Link Breakers

Port Magazine's film issue is guest curated by Daniel Day-Lewis and features Brendan Gleeson & Paul Thomas Anderson
AV Club every stammer in every Woody Allen movie. A 44 minute (!) supercut. Good lord. 
Anderson Live even though I think it's kind of dangerous to let Anderson Cooper get any yummier, he has. Look, it's Anderson Coopcakes! 

Blackbook what do you make of the new tv spots for The Great Gatsby. (I'm trying not to react as it's my favorite book of all time and I can't see it working as a film. Unless it's just completely it's own thing and borrowing the glory of the title.) 
Paul Reese thinks Spring Breakers might be the best American film since Mulholland Dr

just for lolz
BuzzFeed 12 unanswered crazy-making questions about Disney's Beauty & The Beast
Spiral 16 scientific data confirms that "We Built This City" is the worstest song ever recorded.

Jesse Unleashed. And Other Links

i09 the best critical responses to Safe Haven's batsh*t ending (spoilers, obviously)
Natasha VC the Boogie Nights premiere photos are debilitating. (amen)
Cinematic Corner expresses disatisfaction with The Master. I think the qualms expressed here are very imply put the problem a lot of people have with the second act of Paul Thomas Anderson's career. I wonder if he'll change again?
Awards Daily salutes the hard working Oscar publicists as ballots close
MNPP Judy Garland's A Star is Born even wins over JA! She's just brilliant in that film. One of the worst Oscar losses ever. 

Coming Soon on a new Bruce Lee biopic in the works. I read a few articles on this last night and not one of them mentioned that there already is a Bruce Lee biopic, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story which came out in the 90s and starred the hotness that was Jason Scott Lee (no relation)
Playbill Les Misérables will be returning to Broadway in 2014, just 11 years since the original long running show closed. Meanwhile the show has never closed in London and has now been playing for 27 years
Jesse Williams the actor (the hottie from Cabin in the Woods) doesn't pull punches detailing his issues with Django Unchained's treatment of race and slavery
Advocate Kelly McGillis will reminisce about Top Gun generically but she won't talk about Jodie Foster's coming out!
Lainey Gossip checks in with the pre-Oscar gingers Jessica Chastain & Nicole Kidman
In Contention looks at Sound Mixing which I personally think is terrifically hard to predict this year 

Finally... if you believe that math can predict the Oscars check out Ben's Oscar Forecast. He's a Harvard student who's trying to predict them with formulas. He's predicting the usual suspects that have been winning everything for acting but for best director... Ang Lee (!?!)

P.T. Anderson on "The Master" & An Errant Oscar Thought

An hour long conversation about his divisive movie. Sometimes you have to hear it from the filmmaker's mouth.

Somewhat off topic now...

Occasionally with the great filmmakers it feels unseemly to bring up the great compromise of Oscar. Anderson is probably too much of an artist to care too deeply about golden idols but I do wonder -- tis the season -- if The Master can hold on to any Academy plays or if the year is just getting too crowded with traditional but very satisfying entertainments (Lincoln, Les Miz, Argo) for any of the "difficult" s (The Master, Amour, Anna Karenina, maybe even Beasts of the Southern Wild) to squeeze into the major categories.

What say you?

P.S. In case you missed it, my thoughts on The Master

The Masters of My Eyeballs

I like getting lost at the movies. I live for the moments when you dive into the blue box. Ever since Mulholland Drive, that's what I've called that delirius feeling. That's when a movie with a tractor beam size pull just sucks you in until you're fully immersed in its world. Sometimes it's only for a moment. Sometimes it happens in fits and starts. With masterpieces it can last for the whole running time once you've stopped resisting. In these moments we've left the movie theater behind; the projectionist isn't the only one projecting.

Paul Thomas Anderson movies usually give me just this blue box sensation. I ate at the diner in Hard Eight. I hung out on porn sets and called Julianne mommy while high on coke in Boogie Nights. In There Will Be Blood I fell right in the oil well with Daniel Day-Lewis but only one of us emerged again after that prologue. I even lost myself a time or two in Punch-Drunk Love flights of rage and whimsy. 

 THE MASTER and HOLY MOTORS after the jump

Click to read more ...

Team Experience: The Master

I'm out and about again (finally!) so my greedy eyeballs will be on The Master soon. I challenged Team Experience to describe the film in three words since so many critics can't even settle on what it's even about (I'm avoiding reviews but the non-consensus as to meaning is out there).

Four brave souls took me up on the challenge...

Matt Zurcher writes:

Fevered heart need.
The intensity of The Master is impossible to understate. The style itself is unhinged -- crazy, even. The characters are bloated visions of Freudian extremes. The Master is filmmaking of the highest order, yes. But it's also cinema that works on its own terms, so full of cocky flair and delightful self-indulgence that the audience has no choice but to follow it wherever it wants to go. Anderson's fable can seem alienating or disorganized on first viewing, but a second reveals the director's compassion. Joaquin Phoenix's face is a shattered one, but his tears are so heartbreakingly believable. The passion and need that these two men feel for each other begs to be known. And in all the intellectualization of this film that we're going to see, let us remember that it's really just about two people who need each other and who love each other. It's the best love story I've seen since Punch-Drunk Love.

You can read Matt's full review here.

Beau McCoy writes:

Opaque Rabid Jazz

"The Master" makes "Cosmopolis" look as accessible as a Spielberg film. Purposely distant and muddled; what are we watching and why? Ferocity abounds in its many forms and incarnations. Moves like a jazz solo; we don't know where we're going. Why should it matter? Premature.

Alexa says:

Disappointing Beautiful Molasses
There's a truly great film here waiting to be pulled out of the molasses...

You can read more of her thoughts, here.

Finally, Jose was even more succinct but I suspect it's something of a spoiler so I'm putting it after the jump...

Click to read more ...