Dance the Link Away

Pop Confidential reviews the "Prom" episode of Glee. Heartfelt piece.
I0N Cinema looks at how female director heavy the Cannes lineup is, once you include all the sidebars. I hadn't realized this. Speaking of Cannes...

Uma Thurman is ready to judge your films!

Uma at the Cannes Jury Press Conference

She's ready to judge them with true old school glamour!

Film Doctor Thor makes the film doctor wax all poetic. No, truly.
Pajiba displays the entire Hunger Games cast in gallery form so you don't have to read all those repetitive filler articles clogging up 95% of movie blogs on the web.
Just Jared offers up the Young Hollywood Award Recipients: Elle Fanning, Hailee Steinfeld, and Aimee Teegarden, among others, are winning prizes on May 26th.
Go Fug Yourself Reese Witherspoon has a thing for the sweetheart neckline
Pop Matters Fellow Best Actress Obsessive Matt Mazur looks back at Best Actress 1978
Movie|Line Cannes may have only just started but the distributors are already buying titles.

New York Stories
New York Magazine did a profile on Mx Justin Vivian Bond who some of you will remember from John Cameron Mitchell's polysexual indie Shortbus (2006). Bond is one of the best performers you'll ever see so if you get a chance... take it. But about this profile...
Mx Justin Bond is NOT pleased with the piece, which is strangely disrespectful in regards to trans identity, despite ostensibly promoting v's new record and Joe's Pub residency.
Kenneth in the (212) naked insane guy on the ➅ train. Jennifer Lopez did not sing about this particular incident On the Six. (Is that why the trains were so fucked up the other day?)

A Moment of Beauty
In case you missed it here is the graceful inspired tribute to dance legend Martha Graham on Google's homepage today from animator Ryan Woodward.

Google - Martha Graham from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

[Jan Brady Voice]  "Martha! Martha! Martha!"

"Savage Beauty" A Red Carpeted Conversation.

I felt like the red carpet lineup feature needed a rethink so let's make it a conversation instead. I've enlisted Kurt from Your Movie Buddy to chat with today. This is but a small sampling from this week's big event which seemingly hundreds of celebrities attended. But we're only talking about 18 of them.

SEVIGNY, FANNING, LOPEZ, PINTO

Nathaniel:  The Met's annual Costume Institue Gala has been nicknamed the "Oscars of the East Coast" in the past -- everyone goes -- so I figure we should uh, say something, though predictions cannot apply. Nobody wins anything except for maybe your oohs and aahs.

Hi Kurt!

Kurt:  Hi Nathaniel! I was not aware of such a nickname, but okay. I'm all for lavish attire and oohs and ahhs. As for the first quartet of ladies you've provided, shall we go through them one by one?

Nathaniel: Two by two because... Chloë Sevigny and Freida Pinto. Don't they seem like inverted images. The theme was "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty" I think -- there's always a theme. Wouldn't it be great if Oscar had a theme each year?

Kurt: They have unofficial themes -- remember when everyone wore red in 2008? "Savage Beauty," eh?

Nathaniel: What's with the ties (?) and the black and white reversed?

Kurt: There's not much savagery in the Sevigny-Pinto duet, unless you count Chloe's 'do. The inversion is interesting. I feel like it's part of a trend I'm not privy to, as both of these ladies seem to be on fashion's cusp. As for who wore it best -- I'm Team Freida.

Nathaniel:  Vote Split! As for women in ties, I would like to vote for Diane Keaton circa Annie Hall in absentia and perpetuity.

Kurt:  Of course. for the record, though, I am a HUGE Chloe fan

Nathaniel:  True story. When i was a little kid I thought it was pronounced "shlow" and my friends never never never let me live it down.

Kurt:  In that case, I imagine you would've had a helluva a time with SEVIGNY

Nathaniel:  LOL. no not Sevigny herself. Just her namesake. But when one says they are a fan of Chloë that can mean SO many things. Don't you think she has kind of a schizo fan base like acting, fashion iconery, polygamist cult-obsessives, drag queens... So what kind of Chloe fan are you?

Kurt: Very schizo fan base indeed. I'm of the opinion that if you like Chloë S., we can prob. be friends. She has a very specific coolness. Me? I'm a fan of the actress first, the fashion icon second, and whatever else she's into third.

Nathaniel:  Is "whatever else she's into" a reference to Brown Bunny because this isn't that kind of blog!!!

Kurt:  Haha! I'm going to admit I've never seen that. I've heard it's such a slog, and I feel like I'd only be watching for the BlowJ part. Not that that's not worth seeing, I just feel like I'll let it keep its lore and mystique. Besides, I'm certainly no Vincent Gallo completist.

Nathaniel:  Fair enough. I worry for people who are. Is it fair to say that you're a fan of Dakota Fanning -- I know you liked her Runaways work -- or am I being too pushy about recruiting? She needs some support given The Rise of Elle.

Kurt:  I'm definitely a Dakota fan. She's one of my favorite young stars to watch. The whole evolution thing is really fun when the star is actually a big talent. I feel the same way about Saorsie Ronan (who suggests future Blanchett chameleonism in Hanna). I remember thinking in that awful movie Push, which Dakota totally ran away with, that she has all sorts of Jodie Foster parallels. I think she will be a star until she's dead.

Nathaniel:  Are you suggesting that Elle will have to kill her to dethrone her? I hate what Dakota is wearing here. But moving on... I only included Jennifer Lopez because she's "relevant" again (damn you American Idol) DON'T MAKE ME TALK ABOUT HER.
 
Kurt:  Oh no, we MUST. JLo is a perpetual red carpet fiasco, which is so funny because she's obsessed with fashion. Here we have another mess...

[long pause]

Nathaniel:  I've half typed seven different jokes and can only raise a white flag. JLo has defeated me. I have nothing to say.

Kurt: Was one of them "bondage gardener?" I was so excited when I saw her in the lineup. She is the queen of excess, which I guess is appropriate but MY GOD. It's always the antithesis of "take something off before you leave." And this getup looks so effing uncomfortable.

Nathaniel:  But does it look Savage? Or Beauty-ful?

Kurt:  I'll give her Savage.  Savage Garden

Nathaniel:  Heh. These lineups are very random except when I wanted to pair people.

KRUGER, MICHELE, IMAN, ZEEEEEE, MENDEZ

And I have to say this about both Zeéeeee and Eva Mendes. You have to give them points for tenacity. Whatever their onscreen merits, I feel like they both have death grips on their fame. They're just not going to give up. Eva's look screams very sophisticated key party to me. As for Zeéeeee, well she is fairly reliable as red carpet stars go.

Kurt:  (Oh, that inescapable pout...) Interesting point about death grips. Eva rides high on sexiness, which is definitely what keeps her working

Click to read more ...

David O. Russell ♥ "The Royal Tenenbaums". Rosie Perez ♥ "The Fighter"

When I lived in the northern Brooklyn, I used to hop on the G Train to visit the Museum of Moving Images in Queens with some regularity. I haven't been in years but they've redone the museum and they're holding special events and courting press. A few days back Spike Jonze interviewed David O. Russell about The Fighter. You can listen to the whole hour long event if you've got the time. But I thought I'd share two weird bits and two interesting anecdotes if you don't have the full hour.

David O. Russell and Spike Jonze discuss filmmaking

Two weird things

1. Spike Jonze's laugh is strange and delightful and just as weird as Natalie Portman's. 

2. About 34 minutes into the conversation Rosie Perez interrupts the interview because she has to leave the event early but doesn't want to leave without telling Russell how much she loved The Fighter "I laughed. I cried". There's just no mistaking that voice! (And there's one Oscar ballot to consider.)

Two anecdotes of interest

1. David O. Russell really really really loves Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums (2001). He claims to have seen it over 50 times. He talks about his change of heart with the movie.

When it first came out -- we were a little bit of group with Wes and Sofia [Coppola]. Wes shared the script with me and I didn't really get it. I was like 'Wes, I don't know if you know this but there's no 375th street in New York. He says "No, I'm making up New York."


When I saw the film I still didn't get it, still didn't really get it and I was a huge fan of Rushmore. The funny thing is how your feelings can change about cinema. So if you don't like any of my movies just give it ten years. [Laughter] Ten years later my son he loves The Royal Tenenbaums and I gotta tell you I just fell in love with it. I see so much brilliance in it. I think it's Gene Hackman's greatest performance and it plays constantly in my car.

He goes on to explain that he has a tv in his car and that he watches the movie while driving "Well, there's a lot of traffic" he says getting a big laugh from the room.

2. The second bit that stuck out for me is obvious but I had never really processed it. Originally Darren Aronofsky (who we were just discussing) was attached and Russell, in explaining what he was drawn to in the material, reveals just how different that film would have been. That's a big "duh" but it struck me nonetheless.

Right now what interests me most is something that's very real and emotional and raw and fascinating in a way that certain characters or people can be. Like, that's an amazing character. That's someone i could watch or look at or listen to for a long time. That's what interests me the most, characters that make my mouth hang open like "WHO ARE YOU?"

When I saw this family in their photo album the mother, you know, with the sisters. Darren's script didn't really have the mother and the sisters as much or the girlfriend. The women were much smaller and it was much more dark about Dicky's dark crime stuff.

David O. Russell with "the sisters"

Now.

Just try and imagine The Fighter without Melissa Leo's energy-sucking presence or Amy Adams' softbodied but hard living bartender. Try to imagine it without the sisters???. I mean, that film... NO! Russell returns to this line of thought much later in the interview when he reveals what a godsend the movie was for him; Mark Wahlberg was returning the favor bringing this to him since he brought Three Kings and Huckabees to Mark.

I had had a bumpy few years of writing many things and tying myself up in knots. That's hard. That can happen. I was happy to have a simple thing that I saw how it could be done, I had a clear take on it. Mark is very loyal to me and very much a protector of me so I knew I wasn't coming in somewhere where I was not going to be able to do what I wanted to do. That's the only way i know how to do things. So I came in and said this is how i see it, this is how I want to do it. They cleared the way and let me do that, the sisters and the mom and the girlfriend being more prominent. They were there in the earlier versions but barely there. They weren't pivotal.

I'm so glad Aronofsky departed. We got this movie instead AND we got Black Swan. It was literally a win/win for moviegoers.

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