Jeanne Moreau (1928-2017)

by Nathaniel R

Jeanne Moreau in BAY OF ANGELS (1963)

The greatest French New Wave icon Jeanne Moreau has passed away at 89 years of age. I didn't immediately understand the fuss over her in my earliest years of cinephila. That's no reflection on the silver screen goddess herself but rather a byproduct of my uncommon disinterest in François Truffaut's classic Jules et Jim (1962) in which Moreau is the object of both titular men's affections. That movie reliably excites almost everyone who shares the affliction of cinephilia so I can't say why it did so little for me!

But one day, nine years ago, my dear friend Vern who had been experiencing back pain and whose wife was off travelling somewhere brought over Bay of Angels (1963) for me to watch...

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Looking Ahead at Best Original Song

Chris here. What with Nathaniel's updated Oscar predictions and my regular Soundtracking duties, my mind has been on that ever pesky Best Original Song category. How will this year shake out for the sometimes maligned category?

Per usual we haven't had many obvious contenders, though I would argue that Beauty and the Beast's "How Does A Moment Last Forever" is one of the film's bright spots - can you just imagine Celine Dion taking the Oscar stage for the first time since Titanic. Perhaps our best chance at an Original Song behemoth like last year's La La Land and Moana were is The Greatest Showman, this season's original musical. But other questions and curiosities remain: what documentary song will surprise this year? Can credits song queen Sia finally land a nomination (she'll at least have one option with Wonder Woman)?

One contender I'm already hoping has some staying power is A Ghost Story's "I Get Overwhelmed" by Dark Rooms. The track flows fluidly in and out of Daniel Hart's score (naturally, he heads Dark Rooms), encompassing both the film's intimacy and cosmic expansiveness. Lyrically, the song carries meaning for Casey Affleck's songwriter and has a whole new context in the afterlife - so it carries the kind of narrative weight the Academy's songwriting branch has been seeking. But will it even make the eligibility long list?

Do you have any Original Song hopes already?

Review: The Emoji Movie

By Sean Donovan

The internet has spent the past few days savagely ripping apart The Emoji Movie, the animated film about sentient emojis and the adventures they have within your smartphone. This is a film made specifically for children of the internet, who might gaze upon this Sony vertical integration monstrosity of app references and infomercials for about a minute before heading back to their own smartphones. It’s tough to review The Emoji Movie, because it’s tough to take its lack of creativity and basic construction seriously when such cynicism and apathy burns off the screen. It singes your eyebrows. No one cared about making this movie; I can’t imagine anyone coming up with a criticism the filmmakers would even protest. The Emoji Movie is the unadulterated heart of capitalism pumping out disinterested beats, an infomercial for WeChat here, a paid ad for CandyCrush there, Sony everywhere you look...

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Sam Shepard (1943-2017)

by Eric Blume

Sam Shepard in the early days of fame

Although it’s been well over a decade since we’ve had a major contribution from Sam Shepard, his death yesterday at age 73 feels momentous.  He’s our only American playwright to have won a Pulizer Prize as a writer and then gone on to an Oscar nomination for his acting.  He was a symbol of masculinity and a man of great mystery...   

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Beauty vs Beast: Children of the Night

Jason from MNPP here with this week's brand new edition of "Beauty vs Beast." Isn't it weird that Marvel says they have no current plans to reboot the Blade series? I know, I know, we're supposed to be against reboots. But Blade is a great character with great name recognition, and he's a great character with great name recognition of color on top of that, so maybe we should set aside our prejudices in this instance. It has been thirteen years since the last film, after all. I really like the original Blade trilogy though, and so here on Wesley Snipes' 55th birthday let's give some love to the original 1998 film, which I've always in particular had a soft spot for... especially with regards to its bad guy played by a sleazily charismatic Stephen Dorff.

PREVIOUSLY Last week we wandered into the land of Gilead and faced off the Emmy nominated ladies of The Handmaid's Tale - sure enough voting for a bitter pill like Ann Dowd's villainous Aunt proved difficult in our current political situation and Elisabeth Moss took a whopping 80% of your vote. Said Duncan Dykes:

"Such great scene partners - feeding off of each other and selling the dystopian world better than any production design or visual effects could.... Points to Ann Dowd for consistently unexpected characterization - her apparently genuine care for some of the girls (Janine in particular, striking considering her initial torture of her) adds shades of humanity to her in most unnerving ways. She speaks more like a preacher or particularly disapproving parent than a general or warden, which makes the character all the more intriguing.

Ultimately however you have to go with Elisabeth Moss for a spellbinding symphony of a performance - deeply felt humanity, her drained voice and face, the precision of her furtive glances of longing or fear or paranoia or anger. She spends such stretches of the show with everything on the inside that when she gets to let loose and expose traces of the fury she feels regarding her situation, it leaves you shaking. Brava."