Ray of Link

Rope of Silicon early commercials starring the ascendant Michael Fassbender
W Magazine a horizontal pictorial of Fassy. I am more and more worried he'll be the surprise snub at the Oscars. I really am. May my prophecy fail me!
NY Times a profile of George Lucas on the eve of his supposed retirement from blockbuster filmmaking. But first Red Tails (2012)
24 Frames Octavia Spencer is getting choosy about her roles but Hollywood is still not awash in leading roles for acclaimed black actresses.

Pajiba on Michelle Williams body body body GQ photoshoot.
Guardian offers a guide of 20 pictures to watch for at the Sundance Film Festival which begins... tomorrow!
Low Resolution Carnage cast power rankings
FlavorWire on TCM's ten most influential silent films. See, The Artist is good for cinema. People are looking back. Silent films are so wonderful. I hope you've seen a bunch of them.

Kenneth in the (212) fans "react" to Madonna winning her second Golden Globe. LOL.
Boy Culture I knew Matt would have smart things to say about the Madonna Globe win and Elton John's ridiculous pissiness about it. Matt on Madonna's "ungracious" speech. 

What was narcissistic about Madonna's sweet speech, anyway? She accepted an award and thanked her co-writers and her leading lady. Sure, she forgot to self-flagellate, but...

Hee!

Guardian Speaking of The Artist. I knew we'd eventually get a story about total idiot moviegoers. Seems some people want their money back because they didn't realize it was a silent movie. Excuse me, I amend. Not idiots, Assholes. Silent films can be just as amazing as sound films.  
In Contention on the costumes of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Ultra Culture 14 Things That Armie Hammer looks like in J Edgar. Hee
Paper Mag has the season 5 poster for Mad Men but to give it context they include all the others too.

If you must know, not that *I'm* counting, that is 67 days away. How will you spend those days?

Blue Moments With Jodie & Fassy

Was it just me or was last night's Golden Globe ceremony less gold than blue? (It was even unfortunately brown what with all the references to Bridesmaids poop jokes). "Blush" was both a red carpet trend and something that stars were having to do.

The evening literally began with a beaver joke and ended with a dick gag. Both Jodie Foster and Michael Fassbender were good sports about the below-the-belt ribbing but what the hell did they spike the drinks with last night?

Jodie's Beaver
Ricky Gervais set the bawdy tone kicking off with a joke that seemed to be about Mel Gibson (he wasn't allowed to talk about him) but morphed into a much better one about Jodie Foster. He can't mention Mel Gibson...

Especially not Jodie Foster's Beaver. I haven't seen it myself. 

I've spoken to a lot of guys here. They haven't seen it either.  

...But that doesn't mean it's not any good!

One of the talking dumbheads at E! after party actually thought that was a joke about Jodie still being hot after birthing two children. Oh no, honey, no. That's not what the joke was about. 

Elton John did not think this joke was funny in a subsequent cutaway -- though he knew what the joke was about -- but he had a permascowl on his face throughout the evening, only smiling when Morgan Freeman interrupted his own speech to say "Hi Elton"

Fassbender's Frontal
When Clooney won Best Actor, He gave a beautiful shout out to his friend and former co-star Brad Pitt before going straight for the Fassbender dick jokes, even pantomiming a golf swing without a golf club.

Also you get to meet a lot of other wonderful young actors.  I met -- I'd like to thank Michael Fassbender for taking on the frontal nudity responsibility that I had.

Really Michael?  Honestly, can you play golf with your hands behind your back?

Go for it man, do it. 

George, George, George... 

Surely that was as good as a $100 million blockbuster for upping Michael Fassbender's Q Quotient round the world. 

FYC Booklets: Shame

Ever since we shared that Harry Potter "Consider..." book, I've been meaning open to crack open the other FYC ads that have arrived. So let's do that starting with Shame.

Shame... Why didn't this one come in a black plastic or brown paper wrapping like porn? The cover blurb courtesy of New York magazine says

Michael Fassbender has arrived."

Where? We'll be right over!

We get the meaning but that happened with Hunger, thank you, and was immediately confirmed over and over again for the next year and change with the consecutive openings of Inglourious Basterds, Jane Eyre and X-Men First Class and so on. He's not only arrived, he's moved in.

More Shame and modest FYC proposals after the jump

Click to read more ...

Moët BIFA Awards Spread the Movie Wealth

The Stars gathered this evening in London for the Moët British Independent Film Awards which was ruled by one particular Tyrannosaur and also afforded Michael Fassbender his second best actor prize (following the Venice Volpi Cup) for Shame. He needs to keep nabbing these to stay in play for a very competitive Oscar race.

photo via @shamefilm

Photos and a list of winners after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Distant Relatives: The Graduate and Fish Tank

Robert here w/ Distant Relatives, exploring the connections between one classic and one contemporary film.

Sedentary and Sex

So what do a rough and realistic look at poverty in London and a comedy set in the suburbs of California have in common? Well at first glance both are about the events that lead up to and follow an inappropriate relationship. For many reasons, the cinematic arts naturally drift toward stories of forbidden sex. They allow filmmakers to explore the human condition in areas that lend themselves to lack of control. They're filled with all kinds of drama and conflict. And of course sex gets people to sit and watch. But there's more to it. After all, with all of these films about forbidden sex out there, why these two that seem so different? In both The Graduate and Fish Tank, the inappropriate relationships aren't really the problem. Well, they are eventually, but initially they're just a symptom of something greater. Both films have protagonists filled with agitation, ennui, longing, and the desire to do something, anything greater than what they're doing now. And both films postulate that this puts them on the easiest possible path to seduction.

In 1967 The Graduate became a hit because as all we all know, it spoke to an entire generation. But it didn't speak to a generation because every young person in the 1960's was familiar with boinking their parent's friends. Ben Braddock, the titular character came back from school to a safe suburban existence where everyone had unique opinions on what he should be doing with his life. Yet all of these opinions came from people with lives to which he did not aspire. Benjamin's potential seemed endless yet all paths pointed to an undesirable future. Fish Tank's Mia (Katie Jarvis), although an ocean and a continent away and on the opposite spectrum of the class divide finds herself in a similar situation, however she doesn't have the benefit of unlimited prospects. At fifteen, Mia doesn't have much of a future at all. She doesn't like her mother and doesn't want to become her mother, but there doesn't seem to be too many other options. She's not one for academic pursuits and mostly dreams of being a dancer in a non-specific way.

No Someday. No Rainbow.

With Benjamin and Mia adrift, the idea of a promising future slipping further and further away, they turn their attention to the possibilities of the present. Enter someone older, desirable, representative of impulsiveness and rebellion. Both Benjamin and Mia have a need that requires filling. Love and affection? Maybe. But more so a desire to be distracted from their hopeless future, perhaps even a need to be destructive, to have some ownership over a future already in shambles by being careless and responsible for its destruction themselves.

Then there are the seducers. The Graduate's Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) is the epitome of aggressiveness. Fish Tank's Connor (Michael Fassbender) is more subtle. Then again he has to be. A movie about a fifteen year old girl being seduced by an older man has to be handled differently than a film about a male college graduate being seduced by an older woman. An aggressive Connor would have immediately upped the suspense and diminished the realism. But in both films, it doesn't take much for the deed to be done. Yet once Benjamin and Mia realize that their older suitors are still representatives of their ugly futures, they realize that they can't be a part of them. Ambiguous endings abound, though there is the sense that our protagonists have learned something. Been used to be sure, but reset onto a better path? Or do they, in the words of The Graduate director Mike Nichols "become their parents?"

If you still think the comparisons are a bit trying, consider the title of our modern film: Fish Tank. It suggest being both submerged and imprisoned at the same time. It's a clear effective metaphor, and one that The Graduate would know something about too.

 

Other Cinematic Relatives: Lolita (1962), Beau Pere (1981), Fat Girl (2001), Notes on a Scandal (2006)