Yes No Maybe So: "Boy Erased"

by Nathaniel R

Another Oscar hopeful trailer coming at you. Focus Features will begin the platform release of  Boy Erased this November 2nd which is of course a prime Oscar date. December is sometimes too late but November is a sweet spot, rarely too early nor too late exactly if the film is high profile enough with Oscar pedigree. Not that November is easy. There will be a ton of competition for media attention. 

We now have the poster with Lucas Hedges praying for a second Oscar nomination to release him of this gay burden? And the trailer has arrived too. The buzz is already strong for the acting which is no surprise with the trio of Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, and Russell Crowe jerking the tears... but can the film itself also impress? The trailer and a Yes No Maybe So breakdown are after the jump... 

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Call of the Ford

by Jason Adams

When Clark Gable played the gold prospector character called Jack Thornton in the 1935 movie version of Jack London's dog adventure novel Call of the Wild he was 34 years old. When Charlton Heston played the character in the 1972 film, he was 49 years old. And now comes word that we've got 76 year old Harrison Ford tackling the role... so given the way this casting's going look out for the skeleton of Clark Gable to reprise the role about thirty years from now. 

Ageist jokes aside Harrison's a good match for the role, which is slyly stoic and adventurous in the way he likes to be but maybe adaptable to fewer big outward heroics than Indiana Jones, who's coincidentally why he's doing this role - the fifth Indy movie got moved back for a rewrite and so he signed on to make Call of the Wild with director Chris Sanders (How to Train Your Dragon) and the hella booked screenwriter Michael Green (Logan and Blade Runner 2049 among many) and here we are. Any Call of the Wild fans out there? 

Sharp Objects: Episode 2 "Dirt"

Previously: Episode 1 "Vanish"

Go report somewhere else. Let these people be"

by Nathaniel R

Team Experience has decided to pass the baton each week on Sharp Objects for different perspectives / takes on the show. Two episodes in I think that seems fitting. While the show is focused on one woman's perspective, albeit not in a first-person narrative way, its shard-like editing is disorientingly multiple in feeling, as if Camille (Amy Adams) can't shake any of her past selves but also can't just be in any moment with herself. The communal self, the incestuously local population of depressed sweaty Wind Gap, Missouri, isn't any easier for her.

The second episode "Dirt" revolves around the funeral of Natalie Keene, a young girl murdered by an unknown killer. Detective Willis (from Kansas City... and our dreams) fears it's a serial situation given a similar early crime in Wind Gap. Willis and Camille do their own individual digging while Adora (Patricia Clarkson) continually bristles at her daughter Camille's reporting...

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Showbiz History: Hard-Living Women and "Mr Holmes"

We need escapism now more than ever so on this July 17th let's looks back into Showbiz History for easier things to think about then the here and now.

ten random things that happened on this day in showbiz history...

1899 Oscar winning James Cagney (Yankee Doodle Dandy) born in New York City

1935 Two famous actors share this birthday: Donald Sutherland born in Canada and Diahann Carroll born in the Bronx. Happy 83rd to both of them!

← 1942 Lana Turner marries restaurateur and ladies man Stephen Crane (he dated several famous actresses, married two of them). Get this: between July 1942 and August 1944 they married, got an anullment, got remarried, had a baby (Lana's only child, Cheryl), and then got divorced! Lana lived a tumultuous life... 

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Stage Door: "Teenage Dick" and "Boylesque Bullfight"

Stage Door is our intermittent theater column because there is more to live than cinema and also because cinema and the stage frequently interact...

Teenage Dick (Public Theater)
This very cheekily titled show -- so embarrassing to say or type! -- is actually Shakespearean. (What isn't when it comes to theater? We'd love playwrights and directors to leave Shakespeare behind for a few years and discover vast untapped realms, but they're all Bard addicts who perpetually need a fix.) If you're going to riff on the Bard, please have as much fun with it as Teenage Dick does! This comic interpretation of Richard III recast the disabled king as a teenager in hate with his boring high school and the jock star and Christian activist classmates he aims to take down via an upcoming student election...

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