Review: Welcome to Me

Michael C. here with your non-Avengers review of the week

When we daydream about striking it rich the objects of our fantasies usually fall into tangible, straightforward categories. The things we will buy, the places we will travel, the jobs we will quit. Alice Klieg, the lottery winner with borderline personality disorder played by Kristen Wiig in Shira Piven’s Welcome to Me, has more abstract ideas. Alice has spent her whole life trying and failing to live in the world everyone else seems to inhabit with ease. Now, fresh off the decision to go off her meds and with 86 million at her disposal, she can finally force the rest of us to live in her world.

When we meet Alice prior to striking it rich, she is filling her lonely days watching her vast collection of Oprah episodes on VHS, mouthing the words along with the host. It makes perfect sense then, that when she finds herself thrust into the spotlight her first instinct is to cast herself in the role of self-help guru, albeit one with her own life as her first and only subject. [More...]

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actressssssssss
Buzzfeed Nine magical photos of Nicole Kidman's hair in the Eighties
/Film Kristen Wiig's new comedy film Welcome to Me gets a slew of new cast members including just-Emmy nominated Linda Cardellini (from Mad Men & Freaks and Geeks)
Jacket Copy Reese Witherspoon will play the leadiest of leads in Wild, (in that she'll be onscreen every second without much in the way of co-stars) based on the best seller about a woman hiking 1000 miles alone after her mother's death
Guardian on the climactic row between Julie Delpy & Ethan Hawke in Before Midnight and acceptance vs. resignation in relationships
i09 check out Hailee Steinfeld's geeky nail art for Comic Con

tv mania
Vulture Matt Zoller Seitz on the pleasures and brilliance of "Suits" and why critics ignore it
Pajiba on the 25 best series which were never nominated for best comedy or best drama series in their runs. (Honestly I still look it up every time I hear that Roseanne was never nominated for Best Comedy. It seems so patently absurd that I resist the fact every time and scurry off to fact-check. But a fact it is.)
Slate *TODAY'S MUST READ* an excellent piece, arguing as I like to and have right here, that it's stupid to argue that "tv is better than cinema these days" for a variety of reasons but mostly for the dishonesty of this ubiquitous context-free argument.

it's Comic Con time so it's all genre all the time
Timothy Brayton reviews Pacific Rim. Kaiju dig it? 
i09 on the first ten minutes of Terry Gilliams Zero Theorem which they memorably describe as "Blade Runner meets Sesame Street"
Superhero Hype huge gallery of cosplay photos from Comic Con - my favorites are these gender-flipped X-Men boys, The Princess Bride couple and this tiny Hulk
The Playlist shares the very inspired teaser poster for Gareth Edwards reboot of Godzilla
MNPP which is hotter: Lee Pace blonde or blonder?
Towleroad Jamie Foxx "Electro" teaser for The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Shit, guys, I was kidding about the looking like Mr Freeze part but now that I see more of him it's even moreso!
Coming Soon Character posters from X-Men Days of Future Past including Bishop (Omar Sy)
Cinema Blend the Sentinels design from X-Men Days of Future Past which will merge the superhero genre with the giant fucking robots genre at long last*

*that was facetious even though i'm a huge fan of that arc in the X-Men comics.