Dinner with... Joel & Clementine & Link Roundups

November 19th, 2003. Dinner at Kang's again. Are we like those poor couples you feel sorry for in restaurants. Are we the dining dead?"

How did i forget this shot of Joel playing with his food. Food product smiley faces forever

I will definitely be 'the dining dead' tonight... slowly chewing on my food from the same restaurant I always order from. I can already feel the numbness kicking in. Long day. Best to send you off running to other blogs. 

Eat Links Instead
New Now Next is hosting a funny daily March Madness tournament for the "Gayest Cartoon Character of All Time" - I voted already but some of these face/offs are striking, silly, and super. I had to use a lot of "s" so pronounced tha sentence with a sibilant s please. 
YouTube the new Maleficent trailer - same as the one we covered extensively but for more of Elle Fanning and a backstory about Maleficent's wings (!) I am even more intrigued now but I wish movies would save surprises for the theater 
Gawker Landmark theaters invites you to bring your child to see Nymphomaniac Pt. 1. LOL (Hey, it'd be healthier for them than those slasher movies I always see parents dragging their kids into)

Buzzfeed not so insane fan theory about the interconnectivity of Disney kingdoms in Frozen, The Little Mermaidand Tangled. This is trippier than anything Chris Nolan ever dreamed up
The Playlist in addition to just being a mediocre actor Aaron Johnson is also a fussy one and didn't want to have white hair as Quicksilver thus further ruining the character for me in Avengers: Age of Ultron 
The Wrap Tilda Swinton and Barkhad Abdi join Bill Hader and Brie Larson in Judd Apatow's comedy Trainwreck  

Eternal Linkshine
If you aren't yet sick of the 10th anniversary party after all those Best Shots here...
Huffington Post talks to Kate Winset about her memories of the film
Cine Munch for those of you who have more creative energy for a dinner tonight or tomorrow this new blog offers menus and recipes to go along with great movies like this one . Complete with a drink: The Blue Ruin Mind Eraser with my favorite: Curaçao
People Mag 20 elusive facts about the movie - I didn't know a lot of these

Link is an Open Door

Cinema Blend Sebastian Stan, the Winter Soldier himself, has a nine picture deal with Marvel Studios (!)
Vanity Fair Lee Pace stars in a new series AMC hopes can replace Mad Men. Yeah, good luck with that. I especially worry that they're going for another anti-hero. Mad Men and Breaking Bad weren't exactly standard fare when they started. You have to offer something new once imitators are a dime a dozen on every channel. 
The Playlist first images from the new Dardenne Bros film starring Marion Cotillard as a woman about to lose her job

Marion Cotillard would like you to share an ice cream cone with her

IndieWire intriguing interview with Ethan Hawke, who seems to understand his own limitations and his career
Playbill a live album of West Side Story with Cheyenne Jackson as Tony is coming soon
i09 the next X-Men movie will be set in the 1980s 
The Wire reminds you to finally watch Darren Aronofsky's Pi since it's Pi day (3/14). You need to jump because it's almost over 
Coming Soon Captain America 3 is playing "chicken" with Batman vs. Superman, both slated the same weekend in May 2016. 

Today's Watch
I guess Frozen's "Let it Go" has run its course and now people are on to "Love is an Open Door". This video is so adorbs, cute parents perfectly lipsynching the duet while their daughter ignores them in the back.  

'The World is Round, People!' But Can It Spin a Little Differently?

Blue Jasmine was one of Woody Allen's biggest hits, earning $94 million globallyGeena Davis and I have been harping on gender disparity in film for ever and I've also spent a lot of time on its sister problem: ageism focused on women. But in the past couple of years it feels like the conversation has finally reached the mainstream. 

Every website, even the most misogynist-friendly, now knows what the Bechdel Test is and that the majority of movies still fail it even though it's super easy to pass. Cate Blanchett's Oscar speech got a lot of attention and Kevin B Lee recently had a major cinemetrics piece in the New York Times about women's limited screen time and now, as The Wrap reports, a new study out of San Diego State's Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film shows how bad the problem is not just in lead roles (only 13% of the films in the top 100 of last year) but in ageist double standards (women over 40 account for only 30% of female roles while 55% of male roles are for the over 40 set) and in racial representation (73% of all female roles are for caucasian women).

All of this despite the fact that Cate's Oscar speech was total righteous truth-telling. [More...]

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Backstage at the 86th Oscars

The people who are lucky (or random as Cate Blanchett might say) to win an Academy Award get their moment on the stage and then dive headfirst into a throng of press backstage who proceed to ask them generally innocuous, occasionally offensive, usually bland, nationally-biased questions. This year was no different, but there's usually at least one tasty lil bon mot hidden amongst the winners' videos so while the Academy haven't released the full videos yet, we can still use what we've got to find those anecdotal morsels and quick quips.

All the acting winners, Frozen, Cuaron, Jonze and the make-up artists after the jump...

Cate Blanchett:

This is an auction! I'm for the highest bidder."

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Curio: Sunday's Special Oscar Foods

Alexa here. My annual Oscar tradition of theme food took a detour this year, primarily because the most anticipated part of the show for the members of my household under 5 was hearing Idina Menzel sing the song that launched a million YouYube viewings.  

So, instead of a meal made of clever puns I made a "Let It Go" cake, complete with swirly snow icing.

Appropriately enough, our meal beforehand was some rather uninspired pizza, which we enjoyed sharing with Brad and Meryl. [More from the menu after the jump...]

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