The Incredible Linking Man

• The Cut "I'm rooting for the Lannisters" fun piece on Game of Thrones (which I still read about on occasion even though I haven't watched since season 2)
• /Film Guillermo del Toro's official tequila looks like it's from one of his movies
• Vulture every Charlize Theron performance ranked. Interesting list though I quibble with the order (as they seem to equate the quality of the movies with the quality of her performance and Theron is precisely the star she is because she is often able to be good even in terrible pictures). Also Young Adult should be #1

• Playbill all star cast lined up for Steve Martin's next Broadway show (after his musical Bright Star), this one's a comedy called Meteor Shower
• Browbeat the internet goes wild for old Russ Tamblyn dancing clip from 1956
• Tracking Board Nicole Kidman is in talks to headline a crime thriller called Destroyer directed by Karyn Kusama. Kusama is promising that though it's a genre film it's also "a beautiful character study of an incredible female"
• Variety we were wondering when Ruth Negga would start lining up big roles after Loving. She'll star opposite Brad Pitt in the sci-fi movie Ad Astra
• Awards Daily This is Us has lost one of its Emmy nominations, costume design.
• The Wrap this piece about Marvel's plans for Spider-Man got a lot of internet pass-around but it really doesn't tell you much other than they're going to make Spidey a thing in all the crossover movies

Two pieces about criticism/discussion of racial politics in movies/theaters right now

• American Theater a thoughtful piece on the counterproductive assault on Broadway's Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812. (We haven't yet heard if the show is actually closing following it's poorly handled casting changes but it might... but the producers were apparently considering it)
• Birth Movies Death a very navel gazing piece about being an ally and trying to navigate pop culture criticism in the current political climate and intersectional age

Exit Video
Handsome talented Aaron Tveit is taking on the classic role of Bobby in another production of Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece (one of them, at least) Company. This one starts in a couple of days in Massachusetts so go if you live near there and report back. Here he is rehearsing...

Race in Lady Macbeth and The Beguiled: Not so black or white?

by Lynn Lee

Florence Pugh in Lady Macbeth / Nicole Kidman in The Beguiled

In a summer filled with movies by or starring women of exceptional talent, The Beguiled and Lady Macbeth make an especially fascinating cinematic pairing.  Both films center on mid-19th century women who appear trapped by their societies’ constricting gender norms.  In both, the women are confined to an isolated, often claustrophobic space, yet nature is a constantly beckoning presence that at once shapes and reflects their desires.  (Both even have plots that turn on poisonous wild mushrooms!)  And in both, the women up-end the patriarchal structure of their circumscribed universe without liberating themselves.  If anything, they reinforce that power structure even as they seize momentary control of it, leaving not a feeling of triumph but a somber queasiness.

For all these thematic similarities, the differences between the two films are even more striking...

Click to read more ...

Link on a Hot Tin Roof

AV Club RIP voice acting legend June Foray
Variety Amazon is moving into being their own distributor now after partnering with other distributors before. They'll try it out with Woody Allen's Wonder Wheel which they seem to have high hopes for.
Screen Crush It's official - Emoji Movie is worst reviewed wide release of the year

/Film a photo tour of the Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image
Deadline Anne Hathaway circling the Barbie movie that Amy Schumer abandoned
Coming Soon Warner Bros considering "formidable" Oscar campaign for Wonder Woman

off cinema
Variety Jack O'Connell talks about his nude scene in the new revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and why he hasn't watched Paul Newman in the film version
Playbill Ellen Greene shares a scrapbook from the original run of Little Shop of Horrors
Chicago Tribune recommended theater shows on a budget in Chi-town
Boy Culture the world's youngest living Madonna fan - a 13 year old violinist!
Exeunt a piece about that 'critics camp' I went to this month by one of the other fellows
NYT terribly sad debacle going on with The Great Comet of 1812 on Broadway. When I first heard about Mandy Patinkin's casting I was thrilled because I haven't yet seen the show and totally love that man. But it seems in order to accomodate him (in the role formerly played by Josh Groban) they were ousting their current leading man Okieriete “Oak” Onaodowan (from Hamilton) earlier than his scheduled final date. The optics look bad even though Broadway shows do these type of celebrity casting changes constantly. Patinkin has now dropped out and Oak won't extend and now the entire cast, which includes several actors of color (the show was previously praised for its diverse casting), could be out of jobs because they might close early due to the public outrage. 

Exit Video
The new Charlie XCX video "Boys" is a sexy blast. So many celebrity cameos including the internet's current boyfriend Riz Ahmed, diver Tom Daley, and a slew of musicians. There is a chainsaw in this video but as Charli states

NO BOYS WERE HARMED IN THE MAKING OF THIS VIDEO 💕 

"Aladdin" Finds its Leading Man

by Nathaniel R

Will Smith has been booked as the genie for a fair bit but now Disney is really revving up for their live action remake of Aladdin, casting both their "Street Rat! Scoundrel!" and future prince in Mena Massoud (pictured above), and their Princess Jasmine in Naomi Scott, who just played the pink ranger in the film version of Power Rangers...

Click to read more ...

i've got good news. that link you like is going to come back in style.

• Guardian Great interview with Holly Hunter about The Big Sick and her career. (People are already mentioning "Oscar nom!" in regards to her supporting work as Zoe Kazan's mother in the romantic comedy)

• Pajiba on what the new Defenders posters might remind you of

• Playbill Adorable John Benjamin Hickey, fresh off the revival of Six Degrees of Separation, thinks there should be a fine for people who leave their cel phones on in theaters. Agreed! 

• Screen Crush picks the 25 best LGBT films of the past 25 years. Happy to see Pariah and Bound mixed in with the usual titles like Brokeback Mountain and such. And the past few years have been so good for LGBT cinema. I mean: Carol, The Handmaiden, Moonlight, Tangerine. #Blessed

• Esquire Fun article by Tyler Coates on how he finally learned to love RuPaul's Drag Race which he had avoided for years and even bad-mouthed in print

• Theater Mania you don't see this often but there's an actual age restriction on the Broadway adaptation of George Orwell's "1984". No one under 13 will be admitted due to its intensity. The show stars Tom Sturridge, Reed Birney, Olivia Wilde, and TFE fav Cara Seymour (who previously did that lovely guest spot for us). I'm seeing it soon so will report back.

• IndieWire has issues with the "orientalism" of the new Twin Peaks. Add this to the onling Sofia Coppola controversy and... well... People I don't know what to do with all the outrage anymore at everything. There's got to be a line where, as an adult, you're just okay with what you're seeing and discarding the parts that irk you, or filing them under "I don't know about that but whatever" if they're not harmfully intended. Artists will always have their own peculiar obsessions and they'll always draw from a wide variety of influences (at least the good ones will) to craft their own stories and nobody really owns history; pop culture and the arts are giant beautiful melting pots of ideas and aesthetics from all over the world. Oh and also the Laura Dern hairstyle is not proprietarily Asian as the article seems to imply. I know this because I was obsessed with silent film star Louise Brooks as a teenager (Pandora's Box & Diary of a Lost Girl 4ever!). It was originally called the 'Castle Bob,' because Irene Castle (a famous NY dancer) debuted the then-shocking look in 1915. It was a very controversial look but became a sensation in the 1920s with flappers and silent film stars. Hollywood's first popular Asian American actress Anna May Wong, who the article references as an influence on Dern's look, actually had to get her hair cut like that because it was so popular.

• This is Not Porn great photo of Oscar winner Kim Hunter in makeup chair on The Planet of the Apes (1968)

Hilarious Reads and I Personally Needed the Laughs. You?

• The New Yorker "Tennessee Williams with Air Conditioning"... *fans self* I was cackling so loud by the end of this. Best article in forever.

• McSweeneys "11 Ways That I, a White Man, Am Not Privileged" Oops. Hee!

• Buzzfeed "25 Gay Pride signs that will make you laugh harder than you should" - so many of these are so wonderful I just want to hug all gay people for being funny and able to spell

• McSweeneys "An Oral History of Quentin Tarantino as Told to Me By Men I've Dated" 

What places are delivering right now? So, in the early ’90s, right around when Pulp Fiction came out, Quentin Tarantino and Mira Sorvino were dating. I always thought Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion was a dumb chick flick, but I caught part of it on cable the other day and there was an ad for Red Apple cigarettes in the background of one of the shots! Do you know about Red Apple cigarettes?