The Iron Linky

By now you've heard that Meryl Streep will be receiving an Honorary Golden Bear at Berlinale in February. The fun part of this news that you probably haven't heard elsewhere is this is the 62nd Berlinale Festival and Meryl is... 62! They grew up together! The best part of this news for those attending the festival? That would be festival screenings of Kramer vs. Kramer, Sophie's Choice, The Bridges of Madison County, A Prairie Home Companion and Out of Africa. I'd love to see all of those on the big screen again... even though they're not the five exact choices I would have made as a programmer (obvs you have to have Kramer & Sophie though). Coming next weekend we'll look at the Reader Streep Rankings. (Thanks for all your e-mails.)

Oscarables
The Wrap Will the Oscars move away from the Kodak Theater in two years? They're considering their options before recommitting to the contract.
Gold Derby shares the new Oscar ballots for Best Picture and accompanying instructions sent to Academy members. Voters can only vote for five favorites though more than five might be nominated given the complicated rules and thousands of ballots.

Etcetera
Antagony and Ecstasy rips into Phyllida Lloyd's The Iron Lady. Only Streep survives.
Low Resolution rips into Albert Nobbs. Close survives. Sort of.
Paper Mag Matthew Modine turns to short filmmaking with Jesus Was a Commie. May also battle the Batman but won't confirm it.
Guardian Swordsman Bob Anderson, who staged fights for massive beloved franchises Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, has died. 
24 Frames talks about a quartet of movies with ambiguous endings. Spoilers obviously. Strangely the author chastises you for not having seen Rampart. Not that the distributor will let you!
Stale Popcorn thinks Rooney Mara is The Girl With the Ungrateful Stuck Up Attitude.  
Cinema Blend Demi Moore will cameo as Gloria Steinem in that Amanda Seyfried Linda Lovelace biopic which keeps getting starrier. 
In Contention interviews Jeremy Irvine and Richard Curtis on War Horse 

A Raggedy Oscar Podcast Reunion

Surprise! The old team is back together momentarily. Clearly we need more time than 40 minutes to get into everything that's going on in the Oscar race so this one is a totally raggedy conversation... a la Margaret and Rampart, two films that are discussed.

So welcome back to Katey, Joe, Nick from Nathaniel, your host here at The Film Experience.

UPDATE: The entire podcast is embedded below but it is having some trouble playing all the way through with Google Chrome. Works perfectly in Firefox or download from iTunes. 

Topics include but are not limited to:
• Cooking tips from The Help
• The Iron Lady and Streep's hard sell for the third Oscar
• Team Margaret and Team Rampart, two wildly underseen movies that share some intuitive storytelling and vivid ensemble work.
• Critical advocacy in the age of consensus
• The silly battle lines drawn between Hugo & The Artist
• Shailene Woodley and Nick's Descendants agnosticism.

A Raggedy Oscar Reunion

Review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

In the beginning there was only a book, but let's start with the ending. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (2011) wraps up with what can only be interpreted as a prologue to a sequel. The movie's elaborate cold case puzzle plot has long since been pieced together when our socially challenged goth heroine Lisbeth Salander sets a new revenge plot in motion. Since we're already past the two hour mark, we race through this whole new story with the speed usually reserved for Lisbeth's midnight motorcycle rides. New beginnings, middles, and endings race by us like blurry highway markers. What just happened? How satisfied the movie leaves you will surely depend on whether or not you'd like to stay in your seat waiting for the next hellish chapter to unfold. 

Millions of people have eagerly flipped pages for all of the hellish chapters of the worldwide best selling "Millennium" trilogy. The Swedish literary phenomenon has already spawned three homegrown films starring Noomi Rapace (now co-opted by Hollywood for the new Sherlock Holmes movie). It's time to crack the book open again with the American version by David Fincher (The Social Network). We're jumping around in time because the experience of the movie, and this franchise in general, is also one of chapters, false starts, and piecemeal reveals.

Read the rest at Towleroad...

P.S. FWIW I'd rank David Fincher 's work like so. (I'm fully aware that I like Alien³ far more than most human beings and his biggest hits far (That'd be Benjamin and I'm presuming Dragon Tattoo) far less. And yeah, I threw in the Madonna & George Michael vids cuz they're masterpieces of the form. 

• THE GREATS: The Social Network (2010), "Express Yourself" (1989), Se7en (1995), "Vogue" (1990), "Freedom" (1990),  Zodiac (2007), "Oh Father" (1990)
• THE GOODIES:  Fight Club (1999), Panic Room (2002),  Alien³ (1992) "Bad Girl" (1992) and all the other music videos. He was such a master at those... 
• THE ONES I'M COOL ON THOUGH THEY HAVE THEIR INDIVIDUAL MOMENTS BECAUSE HE'S SUCH A SUPERB VISUAL STYLIST: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011) and The Game (1997)

Yes, No, Maybe So: "...Dragon Tattoo"

I've waffled on whether or not to give the trailer to David Fincher's adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo the yes, no, maybe so treatment. The teaser was an explosive example of what film advertising can be when it escapes its rigid little box. That rush of images and punk spirit promising the 'Feel. Bad. Movie. Of. Christmas.' just Felt.Good. in an A+ way. But did you ever see it in a theater? I did a couple of times and felt nothing from the audience (you know how you can sometimes absorb the collective excitement levels when a teaser/trailer is playing or at least the second it ends?) so maybe Moviegoers and Hollywood need the rigid little box of 2 and ½ minute plot and character intros as security blanket and insurance policy respectively. 

So now they give us the normal kind of trailer introducing us to the plot and characters that 75 million are intimately familiar with already. Meet anti-social, abused, violent, brilliant Lisbeth Salander, now played by Rooney Mara with sick earrings, mad multiple hairstylings and a wondrous lack of comforting eyebrows.

the breakdown plus the new trailer after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Prediction Updates: Lead and Supporting Actress

Oscar obsessives around the web, including myself, have been hung up on the Glenn Close vs. Meryl Streep Best Actress '80s Rematch! narrative for quite awhile now with Albert Nobbs and The Iron Lady still without real movie trailers to give the already popular media angle extra flavor. Less often discussed, and it's been nagging me for awhile now, is which young actress the Oscars will glom onto this year. Best Actress is often, statistically speaking, a beauty pageant who's who of hot 20 and 30something stars. This is not to say that the main race can't be between two 60-something ladies (it can if their names are Close & Streep) but we already know that that won't be the whole story even if it does turn out to be The Story.

There are three more slots to consider and more than that if you include the possibility that Close or Streep might not happen, if you include the precursor awards (which have room for more players) and the Supporting Actress category which has slightly more diverse preferences but which is still a sucker for a new "it" girl.

Which young beauties will be competing for gold? There isn't room for all of them.

Fresh Faces.
Which will Oscar get a Mulligan / Lawrence style insta-crush on?
ROONEY MARA, 26, with sociopathic edge and punk styling in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
FELICITY JONES, 27, doing young romance drama in Sundance hit Like Crazy.
ELIZABETH OLSEN, 22, winning acclaim as cult member in Martha Marcy May Marlene and probably winning credit for being talented younger sibling of the gajillionaire Olsen twin sisters.
MIA WASIKOWSKA, 21, proving she can carry a film and also be excellent while doing so in Jane Eyre.
ANDREA RISEBOROUGH, 29, soon to be winning "best in show" attention for W.E. 
JESSICA CHASTAIN, 30, seemingly in every other movie released in 2011 and hardly recognizable from one to the next.  

Already Stars.
Oscar's sweet spot for Best Actress wins is late 20s to early 30s. 
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY, 26, serving mental patient realness in A Dangerous Method.
KIRSTEN DUNST, 29, undoubtedly memorably victimized in Von Trier's Melancholia.
MICHELLE WILLIAMS, 30, doing biopic iconography for My Week With Marilyn and romance for Take This Waltz 
EMMA STONE, 22, who won't get nominated for The Help but the enthusiasm about her career this year is totally hogging some of the spotlight that the other hopefuls are going to need. 

Who do you think will be showered with love and media attention 'round the holidays this year? Who will come up wanting? Which of the newbies will ever have careers as big as the "already stars"? Share your projections / wild prophesies in the comments.

Best Actress chart | Best Supporting Actress chart