HTGAWM: "We're Not Friends" & "Whack-a-Mole"

It's true.  I didn't quit How To Get Away With Murder as intended. The people have spoken and the last writeup was so popular that I kept watching. But writing about it is harder when it's not being porny and forcing my hand and, um, jaw (see: previously on...)

"We're Not Friends" & "Whack-a-Mole"
It's two episodes in one post, a survival tactic. Manuel will be handling the next while I'm in LA, bless him for his sacrifice.

These latest two eppys huff and puff and cry and scream and the first at least is so (typically) hysteric that it has a jury picking montage with frenzied strobelight-editing set to housemusic from the 90s (I half expected Viola Davis to start pivoting and jacking while shouting "excuse" and "accept" and "dismiss for cause" at each potential juror.) Amidst all the heightened emotion the two rawest expression of feeling came in scenes between Annalise and soon-to-be-dead husband Sam. Their scenes together crackle in a way that little else on the show does which does not bode well for Season 2, unless they go supernatural and keep Tom Verica on as a ghost. Pretty please?! You're always jumping the shark when every character is a shark anyway and it's not like they're concerned with Ivy League or Legal accuracy.

These two scenes with have promising Emmy-seeking character moments, though they're a potentia mine field of regressive gender politics. In 'Not Friends' Annalise implies that she was once like the murdered student, a student her husband picked up "weak, broken ... a mess that he had to clean up" and in 'Whack-a-Mole' she delivers a pathetic but wholly human refrain of "I need you"

So...um... [cue Celine power ballad] she's everything she is because he loved her??? 

What the what now,Viola?

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Dinner with... Joel & Clementine & Link Roundups

November 19th, 2003. Dinner at Kang's again. Are we like those poor couples you feel sorry for in restaurants. Are we the dining dead?"

How did i forget this shot of Joel playing with his food. Food product smiley faces forever

I will definitely be 'the dining dead' tonight... slowly chewing on my food from the same restaurant I always order from. I can already feel the numbness kicking in. Long day. Best to send you off running to other blogs. 

Eat Links Instead
New Now Next is hosting a funny daily March Madness tournament for the "Gayest Cartoon Character of All Time" - I voted already but some of these face/offs are striking, silly, and super. I had to use a lot of "s" so pronounced tha sentence with a sibilant s please. 
YouTube the new Maleficent trailer - same as the one we covered extensively but for more of Elle Fanning and a backstory about Maleficent's wings (!) I am even more intrigued now but I wish movies would save surprises for the theater 
Gawker Landmark theaters invites you to bring your child to see Nymphomaniac Pt. 1. LOL (Hey, it'd be healthier for them than those slasher movies I always see parents dragging their kids into)

Buzzfeed not so insane fan theory about the interconnectivity of Disney kingdoms in Frozen, The Little Mermaidand Tangled. This is trippier than anything Chris Nolan ever dreamed up
The Playlist in addition to just being a mediocre actor Aaron Johnson is also a fussy one and didn't want to have white hair as Quicksilver thus further ruining the character for me in Avengers: Age of Ultron 
The Wrap Tilda Swinton and Barkhad Abdi join Bill Hader and Brie Larson in Judd Apatow's comedy Trainwreck  

Eternal Linkshine
If you aren't yet sick of the 10th anniversary party after all those Best Shots here...
Huffington Post talks to Kate Winset about her memories of the film
Cine Munch for those of you who have more creative energy for a dinner tonight or tomorrow this new blog offers menus and recipes to go along with great movies like this one . Complete with a drink: The Blue Ruin Mind Eraser with my favorite: Curaçao
People Mag 20 elusive facts about the movie - I didn't know a lot of these

Review: "Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me"

This review originally appeared in my column at Towleroad

I saw Elaine Stritch’s famous one woman Broadway show “At Liberty” in the last days of 2001 a couple of years after moving to New York. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it was nothing short of spiritual ecstasy but then showbiz is my religion and actresses are my only gods. You might then justifiably say that I am predisposed to love the hell out of the new documentary Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me and you’d be right. But I can still tell a peak performance from a Wednesday matinee and the last doc I saw on Stritch, which shared its title with “At Liberty” was significantly less stellar. Shoot Me is a must-see, even if you only know this Broadway legend from her hilarious guest appearances as Jack Donaghy’s impossible mother on 30 Rock. 

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A Year With Kate: Morning Glory (1933)

Episode 3 of 52  Anne Marie is screening all of Katharine Hepburn's films in chronological order. On the eve of the Oscar nominations, Morning Glory (1933)

In which the seeds of Oscar history are sown...

Sometimes, Katharine Hepburn’s career seems too charmed to be real. At the 6th Academy Awards, Kate won her first Oscar. For her third movie. In her second year. To put that in perspective, it took Bette Davis 23 movies and 4 years to get a nomination alone (on a controversial write-in ballot). Ingrid Bergman: 6 movies and 5 years to be nominated. Olivia de Havilland: 29 movies and 10 years to win. The other record-holding actresses of the Studio System had to slog through bad scripts and bit parts to get their golden statues, but young Kate practically waltzed into the Academy and casually picked one up (figuratively speaking, since she didn’t actually show up)

Morning Glory is the by-now cliché story of a naive actress making it big in New York. 1933's model was Eva Lovelace. [more...]

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