'oh, oobee doo. i wanna link like you-oohooh ♫'

Empire Eddie Murphy could play Washington mayor Marion Barry for Spike Lee in a new biopic.
Carpetbagger wonders if Meryl Streep is the oldest person to ever grace the cover of Vogue? We assume she is, unless some male designer once posed there with an 18 yr old supermodel. 
Movie|Line 5 pieces of Elizabeth Taylor's Memorabilia worth paying for...
Time profiles Tilda Swinton

Indie Wire because Martin Scorsese hasn't won enough awards in the past several years, the Santa Barbara Festival is going to honor him with the American Riviera Award 
Yahoo Movies a rundown of awardage thus far. No consensus really.
Rope of Silicon lists the top five movie tattoos. I was happy to see Seth Gecko.
Awards Daily Sasha gets angry at the Shame haters. The movie not the emotion. Feel free to hate on shame the emotion. It's an annoying one. 
Guardian in "Obituaries of 2011" has Shirley Maclaine's memories of La Liz. 
24 Frames The Hollywood Blacklist... hottest screenplays 

Hero Complex on Anthony Lister's Rise of the Planet of the Apes mural at Melrose Avenue.

Love it, don't you? How many pictures do you think are going to be snapped there every day while it's up. 

And finally congratulations to the directors cited by Variety as "10 to Watch". In case the pay wall traps you like it did me they are:

• Zal Batmanglij (Sound of My Voice)
• Valérie Donzelli (Declaration of War) -French Oscar submission
• Gareth Evans (The Raid)
• Philippe Falardeau (Monsieur Lazhar) -Canadian Oscar submission
• Gerardo Naranjo (Miss Bala) -Mexican Oscar submission
• Matt Piedmont (Casa de mi Padre)
• Michaël R Roskam (Bullhead) -Belgian Oscar submission
• Lynn Shelton (Your Sister's Sister)
• Benh Zeitlin (Beast of the Southern Wild)
• The Bandito Brothers (Act of Valor)

Off Cinema
in case you need a wee break in which case what the hell are you doing here?
Pitchfork Top 100 Songs of the Year 
Billboard The Year in Music
Stale Popcorn Madonna's greatest soundtrack hits. (Okay that one is not totally off cinema I suppose.) 

"Speak as you might to a small child or golden retriever"

This past week I've become concerned with the awards prospects of Shame (is Carey Mulligan going to win anything?) and Martha Marcy May Marlene (which I loved) on account of its loss of every breakthrough actress and best first film contests thus far (in the admittedly young awards season.)

I began to wonder if the problem wasn't the constant withholding of the comfort food that is exposition. So I put in my screener to Margin Call, which keeps beating MMMM to prizes and while I enjoyed the film, I was immediately struck at the ginormous difference in verbosity. One movie tells you everything through it's play-like dialogue. The other tells you only so much and nearly always through its visuals.

So I wrote about ambiguity vs. directness in my Oscar column for Fandor.

There's even an infographic! Apparently I believe in both showing AND telling.

Moët BIFA Awards Spread the Movie Wealth

The Stars gathered this evening in London for the Moët British Independent Film Awards which was ruled by one particular Tyrannosaur and also afforded Michael Fassbender his second best actor prize (following the Venice Volpi Cup) for Shame. He needs to keep nabbing these to stay in play for a very competitive Oscar race.

photo via @shamefilm

Photos and a list of winners after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Thoughts On "Shame"

This time of year I am inundated with awards screeners. Studios send them out to awards voters hoping their films will be considered "Best". The disc for SHAME, a haunting NYC-set sexual addiction drama which opened yesterday in select theaters came in a minimalist pure white sleeve with only the title and a barely visible "for your consideration" adorning it. It's as naked as Michael Fassbender's star turn. Though I'd seen the film just two months ago, I popped it in the player hoping to let its riveting images and mesmerizing rhythms wash over me as I wrote a review. Instead the screen stayed black. The depressing message "Skipping Over Damaged Area" was all my DVD player would show me.

If one were to skip past the damaged, in a figurative sense, one would have to skip the entire film...

READ THE REST @ TOWLEROAD

Other things to read about "Shame" today...

Aint it Cool has a review which spends one whole paragraph on the "magnificence" of Fassbender's cock (from a straight man -lol) and contains a funny smackdown of the MPAA.
MUBI Ignatiy doesn't much care fo Shame's vagueness about the details.
In Contention lets us know that it won't be eligible for the WGA Screenplay prizes.
Next Movie, in honor of Fassy, looks at the best penis moments in movies. 

P.S. I've written so piecemeal about Shame -- see past posts -- that it's amounted to all of these brief bits without one big substantial review. I'm realizing that this is my habit in general, the dangers of blogging daily with ADD I suppose. I feel I need to build Frankenstein monster parts of all my brief impressions of any given movie into a series of hulking reanimated pieces. Now to wait for the right stormy opportunity and the bolt of inspirational lightning. 

P.P.S. Here's the French poster, airbrushing and shining up one of the film's most haunting images. It's like a motion capture animated version of Shame. Imagine it. Hee.

Are you seeing Shame this weekend? If you've already see it, what did you make of it?

The Scarlet Linker

Hollywood Reporter on the highlights from the Gotham Awards. Patton Oswalt and Elizabeth Olsen were apparently big hits.
Tom Shone Best Performances of 2011. Love this fluid quick take annual feature.
I Need My Fix Is Christopher Meloni joining True Blood for Season Five? Could that show possibly contain yet more explosive sexiness?
GQ interviews director Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes Game of Shadows) and yes he actually talks about Madonna and the divorce.... which...
Lainey Gossip has an interesting take on what he means when he says "I'm glad I made money" in the interview with which I would totally agree if that's what I was sure he meant. But it seems highly interpretable to me. Maybe that's not what he meant at all. 
Stale Popcorn Glenn speaks out on Meryl Streep's anti-auteur tendencies and what's going on with the quest for that third Oscar. Good piece.

Coming Soon Lizard concept art from The Amazing Spider-Man 
Alt Screen get yourself to Film Forum over the next two months and bone up on the silent film masterpieces they're showing.
Liz Smith shares a funny e-mail from showbiz widow Tita Cahn about J. Edgar.

Worst line ever spoken between two men in a movie -  'will you be my number two?' "

Hee. That's just one piece of it.

Telegraph TFE friend Tim Robey pays tribute to the one and only Ken Russell, remembering their last encounter at a screening of The Devils. 
Perez Hilton Wow. Apparently Meryl Streep donated her Iron Lady salary to the National Women's History Museum
Movielicious offers up this poster comparison, Zhang Yimou's The Flowers of War (which I'm not hearing good things about) and Angelina Jolie's In the Land of Blood and Honey (which I am).

Hmmmm... 

My New Plaid Pants Have you heard about this reboot of The Munsters. I'm trusting JA to keep me informed as he's knowledgable on all things Bryan Fuller (Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls) one of the best and most idiosyncratic TV minds out there.
MTV Charlize Theron's 2011 Tour of Comedic Movie Star Amazement continues whilst discussing Snow White and the Hunstman.

I haven't really worked with [Kristen]. I've done some small things with her, but we're about to shoot our big showdown, and fingers crossed for me. It's the big battle. I'm just really, really, really hoping I get to kill her. That is how the story ends up, right?"

[For more on her awesome Tour of Tours check out the Actress Roundtable post and the DGA screening of Young Adult.]

Finally...

 Movie|Line has a great interactive Shame map. You can follow Brandon's ritual around the city. It beats an expensive trip to the Museum of Sex here in NYC.