Linkman

Empire The London Film Festival has commenced with Benedict Cumberbatch opening the festivities
Kenneth in the (212) Harrison Ford in 1978 
Logolog This one is for the linguistics and trivia nerds: Last week's box office top ten featured the first ever "pangram" -- I didn't know what that was but the article explains it
Film School Rejects will "Vs" movies be the next franchise trend? God help us all 

Guardian claims that The Imitation Game might be the queerest film for the mainstream in ages. I don't want to do that math because, if so, how depressing because it's not all that queer
/Film a Labyrinth sequel in development?
Pajiba Jennifer Garner talks about Ben Affleck's penis on the Ellen show. Hold me. Why, Jennifer, why?
Esquire Gone Girl as the story of Ben Affleck's career. Undeniable connections!
Vulture theorizes on how all the seasons of American Horror Story could be connected. I guess they mean, besides the famous actors?
/Film First images of Margot Robbie and Will Smith in Focus. Hey, do you remember when there was a movie with that title with William H Macy and Laura Dern? Anyone?
Guardian So, you guys, it turns out that that Effie Gray movie starring Emma Thompson and Dakota Fanning does actually exist and its now playing in the UK 
HitFix Sean Durkin of Martha Marcy May Marlene fame will direct a film version of Little House on the Prairie. Bizarre. 

Casting News
The Playlist Léa Seydoux is your next femme fatale Bond girl. YAS! Great choice, 007 team
Variety Gabriel Luna joins Ellen Page in Freeheld
The Playlist Jennifer Jason Leigh takes the largest (only?) female role in Quentin Tarantino's Hateful Eight. 

Retweet
I take it you've heard about American Crime Story, a new Ryan Murphy series that will take on true uh... American crime stories.

Theory: Ryan Murphy keeps making tv about gruesome murders (AHS, soon ACS) because he secretly wants to murder the GLEE cast

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) October 8, 2014

True crime instead of the freaky supernatural fiction crime that American Horror Story traffics in, right? I had to have my say on Twitter, you know? Hee

Weekend Watch

James Franco's "Making a Scene" a comic mash-up series, fuses Beetlejuice and Batman together. What would Michael Keaton say? Probably "who cares" given his recent comments about the Batman franchise post him.

While we're on the topic of Batman, The LEGO Movie is going to have a solo Batman sequel in 2017. Exactly when do we approach maximum saturation of all things Batman? You'd think it would have been awhile ago. I worry for the the 2020s

Finally
For Towleroad, I wrote up a piece on films of LGBT interest in the big Foreign Film lineup with their trailers and such. Check it out. I'm dying to see Switzerland's The Circle. And I didn't realize until researching this piece that Concrete Night is made by a writer/director pair who are famous lesbians in Finland. How about that?

Stay tuned for more coverage on this category and of course all the others too, right here. Interviews and events are already starting off blog and soon we'll start sharing them. Let's consider Monday/Tuesday the official grand opening of this new awards season here at TFE.

Fantastic Links and When To Blog Them

The Dissolve Alfonso Cuarón might direct the Harry Potter spinoff Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them. The internet seems largely happy about this which puzzles me. I understand everyone likes money but isn't this a huge step backwards after Children of Men/Gravity gave us his full auteurist muscle unbeholden to someone else's franchise? I most definitely think so
Pajiba wonders what was up with that airplane curtain closing wordless scene on Mad Men this weekend? 
The Film Doctor asks 9 questions about Godzilla before realizing he's too old for that shit. (I loved Godzilla so much myself that I've been surprised at the level of thumbs down in comments and online)  
/bent wonders why The Kids Are All Right's director Lisa Cholodenko hasn't yet made a follow up to that financially successful and Oscar nominated feature 

Towleroad one of the Vikings in How To Train Your Dragon 2 comes out as gay kinda. (But ParaNorman will always be first in this regard.)
Antagony & Ecstasy on the intuitive, fluid sensory experience of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and its companion novel
Slate Cliff Curtis, ethnic chameleon onscreen 
Gawker "selfie" is entering the dictionary. But why did it take "steampunk" this long?
MNPP JA zeroes in on one sweaty hairy detail of the Weinstein Co's Cannes preview: Southpaw's Jake Gyllenhaal 
The Wire wonders why the internet is so obsessed with Shrek --  I hadn't realized it was (just goes to show you how the interenet is not at all monolithic in terms of its obsessions  -- but this is an interesting article
The New Yorker if you're still grappling with your feelings about Godzilla here's a smart mixed take from Richard Brody which wrestles with the movies grandeur but lack of complexity and its largely passive human characters

Its scale may feel Biblical, but it doesn’t risk the crises and ecstasies, the sheer moral turbulence provoked by existential menace (cf. “Noah”). The monsters in the movie do monstrous battle, while people—the warriors ostensibly arrayed on the front lines against them—are reduced in the foreground to silhouetted spectators. They are the equivalent of the cutout characters of “Mystery Science Theatre 3000,” but without the comfort of a screen to separate them from the mayhem...

He Said / She Said
RogerEbert.com, which I always feel weird about linking to, since the link name always implies that Roger Ebert has written something new but he has of course departed from our mortal coil. Nevertheless, I started to enjoy these opposing pieces from  Michael Oleszczyk and Barbara Scharres on David Cronenberg's Maps to the Stars until I remembered after the first couple of paragraphs each that I really really really want to go into this one fresh so I can't read anything. BUT if you're not as "sensitive" as I am about reading reviews before you've seen a movie, that's one rave and one pan from the same site so we are now free to call the movie "divisive" as often as we'd like. It's our favorite kind of critical response - homogeneity being so dreadfully dull. Oleszczyk and Richard Lawson at Vanity Fair both rave about Julianne Moore's performance and that's enough to excite me for now without really reading anything!

Speaking of Julianne Moore...

Here she is with Harrison Ford at a party at Cannes. Remember when nobody knew who she was but her walk in The Fugitive (1993) was so grabby anyway? #whowasthat 

You can see more photos from this particular party at Vanity Fair.

My 4 Favorite Things About Each Star Wars Movies

"May the Fourth be with you," my friends. Since everyone is required to talk about Star Wars every May 4th, even if they don't want to, here you go. 

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
01. "I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board..." Carrie Fisher in all her royally bitchy double-bunned glory
02. "These aren't the droids you're looking for." Sir Alec Guiness (in general) and those delicious British intonations 
03. The opening scrawl and in media res Storm Troopers / Vader attack. This is how you start a movie/trilogy. Death to backstory - just throw us in!
04. The trash compactor sequence. As a child I was obsessed for some reason so it's merely a nostalgic choice.

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
01. Love Yoda and the existential mysteries of the Dagobah swamps, you must.
02. That it inspired this cartoon (above) about my youth. "Luke, I am your father"
02. "I love you" / "I know."
04. The perfect mirror of Star Wars opening planet, a hot dry desert (Tatooine), in the unforgiving freezing ice planet of Hoth.

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi (1983)
01. The entire Jabba the Hut opening act (my favorite complete act in any Star Wars film). Love every fucking second of it (especially Jabba the Hut) and that it fully earns the wonders of that immortal gold bikini.
02. That the movies kept finding new weird things to do Leia's hair that seemed organic to Princess Organa. 
03. That speeder bike race on Endor
04. The teaser highly graphic poster art with the red and the purple/blue lightsabers. One entire wall of my bedroom (!) was Return of the Jedi posters/stills.

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)
01. The release of the trailer. It was so exciting that even a glimpse of the Gungan (Jar Jar Binks and crew) seemed rife with possibility. The horror being yet to come!
02. "The Duel of The Fates" three-way lightsaber battle: great scoring, great choreography, great everything
03. Any glimpse of Darth Maul. And there are only glimpses.
04. Princess Amidala's Kabuki/Geisha/WTF costumes (designed by Trisha Biggar)

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)
01. The title had a certain cheesy B movie grandeur about it
02. Um... shots of the Storm Troopers had a kind of military fetishistic panache. 
03. Yoda's bouncing lightsaber fighting style had a big memorability factor despite being stoopid.
04. Ewan McGregor

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
I don't remember anything other than that I was so glad Star Wars was over. But then... (gulp)...

the cast of Star Wars Episode VII at their first table read last week

Star Wars Episode VII: Title To Be Determined (2015)
01. Hamill & Fisher & Ford. Oh my.
02. Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca (oh please let him have grey fur now! That'd be hot and funny) 
03. Andy Serkis as someone or other or possibly multiple others (because you have to respect that he completely monopolizes that whole new wing of film acting: CGI/actor creations)
04. John Boyega. Finally someone using him for something big and poppy after Attack of the Block.  

Your turn!

A Pizza Ranks the Celebrities Who Ate Him at the Oscars

I am no more.

But the glorious finale of my life, too brief though watched by millions, was sensual mastication in the mouths of the world's greatest beauties. My only regret, days later whether unnaturally purged or properly digested, is that I never reached the pillowy lips of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award Winner.

To Angelina... my unrequited love!

10 Ellen DeGeneres for ordering me

09 [tie] Harrison Ford & Calista Flockhart for pizza is love

07 Jennifer Lawrence

06 Jared Leto who had for too long forsaken my brothers and sisters.

05 Julia Roberts you have worshipped her megawatt smile but I have known it intimately.

04 Chiwetel Ejiofor who I voted for for Best Actor; and none for you Matthew McConaughey

03 Brad Pitt who so lovingly passed out the paper plates which did cradle me in those final moments and who held me so gently as his perfect teeth pulled desperately at my cheesy surfaces. I didn't mean to resist; I just wanted the moment to last forever.

02 Kerry Washington to provide sustenance to your unborn!

01 Meryl Streep who is the best at everything. Including devouring me. 

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Dr Linkgood

Yahoo attends a Hobbit fan event and discovers that Gandalf has a potty mouth
Movies.com inspired by the return of Chris Hemsworth as "Thor" they must ask "what's the best movie starring a man with long blonde hair?" Duh! It's a tie between the complete filmography of Brad Pitt and The Legolas of the Rings trilogy starring Orlando Bloom's Youth.
Deadline now here's a biopic we weren't expecting: Hair metal band Motley Crue to get the bio (of sorts) from the director of Bad Grandpa.

Atlantic Wire the Emmys weren't enough. Netflix wants an Oscar and scoops up hot documentary The Square (reviewed right here) relabelling it a 'Netflix Original' 
In Contention Nebraska in a double bill with Paper Moon for old timey charm? Yes please. 
AV Club why Schwarzenegger's Last Action Hero failed 20 years ago and why it needs to be rediscovered  
Playbill Sadie Sadie Married Lady! Congratulations to the fabulous Megan Hilty (Smash) who just got hitched. 
i09 Benedict Cumberbatch surprises Harrison Ford with a pretty great Chewbacca impression 

Today's Watch
Awesome Greta Gerwig dances her way through this awesome new video "Afterlife" from Arcade Fire, directed by Spike Jonze