Ray of Link

Rope of Silicon early commercials starring the ascendant Michael Fassbender
W Magazine a horizontal pictorial of Fassy. I am more and more worried he'll be the surprise snub at the Oscars. I really am. May my prophecy fail me!
NY Times a profile of George Lucas on the eve of his supposed retirement from blockbuster filmmaking. But first Red Tails (2012)
24 Frames Octavia Spencer is getting choosy about her roles but Hollywood is still not awash in leading roles for acclaimed black actresses.

Pajiba on Michelle Williams body body body GQ photoshoot.
Guardian offers a guide of 20 pictures to watch for at the Sundance Film Festival which begins... tomorrow!
Low Resolution Carnage cast power rankings
FlavorWire on TCM's ten most influential silent films. See, The Artist is good for cinema. People are looking back. Silent films are so wonderful. I hope you've seen a bunch of them.

Kenneth in the (212) fans "react" to Madonna winning her second Golden Globe. LOL.
Boy Culture I knew Matt would have smart things to say about the Madonna Globe win and Elton John's ridiculous pissiness about it. Matt on Madonna's "ungracious" speech. 

What was narcissistic about Madonna's sweet speech, anyway? She accepted an award and thanked her co-writers and her leading lady. Sure, she forgot to self-flagellate, but...

Hee!

Guardian Speaking of The Artist. I knew we'd eventually get a story about total idiot moviegoers. Seems some people want their money back because they didn't realize it was a silent movie. Excuse me, I amend. Not idiots, Assholes. Silent films can be just as amazing as sound films.  
In Contention on the costumes of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Ultra Culture 14 Things That Armie Hammer looks like in J Edgar. Hee
Paper Mag has the season 5 poster for Mad Men but to give it context they include all the others too.

If you must know, not that *I'm* counting, that is 67 days away. How will you spend those days?

Naked Gold Man: The Pitiable Tradition of The Backlash

Yesterday I was asked by a fellow writer to be quoted on a "who will win?" Oscar piece at another site. I said yes without hesistation but why are we always jumping ahead? We don't even know the nominee list yet! One particular way in which I find it hard to relate to my fellow Oscar pundits and even a lot of kindred spirit movie fans is this: Year after year there seems to be a enthusiasm for and a willingness to concede the race to a presumed frontrunner before nominations are even announced.

This "it's over before it's begun" atmosphere enables, no, encourages hostility and backlash against popular films and performances. The annual Oscar carnival, meant to be a celebration of Hollywood's perception of their own best work, becomes decidedly less magical and fun once the atmosphere turns hostile. It's both more fun and more accurate to view the Academy Awards as a two phase celebration which has numerous winners. In the first phase dozens upon dozens of films and talented individuals compete to find placement in traditionally five-wide shortlists. Several people emerge as winners, drawing attention to films and performances that are sometimes really worth the moviegoer's time. In the second phase the nominees go all Highlander with their golden swords. There can be only one. 

But why rush to the decapitations? 

George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) in "The Artist", a silent film superstar threatened by the "talkie" revolution in Hollywood

The film that has been labelled the winner before its secured a nomination this year is The Artist. Many have already said it's a done deal though nomination ballots don't go out for another 9 days. So the backlash has begun. It's an inevitable fact of frontrunner status as any year teaches us.

On backlashes, nostalgia and scarce originals after the jump

Click to read more ...

Links: Wings, 50/50, Serkis, Streep, Top Tens

Drawn Need Christmas Gift ideas! Here's favorite art books of 2011. Love to see "Hark! a Vagrant" and "Amazing Everything" listed, both of which we've linked up before. Several movie books also make the list including The Art of Pixar and Saul Bass.
Movie|Line is still on Team Uggie (The Artist) even if the dog may soon retire. 
In Contention Andy Serkis on MoCap performances and Oscar.
toh! Zoinks. I want to go to this restored Wings (1927) screening so bad. Someone buy me a roundtrip to Los Angeles. The silent classic was the first to win Best Picture and let's just say that ol' Oscar started on a high note. Especially since he essentially gave two Best Pic prizes that year and they other one Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans is also wondrous.

Gold Derby on the opening weekend performance of a "need to see this" movie like Shame. 
Stale Popcorn the ladies who lunch with The Ides of March. Hear hear on the Giamatti/Hoffman business. 
Telegraph Daniel Radcliffe joins the bizarrely long list of actors to play Beat poet Allen Ginsberg .
The Guardin Pixar House inspired by Up goes for $400,000
Pajiba 'movies that should've made an assload more at the box office than they did in 2011'. Interesting list though I'd argue that the gross that 50/50 did receive was much higher than one could reasonably expect given that it was a) a tearjerker for guys and guys aren't supposed to like tearjerkers and b) a comedy ABOUT CANCER. The movie should be proud of its gross.

The Wrap super-duper insanely great news for Meryl Streep fans. The living legend will reprise her guffaw-worthy Camilla Bowner character on the second season of Web Therapy. If you never saw the original Web Therapy shorts that played on the internet (before it was a Showtime series) she played a reparative therapist who was attempting to 'cure' Lisa Kudrow's character's husband of his homosexuality. 

Top Ten o' the Day - David Edelstein
I lurve top ten lists. It matters not whether I find them (individually) nonsensical, just right or aggravating. There's something in me that adores the cataloguing of each year's work. So in each day's link-roundup, I'll be bringing you my favorite bit from whichever top ten list I've just been reading. Here's Edelstein on Beginners:

Melancholy and madcap, Mike Mills’s inventive weave of past and present ushers you into the mind of its hero (a superb Ewan ­McGregor) as he agonizes over his emotional inheritance. As the dad who comes out of the closet at 75, Christopher Plummer is light and lithe, buoyed by his new life among the boys.

I also really dig his question-mark description of Alexander Payne even though The Descendants isn't coming anywhere near my list. 

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. 

'It'

Click to read more ...