Links: Lynskey, Castillo, Cho, and Missing 80s Movies

• THR a reporter on the next tense moments at Netflix as they try to make their original movies more culturally impactful to continue to lure filmmakers. Roma and The Irishman are going to be crucial to their plans
• Awards Daily Melanie Lynskey talks about her work on Castle Rock
• EW high powered producer Craig Zadan, who brought lots of musicals to the screen and also produced the Oscars, died unexpectedly at just 69. Hollywood is paying tribute.
• Playbill cast announced for the Broadway aimed Beetlejuice musical. Includes Kerry Butler in the Geena Davis role!

• ScriptNotes a great discussion about the new silent-movie like loss of old movies (particularly from the 70s and 80s) in the streaming era. It springs from this article...
• BlackList "In search of the last great video store" - the writer had a craving for Fresh Horses starring Molly Ringwald and couldn't find it. (We've been there MANY times)
• Filmmaker Raúl Castillo talks about his career from his theater roots, through Looking, and on to We the Animals
• Variety Aretha Franklin apparently didn't leave a will before she died
• Coming Soon Crazy Rich Asians sequel is moving forward. That's great news for Gemma Chan and Harry Shum Jr who feature prominently in the book's sequel
• My New Plaid Pants John Cho seven times
• The AV Club Hulu wants to revive Veronica Mars
• Vulture looks into the climactic mahjong showdown in Crazy Rich Asians

Barbara Harris (1935-2018)

by Nathaniel R

Barbara Harris in The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979)

Sad news yesterday. One of the nation's best and most underappreciated actresses Barbara Harris passed away at 83 from lung cancer. The Chicago native got her start as a teenager on local stages and was an original member of Chicago's famed Second City troupe. Her intermittent screen career sprang initially from her stage successes. Though her filmography is mostly in the 1970s, she made a few 80s movies before retiring including Peggy Sue Got Married, Grosse Point Blank, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Curiously for such a talented thespian of both stage and screen, she seemed somewhat ambivalent about her career, stating that she didn't miss acting after her retirement...

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"the air is humming..."

...and something great is coming. 🎵"

Months of Meryl: A Prairie Home Companion (2006)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

 

#33 —Yolanda Johnson, a Midwestern songstress and longtime staple of the titular radio show.

MATTHEW: Two of the most revered artists in American cinema history, Robert Altman and Meryl Streep each built their lauded careers by probing into characters from countless corners of the world, driven by an ardent and undiminished interest in the micro — but never minor — idiosyncrasies of collective human behavior. For those who believe in the supernatural forces of fate, there is something undeniably kismetic in Streep and Altman’s first collaboration, which would turn out to be this mighty auteur’s valedictory effort. A Prairie Home Companion, Altman’s final film, is a moving backstage comedy that sketches out the (fictional) final broadcast of the historic and beloved Minnesota radio variety show of the title, created and hosted by Garrison Keillor, who also scripted the picture. (Keillor was fired from his program in November of last year over allegations of sexual misconduct.) Brimming, like all of Altman’s work, with an abundance of people and all their peculiarities, A Prairie Home Companion relies on the character-inhabiting talents of an irresistible and excitingly-paired ensemble, whose every member gets ample opportunity to ingest spirit and specificity into a wide array of oddballs and straight-men, from Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly’s ribald cowboys to Maya Rudolph’s quietly panicked and heavily pregnant stage manager to the pair of aging songbirds brought to fanciful, rueful life by Streep and Lily Tomlin.

As Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson, the two surviving members of a four-sister singing act, Streep and Tomlin are, quite simply, a match made in acting heaven...

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Soundtracking: "Chi-Raq"

by Chris Feil

Few filmmakers understand the power of the soundtrack as well as Spike Lee. The full force iconography of Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” in Do the Right Thing is an integral part of the American cinematic lexicon. But there’s also the era authenticity of Summer of Sam, the haze of jazz over Mo Better Blues, and the largely undiscovered but brilliantly precise filming he did of Broadway’s Passing Strange. It’s a wonder that the closest he’s come to a true musical is Chi-Raq.

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