Lukewarm Off Presses: James Dean, Christopher Guest, Bryan Cranston

Three stories we're late mentioning but so what? Always eager to hear your thoughts...

Trumbo
Still no trailer but there's now a poster for Trumbo, the Hollywood blacklist drama starring Bryan Cranston and Helen Mirren (as gossip icon Hedda Hopper). Cranston could be looking at the Triple Crown if he's Best Actor nominated since he already has the Tony and the Emmy. Will Oscar go wild for this? A word of caution for those predicting at home: People were going on and on about how much Hollywood loves movies about itself when Birdman won the Oscar last season but it's not entirely true. They sometimes nominate movies about movies but they don't tend to be the big winners. And Hollywood blacklist dramas are an infrequent subcategory unto themselves: Career (1959) won a few tech nominations but nothing in the top categories;  The Way We Were (1973) only won for music and didn't even make the Best Picture lineup which it absolutely deserved to be in; Guilty by Suspicion (1991) with Robert De Niro and The Bening and The Majestic (2001) starring Jim Carrey were both entirely ignored;  Good Night and Good Luck (2005) was popular with voters for nominations but lost each of its categories. 

Mascots
It's been nine freaking years since Christopher Guest's last mockumentary For Your Consideration (2006) which was, unfortunately his weakest comedy. But he's finally making something new! The movie will be for Netflix and it's about what it sounds like it's about. No cast announced yet but I think we can safely guess at least a handful of players. I NEED to see Parker Posey and Catherine O'Hara in big furry costumes, okay? I need it like I need oxygen. 

<-- The "Life" of James Dean
Bring Your Own "Yes No Maybe So" in the comments. James Dean has had biopics before but this one comes from Anton Corbijn who I think we should allow made a very fine music biopic on Ian Curtis of Joy Division called Control (2007). This ground, however, is amply covered previously -- except for its macro focus on a photoshoot the moment before Dean was famous. The film, which looks depressingly actress free from the trailer, stars Robert Pattinson, Ben Kingsley, the ubiquitous Joel Edgerton and Dane DeHaan as James Dean.

Ready? Go...

The Team on TV: Masters of Sex S3

Last week we kicked off a new weekly series in which we assemble a few rotating members of Team Experience to discuss various TV shows. Here's Dan, David, Deborah, and Manuel on discuss Masters of Sex - Editor
 

Dan: Hello everybody, welcome to our roundtable discussion on Masters Of Sex. I want to begin with a general topic: How do you all respond to time jumps in TV shows? Masters of Sex does this a lot, with several months often taking place offscreen either in between episodes or even during a single episode (S2's "Asterion" comes to mind). The second season ended in 1961, and this season began in 1966, skipping anything dealing with finding a publisher and marketing the study as a book. Did that throw you? Did you miss anything that would have been covered in the years we didn't get to see?

I was taken aback when it turned out Isabelle Fuhrman was Virginia's daughter Tessa, because last we saw Virginia had given up custody of her kids and Tessa was still a little girl. Now she's all grown and sneaking alcohol and drunkenly attempting to kiss Bill.... what happened to our sweet girl?

Deborah: Hi Dan and all!  I'm a Mad Men fanatic, so I don't mind time jumps in theory. But Masters of Sex has been clunky with it. A big time jump at the halfway point of a season (Asterion) is awkward. At the time, I wrote "Halfway through Season 2, Masters of Sex decides 'to hell with this.'" It was strange. Jumping forward between seasons is a more elegant way and it makes sense. Here's what doesn't make sense: The show clearly wanted to get to the publication of the book, because all the years of research for the book were bound to become repetitive. That being the case, now that they've brought us to the book, why put so much attention on Virginia's kids and Bill's marriage?

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Miscellania: Mad Munn Mortal Minority Musicians

Newsweek Before Straight Outta Compton: race and the black musician biopic
Awards Daily makes a great case for why Mad Men should win the Drama Emmy
MNPP playing lumberjack with Patrick Wilson
Vanity Fair Katey and Richard survey the summer movie season, get nostalgic for Mad Max Fury Road already
The Envelope talks to Lily Tomlin on her great year "If one looks at years that way."
Instagram Olivia Munn wire training for her superheroic antics as the X-Men's Psylocke. Physicality is getting to be so essential in the CG action age that I hope aspiring actors are taking gymnastic and dance courses

Vox why The Chronicles of Prydain is the best literary fantasy series (when do you suppose they'll try to film it after Disney's 80s botch job?) 
Interiors Film Journal looks at the dance scene in Tom at the Farm
THR looks back at unlikely hit Mortal Kombat when videogame movies were ridiculed
Towleroad Trans bodybuilder Aydian Dowling now a top 5 finalist for Men's Health "Ultimate Guy" cover contest
Self Styled Siren on an old book about a possibly violent but definitely tumultous John Barrymore marriage
i09 gets excited for the Minority Report tv show
Film Stage deleted scenes from Mad Max Fury Road
Starf*cker Matthew Rettenmund's (Encylopedia Madonnica, Boy Culture) new book is available for pre-order 

Today's Watch
On baffling uses of CGI... I didn't know this about 50 Shades of Grey or John Wick and definitely blocked out the "pear" from Star Wars. Repressed memory!  

Thoughts I Had... Whilst Looking at Chris Hemsworth in "Ghostbusters" Uniform

In the order they arrived...

• This would not qualify as a 'Cool Rider' by Stephanie Zinone's standards. No hell in his eyes. No skintight leather.

•mmmmskintightleatheronaHemsworth

• When are jumpsuits coming back in style? They look so comfy.

• He's playing the Annie Potts receptionist role but this is the new Ghostbusters uniform so even when genders are reversed, male privilege guarantees a slice of the action!

• For his next trick: "Mary Jo" in the gender reversed Designing Women reboot. How is this not a new gay network sitcom already? Get me a pitch meeting.

SOURCE

• Hopefully this is a windblown rather than a hairsprayed look since he needs his bangs for Hair Acting (see: Thor, Blackhat, Rush) 

• Is this hunky guy still Chris's go-to stunt double?

• The Avengers all seem to be getting a little slaphappy lately what with press rounds and comic cameos and dubsmashes and what not. Chris is clearly in the mood for comic larks.

• <-- See also: Vacation Dong. Whose job is it to provide actors with fake cocks lately (see also: The Overnight) and exactly how profitable is this niche? 

• Whatever happens in this movie it is bound to make more sense than whatever was going on with Thor in Avengers: Age of Ultron. I just saw that for the third time -- it was my inflight movie over the weekend -- and everything Thor-related, yikes. Not his fault but cut his key scenes and the whole movie plays better. In Related Unpopular Note: I have also come to the opinion that it's a much better movie than people give it credit for... but it is ungainly and it's a miracle that Joss Whedon pulled it off, given the clear presence of a dozen plus agendas outside of Tell This Story.

• If we must have remakes then a Lady Ghostbusters is the best possible outcome on paper. But I hope not to be sick of the movie before it arrives 332 days from now which is always a threat when internet interest is high.

What is "Joy"?

We know of course that Joy, the David O. Russell / Jennifer Lawrence reunion, is a biopic about Joy Mangano, the female entrepeneur who founded the miracle mop. But the advertising thus far, both teaser and poster, aren't selling these details. They're telling the non-film-news obsessed virtually nothing. They're only selling Jennifer Lawrence and a vaguely seasonal vibe. The teaser poster, pleasantly crisp, blue, and straightforward, is ultra simple - the superstar looks up into snowfall.

That may well be enough of a pitch given JLaw's bankability these days. That weird blink and you'll miss the barely released and oft-delayed Serena aside, she's proved golden. Or maybe it's the combination of Jennifer Lawrence with David O. Russell that's golden? You can't credit her for the box office of X-Men -- contrary to salary demands in tinseltown and casting practices, too, it's the franchises not the name actors who are the stars of franchises -- though she certainly helped The Hunger Games toward phenomenon status since she unarguably carried those pictures. But in her two previous pairings with Cooper & De Niro & Russell (Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle) the grosses have been spectacular given that the films are a) not franchise or high concept b) made for adults without the safety net of "Oscar Importance" even if they end up doing very well with Oscar voters and c) they're fun without being broadly pitched as "COMEDY". All of which make them feel like very rare beasts in the current market. 

But how long can this team keep coming up with winners? David O. Russell has had three consecutive Best Picture nominees (it wouldn't be fair to him to count Nailed/Accidental Love as breaking up this continuum) with the grosses climbing each time out. The two most recent have featured all three of Joy's stars. Is this team's luck about to run out or is this streak still to peak? To continue the hot streak, Joy will need a Best Picture nomination and a gross of over $150 million. What's your prediction on the matter?