The Newsies is a regular feature that sees The Dissolve cheerfully adding to the awards glut by handing out imaginary awards related to the day’s movie news.
Most Audible Gasp Of The Day: Mandy Patinkin to star in Ali & Nino
Here at The Newsies, we only have two rules: 1) Mandy Patinkin news shall always win a Newsie. 2) Don’t talk about Newsies. Today, Mandy is in “advanced negotiations” to join the cast of Asif Kapadia’s Ali & Nino alongside Adam Bakri and Maria Valverde. The movie’s based on the best-selling novel by Kurban Said, and tells the story of “Ali, a Muslim boy, and Nino, a Christian Georgian girl, in Baku, Azerbaijan. Their love story plays out against the backdrop of World War I and Azerbaijan’s fight for independence.” Fun and related fact: I once chased Mandy out of a restaurant, left my own body, and told him I loved him. Undeterred, he shook my hand with both of his hands, looked deep into my eyes, and said, “Thank you.” I just want everyone to understand that Mandy Patinkin is the ultimate mensch and that I am the ultimate unhinged person.
Neon Demon Update Of The Day: Keanu Reeves and Christina Hendricks join the cast
Speaking of deranged, The Neon Demon is the gift that keeps on giving. First, director Nicolas Winding Refn described it as follows: “One morning I woke and realized I was both surrounded and dominated by women. Strangely, a sudden urge was planted in me to make a horror film about vicious beauty.” Then, Abbey Lee joined the cast as a “maniacal model.” Today, Keanu Reeves and Christina Hendricks have joined the cast. No idea who they’re playing, but judging by the bizarre, adjective-rich tone Refn’s struck thus far, I’d guess Keanu is playing an axe-wielding paper salesman and Christina is playing a demented horticulturalist.
Bleakest Press Tour Of The Day: Fifty Shades Of Grey
Defamer has a hilarious roundup of the Fifty Shades of Grey press tour, starring Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, and palpable tension. To sum it up, Dakota and Jamie fucking hate each other, and it’s darkly fascinating and strangely upsetting to behold, which is, hopefully, how watching the movie itself will feel. Their interviews are filled with long silences, a lack of chemistry that suggests that they’ve had sex approximately one time and it was memorably terrible, and body language that suggests Dakota wants to deposit Jamie into an old-timey butter churn (but not in a sexy way). After watching several clips, I’ve now internalized their darkness; I hate them both so much.
Two Newsies Of The Day Because One Is So Short And So Is Life Of The Day: Brimstone and The Other
Mia Wasikowska and Guy Pearce are set to star in “epic thriller” Brimstone. Mia will play a “heroine on the run from her past” who’s also being “hunted by Pearce’s diabolical preacher.” Okay. This may be the vaguest movie summary of all time—beating even “a horror film about vicious beauty”—so I am going to put another news item in here now in the efforts of not wasting anybody’s time, because we’re all just barreling toward death. Cary Elwes and Alex Rocco will star in The Other, a “demonic love story” from Rick Bieber. (This is not the same plot as the Neon Demon, which is just about demonic women. It is, however, the same Bieber as Justin, who is directing under a pseudonym he made up while he was smoking Clorox and peeing on the Statue of Liberty.) The Other stars Dominic Sherwood as a “young man [Justin Bieber] who’s tormented by the possibility of descending into the depths of insanity, or worse, becoming the target of an actual demonization.”
Thinking About Drowning Someone Of The Day: The Hollywood Reporter
The Guest director Adam Winged has signed on to direct The Woods, written by his longtime pal Simon Barrett. The Hollywood Reporter helpfully shares that “many of the details are being kept submerged.” A violent and evocative verb choice, THR. To be a fly on the wall of your mind! The movie will follow a “group of college students on a camping trip who discover they’re not alone”; namely, they find that Justin Bieber has followed them into the woods and turned his manager Scooter Braun into a human tent.
Hipster Shit Of The Day: Maudie
Screen Daily reports that Ethan Hawke will act opposite Sally Hawkins in Maudie, based on a “bizarre true-life romance” that played out in 1950s Nova Scotia. The movie follows Hawke as a “reclusive fish peddler” who falls for his “arthritic housekeeper, the eponymous Maude, who displays little talent for her job but huge ability as a painter and goes on to become a celebrated folk artist.” Why do I feel like I have just stumbled into the movie-synopsis version of Anthropologie? What is this twee, indie, reclusive-fish-peddler, Nova Scotian folk-artist paradise? Does it sell ironic curtains?