Link Shelf

Can we talk about the official Oscar site for a minute? The past few years they've really improved it but some things are questionable. Like their live blog of the nominee luncheon being just a series of photos or this weird article about the biggest Oscar surprises evers that seeks to rewrite history and imagine a world where everyone didn't know that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were winning Screenplay for Good Will Hunting. LMFAO. Everyone knew that. But I have to say that I love their nominee questionnaire. Especially the handwritten responses from various celebrities and filmmakers.

Okay, Links
Pajiba Fox News' hilariously dumb war against the "anti-capitalist" The LEGO Movie. Hahaha. I swear they get dumber every year over there and they were pretty stoopid to begin with
Glenn Dunks Laura Dern's greatest faces
i09 the cast of Frozen, including Idina, did a live concert. Will Disney finally wise up and realize original voice recordings are better than overproduced lame pop versions of the song? 
/Film Weinstein Co drops a lot of money on Imitation Game (2014). We already thought it was an Oscar contender and this confirms it

Oh and have you seen McConaughey on Graham Norton talking about his Wolf of Wall Street chant? For some reason Julianne Moore is there, too, and eager to hear it. (I missed this episode, obviously)

Cinema Blend Anne Hathaway considering taking the lead role in The Intern, vacated by Reese Witherspoon opposite Robert DeNiro (but why are there two recent comedies about middle aged or senior guys doing internships -- is this a business trend I'm unaware of or just Hollywood being dumb?)
Grantland Mark Harris on Oscar season turning ugly
Pillow Tweets [NSFW] W Magazine has compiled a bunch of photos of stars in various states of undress with their white sheets and pillows including current Oscar nominee Pharrell Williams, increasingly naked Miley Cyrus, Joe Manganiello, noted homosexual Luke Evans and many more.

BOOKS!
I wanted to take the time out to congratulate some online writer friends. Manuel Muñoz's first full novel "What You See in the Dark" was inspired by and evolves as kind of an adjacent story to the making of Hitchcock's Psycho (we've discussed it a few times because it's awesome) and it's now been translated into French - here's a review if you're a francophone! Christopher Smith, who once upon a time vouched for me for BFCA membership, left film reviewing to become a best-selling novelist.He just keeps churning them out!  

But the real reason I'm posting this is three more online friends have new books out or arriving soon! Kenneth in the (212) wrote the pop culture saturated memoir "Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?" which is available now. Dan Callahan, who was delighted when we coined the term 'actressexual' here (and definitely is one) has previously written a book on Barbara Stanwyck. His new book is  "A Life of Vanessa Redgrave" which doesn't arrive until May but I have a delicious looking copy on my coffee table because I am special. And last but not least, the Self Styled Siren (a must read blogger for you fans of classic cinema) also has a book coming out later in 2014 though I don't think we're allowed to share details just yet. Be assured that we'll discuss it when it arrives. I am officially now the only reasonably-somewhat-sort-of-well-known blogger I've ever met who never got a book deal. I am officially also quite happy for all of them. Well done! 

William S Burroughs Centennial

Today is the centennial of the infamous Beat era writer William S Burroughs and I've been thinking about him lately due to Philip Seymour Hoffman's death via heroin (why is it that I always start stringing the celebrity junkies together when they die? Is it because there are so damn tragic many of them?) but mostly because I was really gripped by Ben Foster's portrayal of him in Kill Your Darlings, a problematic movie about guys that weren't nearly as palatable in real life (despite the movie being about murder) that had a great moment here and there. Of course the movie wasn't really about Burroughs but about Lucien Carr's (Dane Dehaan) murder of his lover (Michael C Hall). From time to time I have wondered why we've had no straight up biopic about Burroughs (Keifer Sutherland is the only other actor I can think of that's played him), given that he's a very famous white guy genius and that's the kind of biopic Hollywood likes best. But I guess it couldn't be done; The MPAA and most moviegoers and possibly even myself would just never be able to deal what with the sex, the drugs, the finger-chopping, the wife-shooting, and what not.

So let's move over to actual movies. Burroughs appeared in a small role in Gus Van Sant's terrific Drugstore Cowboy (1989) which I highly recommend to any of you wondering why Matt Dillon was a "you owe him" Oscar nominee for Crash (2005) and then of course there was David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch (1991), a film version of Burrough's, ummmm, unfilmable novel. (Incidentally our friend Nick, who you know from Nick's Flick Picks and the podcast, writes extensively on this film in his first book "The Desiring Image") Whether or not any cinematic interpretation of Naked Lunch could be considered definitive if we didn't have it we would never have seen Julian Sands buggered by a towering insect monster or Judy Davis injecting bug powder into her breasts.

Have you seen Naked Lunch or read any of Burroughs work?

Burroughs with Cronenberg during the filming of Naked Lunch

Some Centennial Celebrations
Time Magazine "Rebel, Junkie, Exile, Genius"
NPR "Possessed by Genius"
The New Statesman "To say it country simple, most folks enjoy junk” - Burroughs in 1966 on kicking his heroin addiction 
Dreg Studios Brandt Hardin celebrates the history of Burroughs with a portrait 

The Linking Games: Catching Blog

Self Styled Siren has ten rental suggestions for your friends who are haven't yet become true movie fans - 10 classics anyone will love
The Cut Scarlett Johansson's runway looks for her 29th birthday
Vanity Fair Jason Statham on 'poncy actors' and stuntment deserving Oscars 
Variety Emma Thompson is just killing it in these campaign stops for Saving Mr Banks

 Awards Daily on a live performance of the score from All is Lost
The Film Doctor revisits Frances Ha and its French New Wave inspirations
MNPP The Moment I Fell For... Mark Ruffalo
In Contention I'm beginning to realize that Guy Lodge and I have very very different taste in actresses. He thinks Julia Roberts is the MVP of August: Osage County. (I will say this for her: she has the toughest role and she is really going for it.)
Gurus of Gold for this week's chart David Poland had us imagine what would happen if Oscar held a "Best Casting" prize and didn't differentiate between Adapted and Original Screenplay. FTR I love some of the other gurus choices for Casting more than my own picks but I was doing it how I thought Oscar might...
Variety Bunheads after glow... TV giant Amy Sherman Palladino joins other producers to bring Sutton Foster back to Broadway in the new musical Violet. Yes, please.
Variety finally a worthy sounding project for Oscar nominee Catalina Sandino Moreno, the biopic Castro's Daughter

All Hunger. All The Time
The Hairpin Closeted characters from The Hunger Games' Katniss Everdeen to everyone in The Great Gatsby
Monkey See and yet more thinkpieces. On gender types: Is Peeta essentially Katniss's girlfriend?
Atlantic Wire An Open Letter to Jena Malone (who does make a fabulous Johanna) 

Tweet of the Week
By name you've undoubtedly heard that Mia Wasikowska and Johnny Depp are both in for a sequel to Eyesore in Wonderland.

It's Official: Johnny Depp and Mia Wasikowska love money!!!

— Pat Healy (@Pat_Healy) November 23, 2013

 

What else is there to say really?*

*although don't let that stop you from having doing what you do in the comments

Interview / Giveaway: "Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait"

TFE's Vivien Leigh Centennial Celebration (November 2-6) 
Here's David with an interview and book giveaway 

Vivien Leigh was only nominated for two Oscars, but she won both of them. More impressively, both of her winning performances are still frequently said to be among the finest of all-time. If she’d done nothing else in her career, that would be a legacy to be proud of. It’s even more extraordinary when you consider the personal struggles that the actress went through: constantly striving to feel worthy of acting alongside the love of her life, Sir Laurence Olivier, and an undiagnosed and mistreated bipolar disorder that increasingly overtook her. In Vivien Leigh: An Intimate Portrait, Leigh scholar Kendra Bean digs into the actress’ dramatic life story, using a myriad of photographs both legendary and rare to imbue Vivien’s life with the vulnerability of her delicate beauty.

book contest and interview after the jump

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Beauty Break! Which would you find most (artistically) flattering...?

We're having daily nooners with the supporting actresses of '52 in preparation for this weekend's Smackdown. But I hope I'm not burning out all our comment juice with these lead-up posts. So today, an "artistic" detour. Though we sometimes lament that movies are made by committee or that artistic decisions are determined by bank ledgers at huge corporations, it's always been true that the movies have been been hybrid babies, born from both business decisions and artistic concerns. Still, even for the fame-craving, what draws (most) people to showbiz is some kind of creative urge or spirit. So the movies have more than their share of artistically inclined characters within them. Moulin Rouge (the 1952 version) is about a famous artist, Singin in the Rain is about (singing & dancing) actors, and The Bad and the Beautiful is about all sorts of creative types: actors, writers, directors. Which led me to this train of thought...

Gloria Grahame's character in The Bad and the Beautiful gets a Pulitzer winning novel written about her and Colette Marchand's character in Moulin Rouge gets her portrait painted by Henri Touluse-Latrec.

Which would you find most flattering: your portrait painted by a great artist or a book written about you by an esteemed writer? OR...

Are you the type who'd rather do the immortalizing yourself for someone else? That's what Terry Moore does as almost-horny college student "Marie" in Come Back Little Sheba when she brings Turk (Richard Jaeckel) local star jock home for a bit of live modelling.

Lola: That's a beautiful drawing Marie!"

CONFESS IN THE COMMENTS! Painting, Novel, or Do It Yourself?

P.S. After the jump we have to talk about that scene in Come Back Little Sheba cuz it is everything.

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