I Am Link

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--- Tight By Tycoon - That upcoming Amazon series adapting the F. Scott Fitzgerald story called The Last Tycoon which will star Matt Bomer added some cast over the holidays - Lily Collins is the female lead, while Kelsey Grammer and Rosemarie DeWitt will also co-star. I kind of don't get why Collins keeps getting work, she's proven herself awfully bland so far, but whatever - it's not like I'll be looking at anything but Bomer. And speaking of I've totally whiffed my chance at posting shots of Matt doing a super-hot water-logged shoot for the cover of Men's Fitness - they're already everywhere by now. Oh well I can't do everything. I mean I haven't done Matt himself and that should be my priority.

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-- Today's Must Read - The Hollywood Reporter has published a really terrific excerpt from big time Hollywood publicist Dick Guttman's upcoming memoir Starflacker, which is out next week, in which he talks about having basically invented the concept of the "screener" when he teamed up with infamous L.A. cable channel Z Channel to screen movies in conversation (like Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation, for example) during the run up to the awards way back in the 1970s. It's fascinating!

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--- Small Screen Sausage Fest - HBO's President of Programming chatted to the Television Critics Association about how he pushed True Detective's Nic Pizzolatto too hard for a fast turnaround on the second season and all that shit everybody hated is his fault, all his fault, how noble of him really... but more importantly he then talked about the inequality in the female to male nudity ratio on his channel. Choice bit:

"I'm often told that relative to other premium services, we don't have enough nudity. But here's the truth. I'm a gay guy. I don't particularly care about female nudity. We have never given a note to say, 'More nudity.'... I was screening recently a show we did. And the actress is running across the screen completely naked. And then the actor runs across the screen completely naked. And yet somehow it's pixelated, his genitalia. And I'm like, wait a second. Why is a man's genitalia so much more 'verboten?'"

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--- Girls In Space - We first heard about Alex Garland's next project, an adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer's sci-fi book called Annihilation (first in a trilogy of books), way back in May - at that time the film, which is about a group of female scientists visiting a maddening planet, was flirting with a cast including Natalie Portman, Tilda Swinton, and Julianne Moore. Cut to now and Portman's still around but those other two incredible actresses seem to be gone, replaced by two up and comers - Creed's Tessa Thompson and Jane the Virgin star Gina Rodriguez. On the one hand that's some Grade A diversity there... on the other, sigh, no Tilda.
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--- Special Friends - The Playlist has got the first few images from Ricky Gervais' upcoming comedy series Special Correspondents for Netflix, which is about a journalist who's down on his luck who begins faking front-line war coverage from his apartment in Queens. It's a great idea, made even better by his co-stars - Eric Bana and Vera Farmiga and Kelly MacDonald and several other hot commodities. They had me at Bana, of course.

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--- In House - I hope you've been keeping up with the "Year in Review" over at The Film Experience - besides my typically astute observations on the 15 Best Scares of the year there's been other fun stuff too! I'm especially keen on Nat's reminisces about his 15 favorite movie theater experiences of the year because it's a great lens through which to view the 12 months and what mattered in it - the whole theater-going experience is often what you remember more than the films themselves. (Also I was there cackling in bliss at Written on the Wind with Nat.)

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--- Topless Transylvanian - Y'all know I don't mix with musicals as a general rule but I kind of love that TV has grasped the idea of putting on live shows of movie musicals that the movies would get crucified for trying to remake - like for example a new Rocky Horror Picture Show, which is a thing that is happening thanks to Fox. Anyway several people just got cast including Reeve Carney of Penny Dreadful & hair-ironing fame, and that dude to the ? there is named Staz Nair (okay) and he is playing the titular (emphasis on tit) Rocky. And most importantly here's a collection of images proving he will fill the golden speedo just fine.

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--- So Long Super - All of the headlines from Joss Whedon's recent Q&A for something or other were Marvel related - that's he's done as death with those damn superheroes, dammit! But mostly I just wanna know what he's working on now, next, for the rest of time, which I guess we'll have to wait to find out. But I haven't watched the entire Q&A so I was glad to see that the video does exist and you can watch it over here. I am sure he has good things to say that don't have anything to do with Thor's hammer.
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