Curio: On a Cute Streak

Alexa here with your weekly arts and crafts. Chelsea Patterson moved to Los Angeles with an art degree and a dream.  When creative work was hard to find, she started waitressing and eventually decided to focus her energies making art celebraing her favorite movies. Her goal was to keep her designs full of delightful details, and her etsy shop CuteStreakDesigns was born. I like her off-kilter take on some of my favorites, like this print for The Conversation.

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Dirty Grandpa Poster

Manuel here getting your week started with a poster that is hard to come to terms with.

Everything we know about this upcoming comedy comes courtesy of all the on-set shots of Efron which were deliciously skintastic. (JA has been dutifully (un)covering them at his blog.) There's also a trailer below, but the poster is more fascinating. How well-known is that Hoffman/Graduate shot among the young ones the film's tone is obviously courting. 

Or, perhaps it's an attempt at finding a middle ground between the Zefron fans and the De Niro fans? Are you at all excited about this very random pairing of inter-generational leading men?

The Star Wars Poster Awakens

After brief consideration of an annotated poster, The Film Experience's official position is that we actually don't know enough about the new Star Wars (by choice!) nor do we want to do the research so as to insure some sense of discovery in the the movie theater. Most of you weren't born yet but I saw Empire Strikes Back in the theater and I cannot tell you the seismic jolt that shook the sold out theater during the "Luke, I am your father" business. Filmmakers and even marketers used to understand the power of a good surprise in a crowded room.

Nevertheless one can't help but look! Surely you agree. After the jump, thoughts I had (uncensored as they arrived...)

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Posterized: Joe Wright's "Pan" and Peter Pan Movies

Jackman and Wright talk on setYou have to admit that Joe Wright was asking for it. He went and titled his Peter Pan epic, Pan, which is functioning like a command for the nation's critics who have done so mercilessly. It probably didn't help that he uglified one of our most handsome movie stars (no one needs to see Hugh Jackman going the Johnny Depp route). Worse, he truly stepped in it early on by casting the very white Rooney Mara in one of the few iconic roles meant for a Native American actress. (This issue has been discussed at very high volumes in the past few years since moviegoers and the media are sick to death of Hollywood's white-washing. But Hollywood is still wearing ear plugs.)

Will you see his latest despite the reviews?

And how many Peter Pan related movies have you seen? (More on Peter and Joe after the jump)

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Saoirse Ronan, All Grown Up

Behold the new poster for Oscar hopeful Brooklyn (reviewed at Sundance) which arrives in theaters on November 6th from Fox Searchlight. 

Though it's not half as distinctive or even film-representative as the earlier teaser poster, one thing it does aptly convey is the maturation of Saoirse Ronan. Brooklyn is her bridge movie. She was a famous teen (see: Atonement). Now, at 21, she's an actress fully ready for those complicated adult roles that will surely come her way. She's terrific in the film, charting this young immigrant's progress from overwhelmed mouse to confident young romantic heroine.

the earlier more beautiful posterTrivia Alert 
Should Saoirse be nominated in Best Actress at 21, she won't break the record of fastest to two nominations. That record ain't budging since Angela Lansbury has held it for about 69 years now, winning her first two nominations by 20. But she will break the crowded tie for Lansbury's runner up (Kate Winslet, Sal Mineo, and Jennifer Lawrence all got to two Oscar nominations by the age of 22). 

Do you think she'll manage it?