Doc Corner: 'An Inconvenient Sequel' and 'Chasing Coral'

Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth was a brilliantly effective work of agitprop. It pushed Al Gore’s pet climate change cause into the cultural stratosphere and won two Academy Awards for the effort. Of course, one’s mileage with it as a good film or not likely depends on whether you consider good intentions as Oscar worthy. I personally don't care for the movie, and could easily list a dozen documentaries from 2006 worthier of the Oscar. Not the mention dozens of enviro-docs that are worthier of your time.

Still, despite this, I do not necessarily begrudge Guggenheim his Oscar (remember, Gore did not get a statue – something a right-wing commentator mistakes in the opening passages of this sequel). There is something to said about a film, documentary or not, that makes an audience feel and become as impassioned about as subject like this one did. It's just particularly frustrating with Truth given the inherently fascinating subject that inspires so many critical and scientific paths and which took the easiest and most pedestrian path.

Which brings us to a rare documentary sequel...

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"Justice League" to Deny Us the Cavill-stache

Chris here. Depending on which report you believe, Justice League has been in nearly constant state of filming since production initially wrapped. But the latest bit of news out of a new batch of reshoots has the superhero tentpole going too far - Justice League will digitally erase Henry Cavill's mustache.

Think of all the possibilities that we are being denied with this false CGI smoothness aside from a change of pace for the squeaky clean hero! Evil Superman, Euro-Superman, Tom-Selleck-Tribute-Superman. Jokes aside it is an odd sort of digital trickery and another level to the ongoing saga of this tentpole's preproduction. (But reminder: the goal of all reshoots is to make a movie better!)

This is also an interesting tidbit to emerge considering that Warner Bros. has been dancing around admitting that Superman will return from the dead in some form (that new poster out of Comic Con has Supes' logo though he is nowhere in the actual lineup). The practical reason is that Cavill will be back and forth between Superman duties and the next Mission: Impossible. What are the odds on the Cavill-stache being one of the best M:I stunts?

Would you keep or CGI out the Superstache?

A post shared by Henry Cavill (@henrycavill) on Jul 19, 2017 at 5:40am PDT

Beauty vs Beast: The Gilead Girls

Happy Monday, Jason from MNPP here with our weekly "Beauty vs Beast" fun-time experience. While you were all enjoying Elisabeth Moss' charm offensive on the Emmy Actress Roundtable this past weekend what you should have been doing is baking a birthday cake for her, because she turns 35 today.

Did we all watch The Handmaid's Tale? I'm thinking enough of us did (there was actressing from every angle, after all) that we can go ahead and have this week's contest be between Moss as Offred and her fellow Emmy nominee (not to mention honorary member of Team Film Experience!) the great Ann Dowd. Does Aunt Lydia's religious fervor strike too close to home, or is Dowd's take on the role just too delicious to ignore? You tell me.

PREVIOUSLY To be honest I am shocked that Charlton Heston won any votes in our Planet of the Apes off last week, but he was still soundly beat - Kim Hunter's Dr. Zira took over 81% of the vote. I guess his hands really are cold and dead now. Said Tom:

"Team Zira because empathetic scientists crying out the truth to an unbelieving world seems so important now."

Happy Monday Open Thread

Left to Right: Chris Feil, Murtada Elfadl, Nathaniel R, Jose Solis

The Film Experience is mostly an online party, but on very rare occasions small portions of us have the opportunity to see each other off line. So from this brief weekend get together... happy Monday to all of you!

WHAT'S ON YOUR CINEMATIC MIND?

The Furniture: Indulging Fantasy in 'The Lost City of Z'

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

by Daniel Walber 

The Lost City of Z begins with Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) in hot pursuit of a stag, risking his limbs to win the respect of his superior officers. Two things are obvious in an instant: his athletic ability and the enormous chip on his shoulder. Burdened by the memory of his alcoholic father, he throws his whole body into the quest for social redemption.

Unfortunately, this burst of exertion doesn’t pay off. He does get the stag, its lifeless head displayed prominently at the evening ball. But it’s not enough. The labyrinthine snobbery of England is presented by writer/director James Gray as an impossible obstacle, as resistant as the dense rainforests where Fawcett later seeks his fortune.

After this initial frustration, Fawcett accepts a cartographic mission to Bolivia. There, he is seduced by tantalizing stories of a lost city of gold. It becomes his obsession. In turn, the contrast between rigid England and lush Amazonia drives the film’s visual logic...

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