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The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)

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Monday
Apr022018

Beauty vs Beast: Monkeys to Monoliths

Jason Adams from MNPP here on the surface of the Moon (aka lower Manhattan covered with farcical April snowflakes) and primed to toss a bone your way with this week's edition of "Beauty vs Beast" which is wishing Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey a happy 50, which it turns today. The film premiered in Washington D.C. on April 2nd 1968 and in New York the following day, and it has probably been running on some stoner's projector every day since. The film was nominated for four Oscars and rightly won for Best Visual Effects - basically every movie that's gone to outer space ever since has been mercilessly ripping it off, just like every movie set in the future post-Blade Runner throws up a neon billboard or twenty. But for all its trippiness it's still at its heart just a "boy and his dog" movie. So what of the boy and his dog then?

PREVIOUSLY We faced down two of the greatest performances ever put on a movie screen last week with with A Streetcar Named Desire but y'all didn't have much trouble making your choice - Viven Leigh's Blanche DuBois roundhoused Marlon Brando's Stanley with 59% of strangers' kindnesses. Said adri:

"I always think of Tennessee Williams as expressing his soul through Blanche. So yes, my dearest Tennessee, I am with you on Blanche, no matter how messy, and a failure and a figure of ridicule she may be."

Monday
Apr022018

Box Office: Ready Player Dogs

by Nathaniel R

Weekend Box Office (March 23rd-25th)
W I D E
800+ screens
L I M I T E D
excluding prev. wide
1.🔺Ready Player One $41.2 (cum. $53.2) NEW REVIEW
1. 🔺 Isle of Dogs $2.8 on 165 screens (cum. $5.9) CAPSULE | HOMAGE OR APPROPRIATION
2. 🔺Tyler Perry's Acrimony  $17.1 NEW 2. 🔺 The Death of Stalin $1.4 on 484 screens (cum. $3.9) REVIEW
3. Black Panther $ 11.2 (cum. $650.6) PODCAST
3. 🔺 Baaghi 2 $580k on 123 screens NEW
4. I Can Only Imagine $10.7 (cum. $55.5) NEW 
4. 🔺 The Leisure Seeker $248k on 38 screens (cum. $1) 
5. Pacific Rim Uprising $9.2 (cum. $45.6) REVIEW
5. 🔺 Finding Your Feet  $61k on 14 screens NEW

 

Spielberg had his biggest opening in years with Ready Player One, though a lot of people (including our own Chris Feil) don't love the film. Black Panther just won't quit, now nearing the domestic totals of Titanic  (unadjusted) and Jurassic World  and only just starting to lose theaters in its 7th weekend. Meanwhile...

Click to read more ...

Monday
Apr022018

Isle of Dogs and Japanese culture: Riff, love letter, or appropriation?

by Lynn Lee

A friend on Facebook recently asked me, after I posted a positive response to Isle of Dogs, what I thought about the controversy over Wes Anderson’s alleged cultural appropriation of Japan.  My initial answer was that it bothered me a little bit, but not enough to mar my enjoyment of the movie.  Later I realized that I’d just implicitly accepted the charge that there was cultural appropriation and, as an Asian American, felt mildly guilty that it didn’t bother me.  But on further reflection, I’m not sure either of those knee-jerk reactions was warranted.  It’s more complicated than that.

The question of cultural appropriation can be broken down a few different ways...

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Sunday
Apr012018

Beauty Break: He is Risen

Did you love Jesus Christ Superstar Live!? John Legend was in spectacular voice as Jesus and kudos also to Tony nominee (and one of my favorite Broadway stars) Norm Lewis as Caiaphas. But the scene stealer of the night was Tony nominee Brandon Victor Dixon who stole the show as Judas Iscariot. He was a glittering reminder, particularly in disco chainmail in the closing fantasy sequence (since Judas had already committed suicide), that live performing is a unique skill set. Imagine your average movie star trying to keep up that much physical and emotional energy for two plus hours while leaping around a stage and singing at the top of their lungs. If anything Dixon's energy only grew as the night wore on. Just stunning. (I'm not talking about his body, but that too.)  

Though Jesus Christ Superstar! was in some ways an odd dated musical choice for a mainstream family event (it's not remotely 'funny' for one)  it was the best produced "Live" musical since that became an annual thing. The set design and direction were amazing, culminating in a major wow of a finale. Still don't love the Andrew Lloyd Webber score and can't fathom why people doing the orchestrations for Lloyd Webber revivals never think to subvert the oh-so-70s electric guitar sound (also a weird issue with the 1996 Evita movie) but you can't have everything.

Since this particular production had all kinds of gorgeous men in fine voice and equally fine body, let's end this Easter weekend sharing photos of the hottest men to have ever played Jesus in the movies or on television before John Legend's go at it. The gallery is after the jump...

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Sunday
Apr012018

Happy Easter!

I know we're supposed to be thinking about Jesus today but to be honest, I keep thinking about Annelle. And not just because she was the star of our first newsletter last week. Who or what are you thinking about on this Easter Sunday?