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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Tuesday, February 13, 2018 at 9:30PM Chris here. Even if the Oscar buzz comparisons to Melissa McCarthy didn't yield Tiffany Haddish the same happy result, all that talk maybe did align their stars together. The two funny ladies just signed on to star together in mob movie The Kitchen. Now before we prime ourselves for a comedy goldmine, this project will actually be something of a curve ball for both actresses...
Tuesday, February 13, 2018 at 3:37PM by Nathaniel R
Frances Ha
For those wondering why I've been so quiet during Oscar month, please bear with me a little while longer. After much chaos in my offline life and a painful end to a long relationship (...but let's not get into that), it's moving day. Or days.
It occurred to me today that movies skip over this physically exhausting and emotionally taxing work in seconds usually. Where's the magical montage that transports me from No-Longer-Home to New Place in like 10-30 whimsical but melancholy seconds? Because this real time continuous-shot business is no fun. Even Lav Diaz would think this running time indulgent.
But back to boxes and chaos. Here's to fresh starts.
Monday, February 12, 2018 at 11:52PM Daniel Walber's weekly series on Production Design. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.
While planning the look of Blade Runner 2049, director Denis Villeneuve asked production designer Dennis Gassner for something very specific: brutality. As Canadians, Villeneuve and Gassner know a whole lot about that, at least architecturally. Canada’s big cities are inflected by brutalist buildings, stark and intimidating structures that have made their mark on cinema. Enemy is a good example, along with a lot of David Cronenberg’s early work.
Of course, Blade Runner 2049 takes place mostly in Los Angeles and was shot in Hungary. But its use of brutalist design transcends the specificity of place, resembling a vaguely Canadian nightmare as much as any waking version of California...
Monday, February 12, 2018 at 5:00PM Chris here. One of the final major set of prizes before the Oscar ceremony was handed out over the weekend, the Writers' Guild of America awards. The WGA awarded their screenplay honors to Get Out in original and Call Me By Your Name in adapted. Even though the latter's Oscar competition is now even further in the dust, its safest-bet-of-the-night odds to win the big prize will still be an exciting victory lap for its never-awarded legend screenwriter James Ivory.
Monday, February 12, 2018 at 2:12PM Jason from MNPP here - while we're all sitting patiently on our hands waiting for Black Panther to hit theaters this weekend let us use the occasion of today's "Beauty vs Beast" to gaze backwards in Ryan Cooglar's filmography to the flick that no doubt gauranteed him this Marvel gig, 2015's great big crowdpleaser Creed. Coming nine years after Rocky Balboa, Sylvester Stallone's original "goodbye" to the character that gave him his career, Cooglar's Creed opened the franchise up and breathed new life into the Philadelphian boxing saga via Michael B Jordan's Adonis, son of Rocky's deceased opponant and friend Apollo, and with Adonis' attempt to find selfhood in the shadow of his legendary father. The relationship between Rocky & Adonis formed the core of the film, it was one fraught with tension, which brings us to...
PREVIOUSLY Nobody was going to beat The Lovely Laura Linney on her birthday, not even Mark Ruffalo's probable finest performance opposite her in You Can Count On Me - she scored a sizeable 70% of your vote in the end, proving you can indeed count on her. Said RV:
"One of the all time great screen pairs -- both so flawed, both so connected to each other. Lonergan's uncomfortable (for me, maybe not for him) commitment to Casey Affleck aside, he deserves enormous credit for providing such rich writing and understated directing to two amazingly talented performers. "
