Team Experience: The Olympics in IMAX 3D

We've been hoping to return to our group posts from our fabulous Team Experience, so what better way to return than this: Team Experience is going to the Olympics!

Well not literally. But like many of you, we've also been glued to the games in Rio. As with any Olympic year, the games have been filled with spectacle and showmanship - but the increasing production values and drama  is simply too much for our television sets to contain. So what if we could watch the Olympics on the biggest screen?

Top 10 Olympic Moments We'd Like to See in IMAX 3D 

Coming up on #OlympicLateNight @Lesdoggg!!!!!! #YAAAAS #USA https://t.co/Eo2y7Kopta

— NBC Olympics (@NBCOlympics) August 14, 2016

Honorable Mention
Leslie Jones Olympic Tweets
Tweets so good, even NBC had to give her a gig. Can we get a full IMAX Olympics documentary narrated by her? - Chris

10. Gisele Bundchen's strut
Can you imagine that leggy 5'11" beauty sky high? Attack of the 75 foot woman! That dress was the shiniest shiny but Gisele's joy was even more radiantly blinding. - Nathaniel

9 more after the jump

Click to read more ...

Stream This: No Country For Freddy's Happyness

I trust you're all Netflixing today to prepare for Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "The Get Down" tonight. We've missed Baz Luhrmann, haven't you? Netflix hasn't announced its September availabilities yet but here are a few things that just arrived as well as a few you'll need to watch quickly, if you have any desire, as they expire shortly. Let's freeze frame them at random places and see what turns up, shall we?

NEW TO NETFLIX

She will now lay her eggs - eggs with a truly remarkable destiny.

Flight of the Butterflies (2012)
That sounds uneccessarily dramatic, like it's a tagline for a butterfly blockbuster. This is, you guessed it, a documentary on butterflies. Pretty pretty.

(seven more movies after the jump)

Click to read more ...

Doc Corner: Werner Herzog's 'Lo and Behold'

Glenn here. Each Tuesday bringing you reviews of documentaries from theatres, festivals and on demand.

The indefatigable German director Werner Herzog is an unlikely superstar of the modern age – a man responsible for some of the most singular cinematic visions of our time who has remodelled himself over the last two decades primarily as a documentarian. A filmmaker with a unique verbosity who can devour a metaphor and roll it across his tongue like he was twisting a cherry stem. His accent frequently inciting giggles when paired with subject matter that many feel is outside of the wheelhouse of a 73-year-old man like albino crocodiles, Kanye West, Pokemon, or as in the case of his latest film, Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World, the internet at large.

I confess that sometimes I struggle with Herzog’s need to narrate all of his documentaries himself. No doubt spurred on by producers and financiers who see the inherent value if having Herzog, a walking meme among content producers. I was not a fan of Cave of Forgotten Dreams, for instance, for many of the same reasons people adored it. His often long-winded and meandering habits don’t always connect with me as a viewer the way they no doubt do for so many others. And while I was thankful to see Herzog return to the world of non-fiction after the flat and dusty Queen of the Desert (still unreleased in America, unsurprisingly), his latest felt like it was more the product of an over-excited team rather than something organically Herzog. [more...]

Click to read more ...

Q&A: "Who is that?" Actors, Streep Classics, and Gendered Oscars

Last week there were too many questions we wanted to answer to fit it all into one post so here's a second round up of eight reader questions and brief answers. Ahem. (One answer is most definitely not brief.)

MATT ST CLAIR:  When I saw Laura Linney in the trailer for Sully, my heart sank because it saddened me to see another great actress stuck in those stock "wife worrying over the phone" roles. When do you think Hollywood will ever get tired of seeing older women portrayed as supportive wifes or mothers and let more of them be in charge of their own stories?

How I wish I had a good answer to this. The answer might be a more diverse body of people telling stories because then chances are slightly better that it won't always be straight white 30-50something men as protagonists. Now, it's worth noting that it's been largely straight white men directing movies for about 100 years now and there were periods, long before our modern one, when men in charge of storytelling were interested in women and knew how to showcase them. I don't know what happened to make the alpha directors so disinterested in women's stories but whatever it was, I hate it. I guess it changed around the time Scorsese, Coppola, and Spielberg all exploded into fame together (not that we're blaming them) and none of them happened to have much interest in the ladies beyond a key atypical project each. As time wore on into the 80s and 90s less and less female projects were made. Give us more descendants of William Wyler, Douglas Sirk, and Alfred Hitchcock, Hollywood! We've got enough Spielberg & Scorsese acolytes to last another 50 years.

JAMES FROM AMES:  What character actor's performance was so good it made you go from "hey, it's that guy" to "who is THAT?" and start following their work? For me: Mary Kay Place just floored me in Being John Malkovich. I was so pleased when she popped up in Lady Dynamite this year.

Mary Kay Place on the 7½ floor in "Being John Malkovich"

Mary Kay Place is a wonder, isn't she?...

Click to read more ...

Beauty vs Beast: Who's Those Girls

Jason from MNPP here, letting you know for this week's "Beauty vs Beast" that sometimes, at night times, I close and lock the door so no one else can see and... I dance! I dance all by myself! And tomorrow we will all dance (for inspiration) because tomorrow Madonna, the one and only, is turning 58. So now is not the time to haggle over her acting skills - let's just accept the fact that the world would be a less fun place if the she-lady of white lace gloves had never stomped into it, and look at what is probably her best (fictional) turn on-screen, in 1985's Desperately Seeking Susan.

I had never seen this movie until earlier this year when our estimable host Nathaniel dragged me to it at a screening at the Metrograph here in NYC, can you believe that? Speaking of, Metrograph is doing an entire retrospective of the Material Girl's movies later this month, including showing Susan once again, and I highly recommend catching it on a big screen - it's like being dropped into the fanciful 80s East Village of magicians and thrift shops of your dreams. The entire cast is stuffed with about-to-be-somebodies like Aidan Quinn (humina humina) and Laurie Metcalf, and the leading goofball two-some of Rosanna Arquette & Madonna are a true pop delight.

PREVIOUSLY Even though it was his birthday, and even though he's a certifiable acting legend, poor Dustin Hoffman didn't stand a chance -- we'd all long ago been seduced away by Anne Bancroft's smoky eyes and smokier delivery as the iconic older woman in The Graduate; Mrs. Robinson took just under 80% of your vote. Said Tom:

"As soon as Mrs Robinson wondered into his bedroom "mistakenly" looking for the bathroom, I knew this was a performance for the ages."