I am link parts, link skin, link heart... ♫

The Wrap Frozen nearing the $1 billion mark globally. Unreal.
Mail Online Matt Damon faxes his buttcheeks to Ben Affleck... for charity. No really. 
The Dissolve on the broken down grace of Bill Murray 
AMPAS you have to see this "moment" from the 68 Oscars with Jane Fonda and costume design!

LAist Spike Jonze in a very uncomfortable interview about Her
Gold Derby will Mickey Mouse finally win an animated short Oscar this year for "Get a Horse"? He's quite a loser in this category
TFE icymi Tim, our animation expert, reviewed that short here. (I loved it, too)
Mental Floss Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure just turned 25 years old. Can you believe I asked my team if anyone wanted to write about it and NO ONE did. sad face. 
Twitter I don't know why I find the 'Jake Gyllenhaal stole Taylor Swift's virginity' gossip so amusing but I do.(Jake used to have such better taste!)
Variety a review of that gay themed Brazilian film The Way He Looks that took a Berlinale prize 
Vanity Fair Katey talks to the Oscar nominated makeup artist on Dallas Buyers Club. the budget she had to work with is shocking.

It's a franchise world. We're just living in it only to consume
Pajiba the new Wonder Woman Gal Gadot "shows off her, uh, Amazonian biceps"
The Film Doctor with 13 questions on The LEGO Movie
Den of Geek Star Wars Episode 7 rumors and Indiana Jones 5, too 
Hypeable new stills for Guardians of the Galaxy 
Cinema Blend Steven Price, Oscar-nominated for his Gravity score, will be composing Ant-Man 

Olympic-ness
Slate an interesting share on the extremely rigid rules about figure skating at the Olympics. I knew same sex couples were not allowed but I did not know any of these rules about costuming and I was just wondering aloud the other day why the costumes were so monotonous from year to year apart from color changes and the occassional surprise of where the bejazzlements occur. 

A Heart Full of Uh-Oh... Taylor Swift for "Les Misérables"

Last night while innocently checking Facebook, a reader forced me -- literally forced me -- to read unpleasant news, reaching through the screen, yanking my eyeballs out and plopping them right down on this news that Taylor Swift was joining the cast of Tom Hooper's Les Miserables as Eponine.

I said "Don't make me think about THAT!!!". I mean, I'd just shared my top ten list so I was still hooked up to an IV joy drip and he wanted me to focus on THAT. I couldn't do it! THAT would have to wait until tomorrow, I said.

But here we are in tomorrow and THAT is still whatever it is. So let's recap what's going on with the casting of the most important movie musical in the pipeline.

The Three Roles The Whole Thing Rests On
Jean Valjean.......................... Hugh Jackman
Inspector Javert .................... Russell Crowe
Fantine ................................  Anne Hathaway

We know that Jackman and Hathaway have spectacular golden age quality movie musical voices and that all three of these movie stars can really act. That's a crucial thing since Les Misérables is actually an epic weepie and not the more commonly seen musical comedy. If "Bring Him Home" (Valjean) and "I Dreamed a Dream" (Fantine) don't ruin you emotionally, Les Miz will lose 87% of its dramatic potency.

Crowe? Have we heard him sing outside of rock music? Hooper is supposedly NOT doing this musical in the typical way of pre-recording and then lipsynching / acting later on. Instead, or so we hear though it sounds complicated given the chaotic milieu of the story, that the actors will actually be singing while they act. This might make for an electric movie experience (I mean the source material is already great) but who knows.

the rest of the cast after the jump

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