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AV Club Sad Keanu Doll 
Empire JJ Abrams on the secrecy of his Star Wars sequels
Empire 25 different covers celebrating X-Men: Days of Future Past. I hate the cinematic interpretation of Quicksilver already... but they never do right by my favorite characters (see also Storm). And I didn't realize Sunspot was in this but they cast a Mexican actor to play an African-Brazilian? 
Playbill Brokeback Mountain: The Opera debuts today in Madrid

US Magazine Charlize Theron & Sean Penn holding hands. The rumors are true. So that's a good excuse to relisten to...
That Film Experience Podcast in which we fantasized about same-year Oscar couples
Variety The Great Gatsby sweeps the technical prizes at the first half of the Australian Oscars. They announce the headline categories Thursday
Guardian Johnny Depp receiving an award from the Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild 

Post Script Sundance Sales
Ah, Sundance. My wrap up index post is coming late tonight but I enjoyed reading Vulture's takeaways and loved talking up the Sundance favorites with Guy Lodge on the podcast. I was also reading this piece about the non-spectular but steady sales at Sundance and a list of titles from the festival which now have distributors via Sound on Sight and I found both frustrating. I don't know if the latter list is 100% accurate (it's tough to keep track and did they ignore pre-sold films? If you know of a 100% complete list let me know) but it's frustrating. Only 20 deals were made? So naturally the great majority of films didn't sell. Some of them have easily saleable elements -- like oh, Anne Hathaway! --and in some cases are much stronger than some on the films that sold. I'm aware that in this day and age of DIY  distribution, VOD, and [insert latest trend here] not selling to a major distributor is not a death knell, just as being picked up is not always a godsend (some films that have distribution curiously never make it to screens or arrive years later when the buzz has gone ice cold). The three films I most wish had been picked up are:

• Blind -Norwegian films rarely make a dent at the arthouse but it's so good
• A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night -Glenn loved it and it sounds like a must-see curio
• Appropriate Behavior -in the comic subgenre of sexually impulsive twentysomething New York lady in a tailspin it's superior to Obvious Child which did sell.

Exit Music
Here's Vin Diesel dancing to Katy Perry (!) and grabbing his crotch a lot. Two things that are worth doing when one tops
                the dvd charts.

He would be in big trouble if he was asked to "lipsynch for your life"... but wouldn't he be an awesome guest on RuPaul's Drag Race? Make it happen, Ru. 

Oscar's Losing Game

Andrew here, to talk about the Oscar nominations. It’s been one week since they were announced and are we all talked out? Of course not. The Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences can't catch a break from its loudest critics each year. People often view the Oscars as some kind of monolothic entity and not as a group of individual persons with specific tastes, which grants them the aura of sinister agenda like a Bond villain. And given the weight of the crown -- Oscar remains the most significant film award -- they're subject to the sort of ardent scrutiny that would reveal flaws in even the most ostensibly immaculate of things. 

Whether you're a lover or agnostic on AMPAS, there is no denying that they provide fodder for movie conversation the way few other things do. But there's one frustratingly circular and inescapable bit of criticism which comes each year that I find particular exasperating. I'm referring to the complaints which always follow a critically maligned film earning Oscar laurels, specifically for technical proficiency. “Did you hear The Lone Ranger earned as many nominations as Inside llewyn Davis.” or “The Transformers trilogy has earned more collective Oscar nominations than the Before trilogy.” or “The Wolfman has an Oscar, Peter O’Toole does not.” And so on. I almost always think it’s meant facetiously, until I realise these lazy claims are used as legitimate attempts to illegitimatise the worth of the AMPAS (an entirely different topic altogether). It’s all part of a yearly unchanging cry from movie lovers, “How can X (Terrible Film)  be an Oscar winner/nominee when Y (Great Film) is not?" [more...]

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Podcast: American Hustle & Her

Nick, Katey and Joe join Nathaniel to wish you all a very happy holiday week. We begin by talking about David O. Russell's American Hustle. Katey wishes the movie had applied itself more, Joe doesn't believe a second of it, but Nathaniel and Nick enjoy the fun groovy chaos quite a lot more. We're split on Jennifer Lawrence's showboating, three of us think Bradley Cooper is amazing but the podcast quickly turns into an Amy Adams ♥fest. (Shout-outs to Saïd Taghmaoui and Michael Peña, too)

We also discuss Spike Jonze Her and its lovely script and performances. The Scarlett Johansson/Samantha Morton business on the voicework is also on the menu. Do we think Her hits its themes too hard or just right? And would we wear its futuristic fashions? 

PLEASE NOTE: If you're spoiler averse you might want to skip one minute from 18:00- 19:00

You can listen to the podcast right here at the bottom of the post or download the conversation on iTunes. 

Her Hustlin' Holiday

Oscar Rejects and Finalists: Makeup and Hairstyling

Though it's perhaps unfair to possible future Oscar nominees who are (tentatively) celebrating, the finalist lists that are announced in the categories that have "bake-offs" have an unfortunate side effect: the story by necessity becomes about who didn't make it; "finalist" status is not, we must remember, an Oscar nomination and might not turn into one but rejection is hard fact. The Oscar's makeup branch, though fond of showy prosthetics like old age makeup or fantastical creatures has never nominated a zombie movie and also isn't crazy about horror (despite horror employing so many makeup artists) so I knew the chances weren't great for World War Z or Warm Bodies or Evil Dead or any other genre films though I am a little surprised that Oz: The Great and Powerful was already culled. Yes, Mila Kunis's Wicked Witch looked dumb but this branch's history doesn't always give one confidence that they'll choose well.

Surprising Rejections and Unexpected Embraces after the jump...

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Team FYC: The Evil Dead's Make-up

We're looking at our favorite fringe awards contenders just to widen the conversation. Here's JA on the drenched-with-everything Deadites of The Evil Dead reboot.

Happy Friday the 13th, folks! In the spirit of the day, let us make a wish upon a star (a very very far away star, and probably a red one for all the gore... a red dwarf, then!) that we lived in a world where not only the dead could rise again, but that they would do so to walk upon the stage of the Oscar telecast to collect a trophy for Best Make-Up And Hairstyling. (Granted we're ignoring the latter half of the award's title here - dead people are decidedly hair-don't.) As Nathaniel mentions in his Oscar predictions when he lists World War Z and Warm Bodies as most distant nomination possibilities, for some strange reason the Academy just doesn't nominate zombie films... so let us bridge the gap! The bad guys in The Evil Dead universe aren't zombies. They are dead-ish people possessed by demons. Totally different!

In all seriousness (alright, half seriousness) while Fede Alvarez's reboot of Sam Raimi's much-loved slash much-reviled series was greeted by many fans and non-fans alike with something akin to the emotional equivalent of projectile vomit (although I'll admit I personally enjoyed the heck out of it), the one non-negotiable highlight for fan and non-fan alike has got to be the film's old-school dedication to practical make-up and prosthetic magic. The team behind the Evil Dead reboot managed to honor the original designs of deplorable Deadite decay and destruction, while whipping it up into a modern day supernatural frenzy of red and green and black-as-sin fluids drenching every which corner of the screen. (And maybe right out into the theater itself? I felt deliciously dirtied by it, anyway.)

Did The Dallas Buyers Club show Jared Leto saw off his own arm with an electric carving knife? It most assuredly did not, even though it most assuredly would've been the better film for it. Remind me of the part in American Hustle where it rained fifty-thousand thousand gallons of blood from the sky? Oh wait that didn't happen, because suck it American Hustle. Get back to me when Jennifer Lawrence believably swallows somebody's soul and then maybe we'll talk. (Fab hair though, Jen.)