Soundtracking: Wild Rose

by Chris Feil

If it’s time to start assessing this year’s Best Original Song Oscar potential at 2019’s midpoint, we have just been given a hell of a frontrunner in Wild Rose. The film’s buried lede is the participation of one beloved Oscar-winning actress. Guys, Mary Steenburgen is also a songwriter these days, and as Wild Rose’s finale proves, she’s a pretty good one.

Earlier this summer Rocketman arrived already prepackaged for a Broadway iteration by design, and Wild Rose feels similarly ready for the stage translation. The narrative follows all of the hallmarks of the traditional narrative structure for film’s about everyday people with big musical dreams. The film follows young Rose-Lynn, freshly released from prison back to her humble Glasgow home where her wary mother and two children await. She’s a long way from the Nashville she claims as her true home, with even further distance between her dreams of being a famous singer and her reality cleaning houses.

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Showbiz History: Hound dog Kurt Russell and fishy Fiona Shaw

7 random things that happened on this day (July 10th) in showbiz history

1964 The Beatles release "A Hard Day's Night" their 3rd studio album. Have you seen Yesterday the high concept musical comedy about a world without The Beatles in it? Only the title song from this particular album gets played in Yesterday. 

1981 It was a big weekend for Kurt Russell with two new movies in theaters...

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Big Little Lies MVPS: Episode 2.5 "Kill Me"

Previously: Episode 1 (Nathaniel) Episode 2 (Spencer) Episode 3 (Lynn) Episode 4 (Nathaniel) 

by Eric Blume

I’m onboard with most of the TFE staff that season two of Big Little Lies isn’t quite up to the level of its first season, but that it’s filled with fun, exciting, and interesting things.  Last week, Nathaniel noted that David Kelley’s writing is weaker this season, and I agree (especially in those therapy scenes), but it’s also about the directing: Andrea Arnold has talent, but she lacks Jean-Marc Vallee’s lush lyricism and ability to keep everything jangled and on-edge. She also doesn’t have Vallee’s gift for framing:  the images aren’t as memorable as what Vallee put together, and she’s shot too many in-the-car sequences from the backseat so the scenes feel repetitive rather than intimate and revealing. 

 But each episode holds wonderful surprises and treats for those invested in the show...

Top Ten MVPs of Big Little Lies, Episode 2.5 "Kill Me"

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Watch at home: Strange things to tell the bees during the Peterloo massacre

Nathaniel R giving you the heads up on what's newly available to screen at home.

DVD/Blu-Ray/Rental
• High Life - In which Dr Juliette Binoche gets nasty with her patients and Robert Pattinson mopes around in outer space while caring for an infant.
• Tell It to the Bees - In which Dr Anna Paquin seduces her new friend Holliday Grainger (fine performance!) in a small homophobic British town in the 1950s. But it's actually a sentimental family movie of sorts. Watch out for the unintentionally hilarious killer bees! 

Also newish on blu-ray and/or DVD: Pet Sematary, The Best of Enemies, Little, After, Mojin: The Worm Valley, and Gotham (the complete series). 

iTunes 99¢ Deals
Titles you can rent on the cheap this week include the orgiastic French film Climax, 2016's Best Picture winner Moonlight, 2017's very best film Lady Bird, the new horror classic The VVitch, Bong Joon-ho's popular South Korean monster movie The Host, and the charming Eighth Grade.  They're also offering up Don Jon & Under the Skin in a stealth attempt to remind you of what a genre-hopping ridiculously talented and versatile actress Scarlett Johansson is. Be happy that she shakes off the Marvel shackles very soon (Black Widow is currently filming). Who knows what pleasures await when she can step out of that one genre and into all genres again!

Streaming this week

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The New Classics - Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Michael Cusumano's series on the great films of the 21st century through the lens of a single scene.

Scene: Wig in a Box
I distinctly remember the arrival of the poster for Hedwig and the Angry Inch at the art-house movie theater I worked at during the Summer of 2001.  The poster is dominated by the image of John Cameron Mitchell’s gender-defying punk rocker aggressively belting out a song, a swirl of glittering make-up and tendrils of blonde wig. More than attention-grabbing, it was attention demanding. I eagerly anticipated the film as I watched the trailer several dozen times during my shifts. As a straight, cisgender man from the suburbs with a lackluster wardrobe, I assumed that it was most definitely a movie Not. For. Me. but as an insatiable movie-devouring college student, I was nevertheless excited for what looked like a wildly inventive, low-budget extravaganza.

And while I was correct about the creativity on display, I was wrong about feeling excluded by the film. Despite sharing zero details with the protagonist’s turbulent life story, it hit me personally in a way I wasn’t ready for...

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