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11 is the magic number today and 11 comes with big and appropriately twinned A list Oscar trivia.
the great Fay Bainter was the first actor double-nominated in a single year
11 is the number of actors who have been double nominated for lead & supporting within the same year! Pretty cool, right? Details and adjacent trivia starring Lange, Bergman, Blanchett, De Niro, SigWeavie, and more after the jump...
Gurus of Gold the latest Best Picture chart along with Globe predictions. I went out on a limb or two for fun because the Globes usually do at least one weird thing with winners. Variety Guy Lodge on the foreign film finalist list Variety on the Peter Cushing visual fx in Rogue One and performers rights to their image after death (I suppose we should talk about this eventually but I am still really weirded out and uncomfortable about it) Jezebel in case you missed the brouhaha about Tilda Swinton's conversation with Margaret Cho about whitewash casting in Doctor Strange
Tracking Board Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig to headline a new musical comedy Everything's Coming Up Profits: The Golden Age of Industrial Musicals The Gothamist loves Netflix's mystery series The OA [SPOILERS]from the pair that brought us that eco-terrorist thriller The East (Brit Marling & Zal Batmanglij), remember that one? I have only watched two episodes. Not sure that I get it. Feels padded and expository to me. I'll give it one more episode Guardian talks to Sigourney Weaver, still going strong 37+ years into her big screen stardom Coming Soon Ewan McGregor behind the scenes on T2 Trainspotting Variety profiles great new director Garth Davis (Lion, Top of the Lake) In Contention tries to figure out what the Makeup Oscar people might like in next week's bakeoff Playbill First look at Philippa Soo in Broadway's adaptation of Amélie Awards DailyHidden Figures plays the White House. Headed for a Best Picture nod? /Film Josh Boone's initial plans for the movie franchise version of The New Mutants
List-Mania THR 25 best performances of the year - usual Oscar buzzing people plus a few interesting off-consensus choices like Kathryn Hahn in Bad Moms Guardian 50 best comedies of all time - as chosen by comedians. Pajiba best lines of the year on TV Film School Rejects 50 most beautiful shots in Star Wars universe
Vanity Fair interviews reclusive legend Warren Beatty. He talks Annette, his trans son Stephen and i09 Forest Whitaker is joining the ever-expanding cast of Marvel's Black Panther movie Vulture Daniel Craig, newly platinum blonde, is warming up to returning to the 007 gig. Money money money. Money money money. ♫Money money money. If you happen to be rich - .......Ooooh -- and you feel like a Night's entertainment, you can pay for a gay escapade.
Antagony & Ecstacy catches up with The Neon Demon and loves it more than he knows he should MNPP it looks like Nicolas Hoult will be playing Nikola Tesla in the costume drama Current War about the fight over monetizing electricity co-starring those actors of endless ubiquity: Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon. The Playlist Guy Ritchie will direct Disney's live action Aladdin. Weird. /Film Boyd Holbrook will play the cyborg villain Donald Pierce in the third Wolverine movie, now titled Logan AV Club Ron Perlman has finally given up his dream of Hellboy 3
Power Man and Iron Fist I don't know how many people who are into Marvel's modern universe of TV and movies knows this but Luke Cage was always paired with Iron Fist in the comicbooks. That's hard to imagine now because Luke Cage has been portrayed as such a loner in both Jessica Jones and on his own show.
I know this because I was kind of addicted to that duo as a kid. When I heard they were adapting it for television I wanted Marvel to quit whitewashing the Iron Fist character. Yes Danny was always white but since he grew up in Tibet and is a master of martial arts it would make sense that he were Asian. What's more the common narrative of the white man being better than all the Asians at the super powerful stuff they picked up over in Asia (see also Dr Strange's sorcery) is inherently a racist trope. We were not alone in this thinking. Apparently the handsome actor Lewis Tan, who will play one of the villains in the show, actually wanted to play Iron Fist but Marvel was adamant that he be white (sigh). So we get Finn Jones in the lead role who is most famous for playing Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers in Game of Thrones.
Nathaniel R reporting from the Toronto International Film Festival
We must ban the use of the word "problematic" so that it may be deployed to describe pop culture offerings which are PROBLEMATIC in all caps. (re)Assignment is one of those, even if its too dumb to capitalize on its sophomoric provocations.
A hired hitman named Frank (Michelle Rodriguez...with prosthetic dick because her figurative big one wasn't enough) is drugged and operated on by an amoral vengeful doctor (Sigourney Weaver) and wakes up with breasts, vagina and a smoother more beautiful face...
Nathaniel R reporting from the Toronto International Film Festival
That's me telling Sigourney Weaver some story (presumably about how awesome she is). It's all a blur...
You have to act quickly in these situations as you only get a minute. The event was a party for A Monster Calls in which Sigourney plays the emotionally distant British (!) grandmother of a young boy (Lewis MacDougall) whose mother (Felicity Jones) has cancer. As escape from his life or possibly as solution to it the boy meets regularly with a giant tree monster (voiced by Liam Neeson) who tells him morally ambiguous stories about witches, princes, and apothecaries.
I didn't once mention Ripley because I'm sure Sigourney hears this daily (on the red carpet outside there were people with Aliens posters wanting her to sign them) but took the opportunity to tell her how much I loved her on Broadway in Vanya & Sonya & Masha & Spike. Especially in the second act with her Snow White costume.
I almost wore that tonight.
...she quipped. Hee. Then she said it was funny I'd mentioned it because she had just emailed a playwright friend saying "we need a reunion" because she'd love to get back on stage.
Now off to another screening! TIFF moves so quickly on the first weekend.
Wednesday, February 15, 2017 at 9:18AM 
the great Fay Bainter was the first actor double-nominated in a single year
