I link. I die. I link again!

Daily Mail Tim Burton's type is hilariously permanent. Now he's on to Eva Green who fits it like a T
New Yorker The brilliant Emily Nussbaum on sexual consent and PTSD on Jessica Jones and its Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season 6 reflections
DGA Chris Nolan interviews Quentin Tarantino about The Hateful Eight which will now enter wide release on January 1st instead of the 8th.
Slate reflects on what the Star Wars franchise is given that it's not "sci-fi"
Variety has a few old FYC and congratulatory ads for Star Wars from the 70s. Good stuff
Vanity Fair today's celebrities all want to be Han Solo

News
The Black List  If you've got some free time you can wade through Hollywood's favorite unproduced scripts. List was just announced today.
Collider Mad Max Fury Road may return to theaters in a black & white version -- Miller's original intention before they opted for super saturated color.
Variety Brad Pitt's satire War Machine wraps shooting in the United Arab Emirates.
Tracking Board Warner Bros is moving forward with a Speedy Gonzalez feature, date TBD. (He was my second favorite of the Looney Tunes as a child, after Pepe Le Pew... but they both have cultural stereotyping issues. How will they walk that line?)
Variety Melissa McCarthy is nearly free of Mike & Molly

List Mania
Slant picks the 25 best films of the year from 45 Years through Chi-Raq and on to Mad Max: Fury Road. But since Carol is way down at #19... What?
Los Angeles Times Brooklyn tops Kenneth Turan's otherwise alphabetical top ten
Indie Wire critics poll for the year with Mad Max & Carol fighting for supremacy. Fassbender & Rampling take the acting prizes
Pajiba celebrates the best 'comfort movies' of the year - not particularly challenging but great watches from your couch in your jammies: Cinderella, The Intern, and more...
AV Club on the best film scenes of the year including Creed's continuous shot boxing match and lots of interesting and unexpected choices -- yay for including "Summer in Ohio" from The Last Five Years

Today's Watch
If you've got a free two hours you can watch all six previous Star Wars movies at once?  It's an art installation. Click on the image if you wish to do this craziness.

A.I. 'Buffybot'

Some say it's better than the real thing.”

With those words we are introduced to Buffybot, a robotic replica of everyone’s favorite Pointy-wielding, banter-spewing blond vampire slayer... 

Manuel continuing our Artificial Intelligence theme week.

Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer remains one of the best examples of how to use superpowers, monsters and villains as generative metaphors for such varied things as puberty, high school, sexual assault and the systemic misogyny that pervades our contemporary world. This latter issue is at the center of “Intervention” the 18th episode of Buffy’s fifth (and I’d argue best!) season. [more]

Click to read more ...

The Links: Buffy, Disney, Hanks, Viggo, Toxic Sets and Tight Pants

Variety several distributors want the Sally Field vehicle Hello My Name is Doris, an  indie hit at SXSW. But neither of the big Oscar dogs want it (no interest from Weinsteins or Fox Searchlight. Hmmm)
Teenage Bedrooms on Screen a tumblr celebrating movie sets from teen films. I thought this was appropriate to share after...
TFE a discussion of interesting / fun film sets 
Variety our favorite Israeli actress Ronit Elkabetz will serve as president of Cannes' "Critics Week" the festival's sidebar focused on newer filmmakers  (That's often where the best movies are anyway!)
My New Plaid Pants on a current rumor about the "toxic" set of Alejandro González Iñárritu's The Revenant

Vanity Fair looks back at Pretty Woman for its 25th, specifically it's originally much darker screenplay
TFE in case you missed it Manuel also looked back on the nation's (and his) 25 year old Julia Roberts obsession
Daily Mail Lauren Bacall's estate auctioning off collections. Her Manhattan partment is also for sale for (gulp) $26 million
The Guardian match the evil quote to the Disney villain - I got a few of these wrong. The Shame!
CHUD Marvel has reportedly cast Carol Danvers (aka Captain Marvel) already and she might even be added to The Avengers: Age of Ultron. WTH... how many actors can be in that one movie and shouldn't they have finished it already given that it opens in a month?  
Film School Rejects Anthony Russo & Joe Russo, who did such a great job on Captain America: Winter Soldier have been adopted by Marvel and will now direct all of their movies (not really but they're locked up for awhile) 

The Film Stage a one hour conversation with Jessica Chastain 
The Playlist Viggo Mortensen turned down Hateful Eight? Sad. He'd be great in a Tarantino and could use a hit
In Contention Sandy Powell talks Cinderella costumes 
ET Online and speaking of costumes, Billy Magnussen talks about his unmissably tight leather pants in Into the Woods 

Today's Watch

Tom Hanks reenacts his filmography's greatest hits in seven minutes with James Corden. Hanks seems to be having a lot of fun with himself lately, right? 

Small Screen

Coming Soon The X-Files stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson are returning to their iconic roles for a miniseries. The original series lasted 9 years and was revived in two feature films so it's had quite a shelf-life. 
Variety I find BAFTA so confusing. They have so many different awards branches and different announcement times. But the TV craft nominations are out with Penny Dreadful doing well 
Ryan Murphy Chloe Sevigny returning to American Horror Story next season. She was a pleasant surprise for me on Netflix's Bloodline. I forget sometimes how totally watchable she is
Towleroad rumors circulating that HBO is cancelling Looking albeit with a wrap up film *sniffle* 
Salon Jon Hamm just out of rehab for alcohol addiction. With Mad Men wrapped hopefully he won't be reminded of the glass in hand for a while. Best wishes! 

Three Must Reads To Go

1. If you're a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and who isn't) you'll LOL all through The Toast's "Every Argument about Buffy on the Internet, From 1998 Until Now." It's blissfully true to its title.

2. This doesn't have a movie connection apart from a well earned dig at that awful Flawless movie starring Philip Seymour Hoffman but The New York Times has an essay on the feminist evolution of the word "flawless" that is really something. A great read.

3. David Poland has said these things before and will say them again. And we've also harped on his underlying theme / advice to the Academy - 'Embrace the fact that you're THE movie institution. be proud, not worried.' But it's always worth repeating and he does a great job in "48 Weeks to Oscar: Academy in Crisis (?)" at highlighting all the problems... which don't have to be problems! Read it (if you've ever bitched about or defended the Oscars). Live it (if you're AMPAS). Love it (if you love the Oscars).

That's a lot to read and discuss, so have at it! 

Beauty vs Beast: Making Beastly Music Together

Jason from MNPP here with this week's edition of "Beauty vs Beast," wherein we ask you to pick a side either side in one of cinema's many morality plays. It's the birthday of one of our greatest living actresses - Isabelle Huppert is turning 62 today! And talk about still going strong. She's pounding out some of her most exciting and dangerous-as-ever work ever these days; last year's Abuse of Weakness from Catherine Breillat made me weak in the knees. And the project she's in the middle of filming right now, a rape-revenge thriller from Danish provocateur Paul Verhoeven... well even just writing those words in that sequence makes me break out in a hot sweat of expectations.

So today in her honor we look back at perhaps her greatest achievement to date, Michael Haneke's The Piano Teacher. Which - usefully for this exercise - is also giving us one of the hardest-to-root-for lead characters ever put on screen. Not that Benoit Magimel's aggresively manicured Walter is anybody's idea of a saint... Haneke's not going to make this easy for anybody. (Understatement of the century.)

Whose team are you on?

Team Walter

Team Erika

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PREVIOUSLY We made like Buffy for her 18th anniversary and got our vampire boyfriends on - but who slayed? It was the peroxide punk who saved the day - Spike too about 53% of the vote in what was unsurprisingly a close battle. It's been raging for eighteen years, after all! Said JS:

"Spike still takes every and all cakes."

Beauty vs Beast: Vamp Thru The Heart

It's Monday which means it's time for this week's "Beauty vs Beast" - Jason from MNPP here again to talk us in. Did you know that tomorrow is the 18th anniversary of Joss Whedon's television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer's premiere on the WB? I'd say Buffy's old enough to graduate from High School but we all know what happened the first time around (SNAKES) so let's not. Coincidentally over the weekend Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar was asked what she thought about revisiting the character, what with all these series (The X-Files, Twin Peaks) of yore getting brought back - she doesn't seem terribly keen on the idea, sadly. Anyway I don't know if anybody noticed but Joss is kind of busy right now.

But we can look back! So look back we shall. I've already used "Buffy vs Faith" for this series before so let's turn our eyes unto the main menfolk of the show - yup, I speak of Buffy's undead amours Angel (David Boreanez) and Spike (James Marsters). Put on your shipper hats and go!

Whose team are you on?

Team Spike

Team Angel

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As usual you've got just one week to vote, so dust off your pointy things and prepare to make some hard choices. 

PREVIOUSLY Last week we were All About Eve... actually make that all about Margo, since it was Bette Davis who took the wheel and drove right over Anne Baxter (talk about a bumpy ride) taking a whopping 86% of the vote. Bette will not be denied. Said Akash:

"All About Eve is an ensemble that ends up feeling like a one woman show. THAT'S how powerful Bette Davis is is in every gesture, quip and sashay. One of the greatest performances in American film history and it's unbelievable that one of her Oscars wasn't for this iconic role."