Fontaine Centennial: Mrs de Winter in "Rebecca"

For the next few days we'll be celebrating Joan Fontaine's Centennial. Here's Eric on her most famous picture...

David O. Selznick, Joan Fontaine, and Alfred Hitchcock at the Oscars for Rebecca. The film won... but Fontaine and Hitch didn't.

One of the best things about writing for The Film Experience is the chance to open up windows of your film history you haven’t explored before.  For some reason, throughout all the years, I had never seen a movie with Joan Fontaine.  Just one of those black holes.  And because she stopped acting before I was born, I have zero frame of reference for her (unlike, say, sister Olivia de Havilland)... 

Click to read more ...

RuPaul's Next Batch of All Stars!

Chris here. Last night the lineup was revealed for the third season of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars in a big casting extravaganza like Drag Race used to do in the old days. These casting specials really should be required for each season because we get to spend solo time with each queen that the workroom can't afford. And for an All Stars season it allows the newer viewers an opportunity to get to know queens from early seasons. But onto the queens - this year's lineup is also stocked full of "eliminated too soon" queens to go with the fan favorites:

• Aja (Season 9)
• BenDeLaDreme (Season 6)
• Chi Chi Devayne (Season 8)
• Kennedy Davenport (Season 7)
• Milk (Season 6)
• Morgan McMichaels (Season 2)
• Shangela (Season 2 and 3)
• Thorgy Thor (Season 8)
• Trixie Mattel (Season 7)

But wait, there's more! In typical teasing Ru fashion, one queen has yet to be revealed. Whether she will be announced later or saved for the show itself remains to be seen. However with such a build up, its safe to say it's a major competitor. Could it be a shocking game changer like Willam or a cult favorite like Stacy Layne Matthews?

We'll have to wait and see when the new season arrives sometime this winter. This set of queens is on the scrappier side, so we can expect a fight to the top. I'm not ready to name a personal favorite until we see what happens, but current top 3 would be Kennedy, DeLa, and Trixie. I'm already seeing lots of passion for Chi Chi on Twitter, but tell us in the comments: who are you rooting for? (And for the love of RuPaul: let's keep the spoilers out of the comments this go around, readers!)

The Epic and Crowded "Mudbound"

by Murtada

About halfway into Mudbound, the new film from Dee Rees (Pariah), the matriarch of a family of landowners in the Mississippi Delta Laura Mcallan (Carey Mulligan) offers a maid job to Florence (Mary J Blige), whose family are land tenants of Laura's husband Henry (Jason Clarke). The offer comes after Florence had been forced to leave her own family for a few days to help Laura with her sick young daughters. It is a startling offer that comes out of nowhere and Florence isn't given an option to accept or refuse, but rather told it’s been decided to hire her.

However before the audience can process the audacity of Laura’s offer and Florence’s resignation, we are immediately pulled into a combat battle in WWII where Henry’s brother (Garrett Hedlund) and Florence’s oldest son (Jason Mitchell) have enlisted. Herein lies Mudbound's dilemma...

Click to read more ...

Middleburg Day 1: Delightful Fest / Darkest Hour

by Nathaniel R

Thursday. Though a cab accident* and a missed flight threatened to derail day one, somehow The Film Experience's second annual trip to Middleburg, VA commenced just in time for the opening night festivities. The Middleburg Film Festival is now in its 5th year and growing each time.  It's still small enough, however, that it feels like a discovery.

This year's fest kicked off with Joe Wright's Darkest Hour which holds up incredibly well to a second viewing. It's both muscular and fabulous, so it feels like a blend of impulses that, say, Scorsese and Baz alike might thrill to. And in place of their shared muse Leo DiCaprio a fat-suited bejowled Gary Oldman...

Click to read more ...

The Timeliness and Timelessness of "Landline"

By Spencer Coile 

During a pivotal scene in Gillian Robespierre's Landline, just out on DVD, a familiar song begins to play. Curious to figure out what it was, I quickly Shazamed it on my phone to discover that it was Angel Olsen's 2016 song "Sister." It is an epic song -- almost eight minutes long, discussing the longing nature of wanting to change. I was initially delighted to hear a song that resonated with me back when years ago. But why was a tune from the late 2010's playing in a film that takes place in 1995? 

Landline is a film that is all about time. It is rooted firmly in the mid-90's with plenty of political, social, and pop culture references (Jenny Slate's Dana remarks that her and her fiancé rented Curly Sue from Blockbuster and that "it's a good film"). The use of "Sister," however, speaks to the film's transcendence from a period piece to one that is equally as relevant in 2017...

Click to read more ...