The Link Has Two Faces

Your Weekend Must Read
Emily Yoshida at Vulture gazes at Ingmar Bergman's Persona but she sees way beyond that, too, to the dream space shared by cinema's curious subgenre of female identity swapping. 

Two women talking: a recipe for witchcraft, an unnatural feedback loop, a cursed redundancy. Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 masterpiece Persona is a landmark for many reasons, but its legacy, which has show no signs of age in the 50 years since it was released in the U.S. and the U.K., is how it stared that anxiety in the face and opened up a loopy, meandering conversation that’s still going on to this day...

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Keyframe 'The Year of Nicole Kidman' don't force her to prove herself all over again
Variety Cannes lineup is "high on "awards intrigue, low on safe awards bets"
/Film Aquaman is overflowing with villains, 3 already for a first solo film? (not a good sign) and a fourth may have been added
Coming Soon Antonio Banderas will headline Lamborghini -The Legend (working title) a biopic about the Italian entrepeneur of automobile fame. Alec Baldwin will play his rival Enzo Ferrari 

Boy Culture "STREEPSHOW" a drag comedy about "characters one played by Meryl Streep" living together in the East Village will be playing NYC in June. Sounds hilarious but I have to admit that it took me quite some time to figure out the characters in the photo (and there seem to be two Miranda Priestleys?) which is maybe not a good sign. Shouldn't they be instantly recognizable?
Guardian Mixed messages from Cannes as TV premieres from auteurs are happening but they've also banned Netflix from future competition unless they stop skipping theatrical releases
Variety Gay gasp! The BBC is producing a series of 15 minute monologues called Queers which is set to star Ben Whishaw, Alan Cumming, and Russell Tovey and others
Awards Daily Gypsy teaser, a new series starring Naomi Watts
Variety Hugh Bonneville will play Roald Dahl in a biopic set in the early to mid 1960s. This means they're going to have to cast someone to play both Dahl's wife Patricia Neal and her most famous co-star Paul Newman (see Hud) and both of those roles will be a Herculean casting task! 
The Guardian there's a documentary playing Cannes about Cary Grant's experimentation with LSD from 1958 through 196
Tracking Board Kenneth Branagh to direct himself in a movie about the father of Anne Frank The Keeper of the Diary

Not Remakes Though You Might Mistake Them For Such
/Film Martin Scorsese starts filming mob drama The Irishman this summer with Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci
Gothamist Leonardo DiCaprio will star in The Black Hand about an undercover mob cop...
(Ummm, haven't all these people already made these movies? Why not mix it up with a romantic comedy or a sci-fi picture?)

Exit Video
Look it's the first clip from Todd Haynes's Wonderstruck. It may be impossible to follow Carol but we're glad that he got back on the horse so quickly after that long time away from us. How does this clip strike you?

Today's 5: Carrie, Snatched, Blowup, and more...

Today's 5 mood boosting assignments from showbiz history...

2017 oh wait that's today! New in movie theaters today: Goldie Hawn returns to the cinema in the Amy Schumer comedy Snatched; Uneven but sometimes really exciting director Doug Liman unveils the sniper drama The Wall (starring Brit Aaron Taylor-Johnson with a twangy accent); Guy Ritchie anachronistically Ritchifies the King Arthur legend with Charlie Hunnam and Jude Law; Demian Bichir stars in Lowriders; and Diane Lane takes a road trip with Arnaud Viard in Paris Can Wait when her husband Alec Baldwin bails on her for business.

In their honor: Go see a movie this weekend. Pick a title any title. If you don't want to see one of those catch up with The Lovers or Lost City of Z. Both are good flicks.

1988 The infamous stage musical version of horror classic Carrie opens. It will close five days later. The off Broadway revival in 2012 did significantly better but still closed at a loss

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Today's 5: 'You do an eclectic celebration of the dance!"...

Five Life-hacking / mood-boosting / homework assignments -- whatever you want to call them -- pulled from showbiz history each day. Here are your assignments for May 11th! 

2007 It's the tenth anniversary of Georgia Rule, which featured Lindsay Lohan as the wayward granddaughter of strict religious Jane Fonda, the last time Lindsay would lead a reputable mainstream film (whatever one may think of its actual quality). She was just 20 years old...

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A Madonna Biopic is in the Works!

Chris here with some news to have you clutching your layered pearls. And stacked bracelets. And lace. That's right, a Madonna biopic is now in development at Universal. Whether you like it or not, get ready for Blonde Ambition.

Now before we cry foul or "too soon", the film sounds like less of a traditional biopic and more of a moment in time for the legend. Elyse Hollander's script topped last year's Black List (Hollywood's annual list of best unproduced screenplays) and follows the making of Madonna's first self-titled album. This would set the film in the early eighties before "Like A Virgin" skyrocketed her profile, but still in the era of "Lucky Star", "Borderline", and "Holiday". What will it be like to see club scene Madonna on the screen rather than the megastar? Will something like Truth or Dare have stylistic influence?

Word's out on what Madonna herself thinks about the film, but rest assured we will hear from her eventually. The film will be Hollander's first full length screenplay, and no director is attached as this is still in the earliest stages. But that doesn't stop us from speculating on who might be worthy of filling the role! My vote (even if she's a tad young currently): Elle Fanning. Are you excited at the prospect of a Madonna movie? Who do you think should play the role?

Pfandom: Troubled Boys & Spurned Girls

P F A N D O M  
Michelle Pfeiffer Retrospective. Episode 6 
by Nathaniel R 

Pfeiffer is a hormonally charged pflapper in the remake of Splendor in the Grass

[Editor's Note: Due to a scheduling issue with DVDs and a two day internet outage at your host's home last week we're a bit out of sequence & behind. Apologies]

Last week we got an early glimpse of Michelle Pfeiffer's bad girl side with the campy plodding Texas melodrama Callie & Son (1981). It was one of three telefilms the young actress co-starred in the year before her first leading movie role (Grease 2). Her last two TV movies before stardom make a fascinating double feature for their good girl/bad girl dichotomy and their foreshadowing of more famous roles...

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