Link-a-round

Cinemascope Ari Folman (Waltz With Bashir) is working on a stop motion animated film about Anne Frank. Yes, that Anne Frank
The Stake has a great piece on Tina Fey's firestarter comedy, especially its willingness to constantly poke at our racial discomforts
Playbill has fun making Stephen King's books into stage musicals
Pajiba has seen (well the first ten minutes) of a porn parody of Guardians of the Galaxy with characters named Star Load, and Bonin
EW shares the 20 best episodes of Mad Men. Great choices overall - I'll be furious forever that Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss didn't win Emmys for "The Suitcase"
MNPP I missed Matthew Goode's birthday but this is the perfect gif set with which to celebrate

Women and Hollywood the annual Crystal Awards for women in film are here and this year's honorees are Nicole Kidman and Ava DuVernay
Boy Culture celebrates the one and only Buster Crabbe with some pre-code footage
Deep Dish celebrates Bette Davis on her birthday with lots of clips from TV & film
The Guardian raves about Carey Mulligan's career and artistry. She is currently playing Bill Nighy's ex-lover on Broadway at the moment in Skylight. Yes, Nighy. He is 36 years older.
Theater Mania yes, it's true. Cats will be revived on Broadway
Salon Michelangelo Signorile writes about the bleak state of gay characters on TV, usually sexless even in shows where their straight counterparts have plenty of physical intimacy (this is especially sad to read after Looking's cancellation though the article doesn't mention that)
Comics Alliance the superhero craze has officially jumped shark? an Avengers inspired menswear line is upon us. No, not a boys underoos line, a menswear line. Kind of brings us back to that gender doublestandard discussion again, right?
Huff Post Comedy speaking of double standards read this great piece on the headlines that would follow Madonna if she did the same things celebrity men her age or older did
Maria Shriver's Blog also has a piece on ageism and sexism via the prism of Madonna
i09 proof that awards are always political -- and it isn't just Oscar that's perpetually under attack -- in this investigative piece about a very weird two years for sci-fi's "Hugo" Awards
TV Line "The Muppet Show" will be returning to ABC at some point. Let this serve as your reminder that they tried to revive it one other time in the 1990s and Michelle Pfeiffer was a guest! Here is video proof. (Yes, I was very excited that night)

Unfortunately, as in The Muppets (2011) they thought it wise to invent a new Muppet character that wasn't even a tenth as good as any of the originals. Why does this keep happening? I'm all for shaking things up lest one be fossilized in nostalgia but if you can't come up with a good character DO NOT steal screen time from the good ones!

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. 

More...

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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.