They a-link, damnit! It's a miracle.

The Wrap Maggie Gyllenhaal is "too old" at 37 to play onscreen love of a 55 year old actor? Gross!
Empire Juno's mom and daughter Janney & Page reuniting for the comedy Tallulah
Antagony & Ecstasy shares a killer review of one of my fav Best Picture winners Grand Hotel - loved every sentence of this
Nick's Flick Picks revisits Georgia (1995) as part of its Cannes retrospective. Have you ever seen it?  It's a goodie. Mare Winningham, guys
Nick's Flick Picks and the terribly underseen Angels & Insects - amazing costumes
Awards Daily handicaps Oscar chances of Cannes players with Carol and Youth getting top marks for AMPAS likelihood 
The Film Stage looks at Lucretia Martel's next one, Zama, as it begins filming
Salon compares the first seasons of Daredevil & The Flash. Which show wins?

Towleroad plans are afoot to make a stage musical of the Elton John biopic starring Tom Hardy called Rocket Man. Um... shouldn't they actually make the movie first before worrying about adapting it? 
Variety in case you hadn't heard: Roger Deakins will shoot the Bladerunner sequel (so at least it will look pretty and get one Oscar nomination)
CHUD has an index of photo glimpses of Suicide Squad from Harley getting wet to the Joker at gunpoint 

Mad Mania
Gothamist the last scene of every Mad Men season. Matthew Weiner approached each season with its last visual in mind 
Slate 10 great images from Mad Men over the years - the show that always looked more like a great movie than "television" 
Film School Rejects where to see the Mad Men cast members next - new projects! 
AV Club an illustrated guide to Mad Max warlords from the Toecutter to Immortan Joe 
Jezebel offers up hilarious mocking of vulnerable masculinity in the face of Mad Max Fury Road

Charlize Theron menstruated all over my masculinity! 

....and finally the Imperator Furiosa tribute fans of both Mad Max Fury Road and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt didn't know they wanted but now can't live with out. 

They alive, damnit! 

Cast This: Young Hillary & Young Elton

There's a lot of talk going around about the casting of a young Hilary Rodham Clinton in a bio with big star names like Reese, Jessica and Scarlett floating around though all seem too sexy if you ask me -- though Reese's steel could be interesting. Pajiba has one off-the-path brilliant suggestion in Eden Sher.

Another hot casting topic: the Elton John biopic Rocket Man which is currently courting though not married to Tom Hardy. He has shown a willingness to uglify for roles so his masculine beauty might not be a problem but his lips, his defining feature, are in every conceivable way not a match. Still, he's a fine actor so they could make it work outside of the closeups of the singing. Elton John originally wanted Justin Timberlake - who took over in a great music video some years back -- to do the film. But I have to ask: was Philip Seymour Hoffman not available or was he deemed too old for the role?

And if the biopic is decades spanning one, who is going to play David Furnish. And will this eventually be retitled Behind the Candelabra Pt 2? And why is no one talking about the casting of the other roles? At least in Elton John's case that's just as (potentially) interesting.

Who would you in cast any these roles?

Young Hilary?
Young Bill Clinton?

Young Elton?
Bernie Taupin -Elton John's other (musical) half
Renate Blauel -Elton's wife in the 80s
Old Elton?
David Furnish?

<--- Oh lookylol, David Furnish has a picture of himself with Hilary on his facebook! Keeping things on topic we are.

'I Want Love'... and Actors in Music Videos, Please

Justin Timberlake as Elton John in 2001Ten years ago right about now, Elton John's "Songs From the West Coast" dropped. I bring this anniversary up because...

a) I love to celebrate anniversaries
b) music videos are short films
c) an irregularly curated side-obsession of mine is tracking film actors who've appeared in music videos.

For the videos from the album, his last hit-parade album (though not his last album), he used actor/musicians rather than himself, including a pre comeback Robert Downey Jr back when everyone still worried for the actor's very life and he seemed like an open wound... which really worked for this video.

Just love that one, don't you? It was directed by Sam Taylor-Wood before the days of her award winning narrative short Love You More and before she graduated to features with the John Lennon early-years bio Nowhere Boy (starring her future babydaddy Aaron Johnson).

In the follow up videos "This Train Don't Stop Here Anymore" and "Original Sin" Elton John used two pre film-stardom singers: Justin Timberlake as Elton himself and Mandy Moore as a devoted fan. In the latter Elton does appear and drags Elizabeth Taylor along with him in pink-turbaned cameo as "Doris" because, you know, Elton does love to flaunt the company he keeps. Was "Doris" an inside joke of some sort between them? 

Maybe JT got a taste for his acting future right here because he keeps playing important men from the music industry (Sean Parker in The Social Network and now Neil Bogart in Spinning Gold)

What's your favorite Elton John song? And if you were celebrity-aware back in 2001, did you ever dream of such enormous movie stardom waiting just around the recovery corner for Robert Downey Jr.?