OTD: Vera Drake and Lily Tomlin

On this day (Sept 1st) in showbiz history...

1934 Metro Goldwyn Mayer releases their first animated short, The Discontented Canary. It wasn't Oscar nominated but they soon begin to crash Walt Disney's stranglehold on that particular category back then, with nearly annual nominations (for a time) beginning in 1939 (Peace on Earth) and regular wins in the 1940s thanks largely to the Tom & Jerry series. 

1952 Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea is first published. It wins the Pulitzer and gets adapted to the movies twice, the first time as a feature in 1958 with Spencer Tracy and the second time as an Oscar winning Russian animated short in 1999 which was painted on glass. 

1977 Blondie signed their first major record company contract. Whatever happened to that Debbie Harry biopic we were supposed to get? Wasn't it going to star Kiki Dunst or was that just our TFE fantasy?

2004 Mike Leigh's marvelously humane and potent Vera Drake wins the Golden Lion in Venice. The film is nominated for 3 Oscars including a surprise Best Director bid. Imelda Staunton goes on to lose the Oscar to a far inferior performance. We've been demanding a recount ever since.

Happy Birthday to Them
Oscar Nominees: Lily Tomlin (Nashville), Rachid Bouchareb (Foreign Film nominations for Algeria: Outside the Law and Days of Glory)
In Demand: Zendaya (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Boyd Holbrook (Logan, Narcos)
Other Famous Types: Gloria Estefan
Foreign Stars: Fengyi Zhang (Chinese movie star), Lhumnita Gheorghiu (brilliant Romanian actress), Mohammed Assaf (Palestinian pop star) 

I'll link to that 🍸

• YouTube fanmade teaser trailer for Venom with Tom Hardy. Love the use of the Cure lyrics
• My New Plaid Pants a special edition of 'do dump or marry' with Hitchcock classic Rear Window on its 63rd birthday
• Gothamist exciting news for library card holders in LA and NYC -- your public library card actually grants you access to TONS of Criterion Collection streaming titles. Here's how to access them
• Oh My Disney some of the Disney Princess movies are coming back to movie theaters in September and October. YASQUEEN... I mean, YASPRINCESSES. I'm most excited to see Mulan onscreen again because I barely remember it. Seems way too early to revive Moana though.
• EW celebrates the return of Will & Grace with a photoshoot

 

• Observations on Film Art wonderful piece on Dunkirk's emotional core (or whether it has one), color palette, and more
• Remezcla is the new Chilean film Hazlo como hombre (opening Sept 1st) homophobic or just making fun of homophobia?
• New Yorker Richard Brody is watching 80s action movies he's never seen before! Ha. Somehow the classic Die Hard (1988) had eluded him until now
• Self Styled Siren's bad movie double feature: The Legend of Lylah Clare with Kim Novak and Where Love Has Gone with Susan Hayward
• Coming Soon new clip from Marvel's Inhumans features Medusa's prehensile hair. Ugh, I want this to be good but it does not look good
• THR HFPA, the Golden Globe peeps, just gave away nearly $3 million in scholarships and grants to entertainment non-profits. Well done
• Variety interesting report on a working class actor running for the SAF-AFTRA presidency
• i09 12 things to love about The Lost Boys (1987) that have nothing to do with vampires
• Coming Soon several characters from AHS: Cult revealed
• NYT on the casting of indian actors for Taylor Sheridan's Wind River
• MNPP Hugh Jackman and trainer-in-speedo spend soooo much time at the beach. But the photos are inspiring

OffScreen
• Dress The Part if you have lots of extra cash, here are suggestions for how to 'shop the look' of  Atomic Blonde
• Business Insider fascinating study about decision-making and how who you spend time with affects your brainwaves
• Mike's Movie Projector Imelda Staunton never stops. Now she's rehearsing Follies

Olivier Awards Live Stream. And Other Miscellania

Keyframe an interview with Oscar winner Dorothy Malone (OMG) who is now 92. Mambo!
Pajiba adorable family Force Awakens cosplay from Utah
ENO Glenn Close is starring in the revival of Sunset Blvd through May 7th. If you're in London, please go and tell us how it is! 
The Movie Scene Criterion's blindspot for female filmmakers. (I know it's uncool to be critical of Criterion excpet in these rare cases of agreed upon issues -- but they have other blindspots too, like the musical genre)
DListed Ginger Feud: Susan Sarandon and Debra Messing having words over Sanders/Clinton. (Everyone is fired up of late.)

Comics Alliance argues that the bland costumes in X-Men: Apocalypse are a key problem with that franchise -- it's true you could mistake it for a Hunger Games poster.
BuzzFeed "The Unbearable Sadness of Ben Affleck" a good long read by Anne Helen Petersen who also did that recent history of Jennifer Garner

Everything is Gay
Vulture Why Richard Linklater's Everybody Wants Some is inadvertently gay
New York Post Smithers finally comes out tonight on The Simpsons in its 28th season (yeesh. it's already the longest running sitcom and scripted prime time series of all time on US television)
MNPP [nsfw] Jason remembers Exit to Eden (1994) -- Dana Delany wasn't the only one obsessed with Paul Mercurio's butt

Signs of the Apocalypse
Vulture an engineer built a life-size replica of Scarlett Johansson. Don't look directly into its dead eyes!
Tom & Lorenzo Jessica Chastain posing with a terrifying baby kangaroo. RIP Jess 
i-d interviews the gender neutral artist illma gore who broke the internet with a painting of nude Donald Trump. Unfortunately this means they extended the conversation about his junk. (sigh. this world)

TODAY'S WATCH
The Olivier Awards (essentially the Tony Awards of the UK) stream at 12 PM EST. Familiar Oscar nominated darlings who are up for West End acting awards this year include Nicole Kidman (in Photograph 51, which she hopes to bring to the screen), Mark Rylance, Benedict Cumberbatch, Imelda Staunton (she'll perform and Gypsy, which we reviewed, has a ton of nominations), Judi Dench and Janet McTeer. Cyndi Lauper will also perform since Kinky Boots is up for New Musical. Because the timetables are different with UK and US theater, Kinky Boots (Tony Winner 2013) is up against Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights (Tony Winner Best Musical 2008) at the Olivier Awards 2016. Strange that Kinky Boots hit the US first since it's adapted from a British film.

TODAY'S WATCH #2
Speaking of Theater. Benjamin Walker -- who is great on stage but has yet to successfully make his mark on the big screen despite a few tries -- is doing Patrick Bateman on stage. Who knows if he'll be Tony Nominated but here he is performing "Selling Out" on the Colbert Show

We really need to see some current Broadway shows before the Tony nominations hit!

Valentine's - Shakespeare in Love

The Film Experience is celebrating Valentine's Day! Here's Dancin' Dan on an Oscar-winning romance.

Have you ever fallen in love at first sight? Not its more common sister, lust at first sight, but real, true, struck-by-cupid's-arrow L-O-V-E at first sight?

It is a rush. A breathless rush when everything around you seems to slow down and disappear until the only thing you can see, or even care about, is this other person. It will cloud your judgment, and perhaps impair your ability to speak, but all your senses become laser-focused on the object of your affections, this perfect being for whom you have fallen head over heels. More...

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BAFTA Preview: Who might surprise Friday?

Here's Murtada with many questions about this year's possible BAFTA nominations.

The first indication that the BAFTA nominations are upon us - besides Awards announcements every two seconds - is the nominations for the Rising Star Award. This year’s crop include two 2015 British breakthroughs in Bel Powley (Diary of A Teenage Girl) and Taron Egerton (Kingsman), two stars of major blockbusters in John Boyega (Star Wars:The Force Awakens) and Dakota Johnson (50 Shades of Grey) and one Oscar front runner in Brie Larson (Room). Their usual eclectic mix for this voted by the public award. Vote now if you are a UK resident.

But more importantly let's look at what Friday morning may bring by examining some trends from the last few years of BAFTA and what they could mean after the jump......

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