Under the Link

Playbill a Broadway musical of Pretty Woman? They're determined to make every 90s movie hit into a musical
The Gayest of All Time The Many Tears of Leonardo DiCaprio
Vanity Fair tries to get Matthew Weiner to talk the final season of Mad Men but wisely settles for more fertile ground since you know he won't do that! 

World of Wonder I subscribe to everything they're saying about the new Flash costume on Arrow. I have tried to watch that show so many times but i just think it's terrible and so personality free 
Screen Crush another look at the costume and in action. It does not look aerodynamic to me -- way looser fit than most superhero costume and shouldn't it be more like a swimmer's outfit to enhance speed? So who knows what Colleen Atwood was thinking
Pajiba on Lena Dunham's keynote address at SXSW
In Contention Guy Lodge reports on how Brad Pitt almost starred in Under the Skin but I can't read this because I'm keeping myself as virginal on the film as possible. I want to be surprised
MNPP continues to spread the joy of Jake Gyllenhaal's return in Enemy
Empire a new motion poster for Noah which trippily takes you through caves and the ark and fields and foes and loops back like the world is round and infinite or something
Vulture interviews True Detective's Glenn Fleshler on how he approached his very very sick character 

Today's Must Read
Jezebel's funny thinkpiece "A Grown Woman's Guide to Responsible Celebrity Worship" which examines the problem of the "It" girl narrative, the recent Oscar media Jennifer vs. Lupita situation, celebrity backlashes (almost always towards women... the men actually have to EARN backlash), and self-identification. It's pretty great. The piece also references this amazing article "Lupita Nyong'o Doesn't Need Your Permission to Be Beautiful" which is also a very good read.

'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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Children of a Linker God

New York Times the miniature model (so edible looking!) of The Grand Budapest Hotel 
Interview talks to Jeff Goldblum - I didn't realize how much I missed him until his scenes in the new Wes Anderson 
/Film Carrie Fisher to be in London for 6 months for the new Star Wars film... Hmmm perhaps more than a cameo, then. But regardless I'm not really looking forward to these after the debacle of the last trilogy
Towleroad on Neil Patrick Harris as a gay icon 

Gawker Rich Juzwiak on the continuation of the gay 300 saga. This line just kills me:

But no one man can satisfy Themistocles. "I have spent my life on my one true love: the Greek fleet," he proclaims. Sounds like an active life!

(I'm never going to see the new 300: Rise of an Empire given the descriptions of how gorey it is -- sounds more vomitous than the first one in this regard! --  but I sure as hell am going to read the hilarious reviews)
The Wire why gay guys love the 300 movies
Cinema Blend Pee Wee Herman's beloved bike auctions for over $36,000. Wait, I thought it wasn't for sale?
Erik Lundegaard if The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 tops the box office charts in 2014 it'll be the first time that's happened in consecutive years for a sequel since... (you'll never guess when) 
Salon how hotels like the Grand Budapest became relics of the past 

Marlee Matlin, a deaf woman, famously planed a deaf woman in Children of a Lesser God (1986) and won the OscarToday's Most Discussable
Balder & Dash has an impassioned article about why disabled actors should be the only actors cast in disabled roles. The reasoning is very convincing but it does uncomfortably remind me of all of the flak people gave Jared Leto for doing a trans role this year and Leto's very sound response to the criticisms. Just how close do we need or even want actors to be to the roles they play? If we say that a straight man shouldn't ever play a queer role, does that mean queer actors must never play straight roles? And does this mean trans actors who can totally pass as cisgendered people shouldn't be allowed to play cisgendered roles? Does this mean we should never again have a performance like Linda Hunt's great one in The Year of Living Dangerously (1983)? She is not a trans woman or a man, but she played a man convincingly and carried it off beautifully.

It's a fascinating topic and one that I think should be openly discussed even if, in the days of outrage culture, those discussions can be political minefields. My worry is that this sort of stance is just too limiting for artists and boxes them up. On the other hand, though, shouldn't minority artists have first dibs on minority roles? (I know I've been pissed when I've seen bad gay performances in the past and thought "why didn't you just hire a gay?")  Have you ever thought about this and are you also torn between two opinions on the matter?

Last Words: The Court of Public Opinion

I'm really looking forward to that time later this year and next year and the year after that when the new Woody Allen picture arrives and we have to do this all over again.

I'll be much briefer this time, I promise.  The Farrow/Allen debacle gave us a valuable opportunity to discuss important topics: child abuse, power imbalances, the value and imperfection of the law, family dynamics and mental health, the problems inherent in identifying with and/or revering strangers or celebrities, the art and the artist and where and when they cohabitat and divide, gender politics, etc. Maybe some good could come of this harrowing story? But mostly we wasted the opportunity on misdirected rage, name-calling, witch-hunting, woman-hating. When emotionally difficult topics are brought to the public table we should talk and listen, not insist upon idealogical purity. I don't have statistics but I suspect that no one in the history of civilization has ever had their minds opened by opposing views by being a) shamed into it, b) being out-yelled, or c) forced into declaring absolute allegiance. I said some things I regret this past week or, at the very least, that I wish I had phrased differently. [more...]

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The Amazing Technicolor Link Blog

Village Voice is Frozen the first Disney movie about girls rather than for them?
The New Yorker asks Richard Brody, film critic, to explain himself. Cute video but omg his desk is cramped
Jezebel somehow I missed this interview where Bryan Singer blamed women for the failure of Superman Returns (2006)... Jezebel, predictably, has words for him.  
The Dissolve has a piece about the toxicity of twitter and its effects on intrafeminist battles. Really interesting and ties into what's been going on with the Dylan Farrow letter I think 
VF George Clooney's advice for posing on the cover of Vanity Fair 
Coming Soon interesting. Dakota Fanning to headline the next film from Miss Bala director Gerardo Naranjo. She'll play a roadie on the way towards self discovery

NY Times Phedon Papamichael, nominated for his cinematography on Nebraska shares his favorite things of the moment from Instagram to the Polish film Ida
Pajiba on the beautiful casting of a new Netflix show: Linda & Kyle & Sissy oh my
Coming Soon got 10 free hours? Amazon Instant Watch debuts 10 new series pilots we've never heard of today but one of them called Mozart in the Jungle has a great team and cast
i09 a movie version of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamboat produced by Elton John, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber? Sure why not. But they better get a costume designer that's on point

Cinema Blend Pride and Prejudice and Zombies is actually on track towards filming again. Ha. The saga of this movie is probably more exciting than the movie could ever hope to be. Lily Collins will star.
Coming Soon the original Fantastic Four movies were just terrible and I have literally no optimism for the reboot either despite admiring director Josh Trank's Chronicle and virtually all of the actors individually just not the in roles he's considering them for. His casting is too young, too arbitrary, too non-WASPy. I know it's foolish to lament the lack of role opportunities for hot blondes in Hollywood - Hahaha - but if any superhero role ever was meant for a WASPy blonde and a WASPy blonde alone it was Sue Storm. Kate Mara and Emmy Rossum don't fit the bill and isn't Miles Teller way too young and fun-loving for the science genius gravitas of Mr Fantastic? 

Finally
You know how much we love the topic of age and acting here at TFE. Well on this recent HuffPo conversation they discuss the earning power drop for actresses which comes, they say, at 34. With men their power doesn't drop until their mid 50s.

I started the video aggravated that all the panelists seemed clueless about the disparity when it came to the men... I mean it's so obvious since male actors don't even start their reign until their 30s usually (Leonardo DiCaprio is not the norm, he's a rarity. What's far more common is the Channing Tatums and Brad Pitts of the world who kick around for a bit winning some attention and then *BOOM* supernova at about 30)... but I'm glad they ignored the men and discussed the women. It's an interesting conversation and Lisa Rosman is a critic I liked and she's good on the fly discussing this. I would need to read more about this study to believe the results fully though because from where I sit it does seem to me that actress careers are lasting longer, even in terms of lead roles, than they once did. Obviously Sandra Bullock, even more successful than she once was as she approaches 50 -- and she was pretty successful to begin with! --  is a rarity. And yet in general it does seem to me that the major actresses are having longer shelf lives than they once did. They don't seem to just vanish until their mid to late 40s early 50s now (notice the quick fades of Hunter, Allen, Linney, Clarkson, etcetera) rather than the late 30s early 40s it once was.