Michelle Pfeiffer to Return to Television

True story: I have had this tab open for 6 hours and 14 minutes and this is the first sentence I have typed. I am a bundle of inchoate feelings about this news and may never fully process it. Reports have been coming in since last night that TFE's unofficial goddess (aka Nathaniel's all time favorite Michelle Pfeiffer) is heading to the small screen where she started 36 years ago in "Delta House" (1979), a sorority comedy trying to capitalize on the success of Animal House and "Bad C.A.T.S" (1980) a drama about young undercover cops and car thieves. 

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"a kiss can be even deadlier if you mean it"

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Fairy Tales, Witches, and Oscars. An 87 Year History

Over on Twitter Alex posed an interesting question to me and I thought I'd share it with you. Is Meryl Streep the first actor to be Oscar-nominated for playing a witch, or anyone in a fairy tale for that matter? As far as I can tell the answer is "in the way that you mean, yes" and "I believe so."

Though no witches in the fairy tale or broom-riding sense have been nominated before Streep, technically a witch star turn has won an Oscar and another spell-caster has been nominated. The first would be Ruth Gordon's diabolical coven leaderbusybody in Rosemary's Baby which we discussed in worshipful detail here.  And Sir Ian McKellen was nominated for playing "Gandalf the Grey" who, being a sorcerer, is basically the male equivalent of a witch. Otherwise, no witches. The famous witches we think of when we think of the movies weren't actually nominated. No, not even the greatest of them all, Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz (1939). 

After the jump let's look back through cinema history and see how fairytale or witchy films like Into the Woods have fared at the Oscars shall we?  (This is an incomplete history. Feel free to share things I missed. Especially great witchiness.)

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Quickies

THR People's Choice Winners which are always hilarious ugh: Robert Downey Jr as Favorite Dramatic Actor. For what, The Judge?
Tom & Lorenzo judge the People's Choice red carpet quite harshly
Rotten Tomatoes Golden Tomatoes (limited release): Best reviewed are Selma - movie, Life Itself - doc, and Gloria -foreign film.
Rotten Tomatoes Golden Tomatoes (wide): Best reviewed are 1) Boyhood 2) The LEGO Movie 3) Nightcrawler. Huh. Not sure I would've predicted that threesome but i guess they make total sense
The Atlantic Joe & Kevin discusss "Empire" starring Taraji P Henson. I meant to watch this but forgot
USA Today Michelle Pfeiffer as the pop music muse of the moment - (I listen to "Riptide" all the time just so's you know)  
MNPP debuts a beautiful visual to get us used to the idea of Matt Bomer playing our beloved Montgomery Clift
HitFix 'A Coachella for the rest of us' (i'm not sure I'm okay with Hitfix pretending that they're chief demographic is actressexuals -- that's our thing, right here !)
BDCWire the anniversaries people think to celebrate: this one's on Phil Hartman in Houseguest. I didn't even remember that that existed 

And because Shia Labeouf's cultural shenanigans are way more interesting than his counterparts in fingers in every artsy pie (James Franco) here he is dancing in the new Sia video.

Beauty vs Beast: Guests Gotten, Hosts Humped

Howdy folks, it's Jason from MNPP here with a brand new round of "Beauty Vs Beast" and a brand new chance to pit the sorta-good against the sorta-bad, or the sorta in-between, and for us to choose our side with due diligence (at least with enough enough energy to click one way or the opposite). It was a slow creep realization when Mike Nichols died last week, what we'd lost - I'm not a Broadway person and as of late that's what I'd associated him with, so it was only once I started skimming back through his filmography, and once I read wonderful tributes like Nat's here, that my brain clicked into place that "Why yes, Jason, you've loved and been affected by a ton of this man's work for your entire life, duh." And so I've found myself going back and re-watching things I hadn't seen in many years - Working Girl (Sigourney MVP!) and Silkwood (probably my favorite Nichols film) and then today's piping hot dish of husband-wife combat for the ages...

poll by twiigs.com

If you're here in the US you'll probably spend sometime this week giving thanks to the turkey and stuffing for all the good stuff in your life, and I wouldn't blame anybody who placed these two performances on their Good Stuff Lists. Personally I'm Team George because 1) I've never been much of a Burton fan but I think he's phenomonal in this movie, and 2) I see way too much of myself in Martha, and that's the sort of thing you reflexively snap your eyes away from. You have one week to vote!

PREVIOUSLY Checking back in on the gorgeous ladies of 1870s society, last week's Age-of-Innocence Off ultimately sided with the poor unfortunate soul Countess Olenska (Michelle Pfieffer) over wily Winona's little Miss May; we do love a wounded bird. Said Murtada:

"Countess Olenska was way ahead of her time, a pioneer against vicious social mores. And she endured a false life despite getting a glimpse of a real one. Hasn't she suffered enough? She gets my vote."