New York Film Festival Selects Mike Mills' 20th Century Women for Centerpiece Film

Sound the alarms: there's a fresh new reason to celebrate Annette Bening. Following in the footsteps of last year's selection of Steve Jobs, the New York Film Festival has chosen Mike Mills' 20th Century Women as its 2016 Centerpiece, which stars The Bening as a single mother raising her son in 1979 Santa Barbara, co-habiting with a Bowie-cut Greta Gerwig, nomadic carpenter Billy Crudup, and frequent house guest Elle Fanning. We've been anxiously awaiting Mills' follow up to the intimate, structurally adventurous tone poem that is Beginners for a few years now, and NYFF's programming pick (and description of the film as a vibrantly alive time capsule, plus taste-maker A24's acquisition) signals a strong indication that it's been worth the wait. Imagining The Bening caught at the crux of cultural, decade-splitting identities, and strapped into denim overalls to boot, would be enough reason to anticipate the film, but the thought of another story stripped from the personal headlines of Mills' own life and translated into pure cinema has us downright salivating. I can smell the burnt sage from here.

Thoughts I had while looking at the first "20th Century Women" Image

Readers. I do not know where this image originated but I was so excited when I saw it I stopped breathing for a second. Thoughts that came to me while staring at it without editing them...

I already want to inject this movie directly into my veins. 

The Bening is front and center as it should be. Movies that put her off to the side. They're doing it wrong.

Sometimes it disturbs me when Elle Fanning looks directly into the camera. Like, quite possibly, she's not real. Or maybe an alien (I think she is playing one in How To Talk to Girls At Parties but that's just a clever way to throw us off the scent and hide in plain sight)

Remember when Billy Crudup turned down playing the Hulk in the early Aughts? Remember when Billy Crudup left Mary Louise Parker for Claire Danes when MLP was pregnant and everyone hated him? Remember when Billy Crudup was so great in various things throughout his career?

He looks kind of McConaughey Dallas Buyer's ragged in this image and that worries me. Unless it's for the character.

I didn't even recognize Greta Gerwig. WHOA. That's what a change of hair color and cut will do to a person.

When will this movie be in my eyeballs? WHEN? WHEN?!? I have the impatience.

Confrontational hippie boss realness.

I think the boy on the far right is this dude but I'm not sure. (Sometimes I feel like I'm cheating when I click over to IMDb while writing posts. LOL) The movie has something to do with The Bening's relationship to mothering her boy via her other relationships? 

Mike Mills last movie Beginners was so original and amazing and personal and resonant and all of the things movies should aspire to be and if this one is that good I will die of happiness while watching it only not all the way dead because it will also give me life and there will be more movies to see after it and I don't want to die.

Greta Gerwig looking like someone else is weird because even though she's Indie Queen, she's actually old fashioned movie star in that she always plays herself. Superbly.

Will it finally be Annette Bening's year at the Oscars? It wasn't in 1990. Or 1999. Or 2004. Or 2010. Who, me? Bitter? What's that woman got to do to win an Oscar?

Link Nation

Deadline gross. They're making Animal Kingdom (2010) into a tv series? Ellen Barkin is in the Jacki Weaver role so there's that but leave great things alone!
Out talks to Judy Greer about playing girlfriend to Lily Tomlin in Grandma
AV Club another underappreciated actress Carla Gugino has taken over lead role duties from Christina Hendricks in Cameron Crowe's Roadies
MNPP Director John Curran leaves the Lewis & Clarke miniseries so Casey Affleck and Matthias Schoenaerts are without a director. (Naturally there are cute shirtless set photos this being MNPP) 

Deadline Billy Crudup won the top male role in 20th Century Women, though it's not the lead. That belongs to The Bening (yay!) and the film is from the undervalued but excellent writer/director Mike Mills (Beginners)
Demanders looks back at My Beautiful Laundrette which recently got a Criterion release 
Variety happy news: Season 2 of Transparent arrives in time for Christmas
i09 Ridley Scott still planning on filming a Prometheus sequel next year. (And with Michael Fassbender. How exactly will Fassy be able to squeeze that into his ever busy schedule?)
NY Times Christopher McQuarrie on the anatomy of the Opera scene in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation 
MNPP Jai Courtney is... um... enjoying himself 
AV Club The legendary Max Von Sydow joining the cast of Game of Thrones. That's quite a get for the series. Related but not at this link. /Film also covered this story and were shameless traffic whores enough to not even include von Sydow's name in the headline but merely referred to him as "Star Wars Rogue Nation" actor. That's so disrespectful... and just tacky. End of times.  

Woody 2016
Woody Allen has announced the cast of his next Untitled Film (2016). We rarely get anything but a cast list and location as the projects are secretive and/or Woody is not a chatterbox. This one shoots in LA & NYC and will reunite Woody with Parker Posey (Irrational Man), Corey Stoll (Midnight in Paris) and Jesse Eisenberg (To Rome With Love) and first timer in Woody's world newbies: Jeannie Berlin (who does not work enough, she was last seen on the phone with Joaquin Phoenix in Inherent Vice), Blake Lively, Kristen Stewart, Ken Stott, Bruce Willis, Anna Camp, Stephen Kunken, Sari Lennick, and Paul Schneider

About The New Banner
"Anonny" gave me two options for banner topic when he won the theme-choosing with Question of the Week. Though "sweaty" would have been truly new, I promise y'all that it wouldn't have read in black-and-white closeups up top. Unless it was comically drenched sweating and there's only, what, Airplane (1980) for that?

So the new banner is "GRUMPY". I'm not feeling grumpy so I really had to work on my own pose. I'm hesistantly elated. Toronto International Film Festival plans seem settled and I had such a great time last year. I can't truly expect it to be that good every year but it's my favorite festival so cross your fingers that a lot of masterpieces emerge. 

THR Emmy Drama Actress Roundtable (in full)
I'd embed it here but we have a policy against "autoplay" videos. Too noisy. Too disruptive to readers. But if you're interested watch it at THR: Viola Davis, Jessica Lange, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Lizzy Caplan, Taraji P Henson, and Ruth Wilson. Kind of strange that they waited until after nominations to release the full versions of these (the others arrive throughout August) when some of the people in each roundtable weren't nominated. Naturally Taraji P Henson is the most entertaining.

Yes No Maybe So: "Room" and "Spotlight"

We have heard your complaints about not featuring the Room trailer just yet. It was not from lack of love for Brie Larson (who improves every single movie she's in) as you'll remember we were among her greatest cheerleaders for a Best Actress bid for Short Term 12. It was merely lack of time. But do you think she'll get closer to the Best Actress lineup this year?

The Room trailer follows this poster along with our Yes No Maybe So commentary. That plus the new Tom McCarthy film Spotlight, and its all-star cast, which is also tipped as 'Oscar bound' or at least testing very very well...

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'The Stanford Prison Experiment' ...Of Future Stardom

Nathaniel again, down to my final two Sundance movies. (Michael stayed longer so he has more coming)

The Outsiders. School Ties. Go. Mean Girls. Dazed and Confused... These are movies people often marvelled at after the fact for capturing multiple future stars in the same ensemble before the title of "star" sat completely well on them. Certain movies function like abnormally prescient time capsules in that way and, who knows, perhaps The Stanford Prison Experiment will one day be among them?

"Guard" terrorizes "Prisoners" in THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT

It's not that the faces are complete nobodies exactly but, apart from Billy Crudup, as the possibly awful Dr. Philip Zimbardo who is behind the psychological experiment in situational behavior, most of them are lesser known. Or, if they're already rising stars, they don't exactly have that signature role or household name factor just yet.

The Standford Prison Experiment was a famous study from the 1970s in which a psychology professor and his team took a simple ad out in the paper for students to participate in a "psychological study of prison life" for 1 to 2 weeks for $15 a day. Students signed up thinking it was easy money but easy it was not...

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