Thank Link It's Friday

Vanity Fair meet Millicent Simmonds, a young deaf actress starring in Todd Haynes next film Wonderstruck
Film Independent if you are very rich and can afford $150+ to see a live screenplay reading, Hannah and Her Sisters is being performed tonight in Manhattan. Olivia Wilde directs an all star cast including: Bobby Cannavale, Rose Byrne, Uma Thurman, Michael Sheen, Maya Rudolph, and Salman Rushdie. (Love all those ladies but I'll save my pennies to see two fully staged Broadway shows on discount for that price. Jesus)
Oscars YouTube has released a bunch of conversational videos with the team behind Beauty & The Beast for its 25th Anniversary
Decider Joe Reid remembers gay romcom The Broken Hearts Club (2000)
The Film Stage interview with Terence Davies about Sunset Song (2016) now playing
Vulture why X-Men Apocalypse has so little buzz

 

Stage Buddy Nico Tortorella, of Younger fame, tests his comic chops out on stage in "Crude"
Nick's Flick Picks is revisiting the 1996 Cannes Festival, day by screening day. First up was Oscar nominees Ridicule (1996)
Film Forum (NYC) is screening several films based on the work of Noél Coward starting today including Design for Living, Bunny Lake is Missing, and Brief Encounter
Rolling Stone on a newly restored X rated Japanese anime from the 70s, Belladonna of Sadness
Talk House a comic strip review of a comic book movie (Civil War) - this is really fun
THR George Miller talks about his past Cannes jury stints (this next week he's leading the jury) and Oscar night for Mad Max Fury Road 
Interview Magazine unearths a Laura Dern interview from 1990. Great photos. 

Off Cinema
Monkey See lovely piece on reading to your children and the power of spoilers with a Star Wars slant
Madonnarama Madonna will be honoring the late Prince with a performance at the Billboard music awards on May 22nd
Vox on progressive US's citizens frequent threat to move to Canada -- hard to do!
Mic LGBT magazines have an unfortunate habit of lily white male covers, straight and gay. Here are 100 suggestions for LGBT people of color who'd look great on magazine covers. 

Body Positivity
This topic seems to be in the air right now -- and god knows who couldn't use it? -- so here are two good links on insecurities and self-discoveries  
Buzzfeed "Wrestling taught me how (not) to be a man"  
Towleroad "I am a Man..." is there strength in revealing our insecurities? Or just camarederie? 

This is Funny
I don't know who did it though I'd love to give credit -- maybe it's from here? -- but I LOL'ed 

More Captain America Funny: In related unexpectedly amusing news, the US Army confirms that it would indeed owe Steve Rogers 66 years of back pay after he was thawed out in Captain America: The First Avengers; Pajiba reveals a list of every "Chris" that is not part of the Marvel-verse; Over at Funny or Die, thanks to Tony Hale, Civil War Reenactments now mean a completely different thing...It's not a hobby it's a lifestyle!

Random News To Go
• Godzilla 2 has been pushed back to 2019. Way to strike while the iron is hot, Warner Bros. Five years between movies? Strange.
• It's not official official yet but Lupita Nyong'o is reportedly in talks for Marvel's Black Panther, assumed to be the superhero's love interest
• We dreaded it and it's now official: Agent Carter, Marvel's most joyful current property (and they have so many now on TV and film) has been cancelled. In much happier news, The Real O'Neals (absolutely adorable and super funny - please tell me you're watching) has been renewed. Here's a bunch of other new cancellations and renewals.

Review: Avengers 3 aka "Captain America: Civil War"

This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It is reprinted here in a slightly expanded version.

Captain America and his man, the Winter Soldier

Poor Captain America. You know how it is. You’re frozen in a block of ice and when you wake up several decades later the world has gotten so complicated! Everyone you loved is dead except your 96 year old girlfriend with Alzheimers (Agent Peggy Carter) and your brainwashed homicidal boyfriend (Bucky/The Winter Soldier) who is totally ghosting you.

New friends are plentiful but also trouble. Either they have two faces (Black Widow/Agent 13) or they’re constantly vanishing for personal reasons (Thor/Hulk/Hawkeye) so you totally can’t rely on them.

Click to read more ...

Box Office

Black Panther coming for your ticket moneyWhile Captain America v. Iron Man didn't prove to be that much hotter a ringside ticket than Batman v. Superman did in its opening weekend (there's just a 15 million difference or so), the gap will surely widen. The movie's general quality will help it outlive and outperform that earlier embarrassment. One thing the two films do have in common is that the audience excitement appears to be primarily wrapped up in the new characters (Wonder Woman then & Spider-Man/Black Panther now) as opposed to the familiar faces. In related news, Bunny v Fox aka Zootopia overtook Batman v Superman this weekend to become the second highest grossing film of the year thus far.

But real question: who on earth was going to Batman v Superman THIS weekend of all weekends (it earned another million) with Iron Man vs. Captain America available to them? 

TOP TEN WIDE
01 Captain America: Civil War $181.7 NEW Review
02 The Jungle Book $21.8 (cum. $285.9) Articles
03 Mother's Day $9 (cum. $20.7)
04 The Huntsman Winters War $3.5 (cum. $40.3)  Review
05 Keanu $3 (cum. $15.1) 
06 Barbershop: The Next Cut $2.7 (cum. $48.7)
07 Zootopia $2.6 (cum. $327.6)  Reviewish
08 The Boss $1.7 (cum. $59.1)  Review
09 Ratchet & Clank $1.4 (cum. $7) 
10 Batman v. Superman $1 (cum. $327.2) Review 

Sing Street is benefitting from great word of mouth as it expands

Other movies steered clear of opening against the third Avengers film but for Luca Guadagino's I Am Love follow up A Bigger Splash which began its platform release. Now there's an annual franchise option we could get behind. Imagine a world where each Gaudagino & Swinton release is as buzzed about and dissected as any new "Underoos!" moment from Marvel. We're here for that world, whenever it collides with this one.

TOP TEN PLATFORM
01 Sing Street $422K on 153 screens (cum. $1.1) Review
02 Green Room $343K on 470 screens (cum. $2)
03 The Meddler $294K on 53 screens (cum. $.6)  Review
04 The Man Who Knew Infinity $220K on 40 screens (cum. $.3)
05 Papa Hemingway in Cuba $181K on 208 Screens (cum. $.8)
06 Compadres $170K on 212 screens (cum. $2.7)
07 Miles Ahead $131K on 141 screens (cum. $2.2) Review
08 Everybody Wants Some $110K on 131 screens (cum. $3.2) Review Con, Review Pro, Podcast
09 A Bigger Splash $110K on 5 screens NEW Articles
10 The Family Fang $104K on 52 screens Review

What did you catch this week in theaters? 

Tweetweek: Young Han Solo, Met Ball, and Civil War

Apologies for the slim postings the past two days. Boring issues at TFE HQ that will hopefully be remedied shortly for a jampacked next week. But enough of that...

As you may have heard Alden Ehrenreich has been cast as the Young Han Solo. If you are old like me you know he won't be the first actor to have risked Ford comparisons in the role. Way back in 1989, then freshly Oscar- nominated teen star River Phoenix (Running on Empty) played Young Han Solo in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in a flashback scene wherein we learned how Indiana Jones got that scar under his lip. 

Alden Ehrenreich is all the rage at the moment due to his truly awesome work in Hail, Caesar! And the following tweet is most definitely true of actor heat both now and in general. The Coens have a rich history of making people notice how great certain actors are and then other filmmakers capitalize on it. It's not just that galaxy far far away that takes cues from them. 

First Oscar Isaac and Adam Driver, now Alden Ehrenreich. Lucasfilm just waits for the Coens to show them who's cool. #StarWars #HanSolo

— Angie J. Han (@ajhan) May 6, 2016

The Coens have a rich history of making people notice how great certain actors are and then other filmmakers capitalize on it. It's not just that galaxy far far away that takes cues from them. 

But before we begin after the jump please note that I'm nominating Scott Beggs for the Pulitzer in criticism

The punching in Captain America: Civil War looks better than the punching in X-Men: Apocalypse.

— Scott Beggs (@scottmbeggs) April 26, 2016

Click to read more ...

If Actresses Were Superheroes...

I know what you're saying. "If???"

Obviously actresses are superheroes, so after going the traditional route today (National Superhero Day apparently, yes it's news to me too) by celebrating superheroes I loved to draw as a kid and those that made me quiver under my bodice, I couldn't stop tweeting. It was time to celebrate the greatest superhero team of them all: The Legion of Best Actresses.

We'll start with Tilda but there are more super-actresses after the jump...

#NationalSuperheroDay
Name: Tilda Swinton
Alias: Tilda Swinton
First Appearance: ∞
Gender: Mutable
Powers: All pic.twitter.com/eztByMjc2j

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) April 28, 2016

Click to read more ...