The Link Has Two Faces

Your Weekend Must Read
Emily Yoshida at Vulture gazes at Ingmar Bergman's Persona but she sees way beyond that, too, to the dream space shared by cinema's curious subgenre of female identity swapping. 

Two women talking: a recipe for witchcraft, an unnatural feedback loop, a cursed redundancy. Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 masterpiece Persona is a landmark for many reasons, but its legacy, which has show no signs of age in the 50 years since it was released in the U.S. and the U.K., is how it stared that anxiety in the face and opened up a loopy, meandering conversation that’s still going on to this day...

More Linkage
Keyframe 'The Year of Nicole Kidman' don't force her to prove herself all over again
Variety Cannes lineup is "high on "awards intrigue, low on safe awards bets"
/Film Aquaman is overflowing with villains, 3 already for a first solo film? (not a good sign) and a fourth may have been added
Coming Soon Antonio Banderas will headline Lamborghini -The Legend (working title) a biopic about the Italian entrepeneur of automobile fame. Alec Baldwin will play his rival Enzo Ferrari 

Boy Culture "STREEPSHOW" a drag comedy about "characters one played by Meryl Streep" living together in the East Village will be playing NYC in June. Sounds hilarious but I have to admit that it took me quite some time to figure out the characters in the photo (and there seem to be two Miranda Priestleys?) which is maybe not a good sign. Shouldn't they be instantly recognizable?
Guardian Mixed messages from Cannes as TV premieres from auteurs are happening but they've also banned Netflix from future competition unless they stop skipping theatrical releases
Variety Gay gasp! The BBC is producing a series of 15 minute monologues called Queers which is set to star Ben Whishaw, Alan Cumming, and Russell Tovey and others
Awards Daily Gypsy teaser, a new series starring Naomi Watts
Variety Hugh Bonneville will play Roald Dahl in a biopic set in the early to mid 1960s. This means they're going to have to cast someone to play both Dahl's wife Patricia Neal and her most famous co-star Paul Newman (see Hud) and both of those roles will be a Herculean casting task! 
The Guardian there's a documentary playing Cannes about Cary Grant's experimentation with LSD from 1958 through 196
Tracking Board Kenneth Branagh to direct himself in a movie about the father of Anne Frank The Keeper of the Diary

Not Remakes Though You Might Mistake Them For Such
/Film Martin Scorsese starts filming mob drama The Irishman this summer with Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci
Gothamist Leonardo DiCaprio will star in The Black Hand about an undercover mob cop...
(Ummm, haven't all these people already made these movies? Why not mix it up with a romantic comedy or a sci-fi picture?)

Exit Video
Look it's the first clip from Todd Haynes's Wonderstruck. It may be impossible to follow Carol but we're glad that he got back on the horse so quickly after that long time away from us. How does this clip strike you?

Thoughts I Had: First images from "Murder on the Orient Express"

To Entertainment Weekly the honor of introducing us, or re-introducing us rather, to the characters of Murder on the Orient Express. The Agatha Christie book was first published in 1934, got a very popular Oscar loved film adaptation forty years later and another forty-plus after that it'll be back in movie theaters again with a brand new cast. 

After the jump a mega post about this cover and the adjacent character photos that came with it... 

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Cast Begins to Board "Orient Express"

Chris here. Remember what fun we had awhile back fantasy casting Kenneth Branagh's upcoming Murder on the Orient Express remake? Well, now some official names have been added to the cast and it should be just as much of a delight.

The two biggest names come as something of an unexpected Dark Shadows reunion (sorry for the reminder about that Tim Burton misfire): Michelle Pfeiffer and Johnny Depp will be the headliners to Branagh's own Poirot. Pfeiffer becomes the natural successor to Lauren Bacall as Mrs. Hubbard, a casting coup that feels both inspired and accurate. With Beat-Up Little Seagull and Darren Aronofsky's next film which is also probably coming in 2017, we'll be grateful to be seeing quite a bit of her. Depp will be playing Ratchett, the victim of the titular murder.

But they weren't the only names signing up, and the others make for quite an exciting assemblage: Daisy Ridley, Dame Judi Dench, Michael Peña, Derek Jacobi, and Hamilton's Leslie Odom Jr. are all coming on board. That may sound like a lot of names, but this massive cast still has quite a few roles to fill. Stay tuned!

Who should join Angelina Jolie in the Murder Cast?

Murtada here. Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express is being remade by Kenneth Branagh. He will direct and play the lead part of Belgian detective Hercule Poirot who’s investigating a murder that happens on the famous train as it is making its way across Europe. The novel has been adapted several times, most famously into an Oscar winning film in 1974 by Sidney Lumet and an all star cast, led by Albert Finney as Poirot. Angelina Jolie was announced as Mrs Hubbard, an American loquacious socialite, played in 1974 version by Lauren Bacall. It’s good casting as the part calls a star with lots of presence.

Even though I haven’t read the Christie novel, I have seen the movie version and a 2010 British TV version with Jessica Chastain right before she hit it big. The story lends itself to an all star cast as basically every character gets an intro, one big scene and gets to participate in the finale. And everyone has a secret of course so the parts are juicy and fun and not too taxing on the actors. Hopefully lots of entertaining actors will sign up.

Who would you cast? Our suggestions for some of the characters after the jump...

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Why Isn't 'Cinderella' an Oscar Contender?

Glenn here.

You will no doubt have read – or least seen the headlines – that people are saying that Ridley Scott’s The Martian should be taken very, very seriously as a Best Picture contender. I’ve even seen people claiming it could win, which seems awfully bullish given its hastily rising status in Oscar circles is due almost entirely to the film’s overwhelming success at the box office in the face of a glut of underperforming Oscar players like Steve Jobs. But amid this new wind of blockbuster excitement and the snickers at (contractually obligated) Oscar campaigns for other big-budget, uber-successful movies, there’s one film that has so far gone under the radar in the conversation and ought to be taken far more seriously than it likely will be.

Yes, I mean Cinderella... more after the jump

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