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Entries in Lee Pace (24)

Thursday
Mar282013

The Link World

Film.com asks rapper "Riff Raff" to review James Franco's "Alien" in Spring Breakers, allegedly based on him.
My New Plaid Pants "The Golden Trousers" are in full swing. You'd be crazy to miss them. I mean they feature...
"The Great Gratuities" for one thing !
Ultra Culture hosted a Spring Breakers screening with a Britney Spears sing-along

/Film if you'd like to see the Before Midnight trailer. I am personally not going to watch it before the movie. I want every moment to feel fresh and in the now. I don't normally feel this adamant but these movies are special, once in a decade events.
Cinematic Corner appreciates Lee Pace in all his elfen, daisy pushing, soldier girl, still-waiting-for-big-break glory. Someone needs to!
THR Harry Knowles of Aint it Cool fame is attempting a comeback in the web landscape he helped create
In Contention see, even Will Smith knows that Christoph Waltz was the LEAD in Django Unchained (Damn you category fraud, damn you! Tommy Lee Jones shoulda had that Oscar)

Tweet of the Day

 

 


The great illustrator Glen Hanson came up with my favorite image -- as hundreds flooded facebook profiles this week -- in support of Marriage Equality. Obviously Diana of the Amazons would approve of sapphic unions!

Season 1... remembered vividly.If you're not here to make friends...
It's funny but I just realized now, reading Joe Reid's ranking of the 27 Season of The Real World, which he amusingly calls his "life's work" that one of the reasons I've never been a reality show person is I do actually like to make friends and don't actually relish watching people being assholes or, the great lying rationalization, "keeping it real". Unless some kickass screenwriter is writing the assholery, I find it a bore. ANYWAY... I honestly had no idea this show was still airing. But Joe's huge-ass loving ode to its highlights and foibles was a good read. For the record I only watched Season 1 religiously (even taping and rewatching -- unthinkable now) though I saw the bulk of S2 (instant hatred... the worst fall from grace I've ever experienced on television, turning instantly from interesting social experiment to utterly manufactured cash grab) and S3 (compelling but by then I was deeply suspicious and never watched again). Or did I?. Joe's details bring back very vague memories from Seasons 4-10 that I had convinced myself that I hadn't even seen one episode of. Oh, the shame of it all! 

Wednesday
Dec122012

SAG Ensemble. Our Annual "Fix This Rule" Gripe

You may have noticed a few key names missing when the SAG nominatione for ensemble were announced this morning. No, I'm not talking about the casts of Moonrise Kingdom or Magic Mike or other fine ensembles. I'm talking about the performers from the five nominated pictures who won't get a SAG winner / nomination on their resume from this honor. That might seem like nothing but for working actors whose names aren't above the titles it can mean a lot. So today we honor these actors who deserved better from their guild!

I'll keep talking about this every year until SAG fixes their system. Behold the Five most "Outstanding Casts" according to the Screen Actors Guild and a sampling of people that aren't included in that honor.

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
ARGO (Warner Bros. Pictures)
BEN AFFLECK / Tony Mendez
ALAN ARKIN / Lester Siegel
KERRY BISHÉ / Kathy Stafford
KYLE CHANDLER / Hamilton Jordan
RORY COCHRANE / Lee Schatz
BRYAN CRANSTON / Jack O’Donnell
CHRISTOPHER DENHAM / Mark Lijek
TATE DONOVAN / Bob Anders
CLEA DUVALL / Cora Lijek
VICTOR GARBER / Ken Taylor
JOHN GOODMAN / John Chambers
SCOOT McNAIRY / Joe Stafford
CHRIS MESSINA / Malinov

WHERE IS...?


WHERE IS... SHEILA VAND who was captivating as the Canadian Ambassador's housekeeper Sahar?
No people of color from Argo's cast list were recognized despite several cast members of color with important scenes. 

More awkward snubs after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Sunday
Sep022012

The Links We Share

Manuel Muñoz one of my favorite writers on his "sometime love" for director Hal Ashby
Vanity Fair on the Scientology auditions to be Tom Cruise's girl. He's been on 7 of their covers. Won't this spoil their chances at an 8th?
NFB Sarah Polley on her next film Stories We Tell 
Pajiba on "The Death of the Movie Theater" a super depressing but otherwise enjoyable read. It's really too bad the nation's theater owners don't get how they've let us all down.

 

I Need My Fix Alexander Skarsgard for GQ 
Guardian Shia Labeouf's antics keeps people talking
Hollywood Elsewhere Will Terrence Malick's To The Wonder inspire twitter brawls?
New York Times RIP. the legendary lyricist and Oscar winner Hal David ("Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head") dies at 91.
i09 first image of Lee Pace (yay) in The Hobbit as Legolas' father. My what good genes those elf boys have. (See also: Orlando Bloom 2001-2003) 
Gothamist reports on Leonardo DiCaprio filming with strippers for The Wolf of Wall Street. Is it just me or do you never think of Leonardo as a sex scene kind of star?

Awards Daily Oscar Watch 2013? Matthew McConaughey goes full on Bale as an AIDS victim for The Dallas Buyers Club. He's lost 30 lbs.
CHUD Guy Pearce is having a good year. But is his role in Iron Man 3 only cameo stuff? And even if he says so can you believe him? Remember that Cotillard continually lied about her role in TDKR to the press. You do what you gotta do to stop spoilers.
Gawker Nicolas Cage finally settled his overdue bill with a local video rental store; King of Comedy and A Star is Born cost him! (Even more shocking than the news that he rents from a DVD store is his good taste in movies! Too bad it doesn't show in his own filmography.) 

Finally, this video from Flavorwire is inspired by Lawless and a must for Costume Design devotees. Presenting: the coolest looking characters from Prohibition Era set movies.

I want a pin strip suit and a fetching hat, don't you?

Tuesday
May312011

Stage Door: "The Normal Heart" (Plus Feisty Divas, McDormand and Chenoweth)

Time for your semi-weekly theater fix. This one's about a famous play that has (thus far) eluded movie adaptations, the most publicized of which was Barbra Streisand's attempt to have a go at it in the late 1980s.

A new Tony nominated Broadway revival of Larry Kramer's psychic scream The Normal Heart opened recently to absolutely ectastic reviews. The play is very much a product of its time and place, AIDS ravaged 1980s New York. The original play premiered in 1985 Off Broadway, with film star Brad Davis in the lead role. (Davis was diagnosed with the disease himself that same year though this wasn't revealed to the public until 1991 before his death) The play must have been an absolutely defiant shock to the system at a time when people were still struggling to even say the word "AIDS" out loud. Though Kramer's best known work has been revived a few times since, this is its first Broadway run.

It's a strong play, even accepting that it errs always on the side of pedantics, but I'm afraid I wasn't nearly as taken with the new production as most have been. I'm assuming most of the enthusiasm for this production would have been a bit more muted if the 2004 Off Broadway revival which starred the great Raul Esparza as "Ned Weeks" aka Larry Kramer, had been a bigger success. The play's bristling humanity and hammered messages were somehow both easier to take and harder to stomach (if that makes any sense) in the intimacy that the Off Broadway stage provided.

a starry cast for the 2011 revival

It's the scale that's often the issue here. Tony nominated Joe Mantello is a fine actor but it was difficult (for me at least) to wipe Esparza's quieter and more nuanced portrayal from memory as I watched him. Ellen Barkin, who may win the Tony for her very aggressive and crowd-pleasing second act monologue as "Dr. Death", has Mantello's same problem of scale. It seems to be a question of direction since nearly everyone in the cast is constantly shouting at the top of their lungs. Anybody would given the narrative proceedings but the play is so innately blistering that actors who trust that ravaged vocal chords could never grant it more potency than it already has fare better; best in show is Tony nominated featured actor John Benjamin Hickey as Ned's lover "Felix Turner", who both admires and is perplexed by his partner's constant shouting and fighting.

[Tangent: Though it's neither here nor there, Lee Pace, who plays Ned's antagonist, the handsome but closeted "Bruce Niles", is AMAZINGLY TALL. He towers over the rest of the cast, which I wouldn't have guessed watching Pushing Daisies (Did everyone stand on boxes around him?) He is so imposing physically, live on the stage, that I was forced to check his height on IMDb on the way home: 6'3"]

Mantello and Hickey in "The Normal Heart"This production's white and boxy stage design is both weirdly offputting and far too-static in the first act and emotionally right and eerily tomb-like in the play's much stronger second act. The final moments, aided considerably by Hickey's performance and inspiring lighting, do stun. But I have to confess: I never once cried though I was a bawling mess through the entire second act of the 2004 revival.

Tony Kushner's Angels in America, which arrived a half decade after Kramer's play, has long since been canonized as one of The Great Masterworks of American theater. Angels has held tight to the unofficial title of the AIDS play. But in its own particular personal way, The Normal Heart is its angrier cruder earth-bound cousin. The Normal Heart doesn't bother with symbolism or poetry -- whether that's through lack of ability or easily imagined bilious rejection of escapism is up to you -- and generates all of its admirable potency from its fragile impotent humanity, raging against the powers that be, from within its diseased bodies. Everyone should see both plays in their lifetime.

This production of The Normal Heart: B
The 2004 revival: an easy A

Stage People
La Daily Musto
Frances McDormand stopped the show (literally!) during one of the last performances of Tony nominated Good People (from the Rabbit Hole author David Lindsay-Abaire)
Awards Daily
David Mamet's turn to the dark side, politically speaking.
Playbill Composer David Yazbek (of The Full Monty fame) talking about Pedro Almodóvar and the adaptation of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown for the stage.

Busy Broadway Baby: Kristin's new CD and new TV show

Finally...Just Jared spoke with Kristin Chenoweth who will try to tour for her new CD around her schedule for her new TV series "Good Christian Belles" and, one presumes, eventual future Glee cameos because who doesn't love "April Rhodes"? Busy busy!

I love the Cheno as you know so I'm thrilled by her ever increasing fame, but I can't imagine buying her country CDs and this lead off single sounds very generic. Her first CD "Let Yourself Go" is glorious fun but it's all show-tunes which is just where she shines. Personally I only listen to country music if it leans towards bluegrass or folk and stays far from generic "pop" unless it's just straight up A+ music like the Dixie Chicks. How will Kristin marry her different personas in a tour. I've seen her live five times now and while she is amazingly charismatic on stage and I've never regretted a ticket purchase her concerts seem increasingly schizo as her fanbase expands. Will country fans be able to deal with her comedic/operatic  "Glitter and Be Gay" moments... or will she just dump all the showtunes / opera to appease mainstream fans?

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