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.
Female Stuff Of The Day: Suffragette acquired by Focus Features
Focus Features has acquired the North American distribution rights to Suffragette, which we wrote about one whole year ago and which stars Meryl Streep and Carey Mulligan as badass women who were like, “Wait, everything is totally shitty for us” and then made everything less shitty. Variety describes the plot as follows: “The story, inspired by the early 20th century campaign by the suffragettes for the right of women to vote, centers on Mulligan’s character as a working wife and mother who comes to realize that she must fight for her dignity both at home and in her workplace.” According to us one year ago, Streep will be playing Emmeline Pankhurst, leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union and the honorary President of Female Stuff. Helena Bonham Cater, Ben Whishaw, Anne-Marie Duff, and Brendan Gleeson are also starring; the movie will premiere in the fall.
Milquetoast Update Of the Day: Where are The Sound Of Music kids now? Around, doing stuff we’re all doing
The Sound Of Music is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and to celebrate, every person who owns or has access to a computer is required to write 11 stories about it. The Associated Press is weighing in today with a “where are they now?” feature, examining what happened to the von Trapp kids after they tragically sung themselves to death in the mountains (the air was very thin). Disappointingly (for Newsies purposes), they are all doing very normal and even philanthropic things, like getting degrees in geology, selling custom furniture, founding helpful nonprofits, and starring in Deadpool as Ryan Reynolds’ irreverent grandmother who loves to do the dead man’s float for several minutes during water aerobics to freak out her instructors. There is not one full-face tattoo or Scientologist among them. They have also all stayed close friends and have nothing but nice things to say about each other. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more for you here, friends.
Family Business Of The Day: Couple Teresa Palmer and Mark Webber to play relatives in Welcome To Willits: After Sundown
Teresa Palmer (Warm Bodies, Knight Of Cups) will star in a feature-length adaptation of short film “Welcome To Willits: After Sundown,” which premiered at SXSW. The horror sci-fi film follows a group of “young campers who get lost in the woods near Willits, California and come across a man obsessed with aliens.” It’s important to note that this movie would be much weirder and thus more frightening if the young campers came across somebody who didn’t give a fuck about aliens, because why wouldn’t you be obsessed with aliens? What else do you have going on that’s more exciting than aliens? The actual frightening thing about this movie is that Mark Webber, who is Palmer’s real-life husband, will reprise his role from the short as said alien-obsessed dude, and Palmer will play his niece. So there’s that.
Most Pronouns Of The Day: The plot of Message From The King
Natalie Martinez of ABC’s Secrets And Lies—which also stars self-proclaimed polymath and small-country-liberator Ryan Phillippe—has joined the cast of Message From The King, a “revenge thriller” from Fabrice Du Welz. Chadwick Boseman will star as Jacob, a “South African who descends into the Los Angeles underworld in an attempt to avenge his younger sister’s death and rescue her stepson from the immoral world into which he’s been sold.” Why doesn’t he just call Ryan Phillippe? Seems faster. Martinez will play Trish, “the former neighbor of Jacob’s missing sister Bianca who he recruits to help find the woman’s murderer.” I honestly have no idea what I’m even typing. Teresa Palmer is starring in this one too, but is not playing the blood relative of her own husband, which is nice.
Most Beards And Drugs Of The Day: This video store ad starring Jimmy Kimmel and Matthew McConaughey
While filming his show out of SXSW, Jimmy Kimmel decided it might be nice to boost the Austin economy by buying the entire town and turning it into a hipster-themed waterpark. No, he announced that he would film a commercial for one lucky local business. Thousands of Austin shops submitted requests to Kimmel via Twitter, but he ultimately selected Vulcan Video, which Vanity Fair describes as “a fabulously old-school establishment that still sells VHS,” evoking images of a video store that serves ironically named bespoke cocktails from behind saloon doors. Noted VHS magnate Matthew McConaughey showed up to co-star in the ads, in which he seems incredibly stoned, as is his wont. He has literally never been more charming or attractive to me than he is in these commercials, which is something I need to examine.