Links: Refn Gosling Love, Tang Wei Wins, Green Lantern Bile

Alt Screen rounds up takes on Martin Scorsese's New York New York (1977) now that it's freshly released on Blu-Ray. Liza Minnelli is so great in that movie. I'm so excited to see it again. The Blu-Ray is still in its wrapping though. Must get to that soon.
Film Dr "12 notes comparing a purple bottle cap with Green Lantern" (One thing I deeply appreciated about dumbass movies like Green Lantern is the creativity they inspire in critics.)
<--- Movie|Line goes to the LA Premiere of Drive (2011) and enjoys Nicolas Winding Refn's freewheeling intro speech including this bit.

Now, I want to thank Ryan Gosling, because he gave me the opportunity to come to Hollywood and do this movie with him. It all started on a very strange blind date between us that led to a very strange, notsexual encounter, but it led to a mental creation between us. And of course, we couldn’t have done that without Jim Sallis’s book called Drive, which I highly recommend. 

i09 great find: an old "Equal Pay Act" PSA starring Batgirl from the Batman tv series.  ♥ 
Twitch has a series of neon movie posters from artist Mr Whaite. Here's Pulp Fiction.

I said god damn.

Pajiba "how homophobia lost its cool" good piece from a hetero man which kicks off with the homoeroticism of Michael Fassbender & James McAvoy in X-Men First Class
The Awl really lets loose the bile with Green Lantern and what's become of a too dominante subgenre of movies. (Note: We all know that reviews do not exist in a cultural vacuum so will the mass hatred for Green Lantern help or hurt Captain America reviews next month? It could go either way...) 
IndieWire Vera Farmiga hits Provincetown to promote Higher Ground 

FINALLY...

I'd like to personally congratulate Tang Wei, who many fine actress connoisseurs have been rooting for ever since her startling debut in Ang Lee's Lust, Caution (2007). In the past two months she's picked up not one but two awards for recent performances in the romantic films Crossing Hennessy and Late Autumn. To make those rewards more impressive, one was from China (and remember they forbade her from working for a time after the sexual explicitness of Lust, Caution) and the other was a Korean Award which had reportedly never gone to a Chinese actress before. You can see her winning that one in this clip below. (She starts in Korean, switches to English, and then moves over to her native tongue.)

Will Crossing Hennessy and Late Autumn ever make it to US or European theaters? Stay tuned.

Lisbeth Salander's Wardrobe Malfunction

The internet is very excited today by this snapshot of a poster image for David Fincher's take on the popular property The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, in which Daniel Craig embraces gothic Rooney Mara from behind.

It's a great image but it immediately gave me an acid flashback to Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson's infamous Superbowl calamity. Perhaps Janet Jackson paved the way, martyring her career, so that decorative nipplage could one day wallpaper the land in movie poster form? Well done, Janet!

 The Playlist, who posted this image, suggest that David Fincher won a marketing war with this, but I can't imagine that this is the poster that will actually be up all over movie theaters... at least not in the USA where nudity is verboten... and this is tame for a European poster but it's still neat and grim looking.

The tagline is fun but no match for the "THE. FEEL. BAD. MOVIE. OF. CHRISTMAS." Here's the cleaned up red-band trailer to follow that camcorder version.

and now the American teaser poster (notice the order of the dates changes)

Curio: Poster Designs by Matt Needle

Alexa here. Matt Needle is a freelance designer living in the UK with a knack for poster design. I've been following his work since last year, when I was on the lookout for cool indie posters for Inception.  Lately he's added so many new designs to his portfolio that I can barely keep up! Here are some highlights from his film poster collection; check out his flickr to see more, including some great music and television posters (and a very cool Don Draper).  All are available for purchase from his bigcartel shop.

Click to see Hitchcock, Miyazaki and more...

Click to read more ...

Sidney Lumet: 43 Feature Films, 5 Oscar Nominations, 1 Fine Career.

A goodbye with gratitude to prolific director and Honary Oscar winner Sidney Lumet who died this morning at the age of 86 from lymphoma. He was small in stature (5'5") but his legacy looms large as one of Hollywood's most prolific and beloved directors. 

He was a stage actor and a television director before moving into feature films. Actors always loved him and he returned that love guiding several of them through signature roles. He worked with some stars multiple times including, notably: Sean Connery, Timothy Hutton, James Mason, and Al Pacino. The stage-to-screen movie, the courtroom drama, the social conscience narrative, and the true crime story would never have been the same without him. He is survived by his wife of 31 years Mary Gimbel, and children and grandchildren (you'll remember that his daughter Jenny Lumet wrote the blissful Rachel Getting Married screenplay. Our thoughts go out to the family today.

After the jump, the posters for all 43 of his theatrical features with thanks to google, the IMDb and IMP!

How many have you seen?

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Link's Cutoff

Your Movie Buddy has already named a few "best of the year" posters (and it's only March!) including this absolute beaut for Meek's Cutoff to your left. Seriously. I like this poster better than the movie and I like the movie pretty well.
The Wrap has an open letter to David E Kelley about his new Wonder Woman series that doubles as a love letter to Joss Whedon. I think it's time the internet gave up that ghost as sad as it is to say farewell to.
Scene Stealers gives a fist up to Duncan Jones's Source Code with our Jake Gyllenhaal.
Slant also looks at the new scifi tinged thriller
Towleroad speaking of... some lame person at SXSW tried to snap a photo of Jakey doing his business in the bathroom. Uncool.
Critical Condition unburies 80s stinker Just One of the Guys and treats it like a hidden treasure.
Old Hollywood shares a great 70s quote from Peter Weir on Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975).
My New Plaid Pants Eeek. How did I miss this old Michael Fassbender commercial? So funny. And naked.

Finally, The Hairpin has curated an Netflix instant watch program called "Newman's Ownly" that sounds more delicious, soul-fattening, and spiritually satiating than any solo triple feature evening has any right to be

"'Hombre' means 'man'…and Paul Newman is 'Hombre'."

Should you partake in this orgy of celluloid Newmanliness, I only ask that you make it a double feature instead or replace Hud (1963) with another film somehow. Hud should be rented on DVD or simply bought on BluRay as it deserves better resolution than the generally good but still streamed "Instant Watch" can provide. It's one of those crispest and most perfect looking black and white films ever made, like it was carved from the purest cinematic marble by Michelangelo himself. There's one cold-eyed close-up of Newman that is so heart stopping I needed a defribulator to make it through the rest of the movie. Plus, Hud (1963) is one of the best movies of its entire decade so give it the space in your head that it deserves.