On the Linkfront

VF Hollywood Charlize Theron's son loves Emily Blunt... and Frozen
Pajiba posits that Grease 2 is the superior Grease and a feminist triumph
Gothamist On the Waterfront is coming back to movie screens on April 24th and 27th as a Fathom Event. It's rarely seen on the big screen, so go
Variety there is a Three's Company movie in the works. Because.
Guy Goald "The Garlic Awakens"

The Retro Set the 8 most cinematic Duran Duran music videos. They stole from Mad Max, The Night Porter and even Indiana Jones
Towleroad This is awesome. Salt Lake City is renaming 900 South (a pretty cool street as it goes in SLC) "Harvey Milk Blvd". In related news: SLC must have changed a heap since I lived there for this to happen
NY Post Cher: The Musical. It could happen on Broadway
The New York Times Abolitionist Harriet Tubman is coming to the $20 bill. Albeit in 2020. That'll be a fun follow up to the HBO biopic starring Viola Davis (if that one is still on... who knows?)

Vulture Mark Harris's must read piece on Hollywood's strange disrespect for Melissa McCarthy, ICYMI
Pop Matters Duncan Sheik talks about his music for American Psycho on Broadway 
Tracking Board interesting casting: Debra Winger and Tracy Letts will co-star in The Lovers for A24 as a couple planning to break up but having second thoughts  
Stage Buddy Jose interviews Joachim Trier on his first English language film Louder than Bombs

RIP
Variety famous wrestler and TV reality star Chynna, who even played superheroine She Hulk in a porn parody, is found dead in her home 
Guardian remembers director Guy Hamilton who made four James Bond films (including Goldfinger) and other films like Force 10 From Navarone and The Mirror Crack'd 

Oops
We forgot to share the first trailer to Oscar hopeful The Birth of a Nation. If you haven't yet seen it, here it is. 

David Bowie (1947-2016) and a little Velvet Goldmine (1998)

Pt 1 Goodbye to Bowie

One of the most influential artists of the 20th century lost a long battle with cancer in the wee hours of the night as Golden Globe parties were still going, a sobering end to a frivolous evening.

Though it's perhaps inappropriate given Bowie's towering iconicity in pop culture, I couldn't help thinking of Todd Haynes when I heard the news. More...

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Best of '15: Music Videos of the Year

We'll begin our daily year in review partying with some music.

The best music videos are like short films. Or, rather, all music videos are short films. The best of them can give cinematic thrills, though. Not that you'd want two full hours of most of them. Still and all, here are 15 favorites of the year. Apologies to two tremendous auteurs who dabbled in music video this year (P.T. Anderson with Joanna Newsom and Xavier Dolan for Adele) but if you're a legit auteur with great films under your belt, expectations run too high to excited when the video is only "good".

Disclaimer: Endorsement of videos is not neccessarily endorsement of songs though it helps, sure.

Suggestions for what we missed are welcome in the comments since it's easy to miss great ones if a less than spectacularly popular artist makes them...

15 BEST MUSIC VIDEOS OF 2015
(after the jump)

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Production Design Interview: Building the World(s) of "Room"

Once you've seen Room, you're unlikely to forget "Room". To Jack (Jacob Tremblay) "Room" is the entire world. He names everything in it and says hello each morning to the only (inanimate) friends he has ever known. The space had to be tight, visually memorable, and emotionally specific and you had to have cameras function inside it. A tall order. To design Room, and the world outside of it in Room, a Globe nominee for Best Picture, Lenny Abrahamson entrusted the ingeniously creative production designer Ethan Tobman who had previously worked in low profile independent film but attracted much more attention for recent high profile work for music superstars like Beyonce, Eminem and Madonna.

We had the pleasure of talking to Tobman about his process, his time in music video, and how he got emotionally inside and outside of that tiny space to design it. 

NATHANIEL R: Room has such a memorably specific central set, how do you even know where to begin on a project like this?

ETHAN TOBMAN: The way I approach any project, but specifically Room, is to read the script and put it away for a week and think about the things that inspired me about it. The research begins immediately, but I need to allow myself to think pretty abstractly about some of the emotional and thematic concepts. [More...]

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Happy 25th "Mermaids"

Rachel Flax would never approve of anniversary postings.. But Rachel Flax, portrayed by Cher at the tail end or her weirdly brief A-list actress run, didn't always know what was best so celebrate we shall after the jump...

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