We Can't Wait Addendum: "The Last of Robin Hood"

In January we did a countdown of 2014 movies we were most looking forward to. With the distribution news that The Last of Robin Hood, an Errol Flynn bio of sorts with Kevin Kline will be released I feel the need to give it a shout out.

Errol Flynn keeps entering my consciousness when I least expect him lately. I was talking to Diana (currently in LA with Anne Marie to report on the TCM Film Festival for y'all right her) the other day over dinner and she brought him up. She loves the swashbuckling movie star and enjoyed the film at TIFF. I was also at a very chic event celebrating the photography of George Hurrell and there was a huge absolutely stunning portrait of Errol Flynn mixed with several perfect Joan Crawfords.

So when I read the news today, I became properly stoked at last. I love the poster's clever arrowhead riff (pictured left top) on that most boring of poster tropes, one visual stripe per star. I was once friendly with the film's directors (though we've lost touch). And, out of curiousity, I looked up a picture of Errol with his inappropriately young girlfriend at the end of his life and my jaw dropped...

Kevin Kline and Dakota Fanning couldn't be better casting, could they? 

The Complete List of "We Can't Wait" Titles in case you missed them.
We'll be following all these titles closely this year! 
01 Carol (TBA)
02 The Grand Budapest Hotel (March)
03 Foxcatcher (TBA)
04 Under the Skin (April)
05 Inherent Vice (TBA)
06 Into the Woods (Christmas)
07 Snowpiercer (TBA)
08 Nymphomaniac (March)
09 Boyhood (July)
10 Big Eyes  (TBA)
11 The Last 5 Years (TBA)
12 Gone Girl (Oct)
13 Begin Again (TBA)
14 Veronica Mars (March)

Runner Up Films

Link a Prayer

Hello Cinema our friend Amir started a podcast on Iranian cinema. It's an interesting listen even if you know nothing about the topic, particular the first section on how Amir and Tina came to love cinema
Coming Soon Ellen Page will star in Queen and Country based on a comic book about a British intelligence operative
Comic Alliance on the petititon to cast an Asian American as Iron Fist in the upcoming Netflix series. This is SUCH a good idea, because that character was obviously envisioned as white for very problematic reasons given that he's totally tied to Asian culture.

Shadow and Act there's a Spike Lee box set coming this June which will include the first ever Blu-Ray of Summer of Sam so that's great news.
/Film an infographic on Hollywood disasters. They love destroying New York City but it's not the only city they ruin
Vanity Fair rejected movie poster designs for Gravity
House Next Door a look back at Madonna's most beloved song "Like a Prayer" which just turned 25 years old!
Kevin Maguire the X-Men do the Oscar selfie 
Playbill a history of Les Misérables which is reopening on Broadway. It just keeps coming back. 

Release Date News
Everest, that mountain climbing adventure with Jake Gyllenhaal and Zero Dark Thirty's Jason Clarke (among others in a fairly stellar cast) will hit IMAX and 3D screens on September 18th. In case you didn't hear James Gray's long delayed The Immigrant will open (finally) on May 2nd, nearly a year after its Cannes debut - nothing like striking when the iron is hot! And because they're just never going to stop and neither is Hugh Jackman despite his vague protestations, the X-Men have dates scheduled through 2018

And Today's Watch(es)
Kevin Bacon goes a little Footloose on The Tonight Show (looking pretty good for 55) and it turns out Jennifer Lawrence recorded not one but two lipsynch numbers for American Hustle. The deleted one is to Santana's "Evil Woman" - I'm not embedding it here because it starts playing without asking it to. That is NOT okay in embeddable videos.

Linksy

IndieWire the winners at SXSW Fort Tilden (narrative) and The Great Invisible (doc). You may recall that Short Term 12 was the big discovery last year so let's hope Fort Tilden hits theaters soon. But mostly I'm leading with this because the still released has kittens in it. Kittens!

But mostly I led with that because the first still released has kittens in it. Three. Kittens. Kittens, I say.

KITTENS

Ahem. Some links...
LA Review of Books Charles Taylor on Meryl Streep's recent string of gorgon roles and particularly August: Osage County. Really interesting article but Streep fanatics should steer clear since it is merciless. (Slightly confused about what this essay is doing at a 'Review of Books' since none are mentioned.) 
Golden Globe I hadn't seen this before - celebrities fav movies. Turns out Robin Wright loves Werner Herzog, Carey Mulligan loves Steven Spielberg, Emile Hirsch has very Oscar-bait taste, and Julia Roberts loves The Mexican most of her own ???
MNPP [NSFW] Jake Gyllenhaal on the set of Everest
The Playlist on Steven Soderbergh's King of the Hill Criterion release and his dissatisfaction with his post Sex, Lies and Videotape pre Out of Sight period 

Towleroad "Hodor" (Kristian Nairn) on Game of Thrones comes out in an interview 
Movie City News on "popcorn time" and piracy
The Wrap supposedly four actors fighting for the Doctor Doom role in The Fantastic Four: Eddie Redmayne, Sam Riley, Domnhall Gleeson, and Toby Kebbell. I'd say that wasn't a great get considering the face will be covered with a metal mask... but then origin stories, you know, they'll have some time before the face plate.
Variety uh-oh chest thumping Celine Dion could be back at the Oscars again in an Original Song performance. She gets a duet with Miss Piggy "Something So Right" in the new Muppets film 

Finally...
I don't normally post any fundraiser things beyond the site's own need for funding, detailed here. For instance, I had to make a ruling on no campaigns for indie movies simply because I get so many requests every week it'd be a part time job just putting up those posts with no added value for you the reader. But for movie theaters I'll make an exception. Brooklyn is home to so many cinephiles it'd be a pity if they lost another old theater. So if you want to help save the Brooklyn Heights Cinema -- which needs to update its equipment or be shut down -- here's the info!

And The Podcast Goes To... The Oscars

Season Finale
Nathaniel R, Katey Rich, Nick Davis, and Joe Reid discuss Oscar night in detail, with lots of commentary on all the stars and a few reader questions to help guide us 

00:00 Introductions & the musical performances
05:00 Liza Minnelli, Ellen DeGeneres, presenters & "relevancy"
15:00 The Selfie & how Oscar treats its own history
24:00 Our own standing ovations for Amy Adams, Cate Blanchett and more...
37:00 Reader Questions: creative casting, snubs, selfie swaps
53:00 Matthew McConaughey's speech & Randomness
1:00:00 What we did after the Oscars 

Suggested Supplement Reading:
Joe on the "2013" Oscars, Katey talking to the Make-up winners, Vanity Fair's Leonardo DiCaprio piece, those Acceptance Speeches, Jennifer Lawrence's Bestie's Diary and Nathaniel's Oscar Wrap / TFE Funding Drive.

You can listen to the podcast at the bottom of the post or download the conversation on iTunes. Continue the conversation in the comments... which of our ballots most closely resembles yours?Hunger, Shame, I Heart Huckabees, Taxi Driver, King of Comedy, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, Children of Men, Y Tu Mama Tambíen, 

Oscar Nite Finale

Children of a Linker God

New York Times the miniature model (so edible looking!) of The Grand Budapest Hotel 
Interview talks to Jeff Goldblum - I didn't realize how much I missed him until his scenes in the new Wes Anderson 
/Film Carrie Fisher to be in London for 6 months for the new Star Wars film... Hmmm perhaps more than a cameo, then. But regardless I'm not really looking forward to these after the debacle of the last trilogy
Towleroad on Neil Patrick Harris as a gay icon 

Gawker Rich Juzwiak on the continuation of the gay 300 saga. This line just kills me:

But no one man can satisfy Themistocles. "I have spent my life on my one true love: the Greek fleet," he proclaims. Sounds like an active life!

(I'm never going to see the new 300: Rise of an Empire given the descriptions of how gorey it is -- sounds more vomitous than the first one in this regard! --  but I sure as hell am going to read the hilarious reviews)
The Wire why gay guys love the 300 movies
Cinema Blend Pee Wee Herman's beloved bike auctions for over $36,000. Wait, I thought it wasn't for sale?
Erik Lundegaard if The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 tops the box office charts in 2014 it'll be the first time that's happened in consecutive years for a sequel since... (you'll never guess when) 
Salon how hotels like the Grand Budapest became relics of the past 

Marlee Matlin, a deaf woman, famously planed a deaf woman in Children of a Lesser God (1986) and won the OscarToday's Most Discussable
Balder & Dash has an impassioned article about why disabled actors should be the only actors cast in disabled roles. The reasoning is very convincing but it does uncomfortably remind me of all of the flak people gave Jared Leto for doing a trans role this year and Leto's very sound response to the criticisms. Just how close do we need or even want actors to be to the roles they play? If we say that a straight man shouldn't ever play a queer role, does that mean queer actors must never play straight roles? And does this mean trans actors who can totally pass as cisgendered people shouldn't be allowed to play cisgendered roles? Does this mean we should never again have a performance like Linda Hunt's great one in The Year of Living Dangerously (1983)? She is not a trans woman or a man, but she played a man convincingly and carried it off beautifully.

It's a fascinating topic and one that I think should be openly discussed even if, in the days of outrage culture, those discussions can be political minefields. My worry is that this sort of stance is just too limiting for artists and boxes them up. On the other hand, though, shouldn't minority artists have first dibs on minority roles? (I know I've been pissed when I've seen bad gay performances in the past and thought "why didn't you just hire a gay?")  Have you ever thought about this and are you also torn between two opinions on the matter?