Rite of Link

straight outta Cannes
Guardian wonders why Sofia Coppola is so obsessed with pole dancing. The pole is back for Bling Ring
MCN David Poland has several capsule thoughts on Cannes films. This is my favorite type of festival review since I find that festival environments are not good for full length reviews and yet people persist in lengthy split second reactions anyway. Let the movies marinate. But he hates the explicit gay sex drama Stranger by the Lake and thinks it wouldn't be in the festival it it were hetero explicit 
In Contention gives the same film fuller consideration
Apple Daily Tony Leung Chiu Wai -at Cannes for his wife's new film -- meets Ang Lee for dinner. Chinese press follows but the Lust, Caution pair are not reuniting any time soon (shame). Tony tells the reporters that he's seen Zhang Ziyi already, too.  
Ultra Culture lists ten selfless acts committed by the protagonist of Fruitvale Station. Just in the first hour! I was kind of worried about a lack of nuance in this buzzy tragic drama and if the character is a complete angel, I wonder if the movie will experience a huge critical backlash when it opens. Most interesting characters are not 100% anything. 

speaking of Michael B Jordan
...who is the lead in Fruitvale. You may not know this since I don't talk about TV much but I'm most definitely a fan. He's already done really sensitive affecting work in both Friday Night Lights and Parenthood. /Film  is revisiting the rumor that they want him for the Fantastic Four reboot as Human Torch. I'm usually all for color blind casting since it should be about who is the best actor for the job, you know? But there are some cases where it doesn't seem like a great idea and this, to me, is one of them. In fact, I'd pick The Fantastic Four dead last, along with like The Black Panther and Storm, as Marvel Universe roles that should be color-blind casted. One of the peculiarities of FF is its kind of dated nuclear family WASPy feel (I think director Peyton Reed's original concept ten years back about doing it as an early 60s retro-stylized thing would have been so interesting and right for the material). Since they went with Allison Williams as Sue Storm (I like her just fine but she seems as weird of a fit for Sue Storm as Jessica Alba was!) I have no understanding of what they're new concept is. Other than just "reboot and make money!"

Miscellania
Sundance Now revisits Disney's weird sorta wonderful Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) - those mid90s post Lion King/Aladdin movies are as underrated as that duo is overrated if you ask me
Guardian Antonio Banderas will headline the flick about the Chilean miners rescue. His career seems to be back on the upswing. Can we blame the reunion with Almodóvar?
CHUD is doing a series of 15 great actors who haven't starred in a comic book film and they started with Philip Seymour Hoffman. (Although really shouldn't that Mission: Impossible 3 movie kinda count?)  
Filmmaker Kurt talks with Julianne Moore, "cinema's modest chameleon"
New York Times congratulations to my friend Tom, who composes for musical theater (more on him right here
at TFE soon if...well, I'm not allowed to say just yet), who is now married. His engagment is commemorated with this cute NYT Video!  
/Film thinks a limited Christmas opening with a platform rollout in January for the Jason Reitman Kate Winslet Labor Day picture shows faith in the movie for the Oscars. Hmmm. to me the shy December openings with January rollouts are more hedging your bets than total confidence. If there's so much faith you go wide (see Django & Les Miz last year) to get the holiday money. 

Oh and don't forget...
Tomorrow night (and the following Wednesday night) are the last episodes of Hit Me With Your Best Shot before a hiatus in June. So if you've been meaning to join us, now's the time. Tomorrow night is Disney's experimental FANTASIA (1940) which were doing as sort of an offhand centennial tribute to Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" which turns 100 years old this month. So pick one image from the Rite of Spring section and your favorite from the movie as a whole. (Or one for each of its six musical sections if you're feeling into it). Next Wednesday is the brilliant Paul Newman as HUD (1963) which I want everyone to see it because it's one of the best movies of that decade. Even if you're not doing a "best shot" rent it so you can experience it in full before reading the articles.

Do you plan to read any of the books this season's movies are based on?

I'll answer the question first. I might, though I probably shouldn't say that I might. For each year I make an internal plan to read all of the books on which upcoming films are based. Guess how many I usually get through? But given that I'd never trade F Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" for any film version that might ever exist, I should probably try and read source material quicker once I know it's going to be a movie. I weep proactively, for example, for anyone who sees August: Osage County first as a movie (if it's not good) without having previously known the brilliance of the play. With this year's "Adapted" crowd, I have actually had read/experienced at least five of them... plus all the superhero stuff, 'natch.

intimate knowledge *before* seeing the movies, 2013 edition

This topic is on the mind since I've posted my predictions in the Original and Adapted Screenplay Oscar categories.

What's the difference between ADAPTED and ORIGINAL these days? Well, like the Acting Categories, sometimes screenplays play fast and loose with definitions. The landmark year for "Original" vs "Adapted" shenanigans was 2002 in which both Gangs of New York and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which had presented themselves as adaptations of a novel and play respectively for months on end as they made their way into the public consciousness, suddenly decided they were originals when that category proved conveniently easier to nab nominations in. Oh sure, they had their excuses ("only inspired by" "I wrote a version of this for the screen before I wrote it as a play") but it still smelled like Category Fraud.  

I bring this up because it's possible that some of the films will be classified differently than I've classified them. The most confusing case is probably Foxcatcher since books have been written about the bizarre true story but the film doesn't seem to be based on those books but on an unpublished autobiography (?) by one of its secondary characters (played by Channing Tatum). I'm guessing Adapted for now but that could easily change.

But back to books. Have any of you read any of these pictured? Do you want to?
Which of these ten should I read and write about before the film version?

poll by twiigs.com

WHICHEVER BOOK WINS THIS POLL I PROMISE TO READ / BLOG.

I'll try for two but I will do one. I will,  I will.