Monty & The Seasons First Oscar Screeners

Monty, my beloved gray furball, is the web's original cat Oscar pundit. So once again we beg his feline proclamations. They are usually mysterious and non-committal but there are also the unambiguous dismissals,  100% prescient predictions and dumb blunders... just like any pundit might make.

The first screeners of the season arrived last night: indie hit Mud and Sarah Polley's documentary hopeful Stories We Tell. I presented them to him. Which would Monty favor?

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FYC Best Supporting Actor: Ulysses

I have seen the greatest performance by a supporting actor in 2013.  All hail "ULYSSES". Here he is in a key moment from his star-making role in the Coen Bros Inside Llewyn Davis.

What a face! But he doesn't coast on it. He acts with his whole body. If there's any justice in the world, a BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR campaign will rev right up.

Okay okay. I realize this is a silly argument and I know exactly what you're thinking...

You're thinking:

"But Nathaniel, a nomination for Ulysses will never happen. I mean, hello, Oscar Trivia! The Coen Bros filmography, which is chalk full of excellent supporting turns never produces nominations in the supporting category that aren't arguably leads (William H Macy in Fargo and Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men are both in the driver's seat of their film's narrative even if they aren't the protagonists). It's only happened once: Michael Lerner in Barton Fink. And complete unknowns rarely get traction... especially when the film they're in doesn't even feature them in the press notes"

To this I say "But you haven't seen this awesome performance yet and Ulysses DOES drive the plot along -- sometimes in soft footed silence and other times with a sprint. Plus, where's your faith? No supporting actor in a Coen Bros film has ever given a performance this pure of heart or this instinctual. I don't mean to be disrespectful to John Goodman, John Turturro, and the entire Coen repertory company but none of them have ever purred or kneaded their leading men on cue so maybe they just didn't deserve one. 

I consider it an indignity that Ulysses will be left out of the film's SAG ensemble nomination (if it gets one) since he goes uncredited. He has way more screen time than Garrett Hedlund and better close-ups than Justin Timberlake.

Don't hate on gingers. Root for Ulysses.

Short Link 12

Awards Daily early twitter reactions to Gravity
Gold Derby uncovers a beautiful piece of trivia I totally didn't know (that happens less often than I'd like with awardage). If Homeland's stars both win Emmy again it will be the first time ever for a dual lead consecutive win! 
Film Doctor 12 unanswered questions about The World's End. I haven't spoken much about the movie but I thought it was the weakest of its trilogy, funny in parts and especially strong in its middle but I thought the opening and closing acts were weak.
Pajiba on Mandy Patinkin (Holla!) coming to grips with his past bad behavior. True little known story: I am a huge Mandy Patinkin fan so this renaissance has been wondrous for me.

Deadline the HFPA have made the wisest of decisions and have asked Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to host the Golden Globes again. Let's all pray they say yes because the alternatives (*cough* Ricky Gervais) have been ghastly!
Forbes Madonna tops the biggest earners list in Hollywood this year with Steven Spielberg in runner up position
CHUD the Pompeii teaser, skewered in two sentences.
Pop Bytes Alexander Skarsgård is an awesome drunk cheerleader. På Svensk!
Guardian President Obama joins the plus column for Lee Daniels' The Butler
Cinema Blend wonders who Joss Whedon will kill off in The Avengers: Age of Ultron 

Finally...
I don't normally post straight up advertisements as news as most movie sites do (it feels shameless and also "abuse-me!" crazy since the studios aren't paying you but you're still airing their commercial!) but I hope this week's double feature from Paramount is really successful so I'm sharing it!

click on the pic to investigate this 2 for 1 offer

(Is this their sneaky way of getting WWZ over the $200 million mark which its been inching towards for weeks)

Double Features, which you almost always have to program yourself as Unofficial pairings, are one of the great joys of moviegoing. It's one reason we use to twin them up in that Best Pictures series. It would be so perfect if they became a thing again in theaters. Two movies for the price of one! I missed Star Trek Into Darkness (not that I felt its absence) but I liked World War Z far more than my review indicates. I must have been so crabby when I wrote that because it's one of the stickiest movies from summer 2013 with many strong sequences that more than make up for its wobbly seams and the rather blank protagonist... at least he's got the face of Brad Pitt! 

And while I'm providing free adspace please know that Short Term 12 (my pet cause of the summer) expands in or to all of these 12 cities on Friday...

Click on the pic for the official site

So do the right thing, make me proud, and round up 12 friends and go see it.

for entertainment purposes only
while we're on the subject of 12, here's an, uh, 13th link, for a 12 year old vine genius. The cat licking vine is the best thing evah.

Reviews: I'm So Excited & The Heat

This review was originally published in my column at Towleroad

and i know i know i know i know i know i want you i want you ♫

Here's a film you'll never see on an airplane. Pedro Almodóvar's latest, I'm So Excited!, takes place (almost) entirely aboard an airplane like some lost "bottle episode" of an aborted Almodóvarian sitcom. But the stewards and pilots are less concerned with fastening your seat belt than unzipping your pants and more interested in spiking drinks than pouring them. It's arrived just in time for Gay Pride Weekend and what great timing; this is by far the gayest thing Pedro has done since Bad Education (2004) in which Gael García Bernal famously both tucked his junk for drag duties and showed it off in wet underwear poolside.

I think it was the internet critic David Poland (of Movie City News fame) who dubbed that earlier film "fag noir" and took some heat for that but I personally don't think Almodóvar would have minded. In fact, for a long time I miscredited the tag to Pedro himself. Pedro's characters are often outrageously hedonistic from nympho nuns to homicidal hotties to transgendered hookers and even the sanest among them act on melodramatic or comic impulse without shame or apology. In short, to appropriate a quote from Rich Juzwiak they're 'as faggy as they want to be'. And that's just the ladies! [more...]

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Red Carpet Arrivals

I shan't be live-blogging the awards tonight -- I miss too much of the show when I do that but expect some tweets here and there and lots of post-mortem recapping tomorrow ALL DAY. But for now a few arrivals...

Eddie Redmayne's hair defies gravity, logic, and follicular reason #redcarpet twitter.com/nathanielr/sta…

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) February 24, 2013

LORI SINGER (?) I wonder if Amadeus or Places in the Heart will win tonight? #redcarpet #thatsso80s twitter.com/nathanielr/sta…

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) February 24, 2013

When Reese hears "Naomi Watts" she does this. Which is exactly what @joereid does when he hears "Reese"! twitter.com/nathanielr/sta…

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) February 24, 2013

MORE GOWNS & GOODIES AFTER THE JUMP

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