1. “Ellen Page Comes Out as Gay: ’I Am Tired of Lying by Omission.’” The Juno star made the announcement in Las Vegas at the Human Rights Campaign’s Time to Thrive conference benefiting LGBT youth.
“Page, who paused frequently to collect herself as her emotions swelled, added that reading about herself in the tabloids can be a trying ordeal. She mentioned one article, accompanied by a paparazzi photo of her wearing sweatpants on the way to the gym, that asked, ’Why does this petite beauty insist upon dressing like a massive man?’ (The answer: ’Because I like to be comfortable,’ a line that drew laughter and applause.) That kind of gender stereotyping serves ’no one,’ Page said. She then went on to single out examples of ’courage all around us,’ naming ’football hero Michael Sam,’ Orange Is the New Black star Laverne Cox and musicians Tegan and Sara Quin for their contributions to furthering LGBT visibility and pride. A tearful Page concluded her eight-minute speech by wishing the audience a happy Valentine’s Day, sweetly adding, ’I love you.” The remarks were met with a rousing standing ovation.”
2. “Baftas 2014: Gravity hits the heights but 12 Years a Slave takes best film.” 3D space disaster movie wins six awards at Royal Opera House, including best director and best British film.
“It was a contest between two wildly different films—a 3D space disaster movie and an unflinching portrayal of 19th-century American slavery—and on paper it was the former, Gravity, which emerged as the biggest winner at the 2014 Bafta ceremony. It won six awards, including best director and best British film. But 12 Years a Slave unquestionably picked up the biggest prize, best film, with Chiwetel Ejiofor named as best actor. In a year when no one film swept the board, American Hustle also came away with three prizes. Alfonso Cuarón was named best director and said you would not know it from his accent but he considered himself a part of the British film industry. He has lived in London for 13 years and joked: ’I make a very good case for curbing immigration.’ The film, with a Mexican director, American stars and an outer space setting, raised a few eyebrows when it was included in the best British film category. Nevertheless, it fulfilled the rules and duly won.”
3. “Berlinale Winners.” Black Coal, Thin Ice Wins Golden Bear; Grand Budapest Hotel Takes Grand Jury Prize; Richard Linklater Named Best Director, More.
“Chinese director Diao Yinan’s noir thriller Black Coal, Thin Ice was a big winner tonight in Berlin. It took the top prize Golden Bear and also scooped the Best Actor Silver Bear for Liao Fan. The film follows a former detective investigating a string of related deaths, but who also begins to fall in love with the person that connects them. It was a big night for Asian film in general—notable after a lack of titles in competition last year. Cinematographer Zeng Jian won the Silver Bear for Oustanding Contribution for Lou Ye’s Blind Massage and a clearly stunned Haru Kuroki won the Best Actress prize for Japanese director Yoji Yamada’s drama The Little House. Richard Linklater’s much-loved Boyhood brought the filmmaker a Silver Bear for directing. He accepted the prize ’on behalf of the over 400 people who worked on my movie over all these years.’ Linklater made Boyhood in short stints over a 12-year period. Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel was the Grand Jury Prize winner. Anderson wasn’t on hand but sent a note thanking the festival for the ’first full-scale and genuinely metallic’ prize he’s ever won from a film festival. A big surprise tonight was the complete shutout of Yann Demange’s ’71, one of the heavy favorites.”
4. “The Broken-Down Grace of Bill Murray.” Nathan Rabin surveys the career of the iconic comic actor.
“It’s tempting to suggest that Murray has learned how to cultivate an air of mystery. But the truth is that mystery can’t be cultivated, any more than charisma or magnetism can: An artist either has it or doesn’t. Murray, remarkably, has been able to maintain it even after appearing in Larger Than Life, Osmosis Jones, and multiple motion pictures in which he provided Garfield’s voice. That helps explain the remarkable longevity of Murray’s career. Of everyone Murray started out with at Saturday Night Live, he’s the only one who has gone the distance, the one who hasn’t died, semi-retired, or been rendered irrelevant by the cruelty of time and a lack of reverence for his comic elders.”
5. “Here & Now & Then & Gone.” Michael Koresky’s final Here & Now column.
“It’s appropriate that a column that’s essentially about time should have an expiration date. I always intended Here & Now & Then to definitively end. I would never write about the same year twice, and I didn’t want to reach back too far into the recesses of early cinema for fear of stretching a concept to the breaking point, so I knew that if I continued to write one article per week the entire project would last not quite two years. I can hope nothing more than that this investigatory exercise was entertaining and occasionally meaningful to others. Because there is neither a chronology nor a table of contents of these articles elsewhere, I’ve used this final column to place them in order and identify the movies discussed in each one. The list below was created as both the first step toward my own reckoning with what all this has meant to me and a helpful catalog to anyone who might care.”
Video of the Day: Jodorowsky’s Dune gets a new trailer:
Links for the Day: A collection of links to items that we hope will spark discussion. We encourage our readers to submit candidates for consideration to ed@slantmagazine.com and to converse in the comments section.
