Linker in the Rye

WTF w/ Marc Maron talks to Peter Bogdanovich
Yahoo! has the first image of Michael Fassbender in Assassin's Creed but don't get too excited because it could be anyone, given that the character loves those face covering hoods
EW everything Mads Mikkelsen wore on Hannibal thanks to costume designer Christopher Hargadon. So much fine suitage!
Awards Daily Nicolas Hoult to play JD Salinger in a biopic Rebel in the Rye. Danny Strong is on writer/director duties
Variety Penny Dreadful S3 adds Wes Studi (remember how good he was in Last of the Mohicans), Shazad Latif, Jessica Barden, and Patti LuPone (!) as a regular now, albeit in a new role since her witch died last season

Deep Dish [nsfw] celebrates 66 factoids about Richard Gere for his recent birthday - I didn't know a lot of the off-movie stuff
Tracking Board Michael J Fox is voicing a robotic canine for a new film called A.R.C.H.I.E. as befits an 80s sounding high concept comedy
Empire Sam Worthington and Ruth Wilson to headline a new sci-fi picture called The Titan about a military family participating in an experiment in space
Empire French filmmaker Pascal Chaumeil (Heartbreaker) dies at 54 
Film School Rejects has a bathe with A Room With a View... such a great movie 

We ♥ to Watch
Gizmodo Amazon Prime now first subscription service to offer download / watch offline
Cinematically Insane looks at the changes at TCM and what that might mean down the road. I'm so wary of this because even if they rebrand to be less about "old" movies then agreed upon "greats" how will we see the really old movies that are harder and harder to find with the death of DVD? I know I'm not alone among cinephiles in the desire to see less-than-great films regularly so as to get context for a career (director or actor) or timeframe at the movies 
/Films warns you about all the films leaving Netflix in September. (I'm so glad i never gave up my dvds since the range of their streaming options get grosser and grosser beyond their original content)

For LOLz
The Toast A League of Their Own inspired thinkpieces. Inspired silliness.
MNPP Michel Huisman strutting around New Orleans 
Back of the Cereal Box discovers an old Meryl Streep joke that still holds up 

Off Screen
Boy Culture a-ha's "Hunting High and Low" to receive 30 year anniversary rerelease. Such an amazing album - pity that people only think of "Take On Me"
Playbill Jim Broadbent returns to the West End toplay Scrooge in A Christmas Carol this season
Towleroad author Oliver Sacks who wrote Awakenings (which became an Oscar nominated movie) recently died (RIP)

Finally
The trailer to the final season of Downton Abbey. So many big shows wrapping up lately.

Beasts of No Nation Character Posters

Another day, another fall movie releases a poster. Murtada here with the details. 

Following the Beasts of No Nation trailer, the character posters for the African war drama have arrived. The trailer told us a lot about the film by introducing its two main characters - played by Idris Elba and newcomer Abraham Atta - and the hypnotic dynamic between them in one brief scene. The striking but simple posters continue the efficient storytelling and with just a few pictures and words tell us all we need to know. For now...

 

Click to read more ...

Links

BuzzFeed Netflix not legally responsible for your 'viewing history' - it's so funny that people thought they were
The Hairpin Mission: Impossibly Silly "I Still Don't Understand How Tall Everyone Is"  
Interview Director Marielle Heller talks about the ratings and sexuality of her daring debut The Diary of a Teenage Girl 

Towleroad George Takei once asked Gene Roddenberry about including gay characters on Star Trek. Interesting historical response but what's their excuse now since that franchise is still alive?
IndieWire How to apply for a Women of Color directors and screenwriters 10 day retreat
This is Not Porn Cute. Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg take a break during Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 

Tim is the Best
Antagony & Ecstasy revisits Dog Day Afternoon... (great films often generate great writing about film)
Antagony & Ecstasy also revisits the very first unreleased Fantastic Four (1994) and claims its still the best adaptation of Marvel's first family (bad films often generate great writing about film) 
.... moral of combining them: Timothy Brayton often generates great writing about film.  

Off Cinema 
Laughing Squid a feline feeding machine to let your cat be more self-actualized indoors
Gothamist sad news: Annie Lennox's daughter's boyfriend has gone missing after a tandem kayak accident 

"Clobberin' Time"
There's a lot of handwringing going round about what exactly happened between Josh Trank and the studio and the source material to make Fantastic Four so bad. Film School Rejects even felt it needed a six-year timeline. But there's also post-mortems about the opening weekend which are lower than usual for superheroes.Variety argues that audiences are getting wise to money grabs (with tanking reboots like FF and diminished returns for Spider-Man) and studios need to think harder about repackaging known brands. But I personally don't know if that's the case -- I mean audiences are still putting up with needlessly padded "part 1 and part 2" finales which everyone knows are not artistically motivated decisions aimed at providing them with the best possible movie. So until audiences start bailing on those, I'm not eager to give them too much credit for protecting their wallets against Hollywood's 'screw-quality / make another billion quick' tactics. 

08/08 Sense 8 08:08

Happy birthday to the Sensates. Netflix renewed Sense8 for a second season today (the actors seem very happy). To celebrate let's all masturbate simultaneously all over the world at 8:08 PM tonight. 

[If you missed our coverage, Nathaniel talked about the NSFW radical sexuality and Tim reviewed the whole season.]

FYC: Tituss Burgess for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy

Team Experience is sharing their dream picks for the Emmys each day at Noon. Here's Margaret...

Tituss Burgess' performance as Titus Andromedon on Netflix's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is nothing short of genius. (Before we get any further into this, it should be established that Tituss with two S's is the actor, and Titus with one S is the character. Confusing, yes, but blame Tina Fey and Robert Carlock.)

His vocal control is exquisite, and we see it tested time and again as the writers work up excuses for Titus to belt whenever possible. His grip on his comedy is similarly iron-clad. Every gesture, every line reading, is laser-precise. He never fails to deliver the biggest laugh of whatever scene he's in--he's a dexterous physical comic and quite nimble with Fey & Carlock's twisty punchlines-- but he also lends a distinct pathos to the performance that makes it more than just funny. 

And he's tremendously gif-able. Sweet mercy, how gif-able.

Though often ridiculous, Burgess makes damn well sure we know that Titus is the one telling the joke. Even the most absurd lines fly out of his mouth with self-awareness and complete conviction. (In lieu of apologizing for putting his foot in his mouth, he shrugs: "I am as God made me.") One of the things that makes Kimmy Schmidt so special is its improbable sense of melancholy. Hints about Titus' past point to frustration and pain, and that's present in his performance even as he lives confidently and without contrition.

But most of all, he's just purely and entirely funny. He makes me laugh more than any other TV character, certainly today, maybe ever. To deny him would be like denying Jane Krakowski's Jenna Maroney, which...  well... please don't make that mistake again, Emmys.

Previously: Ann Dowd talks The Leftovers and Nathaniel fusses over the Emmy ballot