The Furniture: Magical Unreality in "La La Land" and "Fantastic Beasts"

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. This is the first of two columns discussing this year's Oscar nominees. Here's Daniel Walber...

At a pool party in La La Land, Mia (Emma Stone) is granted the unique misfortune of being introduced to a generic Hollywood screenwriter. “I have a knack for world-building,” he says, instantly conjuring spectres of a Game of Thrones economy. Mia quickly extricates herself, destined for a different man in love with his own talent.

The moment is fleeting, but it peels back the curtain on Damien Chazelle’s own view of world-building and filmmaking. His version of Los Angeles isn’t at all overstated, with the exception of its ever-present automobiles. The characters don’t quite inhabit an identifiable city. Rather, they exist against a backdrop of imagined Hollywood, built from relentlessly colorful skies and busy studio lots...

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I'm so glad we had this link together

Decider Joe Reid on the repetitive lie that Oscar shuns popular movies
Interview shared a Winona Ryder interview from 1990. I can't tell you how formative this was for me. I had the photoshoot plastered all over my bedroom. I was obsessed with her quotables.
Playbill Broadway aimed Moulin Rouge! will be trying to cast its Satine (!!!), or at least a temporary Satine for readings and such, on February 17th at an Equity-only audition
MNPP Great Moments in Movie Shelves visits The Royal Tenenbaums game closet 
AV Club IMDb is shutting down its message boards 

 

Deadline file this under "it's about time" - Sarah Paulson is finally getting lead roles in features! She'll headline Lost Girls, a serial killer drama in which she plays a mother searching for her daughter
i09 revisits Suspiria before the remake by Luca Guadagnino
The Guardian we need to be listening to Middle Eastern cinema right now 
Variety Leslie Mann and John Cho to host this year's Sci-Tech awards for the Academy 
Tracking Board Whoa. Carol Burnett, who is 83, might be coming back with a new sitcom. Come on Octogenarians! (See also: Rita Moreno, who is 85 and great on One Day at a Time)
Variety Oh, this is so sad. Sunday in the Park with George won't be eligible for the Tonys so no Jake Gyllenhaal for Best Actor despite the raves 
Boy Culture Patrick Wilson didnt get paid for this advertisement
Variety The Weinstein Co will distribute a new Diane Keaton / Brendan Gleeson drama Hampstead from the director of Last Chance Harvey
The Guardian "why I love Emma Stone" 

10 Takeaways from the SAG Awards

Two handfuls of moments from last night's SAG Awards have stuck with me. How about you?

All Politics Are Personal
Julia Louis-Dreyfus early win and a speech that got political, her father being an immigrant, set the tone and politics never went away. It was there in every speech, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes poignantly. People who scream "no more politics" are always forgetting that all politics are personal. The laws that are made, the character of the country we live in, the rights we enjoy or can't, the laws that goven our workplaces, the type of healthcare we get, the size of the paycheck. All of these things affect every single person personally whether they see that it connects to D.C. or not. If there was any doubt that Mahershala Ali was going to win the Oscar next month for his terrific work in Moonlight (and also, yes, as a symbolic win for the film itself which often happens in the supporting categories) it surely vanished last night. Ali was deeply touched at the prize, humble, but also upset given T***'s unconstitutional Muslim ban. He brought up his own conversion to Islam and the initial conflict it raised with his mother. Touchingly he revealed that they're both long since over the conflict since. A bonus of Ali winning is we got to see shots of the Moonlight table and they unfortunately didn't get another chance to shine. 

Lily Tomlin, Denzel Washington, Winona Ryder and more after the jump...

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Who will win or could win the SAG Awards?

Last year, the Screen Actors Guild Awards had a ready-made anti-Oscar narrative with a slate of winners that features colorful casts (Orange is the New Black) and Idris Elba as the supporting actor winner during the #OscarsSoWhite backlash. This year, there's no clear media narrative and SAG even has to make do without a Best Picture frontrunner since La La Land is understandably not up for their top prize (Outstanding Performance by a Cast... also referred to as "Best Ensemble" by many). So what will they choose this year? Who knows!

Viola has won four SAG awards, two for How to Get Away With Murder, two for The Help

We'll find out tomorrow night but what we're most looking forward to the lifetime achievement tribute to Lily Tomlin which will happily be presented by her 9 to 5 co-stars Jane Fonda and Dolly Parton. But back to predictions. Will Viola Davis win her fifth SAG in five years?  Let's make the tough calls after the jump...

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29 Days until Oscar

29 is the number of the day. It's also the most common age for Best Actress winners. That's quite something if you consider that the youngest best actor winner of all time was 29 and just a month shy of his 30th (Adrien Brody, The Pianist). The gender bias that preferences young actresses and older men gets even worse when you realize that HALF of all Best Actress winners won by the age of 33. Less than 10% of Best Actor winners were 33 and under. The eight women who won at 29 are...

Emma Stone is the youngest Best Actress nominee this year at 28 and expected to win by most pundits. Stone is the same age now as the following winners were: Norma Shearer in The Divorcee, Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve, Luise Rainer in The Good Earth and Charlize Theron in Monster.

Curiously there is no "most common age" for Best Actors (spread out fairly evenly from mid 30s to mid 40s) or Best Supporting Actress (all over the place). The most common age for Supporting Actor winners is 46 (seven winners).