but all I know-oh-oh is down inside i'm lii-iiin-king ♫

Empire exciting project alert! Writer/director Destin Cretton of Short Term 12 fame will guide Michael B Jordan in Just Mercy, a memoir adaptation about a young lawyer who fought for the wrongly convicted
Balder & Dash looks back on the exciting sci-fi curveball Attack the Block (2011)
Variety Alan Parker (Midnight Express, Bugsy Malone, Evita) receives BFI Tribute
Kenneth in the (212) is rewatching Woody Allen movies and has time for Diane Keaton singing
Cinematic Corner really loves Ant-Man and since I was kind of hard on it, I figure a more positive review should be shared
NPR talks about getting the ants right with the help of "myrmecologists" on Ant-Man
Pop Culture Crazy on Paper Towns (2015) and "Manic Pixie Dream Girl nonsense"
Comics Alliance Green Lantern Corps (2020) may feature Tyrese Gibson as the John Stewart iteration of Green Lantern and yes I feel dirty that I typed a sentence about a movie that's not due for another 5 years and might never even be made. Apologies. We really are living in a sick movie culture at the moment

LOL
Karen Carpenter Died For Your Sins finds Angie Dickinson in a "white mood" 
/Film Jake Gyllenhaal cried when his parents wouldn't let him star in The Mighty Ducks in 1992. Hee!  

Off Cinema (Sort Of)
The Hairpin on kissing and 'disgusting intimacy'. Interesting article but be warned of really gross photos that may or may not be from an X-Files episode that's name dropped. (I love kissing. I once toyed with starting a series on it with this classic post on Jake Gyllenhaal but good god that was a ton of work.)
i09 need some reading suggestions? Here are nominees for the British Fantasy Awards
Boy Culture 30 minutes (!!!) of unseen outtakes from Madonna's classic "Vogue" video have surfaced. It's so weird to see Madonna at the end of takes all dissatisfied with herself for milliseconds. Don't you miss David Fincher making music videos. He should do that inbetween his films
Playbill casting complete ono the West End production of "Photograph 51" starring Nicole Kidman. Her first time on the UK stage since "The Blue Room." Performances start in just 2 months. me want! me want! donate to the site (see sidebar) so I have funds to go see her. *sniffle* 

Showtune to Go...
Feeling oppressed by superheroes of late, I suddenly remembered one of my very favorite songs from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I seriously love this song (Yeah, I went through a Rocky Horror phase one year as a teenager) and strangely YouTube has very little use for it. Is it because of its lack of fame since it was axed from the original cut of the movie? I found one good clip from a performance in Jacksonville Florida with Ross Frontz and Jessica Alexander doing Brad and Janet... good voices!

Baz, Rocky, Sarandon and Me

Editor's Note: Faithful reader and frequent Best Shot participant Derreck (see his tumblr here) attended a special film event that we desperately wanted to make it to last week, a screening of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" with everyone's favorite red curtain Aussie auteur hosting. I invited Derreck to share his memoir of the event, so here he is to do so! - Nathaniel R.

I've never seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’ve heard about it. I’ve seen images of Tim Curry in a corset, fishnets and makeup, heard about shadowcasts and seen its enduring cultural presence in movies like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but I’d never actually watched the film. I was born way after it was released and even though to this day, it is one of the longest theatrical releases in the history of cinema, it never made it to theatres in my homeland of the Bahamas. Rocky Horror ended up in my “I’ll get to that eventually” pile along with other much-discussed 70s movies like Apocalypse Now and Xanadu. 

Fast-forward to me living in New York. I was doing my daily blog readings and saw that Rocky was playing at the IFC Theater in Manhattan as part of Super Week leading up to Comic-Con. I thought “oh, that’s nice. Maybe I’ll go.” Until I read on and saw that Baz Luhrmann would be there in person to conduct a Q&A about the film and speak about how it influenced his work. 

Baz Luhrmann. The man behind the film that remains forever close to my heart and inspired my ridiculous obsession with love: Moulin Rouge!

I immediately left my apartment to get a ticket. 

Fast-forward to the big night. I was sitting in my chair shivering with "antici--

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Top Ten: Strange Golden Globe Musical Snubs

Glenn here with a tuesday top ten on a topic dear to my heart, and Nathaniel's too. We both have a strange fondness for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s annual Golden Globe Awards. Beyond the gif-ready celebrities-getting-drunk setting and the organisation’s occasional flurries of bonkers brilliance (too many to list), I think I like most of all that their splitting of films between drama and musical/comedy means so many very worthy films get big awards and nominations that they otherwise wouldn’t have. The general rule of thumb is that musicals have a much easier time getting a nomination because there are far fewer of them and, thus, stick out more. Sure, Burlesque, Across the Universe, Nine, and Mamma Mia are recent examples of none too acclaimed musicals landing big time best picture nominations.

Forgotten Awards Trivia: The Globes didn't consider "Dancer in the Dark" a musical (???) and Björk's awards show bird fetish didn't begin with the Oscar swan dress. Note that owl purse!

But what about those that didn’t? There’s more than you’d think!

11 with an Asterisk
Given the somewhat lax definition of “musical” by the HFPA – Ray? Coal Miner’s Daughter? Walk the Line? The Rose? – it’s a surprise that Robert Altman’s classic Nashville and Lars von Trier’s masterpiece Dancer in the Dark weren’t classified as such. The former because, well, it’s also pretty funny, right? The latter because it was a true, honest to god MUSICAL in the tradition sense. Altman’s ode to country garnered a whopping 11 nominations (including multiple for the now defunct “Best Acting Debut” category) and Dancer in the Dark snagged one for Bjork’s performance. Still, it’s about as dramatic as you can possibly get so we’ll let it slide.

TOP 10 MOST MYSTIFYING GOLDEN GLOBE MUSICAL SNUBS

10. Xanadu (1980)
Nominated instead: Airplane!, The Coal Miner’s Daughter (won), Fame, The Idolmaker, Melvin & Howard
Oh sure, laugh! Yes, this infamous movie was scorned upon release, but so was Burlesque and they had no trouble nominating that fabulosity twenty years later. Given the universal acclaim for, if nothing else, its soundtrack you’d think it could have at least gotten an original song citation for the title track. No, it’s not great art but who’s ever heard of Taylor Hackford’s The Idolmaker since?

Nine more increasingly acclaimed and tuneful snubbees after the jump

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