Yes, No, Maybe So: 'Spy'

Margaret here with an update on upcoming projects from Paul Feig, the bannerman for blockbuster female-driven comedy. He's following up the roaring success of Bridesmaids and The Heat with two more big-budget Melissa McCarthy projects due over the next couple summers. 

The buzzier of the projects is a female-led Ghostbusters reboot, whose main cast has just been announced. It's a wonderful lineup: Feig muse Melissa McCarthy, post-Bridesmaids movie star Kristen Wiig, the hilarious rubber-faced Saturday Night Live MVP Kate McKinnon, and comedy vet Leslie Jones, a recent addition to SNL as both a writer and a featured player. These choices, exciting on their own, are all the more gratifying when one considers all those rumors circa the Sony leak that they were looking at gamine young A-listers like Jennifer Lawrence and Emma Stone.

 While we bask in the casting news (and speculate wildly on the movie's plot), let's take a look at the Feig/McCarthy project coming to us mere months from now: the espionage thriller parody Spy...

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Open Thread. Wanna Help with my Critics Choice Ballot?

Nobody was more badass than Emily Blunt as the Full Metal Bitch ... no matter what you're calling the movie nowYesterday I shared the eligibility list (not-official, but Nathaniel-created) for an underdiscussed Critics Choice category "Young Actor/Actress" but that's not the only category that the BFCA has that isn't discussed enough to insure widespread careful consideration for a strong lineup. Here are some other categories you can help me with.

FYC your favorites in the comments for the following COMEDY & ACTION categories! We're only allowed 3 votes in each so there are some no brainers for yours truly: Rose Byrne for Comedy Actress (Neighbors) i imagine she's a longshot for a Globe nomination which pisses me off to no end; Emily Blunt for action actress (Edge of Tomorrow); Captain America: Winter Soldier for Action movie... and it's just no contest. Other movies: You got nothing on Cappy in that elevator. Sorry bout it!

BEST ACTION MOVIE
BEST ACTOR in an ACTION MOVIE - name AND film
BEST ACTRESS in an ACTION MOVIE - name AND film

BEST COMEDY
BEST ACTOR in a COMEDY - name AND film
BEST ACTRESS in a COMEDY - name AND film

BEST SCI-FI/HORROR MOVIE
For some reason this one doesn't get acting categories to go with it. I'm a member but the Critics Choice Awards sometimes feel poorly thought out in terms of categories. Either commit or don't, you know? 

Stage Door: "You Can't Take It With You" & "From Here To Eternity"

The Best Picture winners of 1938 and 1953, which were based on hit plays and best selling novels respectively, have moved to the stage. Let's take a look...

Annaleigh Ashford dances up a comic storm in "You Can't Take It With You"

YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU
For this Broadway revival of the classic 30s comedy, famously moviefied by Frank Capra back in the day, they've gone all star: James Earl Jones plays the tax-avoiding follow-your-dreams grandfather, Broadway vet and A+ comic actress Christine Nielsen (recently Tony nominated for Vanya & Sonia & Masha & Spike) is the easily distracted mother of a large brood, Rose Byrne her gorgeous daughter (essentially the 'Marilyn Munster' of this band of eccentrics), Fran Krantz from Dollhouse and Cabin in the Woods her rich would-be fiancee and Annaleigh Ashford, who has been on such a brilliant role these past couple of years with her ex-hooker lesbian receptionist on Masters of Sex and as a factory girl in Broadway's Kinky Boots, is the dance-crazed busybody.

If you've boned up on your 1930s Best Picture winners you'll know that those are the roles once inhabited by Lionel Barrymore, Spring Byington (Oscar-nominated), Jean Arthur, Jimmy Stewart and Ann Miller; tough acts to follow all.

As it turns out the theatrical and farcical antics of this family play better on stage...

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Yes, No, Maybe So: "Annie" and Kneejerk Musical Reactions

"How many 'Tomorrow's until Annie comes out?"
"293, kids!"

Quvenzhané Wallis stars as little orphan "Annie"

That means we just need to get through 294 days of internet hyperbole BEFORE ANYONE SEES IT about how the new Annie (the third filmed version after a 1982 feature and a 1999 telefilm) is the worst thing that ever existed and musicals suck and it's going to kill everyone's career... Give me strength! BUT in fairness to whatever social media hatred happened (I only saw a little but I'm assuming there was more since I wasn't online much last night) the new trailer which is embedded at the end of the post, does ring alarm bells.

Here's the thing. I realize that my own kneejerk defensiveness/love for any and all new musicals before I see them, is, in some ways exactly like the internet's kneejerk distrust/hatred of any and all new musicals before they see them. Both reactions have less basis in reality than in indoctrination. But the reason my indoctrination is superior (heh) is because its self-indoctrination - a connosieur's faith in his own taste and in the possibilites of the genre and not lazy long-since disproven cultural indoctrination that this genre is over or passé. I can blather about this peculiar problem for HOURS but I should probably spare you and we'll get back to "Annie".

After the jump we'll discuss the pros, cons, and "which column do I put this in" beats from the trailer. 

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'Great Gatsby' and 'The Rocket' Lead the "Australian Oscars"

Glenn, Team Film Experience's resident Australian, here. In all the hubbub surrounding the big wins for American Hustle and Her, it went unnoticed (not surprisingly, but also not without reason) that the nominees for this year's AACTA Awards were announced. Australia's own "Academy" (renamed from the Australian Film Institute several years back) went big for Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby, which is hoping for a tech resurgence later in the guild-stretch of the Oscar season, and Kim Mordaunt's The Rocket, which is still holding on hope for an Academy foreign language short-listing. Other famous names like Rose Byrne, Hugo Weaving, Mia Wasikowska, and Naomi Watts also appear across the 14 categories recognising Australian films.

Catherine Martin and her team of production/set/costume designers are - let's face it - the only likely Oscar cross-over here for their work on The Great Gatsby so it's hard to picture her losing. That would give Martin a total of seven awards from her home country. One for every single nomination she's received. You don't get much better than a 100% win ratio, do you? Are we thinking she'll be adding two more Academy Awards to her weighed-down shelf of achievements? At this stage I actually think it's entirely possible. 

The full list of nominees are...

Best Film

• Dead Europe
• The Great Gatsby
• Mystery Road
• The Rocket
• Satellite Boy
• The Turning

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