A "Moana" Sneak Peek with Lin Manuel-Miranda

We're just 25 days from Moana hitting theaters and more fresh looks have been coming. This past week I had the opportunity to see a few scenes and hear Lin-Manuel Miranda speak about the film afterwards. Curiously the scenes they showed us weren't "song scenes" despite the pairing of those two things.

We mostly saw scenes involving Moana herself, voiced by the joyful Auli'i Cravalho, the teenage discovery Disney chose to voice their latest princess. Baby Moana, before Auli'i Cravalho takes over, is just about the cutest thing ever and there's a long scene of her discovering the ocean that is not unlike the adorability of Pixar's wonderful short from earlier this season, Piper, albeit with less fear because Moana is immediately in love with the ocean. 

They also showed us a complicated ocean action sequence that the exuberant Venezuelan animator who hosted the event revealed was inspired by Mad Max Fury Road. Later when Lin-Manuel Miranda spoke we learned that he got the job before Hamilton (!) and when he was composing for Maui the demi-god he used The Rock's wrestling videos, of all things, to get a sense of his vocal range.

I was reminded of that when this new clip emerged very recently featuring The Rock singing in character as the demi-god who accompanies Moana on her journey. (In one of the clips I saw last week we also got a sense of how fun his magical tatoos are, including "Mini-Maui"  who you can meet here for yourself.)

Are you counting down the days? Or are you still a Zootopia or Red Turtle fan for the Oscar?

Review: Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates

This review was originally published in Nathaniel's Towleroad column...

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates starts out giddy with a bouncy firecracker of a credits sequence. Please take that literally as the credits involve a trampoline, fireworks, and two gleeful stars Mike (Adam Devine) and Dave (Zac Efron) in mid air. Their joyful abandon is short-lived. A scene or two later we're at an intervention with their parents (Stephen Root & Stephanie Faracy) in which we see these same high-flying images again from a less zhushed-up perspective in home wedding videos their parents play them. The inseparable brothers, always each other's bachelor dates at these gatherings, egg each other on until disaster strikes. Property destruction and ambulance calls follow them... 

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Pt 1 Smackdown Xtra: High & Mighty Executive Suite

Nathaniel (your host) welcomes Brian Herrera (aka Stinky Lulu), Mark Harris (Grantland and EW) Anne Marie Kelly (The Film Experience), Manuel Muñoz (award winning writer) and Todd VanDerWerff (Vox) to the podcast for a Smackdown conversation. To flesh out our thoughts on the 1954 Oscar Battle (we trust you've read it now?) and expand the topic to include the four films themselves, and where Hollywood's head was, here is our 80 minute conversation in two parts.

Pt 1 (40 minutes)
00:01 The High and the Mighty and the birth of both DeGlam and the Disaster Epics. With shout outs to The Love Boat (?), Airplane, and Grand Hotel
21:45 Executive Suite, experimental filmmaking, and trusting the patriarchy.
36:40 Marlon Brando and New Acting Styles. Post World War II / Pre Something Else.

PART 2 WHEN YOU'RE READY

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes.  Continue the conversation in the comments. For fun I thought I'd include this video of Nina Foch (An American in Paris), our Smackdown runner up, discussing her Oscar nominated role in Executive Suite. The pencil necklace was her idea! Thank you to reader David Q. for pointing it out to Nick who sent it along to me.

Pt 1 Smackdown: The High and The Mighty

Mad Men @ the Movies: From Here To Eternity & A Star is Born

In Mad Men at the Movies we explore the cinematic references of television's finest drama. So good to have the SCDP gang back on our small screen dreaming about their big screens. Naturally mild spoilers follow...

6.1 "The Doorway"
Vague Synopsis: The sixth season of Mad Men begins just before New Year's 1968 (?). A client has paid for the Drapers to vacation in Hawaii assuming that the trip will inspire Don to come up with a brilliant ad campaign to sell their hotel. They don't quite get what they were expecting since Don Draper is perpetually gloomy and unknowable even to himself -- 'The Inferno? just a little light reading on the beach!' Later both Peggy & Don run into trouble with their latest individual ad concepts due to uncomfortable associations - Peggy's ad rubs up against the world's worsening Vietnam problems, Don's ad reminds his clients of suicide. Meanwhile, perpetual child Betty Draper Francis obsesses over her daughter's friend (this isn't the first time!) and continues to need more therapy even more frequently than lost playboy Roger Sterling is getting it.

As ever not all of the movie references on Mad Men are spelled out with movie titles. more...

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To Link or Not to Link...

Gawker on Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby, just issued in a deluxe Criterion version
BBC Skyfall wins the best Bond opening ever overseas. Remember when we didn't even know if we would get any more James Bonds due to legal issues and rights and studio problems?
The Guardian on Daniel Day-Lewis' infamous ghostly father sighting all those years ago when he played Hamlet on stage (he has not returned to the stage since) 

In Contention George Clooney lines up a very starry cast for his next Oscar attack, the World War II drama Monuments Men: Craig, Blanchett, Goodman
AV Club Mike D'Angelo on the directors cut of one of my favorite films Little Shop of Horrors (1986) 
The Film Doctor 8 notes on Cloud Atlas
Cinema Blend Cloud Atlas karmic interconnectivity infographic
Towleroad Madonna visits Ellen Degeneres! 
Coming Soon Tom Cruise isn't done with the Mission: Impossible franchise yet. And here I thought they brought in Jeremy Renner to replace him. 

CHUD has a 1688 word review of the new Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning movie with 80s action icons Jean Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren returning and refuses to say whether they walk around with asses out as they so famously did the first time. 1688 words and no time for ass? That's just mean.
Movie|Line Ugh. I was totally going to do this Grease-centric Hurricane Sandy thing but a ton of sites beat me to it. I type so fast but I don't have all the time in the world or a huge paid staff to jump on everything. BOO.
Tom & Lorenzo Mad Men filming in Hawaii, eh? Jessica Pare and Jon Hamm in cute bathing suits. Oh I have to share the photo... I can't just link!

Lovely! I've never been to Hawaii, have you? It's nice to dream of Hawaii in the aftermath of dismal, windy, grey, wet destructive Hurricane Sandy.