The Oscar Week

In this weekly feature from Murtada we will follow the Oscar contenders and examine how their many interviews and appearances impact their chances. This week we check in with Ryan Gosling, Viola Davis, Pedro Almodovar and Annette Bening.

Ryan Gosling

Gosling is trying to catch up with co-star Emma Stone who’s been promoting La La Land while he was away shooting Blade Runner 2049. He also trying to catch up with Casey Affleck and Denzel washington who’ve established themselves as the frontrunners in Best Actor. Last week he got his hands and footprints immortalized. This week he gets his first solo magazine cover - he's been in a couple with Stone - of the season in GQ. Gosling thinks the his appeal and the popularity of the Hey Girl meme are because … he’s Canadian?

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Beauty vs Beast: Grassy Knoll Ethics

Jason from MNPP here with an under-the-weather edition of "Beauty vs Beast" - apologies if I am brief and lacking some spark today, I'm staring at my computer screen from the business end of a box of kleenex and with one too many sudafed capsules dotting my system. I bring up my sickness not to be (entirely) self-indulgent but to explain why I didn't make it out to see Jackie this weekend as I'd planned - every cough feels like a cinematic betrayal right now.

So until me and Natalie can rendezvous with our matching pink pillboxes I will ask you today to look backwards at the previous biggest Kennedy assassination movie on the books, Oliver Stone's JFK. I don't remember the Oscar race that year but I'm kind of surprised Costner wasn't nominated for the film - maybe they'd had their fill with Dances With Wolves the year before? Tommy Lee Jones was nominated for the movie though, for the poodle-mopped conspiracy sissy at the center of the mystery, and so I ask you...

PREVIOUSLY We're on an Almodovar kick thanks to the retrospective at MoMA right now so last week we climbed into bed and slipped our hands into the sex ropes for Antonio Banderas in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! - he took 56% of the vote over Victoria Abril's 44. Said thefilmjunkie:

"If I were voting with my head I'd probably go for Marina, but my vote for Ricky was guided by more, um, prurient interests. I have no shame. I regret nothing."

Cate and Pedro

It's been great having Cate Blanchett in our city. From glimpsing her amazing costumes on the Ocean's 8 set, to waxing poetic about Amy Adams at the Gotham Awards, she's giving us lots to cherish while she is in New York City. And there's more to come. Rehearsals start next week on her Broadway debut, The Present, set to start previews on December 17th and open on January 8th. Before that though she had time to toast the master actressexual filmmaker, Pedro Almodovar.

Cate was one of the guests at the opening of the Almodovar retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. The retrospective is running through December 17th, and coincides with the release of Almodóvar’s 20th feature, Julieta (2016), and includes all of his feature films. So New Yorkers don't miss it. 

This picture got us thinking that Cate should work with Pedro. Can you see her in an English language remake of one of his films? Which one?

Beauty vs Beast: Love Bound

Jason from MNPP here back from turkey break and prepping a fresh "Beauty vs Beast" for y'all to feast upon. The Spanish provocateur Pedro Almodovar's latest film Julieta (which our pal Manuel reviewed right here via the New York Film Festival) opens in the U.S. in just a couple of weeks and so the Museum of Modern Art is celebrating all things Almodovar with a great big retrospective, starting tomorrow. The series runs through mid-December and they're showing pretty much everything he's made - don't miss out!

And so in turn for this week's "Beauty vs Beast" I'm asking you to look back to Almodovar's 1990 romantic comedy of kinky kidnapping, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (aka ¡Átame!) and its rope-crossed lovers -- Ricky (Antonio Banderas), fresh off the psych ward, and Marina (Victoria Abril), the actress and recovered drug addict who finds herself on the receiving end of Ricky's deranged affections.

PREVIOUSLY Last week's contest between Gaston and The Beast from Disney's Beauty & the Beast went back and forth and back and forth between the two big strapping hairy-chested menfolk in belle's life for awhile, but in the end true romance won out - y'all softies - and The Beast took it home with 55% of your vote. Said Nick T:

"Kudos to Gaston for having such a great song, but The Beast is such a lovely character. Even if my memory of him is blurrier, it's still warm."

With Six You Get Linkroll

Towleroad Florence Henderson, "Mrs Brady" herself, dies at 82
Letterboxd "movies where jessica chastain gets fed up with the useless men around her so she decides to save the world herself"
EW Martin Scorsese's Silence to get world premiere at The Vatican
Medium "a letter to Tom Ford from a fat moviegoer" regarding Nocturnal Animals
Coco Hits NY finds Moana distractingly relevant to the current political situation
Elle Magazine all the different women who've played Jackie Kennedy (amazing, really)
The New Yorker the evolution of Pedro Almodóvar

oops that was seven links 

Exit Video
Doctor Strange as 8 bit game

They only do this for action and genre flicks since they're a natural fit but wouldn't it be satirical fun to do it for an unexpected non-teen boy favorite like say... Carol or The Hours?