Link Factory

• Mashable badly seeded March Madness brackets are terrible storytelling
• Film School Rejects picks the 18 best movies of 2018 thus far (weird-ass rankings if you ask me, especially with Isle of Dogs below A Wrinkle in Time... and the kind of obnoxious indie supernatural ovie The Endless)
• Decider looking back at an old Tiny Toons episode about representation in 1990
• Screen Crush man died when head got stuck in seat at movie theater (I'm going to have nightmares)
• E! Online Arnold Schwarzenegger has emergency open heart surgery

• Tracking Board  Twice delayed X-Men adjacent movie The New Mutants has been a nightmare to make; Fox keeps changing their mind about what they want it to be. While we all might complain from time to time about Marvel Studios (who are far from perfect -- especially in regards to gender) at least they seem to know what they want every time and how to get there. Even if what they want has been a bit formulaic until recently.
• Cartoon Brew it only took 32 years (oy!)  for a woman to get to direct a Pixar short
• AV Club here's another cute report about that movie which is called Bao and about a dumpling that comes to life
• My New Plaid Pants Klaes Bang, of The Square fame, made a gay short film
• Jim Carrey I somehow missed that in his spare time the seemingly retired movie star has become a political cartoonist. A pretty good one, too. This reminds me of the first time I saw him. Anyone remember his short-lived sitcom Duck Factory in which he played a cartoonist?
• Vanity Fair a good pilot season for South Asian actors - lots of roles in all sorts of shows
• Deadline the cast of Sex & the City supporting Cynthia Nixon's run for NY Governor
• Theater Mania Desperate Measures, which was so so wonderful in its premiere engagement (we talked about it here) is getting an open ended run off Broadway soon. Here's hoping the hilarious original cast is available.

16 days til Oscar. Ranking the 16 Animated Feature Winners

by Nathaniel R

which movies willed this category into existence?

With just 16 days to go until Coco wins Pixar its 9th Academy Award for Best Animated Feature let's look back over the first 16 years of the category. (Yes, that's right math geniuses, Pixar has won a full 50% of the animated Oscars thus far.)

The History, Chronologically

1988-2000 The category didn't exist until 2001 but it wasn't just created on a whim. The previous dozen years which included the renaissance of Disney, the sizeable popularity influence and beauty of what was happening in Japanese animation, the explosion of new animation studios all over the map, and the rise of Pixar in particular, all led us to the inevitable: an Oscar category for animated features...

Click to read more ...

A Glimpse at Oscar's Nominated Animated Shorts

by Chris Feil

Is this an off year for the Animated Short category? It’s (shamefully) my first year to catch the entire lineup, but unfortunately that seems to be the general response. If you check out the films in theatres you will also be treated to a few of the shortlisted contenders, but the package sadly doesn’t include the delightful In A Heartbeat. Even if this is also the least exciting lineup of the three Short categories this year, there are still delights to be found in this category, with animation styles the run the full spectrum from hand-drawn to computer generated to stop motion animation. Let’s look at the nominees...

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Coco Rules Over the Annie Awards

by Nathaniel R

In one of the least shocking events of this awards season, Disney/Pixar's Coco swept the Annie Awards this weekend, winning in every category in which it was nominated. 2017 was widely seen as an underwhelming year for animated features but we should face facts: Coco would have been a strong contender for Oscar gold in many other years, too.

The complete list of winners (Coco wasn't eligible in every category) and a few more comments after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Ride on the Link Train

news
• Coming Soon first image Zac Efron as Ted Bundy in Extremely Wicked
• TMZ Meryl Streep files for trademark claim on the use of her name. Wonder what prompted this?
• WSJ Is the Star Wars franchise slipping in popularity? (This seems like a lot of panic for nothing since the movies are regularly grossing a billion)  

• Variety Bernadette Peters off to a great sales start taking over for Bette Midler in Hello Dolly! on Broadway
• Tracking Board Juliette Lewis joins the cast of the next Sam Taylor-Johnson movie A Million Little Pieces 
• The Wrap Oprah responds to her action figure from A Wrinkle in Time
• Tribeca Film Matthew Eng, who co-writes our "Months of Meryl" column, interviewed the queen herself! Check out his chat with Streep about her work on The Post.
• AV Club Sam Raimi likely to direct the Kingkiller Chronicles which already has Lin-Manuel Miranda attached for the music

opinion
• Film Mixtape Our own Chris Feil's top 15 films of the year: Lady Bird, Raw, Personal Shopper, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and more...
• Advocate Sir Ian McKellen on the 30th anniversary of his coming out
• Fandor "What if Pixar made Phantom Thread?" <-- SPOILERS in that article, major ones, so be warned. I'm not sure what to make of this piece. I love the concept and the header image and the cartoon being described but it's basically like 2 separate articles shoved up against each other since they keep leaving the imaginary film for multi-paragraph detours into the real one.
• Cinematic Corner Sati picks her 35 best shots of the year

exit video

Nicole eats "micro-livestock" aka bugs for Vanity Fair's secret talent theater. Jason made me lol with his response to this video:

Nicole Kidman dislodged her jaw and swallowed Lars Von Trier whole one time on the set of Dogville so bugs ain't shit"