Meet Joe Link

good morning!

• /Film amazing story behind that funny "he's a friend from work" line in the forthcoming Thor: Ragnarok
• Variety talks to five members of the HFPA, aka the foreign press who vote on the Golden Globes
• Interview fun Q&A with Kathy Bates using ol' Andy Warhol questions. She reveals that she's a huge fan of Asghar Farhadi (yes!) and, uh, Meet Joe Black (noooo!)
• BuzzFeed Charlize Theron is a "broad" - how the actress charted her own course, while cashing in on her considerable beauty

• Financial Time amazing sit down with Isabelle Huppert who gives great quote over a 12 course meal
• Vanity Fair Lindsay Lohan's new publicist and how he's changing the conversation about her (as she works towards a comeback)
• Variety Broad Green Pictures, which started off strong with the hit A Walk In the Woods, is laying employees off. Uhoh
• Head Over Feels has a really fun alternative Emmys (and other categories) you can vote on
• Awards Daily on the Emmy's most competitive race: Outstanding Drama Series
• IndieWire Angelina Jolie upset that people have misinterpreted a casting exercize she used to choose child actors for auditions for her new film First They Killed My Father

Off Screen
• The Independent if you're in the UK this summer, snag tickets to see Tom Hiddleston as Hamlet for a limited fund-raising stage production in a tiny theater (160 seats only!) helmed by Kenneth Branagh himself (you may recall that Branagh already did a Hamlet movie in 1996 that was four hours long and nominated for four Oscars.
• Modern Love Actor Andrew Rannells on a night of casual sex that coincided with a family tragedy
• NPR the 150 greatest albums made by woman. This is an awesome list. Must listen to the ones I don't know
• Onion "Twitter Introduces Red X Mark To Verify Users It’s Okay To Harass"
• Cosmopolitan repainted Barbies as RuPaul's Drag Race queens. The Valentina and Trixie Mattel's are amazing
• Theater Mania last block of tickets on sale for Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly! (through January)
• Playbill the original stars of Kinky Boots (Stark Sands and Billy Porter) will return to the show in late September (hmmm, does this mean a closing date soon?). Since I've already seen the show twice, I'll skip... unless they can also lure awesome Annaleigh Ashford back in which case, I am there with bells (and heels) on.
• Gothamist the legendary Algonquin Hotel in NYC is getting a new cat-in-chief. This one's a ginger rescue.

And This Just In...
Jessica Chastain will be playing Empress Lilandra of the Shi'ar in X-Men Dark Phoenix. A kind of Catwoman to Xavier's Batman if you will (at least in the comics) because she's not exactly evil but not a hero either... and in this here classic storyline -- which I have little hope they can pull off in the movie but was so damn awesome back in the day in the comicbooks -- Lilandra was in direct conflict with her lover Xavier. So it's a mini The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her reunion as Jessica reminded with this cute photo of her and her former and now future co-star...

Hey @jamesmcavoyrealdeal you ready for me up in Montreal? Im gonna make you cry so hard 😈 #xmen @simondavidkinberg

A post shared by Jessica Chastain (@jessicachastain) on Aug 1, 2017 at 3:29pm PDT

Double Feature: "Atomic Blonde" and "Girl's Trip"

This article was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It is reprinted here in a slightly extended edition.

It’s a special ‘Sister’s Are Doin’ It For Themselves’ double review with two female-driven hits.

Have you caught Girls Trip yet? I was one week late to the party after its hit opening weekend. When we looked around the theater this weekend my best friend was all “it’s 80% women of color and 20% gay men!” Truth! And perfect as target audiences go for an urban female comedy called Girls Trip. The crowd was boisterous, laughing their asses off throughout but also visibly feeling the '90s hiphop soundtrack and audibly praising the “message” moments in the movie.

The night before I saw Atomic Blonde and though I didn’t see anyone dancing in their seats, I was dancing on the inside with its killer 1980s new wave soundtrack...

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Charlize Theron in "The Curse of the Jade Scorpion"

by Tim Brayton

As part of our celebration of the career of Charlize Theron, I'm revisiting the performance of hers that first made me clearly aware that here was a woman whose career would be worth keeping an eye on. Unfortunately, it's a crap film, one of the worst she's ever been in: I speak of the 2001 Woody Allen project The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, a sluggish, mirthless throwback to the screwball comedies of old that is, by some reports, Allen's own least favorite of his career. I can't quite bring myself to agree with that assessment, but it's certainly right down there near the bottom.

In fact, Theron's performance as bored, spoiled rich society woman Laura Kensington is easily the best thing about the film, if not indeed the only good thing about it, period. I'm very happy to report that her work holds up, even without the sense of newness...

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Soundtracking: "Young Adult"

We're celebrating Charlize Theron before Atomic Blonde opens this week! Here's Chris Feil's weekly series on music in the movies...

Young Adult begins with a near ten minute stretch of almost silence before its recurring song choice bursts in and becomes one of the film’s most illuminating crutches of its antihero Mavis Gary, played with utter genius by Charlize Theron.

At the news that her high school sweetheart Buddy is a new father, Mavis departs her depressing life on a cringe-inducing quest to win him back, armed with tunes from their love that she keeps in a memory box in her closet. The keepsake mixtape “Mad Love, Buddy” begins with “The Concept” by Teenage Fanclub, quite the apropos band name for Mavis’s frozen disposition. After several instant rewinds it becomes clear this isn’t just a favorite road trip singalong, but the one she remembers Buddy by. Their song.

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Would you rather...?

WOULD YOU RATHER

...model rompers with Taika Waititi?
...pay tribute to Antonio Banderas with Miguel Angel Silvestre?
...soak up some sun with Elizabeth Banks?
...study a screenplay with Saîd Taghmaoui?
...have a peroni with Zoe Kravitz and Karl Glumsan?
...appreciate your sycophantic base with Charlize Theron?
...eat a slice with Laura Dern and Jim Sturgess?
...or do some facepainting with Paul Bettany?

Photos are after the jump to help you decide...

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