Twin Time! We ♥ Geminis

Happy birthday to all our fellow Geminis out there. I thought we'd celebrate -- and reenergize the blog a bit -- with a daily dose of twins. Sometimes it'll just be a photo, sometimes a full post... but we're serving up twins until the next star sign arrives every day at 2:22 PM. And by we I mean both of me. 

not actual twins. Hayley Mills²

Shout it out if you love Geminis and twins in the comments. And if it's your birthday star sign, make a request.

Take Three: Grace Zabriskie

 Craig here with this week's Take Three. Today: Grace Zabriskie

It was Grace Zabriskie’s 71^st birthday last week. She’s achieved a lot in her vast career over the 34 years she’s been acting: she had a daughter with oversized thumbs (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues); paid River Phoenix for sex (My Own Private Idaho); been killed by Chuckie (Child’s Play 2); ran on a brothel  (The Brothel); evangelized about vampires (Blood Ties); had a asteroid named after her (Armageddon); performed a voodoo sex-killing (Wild at Heart); fought for worker’s rights (Norma Rae); navigated b-movie space horrors (Galaxy of Terror); and turned mourning into a mad maternal art (Twin Peaks). And that's just ten of her 93+ screen roles.

Here are three performances that I feel deserve highlighting.

Click to read more ...

Box Office: Some Movies Made $. Some Didn't. The End.

Whenever a mega-hit comes along reporting on box office gets yet duller. How many times can the internets type "SHATTERING RECORDS!" There aren't enough thesauri in the world to rescue us. I've tried goosing the box office column up with cartoons, illustrations, and extra lists so that The Film Experience retains its air of not phoning this in! So begone repetitive top ten chart. Let it suffice to say that the box office looked something like this over the weekend...

• THE AVENGERS
• Unauthorized Transformers Sequel
• Outrageous Antics of Sacha Baron Cohen III
• Marketing Hooks
• Old Ladies
• Movies
• Movies only New Yorkers and Los Angelenos are allowed to see for some reason 

Next week is a holiday weekend. Can The Avengers withstand the onslaught of Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin as Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black III for a fourth weekend on the top of the mountain of money? Stay tuned!

Did you see a movie this weekend? 

Tilda, Candied

First the prize jewel in gay activist's Derek Jarman's filmography. Then critical adulation and fame with Orlando "same person...different sex". On to Female Perversions and into The Deep End. Finally and impossibly, sorcerous big box office, red carpet goddess, unashamed polyamory, and Oscar-winning internationally adored actress. All this and she's never lost a single wisp of that original avant garde spirit.

Queen Tilda.

Now, a covergirl for the "first transversal style magazine"! Fifty-one years fabulous and still going impossibly strong. Long may this queer icon reign.

heart-stoppingly exciting photos by Xevi Muntané after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Chastain @ Cannes

I was thrown for a giddy loop while watching the Lawless trailer last week when Jessica Chastain strolled into frame with this sassy rhetorical question:

Well... do I get the job?"

Oh, Jessica. You get every job.

Quoth Movie|Line two weeks back when she finally turned down a role (in something as fame-boosting as Marvel Studio's billion dollar superheroes franchise (Iron Man 3 to be exact):

Asked for their reactions, every other young actress in Hollywood sighed in unison, "Finally." 

When I interviewed Jessica Chastain this past Oscar season she was name dropping international auteurs like Olivier Assayas and Michael Haneke as dream directors, as a true cinephile and would be auteur muse would. I guess when you kick things off with stellar co-stars and Terrence Malick you have license to dream big. Will she actually court them (or vice versa) while in the South of France?

Or maybe she's recalibrated to pursue Jacques Audiard (extremely worthy target) who has a festival hit with Rust and Bone. What do you think Jessica Chastain is doing at this EXACT moment over in Cannes? It's 2:15 AM there at this very moment but it's not like anybody sleeps during the festival.