Blueprints: "A Quiet Place"

This week, Jorge dives deep into the unconventional formal elements inside the screenplay of the number one film in the country right now. 

A Quiet Place is an immersive experience. The film centers around a dystopian future, in which creatures that are attracted to sound have taken over. In order to stay alive, a family has to stay totally silent through their everyday lives. 

The film utilizes sound (the lack of, its intensity, its threat) as a formal device to guide us through the narrative. There is barely any spoken dialogue. Everything is conveyed visually, using alternative devices than those we are used to seeing in film. It is an experiment in form.  Its screenplay is much the same. Using devices that are rarely found in a regular script, the writers create an immersive, completely different experience that lets the reader know right away that this is not your regular horror flick...

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William Holden in "Picnic"

Our mini William Holden Centennial celebration continues with Eric Blume...

Picnic, the 1955 film version of William Inge’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, came two years after William Holden won his Best Actor Oscar for Stalag 17 and one year after his dashing role in Sabrina.  Holden was at the height of his stardom when this film released, and he’s smartly front and center through most of the picture...

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Doc Corner: 'Yours in Sisterhood' is an Essential Film for 2018

This week we're going to the Art of the Real festival in NYC from April 26 to May 6, which will feature documentaries by big names of international cinema like Sergei Loznitsa, Corneliu Porumboiu and Kazuhiro Soda, and will open with Julien Faraut's John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection.

By Glenn Dunks

I finally just finished season one of The Handmaid’s Tale, which feels appropriate to note as I sit down to write about the incredible documentary Yours in Sisterhood. If people thought that the themes of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel remained pertinent to present day society, then what can be said about this documentary that repurposes unpublished letters to the editor of Ms. magazine from the 1970s as a reflection on the struggles of women in contemporary society.

This compelling documentary by Irene Lusztig, full of rich words and thought-provoking dichotomies, takes its name from Amy Erdman Farrell’s 1998 non-fiction biography of the history of Ms. entitled Yours in Sisterhood: Ms. Magazine and the Promise of Popular Feminism. But that doesn’t necessarily make for the sort of rapturous documentary about Ms. that one might expect. Rather it asks the viewer to consider the many ways equality – and more specifically, feminism – has come, how it succeeded and how it failed, both then and in the current day, and how we look at and interact with history...

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April Foolish Predictions: What film scores will be loved in 2018?

by Nathaniel R

Mary Poppins (1964) was nominated for 13 Oscars winning 5. Will Mary Poppins Returns (2018) also win Oscar hearts?

Since scores are often one of the very last components to fall into place in post-production, determining which scores might stand out at year's end is like throwing darts blindfolded. Each year some composers are replaced between our first round of predictions and the time their films arrive. Plus some 2018 movies haven't even hired a composer yet. Presumably they're waiting for Alexandre Desplat's schedule to open up. Only half joking! The perpetually in demand French composer and double Oscar winner generally scores anywhere from 5 to 10 (gulp) movies a year and he only has three films currently scheduled for release in 2018 (Isle of Dogs, Operation Finale, and Kursk... though we suspect The Sisters Brothers will hit this year as well, making it 4). Other Oscar favorites who have suspiciously empty schedules this year include Hans Zimmer and Thomas Newman.

From the year's releases that we've already seen we're curious about how A Quiet Place and Black Panther might hold up in the sound categories, too, since both films are blockbusters and A Quiet Place, especially, relies heavily on its aural elements for its success.

In related news: Best Original Song is next to impossible to predict this early as details are always scarce until late in the year but if you have any premonitions do let us know!  Here is our guesswork on the sound categories for the next Oscar race and the April Foolish Predictions thus far.

Months of Meryl: She-Devil (1989)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

#16 — Mary Fisher, a frivolous romance novelist who steals the husband of a dowdy housewife.

JOHN: For such a tepid and unruly film, She-Devil enjoys quite an outsized reputation. Considered by many to be the nadir of Streep’s early career and one of her worst performances, She-Devil is also a Streep turn that is often reblogged context-free online, which makes sense when one considers its outre, GIF-ready moments of ironic femininity and gaudy Real Housewives of Long Island aesthetic that some might consider ahead of its time. Having seen these images of Streep’s Mary Fisher before watching the film, I had anticipated fun kitsch or perhaps even smart camp. Roseanne’s film debut! Susan Seidelman with a budget! Meryl’s comedy vehicle to silence the critics! But these are promises that She-Devil most certainly does not keep...

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