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The Film Stage Kate Winslet will lead Woody Allen's next film which supposedly involves Coney Island
W Magazine gets Tom Hiddleston stripped down (not an unusual triumph of late: see High-Rise)
i09 even though Sterling Archer may or may not be dead (cliffhangers. argh) Archer has been renewed for 3 more seasons. Yay! 
Playbill Kristin Chenoweth is joining TV's next live musical, Hairspray in the Velma Von Tussle role (yup, the Debbie Harry / Michelle Pfeiffer part)  

Gothamist the Bryant Park outdoor movie series begins. If you watch this footage this is why I never go! I've been once and omg the claustrophia and noise and inability to enjoy the movie (full disclaimer: I also hate summer which might have contributed to my distaste for outdoor summer events)
Kickstarter Here's an oddity. Apparently Todd Haynes and Christine Vachon who have brought us so much eventful art cinema in the past 25 years made short films before the films we know and they're trying to find them and restore them
Guardian Sarah Polley will adapt Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace for a Netflix series
AV Club John Boyega joins Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit riots movie
Boy Culture does his annual review of Broadway Bares - so cool that Daniel Dae Kim did his bit for the cause!
Pajiba The Lego Movie predicted Donald Trump's current villany
Antagony & Ecstasy looooves Piper, the new Pixar short. It's true -- it's better than the feature that follows it. 

Superheroics and Hijinx
Tracking Board  glorious ginger viking Kristover Hivju, who devoted Film Experience readers know as a former nominee here for his perfect supporting work in Sweden's Force Majeure but who most of the world knows from Game of Thrones has joined the cast of Justice League
/Film a very long set visit report from Justice League. I know WB is trying to send the message that this will be fun but this sounds like a mess to me. Especially the part about Mother Boxes. I mean after Horcruxes and Infinity Stones who isn't sick of "collect these objects before the villain and win!" plots. SO DULL 
MNPP why did Zach Snyder make this cut from the Batman & Lois bath scene? 
Comics Alliance I wasn't aware that Tank Girl, a comic that once became a Lori Petty movie in the 90s, has been revived but it has. Tank Girl was always so cool looking. Still is
Coming Soon Wonder Woman herself, Lynda Carter, is joining the Supergirl TV show. Alas not as Wonder Woman but as POTUS. After all the fictional female presidents we've had over the years we better get a real one soon

Look.
It's the Looking movie trailer. Now I have to sob gay tears all over again that these beautiful characters will soon ascend to showbiz heaven never to be seen again. *sniffle*

Posterized: Naomi Watts

It's good to be Naomi Watts right now which is something of a surprise since last year it wasn't. But then the blonde Aussie's career has always been like that. Let's investigate.

Naomi Watts photographed by Mark Abrahams for More magazine

In the Posterized series, now beginning a new season so expect one each Friday, we look back at a star's career through their movie posters. Sometimes it's their giant sized faces and sometimes they don't appear on the poster at all. Such are the vagaries of stardom and advertisements.

In Naomi's film debut she didn't even get a name. The then 18 year old actress was billed as "Leo's Girlfriend" I couldn't find a movie poster of that one so we begin five years later when the actress, after a few TV stints debuted properly opposite her best friend Nicole Kidman in Flirting (1991) a terrific Australian coming of age movie you should seek out. A few random TV stints sprinkle her filmography but it's been mostly movies ever since. Out of kindness I'm not including Movie 43 (I'm assuming the hundreds of stars in that one want to forget it, right?) so let's look at the other 39 films. 

HOW MANY HAVE YOU SEEN? 

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Some Came Linking

Vulture dreams up sequels for The Fault In Our Stars. We'll obviously take the Laura Dern one
The Awl "The Tortured History of Entertainment Weekly" - god I was so in love with that magazine when it debuted in the 1990s. The first issue I remember buying was #5 with Jamie Lee Curtis on the cover for Kathryn Bigelow's Blue Steel
Pixar Times Pixar teases the first five minutes of Inside Out their June 2015 release
Theater Mania Laura Benanti auditions for Peter Pan Live! 

Boy Culture RIP supporting actress Martha Hyer, Oscar-nominated for Some Came Running (1958) 
Kenneth in the (212) teases a new stage production with the music of the The Go-Gos?
Comics Alliance a giant statue of Spider-Man in Korea is causing a stir thanks to its Spider-Manhood
Empire there's a new trailer for The Boxtrolls
Variety expects crazy ladies to dominate the Guest Actress race at the Emmys 
THR has a lengthy cover story on the suicide of the director of Searching For Sugar Man 

Foreign Film Oscar Watch
The Great Beauty, Italy's Oscar winner just lost its home-field Oscar race to a film called Human Capital which also won three acting gongs. Human Capital wasn't eligible for submission by Italy last year (since it hadn't yet opened by the cutoff date) so it could well be Italy's submission this year.

P.S.
I'm not sure how I missed this excellent interview with Lori Petty over at The Daily Beast on Sunday but it's a must read if you have any affection at all for Lori or the 1990s when she just kept doing her inimitable thing all over now classic movies like A League of Their Own, Point Break, and... well, the interview weirdly neglects Tank Girl but what can you do? She talks working with Jodie Foster, Madonna, discovering Jennifer Lawrence and how she got her cameo part in Orange is the New Black despite definitely being off the radar in recent years. 

Lori Petty & Naomi Watts in Tank Girl (1995)

Why do you think the roles started drying up after Tank Girl?

Well, because I was thirty-something and I hadn’t married my agent, married any guy co-stars, or gotten fake titties or Botox. I never wanted to be a bombshell; I wanted to be an actor. I would much prefer to be a woman than a man, but if I was a dude, maybe I’d have Johnny Depp’s island because women in this industry after a certain age definitely don’t get to do Pirates of the Caribbean. Poor Keira [Knightley], they even airbrushed huge tits on her on the poster, and she’s flawless! I was trying to play football with a baseball, and you can’t really do that.

Interview: Oscar Nominee Arianne Phillips

It's long been my goal to up the visibility of the craft of costume design here at The Film Experience. So when the W.E. team was making the press rounds, I jumped at the chance to talk with Arianne Phillips, who has long been a designer I admire both for her technical and visual invention and for her uncanny ability to hit the pop cultural bullseye with instantly memorable looks whether she's designing for musicians (including longtime collaborator Madonna) or for actors. Her film career took off with the one-two comic book punch of The Crow (1994) and Tank Girl (1995). And it's continued to fascinate through Hedwig and the Angry Inch and on to her first Oscar nomination for Walk the Line (2005).

Arianne Phillips in front of her W.E. costumes. Photo via Society News

She received her second nomination last month for W.E. (2011) which has an absurd amount of use for her skills. In my mind they really ought to have done away with typical star "billing" and listed Arianna Phillips up top. No disrespect intended to Abbie Cornish and Andrea Riseborough, who lead the picture through its double-sided narrative.

Years before W.E. materialized Phillips has been living her own double-sided career "by design". Arianne speaks with a mixture of confidence, sincerity and appreciated bluntness: she agrees that costume designers don't get enough credit calling it an "a gorllina in the room. It's such an annoyance" but she corrects my slight misunderstanding about her past collaborations with musicians. She freelances as a stylist and editor for print photography, concerts and music videos. She doesn't dress stars for events.

a recent Madonna/Riseborough photoshoot styled by Arianne

I do videos and album covers, mostly narrative based: fantasy, illusion and character. It's very connected to film. You're creating the fantasy of who that person is.
-Arianne Phillips on her second career as a fashion editor and stylist.

Continue for... Madonna, Larry Flynt, Biopic & Concert Tour Challenges

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