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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NYFF: Pawel Pawlikowski's Cold War

Jason Adams reporting from the New York Film Festival

Like Phantom Thread last year Pawel Pawlikowski's magnificently romantic and visually bewitching new film Cold War deals in the secret languages and strange understandings between true lovers - that no matter how hard it is on your soul and constitution that person sitting across the table is the one made for you and vice versa, and you might be the end of each other but you'll be each other's beginnings too...

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Oscar's Foreign Race Pt 4 - Debuting Filmmakers

Previously: All 87 foreign language film contenders, all the trailers we could find (we're missing just two) along with screening information, and the 20 female directors submitted.  Okay, part four now...

DEBUT DIRECTORS

First time's the charm. 26 of the 87 films Oscar-submitted by their home country are for directors making their debut. That's an extraordinary honor if you stop to think about it! Would you like to meet them? That's rhetorical as I'll hope you'll click ahead to do so...

Asim Abbasi is a Pakistani director making his feature debut with Cake. He previously made short films.  You can follow him on Twitter. 

More newbies after the jump...

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Soundtracking: "A Star is Born (1976)"

Last week Chris Feil looked back at Judy Garland and A Star is Born's musical beginning. This week, it's Streisand/Kristofferson...

Some viewers have chastised the current remake of A Star is Born’s presentation of pop music, but it kind of pales to the cynicism and condescension to 70s rock and roll in the Streisand/Kristofferson version of 1976. What had previous been told as a saga of the film industry is transplanted into rock arenas, the emptiness of fame represented by a ravenous crowd of thousands acting a fool. Know a little something about Streisand’s skittishness with (sometimes rabid) crowds and you can begin to understand the film’s boorish presentation of fandom, so some grace can be granted. But nevertheless, fame suddenly seems all the more vacuous here in the face of Real Artistry.

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