I Could've Linked All Night

Boy Culture shares photos of 25 stars first and last appearances onscreen. Fun randomness. Greta Garbo & Marlene Dietrich transformations are big whoas.
FilmDrunxx has a funny piece on declining Rotten Tomatoes scores (in this case: The Last Stand with Schwarzenegger). Be warned sensitive Steven Spielberg fans: there's a jab at him at the tail end.
Guardian is asking for mocked up movie posters with title casting and soundtrack suggestions for JJ Abrams proposed Lance Armstrong biopic. My guess is their inbox is already full.

Pajiba looks at 20 interesting facts about Joss Whedon and The Avengers -- I'm not sure what brought this on, now, in January but I enjoyed reading it. 
The Sun Benedict Cumberbatch teases his legion of crazed fans by joking about how tight his Star Trek Into Darkness costume is

You can almost see what religion I am." 

CHUD famed poster artist Drew Struzan has been asked about doing posters for the next three Star Wars films. I approve. Weirdly the article refers to Strusan as "the director"... um... the director of his airbrush and cintiq?
Vogue UK has Miucci Prada sketches for The Great Gatsby costumes 

Small Screen
Pajiba b*tch rankings with Downton Abbey
Advocate recommends FBI vs serial killer show The Following which is supposedly slightly gay-ish horror. Doesn't American Horror Story already cover anyone jonezing for that? 

Devil's Advocate
David Edelstein 'why i hate the Oscars'... the piece, though anti-awards, is much richer than the dumb headline
Telegraph 'why I walked out of Les Misérables' it's another attack piece but I'm linking up because there is stuff of note: like voice goddess Marni Nixon's (Sound of Music, West Side Story, My Fair Lady) feelings on live-singing. This piece has further convinced me that people, in general, whether they love musicals or not, have a really hard time dealing with musicals of any kind, being satisfied by them, knowing even what they expect of the form. I'm still not sure why the genre has such difficulties with audiences given the absolute suspension of disbelief afforded every other genre in modern times. The silver lining for the ongoing Les Miz debate for me though is that more and more people seem to be saying 'why can't they just cast great singers and let them sing great songs' which is reductive but correct and also what I've been bitching about for my entire lifetime since I wasn't alive in that mythical time (post-silent cinema - pre Cabaret) when people loved musicals without shame and without so many hard-to-navigate hangups, caveats and ever-mutating conditions.

The Linkmaker

Vanity Fair looks at the Lincoln costumes of first time Oscar nominee Joanna Johnston from sketch to still
LetterBoxd are any of you trying this new cinephile site out? I am. 
A Blog Next Door film scores to write to? (Joe Reid was just talking about this habit in that Hours piece). I used to write to the score to Talk to Her but lately I've found music distracting.
MNPP "Who died worse: Fantine or Talia Al Ghul?"
Gold Derby's Tariq Khan thinks Emmanuelle Riva is going to win Best Actress. I wish I believed him!

Empire Lance Armstrong: The Movie?
Coming Soon Here's most uncharted territory for the movies: elderly gay romantic drama. Ira Sachs will follow up his critical hit Keep the Lights On with Love is Strange starring Alfred Molina and Michael Gambon as long time companions who decided to tie the knot. 
Tom Shone interviews Spielberg for The Sunday Times (subscription required for full article)

With every movie, some more than others, you have to make the audience your accomplice." 

Towleroad Ryan Gosling on his abs and pecs. LOL. Gosling does always give good quote. Speaking of...
Frisky ...remember this classic "Meet Ryan's Abs" infographic? (I can't find the full thing anymore)
i09 sci-fi authors have a sense of humor about the gender politics of genre book covers 
Hollywood Elsewhere Marilyn at the 1950 Oscars? This photo looks fake to me but I love it still. 

Finally... did you hear that those Django Unchained action figures are being pulled by the Weinstein Co over debates that they have commercialized and trivialized slavery. Oh god. People are so frustrating. If you accept that the movie is historical fantasy fiction, aren't the dolls also exempt from this kind of moral outrage? Or do the $35+ dolls somehow shamelessly commercialize it whilst the $150+ million grossing movies doesn't? At any rate, pulling the dolls is no biggie for the Weinstein Co since the first series is already sold out (and given how many characters were in that series, was there ever going to be a second series?) and selling for $760 to $7,000 online (asking prices). I get that purchasing a slave doll has more uncomfortable connotations than buying a ticket to a movie in which Quentin Tarantino plays with his live action dolls playing slaves but isn't it basically the same thing in the end: a commercial product which makes money off a communal desire to create fantasy corrective narratives about atrocities of the past?

Interview: Julie Weiss on Visitation Rights to "Hitchcock"s World

We haven't talked Costume Design much this year -- course correct, course correct! -- so  let's talk about two time Oscar nominee Julie Weiss and her work on Hitchcock. Hitchcock met with rather cool reception from critics and the public when it debuted last month. Part of that was, I think, due to its all encompassing title. While not a great picture, it self-sabotaged by allowing expectations of a factual and expansive biopic of the Master of Suspense when it actually only had plans on taking a lightly comic snapshot of one year in a famous Hollywood marriage.

Peggy (Toni Collette), Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) and Alma Hitchcock (Helen Mirren) in 1960s Hollywood

Though inside showbiz pictures are rarely big hits, movie buffs and those who are actually inside showbiz tend to like them -- go figure! Julie Weiss is no exception. We spoke on the phone but I could swear her eyes were lighting up each time she talked about the honor she felt recreating Old Hollywood.

"That's what we want!" she told me emphatically. "We want the visitation rights to all of these worlds."

Julie Weiss attends a Hitchcock screeningI wondered if she felt the need to let loose creatively in the non-Psycho scenes since she wouldn't have felt as restricted by previously established conography but her passionate response surprised me. She didn't feel hemmed in by Psycho at all.

"Fidelity is an interesting word when memory comes into view," she said explaining that exactitude wasn't the pressure at all. We certainly know Hitchcock but recreating the look of Psycho she reminds me was only part of her job. Especially since the legendary film was shot in black and white and this look back is in color. Color is a key factor in many costuming decisions and we spoke at length about the scene where Alma (Helen Mirren) and Janet (Scarlett Johannson) first meet, with Alma in her usual red and Janet in the palest of pinks.  

"When the costume becomes clothing you know it's the actor becoming the character," Julie explained, describing fittings as crucial to her desire to help the actors transform. "I'm far more interested in watching an actor becoming a character than have a gown stand by itself."

"Scarlett Johansson playing Janet Leigh playing Marion Crane," in particular she describes poetically as a "prism that turned three times." Hitchcock proved a difficult assignment since it encompassed famous film costumes, movie premiere glamour, and everyday period wear in Hollywood and beyond (the Ed Gein sequences). She had to accomplish it all with with little prep time. "So difficult but worth it."

The only time Weiss seemed disappointed in her latest costuming gig was when the conversation turned briefly to the shower scene.

As a costume designer, I wished she were wearing something."

Hee!

Weiss previously performed these old showbiz tricks with Hollywoodland (2006), the lower rent story of the mysterious death of past his prime Superman actor George Reeves played by Ben Affleck. But up until now Julie Weiss's most famous work came from three very different assignments: the dystopian hobo rags and space suits of Twelve Monkeys (1995, Oscar nomination) the pinata-colorful gowns of the art biopic Frida (2002, Oscar nomination) and the uniforms of suburban dysfunction within American Beauty. 

I told her that my favorite costume from American Beauty was the navy sheath dress on Annette Bening that made her blend in with her prized vertical striped sofa. 

"I'm so glad you noticed that. It means a lot when people notice," she said and shared that she was also made sure The Bening's gray dress matched the metallic of the gun. But before our chat spun into endless 'love your work' back-patting she poked at herself endearingly.

I still worry I should have put more dirt on her apron!" 

This last comment was funny and telling. Julie Weiss was surprisingly self-effacing in the end. Despite a celebrated career with these unmissable peaks, she's really just there to help us win visitation rights to these other worlds.

"I love just standing back and watching that universe come to life. What you really want as a costume designer is that when the person walks out of the theater that they don't remember the costume against a white piece of paper but that they remember the scene and the world."

related...
costume design articles
more on Hitchock
previous interviews 

And the Oscar Goes to... Snow White?

YEAR IN REVIEW BEGINS NOW! Many Best ofs and Film Bitch Awards to follow...

Did you know that today marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of the controversial "Die Kinder und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales)" by the Brothers Grimm? (Google is celebrating) The book, a collection of fairy tales both pre-existing in oral form and original, has a complicated legacy in Germany and outside of it. But modern pop culture would be unthinkable without its existence. I mean without Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and the rest you'd have no "Into the Woods", no Grimm or Once Upon a Time, no gingerbread houses, and no global Disney Empire as we know it!

But today, when it comes to the legacy of the Brothers Grimm, I'm thinking about Snow White. If you're reading any list on "Entertainers of the Year" for 2012 and Snow White isn't present, there is a problem. Or if not Snow White (who has, on occassion, defined The Bland Protagonist), than the Evil Queen Stepmother. The Former Fairest of Them All nearly always pulls focus and ends up the defacto star of each iteration.

Earlier this year we celebrated the 75th anniversary of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) with an animated edition of "Hit Me With Your Best Shot"  and the cinema gave us not one not two but three new movie versions of the classic tale... [more]

Click to read more ...

Rejected Interview Question #231

A peak into process. Generally I scribble down far more questions than I end up asking in interviews. You gauge the mood and proceed. Herewith a question I opted not to ask Julie Weiss, Hitchcock's twice Oscar nominated costume designer:

Tell me about Dolph Lundgren's costume fitting in Masters of the Universe.

Probably made the right call but I still want to hear the answer, don't you? (Questions I did ask, the wonderful Weiss did answer. Interview forthcoming)