Nic's No Nympho

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JA from MNPP here with some sad news - Nicole Kidman has dropped out of her reunion with Danish dare-monger Lars Von Trier for his next flick, the sexually explicit Nymphomaniac. She's too busy playing a Princess to mime unspeakable acts with Shia LaBeouf, it seems. The assumption is that the recently added Uma Thurman is her replacement, but (nothing against Uma) I'm hoping it's another name just added to the cast instead - let's see Willem Dafoe fill in Nicole's shoes!

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Review: "The Paperboy"

This article was previously published in my column at Towleroad

Now the very exciting correspondence is in the bottom box. In case you're interested."
-Charlotte Bless

I can't recall how THE PAPERBOY begins exactly though I saw it just a few days ago. Was it a shot of Zac Efron's body gliding through a pool, losing its hard fixed shape through the watery prism. Was it a grisly black and white flashback of a murder? Was it Macy Gray smoking, staring dully just off center of the camera. It doesn't matter though my confusion is telling. Lee Daniel's third movie is a mad undisciplined mix of just these things: eroticized bodies, physical violence and character beats. If the film never settles down, eventually you settle into it. 

Macy Gray helps. Her voice is so evocative she doesn't even need to be singing to send you. Director Lee Daniels, wise to the specific gifts of his actresses (the proof is all over Precious), knows this.

Macy Gray is your guide through this sensationalistic scuzzy story

Continue...

Click to read more ...

Princess Nicole

JA from MNPP here, sharing the first look at the goddess named Nicole Kidman playing the goddess named Grace Kelly in Oliver Dahan's film Grace of Monaco, which IMDb lists for release in 2014 but I'd be surprised if it didn't come out next year. (via) It deals with Grace's late-life princess days; Tim Roth is playing Prince Rainier; also hanging around will be Paz Vega, Frank Langella, and Parker Posey (YES). Nicole looks fab, no?

Curio: Carole Bayer Sager's Friends

Alexa here. Carole Bayer Sager is best known as a songwriter. Anyone who came of age in the 80s will know the songs she helped create with the likes of Marvin Hamlisch and her ex-husband Burt Bacarach. Many of these figured prominently in film, like "That's What Friends Are For" (I remember Rod Stewart's version being used in Night Shift, although Dionne Warwick's version with her friends is more famous) and "Nobody Does It Better" (one of the best Bond songs). Carole won an Oscar alongside Bacarach and Christopher Cross in 1981 for the indelible "Arthur's Theme (The Best That You Can Do)".

These days, less excited with songwriting, she has turned to oil painting.  She discusses her new work, mostly of large-scale abstractions and macro-like images of food, in October's issue of W magazine. While her abstractions are stronger, she has also painted portraits of her famous friends, many of which reveal an intimate side of figures we often don't get to see.  Here are a few from the film world she has captured. You can see all her work here.

Steve Martin and his wife Anne StringfieldNicole, Sunday Rose, and KeithStephen Spielberg

Link Machine

New York Observer Nicole Kidman reborn. On The Paperboy and her upcoming NYFF tribute
The Genteel the great costume designer Jacqueline Durran (Vera Drake, Atonement) on her Anna Karenina work
New York Times "Rian Johnson Builds a better Time Machine" on Looper.

Los Angeles Times Singer Andy Williams ("Moon River") has passed away
Stale Popcorn Glenn is angry with the "100 best gay films" list that was crowd sourced. The gays really do have bad taste! (I'm allowed to say that as a gay.
Broadway Blog congratulates director Jason Moore on his feature film debut (Pitch Perfect) and looks back at other Broadway directors that made the leap.

John August on his contribution to the Frankenweenie soundtrack "Praise Be New Holland"
Vanity Fair a standard post Emmy party or any given day in Betty White's life? Hee
In Contention when to strike with your Oscar campaign when the deck is stacked against you

Finally, for those of you interested in Platoon and the 80s Oscar lore, Oliver Stone optioned his story early on but it didn't get made until he made it and he recently published photos on his own website from his time there.

Oliver Stone in Vietnam.

In 1976 I optioned “Platoon” to a producer, but it was not made. The production manager asked me to entrust him with many of my prints and negatives from Vietnam. He thoughtlessly sent it all in a package from New York to Los Angeles, but it never arrived. I’m sure they’re somewhere in this world—anyone know (reward offered)?

So recently when we were setting up our website, I went hunting thru storage for various materials that are now on the site—or will be. In the back of a home closet was an old shoebox marked ‘classic snaps, 1950s.’ There were many family pictures, but at the very bottom were 7 envelopes of worn-looking negatives in 35mm and the vanished 126 format. They looked vaguely like Vietnam. It is an amazing moment when something lost reappears after more than 40 years...

If only I could find everything I lost in the 80s!