Saoirse, Queen of Looks

 

Chris here. Two Mary Queen of Scots posters have arrived and the internet has already gone monosyllabic. Saorise Ronan and Margot Robbie are here in vivid primary colors, and honey, they are not here for any of your crap. Given the Ronan has also landed the cover of next month's Vogue, rest assured that Focus Features is hitting the pavement hard and early to solidify one of this year's Best Actress frontrunners. Before the trailer arrives tomorrow and we finally get a glimpse of Ronan's titular role heroine opposite Robbie's Queen Elizabeth, tell us which velvet high collar look is giving you goosebumps!

Beauty vs Beast: The Gump Generation

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" fun-time poll extravaganza - it feels, in the legendary words of Stephanie Tanner, HOW RUDE, to wish Tom Hanks a birthday today with what's come to be seen as his most divisive role, that of the lead character in Robert Zemeckis' 1994 Oscar-magnet Forrest Gump. "We hate that movie now," screams the internet echo chamber.

Except... I kind of don't? I've always been plenty privy to its gross conservative streak - I went to film school in the late 90s, we talked about it a whole bunch, don't worry. I get that it takes a feather-lite tickle to nostalgic Boomer bullshit when a hand grenade might've been more helpful. I was always rooting for Jenny (Robin Wright) and have always found the film's liberal ladling of degradation onto its independently-minded female character, in the words of here and now, hella probelmatic.

And yet despite all that if I stumble upon the film on TV I'll always get sucked in. Zemeckis spins his fable of Straight White Americana with soda-pop commercial zeal, and everybody's so good, iconic really, in their roles. Perhaps we can one day find a middle-ground, watching the movie as an under-amber representation of a vacuum-sealed culture's last gasp; this is the way America saw itself once, lucky and dumb, constantly blundering forward into the next morass without thinking and then making a pretty story out of the good parts.

online survey

PREVIOUSLY Speaking of curdled American Dreams last week's I Tonya contest gave Tonya her gold medal at last - Margot Robbie kneecapped statue-hog Allison Janney with 68% of your vote. Said Suzanne, echoing most of your comments since y'all still mad about last year's Oscars:

"Laurie Metcalf should have won. (And if anyone were going to beat her, it should have been Lesley Manville.) It's Tonya for me."

Beauty vs Beast: Gold Medal Mamas

Jason Adams from MNPP here trying to think cold on a 95 degree day in New York City - let's step back in time then to the cool months of this past winter, known around these parts as Awards Season, and onto the ice, for it is Margot Robbie's birthday today and we never did a "Beauty vs Beast" for I Tonya if you can believe it. I'm a little shocked myself that we never had 'em duke it out. So here, in one corner we have Tonya Harding (Robbie), who fits this boxing talk like a glove, and in the other corner her mother LaVona (a statue-snatching parrot-wearing Allison Janney), who... is also perfectly comfortable existing inside this metaphor of the boxing ring. 

free polls

PREVIOUSLY Last week's contest also tackled an antagonistic mother-daughter duo with Dolores Clairborne, and it was Dolores herself came up on top with a whopping 80% of your vote. Said W.J.:

"That film is a flat-out masterpiece, no joke. Awe-inspiring, fully realized performances all the way around, stirring cinematography and visual effects that stand the test of time. Glad to see it get some love."

Us Links

Click to enlarge• Vanity Fair Everything thats known about Jordan Peele's Get Out follow up Us and a nifty teaser poster for it to your left! Like Get Out it's going for a first quarter of the year release. Yes! We love it when films don't feel the need to open in October, November or December. 
• Viacom on Younger's successful social media strategy
• Coming Soon That didn't take long -- Focus Features has asquired Asghar Farhadi's Everybody Knows for distribution after its Cannes bow
• Variety Empire star Jussie Smollet wants to be 'the black male Barbra Streisand,' adds directing to his repertoire of talents
• MNPP Justin Theroux ten times
• Deadline Nominations for the Golden Trailer Awards honoring the best in film marketing and promotion are out
• IndieWire Terry Gilliam will be debuting his 20 years in the making The Man Who Killed Don Quixote at Cannes
• MNPP fav movies of 1970 (since it's our year of the month, I was searching and now i'm linkin' up)
• Boy Culture Madonna at the Met Gala - she performed!
• THR will the Academy's wave of expulsions prompt more of the same. Some are happy, others claim "moral policing"
• /Film Well, that negotiation took a long time. We've known that Quentin Tarantino wanted Margot Robbie to play the actress Sharon Tate (Roman Polanski's late wife, murdered by the Manson family) in his next film for an entire month. She's finally signed on.

Red Carpet: Best Actresses Hug It Out

by Nathaniel R

Tonya, Mildred, Lady Bird, Eliza, and Katherine

Beauty! This season's five most celebrated leading actresses have 32 Oscar nominations and 5 statues between them. (Of course Meryl accounts for more than half of both totals but what can you do?). But readers hearts were elsewhere this year...

Click to read more ...