March. It's a Wrap

March happened at me. I hope yours was better. The blog has been a bit more tepid than usual in the post Oscar malaise and all around off-blog madness. But here were ten highlights from the month in case you also were caught between rocks and hard places or entire boulders and cliff faces.

Burning Questions: To Read or Not To Read in this age of adaptations, Michael wonders whether it's better to read the book first or see the film.
Cosmopolis + Cronenberg nine favorite images from the f'ed up teaser. 
Ladyhawke the third season of "hit me with your best shot" kicked off with a bird-like Pfeiffer and the wolfen Rutger Hauer 
The Hunger Games reviewed

Carrie Off Broadway the 70s horror classic is a thing again
Stupid News: Chloe as Carrie a terrible casting idea. They're all going to laugh at you, Moretz! 
Divas & Heroes more Film Bitch Awards 
Distant Relatives second season series finale. Thanks, Robert

Most Comments Burning Question: The New Classic Quotes. Everyone had an opinion about which recent film quotes would endure beyond this decade.
Most Popular A Game Change for Julianne Moore come awards time?

Coming in April: First Oscar Predictions of the New Film Year, Easter Parade, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, April Showers, the return of Take Three, Mad Men and 1966, and the Titanic Centennial... that colossal both just keeps sinking. Much more to come if you keep coming back and start commenting again.

Someday My Link Will Come...

The Playlist P.T. Anderson's The Master is coming on October 12th. Five long years for a new PT.
Gawker Rich Juzwiak on the reign of PG-13 "safe, sanitized, and worth shitloads of money"
Cinema Blend "the envy of lady bookworms everywhere"... Mia Wasikowska moves from Jane Eyre to Madame Bovary.
Empire has an hour long interview w/  General Zod himself Terence Stamp.
La Daily Musto "Newsies is the new Annie" love that headline for this review of the film turned stage musical.

Movie|Line apparently Leonardo DiCaprio was just too busy to attend the Titanic 3D premiere. James, Kate and Billy made the time.
WOW Dakota Fanning in Wonderland magazine. She's looking a bit Carol Kane, yes?
Thought Killer an imagined conversation between four girl icons: Buffy, Bella, Hermione and Katniss from Hunger Games
The Capitol Interesting piece on Jennifer Lawrence and the career she might have if she plays her hand well.

Her presence is palpably earthy and unfussy, reminiscent of Ingrid Bergman, another natural beauty who seemed uninterested in playing up her looks.

Flavorwire on the music used in Hunger Games (strangely much of the score is not on the soundtrack album 
Zephyr A must for horror fans: what horror icons from the past might look like today. 
Old Hollywood awesome storyboards from Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

Finally...
NPR Snow White is having a moment. Why now?

... and I suppose this as as good a time as any to announced that I'm taking Jorge's suggestion. We'll do Snow White and the Seven Dwarves for the April 11th Hit Me With Your Best Shot.  If you join in your prince will come. Someday. Promise.

Which Is Hotter?

JA from MNPP here. Over at my blog I sometimes ask people to make impossible choices like the following. It's a thing. Today in honor of Warren Beatty's 75th birthday, I ask...

poll by twiigs.com

Infatuation with one leads to  the asylum, and the other takes you to the morgue (but oh, those outfits!). Sexy shoot-outs or forbidden classroom glances - you must choose!

Burtonjuice: Thoughts on Frankenweenie (The Original)

BURTONJUICE... on Thursday nights we're looking at Tim Burton films chronologically. Previously we covered his early shorts including the perfect goth calling card in Vincent (1982).

a boy and his dog. til death do they part

As you may have heard Tim Burton is currently rethinking Frankenweenie as a feature film. The Frankenstein story is so familiar as a myth that its ripe for either riffing on and spoofing in. But the short film is so successful at 29 minutes that it's strange to imagine it padded with another hour of footage. I thought I'd type up "things I didn't remember about the original Frankenweenie" but realized that the list would be far far too long as I didn't remember a single thing beyond the premise, that it was in black and white, and that particular boy (Barret Oliver, a major child star in the 80s. What became of him?) and his dead doggie. More after the jump...

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Distant Relatives: Brief Encounter and Once

Robert here w/ the secone season finale of Distant Relatives, exploring the connections between one classic and one contemporary film.

Hollywood has a pretty un-nuanced idea of infidelity. Whether cheating is bad usually depends on whether or not it's our protagnist who's doing it. If they are, then their current spouse is probably evil or terrible or unsympathetic and totally worth cheating on especially when the lover in question is most likely a soulmate of some sort to our protagonist. The details may differ but the situation is always perfect for drama. What our two films this week, which are tellingly not from Hollywood but across the pond, have in common is that both are more interested in the subtleties of infidelity than the overdramatics.
 
One place where our films differ is in the genders of our heroes. Brief Encounter is the story of Laura, a British houswife with an unextraordinary existence who meets a charming doctor named Alec Harvey and slowly begins to fall for him as he does for her. Once follows a pretty typical street musician (unnamed in the film, credited as "Guy") who dreams of something greater and begins to collaborate with and develop feelings for an immigrant girl (credited only as "Girl") and she for him. But despite this gender difference between the two films, they are vastly similar.

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