Podcast Extra: The Trouble with Diane Keaton

In this free flowing conversational extra [23 minutes]  Joe Reid tells Nick, Katey and Nathaniel  about where his devotion to Diane Keaton has taken him: to the "nothing" of And So It Goes (2014). We discuss the dangers of "comfort zones" and working with paychecks.

The conversation drifts to Edge of Tomorrow and Broadway musicals including Into the Woods. But mostly the 1989 & 1990 Oscar ceremonies. We always end up at Oscars. It's a sickness! Name checked in this extra episode: Emily Blunt, John Lithgow, Graham Greene, Michael Douglas, John Lithgow, Annette Bening, The Silence of the Lambs, Reba McEntire, Michelle Pfeiffer, and the musical stylings of Jasmine Guy. 

You can listen at the bottom of the post or wait till it shows up on iTunes (which usually takes about a day). Continue the conversation in the comments. We'd love to hear your comments on how it's going with Diane Keaton and your memories of the 89 and 90 Oscars, should you have any that is.

Articles Referenced: 
Joe & Kevin on Diane Keaton's career, Nathaniel on King Lear, and Nick & Joe's halfway mark capsule brilliance. 

And So It Goes...

Live(ish) from Comic Con: Marvel-ous Ant Man & Avengers 2

Anne Marie here, wrapping up coverage from San Diego Comic Con after 8 straight hours of studio announcements. Marvel had some major obstacles to overcome for its brief one hour panel. Edgar Wright's departure from Ant Man had generated negative press, and not everyone was thrilled with the studio's decision to put out release dates unattached to any actual films. WB had been gearing up for a fight, but overall so far Hall H's announcements had been more misses than hits. As the studio delayed 15 minutes into its start time and fans grew mad, the question hung in the air: could Marvel deliver?

Answer: Hell yes.

Ant Man
Marvel president Kevin Feige introduced a panel designed to assuage fan fears: Paul Rudd (new Ant Man), Michael Douglas (old Ant Man), Corey Stoll (confirmed as villain Yellow Jacket), Evangeline Lilly (Ant Man's love interest) and Peyton Reed, who stepped in to direct. Reed was quick to flash his geek cred: 20 straight years at Comic Con and a stint in a band named the Johnny Quests. But none of that really proves his credentials as Wright's replacement. Marvel even produced a minute long teaser, despite the fact that they don't start shooting for another two weeks. It's more than WB provided for Batman v Superman, but it's not enlightening. Here's the weirdest moment of the panel:

Paul Rudd: I'm popping my Comic Con cherry, and it's as advertised.

Chris Hardwicke: If you're going to do it, do it with 7,000 people.

Michael Douglas: I've popped enough cherries.

So, Michael Douglas is kind of creepy. This isn't news, but it bears repeating.

Avengers: Age of Ultron
The panel assembling half of the Avengers team was charming enough, but the real show began at approximately 6:40pm, when 7,000 geeks in Hall H collectively lost their minds over the trailer for the next Avengers movie. Set to a creepy version of "There Are No Strings On Me" (the advantage of being owned by Disney), it teased Iron Man's Hulk-Busting armor, an army of Ultrons (that look suspiciously like Iron Man drones), and twins Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver (played by Elizabeth Olson and Aaron Taylor Johnson and totally unrelated to the Xmen versions) dealing some serious damage.

Elizabeth Olson almost slipped up and said the word "mutant." The crowd groaned a bit. #SDCC2014 #Marvel #copyright

— Anne Marie (@WeRecycleMovies) July 27, 2014

Age of Ultron promises to be much, much darker. Despite a lively banter-filled dinner party opening, the trailer ended with Iron Man holding Captain America's broken shield at the base of a mountain of superhero corpses. Chris Evans keeps saying he's out a after Captain America is over. Maybe it's over earlier than we expected.

We ended with two final announcements of the night: Guardians of the Galaxy 2 has been set for a 2017 release. Says a lot about Marvel's confidence, since Guardians 1 won't be released until Friday. But who cares, because more importantly Josh Brolin is Thanos! He walked out wearing the Infinity Gauntlet.

And that's the end of my Hall H coverage! This year was 15 hours of waiting in line and 8 hours of studio announcements. I'll be back to wrap things up Sunday night after I've showered, slept, and questioned my life choices for a bit.

Post-Globe Thoughts / Linkings

My apartment gets too much sunlight and I have no window blankets. So I can't see the TV during the day so I can't rewatch the Globes so I can't blog more about them until tonight and then who knows if any of us will be in the mood when I can't so maybe I won't and I just don't know anymore. The tragedy of it all!

Until then, I devour uneaten party snacks and commence with the linkings...

first a few non-Globes items
EW really thoughtful piece on Armond White and why he was just expelled from the NYFCC 
Critic Wire "Should film critics give out awards?" Of course they should. Awards are just another form of evaluation and needn't be thoughtless. They just shouldn't do it badly, ot to "predict" the Oscar race.
THR Tang Wei falls for a money scam. I hope they find the culprits but the greater crime is the career momentum the Chinese government stole from her post Lust Caution. Can we prosecute that, instead?
Dark Horizons Joseph Gordon-Levitt on the upcoming Sandman adaptation 
The Playlist Martin Scorsese on the campaign trail with Wong Kar Wai for The Grandmaster. I still have no firm read on whether or not that is making it into Best Foreign Film 

today's must read 
W Mag John Waters on staying famous once you've achieved celebrity. It's a pretty great read. Consider this bit:

If you’re really lucky, you might survive a disaster, and that’s a sure way to get your Wikipedia page updated if it’s been dormant for too long. My friend Pauline jokes that if she were in an airplane crash with me and she was the only one to die, the headline would read: air disaster! john waters lives. one dead. 

okay back to the globes
Vanity Fair Bobby Finger's imaginary Globe conversations are super. I love Streep's world domination plot (although hasn't she kind of already accomplished that?)
NY Daily News ok, I need to understand whether or not Nicholas Hoult and Jennifer Lawrence are together. Or are they like Friend with Benefits. Make up your minds!
Variety inside the after parties. Fun(nish) photos of the rich and famous at play
Zimbio more after party pics
TFE I looked back on my Globe predix and was shocked to realize that I did REALLY well (though I generally suck at Globe winner predictions) only missing stuff the mainstream media doesn't care about (but I do) like foreign, screenplay, & both music prizes among the film awards! I even somehow correctly predicted that 12 Years a Slave would only win Best Picture. I guessed HORRIBLY with the TV awards but I've never claimed to know any better there

drawing by Liza Donnellytoday's must see
Liza Donnelly took live-blogging in a fresh direction by live-sketching the Golden Globes. Damn fabulous. 

On That Woody Allen Cecil B DeMille Thing...
Ronan Farrow twitter's favorite fusion of political pundit/celebrity spawn/hot guy, wasn't pleased. Lots of people joined in the Globe-shaming. But really, now. It's so easy to judge from afar but if we are going to deny artists prizes for their work based on their moral character, actual crimes, alleged crimes, grudges people hold against them and the like would we have any prizes at all? I'm not even exaggerating. Prizes for the arts should be about the arts always, and not about someone's character. There's no prize for "Most Nice" or "Best Person" and even if there was, wouldn't showpeople be terrible judges of it? (Including Mia Farrow who is willing to testify on Roman Polanski's behalf but Woody Allen honors are beyond the pale?)
Salon has some issues with it, too, although calling out the Globes for their lack of regular honors to women is relatively speaking, misleading, since they're SO MUCH BETTER ABOUT IT than the Oscars ever have been and only a few sites (like, um, this one you're on right now) take AMPAS to task for it.
Shawn Levy did a post earlier this summer that's especially relevant now, detailing how strong Woody's Oscar history is in terms of directing actors. It's not just strong but it's varied which he gets absolutely no credit for as the article amply illustrates.

Exit Image
Jason at MNPP dubs this Globe after party pic "The Picture That Broke The Internet" and then hedges with a "this could finally be the one to do it" but either way, yes! I mean, at least it broke tumblr. I haven't been on today but I'm quite sure it's dead.

If you somehow squeezed in Tom Hiddleston for a three-way, all the breakings, everywhere.

This awesome image unfortunately reminds that it was a very BRO evening at the Globes with lots of frathouse like back patting going on. This was probably best exemplified by Michael Douglas and Jared Leto's tone deaf acceptance speeches for gay roles (ouch, you really wanna play it like that?) though I think it's unfortunate that McConaughey is getting roped into that conversation because his speech was not offensive and people are stretching ungenerously when they go there, the Leo for Wolf win after that 'supermodel's vagina welcome' (Fey & Poehler, you delight), and a million photos of handsome powerful rich (mostly) white straight guys pointing at the camera, with smug smiles on their faces (lampooned by Melissa McCarthy as Matt Damon on stage in point of fact).

And so on and so on...

Dude.

Review: "Behind the Candelabra"

This review was originally published in my column at Towleroad

Too much of a good thing is wonderful."

That was a signature catchphrase of Liberace, the classical pianist who became a household name as a flamboyant nightclub entertainer. Liberace was born Vladziu Valentino Liberace but known by "Walter" or "Lee" to his intimates -- even the names were too many… too much! He didn't just popularize the catchphrase but lived it maintaining his most unlikely monster career for roughly four decades -- which is, what, a century in showbiz years?

The new biopic BEHIND THE CANDELABRA, premiering tonight on HBO, is smart enough to adopt it as tagline. But is it too much? Is it wonderful? Hollywood studios thought so, at least in regards to the first question. Director Steven Soderbergh hasn't been shy about telling the press that the story was too gay for the movie studios and while we can't know the ins and outs of how true this is or to what extent he tried to make it happen as a theatrical feature before going to television, it sounds trueish. Hollywood has been curiously reluctant to relive the mainstream success of Brokeback Mountain (a major hit grossing nearly $100 million in domestic release) even though they're usually downright shameless about cashing in on any success with quick imitation.

But bless Soderbergh for pushing it forward even if he's a weird fit for the material...

Click to read more ...

Introducing... Jodie Foster

With the Cecil B. DeMiller tribute coming at the Golden Globes and her 50th birthday hitting this coming Monday, we're celebrating the one and only Jodie Foster.

Jodie Foster is one of only a tiny handful of full fledged child stars to become even more legendary as an adult movie star. She remains the modern era's gold standard for making the transition but who could've predicted it in 1972 when she made her first feature Napoleon & Samantha. She's not really the star (that'd be Johnny Whitaker as Napoleon) but the film had the foresight to open with her face and that distinctive voice. 

She gets the movie's very first shot and line. 

Ouch, I bumped my knee!

Auspicious beginnings! 

a totally docile animal actor. Johnny & Jodie climb all over this big cat, pull its tail, shove their hands in its mouthNapoleon, tells her to shush with a "who cares about your stupid knee?" Turns out moviegoers around the globe would  -- the stupid knee and all the rest of her, too!

Napoleon and Samantha is a really weird watch in 2012. Just about the only recognizable  thing about it is its Disney Fixation with orphanhood (that fixation is still with us) but everything is truly foreign, dated or bizarre: a retiring circus performer Napoleon meets in the woods; a lion who only drinks milk and that barely anybody seems freaked out about when they meet; Michael Douglas as a kind-hearted hippie goat farmer with a political science degree (don't ask); a chase scene with Douglas stunt double in a Bad Grandma Michael Douglas wig and porn-ready music scoring; an escaped mental patient in the woods (!); It's a weird weird movie disguised as an innocuous family one.

But the time capsule treats of seeing an intermittently bored baby Jodie trying to remember her lines (this is not her finest hour) and watching Michael Douglas all twenty-something young and hippie sexy...

... not to mention the unintentionally hilarious visual juxtaposition of Jodie's butch gait in little girl dresses with Michael Douglas hippie fey exuberance, made it oh so worthwhile! I meant to just grab an image but I couldn't turn the damn thing off.