Steaming Hot

Too darn hot. They're having a heatwave. Et cetera.

I meant to toss this out on Wednesday but here are my choices for sexiest of the year. Yes, I'm back to the FB Awards. Gotta wrap these up. Medalists in every category have to be announced a week from today!

I decided to give Daniel Craig a vacation this year (no blue speedo. no nomination!) even though he's already a double medalist in this category. Who I really wanted to include was Haaz Sleiman from The Visitor. That was a good film but while we're wading into shallow waters, wouldn't it have been a better film if he had drummed in his underwear in every scene. Haaz doesn't make the nominee shortlist because carnality seemed to be the last thing on his mind in the film (legal troubles will kill the sex drive). The choices might seem a bit more obvious than in past years, but sometimes obviousness hits the spot.

Read on...
Strip with Marisa Tomei. Kill for Angelina Jolie. Put your fists up for Hugh Jackman.
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You think you know who you link. You have no idea.

Thompson on Hollywood will Milk surprise in Best Picture?
Armond White with his annual sh**-starting "Better-Than" list
Coming Soon Amanda Seyfried vs. The Bening in an Oscar Wilde comedy? I'm so there.
Dear Jesus Whitney wishes she were more like Diane Keaton...
Just Jared yet more Nine set photos. This time it's Pené


"Moments Out of Time" I used to love this. I'm glad they're still doing it. A list of great singular moments in 2008's movies
Flickhead writes a pretty hawt tribute to Wanted... yes, that Wanted
Lazy Eye Theater, often prone to amusing shapeshifting as a blog, has now become some sort of anti-Slumdog machine (but this Slumdog is Crash correlation? I guess I agree after reading)

Movie City Indie AMC is doing that Best Picture marathon again. Five movies for $30. Tomorrow! In 42 different cities. I think this would be soooo fun except -- well, only if I could live blog it and you can't exactly bring glowing laptops into the cinema, now can you? But I bet it would be fun except -- always with the conditions Nathaniel sheesh -- well, AMPAS did sort of do a dull job in picking the five, didn't they? And I'm not talking about snubbing The Dark Knight. I'm talking about the lack of a "WOW" factor.

Fritz Link

Cracked If your last girlfriend had an IMDB page. Hee
StinkyLulu Supporting Actresses of '39. FWIW I'm a bigger fan of Fitzgerald and DeHavilland than the panelists
<--- The Guardian wonders what other missing silent films might be found --this is in reaction to the über exciting full Metropolis find last week that I forgot to write about. I worry about another version of Metropolis. I've seen so many. Ridley Scott will have to do yet another version of Blade Runner soon or Fritz Lang will totally outpace him by way of all these proxies.
MNPP Wanted in 150 words or less.
Richard Bolisay offers another incisive capsule review of that Jolie/McAvoy thrill machine
A Socialite's Life Angelina's brother Haven (haven't seen him in a while) takes Maddox to the hospital to see Angie. Why is it that I am not a gossip person in general but I am always into whatever is going on with Brangelina. It's so ...common... of me ;)
Thompson on Hollywood on The Dark Knight's sequel inflation. Make it BIGGER
Baz Bamigboye Was La Pfeiffer a diva on the set of Chéri? This columnist hears that she was. And is this the first good buzz (the first any kind of buzz for that matter) on Young Victoria?

I haven't quite known how to broach this last subject. It falls under the pot/kettle subcategory of tricky subject matter. But after County Fair and Circus reminded me that Entertainment Weekly has now made a list of the best lists... I feel it's time. EW is smothering me. I can't breathe. It used to be I looked forward to my subscription and occasionally visited their website, too. But between their bi-hourly random and ultra disposable listings (and remember I love lists), their multiple daily e-mails, and this past epic "best everything of the past 25 years" issue, I just feel like covering my ears and singing "Mary Had a Little Lamb" until they wander away defeated by my petulant refusal to succumb to their ubiquitous opinion-making.

I assume the idea is that if they provide more content than anyone could ever read in a week each and every single day of their existence they will drown out the other 50 media giants as well as the more idiosyncratic pop culture pundits (like myself and roughly 349,875 others) as well as entirely mind control the 1,000,000,000 blogs and social network pages wherein people randomly express their opinions of pop culture with their 50-100 closest friends. I get the point of it but I feel like it's sapping my will To List ... and I think you know that ain't right! All things in moderation my friends. If you list too much you get hair on your palms. I heard that somewhere. At this rate the truly special lists -- the "top ten films of the year" and whatnot (I know some people don't like them but I've always thought Lisa Schwarzbaum and Owen Gleiberman were both excellent writers) will be buried in the garbage surrounding them. Who will even notice when the important lists are announced?

LINK•E

E!Online Angelina Jolie's 9 best body parts. Ass doesn't make the list but when I saw Wanted a row of three fanboy geeks shouted "YES!" @ the top of their lungs when it made its brief cameo
Just Jared she may have just given birth
12 Grand in Checking NYC + Movies (blog-a-thon)
Antagony & Ecstacy doesn't want Wanted
Defamer bizarre rumors about Oliver Stone's W.
TBATU more Oscar talk for Heath Ledger's Joker. Can this movie just come out already before it hypes me to death? I feel bludgeoned
Bauer Griffin Ian McKellen's got a new boytoy. Hmmm, Gandalf definitely has a type --this one being similar to the arm candy he took to the Oscars in '01
i09 has questions about the forthcoming Ant-Man movie. My question is this: Ant-Man (?!?) gets his own movie but we're still not getting any female hero movies greenlit? How long before the studios realize that Elektra and Catwoman failed spectacularly because they were spectacular failures in just about every sense of the word. I think the Alien franchise and Kill Bill and Wanted should prove that audiences like female action stars, too. The movies just have to be good or fun or satisfying in the plain old time-tested normal ways that everybody expects them to be. Imagine that. Argh!

I Y WALL•E
babblebook a totally adorable post on this robot romance
NY Post Fatties find WALL•E offensive. Have you been following this plump drama?
Awards Daily EVE got knocked up, you know
The Big Picture A big piece on John Lasseter and Pixar's everlasting winning streak. How ever do they do it? The piece isn't about the Oscars but the quotes from other studios, sound a bit peeved. I know people have been talking about a Best Picture nomination for WALL•E but I'm betting the Green factor (Jealousy not Environmentalism) will hurt in the long run

Easy Money, Wanted

Is Angelina Jolie's salary for Wanted the easiest paycheck anybody in Hollywood ever got? The actress commands $15-20 million a picture now. She spends most of Wanted's running time standing and staring at James McAvoy. Correct me if I'm wrong but he ain't hard to look at. It has to be the easiest money ever made. I mean, apart from Marlon Brando's $1 million Superman cameo 30 years ago. Or the astronomical salaries they pay A-Listers for voicework on animated films when they don't even have to come up with a new character voice.

poll by twiigs.com

Wanted is...

_____________ (finish the sentence or somebody's going to get hurt)

Now Playing: Cute Robots, Sexy Assassins, Vegas Hookers

all links go to trailers

L I M I T E D
Elsa and Fred a romantic comedy from Argentina featuring senior citizens. What a concept.
<--- Finding Amanda Matthew Broderick is out to rescue his neice Brittany Snow from hooking in Vegas in this addiction comedy. And that's not a photo of Penny Lane from Almost Famous. The costumer was just referencing, I suspect. I wrote about this for Tribeca but, not included in that piece, is that when I met Brittany Snow I had to ask about her work on Hairspray. She told me she thinks she creeped out Michelle Pfeiffer. She was following her around the set, studying her, trying to imitate her body language as Velma so she could make Amber Von Tussle a sycophantic daughter who didn't have her own identity. (Yes, by all accounts La Pfeiffer is easily spooked. Skittish that one...)
Full Grown Men -an indie comedy about adults who haven't quite grown up with a fun cast: Alan Cumming, Deborah Harry, Amy Sedaris, Judah Friedlander and Matt McGrath.

Gunnin' for that #1 Spot a sports documentary
---> The Last Mistress -Here's the thing. I can't really recommend this movie, which is odd and stiff but I couldn't take my eyes off of Asia Argento who plays a courtesan who loves her unfaithful young dandy lover too much... (the plot is vaguely similar to the upcoming Chéri movie with Pfeiffer in the languorous courtesan role and Rupert Friend as the young straying dandy) I'm sure others have said it but I see Asia as more of a presence than an actress. I'm not sure what she does... and I don't see "great performance" in any of it but there's life force there. That's for damn sure.
Trumbo -a documentary on blacklisted Academy Award winning screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (Roman Holiday, The Brave One, Spartacus)

W I D E
There's one for the whole family: Pixar's latest beauty Wall•E. There's one just for the adults: the gun happy action/porno Wanted (hey, it's a porno to me: Angelina and James McAvoy? bow chicka bow bow)


These two movies are hogging over 10,000 of the nation's screens (yikes) and they're both looking like real blockbusters. Expect talk of little else.
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Wanted...

...James McAvoy all wet.

I don't think that's asking too much. For all that I do for the movies.
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