353 Days Until "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"

Behold. It's the first image of Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The film is still a year off, as it won't hit theaters until July 26th, 2019. The release date was originally August 9th, a tasteless choice as that will be the 50th anniversary of Sharon Tate's grisly murder at the hands of Charles Manson's followers. Tate was famously married to Roman Polanski and 8 months pregnant at the time (Tess, an Oscared hit in 1980, was dedicated to Tate, who had hoped Polanski would adapt it to screen). No signs of pregnancy in this photo so perhaps the film will not go there directly (we hope not).

The lead characters are a fictional actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double (Brad Pitt)...

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Together & Apart: 10 Years with The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

By Spencer Coile 

Growing up in the early 2000’s, it was near impossible to avoid hearing someone talk about The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. It followed four best friends who, realizing the difficulty of being apart from each other for the summer, find themselves inexplicably linked by a pair of jeans that magically fit all of them. The first book by Ann Brashares was published in 2001 with four sequels shortly after, so it wasn’t long before a film adaptation was in the works. 

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants was released in 2005 and its sequel in 2008. With the casting of TV stars Alexis Bledel, America Ferrera, Blake Lively, and Amber Tamblyn, the films brought the same magic that the novels did before them. They were melodramatic and trite, but bursting with themes of loss, love, and friendship. I was swept up in the magic, and with the 10th anniversary of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, felt it was imperative to get nostalgic and explore a series that helped define my adolescence...

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Sharp Objects: Episode 5 "Closer"

Previously: Episode 4 "Ripe"

by Chris Feil

This week’s Sharp Objects installment opened with its morphing opening credits turned into an ominous cooing, as if from the lullaby of a captor. And this week was similarly barbarous with its flailing comforts. “Closer”, its chapter title promises, describing both our discovery of the mystery and the shows encroaching brutal intimacy. This is the most contained episode yet, taking place over the course of a single day and mostly set on Eudora estate with all of the players brought together. It’s been a show built on a backbone of knowing glances, and “Closer” stacks several atop one another at once. Everyone has eyes on them, and no one feels fewer than Amy Adams’ Camille...

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Gloria Grahame with Cat

meow.

Beauty vs Beast: Running Mates

Jason Adams from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" query -- when I saw it written in my calendar that today is the 25th anniversary of The Fugitive my first thought is I must have done that movie for this series before, but a quick skim tells me I hadn't, and so here we are! I vividly remember The Fugitive coming out in the summer of 1993, a banner year for this movie-lover - I had gone to see Jurassic Park a dozen times by then and I needed something fresh and new to feed this newly awoken beast inside me; Harrison Ford leaping out of a train-crash did the trick.

I went to see the film several times after that, but save a few minutes here and there on TV I don't think I have seen it since? Still it's an easy enough film to remember, especially after we spent that entire year's awards season getting the clip of Tommy Lee Jones saying "gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse" hammered into our heads over and over and over, until he got his Oscar for it the next spring.

bike trails

PREVIOUSLY Two weeks back we had you tackling PTA's The Master - turns out that Joaquin Pheonix holds that title, taking a precise 2/3rds of your vote. Said Devin D:

"This performance truly cemented Joaquin Phoenix as one of the irrefutable greats, and it was very nice that Philip Seymour Hoffman got to work yet again before his untimely passing with Paul Thomas Anderson in a role so sizable."