Black History Month: Endless Love (1981)

I know what you're thinking. You're working out some variation of "how perverse to feature a lily white teenage romance for a Black History Month feature!"... and I get it. But let's travel back to 1981 together anyway and I'll explain.

The Italian auteur Franco Zeffirelli had found great success in America directing Romeo and Juliet (1968) which became both a populist hit and an Oscar magnet finishing in the year's top five at the box office and in the Best Picture shortlist. A dozen or so years later Zeffirelli took another stab (pun intended) at the zeitgeist with a similar if much cruder tale of an ill advised tempestuous and horny teenage affair. Endless Love was critically panned (multiple Razzie nominations) though it managed to be a hit if not quite a blockbuster. Its eponymous Best Original Song nominee "Endless Love" by Lionel Richie on the other hand was a monster...

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Musical Oscars: JHud, Kendrick, Jack Black & More to Perform

Anna Kendrick singing her ass off all month on screen and stageManuel here bringing more news about the Oscar telecast. While some continue to ponder whether we’ll really be asked to be Team BOYhood or Team birdMAN (and how’s that for a an apt metaphor for contemporary Hollywood!), we’ll be focusing more on what Craig Zadan and Neil Meron have in store for us during the sure-to-be-endless ceremony that shortchanges winning speeches for needless montages and musical performances.

Speaking of these, it looks like we’re getting a full Best Original Song performance roster, with Adam Levine ("Lost Stars"), Tegan and Sara with The Lonely Island ("Everything is Awesome!!!"), Common & John Legend ("Glory"), Tim McGraw ("I'm Not Gonna Miss You") and Rita Ora ("Grateful") slated to sing their respective numbers on the big night.

"We're creating several musical sequences for the Oscars and we couldn't be happier that our friend, Jennifer Hudson, will be performing in one of them," say Zadan and Meron.

On top of this, last week came word that Jack Black would be performing, that Anna Kendrick would be part of a "special performance" and just this past weekend, Meron and Zadan confirmed that Jennifer Hudson would also be performing (my guess is she might be doing the In Memoriam number? That is, unless they’ve designed another “tribute to musicals” like they did in 2013, remember that?)

That already looks like quite a stacked schedule, especially once you add NPH’s number, so maybe we’ll be spared the montages that celebrate “Oscar’s history” or some oddly specific genre rather than the year in film and the actual nominated films?

The Best Picture lineup may look quite oppressively manly, but with all these musical numbers (and NPH on hand), it’ll be quite the glittery gay spectacle, no? Fingers crossed! My only hope is that Hudson wears something as cray-tastic as that cape from her Dreamgirls red carpet.

Inside the Dolby. AFI Fest Begins!

Anne Marie and I had a stupendous time tonight at the premiere of A Most Violent Year which we were  mpressed by: tense, gorgeously shot, with a fiery Jessica Chastain and an ice cool Oscar Isaac. I'll tell you about it tomorrow. But for now -pics & tweets.

(We got there early and couldn't resist geeking out a bit inside The Dolby, the home of Hollywood's High Holy Night each year, The Oscars. [More photos after the jump]

I am inside the Dolby, land of Hollywood's High Holy Night. Streep is amused.

A photo posted by Nathaniel R (@nathaniel_tfe) on Nov 11, 2014 at 6:46pm PST

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Neil Patrick Harris Will Host the Oscars & Complete His Life

SPOILERS TO GONE GIRL BELOW

 Do you want to know what is so weird?

I literally just returned from a second screening of Gone Girl. I turn on twitter and I see Neil Patrick Harris's name everywhere. 

So while I was watching him being gruesomely murdered whilst orgasming the rest of you, he was announcing to the world that he'll host the Oscars with a simple video in which he pans to his Bucket List, all of which he's now completed except "Host the Oscars". Let's hope his list continues on the next page of the legal pad because it's way creepy to be done with your Bucket List at 41. And even creepier that NPH's final act will be hosting the ceremony that pays homage to the movie in which he gets his throat slit with a box cutter!

Here are eight items he forgot to include on his list:

 ☑ Beat the odds and survive childhood stardom
 ☑ Win 3 People's Choice Awards
 ☑ Win 4 Emmys
 ☑ Become friends with Elton John
 ☑ Work with Joss Whedon twice
 ☑ Slather penis in fake blood for David Fincher
 ☑ Host the Tonys 4 Times
 ☑ Host the Emmys 2 Times

The Oscars probably want to play down his previous hosting gigs else it looks like sloppy sevenths. Still, we already know he's a perfect emcee for showbiz backpatting so, let us rejoice. The Oscars are just 130 days away on Sunday February 22nd, 2015.

135 Days 'til Oscar: Remember the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion?

Occasionally while typing about the Oscars I accidentally type in the Shrine or the Kodak and especially "The Dorothy Chandler Pavilion" when I mean The Dolby Theater. It's an honest mistake since the Oscars are a bonafide institution and one tends to associate locations with events. The Dolby Theater, the "permanent" home now for Oscar (whatever permanent means considering things such as contracts, name changes, and rights battles for broadcast and whatnot) was once the Kodak Theater and for the last dozen years that's where the Oscars have been held. But until the new millenium, I associated the event with the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. That music hall hosted the Oscars the longest from Oliver! (1968) through Shakespeare in Love (1998) though it should be noted that the Shrine auditorium stepped in as substitute for six years during that three decade stretch. 

I've never actually been to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion but for a young movie mad boy in the suburbs of Detroit in the Eighties, 135 North Grand Avenue was the most important address in the world, way cooler than 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I still think of it as way more glamorous than the Dolby... but maybe that's because I've been to the Dolby and though it looks great on TV it's inside a shopping mall. Perhaps that's appropriate for a golden idol that's really only gold-plated. 

Previously on our countdown that's really just begun...
138 Days - Average Best Picture Length
170 Days - Best Actor Trivia 
182 Days - What did Pickford & Fairbanks start?!