The Furniture: My Gal Sal's Nonsense Gay Nineties

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail. Here's Daniel Walber...

My Gal Sal is a pack of lies. The 1942 musical, ostensibly a biopic of songwriter Paul Dresser, is almost entirely fabricated. Of course, that hardly matters. Accuracy is no prerequisite for the Best Production Design Oscar, which Richard Day, Joseph C. Wright and Thomas Little won for the picture. No one will be mad if some details are fudged in musical numbers like “Me and My Fella and a Big Umbrella.”

That said, My Gal Sal is interesting because it’s all nonsense. It’s a window into the way Hollywood projects itself onto the past, a compendium of historical kitsch.

Dresser (Victor Mature) begins the film in a strict, Indiana home. His minister father objects to his music, so he runs away and gets a job with a medicine show. 

Eventually he meets Sally Elliott (Rita Hayworth), an established Broadway star. They don’t hit it off right away, but he meets her again in New York City. Their on-again-off-again romance, troubled by his sudden success, drives the rest of the plot...

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Tribeca 2017: Thirst Street

Indefatigable Jason Adams with another review from Tribeca!

For anyone who's ever felt like the most pathetic poke in the cabbage patch I give you Thirst Street, a hyper-fevered ode to our most self-destructive urges. Narrated by Anjelica Huston!

You think you're bad, refreshing your oblivious self-assigned amour's Facebook feed ten times a day? Wait til you catch a load of Gina (played by a madly committed Lindsay Burdge), the flight attendant fleeing her barely-cold ex's corpse to stalk a one-night stand with all the force of a category four... 

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May!

And you... and you... and you... you're gonna love May! 🎵

That's my promise to you readers. We're planning to work our asses off this month for you after a slow April. When you feel energy comin' off the blog, given back in the form of comments, shares, donations, good vibes, or subscriptions, won'cha?

May is the month of the Virgin Mary, emerald birthstones, Tauruses and Geminis, and all sorts of ultra specific things you can celebrate on this very day if you're feeling festive.

10 things work celebrating on this day in history (May 1st) after the jump including Batman and our third living 100 year-old movie star...

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Box Office For Those Who Can Read...

by Nathaniel R

Since this weekend's box office results are just too dull to report on (April has been seriously lacking in new mainstream movies of worth) let's swerve over to the arthouse for this weekend's box office chart. And this gives us an excuse to talk about the the underdiscussed auteur François Ozon, too. D'accord? Which foreign language films have been most popular with US moviegoers in the first third of the year?

TOP FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILMS RELEASED IN 2017
(numbers as of April 30th, some of these are still in theaters)

01 Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (India) $10.1
A sequel to the 2015 epic about ancient India. 

02 Your Name (Japan) $4.2
Many people thought this should have been nominated for the animation feature Oscar last year -- from my understanding it's being shown in both English dub and in subtitled versions though I'm not 100% confident about this understanding.

⇱ 03 Raees (India) $3.2
Shah Rukh Khan continues to be a very reliable Bollywood draw. His latest is about a bootlegger in Guajarat...

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Ask Nathaniel

The Q&A was good last week, wasn't it? So lets do another one. Got a question? Ask it in the comments. Your theme, which you don't have to adhere to, is "May". May has Emerald as its birthstone, Taurus and Gemini as its the signs, The Virgin Mary as one of its prime devotions, and its also Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and Mental Health Awareness Month.

Ask some Star Wars questions for "Star Wars Day," too, while you're at it! Ready and go...