Beauty vs Beast: Rock Star Wars

Hello and Happy Monday everybody, Jason from MNPP here with a brand new edition of our weekly "Beauty vs Beast" series, wherein we ask you to take a side between a "good" movie character and a "bad" movie character. With Captain Marvel out this weekend let's glance back at one of our fav Brie Larson roles (one of many -- we always love Brie Larson), her small bit as Scott's own ex Envy Adams in Scott Pilgrim vs The World. We're facing her off with Scott's current paramour Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), which might seem unfair given Ramona's in, you know, basically the entire film and has an arc and all that. But don't count out Brie -- she has the best scene in the film, her kick-ass performance of "Black Sheep," the Metric song. (Watch it here.) 

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PREVIOUSLY Twas a cake-walk for our favorite Nicky Hoult in last week's Fancy Tuxedo battle from the Oscars -- he black-tied up Joe Alwyn with 77% of your vote. But some people said we shouldn't fight at all, like Peggy Sue, who had the answer we were looking for:

"A threesome."

Yes No Maybe So: Captain Marvel

by Nathaniel R

Hey look, it's our first official image of Brie Larson from Damien Chazelle's First Ma---- oh, that's not right. It's Brie Larson as First Woman to lead a movie in the MCU. Captain Marvel hits theaters on March 8th, 2019, or as we like to call it, two weeks after the Oscars and two months before Avengers Infinity War Part 2.

After the jump the first trailer and a quick Yes No Maybe So breakdown.

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Links!

film/tv
• Towleroad - I am so not an Andy Cohen fan but this game 'uncomfortably close' that gets Andrew Rannells and Matt Bomer nose-to-nose is... well, I'm here for it. It's also nice to learn that they both made excellent choices in their favorite movie ever.
• i09 fun illustrated poster of 80s movies. I'd ask you to see how many you recognize but if you know the 80s you'll know them all because the films represented (save arguably one) are fairly pop culture famous
• IndieWire -the new super in Incredibles 2 is very Kristen Stewart-esque
• AV Club -apparently ABC is really trying to come up with a way to continue Roseanne without Roseanne!
• Deadline report on the filming of Avatar 2 and Avatar 3. Zoe Saldana has already wrapped her part and James Cameron brags that Kate Winslet can hold her breath underwater for seven minutes. Hmmm. Is that even possible for humans? Really?
• Mirror - very odd report on Catherine Zeta-Jones bragging about her fortune and beauty. File under 'if you got it, flaunt it' I guess?

all Supers all the time
• FSR Captain Marvel will use female Turkish composer Pinar Toprak for the score. That's quite a surprise since her filmography to date is quite obscure with mostly low profile documentaries and TV movies but congratulations! I've never seen the series Krypton, her highest profile gig. If you do, how do you like the music?

• Coming Soon - Wonder Woman's sequel is called Wonder Woman 1984 and there are a few new photos. Love the brighter costume. Annoyed that Steve Trevor is back. No one ever stays dead in comic book films!
• ComicBook.com - Kevin Smith got Marvel screenwriters to say how they'd fix the DC Extended Universe of movies. Sound simple advice but I can't imagine DC is happy about the conversation.
• /Film a bit of info on Patrick Wilson's villain in Aquaman and why he was cast

offscreen
• Damian Alexander - insightful cartoon about the way boys are trained to devalue female protagonists. I relate so much because I loved heroines from the start but knew instinctively that that was 'weird'.

'just link a prayer, your click can take me there... 🎵

• Guardian has a really fascinating interview with Sean Penn about his novel (yes he wrote one), his ex-wives, his humanitarian work, the Me Too movement and more
• AV Club Netflix suggests it's going to back away a bit from its war against the movies... or at least from competing on the awards battlefield. Does this mean they're abandoning their Oscar campaigns? This statement is quite vague.
• Boy Culture connects two of my favorite things of all time: Madonna's "Like a Prayer" phase and... Natalie Wood?
• Time Can Oceans 8 bring back the glamourous caper?

• EW Uma Thurman willing to work with Quentin Tarantino again
• W interviews Grace Jone about her fierceness "I pack a good wallop"
• Variety YES! A24 is planting the seeds for an Oscar campaign for Toni Collette in the horror film Hereditary
• Coming Soon For some reason Monty Python's Spamalot is going to become a movie
• Variety Olivia de Havilland talks about being Cannes very first female jury president decades ago
• Electric Literature "storytelling" in WestWorld and how literary it actually is
• Awards Daily Academy votes to expel Roman Polanski and Bill Cosby
• AV Club Steve Martin and Martin Short are actual best friends
• i09 beautiful posters for King Kong's Broadway musical debut
• Playboy "Hollywood's pansexual moment" - interesting points in this article but I'm really quite annoyed that we've jumped from gay rights to "let not define ourselves and let's explore fluidity" and are acting like homophobia is solved / gays are accepted. There are literally still laws being pushed in the US to discriminate against queer people - even this very week! 

Click to enlargeAvengers Mania
<-- This Captain Marvel poster going around looked so official I thought it was. Apparently it's actually fan art by a Brazilian illustrator Fabio Rodrigues

• Vulture Infinity War facial hair rankings
• Monkey See Glen Weldon coins a genius term for the ending of Avengers: Infinity War. Well worth a close read.
• Crooked Marquee Eric D Snider wins the award for "best headline to an Avengers Infinity War review"
• /Film Black Widow's solo film actively looking for a director (even though no screenplay is written yet. Hmmm)
• AV Film how are we supposed to care about Ant-Man and the Wasp post the brutal ending of Infinity War
• Coming Soon Infinity War has been out just one week and it's already nearly at a billion dollars globally. Jesus.
• Express a very elaborate theory on how Captain Marvel and Ant Man could save the day in Infinity Wars Part 2

Captain Marvel Begins. Infinity War Promises. Black Widow Waits.

by Nathaniel R

Brie Larson training with a real pilot

As you've undoubtedly heard given that half the internet (at least) is a conveyor belt for Marvel Studios propaganda news, Captain Marvel began shooting yesterday. Brie Larson headlines Marvel's first female driven superhero film. Despite the company's cultural prominence they didn't get to female heroes first. That honor actually belongs to the all but forgotten Supergirl (1984). If you only want to count the modern superhero film era (i.e. post X-Men, 2000) the honor belongs to the much-reviled Catwoman (2004), which was followed by the also-reviled Elektra (2005), and the also-also reviled My Super Ex Girlfriend (2006). If you want to only count the post-Marvel Studios world (i.e. 2008's Iron Man,was ground zero) they still didn't manage "first!" dibs but we shouldn't dwell on their priority problems. Thankfully Warner Bros / DC's Wonder Woman (2017) was beloved and hopefully signalled a turning point in the fate of the female hero subgenre...

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