Tweetweek: Fantasy Boyfriends, Favorite Seasons, Fabulous Divas

Don't pretend like you wouldn't watch a movie in which Jessica Chastain sets Xavier Dolan up w Sebastian Stan and also Naomi Watts is there pic.twitter.com/0b4rokKPJf

— Ryan McPhee (@rdmcphee) March 21, 2017

You must click through every photo of that tweet. That whole moment in watching celebrities be themselves in real time with each other together as fans is funny heaven. "Yay, social media," which is something we can't always say as sane people. 

ANYWAY. More after the jump... 

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Links: Nina, Natalie, Sebastian, and Shang-Chi

THR profiles the last living silent star: Baby Peggy who is now 97 years old and at peace with the lost fortune her parents spent
The Cut talks to the immortal Bernadette Peters about her diet and exercize regimen. Takeaway: never aging in the past 30+ years is strictly regimented work!
Decider Today in TV History looks back at that great Natalie Portman episode of SNL  

AV Club Steven Spielberg's career in 30 iconic shots
Angry Asian Man the nonsense Asian actors have to deal with for bit parts 
MNPP The Sebastian Stan Strut 
THR Have you been keeping up with this Nina biopic drama? The Nina Simone estate is NOT having it with the new biopic starring Zoe Saldana (opening in April). But Simone's daughter feels bad for the backlash against Zaldana 
Variety R2-D2's model builder Tony Dyson dies at 68 years of age 
i09 More diversity blunders/handwringing: Marvel is adding an Asian character to Iron Fist but Iron Fist himself they still cast with a white actor (Finn Jones) despite everything about his history screaming to correct the character (the 1960s were a lot different people. You don't have to adhere to fear of creating ethnic heroes now! 

Gayness
The Advocate Caitlyn Jenner continues to reveal that she's one dense trans woman and hasn't absorbed all the wisdom the LGBT community has been trying to give her. She's supporting virulently anti-gay Ted Cruz for president
Towleroad Mark Hamill "Of course Luke Skywalker might be gay". Oh my. Despite being a big 'mo I have to say that I am entirely unamused by this retroactive teasing that's becoming popular from storytellers -- like JK Rowling's thing with Dumbledore. If storytellers are going to have a gay character just have a gay character. Stop being so coy and don't try and take credit for having gay characters when you don't actually have them.
Playbill Luke Evans tweets out a picture from a recording session of Disney's upcoming live action Beauty and the Beast (2017) - a 93 piece orchestra! (the movie's getting three new songs) 

Podcast: Carol Aird of Manhattan, Mark Watney of Mars.

Katey, Joe, Nathaniel and Nick, get stranded on Mars with Astronaut Matt Damon. After rescuing each other they fall for shopgirl Rooney Mara with Cate Blanchett. Yes, we're discussing Ridley Scott's The Martian (now playing at a theater near you) and Todd Haynes's Carol (opening November 20th but surely already playing in your head).

Nathaniel is sick -- apologies for the vocal germs! --  so Katey hosts this one. 

43 minutes 
00:01-14:30  The Martian. How often must mankind save Matt Damon? 
14:31-40:00  The miraculous healing powers of Carol. Struggling with/loving on Rooney's remoteness and Blanchett's range and roll. 
40:01-43:00 Oscar fanfare / Sign-offs

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversation in the comments won't you? Especially those two prompt questions: What did you think of The Martian and when were you most turned on by Cate Blanchett?

Carol and The Martian

Review: Ricki and The Flash

The review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It is reprinted here with their permission.

 How does one act a hoarse voice? Short of screaming all night into your pillow before a key scene, as I’ve heard some actors do to simulate it, it’s not something that’s all that fakeable. This kept coming to mind watching Meryl Streep in Ricki and The Flash. Ricki Randazzo, her new aging rocker alter ego, sings/screams her lungs out all night with the house band of her local dive bar and works a demeaning low wage job all day. She doesn’t take care of herself. Ricki’s voice is hoarse for the entire movie. After admiring Streep’s dedication to nailing a character you might want to say a silent prayer or offer a symbolic lozenge for her vocal chords if they did in fact receive torturous screaming abuse behind the scenes in order to sound just this way. What did they ever do to deserve this?

Whatever it was, the sacrifice was worth it, having given us Ricki...

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Sundance Begins: The Bronze, Dark Horse & Nicole Kidman

Sebastian Stan from his InstagramNathaniel, reporting from the snowy mountains of Park City Utah for the annual Sundance Film Festival. Michael, currently en route, will also be covering though we both missed opening night (I was still visiting family in Utah).

From what I gather the opening night talk mostly revolved around Sebastian Stan's muscular performance in a raunchy sex scene in The Bronze. While that event was happening (unbeknownst to me) I was still visiting my mom and brother and they made me* watch muscular Sebastian Stan and his robot arm terrorizing Captain America and The Black Widow.

So, it was unofficially Sebastian Stan Day. Perhaps this is a good omen for the actor's 2015, which he already seems rather happy about (see photo evidence, left). Variety interviewed him at the premiere and he said the script for The Bronze was so funny that before he even got the role he was quoting his own character to friends. It's a supporting role but a showy one, as a former gold medalist Olympic gymnast 

Dark Horse
After picking up my badge, I raced off to my first movie, the only thing I could squeeze in before a Nicole Kidman party I had no intention of missing. [More...]

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