Beauty Vs Beast - SlayerFest 2014

JA from MNPP here with this week's new edition of Beauty Vs. Beast! As I noted over at my site last week, today is the 17th anniversary of the first ever episode of Joss Whedon's televisual masterpiece Buffy the Vampire Slayer - "Welcome to the Hellmouth" aired on the WB on March 10th 1997, and some of us have been whooping it up inside that Hellmouth ever since.

If you're a fan you know what happened on Buffy's 17th birthday - let's just hope we can all make it through today without anybody's ancient Gypsy curse being activated by sexual relations. That Angelus, he was a nasty one... but Glorificus did her damage too, The Master and the Mayor - an endless list of memorable villains.

But it's Buffy's dark mirror that's always revved our engines the hardest... 

Welcome to SlayerFest '14!!!

poll by twiigs.com

Only one can make it out alive! The too good blonde, the too bad brunette - make your pick and then we'll all skip class and stake some vamps and dance crazy at The Bronze til the sun comes up and dusts our boyfriends.

"previously on..."
Before y'all hit the comments and give us your reasonings though, a look back at last week's (literal) face-off - we were talking the spray-painted ladies of Death Becomes Her, and sure enough, confounding nobody's expectations - MERYL WON. Team Madeline blew a shotgun hole through Goldie's Helen with about 2/3rds of the vote. (As if we needed to puff up Meryl's chest anymore!) As Rob put it in the comments:

"Hel does have a special place in my heart for eating frosting out of its container with her fingers while rewinding the footage of Madeline dying on film but over and over again. But, in the end, gotta go with Madeline, because FLAWLESS."

My Missing Whedon: "Angel"

This morning I read all 3,040 words of "Angel by the Numbers" an essay by Dan Kerns, who started on Joss Whedon's vampire series Angel as Best Boy and worked his way up to Gaffer. I discovered the article through Whedonesque and I heartily recommend it. During the reading I consumed ½ a cup of coffee (I've successfully narrowed down my daily consumption to 2 cups!), ignored the urge to pee twice, and thought of 4 other television shows: my beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which sits comfortable at #1 of my all time favorite tv shows), one-of-a-kind Firefly, fascinating but uneven Dollhouse, and the non-Whedon series Dexter because "Darla" (Julie Benz) was mentioned and I just watched the first three episodes of Season 5 and it's just not the same without her... (and maybe it's the kind of repetitive series that should've wrapped with Season 4?)

Buffy, Angel and Faith.

Before I move on to work on 4 pending articles, I feel the need to admit that I've only seen 19 episodes of Angel, despite seeing literally every other episode -- even the unaired ones including the aborted Buffy pilot where Willow was not Alyson Hannigan (!) -- of every other Joss Whedon series and all of his movie work, too! Hell, I've even seen that animated sci-fi bomb Titan A.E. (2000). I've never understood why I couldn't work up much interest in Angel as a series but perhaps it was the procedural stand-alone nature of the early episodes which are the bulk of what I saw. Maybe I was just angry that Buffy received only 1 spinoff and not 2 (At least twice a year I impatiently dream of a 4 season run of "Faith the F*cked Up Vampire Slayer"). Of the 19 episodes I remember only about 6: the one where Oz visits to give him the Ring of Amara, the one where Willow drops in to restore Angelus soul, and any of the times that Eliza Dushku stopped in for a little big city ass-kicking. You get the picture: Crossovers! I tried again 2 times in later seasons and could not understand what the hell was going on.

Links: Tim Hetherington (RIP), Batman Year One, Gaga Saga

Tribeca Film RIP Tim Hetherington. This is so sad.The just Oscar nominated co-director of the fine documentary Restrepo and an amazing war photographer has been killed in Libya. He had just recently released a book of photography called Infidel which had a section called "Sleeping Soldiers" --not your typical war photography.

You can listen to a lengthy talk by him about his work at "Foto 8" The site also has an accompanying gallery to watch while listening.

Movie|Line 3-D reboot of softcore Chinese movie Sex & Zen (I don't know whether or not to admit that I've seen the original. Whoops) breaks records in Hong Kong. American produced 3-D porn is also on the way. Ruh-roh.
Hollywood Reporter Batman Year One, an animated film igoing straight to DVD, casts Eliza Dushku as Catwoman. That works, her being a frisky kitty and all.
TOH Anne Thompson thinks Jennifer Lawrence looks terrible as Mystique in X-Men: First Class. I'd agree. I don't understand why they had to give her that abnormal forehead thing again. Shake up the look a little.

Weird Al explains what happened with Lady Gaga. She's disrupted his album release plans by rejecting his "Born This Way" parody "Perform This Way"
Playbill Been missing the awesome of Jonathan Groff or the bliss of Kristin Chenoweth on Glee? They return very very soon.

Antonio Banderas in The Skin I Live In (2011)

Vulture Margaret Lyons has a very astute article on what's right and wrong with NBC's "Parenthood". (I met one of its stars and I'll tell you about that tomorrow morning.)
Very Small Array has a horrifying chart about the quality slide in box office hits. Thanks to Awards Daily for pointing it out.
In Contention starts a series on the Cannes offering beginning with Almodóvar's The Skin I Live In.
Cinema Blend Jacki Weaver joins the Judd Apatow comedy Five Year Engagement. Go get those post-Oscar roles, Jacki!