NYFF: Elisabeth Moss's Primal Scream in "Her Smell"

Jason Adams reporting on the New York Film Festival which kicks off Friday

On The Handmaid's Tale Elisabeth Moss is all internalized feminist rage - a sublimated sneer, her Offred says one thing ("Under His eye"), but her eyes, the curl of her mouth, (and also her voice-over) say quite another. But what of her smell? Oh no, Handmaids don't get to stink. They are clean and holy vessels, scrubbed raw of female afflictions. Rock Stars, on the other hand... the real world ain't Gilead (not quite yet anyway) and we're still gonna scream and stink and scream. And Alex Ross Perry's Her Smell screams. Primal screams. This is the rage we've been waiting for...

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NYFF: Olivier Assayas' "Non-Fiction"

Jason Adams reporting on the New York Film Festival which kicks off Friday night.

Calling a movie "Woody-Allen-ish" in 2018 is less of a double-edged sword than it is a single-edged one - there's not a lot of benefit; mostly just wounds. And yet Olivier Assayas' Non-Fiction kind of demands the comparison to Classic Woody - it's about a group of chatty literate urbanites having  literate urbane chats in luxurious apartments and outfits, all of them sleeping with each other while being obsessed with death and sex and books, order TBD. It's terribly witty in that very specific way that certain New Yorkers love, where they can turn to the person next to them and smile and nod, everybody content that hey, they got that one.

And listen, hey, I am one of those Certain New Yorkers myself, so I'm allowed to make fun...

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Soundtracking: "Her"

by Chris Feil

Say what you will about its hipster, ukulele verve, but “The Moon Song” from Her is one of the most deserving Best Original Song nominees of the past decade. Some of the reward may be carryover from songwriter Karen O missing out for Where The Wild Things Are’s equally deserving “All is Love”, but both prove essential to the emotional experience of their films. Seriously, Karen O, please make more music for films and not just those from Spike Jonze.

This song is a deceptively simple ditty, a longing love song that slips into the deep melancholy and faint whimsy of the near-future that Jonze creates in the film. It belongs to Her’s manic pixie dream AI Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), but also the romantic imagination of Joaquin Pheonix’s Theodore. Every couple needs a song, even if one of the parties is solely digital.

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Nicole Kidman's Cats

They're sisters. I'm in love. In a different post on Kidman's Instagram she says "I've always been a cat girl." Well, all the best people are!

Beauty Break: Celebrity Portraiture by Damon Baker

Glenn ClosePhotographer Damon Baker took that insanely great photo of Glenn Close while they rocked out to Janis Joplin recently together in his studio. Though he just barely turned 27, he's been a famous celebrity photographer for years now, first signing when he was just 18. He prefers black and white but lately has been experimenting with color. His favorite subjects appear to be Cole Sprouse (from Riverdale), singer Rita Ora, and a Swedish model named Simon J Loof.

Amazing portraits of Sir Ian McKellen, Tilda Swinton, Rami Malek, Zachary Quinto and more after the jump...

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