MostlyFilm

by Indy Datta

“Yeah, the bin bag really helped me connect with the character’s craziness.”

Mostly Links can’t lie to you, readers: the news this week hasn’t been particularly conducive to the wry sideways look at events we like to feel we have perfected, and we are dead centre in the film news dead zone, after all the festivals have been and gone, and before the critics’ groups and awards bodies start dishing out the gongs. And we can’t even be arsed to try and be amusingly snarky about the carnival of bollocks that is the week’s big new release, David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook. So, in something of a break with Mostly Links tradition, the remainder of this week’s post will be given over to interesting recent film links.

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by Indy Datta

Nobody ever erected a statue to a critic

For reasons that will become clear in the fullness of time (or next Friday, whichever is sooner), Mostly Links will not be making a return to weekly fixture status on these pages, but is dropping by this week for old time’s sake. How’ve you been, readers? You look great. Yeah, I’m fine, you know. Same old…

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It’s Marilyn’s birthday today. She would’ve been 86 today. Imagine that! I bet you can’t. Anyway, fuck me but June 1st is crowded. Andy Griffith, Bob Monkhouse, Edward Woodward, Morgan Freeman, Ronnie Wood, Brian Cox (the proper one, not the slack-jawed wonder-merchant from those tv shows about Jupiter), Gerald Scarfe, Jonathan Pryce, Alanis Morissette, Heidi Klum, René Auberjonois, Cleavon Little, JASON DONOVAN, seriously I could do June 1st every day for the rest of the year. Although this is my last Back Page so I won’t.

Obviously, there’s only one big release to put the trailer up for this week, the one everyone is talking about.

That makes me sad.

Nice out-link for you today, on how Toy Story 2 was deleted. Twice.

Even nicer links in, here are the week’s MostlyFilm articles.

Minor Characters – Slight Return, a follow-up to our previous article on small parts that have a big impact

We’re all in it together, on what makes a good ensemble film

Ol’ Marrsters, on the touring exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci sketches and what they tell us about the man

The Known Unknowns, about the toilers in the engine room of Keeping Kids Happy

Join us next week, following the super-long Jubilee bank holiday, for a short science fiction theme week, with Prometheus, Stalker and the post-script to Hankinshaw’s epic If My Calculations Are Correct.

It’s Friday! The thirteenth!

Howard Keel would have been 93 today; here's a picture of him all casual like, just readin' the papers like he's not Wild Bill Hickok. WHICH HE TOTALLY IS.

I’m not jazzed by the release schedule this week (except A Night to Remember), but, uh, let’s see, The Cabin in the Woods is finally out, so let’s all have a look at the trailer:

Oh, right, OK, so it’s a sci-fi slasher film. Cube crossed with Friday 13th – which is apt, given the date. Wait, though, doesn’t that make it Jason X? Yeah, in your boiled egg face, Whedon!

I couldn’t let you go without giving you a link to this blog post on movie titles. Your life will be enriched by the creator of The Idiotmaker’s Gravity Tour, I promise you.

Or you could read a MostlyFilm post. Not as many as usual this week:

Personal Jesuses, a somewhat blasphemous group piece on unusual Jesus figures

Planks vs Zombies, a slaughter of the Walking Dead innocents/numskulls.

Hair Apparent, a run-through of some jarring hair and makeup in period films.

Join us next week for the end of days for the Titanic and the telly, plus the Terracotta film festival and our review of Breathing.