Maleficent is Coming

Production began on Maleficent (2014) today. A movie we're both totally in for and dreading for very different reasons simultaneously. Of course pre-production has long been afoot as this new photo of the incomparable Angelina Jolie as Disney's best villainess attests. Oscar nominated costume designer Anna B Sheppard (Schindler's List) has been hard at work (obviously) along with the makeup department in replicating the dangerously sharp cheekboned, horned devil look.

Angelina "Maleficent" Joliedglksg

The film will star Angelina as Maleficent and Fanning the Younger as Sleeping Beauty along with Sharlto Copley (District 9), Sam Riley (Control), some Mike Leigh regulars and Juno Temple. Most intriguing is the slightly unexpected production team which boasts Sheppard (best known for WW II era prestige dramas rather than fantasies) Dean Semler on cinematography (better known for westerns like Young Guns and Dances with Wolves than fantasies). Screenwriter Linda Woolverton who helped pen two Disney classics The Lion King and Beauty & The Beast has the script duties though we might have to worry about yet another "backstory" retelling. Doesn't anyone love the inherent mystery of iconic characters anymore? I know I do.

poll by twiigs.com

Superheroes & Oscar. 7 Lessons We've Learned

Last week while reading about The Last of the Mohicans (1992), an astonishing 20 years old now, my mind lept back to early 1993. Even in the pre-internet fueled days of Oscar watching, when we obsessives were fewer in number -- or at least disconnected from each other -- you knew that it was bizarre that such a super, handsome, well acted period epic that made a new Oscar winner (Daniel Day-Lewis) into a much bigger mainstream star would receive only one Oscar nomination (Best Sound). The Last of the Mohicans Oscar performance was shameful but then 1992 was something of a hot mess over at AMPAS largely due to their need to honor Scent of a Woman (wtf?) and the scandal that drowned out the brilliance of Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives.

But let's not get distracted from the main point. That happens when we get stuck in retro Oscar loops. 

Past Iron Man films have won Visual Effects and/or Sound Editing nods. Will The Avengers follow suit?

The sound categories generally come up with shortlists that are not unlike every other category's finalists; a mix of  "Most = Best", "Best Picture = Best" and a random genuinely discerning one-off (or two) of the "wow I'm happy they noticed" variety. See, for example,  last season's Drive nomination which was its sole bid.

So while I was thinking about Sound Mixing and Editing and the Oscars I chanced upon this FYC ad*, via Devour and SoundWorks for The Avengers. I haven't embedded it here because it's one of those videos that starts immediately without you pressing play (hate those!) but it's worth a watch if you click over..... Oscar trivia follows!

Click to read more ...

Pfeiffer Pfriday

I recently got a Pfacebook message from one of her biggest pfans  and he asked me if I'd misplaced my love for the one and only Michelle Pfeiffer. "Of course not!" I wanted to shout only to immediately realize that though she's been far less elusive than usual: magazines, press conferences for Dark Shadows, fresh on DVD with New Year's Eve, at premieres -- I've said pfew words. This must be corrected.

This is my favorite 2012 pfoto of her, taken last month at Cinema Con where she was honored as a "Cinema Icon".

Catwoman black / Susie Diamond sexy.

Since I abandoned my Thursday "Burtonjuice" series which y'all didn't seem to be into, I'll redirect my eyeballs and pfantasize about Pfeiffer each Pfriday till People Like Us premieres... even if it's only a pfoto. Deal?

With Pfeiffer back on the red carpet I was expecting a parade of sleek black but she's been mixing it up: Red and gold to Dark Shadows premieres; black at Cinema Con; gray at the Globes in January (couldn't find a full length pfoto since she didn't do the press lines); purple at New Year's Eve in December.

poll by twiigs.com

Red and black are her standbys (it's easy to see why) but it's nice to see variety. Lock-wise Pfeiffer has never much believed in variety, preferring long curly toussled for most of her career give or take stick straight detours here and there.

With Dark Shadows opening today (more on that later) here's a pflashback to the Batman Returns premiere 20 years ago...

Penguin. Batman. Catwoman. Burton

The Fabulous Linker Boy

Forbes an awesomely nerdy calculation of Smaug's wealth from The Hobbit. It's from the "fictional fifteen" of the wealthiest characters from movies, books, and tv. 
Grantland looks at the end of the full frontal wang era, which peaked with Shame last year and will supposedly die with Magic Mike this summer.
Los Angeles Times Two of the stars of the Tribeca winning Una Noche have defected from Cuba and are seeking asylum in the US. They're a couple in real life and siblings on the screen.
Movie|Line asks everyone to calm down with their "best picture!" proclamations in April. Oopsie. We just completed all of our predictions. But at least The Film Experience has never been driven to "lock!" proclamations before movies are even finished.

The Wrap Any Day Now, a gay adoption drama starring two fine actors (Garrett Dillahunt & Alan Cumming) won the audience award at Tribeca
My New Plaid Pants James Franco and Michael Shannon in compromising positions for The Broken Tower 
24 Frames Henry Selick still hush hush about his Coraline follow up, another spooky sweet stop motion film. It will probably be released in 2013. Scribble it down on your Oscar predictions for next next year. Then he's doing Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book.
The Mary Sue eye makeup looks inspired by The Avengers. As colorful as any superhero comic.
Collider yes, they're still planning to reboot The Fantastic Four
Guardian Olivia Williams isn't one for "flamboyant self display". Perhaps she'll rethink that if she wants Oscar traction this year for Hyde Park on Hudson.

Finally...

if you follow the Oscar race religiously and have for at least a few years you've probably discovered that the craft categories are inherently like the acting categories in that some giants of the trade can't seem to win the gold man despite rich filmographies and stunning year-best work. The Oscars require some luck as well. So I'm very happy to congratulate Michael Ballhaus, pictured above, an amazing cinematographer for his lifetime achievement award at Germany's Lolas this past week. 

His Oscar nominations came for The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), Gangs of New York (2002), and Broadcast News (1987) but he also lit Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), The Age of Innocence (1993), and The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972)... and that's only a handful of the visual wonders he's produced. The Film Experience ♥s him and has ever since La Pfeiffer spun around on that piano and Made Whoopie. We congratulate him sincerely on this career honor.

Pretty Panem Princesses

JA from MNPP here. Have you guys seen the bizarre (and wonderful, genius even, if you ask me) merchandizing choices that the team behind The Hunger Games movies have been making? First I assume we all know the basic story, but if not here's the quick take - in a future dystopia, The Hunger Games are a televised battle fought every year by the children of this society's twelve districts. Fought to the death, that is. The survivor of the battle wins food (yes, food) for the starving people of their district. Such a light and airy premise! Happy, happy stuff.

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Anyway this is a big Hollywood movie they're making so they have to make money somehow, and so naturally they have decided that the best way to sell this movie's premise is with nail polish.

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Naturally! Okay a little more context is needed. The first district is The Capitol, and it's a city and it's filled with rich vain types. There are good people and there are bad people there, it's not cut and dry, but there's  a definite focus on the ways in which we distract ourselves with frivolity in the face of the world's horrors. If you've seen the trailer then you've most definitely seen Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket, who typifies the people therein. That's her in the ad above, and now there's an entire website devoted to "Capitol Couture" and it looks like any old fashion website. Except, you know, with an undercurrent of violent, horrible death.

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Since the books are very critical of this thoughtless extravagance by the super-rich and the literally life-or-death inequalities deeply embedded within these societies, I've seen a lot of people online who have gotten upset that the movie is using these same kinds of frivolous extravagances as its marketing tools. But I dunno... it seems kind of brilliantly ballsy to me. I haven't seen the nail polish in person but if I'd been the one designing it I'd have really wanted it to say somewhere on the label that this bottle was bottled by only the most downtrodden of serfs, working the most horrible hours you can imagine. And when you're done getting dolled up, you're going to look like a crazy purple clown lady, won't that be just terrific?

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 Can you imagine? But even without getting that explicit, I really do feel as if the nudge is there. Come for the pretty fingernails, and stay for the state-sanctioned murder of innocents! Or am I projecting? What's y'all's take on this?