It's Happening... Again.

Hello Lovely Readers!

Beau here, and holy God, it’s happening. 

Yeah, yeah, I knew Carrie was in production, but it’s one of those films you know is being made but you don’t truly believe it until you see a still in front of you.  And lucky for us, we have two.

Initial Thoughts:

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Thoughts I had while staring at Nicole Kidman in "V" Magazine

Nicole Kidman just keeps whipping us into submission. Yes, yes, "Uncle!" You're a great actress and infinitely obsession worthy. But bow down we must, again, as The Paperboy nears movie theaters. Hurry up and get her already, movie! Her latest ploy is dressing up (by which I mostly mean undressing) for V Magazine.

The V doesn't stand for "Voilà" but... Voilà. Here she is boys...

More thoughts / drrty photos after the jump... 

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Gene Kelly (& My 50 Favorite Actors)

Happy Centennial to Gene Kelly (and all film fans who love him)!

100 years ago on this very day Eugene Curran Kelly was born in Pittsburgh. His mom pushed him into dance class but he didn't commit to becoming a dancer until the age of 15. At 29 fame hit with Broadway's "Pal Joey." Almost immediately thereafter he accidentally (or at least halfheartedly since he intended to return to stage) lept from the stage to the screen and stayed, starting with a co-starring role in For Me and My Gal (1942, previously covered -- he credits Judy Garland with teaching him how to act for cameras). Kelly remains the best silver screen song & dance man of all time (sorry Astaire!) and since musicals are the perfect genre, making full use of every tool available to filmmakers aurally and visually, he also happens to be one of my ten favorite movie stars ever of either gender. I'd hoped to celebrate Kelly all month long but time gets away from you in the dog days of summer. Ah well, at least we had Singin' in the Rain (1952)!!!

So herewith a quick semi-revised list...

Nathaniel's 50 Favorite Male Movie Stars of All Time

Tier 1 - Yin and Yang
neither my life nor the movies would be complete without them
MONTGOMERY CLIFT
GENE KELLY

48 more after the jump

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "Dog Day Afternoon"

Forty years ago today, Sonny Wortzik held up a bank on a hot Brooklyn day. It did not go well. Dog Day Afternoon (1975) was nominated for six Oscars -- the kind of nominations that go to well liked contemporary pictures that aren't thought of as particularly "visual" achievements -- winning only for Best Original Screenplay, but it's actually quite beautiful to look at. Credit, then, to director Sidney Lumet who understood the frantic extremes of humanity better than most auteurs, the casting director and the fine actors who are riveting yet absolutely recognizable as people who might actually be bank tellers, cops or pizza delivery boys  and the cinematography by Victor J Kemper whose camerawork and lighting ably capture the flickering nuances on faces and add considerably to the film's sweaty moody desperation. 

Consider these two shots: the first is Carol Kane as a bank hostage and Lance Henriksen as an FBI man.

They're shots that define what "Character Actor" means or at least what it should -- God, what faces!

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Take Three: Rosanna Arquette

Craig here with Take Three. Today three New York stories starring Rosanna Arquette

Takes One & Two: Desperately Seeking Susan and After Hours (both 1985)
Rosanna Arquette was very much at home in Eighties New York. As "Roberta Glass" in Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan and "Marcy Franklin" in Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, she had some strange and bewildering night-time adventures. Her well-to-do New Jersey housewife in the former sought and stalked an elusive Madonna; in the latter she was a curious, oddball girl courted by a desperate Griffin Dunne. These two films were early high points in Arquette’s career and established her as one of the ‘80s most likeable character actresses.

Susan was all about chasing the idea of Madonna, but it was Arquette who led us through Seidelman’s madcap Manhattan to do so. You couldn’t blame Roberta for wanting to add mystery to her life, dull as it was as a bored, mousy housewife. The plot hijinx involved a jacket that “used to belong to Jimi Hendrix”, mistaken identity at Battery Park, stolen Nefertiti earrings that got her into trouble with a creepy Will Patton and a bonus romance with a sensitive projectionist (Aiden Quinn) was just a bonus.

More dark and comic nights for Rosanna's soul after the jump...

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