Q&A Part 1: No Actresses! Whatever Will We Talk About?
Monday, March 23, 2015 at 3:00PM
NATHANIEL R in Auntie Mame, Best Actor, Costume Design, Film Bitch Awards, Horror, James Dean, Production Design, Q&A, Vertigo, musicals

To try something a little different I asked y'all to ask me questions that were not actress related this week. Hold me, I'm scared.

But sometimes you gotta push out of the comfort zone. Some people disobeyed -- sorry, not answering those! Some people gave me ideas for much longer posts. Others took it quite literally just reversing the genders of a question they'd normally ask. But a lot of interesting questions were on offer this week so we'll split this baby into two this week, feeling generous. Part two tomorrow.

Here's the 8 questions we're answering today including but not limited to favorite (male) stars, awesome film sets, horror flicks, and costume dramas...

DAN: What film set, taking in mind color schemes, evocative moods, and lighting, would you most like to inhabit. Ignore modern conveniences like air conditioning and pleasant smells. 

NATHANIEL: This question is so open-ended so we'll start with the movie that popped into mind IMMEDIATELY whilst reading it and surprised me becasue it wouldn't leave: Vertigo.


There are so many great rooms you could imagine spending hours in. Midge's apartment is like bohemian artist / spinster heaven. And what a view. And who wouldn't make a multi-course dinner reservation at that red red  red restaurant that Scottie spots Madeleine in?

[More...]

Every single place is awesome: the beautiful but somehow creepy clocktower, the shop with all the crazy heaps of flowers (even its alleyway), and the museum with the Carlotta painting. Raise your hand in the comments if you love art museums.

Other single sets if not whole movies that seem fascinating but in a more of a "dare yourself to investigate their creepy nooks and crannies" haunted house kind of way are the family estate in The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Nicole's shuttered gothic home in The Others (2001), and "Manderley" in Rebecca (1940).

Oh and TOTALLY Auntie Mame's (1958) apartment and every few months, too, to gawk at what she's done to it this time. Wait. Why are both of my main answers from 1958 ??? That's weird.

Okay, something more modern: ask me to come to the sets from any Wes Anderson or Baz Luhrmann and I'll  pack my bags --when can I move in? 

CLOVER: Which pre-20th century era is your favorite for period films?

This is really interesting question which I'll admit I've never thought of. As a kid I loved movies with medieval setting (early Camelot/Excalibur obsession) and any stories that were Greco-Roman in nature but contemporary cinema loves violence too much for me to be drawn to pre-Enlightenment stories now. I understand that life can be brutal and short but I'm just not into seeing it be that way graphically. It's one of the reasons I don't watch Game of Thrones -- admittedly out of the purview of this question as its fantasy and not "period" but it just has way too much maiming and beheading and bone breaking for me. I think my answer is right on the cusp of the 20th century. I tend to be interested in movies set in the Belle Epoque / Gilded Age time frame. I've actually been meaning to watch The House of Mirth (2000) again since falling back in love with Gillian Anderson in The Fall. The time frame was fascinating politically, economically, and in the arts and fashion. These movies demand great eye candy in production design and costume design (Moulin Rouge!, Cheri, The Age of Innocence, etcetera) and long live the "Spectacular! Spectacular!"s you know? 

My runner up answer is... everything else? All periods have their unique soil for great stories and if they find the right filmmaker, like James Ivory & the Edwardian era, it's a marriage made in heaven.

BROOKESBOY: Please name your top ten actors and your favorite (not best!) film from each


Okay this I can do. though I'm never satisfied with the list.

William Holden

That's 14. SHUT UP. Okay, I can't do that. I couldn't narrow it down any further and I already feel bad about the ones I left off. The current movie star most 'on the rise' towards all time favorite status is Michael Fassbender. You can see a larger unranked list of my 50 favorite male movie stars here, published back in 2012

PAUL OUTLAW: East of Eden opened in NYC on March 9, 1955. (Dean died at the end of September, and Rebel Without a Cause opened in October.) Any thoughts or plans for the blog for the 60th anniversaries (which AMPAS so far seems to have forgotten)?

We try to stick to 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 100th anniversaries (hence this tag) not because we always like those years best -- they change with the calendar year after all -- but because you have to narrow it down somehow or it's anniversaries hourly. But I've had a hankering to revisit Giant (1956) lately so maybe we'll do that. You may have noticed we've already played around a little in 1915, 1965, 1990, and 2005 this year and we'll be doing a big thing for Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) soon to celebrate its 75th. 

VAL: I don't know if this violates the "no actress" rule, but I do have a question about the banner featuring Brad Pitt, Nicole Kidman, Lupita Nyong'o, and Ralph Fiennes. Do these represent your favorite performances from those respective years?


For those of you who are like "huh"? this question involves the deviations from the normal banner. When you click on Oscar charts or Film Bitch Awards (which I hope you do) the banner up top changes to reflect where you are on the site. Usually the method to this madness is obvious. In this case maybe not so much. I was not going with "Performance of the Year" but just going with one of the four "gold medalists" from the last four years and trying to get some variety up there in terms of image, color palette, and style of performance. (Oops, I guess I just spilled the beans that Fiennes is getting the gold medal.) In most cases it's more obvious, various Oscar pages and the Film Bitch pages generally just show the last four big winners.

BHURAY: Five favorite horror films?

I can't go a full five because there are only three that I totally worship and can watch all the time, requiring no rare "I feel like watching a horror flick!" mood, me being a wuss and not an aficianado. My favorites, towering over the rest are: 1. Psycho (1960) 2. Carrie (1976) and 3. Rosemary's Baby (1968). I suggest reading our Team Top Ten on this genre split into two parts "Before The Exorcist" and "After The Exorcist" for a more detailed investigation of highlights of this revered (if not by me) genre. (I like a lot of those 20 pictures discussed but not in the way of 'BEST MOVIES EVAH!' like these three.

JONES: Are there any films you often watch when you're feeling down?

Not particularly single films, no, but any musical will do... even the sad ones. The last part of that sentence might sound weird but watching Liza Minnelli arching backwards in editorial pose over a chair during 'Mein Herr' for the thrill of future Nazis cheers me up just as much as Debbie Reynolds bursting out of a wedding cake singing 'All I Do is Dream of You' at a silly Hollywood party.

HENRY: What are your interests outside film and actresses?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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