Yes No Maybe So: "Lucy in the Sky"

by Nathaniel R

We're finally excited about 2019. The culprit is one Lucy in the Sky which is neither a Beatle biopic nor a sequel to Lucy in which ScarJo became some sort of supercomputer with black tentacles. Instead it's a sci-fi drama with Natalie Portman playing an astronaut named Lucy. Wasn't Portman going to do Gravity (2013) at one point? Anyway she finally gets her chance to do the wide-eyed-at- the-mysteries-of-the-cosmos thang here. Arguably she's already been there via Annihilation (2018) but that was less wide-eyed with wonder and more wide-eyed with "we're all gonna die" tension.

Lucy in the Sky is the feature directorial debut of Noah Hawley who made his name on various TV shows including the surreal superhero drama Legion, the one with Dan Stevens and his multiple personalities. We'll break down the trailer after the jump with our Yes No Maybe So system...

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Would you rather?

Time for another round of our silly Instagram-time-wasting distraction. Would you rather...

...have a double-ginger moment with Isabelle & Juli?
...see Dumbo with Dame Helen? 
... share a meal with a Quokka and a Hemsworth?
...cuddle a lamb with Vera Farmiga? 
... hike Koko Head with Cynthia Erivo? 
... visit Patagonia with La Pfeiffer? 
... sing-along with the Bee-Gees and Guillaume Canet? 

Pictures are after the jump to help you decide...

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Watch at Home: Into the Poppins-Verse and Triple Shoplifting Frontiers

Here's what's new for home viewing this past week or so.

New Blu-Rays/DVDS
• Mary Poppins Returns We here at TFE, despite being a musicals-inclined site, gave this one really short shrift this past season. It was not intentional but it was just that dang Christmas release date when everything is happening all at once. If you'd still like to discuss it let us know in the comments and perhaps we'll do a belated write-up
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse so fun... though we worry it'll spur a million sequels which will, by the very nature of the novelty of this one, be inferior.

More DVDs and new to streaming titles after the jump...

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Abe's SXSW Wrap: Top Ten + Best Performances

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

Jay Duplass and Tatiana Maslany star in the romantic drama "Pink Wall"

The SXSW Film Festival is officially over, and the official winners have all been announced. I managed to catch 34 titles this year, but just three of them won prizes: Alice, the story of a mother who becomes an escort after learning her husband spent all their money on them (which just barely missed my top 10 best of the fest), the comedy Yes, God, Yes and the doc Running with Beto, which was cool to see with an audience of Texas liberals.

Nathaniel likes us to do "jury of one" wrap-ups if we see a lot of festival films so here are my picks for the best in multiple categories, including acting honors... 

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Stage Door: Kiss, Me Kate

by Dancin' Dan

“I hate men,” sings Kelli O’Hara in the Roundabout Theater Company’s revival of Kiss Me, Kate, and the audience applauds in agreement. It may be a bit counterintuitive, but right now feels like exactly the right time to revive this golden age musical, about a formerly married, constantly bickering couple starring in a musical version of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. It's the right time to go to the theater and see a farce where a woman gives as good as she gets from a powerful, abusive man. And Scott Ellis’s sparkling revival delivers, with a little bit of help from some “additional script material” by Amanda Green, and a lot of help from its dynamite leading lady.

This is the best Kelli O’Hara has been since her performance as Nellie Forbush in Bartlett Sher’s 2008 revival of South Pacific...

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