Link Runner

Indiewire has a handy guide for filmmakers of great perks you get from filming in various states
Maxim celebrates the influence of Die Hard 25 years after its debut
Vulture has the 25 best action movies since Die Hard
i09 shares a 60 second animated redux of Blade Runner. I normally live for this sort of thing but I don't really like this one. I think maybe it's because if you rob Blade Runner of its grandiose visuals and color and mood, you don't have much! 

Off Cinema Fun
Towleroad "the greatest shirtlesss popsicle ad ever" 
Thought Catalog "5 business lessons I learned on MTV"
Thrillist Twinkies are back! So here are great moments in the snack cake's history 

Helen Mirren © Kagan McLeodDiva Worship!
Saturday Evening Post talks to Her Fabulousity Helen Mirren 

Guardian on the exciting trend of actresses as co-writers. Greta Gerwig love for this:

Understandably, Gerwig has bristled at being described as Baumbach's "muse". "I'm OK with the term muse as long as you acknowledge the muse wrote the script, too," she told a recent interviewer. "I feel like I'm the loudest muse that the world has ever seen."

Love them both!

The Halfway Mark Pt 1: Pictures & Screenplays

We're halfway through the calendar, if not the film year exactly given the backloaded release schedule. So, let's take stock as to where we've been. Herewith my choices for Best thus far... which means I'm hoping that AMPAS and all awards groups will give them a try before the mad traffic jam of year-end Oscar vehicles.

Disclaimer: But first of all... did I miss anything? Sure. You can't see everything though I see my share (full list). My biggest 'oops' for 2013 is definitely Stories We Tell, Sarah Polley's docudrama about her family history which most people I trust at least like and some love. But I also wish I'd seen the Israeli Oscar submission Fill the Void which didn't compete for the foreign film Oscar but did win a release and great reviews.

BEST OF THE YEAR... THUS FAR

Original Screenplay

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Great Moments in Gayness: "Fasten Your Seatbelts"

Happy Gay Pride Week Everyone!

The best screenplay I’ve ever come across is from Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve (1950). It tells a deceptively simple story in a straightforward manner, but does it in such a gloriously telling, bitchy manner that it remains to this day, one of the only films I can’t stop watching once it’s started.

Its most iconic moment is when its leading lady, Margo Channing (played by ours, Bette Davis) literally ascends the stairs in her New York apartment. A party is about to take place that changes the direction of the narrative and the relationships between its characters; a climax that comes only halfway through the picture, which manages to sustain its level of suspense and biting humor thereafter. 

Margo, putting on the facade of genteel, warm host is instead preparing her plan for the evening; to oust the titular Eve Harrington (a wonderful turn from Anne Baxter), and reveal her deceptions to their friends. This is, of course, a plan that goes awry once Davis becomes intoxicated and spends the rest of the party moping about, making her pianist play Liebestraume by Franz Litze and effectively dampening the mood of the entire occasion. But for one brief moment, as her partner and closest friends inquire whether or not the storm has passed or if it’s just about to begin, she gives a beautiful telling look, sashays over to the steps in a way that would make Tyra Banks weep with envy, and like a betrayed Cassandra, intones that classic line:

Margo Channing Portrait © Trevor Heath. Read about it here!

Fasten your seatbelts.
It's going to be a bumpy night.

Her prediction holds true.

All About Eve is a hallmark in gay cinema, not just because of the sexual ambiguities of Eve Harrington or the effervescent, snakelike charm of Addison DeWitt, but because of its diva, Margo Channing. A light that shines from a tower Joe Mankiewicz built that, like any great architect of the cinema, is at once inimitable and forever desired.

We all want that entrance, and we all want such an exit.

Q&A: Disappointing Actresses, Mixed-Up Hunks, Subtitled Crickets

And now the return of the 'Ask Nathaniel/Q&A' series wherein you asked me questions and I pick two handfuls to answer. 

Disposable project on the line for Emily. Yes, another one.DAVID: Which actresses filmographies are you most disappointed in? I'm thinking in terms of actresses you admire and think are incredibly talented, but, for whatever reason, end up working in subpar films.

NATHANIEL: I think the popular answer here is Rachel McAdams but aside from Mean Girls I've never cared too much. The answer that came immediately to mind was Emily Blunt. It’s not that she’s making terrible films per se, it’s just that given how Oscar worthy she was in that plum comic part in Devil Wears Prada seven long years ago, and then how sexy she was in that blink and you’ll miss her bit in Charlie Wilson’s War soon thereafter, I expected her career to explode in the way, say, Carey Mulligan’s did post An Education or at least for her to be more direct competition for Anne Hathaway. I wonder why Blunt isn’t either in more demand or more interested in challenging herself. Maybe it's just bad luck. She seems to be working exclusively in indies that don't crossover, mainstream films that are quickly forgotten or headlining gigs which don't really work in some crucial way (Young Victoria, Adjustment Bureau). I’d love to see her really challenged either by a role or by an auteur. Will Into the Woods bring a happily ever after to that heat-losing career?

The second choice is Evan Rachel Wood who seemed to chuck what looked like incredible range and promise to the side for a long procession of Very Bad Girls. This was, in no small part thanks to her inarguable electricity in Thirteen (2003) but when you play variations on one theme too often you either become a superstar or people lose interest. I thought she was good in Ides of March (2011) but it isn't what she needed. What she needs is a total about face role.

JOHN T: The last foreign language film to clear $20 million was Pan's Labyrinth, almost seven years ago. What do you think it would take for a foreign language film to catch on in that way again?

Amy Adams, Oscar Tragedies, and a Beefcake Triple after the jump...

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Do you plan to read any of the books this season's movies are based on?

I'll answer the question first. I might, though I probably shouldn't say that I might. For each year I make an internal plan to read all of the books on which upcoming films are based. Guess how many I usually get through? But given that I'd never trade F Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby" for any film version that might ever exist, I should probably try and read source material quicker once I know it's going to be a movie. I weep proactively, for example, for anyone who sees August: Osage County first as a movie (if it's not good) without having previously known the brilliance of the play. With this year's "Adapted" crowd, I have actually had read/experienced at least five of them... plus all the superhero stuff, 'natch.

intimate knowledge *before* seeing the movies, 2013 edition

This topic is on the mind since I've posted my predictions in the Original and Adapted Screenplay Oscar categories.

What's the difference between ADAPTED and ORIGINAL these days? Well, like the Acting Categories, sometimes screenplays play fast and loose with definitions. The landmark year for "Original" vs "Adapted" shenanigans was 2002 in which both Gangs of New York and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which had presented themselves as adaptations of a novel and play respectively for months on end as they made their way into the public consciousness, suddenly decided they were originals when that category proved conveniently easier to nab nominations in. Oh sure, they had their excuses ("only inspired by" "I wrote a version of this for the screen before I wrote it as a play") but it still smelled like Category Fraud.  

I bring this up because it's possible that some of the films will be classified differently than I've classified them. The most confusing case is probably Foxcatcher since books have been written about the bizarre true story but the film doesn't seem to be based on those books but on an unpublished autobiography (?) by one of its secondary characters (played by Channing Tatum). I'm guessing Adapted for now but that could easily change.

But back to books. Have any of you read any of these pictured? Do you want to?
Which of these ten should I read and write about before the film version?

poll by twiigs.com

WHICHEVER BOOK WINS THIS POLL I PROMISE TO READ / BLOG.

I'll try for two but I will do one. I will,  I will.