Thursday, May 25, 2017 at 8:00PM Tweet of the Week...
"now you're in the sun-Cannes place." pic.twitter.com/jgYJNzwGb9
— Neil Young (@BohemiaStable) May 24, 2017
Get it? Oh reader, I LOL'ed and LOL'ed. Cannes fun follows after the jump but first some non-Cannes thoughts and amusements featuring Twin Peaks, Rooney Mara, Reservoir Dogs and more...
Sunday, May 21, 2017 at 9:00PM Cartoon Brew utterly savage (but 100% correct) on the Emoji Movie trailer
LA Review of Books on Netflix's Sense8 as metaphor for Netflix is. (I have no idea
why a book site is reviewing this but the piece is absolutely terrific)
LA Times talks to Robin Swicord, only now with a second feature (Wakefield) long after the success of The Jane Austen Book Club. Her debut was profitable (always Hollywood's end goal) but Hollywood wouldn't hire her to direct? We've heard this story all too often!
Screen Daily in terrible terrible news they're still not going to let the once genius but totally played out Terminator franchise die and Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron plan to be involved in the next one. Doesn't anyone in Hollywood want to do something original even more? It's not like Cameron couldn't get funding for literally ANYTHING he wanted to do. (sigh)
Film School Rejects on Disney's self cannabilization and the particular folly of trying it with Fantasia
Variety TV is invading Cannes with many auteurs now doing both
Vulture Tilda Swinton and Steven Yeun on making art in the new impossible-to-avoid-politics era
AV Club Janelle Monáe and Leslie Mann are joining Steve Carell in Robert Zemeckis's next film
MNPP Tom Hardy to play Spider-Man villain Venom in a standalone film
Jezebel the only reporting on the Roseanne revival which includes Luis Buñuel asides
Cinematic Corner visual parallels between Logan and Mad Max: Fury Road
Hugh Jackman 'see you soon Japan' - he's still on his Logan promo tour!
Out people are still shook about that shocking Drag Race elimination. (I rewatched it and it's astonishing how furious you can tell RuPaul is at Valentina for making her job so difficult)
Just For Fun
My Giant Nerd Boyfriend "Horror Movies" (I'm absolutely in love with this webcomic about this Asian girl with a super tall boyfriend)
Cards Against Humanity - cool story from the Emerald City comic con floor
Sage Advice
Daily Actor "18 Ways to Self-Tape Like a Pro" - smart ideas here about self-taped auditions (which are increasingly popular
Twin Peaks is here!
Twin Peaks Season 3 begins today so it's probably a good idea to reacquaint yourself with the previous two seasons and Fire Walk With Me. If you don't have time to rewatch them (*raises own hand in solidarity*) there are articles around to jog your memory. Unicorn Booty recaps where several storylines left off at the end of Season 2, and K Austin Allen of The Ringer takes a deep dive into the movie prequel that was honestly kind of reviled back in 1992 but has since grown rather beloved amongst Lynch fans and cinephiles. Perfect anecdotal evidence from my own life: my best friend who was an absolute Twin Peaks nut in the 90s and then hated Fire Walk With Me which we saw together in 1992. I saw him yesterday -- he had just rewatched it was like 'Have you ever watched Fire Walk With Me again? I remember hating it, somehow, but it's incredible!'
Cannes, Logan, Roseanne, Sense8, Terminator, Tilda Swinton, Twin Peaks, Valentina, Venom, links, sequels, webcomics Wednesday, May 17, 2017 at 10:57AM 
Before we get to the links please click on this photo to your left, the teaser poster for Yorgos Lanthimos's The Killing of a Sacred Deer. (Lanthimos last brought us the incredible The Lobster so we hope he's on a roll.) The poster is so beautiful we don't even mind that Nicole Kidman isn't on it! That's high praise if you haven't been paying attention.
Links
Los Angeles Times Jimmy Kimmel will return to host the Oscars again in March. Same team this year, producers too.
Interview Ethan Hawke talks to his friend Alessandro Nivola (easily one of the best stars among the under-famous and under-celebrated division) about his current hot streak
Fathom Events will broadcast the current London production of Angels in America to select US movie theaters in late July. Click there for ticket sales in your area
Awards Daily keeping Oscar buzz alive all year for Cannes contenders is a tricky feat - I agree with most of this but disagree with the example of Midnight in Paris. I'd argue it wasn't the Cannes launch that made that film an instant Oscar contender but its big box office at home (for Woody) the month after the festival --another reminder that it can be really advantageous to strike while the iron is hot though few films dare and instead let their Cannes hype dwindle into nothingness before theater launches half a year or longer later.
Playbill ABC will air a live Little Mermaid special on October 3rd which combines the 1989 classic with live celebrity performances with "cutting edge technology." What the what now? This sounds potentially awful and disastrous but also, because of that, a 'must see'
Script Notes, a writing podcast, talks to Chris McQuarrie about moving from being a writer to a writer-director and the difficulties of moving from indies to tentpoles
Criterion Corner David Hudson aunched his new column "The Daily" which I will surely be stealing links from at some point for these roundups unless I got to them first. Let's start now with these two...
Reverse Shot has a new series called Executive Order which takes a deep dive into the individual T****'s EOs and fuses them with a film that is in conversation with those ostensible ideas or power plays. This link is about the Muslim ban and segueways into a discussion of the fine gay drama Henry Gamble's Birthday Party
NYT how action roles have changed for women (with Theron, Jovovich, Yeoh & Rodriguez)
I object!
/Film "Why Marvel Can't Fail" I'm linking this piece not because I like it but because I have to take issue with it. There has literally never been a long-running franchise or a single studio that has never failed. James Bond had flops. Tarzan had flops. Disney was once dying! Superman eventually fell out of the sky (though he's flying again). Marvel and Pixar, the current studios who inspire this type of article/argument, will not change that. It is an impossibility to always succeed. It's wiser to understand this because one of the quickest ways to insure failure is to assume infallibility. (Also I take issue with the use of "stickiness" here. Sticky as a concept in business may be morphing but it didn't mean 'traps you into brand loyalty' originally. I know because I bought a whole book on the concept
TV
New York Magazine (classic link since Roseanne is topical again) Roseanne Barr on the addiction of fame, her eponymous show, Hollywood sexism and Charlie Sheen
Esquire Corey Atad ranks every episode of Twin Peaks. This brought back so many memories and it's true that the show's quality varied wildly
Coming Soon Netflix is adapting the fantasy novels The Witchers Saga to series
Off Screen
The Atlantic "My Family's Slave" incredible long read about slavery, shame, family demons, cultural norms, and more
Tuesday, September 29, 2015 at 9:09PM • The next James Bond will be... Damian Lewis? Our first ginger 007 you guys! Rumor only but I could see that happening. [Mirror]
• It's weird that there's not a definitive feature about the airplane-building Wright Brothers. Steven Spielberg wants to make one as it turns out. Seems like a good fit, no? [/Film]
• Life on the red planet? There's water at least. Did Fox pay NASA to announce this the week before the opening of The Martian ;) ? [The Guardian]
• Rising star Jonny Beauchamp says he owes everything to Roland Emmerich. Oh noooo. Tough debt. Also there's a photoshoot [Interview magazine]
• "I was being talked to like I was a silly pop singer." Grace Jones is still quotable/fabulous/singular. Just released a memoir [Time Out]
• "I've got tea. I've got cookies. No cake!" I cannot tell you how often my best friends and I quote The Log Lady from Twin Peaks. RIP Catherine Coulson [Wired]
• "Marlene Dietrich believed her pussy was magic" is the first sentence of this article so you know you want to read it. Why can't we get a biopic about THESE anecdotes? [Pajiba]
• Is this really Frank Grillo (from Captain America: Winter Soldier) younger & NSFW? [OMG BLOG]
• Everyone in the world has forgotten that Disney was going to make an Enchanted sequel. Except Disney apparently. It's going to be called Disenchanted. I shudder to think of the web exploding with "who should replace Amy Adams?" articles [Coming Soon]
• "we were certainly looking for shots that told the story without a lot of cutting." - Roger Deakins on point of view and action sequences in Sicario [The Film Stage]
• First image of Woody Harrelson as LBJ in Rob Reiner's forthcoming biopic [Empire]
Image of the Day
Thor and The Vision making out from the Avengers: Age of Ultron gag/blooper reel. Love the elegant placement of Thor's hammer. The best part of the image is surely that man about to shoot in the corner.
P.S. My favorite part is Elizabeth Olsen dropping her accent when she messes up a line.
Video of the Day #1
The Revenant gets a new nearly 3 minute trailer. I won't be watching it because I love the teaser so much (previously discussed, the one with all the heavy breathing) and I don't want any more information in my eyeballs before seeing it than we've already gotten. The reaction online seems breathless/"MASTERPIECEY"! but one should never bank on trailers to tell you what the finished quality of a movie will be, only to tell you whether it looks like you must see the movie. The last trailer that fooled me with "oh, this will be a masterpiece, hands down!" was Little Children (2006) and that's where I learned my lesson once and for all that the art of cutting trailers into 2-ish minute expressive gems was an entirely different art form (a beautiful art form if you don't give too much away) then making a 2 hour movie.
Video of the Day #2
"Bitch Better Have My Money" Barbershop Quartet Quintet style with Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Monday, January 19, 2015 at 3:00PM 
Jason from MNPP here wishing everyone a blue blue Blue Monday. When I tell you that it feels as if I've been having an awfully Lynchian series of months, I'm sure your first reaction is to 1) shudder and 2) to call the police on my behalf. But this is not a cry for help, don't worry - I haven't turned into a door-knob or anything. It's just been a random confluence of events - I saw David Lynch speak at BAM a few months ago; then I read Lynch on Lynch (a terrific book of interviews with the director); then there was the news about the Twin Peaks revival; then I met Laura Dern at a party and told her she needs to get herself into the Twin Peaks revivial; then I went to Philadelphia and saw an exhibit of his paintings. It's been Lynch up the wazoo, basically.
And since tomorrow is Mr. Lynch's 69th birthday it seems a heck of a good time to give him the "Beauty vs Beast" treatment. I mean, what other director works in such extremes of dreamy beauties and nightmare beasts after all? Laura Palmer and the BOB at the end of her bed, for instance. And when the beauty & beast meet, watch out - you could argue that Laura Dern's become the perfect muse for him since she can so effortlessly stretch her sunny beauty out out out way too far for comfort. Those examples aside, it was pretty clear where we needed to mine this week's competition from...
Treat yourself to some cherry pie, climb inside a stranger's closet, do whatever it takes, and then hit the comments to tell us whose disease you want put inside of you in the next seven days, and why and how. And here's to your...
