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Entries in Willow (6)

Wednesday
Feb032021

Showbiz History: La Dolce Vita, La Haine, and the return of Willow

The Golden Globe nominations nominations are announced today so there's no time to gaze fondly back. And yet we're so OCD about doing this. Here are 5 things that happened on this day, February 3rd, in showbiz history...

1945 Walt Disney's The Three Caballeros opens in theaters 

1959 A plane crash kills three popular musicians Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and "the Big Bopper" J.P. Richardson. This tragedy became known as "the day the music died" due to the classic song "American Pie" by Don McLean...

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Wednesday
Oct212020

Links: Wicked delays, Jennifer's campaign, Disney streaming

Deadline Stephen Daldry is leaving Wicked. Universal wanted to work faster than Daldry was willing but losing a director will slow them down anyway so why not meet his schedule? 
Variety The Avengers acting heroes want you to Vote Blue this election
EW Jennifer Hudson fires up her second Oscar campaign (for Aretha Franklin biopic Respect) with an EW Cover and profile

Jeff Bridges cancer reveal, Disney news, Noah Jupe confession, Dirty Dancing tribute, Sigourney's Avatar training, and more after the jump...

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Thursday
May022019

Links: Anjelica Huston's Life, Magic Mike's Postponement, Madonna's Holograms

The Week's Must Read
Anjelica Huston interview in Vulture -Many great quotes. So much IDGAF mixing with caring about her career in interesting ways. And her tongue is so sharp and she's so candid I am forced to order her autobiography "Watch Me"

More links after the jump involving Mean Girls, casting news, Avengers Endgame, new series in development, and the Billboard Music Awards...

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Monday
Oct192015

Linkwire

Film Grimoire bookmarking this "on location" series since I'm going to London soon and there's lots of fun places from famous movies
You Must Remember This Karina Longworth researches Hollywood's first openly gay star William Haines (way back in the silent era) 
The Guardian on Spear, the "Australia's first indigenous dance film" - we wanna see
Quartz a photographers new project "edits" out smartphones showing us our lonely new world of disconnection

 

Variety checks in with sales of Mexico's Oscar hopeful 600 Miles feat. Tim Roth
ICYMI <-- we previously covered the foreign submissions w/ recognizable stars like Roth
Buzzfeed Dreamboat Aaron Tveit sings stripped-down "Defying Gravity" from Wicked
Playbill looks at Broadway's oldest living leading ladies: Lansbury and Rivera aren't the only ones
AV Club childhood memories of Willow (1988) and an adult revisit
i09 the first image from The War of the Planet of the Apes looks familiar 
i09 on the superheroes that should get TV series rather than movies. Okay, I'd watch She-Hulk and Ms. Marvel.
i09 Captain America is outraging conservatives again, who forget that he's always been a political character
Variety The 33 and Where to Invade Next added to growing AFI Fest. Nathaniel and Anne Marie will cover this last minute Oscar nom -seeking festival for you as usual. 
Forbes YouTube's highest earning stars. I feel so removed from this wing of showbiz that it always startles me to realize that a) there are famous people that I wouldn't recognize even if they were standing right in front of me screaming their name and b) those same people are NOT from sports or reality television... the other areas to which I am blind

Lukewarm Off Presses
• Page Six I somehow missed this story of Daniel Craig getting in hot water with Sony execs with his repeated groaning about having to play James Bond again. But I like it. (It sucks when you have to work once every three years for shitloads of money, right). In related 'anything else!' news, Craig has signed on for a new production of Othello on the stage. He'll be playing Iago to David Oyelowo's Othello.

Celebrity Pic o' the Day

 

 

An excellent idea, prolly.

Garret Dillahunt is a marvelous actor and though Hollywood likes him best as a sinister possibly dim psycho (The Road, Amazon's Hand to God), he's just as good at decent if ineffectual lawmen (Winter's Bone and No Country For Old Men) and has proved his comedy bonafides on television in Raising Hope and The Mindy Project and also does stage work. In short: we are fond of him and he has more range than the roles he's offered. This great selfie he posted yesterday is exactly how it feels to watch him in his most unnerving roles, though. Love his caption "An excellent idea, prolly" Heh! 

Tuesday
Jun242014

Tues Top Ten: Movie Dragons

The Podcast didn't help. The more I linger on How To Train Your Dragon 2 the less love I realize I have for it. This is not to say that it's not worth seeing -- it's good. I just wanted it to be great since I hold the original in such high esteem. The animation is truly impressive and some sequences provoke awe in a way that nothing else in the theater does at the moment outside of a few scenes in Godzilla. But plotwise the third act just doesn't work for me. I don't like the alpha-male 'you have no choice to obey' conceit... which feels like a betrayal of the first movie's very particular and atypical action movie triumphs. But I still want to see it again for reasons of DRAGONS!!!

So for today's list...

THE TEN BEST DRAGONS IN THE MOVIES
(Disclaimer: I did not see The Desolation of Smaug and have no plans to)

10 The Eborsisk in Willow (1988)
Around the web you can find a few references to this two-headed dragon (which was done with puppetry - puppets are the best) that label it a 'homage' to Siskel & Ebert, then very much the power duo of film critics. But that's rewriting history. At the time it was a diss since George Lucas was no fan of theirs. Willow is a lot of fun across the board except those stupid thumbelina sized people, the 'comic relief'. 

09 Falkor in The Never Ending Story (1984)
I don't remember this movie well at all. In fact, just about the only thing I remember was that I was really in love with it when I was much younger. But now I don't remember why. But it brought me joy then so I figured I owed it to him. And to whoever thought up a dog-like "luckdragon", more cuddly than fearsome, long before the cat-like Toothless, I salute you. 

8 more mythological beasties after the jump

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