Link or Dare

Film School Rejects on Comic Con leaks and what the studios should worry about instead
Arts.Mic Netflix has the best opening titles
Empire Jennifer Lawrence attached to The Rosie Project, a romantic story of a man with aspergers and a free spirited woman who inspires him
/Film X-Men Apocalypse teaser posters 
Queerty interviews Alex Keshishian on the seismic impact of Madonna's Truth or Dare (1991) back in the day. It changed lives! My friends and I still quote it regularly to this day.

Freier Fall 2 -- um, WHAT? They're raising money for a sequel to that very hot LGBT movie that's streaming on Netflix that stars Max Reimelt from Sense8.   
Awards Daily Sasha compares Oscars to the presidential primaries 
Guardian one million dollar reward in the case of Judy Garland's missing ruby slippers 
i09 first look at HBO's series version of the old sci fi classic Westworld
FSR checking in with Hayao Miyazaki who is still working -- albeit on short films -- and experimenting at 74. 
Variety Guillermo del Toro on his female centric Gothic horror, Crimson Peak 

Off Cinema
B&N Reads Esther Bloom on inappropriate books she read as a tween. I didn't do this but I remember the whispered conversations in school about books we weren't supposed to be reading.
Playbill interviews two of the most talented people in the world: Sutton Foster and Jonathan Groff and talks tv learning curves, their summer productions at City Center, and Groff's fanboy obsession with Foster before he himself was famous. It's sweet 

Pic of the Day
"Chewie's Angels" (from Comic Con via HitFix) Mwahhhaaaaahaaa. L-O-V-E.

Cara Seymour on Playing Sister Harriet in "The Knick"

Cara Seymour (Adaptation, American Psycho, The Savages) is Guest Blogging all day today! - Editor
 

-by Cara Seymour

Getting to work on "The Knick" has been one of the greatest experiences of my career. I screamed with joy when I got the part and I'm not a big screamer of joy.  Amazing director, talented and really fun cast and all round impeccable team of super talented people in every department.  I'm madly appreciative of this.

Michael Begler, Jack Amiel and Steve Katz wrote this extraordinary character of Sister Harriet - she leapt off the page. But I wanted to know more about nuns in 1900 when The Knick takes place, so I ordered nun books.

"Through the Narrow Gate,"  by Karen Armstrong was an unflinching account of her life as a nun in a convent pre Vatican II -- read every word of that!

Didn't read them all from cover to cover. Not quite that crazy!

(more on The Knick after the jump)

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Q&A: Summer Classics, Best 'Action' Acting, and Late 70s Silliness

Yay, reader question time! I did two public appearances, with mic in hand, this weekend which is rare for me. First up was the Q&A with David Dastmalchian for the Animals opening at Village East Cinemas and then on Sunday, a very stressful pre-screening trivia for the Mad Men Finale at The Astor Room restaurant in conjunction with The Museum of the Moving Image. I am always terrified if I'm miked but here at home on TFE, no terror. I type at you, no miking necessary.

Let's take 9 reader questions. I suggested 1979 related questions (our year of the month) but let's do some general questions first on action film acting, summer movies, Oscar sweeps, and classic novels on the screen...

BHURAY: What are your five favorite novels of all time and if they've been translated to film how would you rank the films?

NATHANIEL: I don't feel all that well-read I confess. I spend so much of my time with movies that it's hard to carve out several hours for a book. But when I do read I try to alternate between one for fun and one because-it's-classic when I do read. These are the five best novels I've ever read:

Beloved and lots more questions after the jump...

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Mother's Day Special: "Now, Voyager" and Bette Davis

Happy Mother's Day, readers! Here's new contributor Angelica Jade Bastién returning to talk Bette Davis, tell all bios, and a 1940s classic. - Editor

When I introduce friends to Bette Davis for the first time I tend to show them Now, Voyager. Yes, the film gives us one of Davis' best performances but my love for it is deeply personal. Whenever I watch Now, Voyager I see my emotional landscape on the screen. As a teenager struggling with mental illness and a caring yet controlling mother who didn’t quite know how to handle it the film was a revelation. It gave me hope that I could become the woman I always dreamed of. Ultimately, my obsession with the film centers upon the multiple ways it explores motherhood. 

Now, Voyager is essentially about the transformation of Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) from spinster aunt figure to badass, emotionally realized womanhood. The film begins with Charlotte teetering at the edge of a nervous breakdown brought upon by the multitude of ways her mother, Mrs. Vale, controls her...

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Do you ever read books just because they'll "soon be a major motion picture"?

That's today's burning question since the April Foolish charts for both screenplays are up this May 2nd (shut it - I tried to finish by April!) and, as per usual, the year's Adapted Screenplay competition looks fairly robust while the Original Screenplay competition is harder to parse since the films don't come with as much pre-release prestige. My whole life I've tended to prefer films written originally for the screen -- this year I'm most curious about what Diablo Cody has written for us with Ricki & The Flash --  but Oscar feels differently and Adapted Screenplays are often where it's at for them.

See the two charts here and tell me this:

Have you read any of these books that are 'soon to become major motion pictures' in 2015  do you plan to? And which book-to-film for 2015 do you suspect will only become a "minor motion picture"?