Happy 111, Elsa

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The woman behind the Bride of Frankenstein was born one-hundred and eleven years ago today. But as we've told you before, Elsa Lanchester was so much more than just that one (admittedly amazing) movie - her auto-biography is one of the all-time greats; it's shamefully out of print, but our friend Tom is trying to change that and you should head over to the Facebook campaign to help him get it done. Do it for Elsa, do it for all of us, so we can all cry out, "She lives! She liiiiiiiiives!"

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I Am Link

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--- Get Stalked - I've spoken about the "Meet the Lady" show here in NYC before - it's where I got to be in the almighty presence of Beth Grant, for starters. This Friday there's another edition all about Stalker Cinema (Fatal Attraction et al) which will no doubt be the best thing to do in NYC on Friday, you should all come. Buy tickets here! Show creator Tom Blunt talked to Fangoria all about it over here. Sad news though - the place that held the show, the 92YTribeca, is shuttering its doors, so the show post-this-week is homeless. Somebody offer up a grand space worthy of the Meet the Lady spectacle immediately! I gotta have my monthly fix!

--- Forgotten Fish - Pixar has officially announced the Finding Nemo sequel for 2015 - it's to be called Finding Dory and it will find the same ol' folks finding Dory instead of Nemo, I am supposing. All the ol' voice actors will return, no doubt.

--- Play Dirty - The Playlist has a few new pictures from Mud, director Jeff Nichols' follow-up to the brilliant Take Shelter, and I'll link you on over since shirtless McConaughey is involved. I do wanna see this though.

--- Eventual Heroism - The second Avengers movie will film by the end of 2013 slash the start of next year in the same studio in London where a bunch of the other Marvel movies - Thor 2 and Guardians of the Galaxy - are filming, too. It's not slated to come out until May of 2015 so patience will have to be our main virtue, I suppose. Slash has some Marvel-centric concept art too.

--- Darker Than Dark - So much good dashed so quickly - I was excited about Dark Places, the adaptation of the Gillian Flynn book set to star Charlize Theron. I finally read Flynn's other book Gone Girl and I very much liked it, and Charlize is Charlize. S'all good! but now that dreaded thing called Chloe Moretz has dug her claws into it and all I can do is SIGH SO HARD.

--- May Day - Over at The Film Experience Deborah is talking The Wicker Man (the original film) for (belated) Easter, and I will take note whenever anybody's talking The Wicker Man, because that is a movie worth talking about all the time.

--- Rose Hot - And speaking of belated holidays, here's Joe Reid talking about the always awesome Jawbreaker in honor of April Fool's Day yesterday.

--- And finally as I mentioned earlier, it's only two days until Hannibal starts! There's bound to be sheer tonnage of interviews with Bryan Fuller and his stars this week, but you shouldn't miss this chat with Bryan over at IndieWire where they praise the show as being possibly the best thing he's ever made (highest praise indeed) and then they get some info out of him on what his Pushing Daisies movie would look like if a Kickstarter campaign were to materialize for that. Zombies!
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Tonight's Mood

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Hey remember that tribute to Elsa Lanchester happening here in NYC that I told y'all about a couple of weeks ago? It's tonight! It's not sold out just yet but it probably will at the door so if you're in NYC and you, uh, want to see a tribute to Elsa Lanchester - and if you are the kind of person who wouldn't want to see a tribute to Elsa Lanchester well I just thumb my nose at you in indignation - then you'd best get there early! If you're not in NYC then you can get by watching Bride of Frankenstein or Mary Poppins or Willard (sidenote: I have never seen Willard!), or just watch this:

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The Bride of Lanchester

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Have any of you read the autobiography of the actress Elsa Lanchester? She's best known for donning the iconic fright wig of the Bride of Frankenstein, but she had a long and rich career - she's in Mary Poppins and Bell Book and Candle and Murder By Death and Witness For The Prosecution, amongst many many others. She was nominated twice for Best Supporting Actress, too. And she was married to Charles Laughton, who was really quite gay. So she's got some stories to tell, and she tells them with marvelous skill and wit in her book, I really do highly recommend it. She is tremendously funny and very very smart - if half the actresses today in Hollywood were half this interesting we'd be overcome with awesomeness.

I bring it up because MNPP friend Tom is devoting the next round of his "Meet the Lady" show here in NYC (Remember that time I saw Beth Grant in the flesh? Or Louise Lasser? Or Amy effing Sedaris? Yeah that was this.) to the lady Lanchester and I am super-psyched to see what he and his band of merry ne'er-do-wells comes up with this go-round. If you're in town on January 25th, you should come! Buy tickets here.

Elsa's book is out of print (although you can get used copies on Amazon) and that's also on Tom's list - he's started a campaign to get the book reprinted, which I fully support. This woman should be remembered for much more than just that magnificent electric beehive.

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Go Ask Amy

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My eyes are half-shut and I'm swollen with embarrassment (embarrassment and beer) and I'm also off-balance since I'm trying to kneel a bit so I didn't look like The StayPuft Marshmallow Man stepping on a teensy whimsical human girl way down there... but there it is, me and Amy effing Sedaris. The look on my face should be read as, "Where has all of the oxygen gone, things are turning black..." while the look on her should be read as, "I need to get home and feed my damned rabbit and this guy's armpit is fucking enormous." Whatever, it happened and I've got proof it happened, hooray! 

This is all thanks to my friend Tom who runs the "Meet the Lady" series over at 92YTribeca which I've told about before (it's where I got to hang out in a room with Beth Grant that one time!) - well last night they screened the hysterically stuck-in-time 1973 Don't Do Drugs (Cuz They're Awesome!) (But Then You Think You Murder Babies) (And Then You Die) TV movie called Go Ask Alice. After the screening there are a Q&A with the film's star Jamie Smith-Jackson, alongside musician Jill Sobule and the one the only Miss Sedaris. Amy was there to make it clear just how much Strangers With Candy stole from Go Ask Alice (which is lots and lots).

Amy was every bit the pip you'd expect, never missing a beat, putting the whole room into stitches basically from start to finish. I never press people for pics in these situations but I just had to with Amy - thanks to Tom for first off putting together the wonderful evening, and secondly and perhaps more importantly for grabbing Amy as she was trying to get the heck out of there and tricking her into my arms for one brief flash. One brief flash for Amy, one giant flash for me-kind!

ETA I forgot, I took some pictures during the show! From left to right that's Jamie Jackson, Amy Sedaris, Jill Sobule, and host Tom Blunt. Now more!

Sobule was awesome enough to sing us one of her drug songs,called "Cinnamon Park," and Amy and Jamie did back up! What a night.

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Strip Teased

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I have told y'all about MNPP friend Tom Blunt's spectacular spectacular variety slash cinema show "Meet the Lady" before - thanks to him I've gotten to sit in a room and listen to MNPP heroines like Beth Grant (see here), Louise Lasser, and several of the lovely ladies of Twin Peaks (Log Lady holla!) talk about their careers and assorted ephemera of note in the past, and it's been a blast each and every single go of it.

Which one of these is not like the others?

Well it's time for another show and if you're in New York this week you really would be a fool - a charlatan even! - to miss it. He'll be taking on the topic of "Burlesque" in the movies - no, not specifically the Christina Aguilera & Cher movie (although I assume that will be mentioned); rather the whole gosh-darned cinematic highlights slash history of it. There will be interviews - including, whaddya know, a phone chat with repeat Lady and all-around awesomeness Beth Grant! - and film clips and live performances, oh my. Nipples will surely be tassled and bumps will surely be grinded but good.

It's at the 92YTribeca, tickets are a dirrrrt cheap 12 bucks (seems I caught some Aguilera there for a second), and there will be an after-party to boot! From what I can tell there are still tickets, so you'd be a fool - a charlatan even! - not to snap up your own, says me. It really is a great evening every time and this promises to be the biggest one yet! Take it from Babs!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Bananas (1971)

Nancy: Can... can you, like, define the meaning of love?
Fielding: What do you... define... it's love! I love you!
I... I want you in a way of cherishing your...
your... your totality and your otherness, and...
and in the sense of a presence, and a being, and a
whole coming and a going in a room with grapefruit, and...
and love of a thing of nature in a sense of not wanting
or being jealous of the thing that a person possesses.
Nancy: Do you have any gum?

A happy 73rd birthday to Louise Lasser! I was lucky enough to see her in person a couple of months ago for the excellent series "Meet the Lady" hosted by MNPP friend Tom Blunt, which was a huge treat. Speaking of, you can buy tickets to this month's Meet the Lady over here - it's all about Cat Women! 

And speaking of Cat Women, have you seen the new full-body T&A-centric picture of Anne Hathaway as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises? Va va va meow.

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Wanna Know Who's Awesome?

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Beth Grant is who's awesome, that's who. Not that anybody could have  ever doubted such a thing in the face of so much evidence of awesomeness, but it's good to have solid right-up-in-my-eyeballs confirmation. Last night the 92YTribeca held "Meet the Lady" in which we... met the lady, the lady being bright shiny beautiful Beth herself. Host (and friend of MNPP) Tom Blunt sat her down and we all went on a ride through her career together, from Judge Wapner (speaking of her scene with Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man she told us, "He can fart on command!" I hope he puts that on his resume.) to Sparklemotion to Chucky and beyond! 

Some more fun facts: Director Richard Kelly told her to just whip up a German accent for her character in Southland Tales as she sat in the make-up chair an hour before filming her first scene! Zelda Rubinstein had a sexy ass husband! She once did a version of Madea on stage that involved her naked covered in gold paint being served by Donna Mills! The mind boggles. And every night I spend from here on out will feel a little emptier for not being as much fun as last night was. What a wonderful lady.

"Meet the Lady"'s a monthly series. You can keep track of it here.

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