Kiki's Melancholia (& Other Saturn Triumphs)

Though I haven't yet seen any photographs of the Saturn Award event, held in Burbank this week and the last of the 2011 Film Awards -- arriving even later than the MTV Awards each year  -- we must rush to congratulate the one and only Kiki for her Best Actress win for Lars von Trier's apocalyptic arthouse amazement Melancholia. You may recall we also honored her right here in our Best Actress list. The Saturn Awards don't have anything like a prestigious reputation (often a problem with awards organizations voted on by fans) but they do have a long history (38 years!) which counts for something and you have to hand it to them this year that they're the only large non-critics awards group to honor Kirsten Dunst for her indelible embodiment of Planet Sized Depression though she did win the top Actress prize at a few film festivals (including the very definition of Prestige Reputation: the Cannes Film Festival) and was also honored by two critics orgs one minor and one major: Kansas Film Critics and the National Society of Film Critics. 

A complete list of winners after the jump but if you're too lazy to click, please note that they seemed to love Super 8 best even though it didn't win any of their four Best Picture prizes. Wins and commentary if you...

Click to read more ...

The Link Squad

The Film Stage Gangster Squad, with its machine gun in the movie theater moment -- already revealed in the trailer --  may be delayed or reedited now in the wake of Aurora Colorado tragedy. (I figured this was coming)
i09 Lt Ellen Ripley and Child, painted. Other sci-fi women also iconized. 
Telegraph RIP Actor Simon Ward of The Tudors, Three Musketeers, Supergirl, and Young Winston fame. He was 70 years old.
Rope of Silicon is wondering about the Oscar chances of Beasts of the Southern Wild now that it's expanded well.

My New Plaid Pants Quote of the Day via The House of Kermit
Pajiba Dustin recounts his single most humiliating experience as a critic. Curse you, Taylor Lautner!
The Broadway Blog celebrates musical theater's belters: Sutton, Babs, Lupone and more
Hollywood Elsewhere has lunch with the Criterion Blurays of Rosemary's Baby and Sunday Bloody Sunday
Vanity Fair says goodbye to The Dark Knight Trilogy with a behind the scenes slideshow 
Vulture looks at the dissolution of the TomKat marriage
NPR this is sweet, actor Donald Faison (Clueless, Scrubs) on the movie he has seen a million times: The Empire Strikes Back
The Film Doctor discusses The Dark Knight Rises with a film major at Waffle House. Cheese, eggs, raisin toast, and spoilers.

P.S. Yes, yes. I did start a review myself and I hope to have it up today but I'm moving in slo-mo this week.

Monologue Monday: "Time To Die"

Today marked the 30th anniversary of Blade Runner, one of the most influential movies of all time. The last time I saw the picture was  5 years ago for its restored 25th anniversary . T'was quite a mindfuck to see a movie so clearly 80s looking like it just came from the lab. For the anniversary I thought I'd share this previous article on Roy Batty's famous final monologue...

Blade Runner's perfect opening shot. Human but abstract

I've lost track of the times I've seen people steal from it, particularly in the art direction/ production design world (the world that spawned auteur Ridley Scott, don'cha know?). Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), the leader of a freethinking band of androids known as "replicants" is the best character in the movie. He's scary yet soulful and sympathetic... like a 21st century Frankenstein monster. [More after the jump]

Click to read more ...

Maleficent is Coming

Production began on Maleficent (2014) today. A movie we're both totally in for and dreading for very different reasons simultaneously. Of course pre-production has long been afoot as this new photo of the incomparable Angelina Jolie as Disney's best villainess attests. Oscar nominated costume designer Anna B Sheppard (Schindler's List) has been hard at work (obviously) along with the makeup department in replicating the dangerously sharp cheekboned, horned devil look.

Angelina "Maleficent" Joliedglksg

The film will star Angelina as Maleficent and Fanning the Younger as Sleeping Beauty along with Sharlto Copley (District 9), Sam Riley (Control), some Mike Leigh regulars and Juno Temple. Most intriguing is the slightly unexpected production team which boasts Sheppard (best known for WW II era prestige dramas rather than fantasies) Dean Semler on cinematography (better known for westerns like Young Guns and Dances with Wolves than fantasies). Screenwriter Linda Woolverton who helped pen two Disney classics The Lion King and Beauty & The Beast has the script duties though we might have to worry about yet another "backstory" retelling. Doesn't anyone love the inherent mystery of iconic characters anymore? I know I do.

poll by twiigs.com

Twins: Luke & Leia

twins daily at 2:22 pm (while we're in Gemini)

Like most people of my generation I grew up with the Star Wars franchise (1977-1983. It ends there, right?) as the single most defining pop culture event of youth. I did not, however, feel any particular need to have it as a continuing Force (heh) in my life, afterwards. By the time I was a teenager I had already moved on to the collected works of dramatic actresses as The Single Most Satisfying Form of Entertainment. So I'm kind of amazed still that in any given month on the internet you can find dozens of new articles or tumblr items or deviant art sketches or nsfw riffs or ANYTHING at all about the franchise. It just doesn't stop... even after George Lucas tried to kill it cluttering up the beautifully sparse frames of the originals with merciless revisionism and CGI accessorizing.

Yet despite my lack of continued love for the franchise to end all franchises (or, more accurately, the franchise to start all franchises -- that's all we get now!) I will admit that Luke & Leia still have a very special place in my adult heart. 

More on Padmé & Darth's twins after the jump...

Click to read more ...