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Nathaniel R on one of the season's biggest Tony nominees and the most important for Actressexuals
Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes first debuted on the New York stage in 1939 with instantly classic characters, most notably the spiteful Regina Giddens and mousy drunk Birdie Hubbard, who Regina's brother married for her considerable fortune. The show was a hit and immediately scored a classic film version, released in 1941. In the intervening years the show seemed to disappear from the public consciousness a wee bit, despite being revived several times. It didn't help that the awesome 1941 film version was out of print for a long stretch. It's always a treat for fans of actresses since the roles are tailor made for starpower divas...
Daniel Crooke here, new contributor. As daily updates make their way stateside from the Berlinale, certain titles that can’t help but infiltrate and overtake your curiosity. One such film is Terence Davies’ A Quiet Passion. What a time to be alive when the promise of a film starring the soulfully efflorescent Cynthia Nixon as the spiritually untethered Emily Dickinson exists on this planet. While reactions to the poet’s biopic have been highlymixed, the overlapping of these two mustang personas is an undeniable attraction.
Obviously much of Dickinson’s public face continues to be debated – that’ll happen when you like what you like and forget the rest – but there’s still a respected wealth of fascinating, cogent theories about the manner in which Emily lived. And no study needs a peer review about how perfectly Nixon’s signature role encapsulates this iconoclast who ditched polite society for a personal universe of her own reckoning.
The ultimate role research for Emily Dickinson lies in playing the sage and self-determined Miranda Hobbes for six seasons of Sex and the City. Six reasons why after the jump...
• AV Club loves on the dearly departed Bunheads • Guardian Cynthia Nixon, who plays Emily Dickinson in a new film, thinks she'd have loved social media • E! Online Dakota Johnson wants Jamie Dornan to bare all in Fifty Shades sequel. (I mean, why not? It's not like he's NSFW shyaboutit.) • EW looks at a handful of AMPAS ballots Supporting Actress and Picture votes are all over the place
• Awards Daily on two previous shakeups in Hollywood (the late 1920s) & Academy (the late 1960s) business • Towleroad Gay Iconography: All About Bette Davis • Film School Rejects Ben Stiller's most iconic characters from best to worst • Coming Soon Ghostbusters gets a teaser poster. Don't get excited. It's basically just the old logo. Trailer coming on March 3rd • Coming SoonSalt, Angelina Jolie's would be franchise that never became one headed to TV in series form - without Angie of course • /Film Alexander Payne lines up his next next film. It's called My Saga, a road trip movie. He still hasn't shot Downsizing with Reese Witherspoon though.
Today's Watch Daredevil Season 2 Trailer - Pt 1
Elektra and The Punisher get their own trailers, looks like. I'll be disappointed if we don't get a follow up on Madame Gao though, since she was fierce/mysterious.
• And finally, Star Wars Episode VIII: As Yet Untitled began filming this morning at Pinewood Studios in the UK aiming for the Christmas friendly release date of December 15th, 2017. All the major players, sans Harrison Ford of course, will return. The film is written and directed by Rian Johnson (Brick, Looper) and all the major cast members return (sans Harrison Ford *sniffle*). New cast members will include Benicio Del Toro, newcomer Kelly Marie Tran and 'The Face,' herself Laura Dern! No, wait, that deserves more exclamation points. Laura Dern !!!!!!!!
Manuel here. No sooner was Nat discussing the talents of one Miss Cynthia Nixon, who's great in James White (review) and commenting on the fact that she’s an Oscar away from EGOTing, than we got these new images from Terence Davies’s upcoming film A Quiet Passion.
In the film, Nixon plays poet Emily Dickinson. The always welcome, if criminally underused, Jennifer Ehle plays Vinnie Dickinson, her sister, and if these images are anything to go by, we’re in for quite a treat. The project should no doubt excite anyone who’s ever fallen in love with Dickinson’s lyrical poetry. A known recluse (or “introvert” if you want to put it mildly), Dickinson produced copious amount of poetry in her lifetime but saw but a few of them published. Since her death she has become a key figure in American literature.
Emma Bell plays a young Emily which suggests the film may shuttle back and forth between her younger years and her later later life.
We know what a wondrous performance Davies courted out of Rachel Weisz in The Deep Blue Sea — you’ll remember she won the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Actress and even earned a Golden Globe nomination for her work — and so his pairing with these two talented actress should have us all excited. May this be a chance for Nixon to at least contend for that coveted golden statue? In the meantime for those looking forward to more of Davies’s work, his new film Sunset Song, which premiered at TIFF will be released in the UK next month.
Kieran, here reporting from AFI Fest in Hollywood.
James White (played by Christopher Abbott) is a 21-year-old whose life is in a kind of disarray that's sometimes indistinguishable, at least from the outset, from typical millenial aimlessness. He spends his evenings binge drinking, getting high and instigating bar fights all while harboring vague notions of becoming a writer. His estranged father has recently passed away and he sleeps on the sofa of his ailing mother, insisting that he's only there to take care of her. There's a lot in that plot description to suggest something trite and indie-by-numbers. My own antennae were up for yet another indie about a disaffected, yet ambiguously wealthy young white man. Thankfully, writer-director Josh Mond's directorial debut (he was previously a producer on Martha Marcy May Marlene whose director, Sean Durkin is a producer here) opts for something more specific and lived-in here.
The film's saving grace, at least on the script level, is that it manages to be kind to its lead character without co-signing his worldview or behavior. Yes, James is "a mess" as a family friend played by Ron Livingston tells him during a job interview that's going terribly in every possible way. [More...]
Tuesday, May 9, 2017 at 5:49PM 
