The Furniture: Theatrical Magic in "Fanny and Alexander"

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, our weekly series on Production Design returns for Season 3! Kicking off with an episode of our Ingmar Bergman Centennial Mini-Series.

There is so much to say about Fanny and Alexander. It has the visual density of The Age of Innocence, the spiritual ascent of Berlin Alexanderplatz, and Ingmar Bergman’s remarkable way with character. These elements gather together to form a benevolent and mystical dome, one which will define the young Alexander’s relationship to his family and his world. The film is built with a free sense of reality, leaping across time but lingering in resonant moments. Bergman casts the Ekdahl family as practitioners of a magical humanism, which which whisks the audience through these many hours as if in a dream.

Much of this atmosphere depends upon the film’s Oscar-winning production design. 

Its furniture magic takes center stage in the first act, late into the early morning hours of Christmas. Oscar Ekdahl (Allan Edwall), Fanny and Alexander’s father, spins a fantastical yarn about an otherwise unremarkable wooden chair. Its long history and hidden power, he says, make it the most valuable in the entire world. Between the flickering gas lights, the holiday atmosphere and the mood of childlike wonder, we are all taken in...

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Fantasia, Straight Ahead

by Jason Adams

Tomorrow marks the opening of the 22nd annual Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, which runs all the way to August 2nd - the fest focuses in on genre films from around the world, with titles ranging from Indonesian Cowboy Epics to Christmas Zombie Musicals to Nicolas Cage. It's got everything a growing nerd might want... and then some things you might not think you want but you'll try them anyway and oh look you've got a new kink now, thanks Fantasia.

I'll be covering the fest both here at TFE and over at MNPP (we covered the fest there last year) over the next couple of weeks. There are some big titles screening like Mandy, the by-all-accounts insane bloodbath starring the aforementioned Cage alongside Andrea Riseborough of all people, and Under the Silver Lake, It Follows' director David Robert Mitchell's (recently delayed) flick with Andrew Garfield.

After the jump six smaller yet delicious-looking highlights from the fest's epic programming slate that we're hoping to get our beady little eyes on...

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Saoirse, Queen of Looks

 

Chris here. Two Mary Queen of Scots posters have arrived and the internet has already gone monosyllabic. Saorise Ronan and Margot Robbie are here in vivid primary colors, and honey, they are not here for any of your crap. Given the Ronan has also landed the cover of next month's Vogue, rest assured that Focus Features is hitting the pavement hard and early to solidify one of this year's Best Actress frontrunners. Before the trailer arrives tomorrow and we finally get a glimpse of Ronan's titular role heroine opposite Robbie's Queen Elizabeth, tell us which velvet high collar look is giving you goosebumps!

Soundtracking: "The Rose"

by Chris Feil

History may never let us forget that The Rose began as a Janis Joplin biopic before objections from her family and even its eventual star, Bette Midler. And sure, the similarities remain: a tragic end after a life of drugs, booze, and emotional bruises so deep that they bled out into the vocals.

But the unfortunate side-effect of the Joplin adjacency is that Midler’s achievement is overshadowed in the public consciousness. It’s Joplin as template only and its songs are nearly all covers of other blues and rock artists, and still Midler creates her own unique persona and musical identity. When so many actual biopics fail to discover the inner humanity of an artist, she ends up capturing the the crushed spirit of an entire genre...

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Tab Hunter (1931-2018)

by Nathaniel R

Tab at the beach in the early '50sApologies that we didn't say our goodbyes to one of Hollywood's best hunks, Tab Hunter, in a timelier fashion.

Tab's real name was Arthur Kelm but back in the studio days almost everyone got a catchier name to boost their celebrity appeal... and you can't really beat Tab Hunter for a memorable name, can you? (Sometimes we wonder why actors don't do that now. Benedict Cumberbatch as a stage name and so many actors use their real names even if their real name is  long and hyphenated and hard to imagine on a marquee!).

Though born in New York his sun-kissed blonde beauty was a perfect fit for sunny California and Hollywood and he rose through the ranks quickly in films. Despite a few well regarded performances peppered throughout his career he was never considered a particularly strong actor and his fame diminished with time. Until recently but we'll get to that in a minute.

Tab Hunter and Dorothy Malone in "Battle Cry" from 1955, the year that made him a big star.

Yours truly first learned of him in the 1980s due to young me's obsession with Natalie Wood (my first actressexual fixation). The studio though they'd make a terrific onscreen couple and threw them together for back-to-back pictures in 1956 -- Burning Hills and The Girl He Left Behind -- because each had had big hits the year before. Teenage Natalie, already a star, was hot off of her first Oscar nomination for Rebel Without a Cause, ample proof that her child-star status would transfer well to adult stardom. Tab had had two huge hits in 1955 (Battle Cry and The Sea Chase). While his films didn't endure like Natalie's (with the arguable exception of Damn Yankees!), Warner Bros was passionate about his bankability...

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