Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 10:20PM 
Oh my friends my friends don't ask me...
Marius can't handle your questions right now, okay. So ask your kindly editor instead. Yup, it's that time again. Ask questions and Nathaniel will do his best to answer about 10 of them on Monday night. (As always questions that would require whole huge essays, entire books or top ten articles to answer will be ignored.)
Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 5:22PM October came and went and we barely clocked Halloween? That's scary. Usually we're more in the costumed-up spirit. Highlights from a speedy month gone by...
ICYMI
First image from Loving - how long till Jeff Nichols is an Oscar favorite?
Steve Jobs -first impressions of an electric Oscar contender
The AFI Fest is coming - Team TFE will be there so here's a preview
"Hello" - Adele & Xavier Dolan called each other a 1000 times
Jennifer Lawrence vs. Oscar records - how far and fast can she rise?
1986 Flashback - A Room With a View and more
Golden Globe Comedy - a curiously thin field
Steven Spielberg - Bridge of Spies and his 21st century work
Oscar's Foreign Race - a five part trivia-happy series
HBO LGBT Sex & The City - Manuel's series hits the movie spinoffs
Q&A: Favorite Vamps & Cute Monsters - for Halloween
Kate Winslet & the Oscars - a ranking
Freeheld - belated thoughts on the once Oscar hopeful
NYFF Wrap Up -Carol, The Assassin, The Lobster and more...
A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night - female directed horror is all the rage
Coming in November...
Interviews with Ridley Scott, Alicia Vikander, the screenwriter of Spotlight and more. We'll do TFE tributes to Gena Rowlands, Spike Lee, and Gena Rowlands as their Honorary Oscar ceremony approaches. Anne Marie will look at the career of Mira Nair in "Women's Pictures". Our eyeballs will drown in lushness via Brooklyn, Carol, The Danish Girl and other Oscar hopefuls. Plus the star studded AFI premieres of By the Sea, Concussion, and The Big Short.
Any requests?
Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 11:00AM Murtada here, with a lot of love and respect for Carey Mulligan.
There's a scene late in Suffragette when Maud Watts (Carey Mulligan) realizes the devastating enormity of the separation from her son. Mulligan’s face, in a second, flickers many emotions, all so overwhelming that you feel this woman’s pain in your gut. Yet she doesn’t overplay or milk the moment for maximum effect. She remains understated.
This is just one of many moments in the film in which Mulligan transcends her movie and reaches her audience with clarity and without exaggeration. Set in London in 1912, Suffragette tells the story of Watts, her education and indoctrination into the suffrage movement. When the film starts, she is working in a laundry, trying to survive a hard existence alongside her husband and young son. A chance encounter introduces her to the suffragettes and she becomes a member of their embattled movement.
It is through Mulligan that we enter this world. Her character is a composite of many working women who were part of the movement and is built to be the audience surrogate. Her performance is so strong that the plight of these women is not only depicted effectively, but comes alive. I could not control my emotions or my tears. Mulligan’s performance is an emotional marvel and delivered with technical mastery. Her working class English accent is impeccable, her weariness and defeat is visible in her hunched back and heavy walk, her defiance rises to crescendo and is delivered with skillful control of her voice. This is why there are awards for acting.
The film is dividing critics and its reception is unfortunately lukewarm. Some accuse it of being well intentioned but conventional. "Earnest", "formulaic" and "schematic" are words used to describe Suffragette.
But the film derives most of its power from the performance at its center. Mulligan is riding on a wave of acclaim, with co-star Meryl Streep recently praising her:
"I’m in awe of your talent . . . I really am. I’m also in awe of your voice, which is like warm caramel poured over the English language. I applaud your taste in material and how you hold out for stuff. Even when you were young and didn’t have any money, you just did things that mattered. I can’t wait to see what Carey Mulligan will give us next, what new woman she’ll give birth to”.
In her earlier 2015 release Far From the Madding Crowd, Mulligan as Bathsheba Everdeen says "It's my intention to astonish you all". And you do Carey. Always.
Do you think Carey Mulligan in on her way to a second Oscar nomination?
Saturday, October 31, 2015 at 12:01AM 
image sourceHappy Halloween
Be safe today and tonight! This year our only long read horror offering was Anne Marie's fine female directed horror miniseries though we threw in a bit more Horror here and there. But if you're looking for Halloween movie suggestions see something you've never seen from Team Experience's Top Ten Pre-Exorcist Horror Films or the Top Ten Post-Exorcist Horror films.
But enough about Halloween! After this amazing sketch of Catwoman from Batman Returns (I ♥ I ♥ ) -- which is kind of a good Halloween movie even though it's set at Christmas time -- check out amusing tweets of the week starring Steve Martin, The Shining, Monica Bellucci and more!
Cats + Selina Kyle. #CatDay @Sketch_Dailies pic.twitter.com/ayDKrvIGHx
— Luis Burguete (@luisbrgt85) October 29, 2015
Friday, October 30, 2015 at 6:00PM 
Not with a bang but with a whisper. That's the way Hit Me With Your Best Shot season ends this year. We didn't want to let our signature craft-loving series go... so we extended by a few random spaced-out episodes but as it turns out this series needs the weekly check-list reminder to keep the party hopping. So next season we'll return to our March-August madness only.
Happily, whispering feels appropriate when it comes to our final film this season: Repulsion (1965) in which Catherine Deneuve barely speaks because there's probably no room in her brain for words what with sex filling every metaphoric or literal (if you will) crack.
What would Roman Polanski make of the virginal Final Girl trope that took over the horror genre about a dozen years after his masterful trilogy of horror flicks wherein people lose their marbles (and possibly souls) in apartment buildings? (More...)
