Linkside Out

All the news stories we didn't get to and/or articles we like with a wee slant toward the stage this morning... itching to see a show again.

Guardian on the homophobic charges against the MPAA. That über obnoxious organization has struck again. Pride is the second gay movie this year without sex scenes or nudity to be slapped with an R rating.
/Film The Twilight Saga may well be back after some short films. When I first heard this news I groaned and rolled my eyes but then I read the plan and it's sort of a support young female filmmakers thing so it sounds kind of cool, actually. Pit that Twilight is so obnoxious 
The Playlist ranks all 35 of David Fincher's music videos. I used to be so obsessed with him because of Madonna. It's possible that I already linked this? I don't know. But their rankings are fairly good.

Vulture says it's been an amazing year for animation. We just haven't realized it yet. It's all those hard to find foreign toons, it is
Rope of Silicon is doing a Best Movies series and looks back at David Fincher's Se7en. That would probably be on my 100 movies list, too
Cinephilia and Beyond looks at Bob Fosse's masterpiece (one of 'em) All That Jazz
My New Plaid Pants bookmarked! Jason tells us about a Montgomery Clift documentary that I didn't even know about
Variety Jane Fonda and Viola Davis are charitable people. They look great together at an annual Rape Foundation brunch

Netflix, the Disrupter
New York Times on the Crouching Tiger sequel Netflix / IMAX deal
CHUD Netflix going into the business of Adam Sandler movies 
Variety wonders what Netflix's motives our with their recent feature film announcements 

Imelda Staunton rehearsing. Photo by Johan PerrsonOn Stage and Film Interest
Broadway World Imelda Staunton is in theaters now in Pride (and she's delightful in it) but she's also returning to the stage. She's in rehearsals for that mammoth role of Mama Rose in a London production of Gypsy. See photo left. 
The Hairpin wonderful personal essay on seeing Lindsay Lohan's stage debut in Speed the Plow
NYC Theater Interesting. The Laura Pels Theater on 46th street will be doing a stripped down production of Into the Woods while the movie plays in theaters. December 18th through March 2015
Theater Mania Audra McDonald might do a film musical!!! She's rumored to be involved in the stage to screen transfer of Michael John Lachiusa's Hello Again. If only someone would push his Wild Party musical to the screen
Playbill Ewan MacGregor and Maggie Gyllenhaal just made their Broadway debuts in The Real Thing 
Variety Normally movies that become stage musicals are semi-recent hits. But next Spring Broadway will get Doctor Zhivago, once a super-sized smash movie hit from 1965. The song score combines talent from two fine musicals (The Secret Garden and Grey Gardens) so I'm excited.
Theater Mania David Burtka (NPH's other half) will be doing a cabaret show at my favorite cabaret spot directed by Neil Patrick Harris. I imagine this is the type of thing that people will judge harshly just hearing about it like "connections!" but I've seen Burtka in two stage productions and he's very talented

Three hot & short exit videos to wrap

1. We'll start with the best one. Making a Marie Antoinette style dress out of Sofia Coppolla's Marie Antoinette script. Love this.

2. Here's the first teaser for Inside Out, Pixar's 2015 release. And Pixar would like to remind you that they made it and that they made all those other movies you love to. BTW they were made by Pixar and did I mention that Pixar made this?

3. Inherent Vice's trailer which you've probably seen. We would have done a Yes No Maybe So on this one except that the New York Film Festival is in full swing which will render it immediately disposable since there'll be a review this weekend. The voiceover in this trailer reminds me of Annaleigh Ashford (from Masters of Sex) but she's not in the movie. I wonder who the voice belongs to?

"Malkolink Malkolink Malkolink!"

NY Daily News truly absurd photos of John Malkovich recreating famous images of Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, and less glitzy iconic art, too, like Piss Christ and American Gothic
Slate great piece on why we need less reboots and more original genre fiction - interesting points made that aren't just the usual bitching
Pink is the New Blog Channing Tatum inviting fans to be part of Magic Mike XXL
The Film Stage an interview with director Pawel Pawlikowski on his Polish hit Ida
Interview talks to the director of Wild Tales, which I loved at TIFF, Damián Szifrón
Shark Robot Avengers as cold cereal t-shirts. The best ones are clearly Thorrios and Loki Charms 'bifrosted!"

 

In Contention another reason to love Virginia Madsen besides that immortal wine monologue from Sideways - she loves the classic Network. She loves it lots
Variety Looks like it's Rachel McAdams, Vince Vaughn, Colin Farrell and Taylor Kitsch as the four leads directing by Justin Lin for True Detective Season 2. Vaughn is a crime boss, the rest are cops. I love Farrell but this does not excite me as much as the promise of Cary Fukunaga directing Harrelson, McConaughey and Monaghan but we'll see
Twitter ...if you must know my general feeling on Rachel McAdams
Variety Julie Delpy's next effort as a triple threat is a French language comedy called Lolo. She's asked the very funny actress Karin Viard to co-star
Awards Daily Freida Pinto's latest vehicle, Desert Dancer, will open the Santa Barbara Film Festival
Rope of Silicon Interstellar is Chris Nolan's longest film yet. This always worries me with directors. If your films get progressively longer it's often indicative of hermetically sealed bubble trouble. Or believing your own hype and forgetting about the actual story you're telling.
Coming Soon ... speaking of. New stills from the film
The Film Stage listen to the score for Gone Girl
NY Daily News Rumors abound that Quentin Tarantino wants Viggo Mortensen for Hateful Eight. So weird that no cast is in place yet given that we've already had a teaser

Today's Must Read/Watch
Extension 765 Steven Soderbergh is goofing around with Raiders of the Lost Ark - it's now a black and white silent - to teach film staging

I value the ability to stage something well because when it’s done well its pleasures are huge, and most people don’t do it well, which indicates it must not be easy to master (it’s frightening how many opportunities there are to do something wrong in a sequence or a group of scenes. Minefields EVERYWHERE....

Oh and remember that time when people were talking up a Costume Design nomination (which of course didn't happen) for Fantastic Mr Fox? Now there's coverage of the costumes for The Boxtrolls. Hey costume designers are needed on stop motion films.

Awardage
In Contention Casting Society of America nominations and honors. The weird part is that Rob Marshall who just generally casts big stars whether or not they're right for musicals, is being honored. But on a happier front, for the TV Pilot honors Looking was nominated and that show was definitely well cast.
Variety The Cinematographer's Guild are honoring a handful of folks too

P.S.
I had myself a final getaway last weekend to Fire Island before I am chained to the computer and Oscar coverage for the next four months. While I was there I met Robert Chang who was a lot of fun and we argued* about this article he wrote on Hunger Games and Gary Ross's use of breaking the 180 line. It's an interesting argument but it personally drives me crazy when directors break rules largely because they can. It always looks sloppy to me. Still the argument is interesting that it's only used for emotional reasons rather than action reasons which is where you usually see it. What'cha think? Maybe if there was only that and the action sequences were actually well filmed I'd like it.

* I know you're probably not supposed to debate film theory when you socialize with the gays on Fire Island but I am who I am.

Curio: Actorly Outerwear

Alexa here.  Sweater and jacket weather is upon us, that brief time of year where I can pretend to be strolling through the Upper West Side autumns of Woody Allen, or imagine myself on the golden Central Park stroll of Harry and Sally. (My actual fall look is a bit more Julianne in Still Alice, but we can't all be slaves to fashion.) As I drag my wool and leather out of mothballs today, I thought I'd share some outerwear creations for men, inspired by some signature roles of the actors who wore them.  

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TIFF: Miss Julie or, Acting: The Movie!

The 2014 edition of TIFF ends tonight and so will Nathaniel's review coverage with Still Alice. Wrap-ups and Oscar updates coming shortly thereafter. Now Liv Ullman's Miss Julie... 

"Kiss my shoe!" Colin Farrell reenacts critical reaction to Chastain's debut film year

This review contains 126 year-old spoilers if you’re not familiar with August Strindbergh’s one act play, which has been adapted to film frequently. The play is about the bored, lonely, and loveless daughter of a Baron, Miss Julie (Jessica Chastain) who enjoys toying with the servants, especially with John her father's valet (Colin Farrell). She flirts shamelessly even in front of his fiancé the cook (Samantha Morton) ordering him to perform sometimes demeaning and not very valet-like duties, like kissing her shoe or bringing her flowers. The story takes place in a single night in which the valet and the lady of the house will consummate their extremely uncomfortable and scandalous attraction with incredibly disastrous results... especially for Miss Julie. If 19th century Swedish country estates had been unionized John surely would have told her what wasn't in his job description. 'Not that. Not that. Definitely not that. You're playing with fire, Miss Julie!'

We understand Miss Julie's maddening hypocrisies straightaway as, when the story begins, she's already ordered the cook to feed her dog "Diana" an abortive dinner since the naughty girl has had sex with the gate keeper's mongrel dog. Foreshadowing 101 anyone? Diana is played by an adorable pug so we'll ignore, for Jess's dignity, that the play indicates that the dog ought to resemble Miss Julie! The pug laps down the meal hungrily and then proceeds to whimper through the entire first scene. This too proves foreshadowing, as yours truly began to do the same. If only Samantha Morton could have scooped me up, as she mercifully does with the confused pup, to carry me out of the screening room! 

more...

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Dress for the part, Clueless-style

Continuing our Back to School week...

Hey all, Manuel here, reminding you that when it comes to prepping for back to school fashion, Cher Horowitz (Alicia Silverstone) has had an app for that, even before Apple ruled product placement in Hollywood.

The year is 1995 and I remember watching Cher open Clueless by telling me that she actually has a “way normal life for a teenager.” She gets up, she brushes her teeth and she picks out her school clothes. So far so good. Except then we get a shot of her touchscreen (!) computer where she has her entire closet digitized (!). Way normal? As if!

This was mind-boggling to me. Not only because my “pick out school clothes in the morning” routine was restricted to making sure my uniform was nicely ironed (yes, I always looked on with envy to these American high school movies where kids were allowed to wear whatever they liked, never bothering with ties or blazers as I did), but because it seemed like a scene more at home in the Jetsons than in a teenage remake of a Jane Austen novel. This little scene, meant to index Cher’s wealth and fashion sense, works also as a wonderfully prescient scene about our digitized and app-ready world. (So much so that in 2014, Iggy Azalea's take on Cher's closet organizer looks quite at home in a tablet, while the world has finally created an app rivals Cher’s own! #ShareYourCher)

Needless to say, I could have used Cher’s fashion software. By the time I was a college freshman I barely had any idea how laborious choosing a collegiate-ready outfit could be with no school-approved shirts and grey pants to choose from. Last thing I wanted to be was a “fashion victim” let alone “ensembly challenged.” For if there’s something to be learnt about the fashion in Clueless is that it isn’t merely a cosmetic addition to one’s personality, but it can function as a confidence booster. It’s not the clothes that make the woman, of course, but a yellow plaid ensemble can go a long way.

Cher's outfits are truly things of late 90s beauty, it's almost hard to pick a favorite, but I've always loved that first ensemble; which one of hers do you love the most? Do you have a first day of school ensemble you still remember fondly? Or one you don't quite understand what you were thinking when you wore it?