Leave No Ma Behind

I don't know if any of you missed the news yesterday that Octavia Spencer is returning as Ma in Ma 2: The Ma-ening, but I wouldn't want anyone to go without that news so here I am making sure you don't. Yes I made up that title but clearly -- clearly -- that needs to be the title. I am available for script supervision, Octavia! I'm cheap! (Cheap as fuck.) Here is my review of the first movie -- here is the bit that really sells the movie, I think:

"Ma is superficially ninety minutes of ridiculousness and fun, a goof where Missi Pyle gets plowed over for a lark and Luke Evans' peekaboo cock is put to excellent prop use; where a lewdly photographed teenage boy does a gratuitous striptease and Allison Janney gets put in a dog cage."

So let's hope they know the movie they're making and 

they go for it again. Welcome to the Ma Rennassaince! 

Can This Candy Man Can

Of course most people's immediate reactions to today's news that Timothée Chalamet will be starring in a Willy Wonka prequel -- titled just Wonka -- has been to think of Gene Wilder's classic performance in the 1971 film, and I get that. But I have to admit that my first thought reading this news was actually of Johnny Depp, and this is coming from someone who's watched the 1971 film dozens of times and Tim Burton's abysmal remake starring Depp exactly once and that was one too many times. (Except for Missi Pyle, who was very funny, because when isn't Missi Pyle funny?) No I thought of Depp because Timmy's path keeps crossing with Depp, and Johnny Depp would not have been my first thought (or hope) if I was the person mapping out Timmy's adult career. 

First and foremost there is of course the fact that Timmy dated Johnny's daughter Lily-Rose for awhile (I can't remember if they're still together), but there was also that Edward Scissorhands themed commercial that had Timmy playing OG Edward's son opposite Winona Ryder. The first time I thought of the two as linked was that uber-goth acting video Timmy did for The New York Times in 2017 during the awards-run for Call Me By Your Name -- it was very Sleepy Hollow, and if you wanna talk about a role you can picture Timmy in with great ease then I recommend you mentally face-map him onto Ichabod Crane. Real easy!

Anyway I don't think most people think Timmy is the problem with the Wonka news -- this rumor went around in January anyway, and everybody seemed to agree that Chalamet was a better pick than the other stated option on deck, Spider-twink Tom Holland. I think most people's problems with this news is just a lack of need with regards to this project in general. Who's thirsting for this movie? Hollywood seems real in love right now with Origin Stories a la the Cruella movie coming out any day now and I'll agree, they're just so lazy. If there's one good bit of news here it's that Paul King, the guy who directed the two Paddington movies, is directing this, and those movies unexpectedly ruled.

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

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Ma (2019)

I knew the second this Ma Meme...

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Lotta joggers out there not practicing social distancing pic.twitter.com/6Enw1yAcDa

— Steve Venner (@steve_venner) April 4, 2020

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... (is that a Ma-me?) was making the rounds that I had to do this scene of Octavia Spencer running down Missi Pyle with her truck in last year's delightfully deranged Ma for this week's "Ways Not To Die" post. Just the shots of Missi Pyle are enough delight in themselves...

God I love her. I wish Ma had used Missi better -- she really only got one good scene to bitch out; the movie could've used more of the parents and less of the annoying kids, even if that would've betrayed the sleight of hand the movie was (sloppily) aiming for. I think the film might've worked better if we'd known that Ma's plan was really gunning for the kids parents the entire time. It wasn't much of a reveal and all of its best moments (continued after the jump)...

I Remember Ma

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If you're an older woman, older women are always having a moment -- it's not a moment, it's reality. But Pop Culture usually doesn't have eyes for those moments, and so it's in terms of Pop Culture that I speak when I say here and now that Older Woman seem to be having A Moment. Ma might not have been the number one movie of the weekend but dollar for dollar it's probably the most successful, tripling its teensy tiny budget, and so it must be said -- step aside Mothra, Octavia Spencer is the queen of the weekend box office.

But what is this moment? Before Ma I saw the trailer for the new Terminator film, and the return of kick-ass Linda Hamilton drew applause; funnily enough I just happened to be watching Ma in the exact same theater where I saw the latest Halloween film last fall, which brought original "Laurie Strode" Jamie Lee Curtis back to kick some of her own ass -- active living post-Activia.

Those two are tied to nostalgia obviously, but beyond that their return at this period in time feels notable, feels of This Moment of which I speak. And Ma, in the way of all base-minded mainstream horror films, the ones that whether they know they're doing it or not feed on our broadest cultural anxieties, feels like a bit of a definitive wrestle with our moment's preeminent themes. 

What if I told you I was making a movie about a woman who was constantly rejected for not being cool enough -- for being a square who always seems as if she's faking it. She's not genuine. She's not, dare I say, authentic. She has moments where she comes across as, I don't know, what the word, shrill perhaps? If she tries to look pretty she's ridiculed. She's nasty. A try-hard. Robotic. Cold. Crazy. She laughs too loud. What is she wearing? Why am I even being forced to look at this old broad anyway? I just want to kiss my hot sexy young girlfriend and chug beers with all of Kavanaugh's friends, goddamn.

The most tense moment watching Ma for me was the moment when Octavia Spencer sits down at a mirror and starts applying make-up. These are always the moments in these films where the movie laughs right in the faces of these women for trying -- where they become Baby Jane grotesqueries, smacking their dry lips together in a haunted pantomime of femininity turned to dust and decay. Who could love a thing like that, they seem to say? Old Women are terrifying and gross, yuck! Kill it with fire!

Ma isn't a revolution and it kinda remains one of those movies at heart, but Octavia Spencer and director Tate Taylor do yank at those threads and undo them a little. Spencer is too good an actress not to give Sue Ann -- "Ma" is only a nickname, and the script's own waffling in what it calls the character represents, I think, a purposeful confusion of who gets to shape whose story -- boundless humanity in those great big eyes of her, and so when Sue Ann sits down in the mirror and puts on some lipstick the movie doesn't laugh at her. She looks lovely. She's Carrie White all grown up -- nowadays it seems Carrie White finally gets to grow up! -- and so when the nasty characters on screen do end up laughing at her, well, we wince. Respect her or suffer fools, gladly.

Ma is superficially ninety minutes of ridiculousness and fun, a goof where Missi Pyle gets plowed over for a lark and Luke Evans' peekaboo cock is put to excellent prop use; where a lewdly photographed teenage boy does a gratuitous striptease and Allison Janney gets put in a dog cage. And yet I bet that in the long run it ends up saying more about us at this moment in time than a dozen more "important" stories that speak of Serious Things will; I'd take Octavia Spencer in a prom dress yanking dog collared brats over last year's Oscar Winner any day forever, anyway.

We All Go a Little Ma Sometimes

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That's probably a weird image to start this post with but it's eye-catching - caught my eye for sure, and it's somewhat appropriate since Luke Evans is apparently in the movie I'm posting about. How much is he in it? Who knows. I'm not watching the trailer, but I am posting it since maybe you want to. It has taken me a really long time to get to the goddamn point! It's one of those days, y'all.

Anyway. The movie. It's called Ma, as in half of "Mama" short for "Mother," and it stars Octavia Spencer as a local neighborhood lady who invites some teen girls to hang out in her basement, dun dun dun, and turns out to be a nutter. Tell me you don't want to see that movie right this second? I know!

Anyway I don't really know where that plot summary leaves room for Luke Evans (is he a teen girl?) or for that matter his speedo-boyfriend Victor Turpin, also in the film, as well as Missi Pyle. (Yay Missi Pyle.) Anyway the film is out on May 31st, and here's that trailer:

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Who Wore It Best?

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It's the great Viggo Mortensen's 57th birthday today, and he's off doing the most interesting work of his career these days, even if fewer people are paying attention; I liked Jauja very much and I've been chomping at the bit to see Far From Men and his next movie (opposite Kathryn Hahn and Missi Pyle!) sounds pretty interesting too. I can't quite offer up anything as hot as those pictures of him bearded, shirtless, and baseball-capped that I posted in March (nothing will ever be as hot as those pictures) but here, let's do a poll in his honor anyway...

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I Am Link

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--- Pyle On - In case you missed it over the weekend the most important thing on the internet was Missi Pyle's series of posts for The Film Experience - she talked about her night at the Oscars with The Artist, she talked about working with Bryan Fuller on Pushing Daisies, she expressed great affection for Madeline Kahn... basically she proved herself every ounce the cool lady we knew she had to be given her endlessly entertaining career.

--- Super Gay - Our pal Glenn took a look at the year in gay movies over at Junkee, highlighting everything from the art-house likes of Xavier Dolan (always Xavier Dolan) and Bruce LaBruce (when the heck will I get to see Gerontophilia???) to the big-budget undercover queerness of 22 Jump Street and Neighbors.

--- Hit Me As Hard As You Can - In an absolutely cutting piece of journalism, US Weekly found out that while Jake Gyllenhaal was filming his boxing movie Southpaw... he got hit! Like, punched! Isn't that nuts? Who'd have thought it? Oh and here's an appealing new photograph of Jake for his upcoming play Constellations (click here for the full shot including his co-star Ruth Wilson):

--- Little Giant - I don't know who this Steven Spielberg person thinks he is, hiring a total nobody to play the little orphan girl in his adaptation of Roald Dahl's The BFG, but I will only accept a name in that part! And since there arern't very many names at ten years old right now, I suppose we'll have to cast slightly older. Is Nicole Kidman available?

--- Man Busted - How ridiculous would it be if they made a male-centric Ghostbusters starring Channing Tatum and Chris Pratt at the exact same time as Paul Feig makes his female-centric one? That was apparently Channing's idea, via an email exposed by the Sony leak - he and Chris are friends, I guess. And stars! Big hot slabs of man star. But seriously, just make the lady one for now, you guys. And speaking of Chris Pratt a pair of new pictures from Jurassic World dropped over the weekend, head over here to see them. (thanks Mac) 

--- Love Nigerian Style - We told you about Americaneh back when Lupita Nyong'o became attached to the project, since we're dying to see her in more things - now David Oyelowo has signed on for the male lead in the movie. There's somehow still no director or writer attached though? Who doesn't want to work with those two fabulous actors? Come on let's get this thing moving.

--- Forever Fassbender - In Fassy News today we hear that his dick-slinger Slow West has been picked up for distribution well before its bow at Sundance by A24, aka the studio that really knows its shit these days (aka Michael Fassbender's a fucking star) and isn't run by clueless out-of-touch up-their-own-ass dickheads like Aaron Sorkin. Ahem. In Second Fassy News today, director Steve McQueen says that there would totally be a role for Michael in his Paul Rosebson bio-pic if Michael wants it, because he always wants that big-piece around him at all times, and who can blame him.

--- Less Than Super - I figured that this Batman V Superman mess was going to be a bunch of fan-service, trying to right the wrongs they made with Man of Steel, and now we've got some (spoilery) confirmation of that - problem is, as I see it, they can crack their jokes about how Superman killed somebody in the first film but I have absolutely no doubts that this will remain a bloated spooge-fest, screamingly loud and turned up to ten thousand percent from the first to last frame, and that's the actual problem.

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Quote of the Day

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"I'm sorry, I was too focused on the blood to notice Ben Affleck's penis, so I apologize to the penis because I did not notice it. Has everyone in this country seen his penis but me?"

So yeah that's Nancy fuckin' Grace talking, in an interview with Missi fuckin' Pyle (who played a fictionalized version of Grace in Gone Girl), about Ben's Affleck's penis (which we just got our first good long look at earlier today -- click on that link, Nancy! That'll catch you up.). The whole interview's a hoot.

And speaking of Missi Pyle, she's taking over The Film Experience on Sunday! She'll be doing a bunch of posts on the site for about 24 hours starting early Sunday afternoon, so make sure you head over there to check out what wackiness that wonderful woman will summon forth. We've loved her for ages and ages. I hope she talks about Spring Breakdown!!!

Happy 40, Missi Pyle

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We love her so.

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TGT11: The Entertainer of the Year

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I liked The Artist just fine (spoiler alert: it's not making my top twenty films of the year though, which are already half-posted) but not nobody not nothing brought me more pleasure in 2011 than getting to see my longtime love the wonderful Missi Pyle on every red carpet on every stage at every table drinking and laughing and being her awesome self because of that movie's awards dominance. If only the movie had as much for her to do. Hopefully she's parlay this into a heap of work. She's been turning in film-stealing stellar work for years and years, and she needs to keep on keeping that on, please.

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I Am Link

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--- Pyle Up - We were just crowing about this the other day - we take every chance we can get - so we were very happy to see one of our longtime favorite scene-stealers Missi Pyle got some much deserved love over at The Film Experience yesterday for her hysterical performance in Spring Breakdown, a truly underrated little comedy. "It's never gonna warm you up." Classic.

--- Get So Schizo - I've been saving my first viewing of Steven Soderbergh's supposedly psychotically strange Schizopolis for a rainy day, so I am setting aside this post by Glenn as Stale Popcorn on the film and ten of its greatest moments for the day after that rainy day when I'll inevitably want to read about the movie.

--- 25 of 11 - If I started listing the parts of this list of Joe Reid's 25 Movie Moments of 2011 that I loved I would list... twenty, I had to go and count and yup, I would be listing twenty of his list. So just go read his list and save me the nonsensical business of just repeating nearly the whole thing. It's so smile inducing.

--- More Like Lex Loser - Hmm, I wonder what JA thinks about the news that Robert Downey Jr. was going to play Lex Luthor in McG's Superman movie? Could he consider it the biggest bullet dodged in the history of bullets? Could he consider the fact that we're getting Michael effing Shannon as general Zod to be approximately one billion times a better thing? Hmm, I wonder.

--- Deadites Walking - Just because it isn't a true week in time without some new random nothing from somebody associated with the Evil Dead remake, here's a couple of quotes from the lead actress on how gory and scary their version will be - she manages to display a devastating incomprehension of the Sam Raimi films at the same time - plus a little bit from Bruce Campbell too, because he's always yapping on Twitter, bless him.

--- Say Yes To The Mess - Have you guys seen the international poster for the third [REC] movie? (via) I think it's been around for a bit but I hadn't seen it until yesterday and I love it. That's it there to the left. A wedding dress dragged through gore is just a delight, innit? I hope this one lives up to the first two. I love them so. BD's got a gallery with some new pictures from the movie too.

--- A To Zombie - I saw The Ford Brothers' 2010 zombie movie The Dead about a week ago and I really want to write something up when I can, but this week's got its distractions. The movie's well worth seeing though, so seek it out. It just got released onto DVD last week, and Netflix has it. All that said go read Pax's review at Billy Loves Stu, he'll sell you better than I just did.

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Missi and Uggie and Jean, Oh My

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One of the greatest pleasures that The Artist's awards season saturation has given me, far more than the film which I liked a lot but didn't totally love, has been the platform it's given to sighting longstanding MNPP love Missi Pyle. She's everywhere, and she is amazing! I just wish she were in the film more. Hopefully all this media attention will give her more to do in the future. She is worthy.

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I Want My Arm About You, The Charm About You

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I think the highest compliment I personally could pay The Artist is that I immediately wanted to go and watch a musical when it was over. If you know me, then you know I don't want to go and watch musicals. Ever, really. But there's a tap routine at the end of The Artist that is one of the most joyous things you're going to see in any film this year, and so there I was at the end, seriously contemplating going home and watching something like Top Hat.

The second highest compliment I can give The Artist is that I didn't go home and watch Top Hat; I went home and watched Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. The score to The Artist flirts with Bernard Hermann music for that 1958 Hitch flick through it's entire running time, which seemed a strange pick to me, until the last reel where the movie stops flirting with Hermann's score and actually starts using Hermann's score itself. And that seemed really strange to me. I couldn't really figure out why this modern take on a silent movie would go the Vertigo route.

Until I got home and put in Vertigo and remembered that there are long stretches of Vertigo that are essentially a silent film - it barrels through a heap of exposition in the first twenty minutes, and then for long periods we just watch Scottie drive around following Madeleine as that beautiful beautiful music swells in the background.

So we've got a 2011 film pretending to be a silent film from the 20s referencing a pseudo-silent film from the 50s... and somehow it makes sense, ultimately. Because The Artist is a love letter to Hollywood, to the history of film-making and a respect for the technologies of the past. Hitchcock came out of silent films and his camera was always trying to tell the story itself, in place of words as much as possible.

But he was also one of the pioneers of sound - consider the scene in "Knife!" scene in Blackmail:

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Point being, it makes more sense for The Artist to score a portion of itself to Vertigo than it did at first glance, and these are the thoughts I've been thinking since seeing the movie last night. So what a gift, right? That is this movie's gift to us, sending us off on little scavenger hunts of cinematic delight like this. I'm sure there are a thousand more references bouncing around in this baby that are just waiting to be played with.

Oh and Jean Dujardin is like flashbulbs bursting in your eyeballs. He's every inch the movie star the movie demands and then sixteen swaggering steps further. Total hammy megawatted perfection. If I have a complaint to voice about the film it's that I never fell for his partner in love and tap shoes played by Bérénice Bejo quite as deeply as I did for him, and so the love story seemed a little bit lopsided. Not terribly so, it wasn't ruinous, but she was a layer or two of less sparkle than him. He should've ended up with Beth Grant, is my point.

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Good Morning, World

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I've never even seen Jean Dujardin in anything, and yet I am in love. I posted about him once before, and now with The Artist coming out I could just burst. I'm surprised by how badly I want to see The Artist actually - at first blush, when I first heard about it that is, it checked off several big "No Thank You" boxes in my head. It sounded gimmicky and jazz-handsy... and French. But then I saw the trailer and heard the raves and found out it has Missi Pyle and Beth Grant in small roles and I couldn't be more there if I were future-me actually sitting in the theater watching it already. Okay that's not exatly true. Whatever, it's love! Logic is besides the point! See more delicious Dujardin after the jump...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Spring Breakdown (2009)

Charlene: You think it's gonna go on forever, but it's like one of them videos you know... of a fireplace, that you put on your TV. And like no matter how close you get to the... screen... he's never gonna warm you up.

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Good Morning, World

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There was about half of a good movie crammed inside of Barry Munday, and it's always a pleasure to spend time amongst Judy Greer and Mae Whitman and Missi Pyle and Jean Smart, not to mention repeated scenes where Patrick Wilson's crotch is the focus of the camera. But I couldn't help but think at about the 45 minute mark the movie was already feeling long. Wilson's actually very funny and very endearing, and even all those suburban douche-bag ensembles and a wispy goatee can't dull his luster completely. Greer has her moments but the character didn't feel fully fleshed out since the script couldn't really decide what it wanted from her. And it's criminal how little Missi Pyle had to do. She's a dynamo, you fools! Use her!
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Happy 38, Missi Pyle

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I am so frigging excited that some awesome person uploaded Missi Pyle's scenes in Spring Breakdown to YouTube. You have no idea. This is funny, funny shit. She walked away with this movie. Well, she stumbled away with it, while simultaneously barfing.

"Hey miss fancy pants, this ain't the Red Lobster."
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Anybody Watched Barry Munday?

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It's supposedly out in theaters on Friday but I see it's been playing on demand since the end of August. In case you have no idea what I'm on about, Barry Munday is the movie involving Patrick Wilson and castration, yet again. He's really has made that his specialty. It co-stars the always funny Judy Greer, the always funny Missi Pyle, the always funny Mae Whitman, the always funny Jean Smart, and... uh, Chloe Sevigny. This has all been an excuse to post that picture, in case you didn't realize. The end.
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The Golden Trousers '09: 13 Actresses

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Whereas yesterday with the actors I was with the general consensus an awful lot with my picks, today with these here astonishing-lady-parts I am for the most part wandering pretty far off the reservation. And I love it! These are a buncha crazy broads! Gloriously so. My favorite sort. They're tying little boys to radiators, slitting kitten's throats, taking a pair of scissors to their lady-bits. They nuts! I love 'em!

Tilda Swinton, Julia - What more can I say about this performance? I've written my thoughts on it at length, oh here and here and here and here and here and here. See what I mean? If I'd been blogging back when Ellen Burstyn gave us Sarah Goldfarb in Requiem For A Dream or when Christian Bale gave us his American Psycho, then I probably would've rattled on about them the same way, and that's the company this performance of Swinton's keeps. I adore it. Worship it. Will watch it a billion times to seep myself in its every nuance. I want to have a baby just so I can lock it in a room with nothing but this movie on repeat to raise it and teach it language so I can see what sort of adult that would create.

Alison Lohman, Drag Me to Hell - The challenge that was tossed to Miss Lohman was not an easy one (that's why it's called a challenge): her character, Christine, is... what's the word? Oh right - unlikeable. Selfish. Quick to toss any and all moral quandaries into the dumpster to further her own myriad agendas at the drop of a hat. Basically, she's a female version of Ash, Bruce Campbell's character in the Evil Dead films, just without so many off-the-cuff quips. If she's got to slit the throat of The World's Tiniest Kitten in order to save herself, well all that's gonna take is a little convincing. And Lohman makes effortless mincemeat of any reservations we might have in jumping right in alongside this gal.

Missi Pyle, Spring Breakdown - Pyle's been on the background radar for a few years now, but never have I seen her own like she got the chance to do in Breakdown. Diverting my eyes away from the central threesome of Posey Dratch and Poehler would prove a monumental task for most, but I wanted all Charlene, all the time. Drink, drink, chug, drink!!!

Ok-bin Kim, Thirst - I've watched Park's vampire-priest movie three times now and every time what I come away with is a deeper affection for Kim's tricky performance. She lets us know from the get-go that this poor girl is nobody's poor girl and that the priest Sang-hyeon has starbursts in his eyes and can't see the bitch for the trees, but once she gets all the power she didn't know she wanted... oh baby, watch out. It's a delightful derangement, watching this girl discover the unknown depths of her capability for horror.

Susanne Lothar, The White Ribbon - Michael Haneke's favorite punching bag is back for more and she suffers so wonderfully. The scene where her longtime secret lover verbally shreds her as she stares on pretty much in awe of his cruelty, her wounded eyes welling with tears, her inability to find footing in this abuse that's closed in on her out of nowhere, we watch and feel dizzy, as if the room is closing in on us too. It doesn't stop there, of course - the horrors of this horrible community accrue with a malignant consistency, and her eyes blossom in the background, knowing... things... but are they the right things? Well, they're... things. And Lothar makes us desperate to follow along with her. Haneke, the bastard, he's got other plans of course.

Abbie Cornish, Bright Star - What I said regarding Colin Firth's scene on the telephone yesterday applies here to the scene where Fanny learns of her paramour-poet John Keats' death (Spoiler? Although if you don't know that Ben Whishaw is dying the first time you look at him, you don't have yes. Eat a sandwich, man!). The sounds of grief she conjures up tear at the screen. But even before that shoulda-been-her-Oscar-clip moment Cornish works wonders with this complicated young woman, as we watch her realize with expanding breath that what's wanted from her is all she can be, at last.

Mo'Nique, Precious - I am haunted by Mo'Nique. She's been following me around, sneaking up on me, for several years now. Those eyes, alive with devilish glee, that mouth, poised like a viper ready to strike. A delightful ghost, funny and loud and preposterous. She can tell you about some shit, she can. But she took that ghost and she smashed it in the face and buried it and turned herself inside out to make Mary, a beast of a whole new sort. From frame one I didn't recognize her, and then all these horrors started slithering out, and it was something to behold. Biblical, twas.

María Onetto, The Headless Woman - She knows at the end, right? The end is the place to start, after all. When the pieces have come together. Except they haven't. Except maybe they have, for her. I don't know. She might just stand there saying that the whole time and that'd be the only thing that'd make sense. I do not know. The ellipses that is her several month existence is drawn in ever broader strokes on the lines of her face, misunderstanding, missed understanding. As goes her hair color, so goes the truth.

Rachel Weisz, The Brothers Bloom - I've been worshiping Rachel Weisz performances for several years now - I loved her the instant she made the stacks topple over in The Mummy, glasses askew, adorable - and I've never seen her like this. She probably came closest in her role just mentioned in the Mummy films - eyes bright with an unquenchable thirst for adventure - but there's a sadness here that those films never even tried to approach; a closed off girl-woman thing that's endlessly appealing, drawing us in, delighting us with every quirky ridiculous thought that tumbles out of her mouth. This is a terrific actress at the tippy-tip top of her game, folks, playing the screen like a... like a washboard. Or perhaps a tuba.

Charlotte Gainsbourg, Antichrist - When you feel yourself inching back from the screen, as if there's a very real possibility that the thing up there has every bit the power it'd take to scrape its nails through the thin fabric of the image and getcha, getcha real good, then you can be pretty certain you're in the presence of some powerhouse something. You can practically see every veiny detail of Gainsbourg knotting up her rage and grief and hate and pain on-screen, tucking it under her blouse, whittling it down to a very sharp very fine point, and picking her teeth with it, staring at you, waiting. Lars is writing in capital letters here, but Gainsbourg is painting them red.

Blanca Portillo, Broken Embraces - I was torn between which of the ladies of Embraces to love on, Blanca or Penny, but then I remembered the way Blanca chugged her gin and tonics while divulging her outrageous secrets matter-of-factly and I knew in my heart who had won.

Maya Rudolph, Away We Go - I spoke about John Krasinski's charm and warmth yesterday and that's a two-way street with this movie - a blessed heart-bursting motorway of shared affection, sentiment ricocheting off sentiment, a thirty car pile-up of love, man. Love! I watch these two stare at each other and it makes me wanna be a better starer. Maya - I can't help with her, I've gotta address her on first-name basis - dialed it way back here and tapped into a part of herself I've never seen - the wacky SNL affectations (which I adore, for the record) are gone and in their place stands this smart but unsure lady, afraid of home while desperately searching for just that same thing.

Isabelle Fuhrman, Orphan - Oh the wonders of this little lady! Whether it's seducing her papa or getting her mama locked up or hitting a nun in the face with a hammer, it's all with a twirl of her velvety ribbon dress and a skip in her step. This one's for the record books, my friends. And that last act twist that's been whispered-shouted about... it don't disappoint. Which we can thank Fuhrman for nailing like a ballerina coming down, foot on your face.
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