dern! No, wait, that deserves more exclamation points. Laura Dern !!!!!!!!
Jason from MNPP here, flashing my signature look your way as we mount this week's "Beauty vs Beast" -- it's fifteen years later and we're set to return to the Derek Zoolander School Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too this Friday with Zoolander 2, the 2001 film's slow-cooked sequel. The film reunites most of the original cast while bringing in a few new (stretched, preening) faces - I can't even tell you how many times I've watched Kristen Wiig's "Youth Milk" commercial; she's the entire reason I will be returning. I do have good feelings towards the original film though, so let's make our best right turns and flash a Blue Steel backwards in time...
PREVIOUSLY We wished Jennifer Jason Leigh happy birthday with a glance back at 1992's Single White Female, and this time out it was her crazy crazy Hedra that came out on top, sticking a single high heel (and sixty percent of the vote) into poor innocent Bridget Fonda's fashion hopes and dreams. Said DJDeeJay:
"Yes, she kills a puppy, but she also gives a guy a BJ AGAINST HIS WISHES. Totally subversive, haven't seen anything like it before or since."
Our NYFF coverage continues with Matthew Eng on this year's surprise screening -- which was less of a secret than usual this year, continually hinted at by the NYFF themselves, even spoiled ahead of time by IndieWire...
Ben Stiller & Naomi Watts star in "While We're Young"
Noah Baumbach is showing his age.
Not that this is the first time, mind you. Anyone who stuck through his exquisitely harsh and thus totally divisive Greenberg will surely remember Ben Stiller’s crusty, titular protagonist sourly announcing to a party full of fuzzed-out twentysomethings, “I hope I die before I end up meeting one of you in a job interview.”
There’s something instantly more pronounced about Baumbach’s evident unease towards the current generational divide in his latest adult dramedy, While We’re Young, in which Ben Stiller and Naomi Watts star as Josh and Cornelia, a deceptively comfortable urban couple who are surprised to find themselves befriended and seduced by Jamie and Darby, a married pair of kind-eyed, porkpie-wearing, Bushwick-dwelling hipsters, played by Adam Driver and Amanda Seyfried. What starts as a casual, multi-generational friendship soon transitions into something more consuming, as Josh, a struggling documentary filmmaker whose sophomore follow-up has taken ten years to finish, finds himself both aping and inspiring Jamie, who just so happens to be an aspiring documentarian himself. [more...]
Thursday, September 14, 2017 at 4:29PM 
