Links: Thrones, Ratings, Floridians

Ultra Culture has a great post on the British ratings board featuring 10 amusing nuggets from their annual report. Conclusion: at least they're better than America's sex-hating violence-loving MPAA.
Boy Culture is British actor Luke Evans (left) going back in the closet, on the eve of his double-feature blockbuster breakout (The Immortals, Three Musketeers)? Strange story.
Cleveland is very excited to have The Avengers film and wants Ohio to become a big movie-making draw. Between Ohio and Michigan's efforts, the Midwest is really trying to up the "shoot your film here" game.
Google interviews author George RR Martin on his Dance of Dragons tour. It's an hour long but you Game of Thrones junkies will probably want to give it a listen.
Playbill The King's Speech is headed to Broadway in 2012 just as we feared. Ha ha. Not really on the fear part. It's already practically a stage play so it should be fine. 
Inside TV Mad Men is finally shooting again. Woooohoooo
AV Club reports that Friday Night Lights has won a "program of the year" honor from a group called the Television Critics Association (which I'm unfamiliar with but it's a different group than the Broadcast Television Critics Association). Mad Men and Modern Family took home the regular "drama" and "comedy" series prizes respectively and Game of Thrones took home the "best new series" prize. Congratulations to all.

Finally here is Nicole Kidman on the set of Paperboy again. 

Whoa Nelly! and by Nelly I mean up and coming costume designer Caroline Eselin, whose previous credits include Dylan Dog: Dead of Night, Ballast and Leaves of Grass. Eselin apparently isn't shy about a riot of color... but then this murder investigation drama does takes place in Florida. 

Madonna's "W.E." In the Hunt For Oscar

...That's the only possible reason that the Weinstein Company would be interested in distributing her original movie about a woman obsessed with those King's Speech supporting characters, right? Insiders have called it "smart and stylish" and claimed that Andrea Riseborough is Oscar worthy in it.

Abbie Cornish and Andrea Riseborough in 'W.E.'

Perhaps the Weinstein's will do some magic sleight of hand and try to sell it as a revisit. "If you loved the King's Speech, you'll love..."

Please don't be fooled by W.E.'s simply HIDEOUS movie poster, which is floating around the net. This movie could well be very good. Please to remember that The King's Speech also had an absurdly ugly photoshopped teaser poster, too.  W.E. stars Abbie Cornish (in contemporary time) and Andrea Riseborough as Wallis Simpson in ye olden King's Speech times. No word yet on the release date but if we know our Weinsteins it'll be between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve.

Even if the movie hits AMPAS's sweet spot, the woman behind the film could still be an easy snub. In fact, Madonna has never been Oscar-nominated despite writing the following classic movie songs, nearly all of them better than some of the Oscar nominees in their years.

Madonna in Charge.

"Crazy For You" -VisionQuest (1985)
"Into the Groove" -Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)
"Who's That Girl" and "Causing a Commotion" and "Look of Love" -Who's That Girl (1987)
"Live to Tell" -At Close Range (1986)
"This Used to Be My Playground" - A League of Their Own (1992)
"I'll Remember" - With Honors (1993)
"Beautiful Stranger" - Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
"Die Another Day" - Die Another Day (2002)

Arianne & MadonnaThe Academy's music branch hates her but since they have legendarily horrid taste and confounding voting practices, we can't let it bother us too much.

As is usually the case with tricky-to-gauge period pieces, W.E.'s best Oscar bet is probably in Costume Design. Arianne Phillips (pictured left with Maddy) who has worked with the icon quite often and done sensational work on previous films like Hedwig and the Angry Inch, The People Vs Larry Flynt, 3:10 to Yuma and Walk the Line (Oscar nominated) is doing the costumes.

Stay tuned...

New on DVD: Rabbit Hole, Bergman and oh yes, The King's Speech.

Jose here, with a roundup of this week's new DVD releases.

First up we have the Oscar winning The King's Speech which surprisingly hasn't been out on DVD for decades. Doesn't it feel like one of those movies you're used to passing by on video store aisles, next to things like Around the World in 80 Days, Oliver! and all those other Best Picture winners nobody remembers anymore? Maybe I'm alone on this one, since the film was so popular it ended up making $138 million in the North American box office. Will perennial home video popularity follow?

Much less popular, but inarguably more interesting, was Sofia Coppola's Somewhere which also debuts on DVD tomorrow. The Venice Film Festival winner was supposed to reignite Stephen Dorff's career but went by almost undetected by audiences. Give it a try at home, bask in its visual richness and join Nat next week as he features it in "Hit Me With Your Best Shot".

There is also a rerelease of From Dusk Till Dawn, which includes the documentary Full Tilt Boogie: a chronicle of the behind the scenes of the George Clooney vampire fest.

Speaking of things that suck, how crappy was it that Nicole Kidman failed to win any major awards for her moving turn in Rabbit Hole? This tale of grief and sorrow also contained a powerhouse performance by the always underrated Aaron Eckhart and great turns from the reliably good Dianne Wiest and Sandra Oh. The Blu-ray includes deleted scenes and audio commentary with director John Cameron Mitchell. I'd love to hear how he found the calm to direct this after his two outrageously "visual" previous movies.

Also out on DVD is Ingrid Bergman in Sweden a boxset that includes some of the legendary actress' most famous Swedish movies. The set includes Intermezzo (which she then remade for her Hollywood debut), A Woman's Face and making its DVD debut is June Night which was Ingrid's last Swedish movie before moving to America. 

Other new releases include Jane Campion's Sweetie making its Blu-ray debut courtesy of The Criterion Collection and Peter Weir's The Way Back.

 Excited about any of these releases? 

BOB: Sucker Punching Dead Horses

Today's Box Office Blather is short, though hardly sweet. The weekend had only two wide openings which fought it out for two markets: the family and the fanboys. Though girls ruled and boys drooled on Friday when Sucker Punch triumphed, family-market films always grow over opening weekends rather than fade like normal movies.

Carla Gugino, Jena Malone, Abbie Cornish, Emily Browning, Jamie Chung and Vanessa Hudgens at the Sucker Punch premiere

So the weekend went to Wimpy Kids rather than Violent Girls.

01. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules $23.7 new
02. Sucker Punch $19 new
03. Limitless $15 (cumulative: $41.1)
04. The Lincoln Lawyer $10.7 (cumulative: $28.7)
05. Rango $9.7 million (cumulative: $106.3)

Limitless and Lincoln held well in week 2 indicating that people who saw them last week maybe didn't regret their ticket purchases. Rango is now the top grosser of 2011, a title it seems likely to hold until the end of May when Johnny Depp will overthrow himself by way of Pirates #4. (Sigh) Unless Thor gets deified by general audiences or Jane Eyre busts out of her bodice on a record breaking 6,321 screens... all of them sold out for the rest of the summer. (Sorry, fever dream on account of the feverishly Fassbending podcast. But wouldn't it be great if box office were THAT impossible to predict? Hypothetical question. The answer is yes.)

What did you see this weekend? Besides Mildred Pierce, I mean.

Finally, in Shamelessly Beating Dead Horses news: the PG-13 version of The King's Speech opens this Friday. Begone naughty fuck word, you have no power here! The King's Profanity has been redacted. Oscar campaigns don't pay for themselves, people. Although, the $15 million dollar budgeted film has already earned $361 million worldwide so now they're just being greedy fuckers.

The Linkozoic Era

I didn't really intend for this linklist to be so long but the internet kept handing me enjoyable things this morning. Thank you internets.

Stale Popcorn "Olivia Newton-John swinging from a chandelier" This Aussie comedy just went to the top of my wish list.
My New Plaid Pants JA expresses jealousy, warnings and commendations for Amanda Seyfriend's uh, active, Hollywood dating.
IndieWire Deneuve gets a standing ovation at the premiere of Potiche in NYC.

Right here i had an article which talked about the dinosaur-rumor in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011) but it's been taken down. But here is a still of Brad Pitt in the movie anyway!

Brad Pitt in "The Tree of Life"

Boy Culture William Orbit thinks Madonna's W.E. is really good.
Playbill Kathleen Turner to host the Drama League awards
Coming Soon Dreamworks Animation schedule until 2014. Heavy on the sequels, duh. Between this and Pixar's sequel heavy slate, I feel certain that the second golden age of animation will soon end. Only originality can keep a golden age going.

I saw this on Blog Stage and had to share it. Nicole Kidman at 16 (!!!) promoting BMX Bandits. I love how she's so matter-of-fact about the actors not being good enough to do their own stunts.

Nicole Kidman on Young Talent Time from Severin Films on Vimeo.

Film Doctor 8 notes on Rango
i09 on scifi television and the mythical "Summer Glau Curse"
Towleroad Eeek. Blade Runner's replicants are not so far away. Here's a mechanical clone of a guy in Denmark
Alt Film Guide picks up the baton I'm always a-carrying. What the hell does Oscar have against giving actresses Honorary Oscars?
Go Fug Yourself readers votes are in and the single Best and Worst dressed at the Oscars is revealed. Their best is my worst! But their worst wasn't even at the Oscars so I feel like it's cheating.

Finally...

Daily Mail I love this story. The baby of one of The King's Speech producers dropped his Oscar. Hee. A film critic is born?