Beauty vs Beast: Koo Koo Ka Choose

Howdy and Happy Monday it's Jason from MNPP here on this, the day that the great Dustin Hoffman is turning 79 years old. How do you think he now views the concerns of his most famous character Benjamin Braddock of The Graduate, from the opposite vantage point of age? Of course he's much older now than Anne Bancroft was as Mrs. Robinson (now that I think about it I'm actually right around Mrs. Robinson's age myself! Weird!) so he probably looks back at Ben with tired eyes at this point. Heck I do myself, although I don't know if I entirely sympathize with Mrs. Robinson's self-destructive behavior either. But where do you stand? That's right it's time for this week's "Beauty vs Beast" ...

PREVIOUSLY We are smearing our sad clown make-up off this morning and waving an over-sized glove goodbye to International Clown Week - last week's competition of clown couples in Short Cuts fell on the "Julianne Moore & Matthew Modine" side, probably because of the film's still infamous full-frontal fight scene - said Mark, speaking truth to privates:

"The genius of Moore is you watch her face in this instead of her special lady place."

Beauty vs Beast: Send in the You-Know-Whats

Howdy folks it's Jason from MNPP here wishing everybody a candy-colored start to a candy-colored week - that's right, today marks the first day of International Clown Week, held every year right at the start of August, aka the best time to make that make-up run right off your face and give you the time honored "Creepy Clown Effect." But while (in a weird but total coincidence) I may have just started re-reading Stephen King's It this week I'm not going to make you think about Scary Clowns today - oh I know for some of you there is no other kind, but I'm going to try to temper that with Auterism because...

... hey remember that scene in Robert Altman's 1993 masterpiece Short Cuts where Claire (Anne Archer), a professional clown, and her husband Stuart (Fred Ward) get blasted at dinner with new friends Marion (Julianne Moore) and Ralph (Matthew Modine), and instead of the partner-swapping you expect to happen they all just put on clown make-up and dance around instead? I sure do. It's one of the many right turns the film takes when you've braced yourself for a left. So let's face off these two couples for "Beauty vs Beast" this week...

If you need a refresher both couples are in the middle of personal crises -- Marion & Ralph (Moore & Modine) are the couple who have the long fight about her cheating whilst Juli proves she's a natural redhead, while Stuart has just told Claire (Ward & Archer) that he and his fishing buddies fished around a corpse all weekend long. In the grand tradition of Altman-esque character studies, they're all a bit beastly.

PREVIOUSLY Last week we ventured to Mortville with John Waters and his muses for a look at one of his most underappreciated efforts, Desperate Living (and the poll showed just how underappreciated the film remains, with one of our tiniest voting totals ever) - it was Queen Carlotta (Edith Massey) who was carried by her loyal litter of man-servants to the victory, taking 55% of the vote. Said Ken S:

"I'll teach you to arouse royalty! - Team Carlotta all the way!"

HBO’s LGBT History: And the Band Played On (1993)

Manuel is working his way through all the LGBT-themed HBO productions... 

Last week we looked at a biopic of one of the most reviled political figures in twentieth century American history in Citizen Cohn. This week we continue our collection of HBO AIDS films (notice that every single film we’ve discussed so far has been centered on the epidemic: from the Harvey Fierstein chamber piece, Tidy Endings, to Epstein & Friedman’s Oscar winning doc, Common Threads and even that James Woods’-led biopic which structured itself around Cohn’s own battle with the disease) by looking at And the Band Played On, a film you should all watch if for no other reason than to see the eclectic cast Aaron Spelling (yes, he produced it!) assembled.

Lily, Sir Ian, and a troubled production history after the jump...

Click to read more ...

"That was a tough summer for me and Modine"

GEENA DAVIS. God, we haven't seen her in way too long.  Here she is poking fun of her movie past (Yes, you were Thelma!) and a fun shout out to Matthew Modine, too.

Geena Davis Archery Tricks from Geena Davis

Link Bowl

AP the inventor of Etch-a-Sketch has died. If I still had one still, i would draw you the saddest frown right now. Unhappy about this!
YouTube "Upside Downton Abbey" via Sesame Street
Playbill interviews Sebastian Stan who has now made a name for himself on all three actors mediums: film, tv, and stage (with Picnic, previously discussed)
BuzzFeed why The Amazing Spider-Man sequel will prove to be a bizarro version of Spider-Man 3 

Comics Alliance this made me lol'an extensive discussion of Batman punching animals'
Salon Richard Kramer remembers his mentor Pauline Kael
/Film Matthew Modine has had his diaries from Full Metal Jacket made into an iPad App. Great idea.
Carpetbagger Wreck-It Ralph scores at the Annie Awards
Empire Johnny Depp might finally play a non cartoon again. He could attend Black Mass, a true story crime drama, with Barry Levinson directing. He's done this genre before to varying but mostly positive results (Public Enemies, Donnie Brasco) 

Awards Daily on the conjoined fall & rise of Zero Dark Thirty and Argo
The New Yorker nominated The Paperboy for future camp classic now that it's on DVD "where it belongs"
Jeremy Helligar on why Joaquin Phoenix should win the Oscar instead of Day Lewis. Love this bit... 

Quell was a mix of standout characteristics of at least three of the characters played by Phoenix's Best Actor Oscar competition, a drunk like Washington's Whip Whitaker, cuckoo like Cooper's Pat Solitano (though hardly recovering) and criminal like Jackman's Jean Valjean (again, hardly reformed). If The Master had been set 100 years earlier, circa 1850, I have no doubt that Freddie would have wanted to free the slaves, too.

Do you have any impossible dream of Daniel's third going to someone else?