Blueprints: "Crazy Rich Asians"

I’m back. Thanks everyone for bearing with the small hiatus that the column took for the past few weeks. Who knew being overworked and sick wasn’t a good time? For our return, let’s take a look at the biggest movie of the summer, and how a pivotal scene operates in many emotional levels. -Jorge

Warning! Crazy Rich Spoilers ahead!

There are many things to admire in Crazy Rich Asians. Consider theway it reinvents a rom-com formula that seemed to have gotten stale. Or its historic all-Asian cast, something that hadn’t happened in an American movie in over two decades. Big themes of family, legacy, tradition and culture running through its veins. And Michele Yeoh’s stare. One scene in the movie encompasses all of these traits.

The mahjong game, the final confrontation between Rachel (Constance Wu) and Eleanor (Michelle Yeoh) was not in the original novel; it was written specifically for the film. It's one of the most emotionally powerful moments of the movie, where Rachel finally gives up the fight and backs away from her fiancée and his family that clearly doesn’t want her there. But in the scene, Rachel reclaims power and control in many levels at the same time. Let’s take a look at the script to see how the most tense movie moment of the summer was crafted. Sorry, Mission Impossible...

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Happy Birthday, Jane Krakowski!

By Spencer Coile 

You’d be hard-pressed to deny the impact Jane Krakowski has made on stage and television. In recent years, no actress has been as deceptively successful as Krakowksi. Many still lament the fact that she never won her rightful Emmy for 30 Rock – and let’s face it, she was robbed. The countless memes and gifs her performance as Jenna Maroney has inspired in the past five years has been nothing short of astonishing.

That said, she has been working steadily for the past 30 years, and what a triple threat she has become. Garnering two Daytime Emmy nominations, a Golden Globe nomination, five Emmy nominations, two Tony nominations, one Tony win, and an Olivier Award in the span of her massive career, it’s safe to say that Krakowski’s talents know no limit. 

Today she turns 50, so let’s celebrate all the fabulous work she has done since she began performing professionally in 1981. What are some of your favorite Jane Krakowski performances, moments, musical numbers? My go-to is always her rendition of “Call From the Vatican” from her Tony winning role in Nine. 

NYFF: Five Favorite Performances at the Festival

As the New York Film Festival winds down, here's Murtada Elfadl with some of his favorite performances from the movies he's screened.

Sakura Ando in Shoplifters
Shoplifters, Japan's Oscar submission, is about familial bonds that unite with love and real connection rather than blood. Ando plays Nobuyo, the matriarchal figure in this family of outsiders. Her character is the wisest, always knows more than the other characters in any situation. She’s in charge emotionally and that needs an actor who's restrained yet immediate and easy with feelings. She always has the emotional truth in the scene whether her character is having a tender moment with a lover, or facing up to ignorant authority.

Ando shines everytime she’s on screen, yet there’s one moment that is forever marked in my memory...

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Months of Meryl: Julie & Julia (2009)

The Filmography: Across 52 films, Meryl Streep taught America how to act, and how to accept awards. It’s been 41 years since Ms. Streep’s first film. Today we might think we live in the world Jennifer Lawrence, Brie Larson, and Alicia Vikander made, but beneath it all is Meryl, 69 if she’s a day, and no one can touch her.

The Contenders: Too young to recall The Hours press tour, and much too young for any pre-Devil Wears Prada context, really, Matthew and John  were looking for a challenge. And from Still of the Night to Dark Matter, they found it. Risking their sanity, their jobs, and Ingmar Bergman centennial retrospectives, they have signed on for a deranged assignment.

365 days. 52 films. A dozen-plus accents. Three Oscars. Two boys. One refurbished Blu-Ray player. How far will it go? We can only wait. And wait. And wait...

The Months of Meryl Project. Wrapping up soon on a blog you’re already reading.

#41 — Julia Child, beloved chef and unanticipated television star of singular personality.

MATTHEW: In surveying all 21 of the films that constitute Meryl Streep’s history-making haul of Academy Award nominations, Nora Ephron’s Julie & Julia, to my mind, represents an acting challenge that only this stupendous performer could have possibly played and been rewarded for playing...

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Showbiz History: SNL, Jane Krakowski, Laura, Jerome Robbins

Jean Cocteau and Edith Piaf10 random things that happened on this day, October 11th, in showbiz history...

1918  Happy Centennial to Broadway giant and choreographer Jerome Robbins who won a well deserved Oscar for his genius contributions to West Side Story (1961) which we've just discussed at length (in case any of you missed it).

1944 Classic noir Laura,  nominated for 5 Oscars, hits movie theaters. 

1963 Influential queer artist and filmmaker Jean Cocteau (of the sublime Beauty and the Beast fame) dies, just one day after his friend Edith Piaf. Some myths say it was upon the news of her death that his heart failed him. 

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