1977: The Best Animated Short nominees

Tim here. To celebrate the upcoming Supporting Actress Smackdown, 1977 is the year of the month here at the Film Experience. I'd like to take you back to a different Oscar competition from that year, the four-way race for Best Animated Short Film. It was one of the more interesting slates that category has ever seen, which I hasten to clarify isn't the same as calling it one of the best. But it makes for a pretty unique cross-section of the kind of animation being made in North America, with two nominees from the United States and two from Canada, ranging from a purely abstract experiment with the medium to a literal TV show.

We'll start off with the shortest of the nominees, an offbeat little gag called Jimmy the C (on YouTube – that unpleasant little watermark in the center goes away after a minute). In it, recently-inaugurated President Jimmy Carter waxes rhapsodic over his beloved home state by lip-singing to Ray Charles's "Georgia on My Mind", all through the magic of clay animation. I confess myself stumped: what the hell?...

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Links: Banderas, Cho, Parsons, Jones, Holtzmann, and More

TV
Vulture provides an A-Z glossary of all of Stranger Things mad sci-fi referencing  from Alien (1979) toVideodrome (1983)
Comics Alliance American Gods, Bryan Fuller's adaptation of the Neil Gaiman book, gets its first logo and a promotional image 
EW Impromptu Smash reunion. Katharine McPhee invited Megan Hilty on stage with her Sunday night at a LA jazz club - and yes they sang Smash songs.

Movies
Playbill Fences sets its release date for December 16th
Antagony & Ecstasy looks back at His Girl Friday - the Rosalind Russell role was a male role in the source material.

The Root Leslie Jones of SNL & Ghostbusters fame was hounded by racists on twitter - they're feeling so bold these days thanks to the GOP -- fans rallied behind her
Salon "Free Jillian Holtzmann" on why Sony isn't saying that the most popular new Ghostbuster character is a lesbian
AV Club talks to John Cho about Star Trek, gay sulu, and Asian representation in cinema
The Guardian Antonio Banderas to play Gianni Versace in a biopic. The Versace estate is not pleased calling it "fiction" 
Coming Soon Fifty Shades Darker set photos
The Guardian on film franchises with the most episodes: Jungle Jim, Godzilla, and a few more
Awards Daily wonders if the political turmoil will turn the Oscars nostalgic rather than brave (see also 1968 Best Picture winner Oliver!) 
Towleroad Twenty year-old actor Ross Lynch is going from Disney Channel fame to serial killing? He'll play Jeffrey Dahmer, pre-murders, as a troubled teen in a new film.
Variety Sigourney Weaver will be honored for her career as this September's San Sebastian film festival 

...and Anton Yelchin's parents sent a beautiful message to friends and fans and the industry...

Beautiful. Anton Yelchin's parents thank Hollywood in ad @THR: 'Grateful for your unconditional love of our son' pic.twitter.com/01yn7owcL5

— Janice Min (@janicemin) July 18, 2016

Theater
Playbill Jake Gyllenhaal to headline the revival of Burn This. The original hit production in 87/88, which went from Off-Broadway to Broadway for a year-plus long run, won praise for Eric Roberts (Theater World award), John Malkovich (Drama Desk Nomination) and Joan Allen (Tony win)
NYT Estelle Parsons health scare prompts closing of her new play. Send healing vibes her way. She's a national treasure. If you haven't yet seen Season 2 of Grace & Frankie it closes beautifully with an arc about her guest starring role as "Babe," a larger than life friend of the pair who's throwing herself a big going away party. Parsons has done a lot of work on TV but weirdly despite being a highly esteemed actor with an Oscar win and 5 Tony nominations, she's never received an Emmy nomination. 

Miscellania
Huffington Post Jennifer Aniston tears into the media for their obsession with women's bodies and whether or not she's pregnant 
Wicked Gay Blog Dolly Parton working on a dance album with a track called "I'm a Wee Bit Gay" 
The New Yorker "Donald Trump's Ghostwriter Tells All" a harrowing profile 
Logo My Way hosted a contest to redesign the embarassing Trump Pence logo - Love some of these entries
Pajiba on the shitshow that was the RNC's first night with its plagiarized First Lady speech 

Review: The Infiltrator

Manuel here with a review of The Infiltrator which opened yesterday nationwide.

Fact: Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic is one of the most influential films of the 21st century. That’s not a qualitative assessment but an increasingly common thought that’s rankled in my brain. Can you believe Soderbergh actually struggled to get his film financed because Hollywood execs didn’t think audiences would want to watch an entire film about the drug trade?

Fast-forward to summer 2016 when USA is premiering Queen of the South, Netflix will bring us season 2 of Narcos, two competing El Chapo TV series are in development, and Bryan Cranston’s The Infiltrator joins an ever-growing list of films about the war on drugs that range from the sublime (Sicario) to the pedestrian (Blow) with everything in between (Savages, anyone?).

In Brad Furman’s The Infiltrator, the Breaking Bad actor plays U.S. Customs Service special agent Robert Mazur who, as is par for the course in certain genres, decides to take on one last job to go undercover as “Bob Musella.”...

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Doc Corner: 'Zero Days' is One of the Year's Best

Glenn here with our weekly look at documentaries from theatres, festivals, and on demand.

Alex Gibney works with such ferocious regularity that it’s sometimes hard to keep track. Last year alone he had three films released following two the year before that. His latest, Zero Days, falls into the camp of Gibney films in which he most excels - those like Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room that allow him to exercise his skills at investigative journalism and dig deep into exposing organizations and those who surround them. While it lacks the pop fancies that made Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief such a success, Zero Days is Gibney’s best documentary in years.

Told with all the propulsive, thrilling excitement of a Hollywood spy blockbuster, Zero Days lifts the lid on a series of cybercrimes (reportedly - the film certainly makes a valiant case for it) committed by the US government in alignment with Israel against Iran and their potentially dangerous nuclear program. The crimes backfired drastically and exposed America and the world to a future of uncertain technological warfare...

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Tweetweek: Skarsgård, Fences, and... yes... Politics

Time for a quick diversion - tweets that amused or edified this week, somewhat randomly selected.

Get it, Kangaroo. pic.twitter.com/ghyR1msaCJ

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) June 14, 2016

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