Love is complicated for Keira Knightley

by Murtada

It seems that Jason Clarke has cornered the market on playing husbands whose wives look elsewhere in 2017. That is one of the plot threads of the Sundance hit Mudbound where Carey Mulligan plays his wife, who has eyes for his brother played by Garrett Hedlund. And now in the The Aftermath he’s a British colonel in Germany right after WWII, whose wife (Keira Knightley) forms a bond with the German widower (Alexander Skarsgård) who used to own the house they now live in. The film just finished shooting in Prague under the helm of James Kent (Testament to Youth). It might appear on the fall festival circuit.

Knightley was seen this week in London shooting scenes for that Love Actually sequel we’ve been hearing so much about...

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Links with an Invisible Glass of Moët

Inside Movies Andrew Lincoln looks back at "to me you are perfect" from Love Actually
MNPP wants to watch Only God Forgives again. Are you also experiencing these deviant feelings?
Ultra Culture anatomy of most Blue is the Warmest Color "reviews" 

In Contention wonders if Will Forte can win Best Supporting Actor traction for Nebraska - well the category is amorphous still...
BuzzFeed saw fit to rank every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Such a mammoth project so even if you quibble with the ranking -- and boy do I (love "Beer Bad") --you have to respect 
Gawker weeping through The Best Man Holiday 
Pajiba how to prepare yourself for the release of Nicolas Cage's nude photos 

And while I was in Los Angeles earlier this week the Moët British Independent Film Award nominations were announced. I love little weird awards groups like this (the corporate titling not so much) because you can't tie them to "ooh, they're trying to influence the Oscars" which is just about the most boring thing you can possibly do if you're a group thinking of handing out awards. No matter what your group is, if it has no character, personality or purpose outside of predicting another groups awards, QUIT - the world doesn't need you! But anyway... here's a complete list of nominations in case you missed them as I did. They were big fans of the bleak with the violent Starred Up and Clio Barnard's festival gem The Selfish Giant leading the nominations. They also approved of Metro Manila which is the UK's Oscar submission. But they also found room for more mainstream senior Brit efforts like Philomena with Judi Dench and Le Week-End starring Jim Broadbent and Lindsay Duncan.

What a World: Ralph Fiennes & Kristin Scott Thomas are co-stars again. But this time he's sleeping with her screen daughter. Here's why I spit out my Moët, though. They ignored 12 Years a Slave in "International Film" and had a reaction to Ralph Fiennes' The Invisible Woman that I find not only puzzling but deeply lazy. They nominated it only for Best Actress (Felicity Jones, whose appeal still escapes me like crazy) and Best Supporting Actress (Kristin Scott Thomas). Now y'all know I am an über fan of KST but if you're handing out acting prizes to that movie and you DON'T start with Joanna Scanlan, who plays the unloved wife of Charles Dickens, you're on autopilot with stars in your eyes. To which you might counter if you haven't yet seen the film "But KST is a great actress!!!" Well, yes, dear reader and BIFA voters, she is... but Joanna is this movie's MVP. And by a significant margin, too. 

Of course the movie is marginalizing Scanlan, too. She doesn't appear or barely appears in the ads and none of the film's promotional stills include her; P&A has never been a meritocracy.

Happy 10th, Love Actually!

Dancin' Dan here to wish a happy birthday to the romantic comedy to end all romantic comedies. Love Actually surely caused fans and haters of the genre alike to spontaneously combust upon seeing it – so packed is the film with cliché after cliché after cliché (seriously, the only cliché that isn’t here is the one where an unattractive girl removes her glasses and suddenly becomes hot). Richard Curtis’s film tells the stories of no less than twenty-two Londoners (and one Portugese and four American girls), pretty much making this the first rom-com epic.

It’s true, we have Love Actually to blame for the insipid Valentine’s Day and the even worse New Year’s Eve, but those two films don’t have nearly the lightness of touch, the humanity, the… well… British-ness of the 2003 crowd-pleaser.

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American Linko

Slant analyzes the new poster for Madonna's W.E. 
Empire Sacha Baron Cohen taking the Threnadier role we thought was going to Geoffrey Rush in Tom Hooper's adaptation of Les Miserables. 
In Contention Kris & Anne give their top ten films of the year 
Stale Popcorn on the plans to 'update' American Psycho. Hollywood executives can be so thick. It's a satire about the 80s. You don't "update" what something is about.

The Hairpin looks back at Love, Actually a predecessor of the current all star roundelay that is New Year's Eve. 
New York Magazine an inner monologue of a critic watching Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady (I missed this somehow last week but it's great)
Animation Magazine has been hopping lately. Lots of features on the animated contenders including the ones we've heard the least about like the Spanish old age drama Wrinkles. 
YouTube Pulp Fiction in chronological order. I was totally taken by surprise by how it begins but it all came back to me.
The Wrap this news makes me giggle. Lifetime Television is planning to remake 1980's The Blue Lagoon. This is what's called a missing the point. The only reason anyone watched the original film was for the nudity. 
The AV Club chats with Diablo Cody about Young Adult. Check out this great exchange on the film's origins:

Diablo Cody: “Am I some kind of stunted woman-child that’s living vicariously through her characters?” And then I thought, “Stunted woman-child—that’s a character.”
AVC: Now you’re living vicariously through a character who’s living vicariously.
DC: Yeah, it’s like Escher.

Living through film characters. Sigh. Don't we all to some degree. If we're being honest with ourselves. 

Which film character have you found yourself living through?