Link Robot ♥ Actresses (Especially the Intimidating Leggy Kind)

Shock Till You Drop Sigourney Weaver interview involving all four Aliens movies and her other genre successes. She's a bit cagey in her answers -- see how she dodges the tough question. But it's Sigourney so we read. And...
Collider ...Robert DeNiro has signed on to play the object of her investigation in the psychological thriller Red Lights. He'll be playing a psychic, she's a paranormal activity expert. The role of Weaver's partner is yet to be cast. We hope it's a good chemistry fit.

In Contention Are Macy Gray and Kimberly Elise the standouts from For Colored Girls? We'll need more than just one anonymous source's opinion to find out. Stay tuned.
The Film Doctor 9 notes on I Am Love. I'm not going to read this now (I'm working on an I Am Love piece and want to be free of all influence) but I like these # notes pieces.
Birth of a Notion RIP Barbara Billingsley. She spoke jive.

Pussy Goes Grrr on cinema's love of combining the feminine with the monstrous.

Chuck & Beans "How To Break Bad News To A Movie Geek."
popbytes on the movie-turned-stage-musical Leap of Faith with music by Oscar winner Alan Menken. The musical stars one of our Broadway favorites Raúl Esparza. We hope they recast the female lead. Enough with the stunt casting, producers. Musicals deserve GREAT voices (like Esparzas).

Movie|Line Info regarding Oz: The Great and Powerful from Sam Raimi starring Robert Downey Jr. Boy did the producers of the Wicked musical biff their chance to be first. By the time that musical hits the screen people will be so sick of Oz with all these multiple movies greenlit; if you arrive AFTER the things you've influenced it's kind of problematic and potentially stale. They should have started on the movie the very moment they realized they had a mammoth hit on their hands. Like way the hell back in 2004 they should have been doing the first draft screenplay and searching for the movie cast. It takes years to get a movie on the screen and we could have been enjoying it for Christmas this very year.

 Just Jared Halle Berry presented Chris Nolan with an award at the Scream Awards. (It's a horror awards show.) I can't figure out why Nolan would have been honored but when people love you they will find any excuse. P.S. Berry looks sensational. But you knew that already. Beautiful woman.
I Need My Fix Anne Hathaway on the cover of the new Vogue. But excuse me, why does she look like Eva Mendes instead of Anne Hathaway? I hate it when magazine photo shoot tinkering does that.
Pullquote this is a month-old post on notes taken during a screening of Angelina Jolie's Salt. But it's new to me and it totally amused me. Trust that I can never understand my own notes after a screening.
Comedy Central Gay Robot ♥ Ryan Phillipe. teehee

"You won't link me when I'm angry"

Hell on Frisco Bay Silent Summer at the Castro. Love the poster for the Louise Brooks picture (such a great movie). This can be filed under the Grass is Always Greener. NYC has a ton of cool film programs and I'm always wishing I could go to the Castro's film programs.

The Film Doctor good piece on a second look at the 'suicidal cool' of Tom Ford's A Single Man.
Serious Film File this one under Lines I Wish I'd Written. On Peter Jackson returning to The Hobbit

"If only there was some convenient metaphor for some thing people just can't bring themselves to let go of."

Movie|Line Angelina Jolie's "lightning round" of possible future projects. Why does the MTV reporter pronounce Maleficent so bizarrely. Did he never see the glorious Sleeping Beauty as a child? P.S. I love Jolie and I love Maleficent but for all that is holy I cannot stand the thought of that fusion under Tim Burton's direction. I literally would have to be dragged to see it which, well, if you understood how much I loved Maleficent you would understand the utter devastation I'm feeling.

Coming Soon meetings have begun for Wicked with several directors interested (JJ Abrams, Rob Marshall, James Mangold, Ryan Murphy). If you're wondering why I haven't written about it, it's that we have no substantial news and I'm just feeling disaster coming. By the time they make this -- if they ever make it -- the market will have already been flooded with about 6 or 7 other Oz projects that are further along in development. I just don't understand why they waited so long. Hopefully The Wizard of Oz (1939) itself gets some sort of cool rerelease for its 75th anniversary in 2014.
/Film if people who cared about superheroes actually read The Film Experience (I know from comments that that's not really your thing) they would realize I'm a genius because I totally predict these things. MORE trouble with The Avengers. Edward Norton is not returning as The Hulk. I knew this superhero team using all big stars was r-i-d-i-c-u-l-0-u-s from the get go and I already called the delays and cancellations and cast issues. I still have trouble believing we'll ever see the film which is why those constant commercials for it interrupting the narrative of Iron Man 2 irritated me so much. (Just concentrate on the movie we're watching!!! This is not too much to ask of a movie. In fact this is just a basic storytelling requirement.) Most sites on the web feed on every crumb from studio pr about superhero movies like it's a manna from heaven, devouring it all as gospel facts until the fact changes which prompts another flurry of articles. Do movie websites do this because of page views or are they all true believers? If they are maybe I should stop writing the equivalent of "Santa Claus doesn't exist".

But what's this...?

HitFix Marvel Studios publicly dissing Edward Norton? Bad bad form. If that's the way they're going to play the movie game, why would any name actor want to work with them again? I mean, aside from the money. But Marvel Studios isn't the only studio that can offer big money.

The Hot Blog David Poland agrees that it's unprofessional.

Cinema Blend it might be Joaquin Phoenix replacing Norton. This news strikes me as hilarious since... well... when did Joaquin Phoenix suddenly get a "so easy to work with!" reputation that he'd be deemed an upgrade from Norton?

Where Are the Musicals? (Part Two)

Last week I thought I was being a little bit overdramatic when I started worrying about the absence of future movie musicals. But maybe I wasn't dramatic enough. Is it time for panicked hysteria? Just ten years into the genre's spectacular rebirth -- which I trace back to the 1-2-3-4 spectacular punch of Dancer in the Dark (00), Moulin Rouge! (01), Hedwig (01) and Chicago (02) -- it seems to be dying again.

I read today that plans for Hairspray 2 have been halted. It's not often you hear of sequel ideas to hit films being cast aside. Adam Shankman's statement about the dead sequel sounds rational on the surface:

That got killed. I was so happy with the first one, let's leave well enough alone. It's all good.

Since when were Hollywood types ever all zen about the "leave well enough alone". They live for easy money and what is easier than getting a big opening weekend out of pre-sold popularity be it through sequels, remakes, reboots or reinterpretations? Hollywood (speaking generally of course) never has original ideas. What's more they're usually spectacularly proud of their insistence on repeating themselves.

The only musical in development that's getting discussed lately is a remake of My Fair Lady. A remake.

Even weirder and more worrying is that Universal reportedly decided against a Mamma Mia! sequel (2008) even though ABBA has a thousand other great songs that could be similarly massacred for coin if such a film were to exist. I never in a million years thought I'd be freaked out about that decision, "Hooray!" being the only sane response. But I can't recall one time in the history of ever that a major studio has decided not to make a sequel to a movie that grossed over half a billion dollars.

All right... I exaggerate a little. But I'm scared because I love my song & dance. Mamma Mia! is currently the 50th highest grosser ever worldwide*. As it turns out, there are a few higher grossers that don't have sequels (yet) or weren't sequels to begin with. Of the other 49 the stand-alones are (in descending order)

• Avatar (sequel in development)
  
• Titanic (a wee problem called historical accuracy prevented sequels)
• Finding Nemo
• Independence Day
• E.T. The Extra Terrestrial
  
• 2012
  
• Up
• Forrest Gump
• The Sixth Sense
• Kung Fu Panda (the sequel arrives next year)
  
• The Incredibles
• Hancock
• Ratatouille
• The Passion of the Christ
  

That's fourteen other movies, a few of which will undoubtedly get sequels. It seems like the only reason a hit movie doesn't get a sequel is if its lead character dies, or if it stars Will Smith (two examples there, but isn't he his own franchise? Maybe those are sequels) or if it's made by Pixar and isn't named "Toy Story".

If Wicked needs bankable 20something stars,
Anne Hathaway & Amanda Seyfried can both sing.

All of this, plus the weird absence of money-magnet "Wicked" in Hollywood's current Oz-mania production slate, is really getting to me. The stage show's cumulative gross is approaching half a billion dollars (it's currently at $469 million and it still earning over a million a week) Why wouldn't Hollywood be rushing to capitalize on it?

I'm officially very worried. It's too easy to blame it on Nine which cost a fortune (What did they spent the money on? It takes place on a stage! How did that cost $30 million more to make than Mamma Mia! or Sweeney Todd?).Perhaps the problem is actually Sweeney Todd. It earned $152 million worldwide which sounds like a decent amount... until you stop to consider what Burton/Depp pairings usually make.

You'd think it'd be an ideal time to grow a hit musical. The past ten years should be seen as ample fertilizer: the genre has produced hits, several song and/or dance adept celebrities have become much more famous/bankable (Hathaway, Jackman, Harris, Chenoweth, Tatum, Seyfried), musical theater stars have started to gain more fame outside of New York than they have in some time (Cheyenne Jackson, Jane Krakowski, Audra McDonald, Lea Michelle, Idina Menzel) and then there's a little something called Glee on TV. Maybe you've heard of it?

Greenlight some musicals, suits! Just make sure they don't cost as much as Nine so you have a chance at a profit. That shouldn't be hard. It's not like Sweeney Todd looked bad for $30 million less. It looked great. It just didn't sound that way.

*none of these figures are adjusted for inflation. The biggest musical hit of all time (and the third biggest hit of any type ever) is The Sound of Music (1965) which made over a billion dollars in today's numbers.