He Loves Link

Reminder: You can watch the live stream of Broadway's She Loves Me tonight (one of the major Tony nominees this year) on "Broadway HD" for only $9.99 this evening at 8:00 PM EST (though I'd get there before 7:50 PM). The show stars Laura Benanti and Jane Krakowski, two national musical comedy treasures, and some talented men, too. It's the first time in history that a Broadway show has been livestreamed and since Broadway shows aint cheap $10 is practically free. If you check it out, let us know what you thought. Our review icymi.

Links
Variety looks back at the waves made by The Devil Wears Prada 10 years back
Vox has a very sound theory as to why the blockbusters suck this year - the disappearance of second acts in the three act structure
Shout Factory Carrie (1976) is getting a spiffy new Blu-Ray for her 40th anniversary
Birth.Movies.Death on the making of Clash of the Titans. Harry Hamlin was a handful! 
IndieWire how YA stars have emerged as the saviors of American indie films 
THR A24, perhaps emboldened by their first Oscar wins last year (Room + Ex Machina) is really hitting it hard for 2016. They've already released a few notable titles this year with more to come. Now they just picked up Mike Mills 20th Century Women. Can they win Best Actress two years in a row? 
Gold Derby Alison Janney and Julia Louis-Dreyfus will both make history on Emmy night if they win
Birth.Movies.Death on the recent Cap is Hydra comic storyline and how serial storytelling works (it's only the response to serial storytelling that's really changed.) 
Pride Source a fun LGBT themed interview with our new Tarzan Alexander Skarsgård
Boy Culture today is the 30th anniversary of Madonna's "True Blue" album
MNPP Miles Teller in leopard print thong for Bleed For This 

Daniel Craig and Jason Isaacs in the London 1993 production of ANGELS IN AMERICAThis Week's Must Read
"Angels in America: The Complete Oral History" Let us all thank Slate profusely for this retrospective of Tony Kushner's two-part masterwork. Some of my favorite quotes from it.

George C. Wolfe [Director]: I think so much of what I did on Part 1 was keeping the hype out of the room and letting everybody play and discover. Because the hype was monumental, the hype was ridiculous, but you can’t work from hype, and you can’t create from hype. God knows you can’t discover anything new.

Joe Mantello: For a lot of us, that production was like going from zero to 100 in our careers, going from being unknown to the play everyone was coming to see.

Marcia Gay Harden: I’d walk through the West Village, and people would come up to me and say, “I took my parents to see the play, and then I told them I was gay.” Or: “I took my parents to see it, and then I told them I was dying.” And we would cry on the street. That happened once every couple of weeks.

Rocco Landesman: Personally, I think the show is a bit long, particularly in Perestroika. I was lobbying for cuts and got none of them. Tony was very gracious. He would hear me out politely and do what he wanted to do, which was not cut. It was like a conversation with August Wilson but worse.

And on Harper Pitt's very last transcendent bit in the play, her flight to San Francisco...

Marcia Gay Harden: I’m tingling right now thinking about it. The synchronicity of the immune system of the Earth, and that can be healed by the people who are suffering with the holes in their own immune system, the tragedy of the souls of those who have been hurt forming a web of protection around the Earth. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever said—or read—in my life.

Mary-Louise Parker: We shot it in an airplane hangar, and I was really trying to rein in my emotion. I just didn’t feel I quite reached it. I went to lunch, and I was so distraught, and I went to Mike [Nichols, who directed the miniseries] and said, “Can I do it again?” They were literally taking down the wall, and he said, “Oh, my child,” and turned to the crew and yelled, “OK, put the wall back up!”

Tony Kushner: It’s the best paragraph I’ve ever written.

Gird Your Loins. The Devil Wears Prada is 10!

Gird your loins.

We really had meant to do The Devil Wears Prada anniversary up big but the month got away from us. Today, 10 years ago, The Devil Wears Prada opened in theaters as counterprogramming and blew up, becoming one of 2006's biggest hits and endearing La Streep to a whole new generation of fans. Sadly she didn't win her third Oscar then (it would have solved so many problems later on. Plus, more importantly, she deserved it!). Because time slipped away from us, and tales of our incompetence do not interest her, we present this classic from the old site on this special occasion.

Ten Best Miranda Priestley Line Readings

My flight has been cancelled... "

10. How incredulous and put-out she sounds without even raising her voice. The way she says "school" when referencing her kids recital which she's desperate to attend is giggle worthy, too. So childish. Translation 'How could such a thing happen to the center of the universe... me?'

There you are Emily. How many times do I have to scream your name?"

09. 'Actually my name is Andrea.' Oh shut it Hathaway. She doesn't care. She will call you what she likes and you'll come running...

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New Trailer: 50 Shades of... Prada?

Manuel here offering an off-beat theory on that new 50 Shades of Gray trailer.

The worldwide phenomena got a Beyoncé-scored trailer that debuted during last week's Scandal which suggests the marketing team at least know who they're courting. "Haunted" really is a great trailer song & when paired with (intentionally?) campy dialogue like

My tastes are very... singular.
Enlighten me then...

it makes for quite the breathy, pulpy trailer, but am I the only one noticing that this trailer makes the film look like an oddly humorless gender-bending fan-fiction of The Devil Wears Prada?

Between the Runway-looking office reception, Jamie Dornan's teased "gird your loins" entrance, and Dakota Johnson's Andy Sachs-esque outfit, I half-expected Dornan's Gray to give us a sibilant monologue on cerulean fabrics. Alas, despite its gorgeous London skyline shots and a "getting ready to meet Mr Gray" setup scene that might as well be scored to KT Tunstall's "Suddenly I See," this trailer doesn't seem to be aiming for the fun and flirty sensibility of that other best-selling novel adaptation. So many moody shots seem right at home in a horror flick (is he stalking her at a... hardware store?) suggest this film will try to battle its sudsy image by wearing a self-serious smoldering scowl. To be fair, Dornan wears those well (anyone else watch The Fall?) and despite an odd accent and a lack of his usually gorgeous facial hair, his Gray is sure to be the most ogled male film lead since the Magic Mike boys dropped trou. Of course, now I'll just keep imagining what Gray would've been in the hands of Streep; might that have netted her her fourth Oscar? I kid, though it does seem odd that this trailer would so openly (if unconsciously) crib images from that 2006 flick, or am I just imagining things?

Check out the full trailer below and tell me you weren't sad when there were no Emily Blunt or Stanley Tucci one-liners to buffer the self-seriousness of it all:

Enlighten me readers, does this new trailer whet your apetite enough to buy a ticket? Are these just words you're scrolling through in hopes I saved a shirtless Dornan shot at the end of the post?

"And Emily..."

(Great Moments in Screen Bitchery, #91, Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada)

Readers' Ranking: Streep's Oscar Noms, #5-1

We started this blogging experiment by asking readers to rank all the Streep Oscar Nominated performances they'd seen. Then we shared reader stories of how you first discovered Streep. I tabulated all the results, weighting the ballots so the readers who had seen the most films counted for more. Now we've reached the tippity top of Streep performances!  For what it's worth, the top six (including Kramer Vs. Kramer) were the clear winners of your collective hierarchy and numbers two through four were closely bunched together in your estimation, each threatening to take spot #2 with each new ballot that arrived, though eventually they settled into their current positions. 

STREEP'S OSCAR-NOMINATED PERFORMANCES RANKED 
According to Film Experience Readers  (We didn't include The Iron Lady since it's brand new)

16-11
Music of Heart, Ironweed, One True Thing, French Lt's Woman, Deer Hunter, Doubt
10-6
Julie & Julia, Out of Africa, Postcards, Cry in the Dark, Kramer vs Kramer

05. Adaptation (2002)
Role & Balloting: Streep's terrifically clever performance as a heightened version of Susan Orlean, the real life writer who wrote the non-fiction book The Orchid Thief that Nicolas Cage's fictional screenwriter (and Charlie Kaufman stand-in) tries to adapt into a movie in this twisty comedy [whew], is the one many fans point to as "this is what she needs to do more of!" This role was in first place on only 3% of ballots, less than any of the other films in the top six, but it was on nearly every ballot (widely seen) and usually in the upper half.

Who Won the Oscar: Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chicago
Other Nominees in Guesstimate Order of AMPAS Love: Meryl (Adaptation), Julianne Moore (The Hours), Kathy Bates (About Schmidt) and Queen Latifah (Chicago)
The Dread Sixth Place Finish?:  It was Michelle Pfeiffer, SAG nominee, on the outside looking in for White Oleander. I still blame the Golden Globes for that one as they stalled her momentum by fawning over a miscast and dull Cameron Diaz for Gangs of New York. 

Reader Notes and Four More Greats after the jump...

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