Links: Voldemort, Mineo, Britton, Lynch, Cruise

Slate a lovely positive post-mortem of the Harry Potter series with a well reasoned argument for the indispensability of one Alfonso Cuarón and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban as the lynchpin of the series's enviable franchise longevity. 
Movie|Line "nine milestones in the evolution of Ralph Fiennes." Damnit. Why no Strange Days (1995)?

Boy Culture first behind the scenes stills from Sal, that James Franco directed Sal Mineo biopic starring Val Lauren
Boy Culture also discovers that the actor Frederick Weller (remember him? I always liked him) has the world's greatest memory.
The Other Paper a fascinating history of that "You and Me" song in Blue Valentine (hat tip) 
Natasha VC "so much hope" or... (my title) What can happen when the Oscars all go to still-young performers who you think you'll love forever. Oops! 
Awards Daily lists their reader determined first half of the year nominations 
Pajiba is way angry about the film adaptation of the novel One Shot. I don't know the source material but apparently the lead is supposed to be a towering figure, like 6'5" towering; so naturally, 5'7" Tom Cruise is your man! 
Scott Feinberg falls for "blank slate" French girls Melanie Laurent (Beginners) and Marion Cotillard (Midnight in Paris)
The Wrap picks the MVP actors of the summer 

Boing Boing contributor Rob Beschizza decided to reedit and abbreviate David Lynch's much-derided Dune without its problematic script. It's much shorter and the imagery takes over. Interesting. Here's a sample. 

Finally, in my ongoing tiny and useless campaign to win Connie Britton a Best Actress Emmy for Friday Night Lights, I present Grantland's  fine Oral History of Friday Night Lights. The section on the casting of Connie Britton as Tami Taylor is A-MAZ-ING because it makes clear everything I'm always saying about how lame the "supportive spouse" role always is and how much more capable the nation's actresses are than the lame sleepwalking shit they're always given to do in these roles. Here's a sample.

Berg: [In the original Friday Night Lights movie], Connie Britton's role was sort of Pretty Wife Clapping in the Stands, which is about the shittiest job an actress can have...

Connie Britton (Tami Taylor): ... I was like, "No way!" The only thing worse than playing a nothing part in a movie is [playing it] for years and years on TV.

Berg: She said, "Are you fucking kidding me? You think I'm going to spend 10 years sitting on a hard-wood bleacher getting splinters in my ass and cheering on Kyle Chandler? You're out of your mind." I said, "I promise. We'll create a character. We'll give you a job. We'll give you dimension. We'll give you a real voice."

Britton: It really was a leap of faith, initially, because I only had three scenes in the pilot script. So I remember even going into the pilot and saying, "OK, Pete, just so we're clear: What's here on the page in the pilot, that's not what we're talking about, right?"

Heh. Television needs more Tami Taylors. And so, too, does the cinema.

Mix Tape: "In Dreams" in Blue Velvet

Andreas from Pussy Goes Grrr here, with one of the most disturbing cinematic uses of pop music.

From his controlled demolition of the nuclear family in Eraserhead to his grotesque send-up of Hollywood in Mulholland Drive, David Lynch has always delighted in savaging American institutions. Through the S&M-tinged surrealism of Blue Velvet, he pried the bland surface off of suburbia and illuminated the perverse secrets underneath.

The darkest of those secrets is Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), an abusive, foul-mouthed gangster who holds sultry chanteuse Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) in his thrall. Hopper is a villain unlike any other, snapping from relative calm to strung-out psychosis without warning. But Frank's most terrifying tendency isn't his hair-trigger temper or his torrents of profanity: it's the unexpected well of emotion festering inside him.

Read more about Dennis Hopper in David Lynch's America after the jump.

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Top Ten Triple: Time Tables 'Tween Movies

Generally speaking a human infant can be produced in nine months. Baby elephants take two years. But when it comes to directors birthing their next celluloid or digitial babies, the time tables from conception to birth remain a calendrical mystery. Outside of Woody Allen, who brings an infant film into the world each and every year and Clint Eastwood, who often has twins, there's just no telling!

It's so hard to please movie buffs

We're thinking about this because Darren Aronofsky is lining up his post Black Swan project and Serious Film was just rejoicing over the news that P.T. Anderson is back to work. His thinly veiled Scientology film, formerly titled "The Master" has a June start date. Michael is like Goldilocks on the topic of time between pictures and we are too -- it's hard to satisfy us! -- but the Robert Altman / Martin Scorsese time table, a film every two or so years, is deemed "just right".

Michael writes:

Sure that makes them more vulnerable to the occasional dud, but it also opens them up to all the interesting follies and surprise discoveries that wind up being as treasured as their major masterpieces. Marty would never had produced anything as odd and discomfiting as King of Comedy if he has been moving at the glacial pace of a Terrence Malick, and the cinematic landscape would have been poorer for it.'

Can he get an amen?

We're limiting the following lists to living filmmakers / post-studio time frame because everyone was more regular when films ruled the world (prior to tv) and were assembled with greater efficiency. So for today's lists, let's look at the slowpokes, inbetweeners and quickies. These are not exact lists -- imagine trying to research every director in the world and we've also extracted shorts, tv films and documentaries -- but lists of commonly discussed feature filmmakers and a few of our favorites thrown in for good measure. 

DISCLAIMER: We're fully aware that financial backing is a factor in speed but have to ignore it for the purposes of this article. Also, we're aware that release dates don't always reflect timetables but you try looking up start of filming dates versus release date disparity on thousands of movies.

also: eating, sleeping, thinking, applying sunscreen.

SLOWPOKES
Listed from the very slowest to quickest among the slow. One is forced to imagine that the following filmmakers actually hibernate inbetween films. Only intense hunger pains ever reawaken them. This list is dedicated to Spike Jonze (who has only made 3 features since he started movies and they're all brilliant. But three is no kind of legacy: Commit!) and to Jonathan Glazer who we can only assume is having problems with financing. He's only made 2 films, both of them wonderful, in the past 10 years. His next feature is supposedly Under the Skin (2014) which would arrive a full decade after Birth, one of the most brilliant films of the Aughts.

1. Terrence Malick
   Quickest: 5 years between Badlands and Days of Heaven.
   Slowest: 20 years between Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line.
   Rough Breakdown: One film every seven and ½ years (5 films thus far)
2. Baz Luhrmann
   Quickest: 4 years between Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet
   Slowest: 7 years between Moulin Rouge and Australia
   Rough Breakdown: One film every four years and 9 months (4 films thus far)
3. David Lynch
   
   Bob, Dale Cooper and Lynch in the prolific Twin Peaks years.Quickest: He's managed one year gaps on occasion
   Slowest:

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This Must Be The Link

It's a link extravaganza. So many stories/goodies!

Comic Book Movie imagines Marvel and DC characters in the Situation Room. Love Hilary Clinton as Wonder Woman.
Nostalgic Times 12 classic actresses who are actual redheads.
Austin Translation the holiday is over but you have to see the greatest mother's day card ever (via Aliens!)
Scanners David Lynch's coffee commercial. "Real Good" says Barbie's head.

And appropos of nothing... the first official still of Brad Pitt in Cogan's Trade (2012)

Brad Pitt in COGAN'S TRADE (2012)

Money Technological prophecies from books and movies. Scifi that's become fact.
Towleroad Sean Penn clip from This Must Be The Place.
In Contention also has something to say about that goth rocker Nazi searching drama.
Letters of Note Quentin Tarantino's letter to a teenage fan. Fun / flashbacky. Remember when he was with Mira Sorvino?
CriEnglish Zhang Ziyi and Aaron Kwok share a cold bathtub in the new AIDS drama Love for Life (Zui Ai). Ziyi claims she'd doing anything for this movie.
People Magazine It seems like they've been together our whole lives but Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver have separated.

USA Today Woody Allen promises that his Rome picture is "an out and out comedy" and that he's going to be in it. First time in front of cameras since Scoop.
Stale Popcorn's 'Cinema of the Absurd' returns with Teen Witch (1989)
Antagony & Ecstasy's 'Blockbuster History' returns to look at The Labors of Hercules (1958) and the birth of the sword and sandal subgenre. Speaking of...
Twitch has the first trailer to Ronal the Barbarian, a bawdy Danish toon. America does seem to be the only country that views the animation medium as only for family films.
Frontiers has an interview with Raja, the latest winner of RuPaul's Drag Race and, yes, there will be a "Heathers" tour...

Hence this Heathers style photo with (left to right) Delta Work, Carmen Carerra, Manilla Luzon and Raja.

More from Thor?
Scene Stealers has been really working that Thor groove lately. They've got a top ten list of Most Iconic Movie Weapons.
Low Resolution has assorted thoughts. Joe's always a good Reid. (see what i did there?)
Cincinatti The Avengers will shoot in Ohio just as podcast guest Robert hinted this past week. For two whole weeks

Curio: Orphan Elliott on Film

Alexa here. I've been following the work of Mat Hudson, a.k.a. Orphan Elliott, for some time.  Mat is an illustrator and designer living in the state of Washington.  He does some of the finest pop culture illustrations out there; if you love Gogol Bordello, Martin Starr, or Buffy, his work will be right up your alley. He also does marvelous film portraits and posters, and has a bit of an obsession with David Lynch.  You can buy prints here.  When I saw that he posterized Cassavetes' Gloria, I knew I had to buy one.  

David

Woody

Gloria poster