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Two Must Reads @ Vulture
In this moment I really must bow down. Vulture just slayed all this week. I'm sure it helps to have a huge budget and access to hundreds of talented writers but still. I am regularly in awe. Particularly of these two pieces:

• "The 30 Best Broadway Songs of the Past 40 Years" insightful fun writeups in shows stretching from Annie in 1977 through Hamilton in 2015 with a ton of Stephen Sondheim near the top (as well they should be)
• "A Conversation with Ann Dowd and Margo Martindale" two scene stealers talk late-blooming careers, being confused for each other, favorite roles, and not repeating yourself. 

Lots more good linkage after the jump...

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C O N S I D E R - Favorite Actors of 2017, 1st Qtr

With the year's first quarter over, we're listing our favorites in multiple categories. Why? Well, each month of the year tends to contain good work so why pretend otherwise when Oscar season rolls around and only 3 months worth of releases are considered? (We already listed best technical achievements)

Here are the 17 male performances (divvied up into 3 categories) that I was most taken with in the first quarter of 2017. For your consideration...

7 FAVORITE LEAD PERFORMANCES

Paul Hamy as "Fernando / António" in The Ornithologist
(would also top a "sexiest" list were we doing one) 

16 more talented men after the jump...

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Welcome to "Atlanta"

by Kieran Scarlett

The city of Atlanta, for as richly vibrant and complicated as it is, for how many different television shows and movies are shot there has surprisingly never been rendered on screen in a wholly honest way.  It could be the zombie apocalypse laden landscape of “The Walking Dead,” where the embellishments are forgiven given the subject matter. Then there’s the curiously all-white fantasy in Mother’s Day, a movie that hardly needed to take place in Atlanta making it all the more galling. And of course there’s the glossy, sitcom nightmare-scape version of Atlanta as told by Tyler Perry, where the villains are dark-skinned businessmen and the heroes are light-skinned blue collars with rippling muscles and bad lace-front cornrow wigs.

It’s a much more complicated city, a blue dot in a red state. It's also one of the blackest cities in America (RIP Garry Marshall but you knew you were wrong for that) replete with its own internal conflicts of race, class art and culture. It’s viewed as a sort of Southern Mecca for young black artists—a burdensome reputation for a city to carry where dreams and aspirations can fizzle just as easily, if not more so than they can flourish. In just two half-hour episodes, Donald Glover’s “Atlanta,” which premiered on FX earlier this week actually comes the closest to capturing a recognizably authentic Atlanta, clearly birthed by his own experience living in the city...

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Happy 25th Keith Stanfield

by Sean Donovan

Let's celebrate the 25th birthday of rising actor Keith Stanfield, sometimes billed as LaKeith Lee Stanfield. The young actor has shown an impressive versatility and command of the screen in a brief string of memorable appearances. He’s occupied the supporting casts of such attention-grabbing films as Dope and Miles Ahead, acted as a flashpoint for community grief as Jimmie Lee Jackson in Ava DuVernay’s Selma, and even appeared as a young Snoop Dog in Straight Outta Compton. But those of us who have  kept an eye Stanfield as “one to watch” fell in love with his vital supporting work in Destin Daniel Cretton’s 2013 film Short Term 12. 

In our post-Room world, Short Term 12 feels like a more and more essential document, serving for many as the introduction to the true depth of leading lady Brie Larson’s talents before she found Oscar glory two years later...

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Tribeca Drops First Half of Festival Program, Chocked Full of Potential Discoveries

Daniel Crooke here, salivating over today’s first wave of films from the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival’s line-up. While the Spotlight, Midnight, and Special Sections programs won’t drop until March 8, the US Narrative, International Narrative, and World Documentary Competitions, and Viewpoints showcase hit the internet today and there’s plenty to buzz about. Scanning the films, you’ll find an embarrassment of riches hiding in the programming, plot details, and cast lists. Here are some personal points of interest:

US Narrative Competition

Ingrid Jungermann’s webseries F to 7^th was an astutely, hysterically observed slice of queer life in New York, giving voice to a uniquely cutting female perspective in the process, so her feature debut Women Who Kill shoots straight to the top of the list. The Fixer sounds intriguing in a small-town-with-secrets kind way, James Franco as an “eccentric local” a little less so. Queens of charting the path from comfortable malaise to all-out soul-search, Amy Landecker and Melanie Lynskey – who, in particular, is quietly giving the best lead performance on television – pop up in Dreamland and Folk Hero & Funny Guy. Current faves Keith Stanfield (Short Term 12, Straight Outta Compton) and Dan Stevens (The Guest) will star in Live Cargo and The Ticket.

International Narrative Competition

It’s hard to ignore the promise of a collection of short films from the likes of Chilean shaggydog provocateur Sebastian Silva and actors Mia Wasikowska and Gael Garcia Bernal in Madly, sounding like an I Love You, anthology movie but if the city were Relentless. Argentine Cinema had the international stage last year with the raucous Wild Tales – although Lucretia Martel eternally has her own platform in my heart – so fingers crossed for another cross-hemispheric success with The Tenth Man (El Rey Del Once) and its culturally and generationally intersectional premise.

World Documentary Competition & Viewpoints

Documentary-wise, Betting On Zero positions Herbalife as a pyramid scheme, Do Not Resist exposes the military-industrial nature of America’s police culture, and LoveTrue boasts the wacko cred of (my Northeast Los Angeles neighbor) Flying Lotus on score and Shia LaBeouf as executive producer. Equals with Kristen Stewart and Nic Hoult premieres in the Viewpoints program, along with raunchy R-rated animation Nerdland (trend-chillin’ with Anomalisa and Annapurna’s Sausage Party) and the divisive British class flick High-Rise.

You can view the list of released Tribeca titles here – what catches your eye?