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.
Real-Live Woman In A Marvel Movie Of The Day (And Probably The Year): Tilda Swinton in Doctor Strange
Tilda Swinton, Goddess Of Fabulous Weirdness And General Delight, or Tildy for short, is in talks to join Benedict Cumberbatch in Marvel’s Doctor Strange. Swinton would play Strange’s mentor, a “Tibetan mystic known as the Ancient One, who is training pupils to be the next sorcerer supreme.” In other words, she will be playing herself. THR shares that in the comics, the Ancient One has always been a dude; Marvel Studios “initially was searching for a male actor, but the studio rethought the role and has now made it female.” Hey, I support whatever it takes to get some more ladies in your movies, Marvel—rewriting, refinancing, gender-swapping, hiding women inside a Trojan Horse inside a bag of cocaine inside a male character’s bowels. Whatever you guys need to do.
Real-Live Women In Another Movie, Maybe, Of The Day: 4,054 women reading for the parts of “Tina” and “Tina’s sister” in Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them
Speaking of women in movies, here are a bunch of names of women that might be in a movie: Saoirse Ronan, Dakota Fanning, Lili Simmons, Alison Sudol, Kate Upton, Katherine Waterston, and Elizabeth Debicki. The first four might play Tina, one of the female leads in the forthcoming Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them; the last three might play “Tina’s older sister,” another female lead in the film who apparently has no name or additional identifying details. The actresses are reading alongside star Eddie Redmayne over the next week, though, as The Wrap puts it, “it’s unclear whether all of those actresses are available or even wish to pursue the project.” So these women are reading for these parts against their will, or…? Has anybody seen Saoirse Ronan, Dakota Fanning, Lili Simmons, Alison Sudol, Kate Upton, Katherine Waterston, or Elizabeth Debicki lately?
Chris Of The Day: Pine, who is in talks to star in Wonder Woman
Chris Pine is in talks to star as the “love interest” in Wonder Woman, the upcoming DC movie about a woman who is made entirely of white bread. Pine would play Gal Gadot’s love interest, Steve Trevor, who has two first names and “was an intelligence officer in the United States Army during World War II whose plane crashed on Paradise Island, the isolated homeland of the Amazons. He was nursed back to health by the Amazon princess Diana, who fell in love with him and followed him when he returned to the outside world.” (He manages to win her heart by refusing to use her as the outside of his sandwich.) “There she became Wonder Woman (and also his coworker, Diana Prince).”
Which Came First, Man Or His Imaginary Man? Of The Day: Jason Reitman will direct existential children’s parable Beekle
Jason Reitman will direct Beekle, a children’s movie with terrifying existential implications, for Dreamworks Animation. Adapted from the award-winning children’s book The Adventures Of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend, Beekle will tell the story of an “imaginary friend who is so odd and so unique that no kid could possibly imagine him. So he decides to take matters into his own hands, and sets off on a journey to the land of people in search of a best friend.” Whoa, why didn’t anybody warn us we were driving straight into Mindfuck City, amiright? This will be a difficult but important film for our nation’s youth; it’s rare to see a children’s story grapple so honestly with issues of free will, agency, artistic license and ownership, not to mention spirituality and hallucinatory drugs.
Of Course Of The Day: Shia LaBeouf is doing weird art projects with students in the U.K.
Speaking of mindfucks, actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf is collaborating on a basically inscrutable but wholly inevitable project with students from Central Saint Martins, “one of the U.K.’s leading arts universities” (now go back and read that in the proper accent). The “project” includes a 30-second film that sees LaBeouf standing in front of a screen “daubed” (<3 you, The Guardian) with the words “I will not be stopped” while screaming “JUST DO IT, MAKE YOUR DREAMS COME TRUE, NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE.” So true! The film is “one of 36 brief video segments which include LaBeouf reciting his favourite poem, ‘The Laughing Heart,’ by Charles Bukowski; standing in silence in front of a moving projection of clouds; repeating ‘ooohm’ sounds in front of a picture of a block of butter; and reading out the lyrics from the 1982 song ‘She Can’t Love You,’ by Chemise.” Anyway. Now you know.
Depressing Biopic Of The Day: Tammi Terrell’s
Kat Graham, who is on a TV show called The Vampire Diaries that I imagine to be some kind of mash-up between The Basketball Diaries and Vamp, but with more casual heroin use and less Grace Jones, is set to star in a Tammi Terrell biopic. The film “follows the brief but memorable career of Terrell, who started out as a backing singer in the James Brown Revue...But she struck gold after being paired with hitmaking singer Gaye in early 1967…In October 1967, Terrell collapsed onstage while performing with Gaye, and doctors diagnosed her with a brain tumor. She continued to record with Gaye and scored a few more solo hits before dying in 1970.” Well this certainly sounds like it will be very sad. Totally coincidentally, the film marks the first full-length feature for Graham’s own production company, Panthera Pictures; also coincidentally, Graham is working on her own debut album with Babyface right now. Imagine the odds!
Origin Story Of The Day: Cybertron/the Transformers Writing Room
Ant-Man writers Andrew Barrer and Gabriel Ferrari are the latest lucky dudes to join the Transformers Writing Room, which is not not located in the seventh circle of hell. One of the ideas in the works inside said Writing Room, which is tastefully decorated with the blood of our founding fathers and always smells vaguely of hot dogs, has a working title of Transformers One, and is “more or less an origins story that takes place on Cybertron, the planet where the good guy and bad guy robots hail from.” The Transformers Writing Room was actually the aesthetic inspiration for Cybertron, as it is also made entirely of metal and occasionally bursts into piping-hot flames.