Win "Cabaret" on Blu-Ray

I have two copies of Cabaret, one of my personal top ten favorite films of all time, remastered on Blu-ray™ for its 40th anniversary, to give away to musical-lovin' readers!

Flamboyant and eccentric American entertainer Sally Bowles (Minnelli) sings in Berlin’s decadent Kit Kat Club, even as Nazism rises in Germany in 1931. She falls in love with a British language teacher (York) – whom she shares with a homosexual German baron (Griem). But Sally's insular, carefree, tolerant and fragile cabaret world is about to be crushed under the boot of the Nazis as Berlin becomes a trap from which Sally's German friends will not escape.

 

Remastered for the first time in over 20 years with new and vintage special features! 

The new BluRay comes with a little book as well... 40 pages of insightful photos and text. (This special edition will also be available on DVD next week.) I haven't yet watched the blu-ray and I know that the negatives needed to be cleaned up but I hope they haven't scrubbed all the grain out of the movie. I love how filthy Cabaret always looks. Filthy and Gorgeous.

WILKOMMEN

To enter the Cabaret contest...

1) "like" The Film Experience on Facebook and tell us your favorite moment in Cabaret in a comment here or there. (You'll have to do both for it to count... since some of you have already liked the page)

No Facebook? if you are a Facebook agnostic (I understand some of you exist) you can e-mail me your entry instead with "Come to the Cabaret" in the subject line.

2) for a bonus entry send a photo of yourself inspired in any way by Cabaret along with a bit about your favorite moment in the film that I can share in a "life is a Cabaret" post with your fellow readers right here.

I'll announce winners on Monday February 4th.

after the jump the Cabaret cast on the Today show to celebrate the anniversary...

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SAG Carpet Pt 1: Silhouettes and Character Arcs

Red Carpet Line-Up Returns. I don't know if you've missed it but I have. This two-part SAG edition is less quickfire chat and more epistolary but we haven't talked to Kurt Osenlund in way too long since he flew the coop for The House Next Door. 

NATHANIEL: Kurt  I miss you. You have moved to the far off land of Brooklyn and we never see each other. And yet, when I watch the Best Actresses walking the red carpet I know you're out there somewhere gazing at the same visions. So a few questions to kick things off about the Screen Actors Fashionista Guild.

Which of the Best Actresses did it for you? And was this in line with what you think of their performances or the inverse of that? Character arcs aren't cut from runway cloth but sometimes I think people judge the gowns based on how much they're currently loving the woman inside.

"Impossible" Naomi, Dress-Lining Jennifer, "Mama" Jessica, Marion Cotillard

poll by twiigs.com

Anyway, tell me your "best", both performance wise and clothing wise. (Don't cheat and say Helen Mirren since she didn't show. Or the cameras just didn't bother searching for her because 'getouttahereHitchcock'!). [More plus Supporting Actresses after the jump]

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Misérables No More. Les Joking.

You know a depressing drama has achieved deep market penetration when no one can stop joking about it. Is this a communal embarrassment from making ugly cry faces in the movie theater (don't worry, no one can see you.)? Whatever it is, Les Misérables has now joined Brokeback Mountain and Titanic and _____ in the small club of deeply sad dramas that everyone loves to make jokes about.

Have you seen "Les Mean Girls"? The tumblr mashes the musical up with Tina Fey's classic comedy, Amanda Seyfried being the key to all things (no seriously. she's everywhere).

But my favorite current Les Misérables joke is this expert repurposing of the big "I Dreamed a Dream" showstopper as Living FYC Satire. I totally love this even though I think Anne Hathaway is everything in the movie and totally deserves the Oscar.

Luca's Body

JA from MNPP here. You know it's an excellent bit of movie news when you can fill in the BLANK in the sentence "I'd been desperately waiting to hear what BLANK was going to do next" with at least five different names involved in said bit of movie news. So... this is an excellent piece of movie news. Variety is reporting that the director of the Tilda-fetish-object I Am Love Luca Guadagnino (first name) is turning Don Delillo's book (second name) The Body Artist into a movie that will star Isabelle Huppert (third name), Denis Lavant (fourth name) and... David Cronenberg (numero cinco). The book was adapted by Guadagnino, and the movie will be called Body Art.

A couple of weird cinephile overlaps to appreciate here - Cronenberg just adapted a Delillo book (and quite well if you ask me) last year with Cosmopolis, which was about a man riding around in a white limosuine and encountering lots of people over the course of a single day, which was also the plot of Holy Motors (though to much different effect), which of course starred... Denis Lavant. And Isabelle Huppert... is Isabelle Huppert. Nuff said. If this will top my favorite David Cronenberg performance (that would be as the doctor who gets impaled upon a giant steel rod in Jason X) we'll have to wait and see.

Golden Questions

Which Oscar related questions are currently haunting you? Perhaps we can answer them? We'll answer at least one of them daily all week long.