Chus Lampreave (1930-2016)

Almodóvar aficionados, like you and I, have been dreading this day. But every great movie face eventually only still flickers on screens and in our memories. The great Chus Lampreave, so memorable in so many Pedro Almodóvar movies, has died at 85 years of age. She had been home bound recently in Almería.

Her film career began when Pedro was just a pre-teen. She was given her first acting job by the director Jaime de Armiñán. Like many directors after him, he worked with her repeatedly, including in the Oscar nominated film My Dearest Senorita (1972). She came to international fame via her relationship with Pedro Almodóvar though. She joined his troupe early on as one of his subversive nuns in Dark Habits (1983). She was always easy to spot with those coke bottle glasses, that tiny frame and inimitable voice. Dark Habits was the first of eight collaborations with Pedro over the next 26 years in which her comic timing and deliciously matter-of-fact next door neighbor / elderly relative charisma were always put to great use. After Dark Habits she appeared in Labyrinth of Passion, Matador, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, The Flower of My Secret, Talk to Her, Volver and Broken Embraces.

After the jump a bit more plus photos of some of her most memorable roles...

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Doctor Strange, Alexandra Byrne, and Superhero Oscar Trivia

'Last one to Oscar is a rotten egg!'

Doctor Strange (1 time nominee Benedict Cumberbatch) and Baron Mordo (1 time nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor) are running from or towards something in this set photo from the forthcoming Doctor Strange which opens November 4th, 2016. Also in the cast are other 1 time Oscar darlings Tilda Swinton and Rachel McAdams and future Oscar nominees (well, maybe... eventually) Mads Mikkelsen and Michael Stuhlbarg. 

After the jump more set photos, costume design, and Oscar prospects...

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April Foolish Predix: Best Animated Features

It's past time to begin our annual tradition of predicting the future Oscar nominees way before anyone should (yes, I'm aware that nowadays every clickbait site does it the day after the Oscars but we're not into that. Jesus, ppl, let each film year settle!). Let's start with the easiest category in that it's its own world entirely, The Animated Feature. Last year was a relatively thin year for the medium, in that the number of eligible films just barely triggered a 5 wide field. We shouldn't expect a similar dearth this year.

After all 2016's already delivered a possible frontrunner (the delightful Zootopia), a hit that people have already forgotten about (Kung Fu Panda 3... currently #4 of 2016 but have you ever heard anyone talk about it?), trailers to roughly a billion would be cartoon blockbusters scheduled for 2016, and the very tantalizing prospects of an original Disney musical (Moana) and a new Laika feature (Kubo and the Two Strings).

So who do we think will win the nominations this year? I'm not falling into the trap of assuming Pixar is locked up each year (we saw The Good Dinosaur go nowhere, really, in terms of critics and awards enthusiasm) so my big no guts no glory call is that Finding Dory will miss a nomination. Yes, everyone loves Dory and Finding Nemo (2003) but I'm suspicious of a mere fanservice treading of water outing, pun intended, while we wait for a cool original again a la Inside Out. It's a strange reversal that Disney has suddenly taken up the "original" baton and Pixar is wasting its time with sequelitis.

What's below the US radar? Generally speaking online punditry seems to forget that the Academy's animation branch rightly takes foreign cartoons seriously when they're making their calls so something smallish and non American always shows up in the final shortlist. This early -- again, way too early -- I'm guessing that's The Red Turtle. It's due in September from Wild Bunch and Studio Ghibli and given those two companies it will surely be beautiful. Plus it's wordless which should be interesting. The other film I'd ink in if I was sure it would be released in time is Loving Vincent, an entirely oil painted (!!!) animated biopic of Vincent Van Gogh. 

There's a lot to consider out there: martial artist pandas, red turtles, amnesian fish, little princes, secretive pets, pissed off birds, delicious trolls, singing pigs, genius artists, island girls and demigods, police bunnies and more. Check out the chart and do speak up in the comments. 

Beauty vs Beast: Heroes Divided

Jason from MNPP here, using this week's "Beauty vs Beast" to enthusiastically fire the starting pistol on this year's Civil War. No, not the Republicans vs the Democrats, they're still too busy with in-fighting for that Battle Royale just yet; I speak of the competition that many many Americans care about (don't judge me for pointing that out, I am simply the messenger) - Superhero vs Superhero. And since we're already attempting to forget that Batman V Superman happened, we're swiveling to the next big cage match, Marvel style - Captain America: Civil War, which is out in about a month, and which faces off several beloved characters but first and foremost Cappy himself and his co-Avenger Tony Stark aka Iron Man.

I figure in about a month when the movie's actually coming out we'll all be sick of it already (that's the way these things work now) and so when I saw that today is Robert Downey Jr.'s birthday I knew - the time is now. And it's not like with three Iron Mans, two Captain Americas, and two Avengers movies we don't already know enough going in to this battle to choose our sides. Have at it!

PREVIOUSLY We made like Mia Farrow last week and considered our Hannah and Her Sisters co-stars, and over 70% decided that the Oscars were on point, giving our golden love to Dianne Wiest. Said mareko:

"Weist really is amazing in Hannah and Her Sisters. I didn't care for her character Holly *at all* in the beginning, but man does she have an impressive, if somewhat unbelievable, character arc. To go from bitter and cynical to warm and luminous, without losing her way (or ours), is to be applauded. A true breakout performance. (Hershey is good, too, if a bit histrionic for my taste.)"

The Furniture: Saloon Kitsch in "How the West Was Won"

New Series. Daniel Walber talks production design in "The Furniture". Previously we looked at The Exorcist, Carol and Brooklyn and Batman. 

Gregory Peck, whose centennial we’ll all be celebrating tomorrow, was in a grand total of six films that were nominated for Best Production Design. Two of the best, To Kill a Mockingbird (the only winner) and Roman Holiday, will be featured in this week’s Hit Me with Your Best Shot. And so, in the interest of spreading the love, I’ll talk about a very different: 1962’s Cinerama epic, How the West Was Won.

The film, though it tells the story of a single American family, is broken up into five distinct sections. Peck is only in one of them, “The Plains.” This is actually good for our purposes, because it’s one of the three directed by Henry Hathaway. The John Ford and George Marshall chapters are much more about landscapes than sets, perhaps because they found the task of filling up the wide Cinerama frame with furniture to be too tedious.

Hathaway embraced the madness, however, and it makes all the difference. How the West Was Won is a cinematic victory lap for Manifest Destiny, an alternately uncomplicated and incoherent paean to the white conquest of the West. This can easily make it fall flat to 21st century eyes, particularly in its more earnest moments of breathtaking scenery and triumphalist narration (from Spencer Tracy).

But in Hathaway’s segments, with their exaggerated and falsified versions of Western style, suddenly it becomes kitsch...

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