The Furniture: Death by Excess in What a Way to Go!

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Any excuse to talk about What a Way to Go! is a good excuse. But the centennial of Ted Haworth is an especially excellent excuse. He was nominated for six Oscars, starting with Marty in 1955. He won for 1957’s Sayonara. Highlights from the rest of his career include Some Like It Hot, The Beguiled, and Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.

But none of those movies could hold a candle to the astonishing level of creativity on display in What a Way to Go! The epic 1964 comedy of love and loss stars Shirley MacLaine as Louisa May Foster, a many-time widow and heiress.  Each husband, with one particularly tragic exception, begins the marriage as a near-pauper who wants nothing but love. But their passion inevitably leads them on a wild pursuit of wealth, which tends to end in a coffin. It should be noted, of course, that Louisa herself has little interest in cash.

There are far too many brilliant design elements to fit into a single column...

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What's Streaming from 1985?

by Nathaniel R

Most streaming platforms don't have great search capabilities. As we've long complained, they're much better for casual viewers who'll watch whatever is curated for them than devoted cinephiles who often give themselves projects (I know I'm not the only one!) to watch a certain set of films of some ilk, year, awards race of yesteryear or from some filmography. Since 1985 is our "year of the month" -- the Smackdown is just one week away! (have you voted yet?) -- I thought we'd play our streaming screengrab roulette game (wherever the scroll bar lands we take that photo - no searching for cool images or key scenes) with film titles from 1985 that are streaming currently on one of the major services. These weren't super easy to look up but here's what I found on Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. 

Will any of these random screengrabs inspire you to watch a movie? Please do speak out about anything related to any of these movies in the comments. It's more fun when you we're not just typing into the abyss.

Okay, ready here we go...

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NYFF: Félicité, the Real and the Fanciful

by Murtada

Set in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo - a country which has seen a lot of strife in its recent history - Félicité is the new film from Alain Gomis, a French director of Guinea-Bissauan and Senegalese descent. It tells the story of its eponymous heroine, a singer trying to put a life together and barely making it work. The first few scenes establishes Félicité’s daily grind. She sings nights in a makeshift bar, comes home to tiny place. Her fridge is not working, she needs someone to fix it. Yet money is scarce so she has to make do with a local guy who’s obviously not the right person for the job.

Things start taking a turn for the worse when her teenage son is seriously injured in an accident...

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Box Office: Golden Circle and Gold Prospecting

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office (Sept 22nd-24th)
W I D E 800+ screens	L I M I T E D excluding prev. wide
1.🔺 KINGSMAN: THE GOLDEN CIRCLE  $39 new	1.🔺 STRONGER $1.7 on 574 screens new REVIEW
2. IT $30 (cum. $266.3) REVIEW | 5 TAKEAWAYS	2.🔺 BRAD'S STATUS $1 on 453 screens (cum. $1.1) REVIEW
3.🔺 LEGO NINJAGO MOVIE $21.2 new	3.🔺 BATTLE OF THE SEXES $525k on 4 screens new
4. AMERICAN ASSASSIN $6.2 (cum. $26.1)	4. 🔺 VICTORIA AND ABDUL $152k on 4 screens new

Kingsman: The Golden Circle got off to a fast start with its all star cast and Looney Tunes broad violence (only I guess people die unlike Wile E. Coyote) while It continues to power on determined to be the biggest horror hit of all time right now trailing only The Sixth Sense (if you don't adjust for inflation) and that and The Exorcist (if you adjust for inflation).

Meanwhile since Fall has officially begun, so too has the Oscar-hopeful release cycle (FINALLY). All four of them that opened this weekend are off to great starts...

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NYFF: Faces Places

by Murtada

Agnes Varda, recently named one of 2017's Honorary Oscar recipients, retuns to cinemas very soon. Her latest documentary is Faces Places or Visages Villages - sounds more delicious in French, n'est pas? It's Varda's collaboration with visual artist JR to celebrate the power of images. For that it was the perfect confection to see first at NYFF. The two artists set out on a journey inside France, finding farmers, miners, dock workers and others to document and preserve in the places in which they reside and work. They don’t have a plan, they just go where luck takes them or as Varda puts it:

Chance has always been my best assistant.

Varda and JR operate their own separate cameras, but they were also recorded in their travels by multiple other cameras in both still and moving images. What we get is a delightful mix of the histories and stories of the people they meet, JR’s eccentricities (he never takes off his small rounded sunglasses), plus Varda’s grapple with her mortality (she’s 88 and has problems with her eyesight). A joy from start to finish. It’s worth the price of admission just for recreating the running in the Louvre scene from Godard’s Bande A Part (1964), with Varda’s age adding poignancy and exuberance.

Grade: B+

Faces Places screens at the New York Film Festival on October 1st and 2nd. It will be out in limited release on October 6th. On November 11th, she will be awarded the Honorary Oscar at the annual Governor's Awards in Los Angeles.