Instagram Battles: Orlando, Jeff, or Goldie?

Would you rather

...spar with Orlando Bloom 
...read a comic with Jeff Goldblum
...or stop to smell the roses with Goldie Hawn?

he's a shaolin master imma have to practice lots to keep up 👊🏻

A video posted by orlandobloom (@orlandobloom) on Sep 18, 2016 at 6:04am PDT

I'm nothing if not conscientious. #thorragnarok #thor3 #thegrandmaster #marvel #marvelcomics

A photo posted by Jeff Goldblum (@jeffgoldblum) on Sep 9, 2016 at 11:58am PDT

I am grateful today for the sweet scent of the rose. #stopandsmelltheroses

A photo posted by Goldie Hawn (@officialgoldiehawn) on Sep 10, 2016 at 10:55am PDT

Method Linking

The Matinee on the trouble with "classics" and drawing timelines in the sand
Kenneth in the (212) the Mommie Dearest mansion is on the market
The Stake on why blockbuster franchises are all boring now. Even the good ones
National Post pop culture power rankings best and worst in method acting from Daniel Day Lewis to Jared Leto
Uproxx movies have sucked this summer - well, the big ones have. Lots of goodies in limited release 

MNPP * NSFW* Orlando Bloom made the internet all sweaty with his nude paddleboarding adventure 
MNPP I love the "Siri Says" series Jason does. She picks a number, he delivers his favorite films from that year. 
Variety Maya Rudolph to co-star in Melissa McCarthy's Life of the Party (2018)
The Tracking Board Hollywood is planning to remake Mexico's Miss Bala (sigh). Good luck finding a lead to match Stephanie Sigman in the 2011 original
Coming Soon Angelina Jolie has opted not to take the lead role in Murder on the Orient Express. Charlize Theron is the new possibility. And ICYMI...
TFE... we held a Cast This about the other roles in that remake recently.
Film Stage new Antonio Banderas movie is coming called Finding Altamira. I hadn't heard of this but it's directed by Hugh Hudson who I've suddenly realized is still alive. He hasn't made a movie in 16 years. I was just watching his Greystoke movie the other day
AV Club Antonio Sabato Jr hilarious thinks his career is over because of his support of Trump. Oh babe, it's been over for a long time. That's like blaming Obama for the death of Captain Khan who died four years before he was in offic-- oh wait.
Esquire In case you had forgotten that Clint Eastwood is an old guard conservative/misogynist, they have a new interview he does in tandem with his son Scott in which he uses "pussy" as a pejorative, disses Hillary and Obama, and tries that old chestnust "both sides" argument about Trump's behavior. Nope. Sorry Clint. Only one party tries to motivate voters with bigotry. (He also talks movies and at least he loves Sunset Blvd so he's not 100% a terrible person.)
Women and Hollywood Ava Duvernay to become the first black woman to helm a $100 million budgeted film with A Wrinkle in Time - this is news because she's quite successful already and men with a lot less success have been handed blockbuster budgets often. Crossing our fingers that it's a financial and artistic success! 

Dunkirk Teaser
Here's the very quick new tease for Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk which seems certain to net him that Best Director nomination that's eluded him so long if it's any good at all, it being a WW II movie and him being "overdue" and such. And he knows how to direct spectacle films after all.

Off Cinema
Buzz Feed "every time President Obama lost his chill around kids" if you need something adorable to look at
The Guardian Leonardo DiCaprio is "with her". He's hosting a $33,400 a plate fundraiser
The Daily Good Yes the media does play favorites in politics, but as this study shows, it isn't the people complaining about it who are getting the unfavorable treatment 

Links

Screencrush offers hilarious proof that every superhero movie is called the greatest superhero movie ever. People are easily excitable!
Sight and Sound picks the best documentaries ever by pollling filmmakers: Man With a Movie Camera, Shoah and more...
MBetancourt finishes his Instagram Buffy The Vampire Slayer project. It was awesome. Naturally "Tabula Rasa" was the most popular - but not because it's a great episode

PopBytes I normally dont link to super gossipy things but this Justin Bieber / Orlando Bloom fight is just so bizarre and the coverage keeps getting weirder. I guess...
Gawker ... Leonardo DiCaprio was also there, cheering Orlando on? I mean who wouldn't?
Vox I love Todd Vanderweff but I'm not sure I buy Lucy as a feminist movie, even one that's afraid of feminism as posited
Gawker "I am terrified of Reese Witherspoon and a little bit in love with her"
In Contention Rosewater by Jon Stewart starring Gael Garcia Bernal gets an awards friendly release date

Awards Daily another longer trailer for Birdman. I can't watch this one. I don't want to see one more frame before the actual movie
THR the top 25 film schools?
MNPP talks about that John Waters Isabelle Huppert event

RIP
As you've undoubtedly heard the influential makeup artist Dick Smith who made Linda Blair demonic in The Exorcist (currently discussing) and pushed Marlon Brando into hugely convincing Godfatheriness among other achievements has passed away at 92 years young. Some obits/tributes to read: LA Times, In Contention, EW, and multiple Oscar winner Rick Baker

Stage Door: An Iliad and (gulp) Troy's 10th Anniversary

If you'll allow me a personal and quite biased recommendation, I'd love to send any Floridians reading to the Orlando Fringe Festival (May 14th-25th) to check out Allen Sermonia or Jenn Remke in An Iliad. Jenn and Allen are friends of mine and I had the privilege of attending a full rehearsal last week in which Jenn performed the entire show (they're doing it in repertory so Allen gets alternating nights) and apparently she's the first female actor to ever perform it!

I've seen Jenn in a few previous plays so I knew she was talented but holding an entire stage by yourself is a true challenge and I'm happy to report she was riveting. By the time the play sunk its hooks in, I forgot I was watching my friend and was just watching "the poet" working her way through numerous character sketches and a retelling of the specifics of the Trojan War and, by troubling extension, the not-so-specific universality of war.

Even those who don't get a decent education in the classics (in this case Homer's "The Iliad") know the story thanks to the way all hugely influential classics seep into the collective subconscious. I've read the Iliad but I'm embarrassed to report that instead of the poem my brain was doing a major Troy (2004) sidebar afterwards comparing the play's potent intimacy with the movie's B grade epicness.

It's not that I wanted to think about Troy...

BrothersCousins, eh?

It's just that I am me and Eric Bana and Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom and Diane Kruger (all looking beautiful enough to launch thousands of ships to possess) are a kind of draw, no matter how bad the surrounding movie is and however embarrassing that is to admit.

In a stupid coincidence Troy is celebrating its 10th anniversary just as this performance kicks off. And I am helpless in the face of such calendar markers. I haven't had a desire to revisit the movie but aside from the beauty of its players I remember being  convinced that Orlando Bloom, despite the terrible reviews he won, was actually perfect as Paris. It's just that the character is detestable and not in the type of way that often provokes rabid anti-hero worship. Bana also did fine and hugely charismatic work (I expected him to become a much bigger star but it was sadly not to be) but Garrett Hedlund and Brad Pitt were weirdly weak links despite being well cast. Maybe they didn't have enough to play with as actors? Mostly I did not appreciate the weirdly deflating rewrite of the Achilles/Patroclus relationship: 'They're just cousins, broseph; No Homo!'

If you've only ever seen Troy and no other dramatic interpretations of this story, I must suggest this BAFTA Nominated short film Achilles (1995), narrated by Derek Jacobi, from the Oscar nominated filmmaker Barry Purves which restores the gayness in gorgeous NSFW stop-motion:

Back to the play
Because my attention to the theater world is intermittent at best I had missed the explosion of interest in "An Iliad" over the last couple of years. Denis O'Hare, the ubiquitous character actor of stage, film and recently television (American Horror Story/True Blood) co-wrote it and performed it in repetory with Stephen Spinella (the Tony winning original star of Angels in America) in 2012 and it has since become a fixture in regional theater partially because it's cheap and easy to produce (no set / one actor), sure, but also because it's just a damn good play: moving, provocative, and angry.

Even if you're not in Florida, see it as soon as some regional theater tackles it near you.

Stage Door: Romeo and Juliet x 3

In the Stage Door series we look at current theatrical productions with our cinematic eye. Here's Jose on Romeo & Juliet

Some time within the last 14 days, I subjected myself to three versions of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet playing in NYC. "Subjected?" you ask, well dear reader, each of them was perhaps more horrifying than the previous, leading me to ask if I wasn't an unwitting participant in some Shakespeare-meets-Halloween project. However in the name of scientific research I've come back with some results.

The versions in question are...

1) a Broadway update (the first in over four decades) starring Condola Rashad and Orlando Bloom as the infamous lovers from Verona.
2) a new film (written by Julian Fellowes) starring Oscar nominee Hailee Steinfeld as Juliet and Damian Lewis as her dad
3) an off-Broadway version with Elizabeth Olsen and newcomer Julian Cihi as the title characters.

Both theater versions feature anachronisms and are set in unspecified times, the film version inversely has a time-appropriate setting yet somehow it doesn't feel like the most old fashioned of them.

The Best and Worst of each pair after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Beauty Break: Actors & Pups

I am a crazy cat lady but I like dogs in short doses and I especially like seeing movie stars with their pets. Seeing people with their pets (or other people's pets) adds a level of adorable realness that you just can't get any other way. Even movie stars pick up poop and clean catboxes!

Tom Hardy and puppy kisses

This dog doesn't need to watch movies to know how kissable Tom Hardy is! 

Brad, Leo, Josh, Clark and more after the jump...

Click to read more ...