Links, Fences, Songs, Brainnnnns

Free Unqualified... The Artist = Anchorman ?
SuperPunch for your next horror movie party with friends, zombie chocolates with cherry brainnnnns! 
Carpetbagger talks to Stuart Craig on the challenges of art directing Hogwarts over eight Harry Potter films 
Antagony & Ecstacy offers up a great top ten list: ten best Oscar slates ever from 2009's animated feature to 1939's best actresses and everywhere inbetween.
Senses of Cinema looks at the question of identity in Splendor in the Grass (1961) 

Flavorwire Disney Princess tattoos. Why the hell not?
Movie|Line on Clint Eastwood vs the ever-nuttier GOP after his Superbowl commercial
Towleroad  No song performances at this year's Oscars? Christ, AMPAS really needs to call me. They could've had such a watercooler live tv moment with "Man or Muppet". I explain how.

Complex the '25 Hottest Women on Horror TV shows'. Fun list with shoutouts to two of the best TV shows of all time Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twin Peaks 
World of Wonder three things
Empire clears up that silly rumor that Harrison Ford was going to be in the Blade Runner sequel that nobody should be making to begin with shame on you Ridley Scott do you really want to turn into George Lucas I'm just saying... 

Today's Must Read
Grantland Mark Harris writes a fabulous column on Viola Davis's extraordinary gift, the Best Actress race and Hollywood's race relations.

Faced with the peril of that archetype, Davis did the hardest job of anyone in the Best Actress category: She made the movie better — much better — without playing against it. Much of The Help is bright, candy-colored, and loud: It’s full of silly wigs and garish costumes, sitcom slapstick and shit pies, wicked old dears like Sissy Spacek, finger-snappin’ Designing Women tell-offs, and the kind of steroidal pivots from comedy to poignancy to melodrama that would shame an episode of Glee. What Davis gives the film is humanity. Aibileen is a gentle but wary woman — she’s lived long enough to know that in her world, you survive by bending, not breaking, by keeping your thoughts to yourself, by seeing and hearing everything while appearing to register very little, and by trying to apply your own sense of decency and kindness to a badly needed paying job in an often indecent and unkind world. When she’s on-screen, the hummingbird shrieks of the movie’s other characters are hushed; you’re reminded that the human toll of daily, casual racism doesn’t really get addressed by making Bryce Dallas Howard eat poo. Because Davis is a physically gifted actress who can incorporate the exhaustion and strain of being Aibileen into every motion and muscle, and also the rare performer — even in this year ofThe Artist and Max von Sydow — whose silences draw you even closer, she seems to correct The Help’s excesses without ever standing self-protectively outside it. At every turn, she un-simplifies the movie.

Nick and I keep wondering when Hollywood is going to make August Wilson's Fences (for which Viola won a Tony opposite Denzel Washington) into a movie and everyone I know who is into theater keeps wondering why this hasn't happened for Fences or really any of August Wilson's plays. So it's nice to see that subject is revived again here. Seriously what time like the present Hollywood? Get on that. How many times do we have to ask?

Cast This! Rob Marshall and "Into the Woods"

As frightening... as bewildering... as wrong as it is to say after a decade of breakthroughs (Moulin Rouge!), critical triumphs (Dancer in the Dark, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) and box office hits (Chicago, Dreamgirls, Hairspray) and problematic but Oscar nominated efforts (Nine, Sweeney Todd, Phantom of the Opera) ... the movie musical is still in trouble. It probably will be until another Vincente Minnelli or Bob Fosse arrives on the scene, someone who understands and breathes and trusts the very cinematic language of the musical. Until then we'll get bored directors detouring or novices who think it might be "fun" to try one... or Rob Marshall.

Will no young director challenge Rob Marshall as King of the Musicals?

Stage turned film director Rob Marshall was initially seen as something of a savior of the form when Chicago (2002) became a smash hit and Best Picture winner. It had been 34 years since a movie musical had had that honor. But his musical follow up Nine (2009) proved a massive flop and a target of critical derision. Though I thought it was better than it got credit for being (how could it not be given the vitriol?) in tandem with Chicago it revealed too little range and an inherent distrust of the form he had been handed, without competition, to rule; the music in both films emerged on sound stages as hallucinations or performative fantasy. His two subsequent non-musicals (Memoirs of a Geisha and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) were much worse, with listless dramatics and overstuffed weightless business for plot. Nevertheless, Hollywood logic prevails. Disney, looking at the colossal gross of On Stranger Tides, has obviously forgiven Marshall for Nine's red ink and rewarded him with the reigns of the film version of a bonafide masterpiece, Stephen Sondheim's twisted fairy tale classic Into the Woods. Never mind that I could have directed On Stranger Tides (it would have been all about the mermaids and they would have drowned Captain Jack in the first half hour) and it would still have been a top grosser. In Hollywood you get credit for blockbuster grosses even if you are obviously replaceable since anyone helming a long running franchise will produce a similar size hit. Audiences are lemmings when it comes to those big franchises. 

So though I weep that Into the Woods isn't getting a world class auteur, and I shudder most of all to think of those glorious songs sung by people who can't handle the intricacies of the music -- Marshall casts for stardom first even if they can't sing and Sondheim obviously writes only for great singers who can act -- we should try and stay positive. Let's play...

Bernadette Peters leads the cast of the original INTO THE WOODS (1987)

CAST THIS!

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Which Annie Nominee Has Your Vote For Animated Feature?

The New York Film Critics Circle recently opted out of honoring a best animated feature (and unless I'm mistaken it was an afterthought win for Rango at the NBR since it wasn't in the first wave of articles). Will awards bodies lose their keys to this category since realizing Cars 2 was a lemon? If you stop to think about it for more than two seconds it's decidedly ungenerous at best and horribly offensive at worst. It sheds an unflattering light on the initiable embrace of the animated ghetto categories, suggesting they were only created to honor Pixar to begin with. Which is... rather shameful if you ask me. If the only reason you created a category was to honor Pixar, you shouldn't have created a category. Nobody gives out prizes for "Best Paramount Pictures Release of the Year", you know? Nobody gives out prizes for "Best Weinstein Co. Release of The Year" ["The Academy does!" cried the anonymous heckler. *rimshot*]

What? Rango wasn't good enough for a badge of honor?

So, even if this wasn't the single greatest year for animated film, if you're going to honor the medium, honor the medium. If you change your rules every year who will respect you? (That's a general warning to wishy washy committees, The Golden Satellites, and to the Oscar board of directors themselves who are weirdly starting to act like all their imitators these past few years by second guessing themselves constantly).

But, since the Annie Awards have been honoring animated work for 38 years -- long before Oscar or the critics groups ever thought to honor it --  they'll continute to do just that. They've selected ten "Best Picture" nominees for their 39th annual awards. And even if they felt the need to include Cars 2 to get there, at least they didn't cancel their ceremony when they realized it wasn't revving anyone's engines. I promise to brake break with the car puns no. So sorry!

Annie Awards Best Animated Feature Nominees

• A Cat in Paris - Folimage
• The Adventures of Tintin - Amblin Entertainment, Wingnut Films and Kennedy/Marshall
• Arrugas (Wrinkles) - Perro Verde Films, SL
• Arthur Christmas - Sony Pictures Animation, Aardman Animation
• Cars 2 - Pixar
• Chico & Rita - Chico & Rita Distribution Limited
• Kung Fu Panda 2 - Dreamworks Animation
• Puss in Boost - Dreamworks Animation
• Rango - Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Movies present a Blind Wink/GK Films Production
• Rio - Blue Sky Studios

And even if he isn't nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor, Gary Oldman could still win an Annie Award. He's up for best voice acting as "Lord Shen" from Kung Fu Panda 2.

Find this... 'panda'... and bring him to me.
FIND this 'Panda'. And bring him to me.
FIND THIS PANDA AND BRING HIM TO ME!!!"

A complete list of their nominations is after the jump if you'd like to dig deeper. (I was sad that this year they didn't include the info as to which animated characters the individual animators are being honored for designing or animating. If I recall correctly they used to specify which characters, just as in the voice acting honors.)

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45 Animated Shorts: Oscar Will Choose 10... Then 5.

This is the list of 45 animated shorts that the Academy is considering in the Best Animated Shorts category (with links to official sites when I could find them). The Animated, Docs, and Shorts Oscar page is going to be updated piecemeal this week as I work on beating all this information into some form of pundited submission.

Until then, the list. Do you ever try to see the nominees in this category?

A SHADOW OF BLUE (Carlos Lascano)

• A Morning Stroll by Grant Orchard (Studio AKA)
• A Shadow of Blue by Carlos Lascano
• Birdboy by Alberto Vasquez (Abrikim Studio)
• Chopin’s Drawings by Dorota Kobiela (BreakThru Films) Poland
• Correspondence by Zach Hyer (Pratt)
• Daisy Cutter by Enrique Garcia and Rubin Salazar (Silverspace)
• Dimanche / Sunday by Patrick Doyon (NFB)

• El Salon Mexico by Paul Glickman and Tamarind King
• Enrique Wrecks the World by David Chai *Annie Nominee Last Year*
• Ente Tod Und Tulipe (Duck Death and the Tulip) by Matthias Bruhn (Richard Lutterbeck – Trickstudio)
• Fat Hamster by Adam Wyrwas (BreakThru Films) Poland
• Grandpa Looked Like William Powell by David Levy
• Hamster Heaven by Paul Bolger (BreakThru Films) Poland

I WAS A CHILD OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS (Ann Marie Fleming adapts Bernice Eisenstein's memoirs)

• I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat by Matt O’Callaghan (Warner Bros... 3D Sylvester vs. Tweety)
• I Was the Child of Holocaust Survivors by Anne Marie Fleming (NFB)
• Ingrid Pitt: Beyond the Forest by Kevin Sean Michaels USA
• Kahanikar by Nandita Jain (National Film and Television School) England
• La Luna by Enrico Casarosa (Pixar) -See Previous Post (INTERVIEW)

• Little Postman by Dorota Kobiela (BreakThru Films) Poland
• Luminaris by Juan Pablo Zaramella (JPZaramella Studios)
• Luna by Donna Brockopp (Rainmaker) Canada *see complete short, 7 minutes*
• Maska by Timothy and Stephen Quay (Sem-ma-for) Poland

• Muybridge’s Strings by Koji Yamamura (1 PREVIOUS OSCAR NOMINATION)
• My Hometown by Jerry Levitan, Written and Narrated by Yoko Ono (Eggplant) *see complete short, 7 minutes*
• Night Island by Salvador Maldonado (BreakThru Films) Poland
• Nullarbor by Alister Lockhart
• Papa’s Boy by Leevi Lemmetty (BreakThru Films) Poland
• Paths of Hate by Damien Nenow (Platige Image) Poland
• Romance by George Schwizgebel (NFB & Studio GDS)
• Specky Four-Eyes by Jean Claude Rozec (Vivement Lundi)

THE EXTERNAL WORLD

• Spirits of the Piano by Magdalena Osinska (BreakThru Films) Poland
• Thank You by Thomas Herpich (Frederator)
• The Ballad of Nessie by Stevie Wermers (Walt Disney Studios)
• The External World by David O’ Reilly
• The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore by William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg (Moonbot Studios)
• The Gloaming by Nobrain (Autour De Minuit) France
• The Lost Town of Switez by Kamil Polak (Human Ark) Poland *debut*
• The Magic Piano by Martin Clapp (BreakThru Films) Poland
• The Monster of Nix by Rosto *with voice work by Tom Waits & Terry Gilliam. It's a horror musical!*
• The Renter by Jason Carpenter (CalArts) *debut, Annie Award nominee last year*
• The Smurf’s A Christmas Carol by Troy Quane (Sony Pictures Animation)
• The Tannery by Iain Gardner (Axis Animation)

VICENTA (Spain)

• The Smurf’s A Christmas Carol by Troy Quane (Sony Pictures Animation)
• The Tannery by Iain Gardner (Axis Animation)
• The Vermeers by Tal S. Shamir
• Vicenta by Samuel Orti Marti
• Wild Life by Amanda Forbis & Wendy Tilby (NFB)

The Little Mermaid... She's Gotta Have It.

With this week's Disney announcement that The Little Mermaid will get 3D rerelease treatment (along with other pictures) that put The Lion King back on everyone's lips, I thought it was time to republish this piece on the classic film...

The Little Mermaid (1989)  | Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker Screenplay by Roger Allers, Ron Clements, and John Musker (very loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale) | Music by Alan Menken Lyrics by Howard Ashman | Starring the Voices of: Jodie Benson, Pat Carroll, Kenneth Mars and Samuel E Wright | Production Company Walt Disney | Released 11/17/1989

American members of Generation Y or Z and beyond may have a good deal of trouble imagining this but it's true: once upon a time, animated movies were considered highly uncool. They were strictly for babies. Teenagers disdained them. Adults took their children under duress. They barely caused a ripple at the box office. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences ignored them. CGI was not part of the national vernacular. Strange but true.

In a very short window of time, from November 1989 through February 1992, three major events changed modern perceptions of the animated film in a gargantuan way. Let's take them in reverse order: The third big-bang was the moment when Beauty & the Beast (1991) was nominated for six Oscars including Best Picture, the first time that a cartoon had received that pinnacle mainstream honor. The middle part of the three-part revolution was when hipster American audiences began to discover that there was more to the form than Walt Disney. Katsuhiro Ôtomo's Japanese sci-fi spellbinder Akira was the key that opened the door for anime, now very big and influential business in America. But the first key event in animation's rebirth (stateside at least) was the release of Disney's "28th animated classic" The Little Mermaid; an orgasmic reawakening of the most flexible and fantastical of film mediums...

"She's Gotta Have It!"

The heroine of Disney's modern breakthrough film is Ariel, a teenage mermaid. Since this is a fairy tale (and a Disney one at that) she's also a beautiful princess: the youngest daughter of King Triton who rules the ocean. Only trouble is, despite her quick smile and high spirits, she's restless and unhappy... dissatisfied with her life of privilege under the sea. She wants to trade up. Literally. Since this is a late 1980s film (and a Disney one at that) she's also the headstrong entitled type. This princess isn't going to whisper her need. She's no Oliver with his meager allotment of gruel, politely asking for more.

music, sexuality and animated evolution after the jump... 

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