Beauty Break: Bewitched Elizabeth Olsen

Flaunt magazine, which always has amazing photoshoots of gorgeousity, is featuring Elizabeth Olsen right about now with a profile article and a photoshoot. I've been smitten since that eery girl-without-a-center performance in Martha Marcy May Marlene but it didn't hurt that when I met her on the Oscar campaign trail that year she was even more beautiful (skin of creamy flawlessness) and we talked Michelle Pfeiffer since she's also a pfan. But I digress...

These days she doesn't have to wait for her phone to ring with movie roles though we've yet to see a role or performance from her as stellar as that quadruple named indie breakthrough. [More...]

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Link On

click to embiggenBacklots on "the happiest marriage in Hollywood" William Haines and Jimmy Shields from the golden age
Coming Soon first image & poster from Dracula Untold starring Luke Evans which opens in October. (I always giggle when "untold" is used in titles or taglines for characters that every man woman and child has heard of.
Buzzfeed great article on Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook, and melodrama
VF Hollywood Mary Steenburgen on joining Orange is the New Black for Season 3 (I think she removed this tweet because I can't find it) 
Jezebel is the Justice League movie really only going to have one female character?
The Film Stage That's "Sir" Daniel Day-Lewis to you 
Guardian interesting read on how social media killed the official websites for new movies 
Coming Soon Frank Grillo optimistic about returning in Captain America 3 despite being kind of burned alive in Winter Soldier
Variety Adrien Brody and John Cusack joining Jackie Chan in Dragon Blade, one of the most expensive Chinese movies ever. They do know those two Americans aren't box office draws, right? 

Captain vs. Legos
You know how I was all excited about Captain America: The Winter Soldier (which I love and saw again this weekend on a whim) becoming the #1 of the year last week? Well, it's already been replaced as The Lego Movie reclaimed the title the same weekend it debuted on DVD. Only $4,000 separate their grosses - ha! That's what you call a photo finish. The good captain isn't on DVD until September but he's also only in about 200 theaters and could easily lose the rest of them next weekend. Not that any of this matters since Hunger Games: Mockingjay Pt 1 and Grace of Mona-(kidding!) have yet to arrive and will easily surpass them.

What is Valka's purpose in How To Train Your Dragon 2?

Today's Must Read
Tasha Robinson at The Dissolve on "Losing Strong Female Characters to the Trinity Syndrome". Why is it that even when filmmakers care enough to craft and introduce a fascinating female hero, they always abandon, undermine or reduce her by the third act? Two current examples are dissected: Valka (Cate Blanchett) in How To Train Your Dragon 2 who gets the whole second act (but for what purpose?) and Rita (Emily Blunt) in Edge of Tomorrow

Box Office: Cameron Diaz Still Sells Tickets

Hey kids, it's Nathaniel. Amir is busy Hot Doc'ing it up in Toronto (yet another springtime festival!) so I'm here to quickly recite the box office chart. The producers of the Christmas release Annie (previously discussed) must have breathed a huge sigh of relief at the box office receipts for The Other Woman in which Diaz and her two new frenemies (Leslie Mann & Kate Upton) plot to destroy Jaime Lannister who is sleeping with all of them on the down low. Yep, people will stay come out in droves for Cameron Diaz in comic mode. Annie will open big... it's got several marketing hooks even before you get to audience love for funny Cam. 

I haven't yet seen The Other Woman yet but I hear it's quite regressive. Consider this scathing provocatively titled review at The Stranger...

The point of this movie is not sisterhood, but making sure women band together in the name of heterosexual competition. Cameron Diaz is too sexy, Leslie Mann is too frumpy, and Kate Upton is boobs, but boobs that are not good enough to keep a man goddammit. Nicki Minaj joins this horror show as the Sassy Black Secretary™ (it’s 2014, right?)...

THE TOP TEN
01 THE OTHER WOMAN $24.7 *NEW* 
02 CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER $16 (cum. $224.8) Review
03 HEAVEN IS FOR REAL $13.8 (cum. $51.9) 
04 RIO 2 $13.6 (cum. $96.1) 
05 BRICK MANSIONS $9.6 *NEW* 
06 TRANSCENDENCE $4.1 (cum. $18.4)  
07 THE QUIET ONES $4 *NEW* 
08 BEARS $3.6 (cum. $11.1)
09 DIVERGENT $3.6 (cum. $139.4) Review
10 A HAUNTED HOUSE 2 $3.2 (cum. $14.2)

In addition to Tribeca Film Festing, I went to Estelle Parson's new play The Velocity of Autumn in the hopes of catching at least one potential Tony Best Actress nominee before the announcement. But get this: Estelle called out sick so I was stuck with an understudy! The understudy wasn't bad and I liked the play about a very old very cantankerous lady armed with molotov cocktails in her Park Slope brownstone because her children want to put her in a nursing home. And yet it's so obviously a star vehicle (there are only two characters, Tony winner Stephen Spinella plays her son) that I was missing the expert comic timing of the Oscar-winning Parsons throughout. She would have maximized the punchlines and elevated it. The understudy switcheroo hasn't happened to me in a long time though so I made my peace with the theater gods quickly 'bout it. They've been good to me for the past several years and we've all called out sick from work in our lifetimes.

But I still fear the Tony nominations on Tuesday because I've seen like nothing that will be nominated this year. I was concentrating on Off Broadway too much I guess.

WHAT DID YOU SEE THIS WEEKEND? 

Link Jr.

Vulture psychologically astute piece by Kim Morgan on Lindsay Lohan's reality show 
The Front Row on the lost generation of indie film and filmmakers from the 1990s
New York Times Rubin "Hurricane" Carter dies at 76. Did you ever see that Oscar nominated Denzel performance in The Hurricane?
/Film Quentin Tarantino continues work on The Hateful Eight, his "leaked" first draft of a Western

imgur fascinating compilation of screenpaps from Captain America: The Winter Soldier. That list of culturally important things people have told Captain America to google and how it changes in each country 
Variety we haven't checked in with crazy Takashi Miike lately. He's making a Yakuza Vampire flick now 
i09 Wonder-Con happened this weekend which means fun creative cosplay photos. (I miss loving geek culture which I haven't for a long time really... I loved it before "geek" became a compliment).
i09 Dudes in distress, saved by damsels from Wonder Woman's Steve Trevor to The Hunger Games Peeta
Variety Cannes Critics Week sidebar revealed
Film School Rejects on the anniversary of Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr and audience resistance to movies that comment on moviegoing
Out Matt Bomer talks The Normal Heart 
Variety The Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon sequel Green Destiny - is happening later this year. But since it doesn't have Ang Lee or any of the original stars (through necessity plot-wise, really) other than Michelle Yeoh... how much of a sequel will it feel like to people. 

Panel Culture: The Winter Soldier

I had the pleasure of returning as guest on the Panel Culture podcast. It's a weekly comics podcast but they do movie episodes every once in a while and this one is on Captain America: The Winter Soldier. If you've read my review you might feel I'm repeating myself but it bears repeating. It's a fine movie and we discuss why. 

Towards the end of the podcast, Charles mentions that he thinks the blockbuster is helping Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. finally find its voice on TV. I've been hearing that a lot. It's true that the last two episodes have been newly energized, but two episodes is not much to go on. If the corporate mandated Marvel Universe show can sustain this new tension through the end of the season maybe Season 2 will actually be worth watching and not something you tune in to out of habit and because you're tired after a long day at work? 

I also ask the guys which female superheroes they'd like to see get a solo picture. Because I am me, these guys know comics, and I couldn't help myself. 

In case you missed the announcement, The Film Experience's own podcast returns this Sunday. That's my little Easter gift to you. It is risen