Chart Feedback & Mystery Movies

ICYMI over the weekend, I finally unveiled the first round of Oscar charts and pontificating and naturally Best Actress generated the most commentary from you though I readily admit I expected a little more discussion than we got on Screenplay (wah-wah). But maybe that's because I find that topic inherently interesting.

When I'm working on reviews or charts or any topic that involves opinion-making (*cough*) I tend to avoid reading other people on the same topic until I'm finished. Naturally this approach has drawbacks because I forget things. For instance, Sasha Stone recently talked up Best Actress and threw out some names that aren't on my chart (like Diane Keaton in And So It Goes...)  and Kris, Guy, and Gregory at In Contention also talked up '20 movies that aren't on your radar' and my biggest miss there from the Oscar charts is surely the civil rights drama Selma from Ava DuVernay which stars the formidable young actor David Oyelowo as Martin Luther King Jr. I loved their last collaboration Middle of Nowhere and I'd be thrilled if this film was a) as good and b) made a bigger dent come awards time. Tom Wilkinson co-stars as President Lyndon B Johnson. If that film is finished in time it could rock the boat in more than a few categories.

The next chart updates will hit on June 22nd so we have a few weeks to mull over the field.

One movie that I can't stop thinking about is Alan Rickman's A Little Chaos. I expect this curiousity is due to the very vague info that's floating about. We know that Alan Rickman is directing and plays King Louis XIV. We know that Kate Winslet is the lead as a landscaper trying to design a fountain for the King. We know that the talented as he is hunky Matthias Schoenearts (who must have cloned himself he's in so many movies now) is Kate's love insterest. But not much else though it wrapped filming last year. It's an odd premise that sounds comedic but most vague reports list it as a drama or a romance. But the cast is marvelous. The film also features character actors like Stanley Tucci, Helen McRory, Jennifer Ehle and Emma Thompson's mom Phyllida Law. 

Which under the radar movie are you most curious about?

"Knowing Jack, it might be some pretend place"

Intelligent Life effortless performances. Oscar don't like 'em
TV Line Looking gets a second season. The great supporting cast (save Scott Bakula. Hmmm) promoted to "series regular" - this is terrific news. The show isn't necessarily great but it's good and a lot of great shows only finally harness their true potential in Season 2. 
Cinema Blend Netflix & Marvel's Daredevil series is starting production this summer. I've always felt that superheroes belong more on the small screen (it's more episodic like comic books) so I'm totally excited for this. And also because the movie was so dreadful. The only way is up.

In Contention Martin Scorsese and shifts in Oscar for the past decades
krupyeahstephensondheim this hilariously titled tumblr has a surely bootlegged snippet of Meryl Streep singing in Into the Woods
Playbill first look at Disney's Aladdin on Broadway
Hollywood Reporter Sandra Bullock's pay day for Gravity now over $70 million... probably heading towards $100 when all is said and done. Wow.
Yahoo Movies Anna Kendrick says musicals "are f***king hard" and needs a break from them. She's got three of them coming out in the next 12 months or so (a career pivot we've discussed before). 

me me me
Deadline Ava Duvernay of the great Middle of Nowhere will be directing the new Martin Luther King bio Selma starring David Oyelowo. This is all kinds of great news for two talents TFE has been rooting for for the past couple of years. (You may remember I talked to David Oyelow briefly at the Critics Choice Awards and he loves that movie. As well he should)
Multimedia Composition This is one of the nicest compliments I've ever been paid. College students are learning to be better critical thinkers about the movies with my Hit Me With Your Best Shot series as inspiration. Please to note. Details on Season 5 of "Hit Me" are coming this weekend! Any suggestions?
VF Hollywood & Awards Daily Oscar bloggers talk about predicting the big race. Wish I'd been invited but it sounds like they had an interesting conversation even without my genius

finally...
if you haven't yet read about this conversation Anne Hathaway had about Brokeback Mountain you must. She credits that telephone call scene with her entire career. Yes!  That movie is so perfect. Across the board perfect. 

Review: White House. Golden Oprah. Lee Daniels' The Butler

This review was originally published in my column at Towleroad

Somewhere in the vast middle of LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER, a movie about a White House butler who served US Presidents from the Eisenhowers through the Reagans, there's a terrific agitated scene in which we leave the butler behind to check in on his wife Gloria. Gloria (Oprah Winfrey) and Howard (Terrence Howard), the neighbor she's turned to from loneliness, argue on a couch. Howard is trying to sweet-talk his way back into her bed. Gloria, guilt-ridden, distracts herself with chain smoking, occasionally side-eyeing him as if he were a buzzing nuisance and, damn, where is her fly swatter? Slick Howard begins spinning two of her clothes hangers in the air to visualize their parallel worlds. Gloria reacts with extreme annoyance to the comic pleasure of the audience -- Oprah gets one laugh after another, all of them blessedly intentional, in her rousing return to the big screen. 

It's a weird but lively domestic hothouse scene that feels, at first, largely divorced from the movie containing it, a somewhat duller "greatest hits" tour of America's civil rights journey. But in its own peculiar way it's also the movie's key scene. [more...]

Click to read more ...

Goodbye Peacock. And Other Links

Los Angeles Times AMPAS elects their first African American president in Cheryl Boone Isaacs
IndieWire on how newcomer Annie McNamara landed a supporting role in the otherwise starry cast of Blue Jasmine
Filmonic John Williams will score the new Star Wars trilogy 
Maps to the Stars on the Cronenberg exhibit at TIFF this year 
Fashionista thinks Claire Danes has lost a leg in this photoshoot 
IndieWire on the 25th anniversary of Midnight Madness at TIFF this year

Empire another big get for rising star David Oyelowo who was so good in Middle of Nowhere and also eye-catching in The Paperboy - he joins the increasingly crowded Insterstellar for Christopher Nolan
The Backlot on HBO's new gay series starring Jonathan Groff. Is it "special"? 
In Contention A Most Wanted Man could put Philip Seymour Hoffman back in the Oscar race
/Film oh dear god. they can't leave well enough alone. Dexter might get a spin-off series after 8 looooong seasons
Salon Before Fruitvale Station there was Boyz n the Hood
Cinema Blend new teaser poster for Gravity 

Finally, you have undoubtedly heard that the fine comic actress Eileen Brennan passed away earier today at 80 years of age. I have to admit a weird unfamiliarity with the most acclaimed turn in her filmography (unlike me I know!) as I never saw her Oscar-nominated work in Private Benjamin. I remember people being really into it when I was a kid but it was rated R and I somehow never caught up with it when I was old enough. I'll personally remember her most fondly as Peacock in Clue with her frazzled manner, soup sipping, and ungainly hat. Others will cherish her work in The Sting or The Last Picture Show or any number of TV appearances including time on Laugh-In with her future Benjamin co-star Goldie Hawn. What will you remember her for? RIP Mrs Peacock.