Blanchett as Lucille Ball is Finally A Go!

Chris here. Remember a few years back when we first got word that Cate Blanchett was itching to play legend Lucille Ball? Well, the film is now happening thanks to getting picked up by Amazon and set on the fast track.

Lucy And Desi will follow the twenty year marriage of the notoriously embattled couple over the start of their Desilu Productions and I Love Lucy. The script comes from Aaron Sorkin, so expect reems of snappy dialogue and perhaps some timely contextualization - just imagine the drama of Blanchett delivering Sorkinese. No word on a director yet but it wouldn't surprise if those reigns become Sorkin's as well, with his Jessica Chastain-led directorial Molly's Game coming this fall.

Just as exciting as the prospect of Blanchett making a redheaded return to the screen is who might also fill Desi Arnaz's shoes and the rest of the legendary ensemble. Amazon is looking to get major stars for the roles of Desi, Vivian Vance and William Frawley (Ethel and Fred of the show for the unfamiliar - which if you are, how dare you!). Thus far Javier Bardem is the only name being mentioned, but I'd wager he's not quite a fit. How would you cast the rest of the I Love Lucy quartet?

"I only need one of you to help me"

...please decide between yourselves."

Race in Lady Macbeth and The Beguiled: Not so black or white?

by Lynn Lee

Florence Pugh in Lady Macbeth / Nicole Kidman in The Beguiled

In a summer filled with movies by or starring women of exceptional talent, The Beguiled and Lady Macbeth make an especially fascinating cinematic pairing.  Both films center on mid-19th century women who appear trapped by their societies’ constricting gender norms.  In both, the women are confined to an isolated, often claustrophobic space, yet nature is a constantly beckoning presence that at once shapes and reflects their desires.  (Both even have plots that turn on poisonous wild mushrooms!)  And in both, the women up-end the patriarchal structure of their circumscribed universe without liberating themselves.  If anything, they reinforce that power structure even as they seize momentary control of it, leaving not a feeling of triumph but a somber queasiness.

For all these thematic similarities, the differences between the two films are even more striking...

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Beauty vs Beast: Cowgirl's Hall of Fame

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast." On this day in 1911 was born the writer-director Nicholas Ray, whose movies have come to seem fairly ahead of their time. His biggest success would of course be 1955's Rebel Without a Cause (his only Oscar nomination was for that film's script) but several of his other works have grown in reputation over the decades, and we're here to look at maybe the weirdest of them all - 1954's technicolor acid-western Johnny Guitar. (See Also: TFE's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" entry for this movie.)

Guitar stars Joan Crawford as the "railroad tramp" Vienna, who runs a saloon and is drawn to bad men, and her cowgirl nemesis Emma Small, played by an enthusiastically hateful Mercedes McCambridge. The actresses apparently tore it up behind the scenes (everybody who's spoken of the filming of this film makes it sound like a nightmare experience) and their rivalry on-screen brings the heat (in more ways than one) as well.

PREVIOUSLY We entertained ourselves last week by wondering why there's no Blade reboot being worked on, and looked back at the original - y'all were just slightly more captivated by Stephen Dorff's villain to the tune of 53% of your vote. Said Harmodio:

"It's hard to imagine anyone other than Wesley Snipes in the Blade character. He totally endorsed the character. Even so the film belongs to Stephen Dorff and his charismatic, strong, confident, evil performance. He dominates the film and his presence is missed in the next movies."

The Furniture: The Night of the Hunter's American Expressionism

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

Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter is an American classic. But it is also a clear descendant of a movement from across the Atlantic: German Expressionism. This comes through most clearly in the breathtaking work of cinematographer Stanley Cortez (The Magnificent Ambersons).

Yet while The Night of the Hunter’s visual language is clearly indebted to the German films of the 1920s, its sets are far cry from the angular nightmares of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and its siblings. Instead, the work of art director Hilyard M. Brown and set decorator Alfred E. Spencer is grounded in iconic American architecture. Through the intimate collaboration of production design and cinematographer, an Expressionist battle between good and evil unfolds through the aesthetic material of American life...

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