TIFF: Haneke & Huppert Return with "Happy End"

by Chris Feil

Michael Haneke is back to satirizing the upper class for Happy End, a bitter comedy on conscious distraction and privilege in the digital age. The film opens with ominous Snapchat footage and is peppered with live time Facebook chat and email screenshots that feel strangely right at home in the auteur’s aesthetic. But this isn’t Haneke’s treatise against internet platforms - in his eye, these are just other ways to reveal our disaffected, sometimes wicked selves...

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Locarno Winners: Huppert, The Big Sick, and More...

by Nathaniel R

Isabelle Huppert as "Madame Hyde"

The Locarno Film Festival wrapped up today in Switzerland and guess who's back for yet more film honors? Isabelle Huppert, that's who! In the new French film Madame Hyde she plays an eccentric teacher who is struck by lightning. When she wakes she, well, the title will probably cue you in to her sudden split personality. The sleeper hit/romantic comedy The Big Sick also took a big prize. The Awards are after the jump...

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Meet Joe Link

good morning!

• /Film amazing story behind that funny "he's a friend from work" line in the forthcoming Thor: Ragnarok
• Variety talks to five members of the HFPA, aka the foreign press who vote on the Golden Globes
• Interview fun Q&A with Kathy Bates using ol' Andy Warhol questions. She reveals that she's a huge fan of Asghar Farhadi (yes!) and, uh, Meet Joe Black (noooo!)
• BuzzFeed Charlize Theron is a "broad" - how the actress charted her own course, while cashing in on her considerable beauty

• Financial Time amazing sit down with Isabelle Huppert who gives great quote over a 12 course meal
• Vanity Fair Lindsay Lohan's new publicist and how he's changing the conversation about her (as she works towards a comeback)
• Variety Broad Green Pictures, which started off strong with the hit A Walk In the Woods, is laying employees off. Uhoh
• Head Over Feels has a really fun alternative Emmys (and other categories) you can vote on
• Awards Daily on the Emmy's most competitive race: Outstanding Drama Series
• IndieWire Angelina Jolie upset that people have misinterpreted a casting exercize she used to choose child actors for auditions for her new film First They Killed My Father

Off Screen
• The Independent if you're in the UK this summer, snag tickets to see Tom Hiddleston as Hamlet for a limited fund-raising stage production in a tiny theater (160 seats only!) helmed by Kenneth Branagh himself (you may recall that Branagh already did a Hamlet movie in 1996 that was four hours long and nominated for four Oscars.
• Modern Love Actor Andrew Rannells on a night of casual sex that coincided with a family tragedy
• NPR the 150 greatest albums made by woman. This is an awesome list. Must listen to the ones I don't know
• Onion "Twitter Introduces Red X Mark To Verify Users It’s Okay To Harass"
• Cosmopolitan repainted Barbies as RuPaul's Drag Race queens. The Valentina and Trixie Mattel's are amazing
• Theater Mania last block of tickets on sale for Bette Midler in Hello, Dolly! (through January)
• Playbill the original stars of Kinky Boots (Stark Sands and Billy Porter) will return to the show in late September (hmmm, does this mean a closing date soon?). Since I've already seen the show twice, I'll skip... unless they can also lure awesome Annaleigh Ashford back in which case, I am there with bells (and heels) on.
• Gothamist the legendary Algonquin Hotel in NYC is getting a new cat-in-chief. This one's a ginger rescue.

And This Just In...
Jessica Chastain will be playing Empress Lilandra of the Shi'ar in X-Men Dark Phoenix. A kind of Catwoman to Xavier's Batman if you will (at least in the comics) because she's not exactly evil but not a hero either... and in this here classic storyline -- which I have little hope they can pull off in the movie but was so damn awesome back in the day in the comicbooks -- Lilandra was in direct conflict with her lover Xavier. So it's a mini The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him and Her reunion as Jessica reminded with this cute photo of her and her former and now future co-star...

Hey @jamesmcavoyrealdeal you ready for me up in Montreal? Im gonna make you cry so hard 😈 #xmen @simondavidkinberg

A post shared by Jessica Chastain (@jessicachastain) on Aug 1, 2017 at 3:29pm PDT

Part One: 70 Best Gowns of the 70th Cannes Festival

by Nathaniel R.

Monica Belluci, Mistress of Ceremonies, in her Opening Night Gown which just missed our list

It's a giant-sized edition of Beauty Break fused with our traditional Red Carpet Lineup today. But before we begin, can we get a final round of applause for Jose's wondrous work charting all the Kidmanifestations this past week?

Kidman aside, or alongside as the case will be in this post, we couldn't let Cannes wrap up without honoring how glamorous the event is in a big way. Kidman wasn't the only goddess just slaying that red carpet. There were so many of them working those premieres that we even had to leave some A listers off altogether (like Charlize Theron who showed up briefly in a sheer black gown but it wasn't quite a wow if she was just going to do drive by fly by fashion. Alas we've now time to photoshop all the looks with our usual minimalist showcased flare -- please forgive -- but you'll see why given the immense amount of gowns we must cover as we say au revoir to Cannes. 

70 BEST GOWNS OF CANNES 70 
35 red carpet wins are after the jump

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Red Carpet Lineup: Cannes '17, French Actress Heaven

It's been a little overwhelming looking at all the gowns on display at Cannes but before we get 10 whole days behind, let's celebrate the Gallic glory of French actresses. The 70th Anniversary Cannes party that the festival threw itself in the middle of its week long party had the biggest collection of international stars imaginable including these nine giants of French cinema after the jump...

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