Linky Dreadful

The Guardian talks to Jessica Chastain and she is fired up about gender in Hollywood - as a cool non-competitive 'everyone wins' take on Best Actressing awards that's pretty cool to hear.
Kenneth in the (212) a protest of the Cats musical revival. LOL
Tracking Board Judy Greer is moving behind the camera! She'll direct A Happening of Monumental Proportions. The cast is now coming together
Girish Shambu on recent excellent micro-budget indie cinema
Variety Star Melissa McCarthy and her Husband/Director Ben Falcone already have their next movie lined up: Life of the Party
Gothamist Netflix is upping the prices for its longtime subscribers. Okay, cool Netflix. I guess this means you're going to add good movies to streaming again? Hello? Hello? [dial tone]
MNPP which is hotter, annual Taylor Kitsch fetish-wear edition
W Magazine for some reason Disney thought a fashion collaboration with Kenzo was smart marketing for The Jungle Book so here it is  
Film School Rejects rewatches No Way Out (1987) with directors commentary. Ugh, that's such a good little thriller. And Sean Young and Kevin Costner were scorching hot together at that precise moment in history
Pajiba shares screenwriter Christopher McQuarrie's story about how Close Encounters of the Third Kind changed his life. 

Superheroes still
/Film shares early nerd joy tweets from Captain America: Civil War. As a Captain America nut I was excited until I started digging deeper and one person who loved it like crazy still says it's not as good as Deadpool (which is not even a *good* movie, let alone a great one) so I'll continue to downplay expectations as Captain America: Winter Soldier is the best Marvel Studios movie ever and it's difficult to top #1s in any subgenre. 
Coming Soon Confirmed: Marvel Studios characters will appear in Sony's 2017 Spider-Man movie surprisingly virtually no one.
/Film Boyd Holbrook circling villain role in Hugh Jackman's superhero swansong Wolverine 3 with filming starting next month. The movie is said to be very loosely based on "Old Man Logan" story of the comics 

Political Mic Drop
I have announced on another platform and now here that I will stop talking about politics... at least until, oh, September. The why is that I find it absolutely damaging and yet strangely addictive like being a chainsmoker after a lung cancer diagnosis. Everyone hates everyone and I lose faith in almost everyone daily (including you. haha) when I listen to them talk about politics. And clearly people lose faith in me when I talk about politics (#imwithher). So since I will make a valiant effort to not speak about this until it's more relevant -- the next time anyone complains about how "long" the Oscars take I want to point them to this interminable two year long ordeal we're all living through politically --  I only ask that you read this hilarious, scathingly truthful Hilary Clinton endorsement from Ellie Mystal (thanks to MattRett for pointing it out) which sums up my feelings more than I thought was possible. And it put a smile on my face... which I didn't think was possible anymore politically.

(And that's it. Radio silence on politics after tonight. That's my plan at least.)

Today's Watch
The ghoulish tortured cast of Penny Dreadful are almost back! It took me a second to realize that the new poster was not a deformed skull performing its best Munchian scream but actually a man's body; Josh Hartnett's perhaps? Just 22 days until Season 3 begins. If you're not watching the show you don't deserve Eva Green, who may well be the most under appreciated supreme sorceress of the acting arts. 

Official Synopsis:

This season on PENNY DREADFUL, Tony® Award-winning star Patti LuPone (American Horror Story), who guest starred last season as the Cut-Wife, returns as a series regular in the new role of Dr. Seward, an American therapist who treats Vanessa (Eva Green) with an unconventional new approach. Wes Studi (Hell On Wheels) joins as a series regular as Kaetenay, an intense, enigmatic Native American with a deep connection to Ethan (Josh Hartnett) who also becomes an ally to Sir Malcolm (Timothy Dalton). The third season also adds Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Henry Jekyll (Shazad Latif). Other guest stars include Screen Actors Guild® Award nominee Christian Camargo (DEXTER®, The Hurt Locker) as Dr. Alexander Sweet, a zoologist who strikes up an unlikely friendship with Vanessa; Sam Barnett (2012, Jupiter Ascending) as Dr. Seward’s mysterious young secretary; and Jessica Barden (The Outcast, Far from the Madding Crowd) as Justine, a young acolyte to Lily (Billie Piper) and Dorian Gray (Reeve Carney), and Perdita Weeks (THE TUDORS), as Catriona Hartdegan, a scholar with expert knowledge of the supernatural. Simon Russell Beale returns as Dr. Ferdinand Lyle. Rory Kinnear (as The Creature) and Harry Treadaway (as Dr. Frankenstein) also star.

Beauty vs Beast: Heroes Divided

Jason from MNPP here, using this week's "Beauty vs Beast" to enthusiastically fire the starting pistol on this year's Civil War. No, not the Republicans vs the Democrats, they're still too busy with in-fighting for that Battle Royale just yet; I speak of the competition that many many Americans care about (don't judge me for pointing that out, I am simply the messenger) - Superhero vs Superhero. And since we're already attempting to forget that Batman V Superman happened, we're swiveling to the next big cage match, Marvel style - Captain America: Civil War, which is out in about a month, and which faces off several beloved characters but first and foremost Cappy himself and his co-Avenger Tony Stark aka Iron Man.

I figure in about a month when the movie's actually coming out we'll all be sick of it already (that's the way these things work now) and so when I saw that today is Robert Downey Jr.'s birthday I knew - the time is now. And it's not like with three Iron Mans, two Captain Americas, and two Avengers movies we don't already know enough going in to this battle to choose our sides. Have at it!

PREVIOUSLY We made like Mia Farrow last week and considered our Hannah and Her Sisters co-stars, and over 70% decided that the Oscars were on point, giving our golden love to Dianne Wiest. Said mareko:

"Weist really is amazing in Hannah and Her Sisters. I didn't care for her character Holly *at all* in the beginning, but man does she have an impressive, if somewhat unbelievable, character arc. To go from bitter and cynical to warm and luminous, without losing her way (or ours), is to be applauded. A true breakout performance. (Hershey is good, too, if a bit histrionic for my taste.)"

Q&A: Brie & Saoirse, Superhero & Oscar, Actors & Politics

As promised it's time to answer ten reader questions, pulled from your comments. We'll try to do this weekly for awhile because I don't want you to abandon us in the offseason. "DON'T LEAVE US," he cried out, voice trembling, mascara running. 

Pedro: Who are your top ten actors/actresses that also participated in politics (were appointed/elected to office or just participated in an election but were not elected, for example)?

You guys aren't supposed to ask top ten questions! I have not paid close enough attention to this weird occurrence, so I dont even know who has done this really. The most famous examples are surely Ronald Reagan, Nancy Reagan, and Arnold Schwarzenegger with Glenda Jackson a distant fourth. But I have no personal favorites since basically I don't like it when actors shift careers. My 11th commandment proposal: Acting is a rare gift - thou shalt not waste it!

Of course Nancy Davis and Ronald Reagan were no great shakes in the acting department before they became POTUS & FLOTUS so the loss wasn't extreme. We're supposed to be saying nice things about them this week since Nancy just died (RIP) so I'd better just move on before I get myself into trouble since our national fantasy about how great the Reagans were is all kinds of f***ed up and problematic...

But, P.S., I did find it momentarily fascinating when there were rumors that Ashley Judd was going to do it.

DJDeeJay: what's your favorite example of male objectification in a movie?
[The answer and 8 more questions after the jump...] 

Click to read more ...

Linkbowl

Boy Culture revisiting Maurice with director James Ivory 30 years later
The Guardian previews Alone in Berlin, a new WW II drama starring Emma Thompson & Brendan Gleeson
Playbill How the Newsies choreographer got Channing Tatum tap dancing for Hail, Caesar!
The Film Stage 15 movies to see after you've seen Hail, Caesar!

Film Mixtape Chris Feil's top ten.
MNPP [nsfw] Tom Hardy on the set of Taboo... with tattoos 
Antagony & Ecstasy comparing current Best Picture nominees to previous Best Picture winners 
Pajiba on Star Wars...dildos? 
i09 argues that Virtuosity (1995) starring Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington now works as a 'bad movie we love' instead of just a bad movie 

Today's Watch...
I was watching George Clooney and Channing Tatum lounge and dance about in Roman soldier and Sailor costumes during the big game so I watched the new movie commercials afterwards. X-Men Apocalypse, Captain America: Civil War, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, The Jungle Blook, 10 Cloverfield Lane, Jason Bourne, Independence Day: Resurgence are included after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Link Brunch

Now with unlimited mimosas

Towleroad a Russian distributor is planning some law-defying cinephilia -- they're going to release Carol despite Russia's absurdly homophobic "anti-propaganda" law 
Marvel 2016 is Captain America's 75th anniversary so they'll be the new film Captain America: Civil War as well as a 2 hour TV special "75 Heroic Years" to air on ABC on January 19th
Pajiba clears up what the word "spoiler" means since the internet is always confused about it
MNPP Save the date - new Michael Fassbender picture on Oct 13th, 2017
Comics Alliance forget what we said earlier about Nicole Kidman co-starring in Wonder Woman. Apparently they coudln't work out schedules. The'll presumably be looking for another iconic star in Kidman's age range for the Queen of the Amazons  

List-Mania
Associate Press and Rolling Stone have best albums lists for 2015. Adele's "25" and Madonna's "Rebel Heart" make both of the top 10s
i09 best comics and graphic novels of the year
Film Comment picks the 20 best undistributed films of the year. I haven't seen even one of them which is strange given multiple festivals this year
THR the Women Film Critics Circle goes all in for Suffragette with 7 (!!!) awards. This is a group I'd love to sing praises to except so often their ideas about gender seem reductive / surface level. I like Suffragette just fine but in no way does its topic (women's voting rights) make it a better film about women than say Carol or Brooklyn or even less high profile pictures like Grandma or I'll See You In My Dreams or Mustang you know? They also say super strange things like this:

The Invisible Woman Award (performance by a woman whose exceptional impact on the film dramatically, socially or historically, has been ignored): Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl

How, exactly, has a performance with that much Oscar buzz from a new star the media is fawning all over having a wildly successful ubiquitous breakout year count as "invisible"?

a long time ago in a galaxy far far away...
Vogue a grown Star Wars fan remembers her adolescent obsession with the series and debates whether or not to go to the new film
Vanity Fair looks at the origins of Star Wars - an indie film no studio wanted to make
Movie City News the 5 things David Poland hated about Episode 7 (SPOILERIFFIC obviously). Agree completely on #1 (oy!) and sort of on #2 and #3. Don't understand #4 or especially #5 as I loved the Darth Vader obsession -- a great dark mirror to our own Star Wars fixations only embedded organically into the actual narrative.
The Incredible Suit 'froths at the cock' (sorry) for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Funny review