The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Follow TFE on Substackd
We're looking for 500... no 390 Subscribers! If you read us daily, please be one.
THANKS IN ADVANCE
Tuesday, August 30, 2016 at 10:30PM I'll be doing that tomorrow as I've been under the weather today. But don't despair if you needed a fix of Ron Howard's best movie (you heard me), the charming fish out of water comedy Splash from 1984. Here are seven articles from Best Shot participants to enjoy. Click on the photos to dive into their takes on this romantic winner about a man and his mermaid.
Tuesday, August 30, 2016 at 8:48PM by Deborah Lipp
Professor Spouse and I watch a lot of TV. This is absolutely ridiculous, because our first “OhMyGodWhoIsThisWoman” conversation was about movies. But the fact is, the Professor and I rarely watch movies in the evenings, largely because she is a Professor. She comes home from school either fried, or needing to grade, or both. These conditions aren’t conducive to paying attention to a movie, so we turn on the TV.
Lately, we default to the news, and, while Rachel Maddow is a television hero, sometimes the vileness of the current Presidential race is too much for our brains to process. We often watch great TV, which can be challenging and dark. What do we do when we just can’t face the challenge? The West Wing.
If you aren’t familiar with it, The West Wing was a political drama that ran on NBC from 1999 to 2006, following the presidency of Democrat Jedidiah “Jed” Bartlett (Martin Sheen) and his staff through two terms...
Tuesday, August 30, 2016 at 3:48PM The last movie I saw twice in theaters was ___________ and I went twice because _________.
Tuesday, August 30, 2016 at 12:30PM by Nathaniel R
An intermittent off center obsession I miraculously don't believe we've discussed after years of blabbering at TFE: title cards, especially as they relate to actors. My personal favorite is when the name in question aligns with the actor's face on screen (quite rare all told since the order is contractual and title card placement feels like that rare piece of cinema construction that no director has ever bothered to worry about - "just put 'em wherever!".
Sometimes they're agonizingly placed (remember when several of the goddess actress names were superimposed over shots of tertiary character John C Reilly at the beginning of The Hours). Just for kicks with the Smackdown but 24 hours away, which Best Supporting Actress nominee wins the battle of 1984 title cards? Let's take them from worst to best after the jump...
Tuesday, August 30, 2016 at 11:00AM Glenn here. Each Tuesday bringing you reviews of documentaries from theatres, festivals and on demand.
One of the many benefits of doing this weekly column is not just talking about the sort of documentaries that we may be discussing throughout award season, but also being able to highlight those that deserve haven’t a hope that nonetheless deserve the attention. Such is the case with Jenni Olsen’s The Royal Road, an essay film that trades in experimental and avant-garde traditions as a means to explore deeply personal topics.
Using dry yet curiously hypnotic narration, Olsen swerves between discussing Californian history, a long-distance relationship with a woman named Juliet, classic Hollywood movies, and the effects of nostalgia (the latter of which even features a voice cameo by Tony Kuschner). Her film a progression of beautifully captured California vistas of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and everywhere in between, filmed on 16mm by cinematographer Sophia Constantinou whose perfectly composed 4:3 ratio images recall the works of James Benning and offer a striking visual component that elevates the film to the status of true art. By using real film and embracing all of the dots and speckles that come with it, Constantinou’s work adopts the history of the worlds she is filming while also embracing Olson’s edict that nostalgia can be good.
