Thoughts We Had... THR's Annual Actress Roundtable Cover

We'll have to wait a little while for the full video, which is more fun than the cover but it's always exciting to see THR's roundtable covers nonetheless. Like Vanity Fair's "Hollywood Issue" -- less thrilling than it once was for a myriad of reasons -- it's a tradition that is both great fun for its glamour and personality and highly aggravating for its exclusions and repetitions and limited world view... just like, HEYYYY, the Oscars themselves!

By now you know the drill. First an image. Then the thoughts that come to mind without self-censorhip after the jump...

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The Star Wars Poster Awakens

After brief consideration of an annotated poster, The Film Experience's official position is that we actually don't know enough about the new Star Wars (by choice!) nor do we want to do the research so as to insure some sense of discovery in the the movie theater. Most of you weren't born yet but I saw Empire Strikes Back in the theater and I cannot tell you the seismic jolt that shook the sold out theater during the "Luke, I am your father" business. Filmmakers and even marketers used to understand the power of a good surprise in a crowded room.

Nevertheless one can't help but look! Surely you agree. After the jump, thoughts I had (uncensored as they arrived...)

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Belated Thoughts on "Freeheld"

Freeheld, the civil rights drama based on the Oscar-winning documentary short of the same name, hasn't made an impact at the box office or with critics but it really should've been featured on The Film Experience of all places. We apologize for the delay but better late than never... especially when it involves dying wishes!

First a wee bit of background: Autospell keeps trying to change the title to "Freehold". For what it's worth the Freeholders, a local county governing board, are the antagonists of the picture. They're a group of men who deny local hero cop Laurel Hester (Julianne Moore) her dying wish that her pension go to her domestic partner Stacie Andree (Ellen Page) when she dies. The only thing that keeps the Freeholders in the human realm and away from cartoon moustache-twirling is Bryan Kelder (Josh Charles), the most conflicted of them who doesn't see what the big deal is about granting her wish but also isn't conflicted enough to put his career on the line and he's running for a bigger office soon. The boards refusal stirs up a firestorm of activism in her home county in New Jersey

Here are a handful of thoughts on the movie...

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17 Thoughts I Had While Watching "Woman in Gold"

Have you seen Woman in Gold which has been out on DVD for a bit now? It's about an old Austrian Jew (Helen Mirren) who immigrated to America during the Holocaust and attempts to get her family's original Gustav Klimt paintings back which were stolen by the Nazis and now "belong" to a museum in Austria.

Here are a dozen plus thoughts I had while watching it...

What do you know about art restitution?

• Nothing? It's okay. I didn't either. Helen Mirren will teach us. She speaks most of her lines as if to a small child. In fact, a lot of the characters do. They're constantly explaining the movie's plot and conflicts to us. And after explaining things there's sometimes bits of dialogue like...

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Thoughts I Had... While Looking at 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' Poster

Thoughts I had while looking at the Age of Ultron Poster as they come to me...

Wow, that's ugly! And since this movie would make a billion dollars even if they advertised with a giant stinky turd as the poster, you'd think they could be a little more creative. You can get away with anything, Marvel, so make it count. Revive the art of the movie poster... it's not like you don't know the important of a good "cover" for your comic books.

And don't make it so obvious that Samuel L Jackson is bored of his role. 

Where's Drew Struzan when you need him? His posters could assemble multiple characters, amplify their already potent iconography, be fun and beautiful all at once. If you love poster art of the 1980s, you should consider buying his coffee table book.

Who knew that the Black Widow was a fan of Tron: Legacy ? 

You can see The Vision floating up near the top. They let him keep that bright yellow cape though we don't know if his skin will be red and his costume green. Seems unlikely. That's a lot of primary colors for a movie! I don't know why but I now equate his relationship with The Scarlet Witch to with Doctor Manhattan & Silk Spectre so if there's not a CGI generated scene co-starring Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany with a bright red penis, I'm going to be disappointed.

Thor is about to hammer Captain America [ahem]

I hope the robots made of pixels have more character than those nameless alien pixels they battled at the end of the first movie.

I miss The Leftovers (I'm not the only one who was reminded of this). Come back Carrie & Justin

OMG remember The Rapture (1991)? Mimi Rogers was so amazing in that movie and it seems like no one has seen it. My Oscar nominees that year woulda been Foster/Davis/Sarandon/Rogers/Dern with apologies to The Bening! (What? It always comes back to best actress.)