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• Vulture Every Kirsten Dunst role ranked. Wonderful piece by Matthew Jacobs though crazy/beautiful is too low!
• Letterboxd The Writers Guild of America's 101 best screenplays of the 21st century (thus far)
• Interview Colman Domingo interviews Zendaya
• IMDb top 100 stars of 2021 (by their STARmeter rankings) topped by Elisabeth Olsen (WandaVision). The lsit leans heavily into stars from popular shows or movies like everyone from Bridgerton, Ted Lasso, Mare of Easttown, the MCU, and even the star of Squid Game (though the list is heavy on blonde American women). Surprisingly high ranking for Alexander Skarsgård given that he had a mostly quiet year and Kathleen Turner somehow made the list, too, not that we're complaining as longtime fans.

More after the jump including a Shang-Chi sequel, West Side Story plus Steven Spielberg's next film, a big Alessandro Nivola get,  the teaser to Across the Spider-Verse, and the top ten list seasonal kickoff...

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The wonderful world of Adam Stockhausen

by Cláudio Alves

Over the past decade, Adam Stockhausen has become one of Hollywood's most formidable production designers. Working his way up as an art director, the first movies he got to design weren't the most prestigious fair. Indeed, Wes Craven's late-career horrors didn't give him much opportunity to show off. That all changed when Wes Anderson, Steve McQueen, and Steven Spielberg all started to go to him as their preferred designer, relying on Stockhausen to create whole worlds from scratch, whether within a realistic milieu or total fantasy. Back in 2014, Grand Budapest Hotel earned him an Oscar, and Stockhausen is back on the hunt for more gold. Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch just arrived in American theaters, and the new West Side Story is on the horizon. Could he even nab an elusive double nomination?

Here are some highlights from Adam Stockhausen's filmography as production designer, from Anderson's whimsy to Spielberg's glitz…

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7 days until Oscar. 7-time Best Director nominees

It's seven sleeps until Oscar night so today's magic discussion number is SEVEN! Exactly seven directors in history have received seven (or more) nominations for Best Director in the Academy's 93 year history. For fun we've listed that magic seventh nomination below, though coincidentally none of these directors won their seventh time in the race (all had already won). They are, in alpha order:

 

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Link grab bag from Disney strategies to new Auteur projects to Sean Young speaking out

It's been approximately 1,000 years since our last link roundup. It's always tough to keep up with news during Oscar season when more important things (shiny gold statues!) are on the mind.

• Variety Disney is shifting release strategies and dates again for Black Widow, Luca, and Cruella among others. We're disappointed that Adrian Lyne's long awaited return with erotic thriller Deep Water is now a 2022 movie (that's well over a full year since it was first supposed to come out.) 
• IndieWire meanwhile Warner Bros announces that it will end the opening simultaneously on HBOMax treatment for its new movies starting in 2022 which will play in theaters for 45 days first. (We're guessing the people behind Dune are pissed that this doesn't apply to them) since none of their deals imagined a non-theatrical world.
• Towleroad Lady Gaga has already upset the woman she's playing in Ridley Scott's Gucci biopic

More after the jump including Oscar Isaac, Helen Mirren, Elliot Page, Steven Spielberg, and Clint Eastwood... 

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The New Classics: Lincoln

By Michael Cusumano 

Abraham Lincoln abilities as a writer probably would have earned him a place in history even without his accomplishments as a statesman. He is surely the best writer that has ever occupied the Oval Office. Capable of expressing complex ideas with remarkable economy, he had a deft hand with allusions and was responsible for many evocative turns of phrase that resonate far outside the political context of their time, “The better angels of our nature” or “The dogmas of the quiet past”.  Hell, simply opting for “Four score and seven” over “eighty-seven” reveals a writer’s ear for the musical potential of language.

It's a fitting tribute then, that the most prominent film about the sixteenth president, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, with a screenplay by Pulitzer prize winning playwright Tony Kushner, exudes that same love of language. There’s scarcely a scene without some memorable linguistic spin. There's much to admire in Spielberg’s film from the beautifully worn production design to the momentous performances, but the real reason I’ve returned to it repeatedly since 2012 is simply because the characters are such fun to listen to. All of the film’s dramatic peaks involve the spectacle of verbal fireworks, particularly my favorite scene, where Tommy Lee Jones blasts his way out of a political trap firing off ornately worded insults like cannonballs... 

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