Saturday, July 4, 2015 at 9:00AM Happy Fourth of July !!! Party safely. Here's Ann Miller, and 20 other beautiful firecrackers to celebrate with you (who would you like to set off sparks with?) after the jump...
Wednesday, July 17, 2013 at 10:14AM 
Elisabeth Shue had my vote among the Oscar nominees
With the time left -- you can have more money, you can drink all you want -- just stay. That's what I want. I want you to talk. Or listen. Just stay."
Alicia Silverstone, Clueless (MTV Winner, Globe Nominee)
Angela Bassett, Waiting to Exhale (Image Award Winner)
Annette Bening, The American President (Globe Nominee)
Gong Li, Shanghai Triad (None)
Joan Allen, Nixon (SAG Lead Nominee but Oscar Supporting Nominee)
Jennifer Jason Leigh, Georgia (NYFCC Winner, Spirit Nominee)
Jessica Lange, Rob Roy (None)
Julianne Moore, [safe] (Spirit Nominee)
Julie Delpy, Before Sunrise (None)
Kathy Bates, Delores Claiborne (Saturn Nominee)
Michelle Pfeiffer, Dangerous Minds (MTV Nominee, #1 Female Led Box Office Hit)
Nicole Kidman, To Die For (Globe Winner)
Sandra Bullock, While You Were Sleeping (Globe Nominee, #2 Female Led Box Office Hit)
Toni Collette, Muriel's Wedding (AFI Winner, Globe Nominee)
...and the Oscar nominees
Elisabeth Shue, Leaving Las Vegas
Emma Thompson, Sense & Sensibility (won for Screenplay!)
Meryl Streep, The Bridges of Madison County (#3 Female Led Box Office Hit)
Sharon Stone, Casino (Globe Winner)
Susan Sarandon, Dead Man Walking (The Winner)
*and I dedicate this list to Pocahontas in Pocahontas who I wish was a real actress
Such riches to choose from! Definitely in the running for Bestest Best Actress Year of All Time? Your ballots please.
Monday, April 30, 2012 at 4:22PM I'm such a ditz. Last week we learned that Meryl Streep really needed more potassium in her diet -- the marketing for her new comedy Hope Springs is obsessed with those bananas -- and perhaps because of my love-hate relationship with those yellow phallic symbols, I completely forgot to post this particular Yes No Maybe So edition after writing it up.
Meryl's potassium deficiency.
Last week I also got a painful charley horse in my left calf and I ate bananas the rest of the week as penance. I think I have a super mild allergy because they always make my mouth feel weird.
YES
Great 80s Ladies: Elisabeth Shue, Meryl Streep, Mimi Rogers
MAYBE SO
NO
Remember when we all first heard about this project and it sounded like a nuanced marital drama and it was going to star Jeff Bridges and I was pissed that Michelle Pfeiffer didn't fight Meryl for the role? This is not at all what I was expecting!
the trailer in question...
Saturday, November 26, 2011 at 9:00AM Since there were so many television centric questions in last week's "Ask Nathaniel" insert, I figured we'd have to give them their own Q&A post. We'll get to the movie questions on Tuesday. But for now let's handle all these questions involving smaller screens than we usually go for.
BENSUNCE: Like George Clooney, which current television actors would you see having a successful career on the big screen?
Expecting anyone to have Clooney-sized silver screen success after switching from the small screen is, well, a recipe for disappointment if not disaster. He's a 1%er. Most of the people I enjoy on TV now already had their movie shot and have gone small screen for better / bigger roles than they were getting at the movies. But the current small screen actors I think absolutely deserve and would ace major big screen opportunities are Christina Hendricks and Jon Hamm (Mad Men). On a riskier pipe dream note I hope Harry Shum Jr (Glee) gets at least one romantic comedy opportunity both because he's adorable and because Hollywood really needs to end their strange delusion that Asian men can't be romantic leads... or leads at all.
SEAN D: If you were in charge of the Emmy awards how many nominations/wins would Buffy the Vampire Slayer have received?
I knew talking about Buffy earlier this month would get send us all spinning back in time to Sunnydale. It's always difficult to answer questions like this because so much of what should have been nominated and won in any given year in any given artform is contingent upon the competition that year. But I will say that I think Buffy's second, third and sixth seasons had no business whatsoever not being nominated for Best Drama Series and I think they should have won the Best Series Emmy at least once for Season 3. I'd probably have nominated the show itself for seasons 2 through 6 consecutively though I get why people have issues with seasons 4 through 6. But the standard lines of complaining about those seasons are wrongheaded ("it should have stayed in High School") and short sighted ("it got too depressing!"). In the first short season Buffy The Vampire Slayer was merely finding its footing and establishing its identity and the last season was a badly paced mess with a couple of wonderful moments but the rest is gold. As for writing Emmys, it's inexcusable that "The Body" and "Once More With Feeling" didn't have writing and directing nominations and in both cases you could make strong arguments for actual winged statues, too.
Shouldn't "Doppelgangland" have secured Alyson Hannigan an Emmy nod?For acting the show deserved the following nominations at least (Season #)
Actress, Drama
Sarah Michelle Gellar (2, 4, 6)
Supporting Actor, Drama
James Marsters (2), Anthony Stewart Head (6)
Supporting Actress, Drama
Allyson Hannigan (3,4), Emma Caulfield (5, 6)
Guest Actress, Drama
Juliet Landau (2), Eliza Dushku (3)
Guest Actor, Drama
Harry Groener (3)
TOM M: Which recent film would make the leap to television and prove a MASH-ing success? And which television series has the bones to make a great film?
Crazy difficult question. The mediums are so different despite all the crossover these days. I don't know about M*A*S*H* level success ratios for anything but I would love love love or should I say I would ♥ a series based on I ♥ Huckabees that focused on the existential detectives Vivian (Lily Tomlin) and Bernard (Dustin Hoffman). I would fill my DVR with that nonsense and delete every other show taking up too much room. I could see a series based on Inception working fairly well and I think Scott Pilgrim vs. The World should have been a TV series to begin with.
Nathaniel's dream television series
Sunday, November 20, 2011 at 8:15AM 
24 Frames a glowing profile of Shailene Woodley in The Descendants who is looking more and more like a real Supporting Actress contender. Alexander Payne even compares her to a young Debra Winger.
Empire fun investigation of the parallels between Joss Whedon's The Avengers and the Whedonverse itself (Buffy and the like)
Animation Magazine digs into the Oscar race for Best Animated Film
NY Post Apparently Terrence Malick is a comedy loving Ben Stiller fan. Who'da thunk it.
Variety Weird but true. Scarlett Johansson directing a Truman Capote novella
Rope of Silicon likes the cinematography of We Need To Talk About Kevin, Rampart and Shame... and I come away singing Fiona Apple...
But he's been pretty much yellow
And I've been cryin' blue
But all I can see is
Red, red, red, red, red now
What am I to do
Ugh, I miss Fiona Apple so much some times. What happened to her?
Cinema Blend watch an artist transform Rooney Mara to Lisbeth Salander with one finger on his iPad.
Scene Stealers lists the best Twilight parodies online.
Socialite Life Mila Kunis kept her promise and attended that Marine Corps Ball. Good on her.
Coming Soon more Spider-Man set photos
Gothamist Edward Scissorhands on the F train
Tom Shone turns out not everyone loves Martin Scorsese's Hugo.
Guardian UK readers can see A Separation on DVD/BluRay now. By all means, get to it. I love this quote from the Guardian capsule:
It's not so much world cinema as world class."
Tom Munro check out his awesome photoshoot of Madonna and Andrea Riseborough for W.E.
Off Cinema
TV|Line Elisabeth Shue has been put out to pasture in the land of procedural television. Nathaniel wept.
Salon unveils their People-adjacent list of the year's sexiest men. No movie stars or Bradley Cooper allowed though we're very pleased to see the wonderful director Cary Fukunaga (Jane Eyre) on the list. I was also happy to see Marcus Samuellson, star chef, make the list. He touched our table the very first time we ate at his new restaurant Red Rooster in Harlem. It's delicious and afforable, a combo that you can't beat. Try it if you're ever in NYC.
Towleroad More divalicious links over there... if you want this link party to keep on rolling...
