We had so much fun on "Down with Love"

Costume Designer Daniel Orlandi concludes his guest-blogging day with our favourite of his pictures. You should follow him on Instagram for more fun set photos & costume sketches....

by Daniel Orlandi

The Doris Day / Rock Hudson sex comedy romps were among the first movies I saw as a kid. I was so enamored of the look. So when I read the script to Down with Love (2003), I had to do it. I owe a lot to Producer Paddy Cullen for helping me get the job. She slipped me that script early and got me in to meet the director and producers first.

There was one problem, though...

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Linkovers

must read
"Want to work in Hollywood? Only straight, white men need apply?" this new study from USC is getting a lot of attention and it is pretty damning evidence all told. (How did diversity issues get so much worse instead of better? - It boggles the mind.) That study is just for films but TV is doing a lot better. On that note it looks like we lost Lee Daniels to TV for good  (*sniffle... no more Paperboy or Precious). In addition to "Empire" Season 2 he's developing a girl-band series called "Star". NYT also looked at the diversity gap on the bigscreen from that study and Dana Delany tweeted in response underlining why she doesn't do film anymore.

The migration of actors (particularly female) and creatives to television has been well documented. I can only blame moviegoers at this point. They just only seem willing to look at "adult" and female stuff on television and save their ticket dollars for fx films 

links
Variety Todd Haynes to get a tribute at this year's Gotham Awards
Empire remember when Lasse Hallström was a big deal? His breakthrough was My Life as a Dog (not a literal title) and now he'll be directing a movie called A Dog's Purpose which is actually about a dog, a reincarnated dog who helps various owners in his lives
imgur a native of Florida photographs Edward Scissorhands locations 25 years later. The foilage sure grew and the colors sure are drabber now
Interview republishes an archival interview with Warren Beatty from 1972 as we await anything on his long-gestating Howard Hughes biopic
MSZ "Unloved" series looks at Peyton Reed's Down With Love and The Break-Up
Filmmaker Magazine talks to Randal Kleiser about Summer Lovers, an 80s guilty pleasure starring Daryl Hannah and Peter Gallagher.
Indie Outlook compares American Sniper and Selma to find the structure of "Oscar Bait". It's interesting but I wholly disagree on the notion that Selma's focus on the mechanicas of civil disobedience makes it dry and unsatisfying. I think that's exactly what makes it so good and so much more worthwhile than a simple "great man" biopic would have been. Love that movie.
This Is Not Porn Jessica Lange on the set of King Kong (1976). Hee 

spandex city
CW Seed This is actually cool. CW, which had a major hit with their fun and well-crafted Flash series is now streaming the original Flash television series from 1990 -  I had forgotten that existed even!
Comic Alliance "why I'm boycotting Marvel Comics" more on Marvel's very real diversity problem 
Htxt.Africa talks Star Wars and The Jungle Book from a Disney Africa presentation. Also says Doctor Strange looks "horror-movie-dark" 

for London readers
Facebook  Desperately Seeking Susan is getting a 30th anniversary screening at the Prince Charles Cinema 

the Leftovers

Oooh, here's the Season 2 trailer to HBO's "The Leftovers" which had so many good parts for ladies last season. This new season shakes things up a lot so we don't know quite what to expect. 

free the bacon
Kevin Bacon demands more male nudity in Hollywood

Thoughts I Had... while looking at sudden Ant-Man stuff

Ant-Man (2015) has only been filming for a few days and already we have a first image, a complete cast list, cute tweeting between cast & director, and so on. It's the new age of filmmaking in which you can be totally sick of a project before it ever nears post-production. I kid, sort of. I'm not sick of Ant-Man yet but I'd rather be watching it than wondering about it.

Nevertheless let's do what we do. My thoughts as they come to me without censorship...

• If TFE were like most movie blogs I would immediately start theorizing what the license plate "D69W01Y" could possibly mean. Is it a secret message? the code name of some scientific invention? a codebreaker to unlock the titles of all those announced Marvel movies in the pipeline?
• But TFE is not like most movie blogs and we'd rather live in an imaginary world where people got more excited about films that exist already. Or intense upcoming dramas about Women Who Lie To Themselves™. Online film culture seems to be solely reserved for wondering about the minutae of new superhero movies.
• minutae. Hee! Get it? Ant-Man. Because he shrinks. (I'll be here all week.)
• What if Ant-Man crosses the bridge and meets Ape-Men? That's where they live!
• Everyone I know loves San Francisco except for me. Maybe I should give it another try?
• What's in the bag? I hope it's the Wasp all shrunken already. I'm so starved for female superheroes

more after the jump

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Linkbusters

The Daily Beast the sexual politics of Ghostbusters, 30 years later
The Wire the career of Lorraine Toussaint before Orange is the New Black 
BFI let's kill the buzzword "hybrid" when it comes to documentaries 
/Film there might be a sequel to Neighbors... which wouldn't surprise anyone
Variety Kino-Lorber has picked up one of Sundance's buzziest titles A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, an Iranian vampire movie, for US distribution (Glenn's review icymi)

In Contention on an new animated contender from GKids, Boy vs. World 
Pajiba celebrates Emily Blunt's greatness as an action star in Edge of Tomorrow
Guardian The director and his muse will try for more Oscars in 2016 with a biopic called Joy about the creator of the Miracle Mop. She was 12 years out of college with 3 children when all this stuff happened. Eventually Jennifer Lawrence will be old enough for the parts David O. Russell keeps casting her in.  
MTV Channing Tatum still super excited about Gambit prospects. Everyone wants their superhero dollars
AV Club rumors abound that it's either Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy or Jared Leto for Doctor Strange. I worry that Marvel has no clear vision of what they want. What connects any of those actors beyond fame? Very different gifts and styles. (I love Hardy as an actor but he seems like a terrible fit for that character)

Off Cinema
Variety on the explosion of new TV shows in summer now that the game has changed
Cinema Blend Steven Spielberg wants to turn Bryan Cranston's tony winning performance into a tv miniseries
Playbill shares the Tony "In Memoriam" segment that strangely didn't air 
Playbill collects all the Tony performances in one place (seriously, it's like no one even needs to watch live tv anymore) 

And finally I just want to say a big congratulations to Peyton Reed for his new gig.  I've been rooting for him ever since the one-two punch of Bring It On and Down With Love, two stylish, absorbing, joyful, funny movies with a real vision behind them. I was bummed when his proposed retro version of Fantastic Four was cancelled in the Aughts and for what: A low-rent generic lousy f/x heavy version? But it's been so long since he was in the news that I figured his career was over. But now he'll direct Ant-Man. There's been a lot of online sniping calling him a hack, even from sites I otherwise like, but those writers should really think before they type and consider his filmography. There's some "for hire" business yes, but he's a good director. It's an unexpected choice but a good one... even if I'm still deeply suspicious of the project considering Wright's departure and Marvel's current game plans.

Monday Monologue: “There is no Barbara Novak”

Andrew again, with your weekly monologue. Chances are, if you’re asked to remember what films were tickling your fancy a decade ago you wouldn’t turn to Peyton Reed’s sophomore effort Down with Love. I wouldn’t hold it against you. 2003 had many good films, even great ones to offer. Reed's pastiche of the sex-comedies of the '60s was unlikely to be anyone's #1 film of the year but that does not mean it's without ample merits.

Ewan and Renée display their flexibility

When Down with Love opened in May 2003 to unexceptional reviews, both of its stars, Ewan McGregor and Renée Zellweger, had higher profile releases coming out in December of the same year and by the end of the year few were even thinking about it. Ten years after, less so. But that's unfortunate. The film, like many an homage, does not offer expressly much in the way of originality but as far as well intended romps in the romantic comedy genre go Down with Love ably succeeds more often than you’d expect.  We're a few days late in celebrating its 10th anniversary, but for this week’s Monday Monologue here's a reminder of the frothy pleasures of the film...

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