Year in Review: Ten Most Memorable 2020 Screen Animals

by Nathaniel R

Over the Moon

We have a few big 2020 Year in Review pieces left to go but how about something fluffy and little tonight like "Bungee" in Over the Moon (pictured above).. or if not always that then slippery but cuddly, or dangerous and otherwordly. We polled Team Experience for their favourite critters of the year onscreen and here were the results (sort of). We'd intended to do the usual countdown thing but the results were truly all over the place with 20+ animals cited and not much in the way of consensus. So rather than attempting little blurbs and a ranking we'll let these dozen animals speak for themselves. Not that they can speak. Which was your favourite screen creature in 2020?

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New Mutants and New Films. What did you see this past week?

Everyone is wondering when it will be safe to go back to movie theaters, or, in some markets (like here in NYC), when theaters will reopen at all? Vanity Fair sent Richard Larson to his home town of Boston for a wonderfully evocative piece about returning to the movie theater... for The New Mutants of all things. That Fox movie's long troubled voyage to cinemas has been well documented on the internet and Vulture recently tried to sum it all up, if you haven't been following along.

I was an avid reader of comic books when The New Mutants first emerged (September 1982) and I gobbled that book right up...

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Links

• WSJ a day in the life of Regina Hall, finally hitting her peak at 48
• The Ringer investigates the new comedic empire that writer Katie Silberman is building (Booksmart, Set It Up, Isnt It Romantic)
• The Guardian the streaming series based on Love Simon, currently in the casting stage, will not feature ANY of the characters in the film. Hmmm. "based on" being a strange phrase then.

More after the jump including Disneyland's Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, a Boy George biopic, an honor for Jane Fonda, and a new kind of action heroine...

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Showbiz History: Shyamalan Twists and Steppenwolf Alum

10 random things that happened on this day in showbiz history...

we just called to say we loved you, Myrna1905 Charismatic Myrna Loy is born in Montana. She'll come to epitomize urbane style and wit at the movies as one half of The Thin Man's glorious marrieds with William Powell. Though she was never Oscar nominated she was given an Honorary Oscar in '91.

1914 Beatrice Straight is born in New York. In her sixties she'll make history by becoming the actor with the least amount of screentime to win an Oscar. She rages through Network (1976) for all of five to six minutes as a betrayed wife, but that was enough...

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Link Factory

• Mashable badly seeded March Madness brackets are terrible storytelling
• Film School Rejects picks the 18 best movies of 2018 thus far (weird-ass rankings if you ask me, especially with Isle of Dogs below A Wrinkle in Time... and the kind of obnoxious indie supernatural ovie The Endless)
• Decider looking back at an old Tiny Toons episode about representation in 1990
• Screen Crush man died when head got stuck in seat at movie theater (I'm going to have nightmares)
• E! Online Arnold Schwarzenegger has emergency open heart surgery

• Tracking Board  Twice delayed X-Men adjacent movie The New Mutants has been a nightmare to make; Fox keeps changing their mind about what they want it to be. While we all might complain from time to time about Marvel Studios (who are far from perfect -- especially in regards to gender) at least they seem to know what they want every time and how to get there. Even if what they want has been a bit formulaic until recently.
• Cartoon Brew it only took 32 years (oy!)  for a woman to get to direct a Pixar short
• AV Club here's another cute report about that movie which is called Bao and about a dumpling that comes to life
• My New Plaid Pants Klaes Bang, of The Square fame, made a gay short film
• Jim Carrey I somehow missed that in his spare time the seemingly retired movie star has become a political cartoonist. A pretty good one, too. This reminds me of the first time I saw him. Anyone remember his short-lived sitcom Duck Factory in which he played a cartoonist?
• Vanity Fair a good pilot season for South Asian actors - lots of roles in all sorts of shows
• Deadline the cast of Sex & the City supporting Cynthia Nixon's run for NY Governor
• Theater Mania Desperate Measures, which was so so wonderful in its premiere engagement (we talked about it here) is getting an open ended run off Broadway soon. Here's hoping the hilarious original cast is available.