Dear Link People

Cinema Blend Rian Johnson (of Brick and Looper fame) will direct at least one of the new Star Wars movies. Interesting choice
Very Smart Brothas has smart things to say about Yaya DaCosta's casting as Whitney Houston in that upcoming lifetime biopic. (I just discovered this site which I gather is pretty popular on the black internet. Some really funny posts)
MNPP Michael Haneke's Flash Mob is waiting on its lead actress. But who will it be?

In Contention top 10 performances in Roman Polanski films
AV Club talks Judy Garland and the Oscar fuck-up of 1954. One of my favorite topics!
i09 Pixar's next short is called Lava
Esquire 10 best films set in New Jersey from Atlantic City to Cop Land
Just Jared Matthew McConaughey on the red carpet for more prizes. Curiously talk is spreading that McConaughey won't be back for Magic Mike XXL. I actually think that's a great move on the movie's part but I wasn't expecting it since Hollywood usually tries to give you more of the same in sequels. (I've already discussed this but If Tatum wants to build a cash cow franchise out of this for himself as a producer that could even survive without him onscreen, he needs to understand that the topic calls for fresh meat each time. Sorry to be so crass about it but it's true!) 

Most Awesome Tweet of the Day/Month/Possibly the Year
If only they had done another one in a car with Brad in the back seat! 

Inventors of the #selfie at it again. #ThelmaAndLouise pic.twitter.com/1yvbF8j4fF

— Susan Sarandon (@SusanSarandon) June 19, 2014

I haven't seen this movie in way too long.

Opposing Netflix Views
Vulture wonders how Chelsea Handler and Netflix are going to work around the talk show format which requires topicality which you can't get when you film in advance. But...
Mashable thinks this won't be what we're expecting an disrupt television again 

SAG Nominations Are In!

Good morning Oscar watchers. This morning brings one of the biggest precursors of the season: the Screen Actor's Guild. These days the eventual Oscar cross-over is usually somewhere between "very hot" (19/20 for 2009) to "very warm" (17/20 in 2011 and 2010) so you can guarantee a large number of the below nominees will show up on Oscar ballots in January.

What are we thinking will cross over? What will fall out? Will tomorrow's Golden Globe nominations (!!!) erase whatever momentum that some of today's nominees have amassed (we're looking at you August: Osage County and Lee Daniels' The Butler)?

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Review: White House. Golden Oprah. Lee Daniels' The Butler

This review was originally published in my column at Towleroad

Somewhere in the vast middle of LEE DANIELS' THE BUTLER, a movie about a White House butler who served US Presidents from the Eisenhowers through the Reagans, there's a terrific agitated scene in which we leave the butler behind to check in on his wife Gloria. Gloria (Oprah Winfrey) and Howard (Terrence Howard), the neighbor she's turned to from loneliness, argue on a couch. Howard is trying to sweet-talk his way back into her bed. Gloria, guilt-ridden, distracts herself with chain smoking, occasionally side-eyeing him as if he were a buzzing nuisance and, damn, where is her fly swatter? Slick Howard begins spinning two of her clothes hangers in the air to visualize their parallel worlds. Gloria reacts with extreme annoyance to the comic pleasure of the audience -- Oprah gets one laugh after another, all of them blessedly intentional, in her rousing return to the big screen. 

It's a weird but lively domestic hothouse scene that feels, at first, largely divorced from the movie containing it, a somewhat duller "greatest hits" tour of America's civil rights journey. But in its own peculiar way it's also the movie's key scene. [more...]

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Podcast: "Butler" History & "Elysium" Nonsense

On this week's podcast Joe, Nick, Nathaniel and Katey discuss Foxcatcher's release date, and Elysium's fast fade nonsense from unsanitary exoskeletons to Jodie Foster's unplaceable accent.

But the bulk of the conversation is devoted to Lee Daniels' The Butler which has us all confused. Is it a terrible movie with good moments or vice versa? Whatever it is it might well be an unmissable oddity given all the celebrities crammed into it from Mariah Carey to Vanessa Redgrave and the ability to see Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey in matching track suits. 

We'll also tell you which celebrities weren't in the movie that should have been. You can listen to the podcast right here or download it on iTunes. 

The Butler & Elysium

Mix Tape: "Panic in Detroit" in The Kids Are All Right

Andreas from Pussy Goes Grrr here, with my first guest contribution to The Film Experience. We're kicking off a new series called "Mix Tape," all about musical choices in film, with a look at some mood music that adds considerably to one of last year's Oscar-nominated supporting performances.

Creative song selections are scattered throughout The Kids Are All Right, but the one that really stands out for me—even though it only plays for ten seconds in a disjointed form—is David Bowie's "Panic in Detroit." It accompanies a sex scene between Paul (Mark Ruffalo) and Tanya (Yaya DaCosta) which, through the magic of jump cuts, also serves as an introduction to the wildness and fertility that make Paul an ideal sperm donor... and a not-so-ideal interloper into Nic and Jules' domestic status quo.

Right before the sex scene, we get our first look at Paul: carting around vegetables, flirting with Tanya (his business partner and friend-with-benefits), and generally being earthy. He also gets the troubling phone call informing him that somewhere out there, he has a biological daughter. He pauses, presses his hand to his mouth, and suddenly we're jolted away with the sound of Bowie's voice singing "He looked a lot like Che Guevara!" as Ruffalo and DaCosta bounce naked across a living room.

After the jump, more on Ruffalo and Bowie. [Warning: slightly NSFW images.]

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