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Monday
Apr242017

Tribeca 2017: Guillaume & Marion in "Rock'n Roll"

Here's Jason Adams reporting from the Tribeca Film Festival

As the fifth movie I saw in a single day at the Tribeca Film Festival this past weekend (a new personal record!) I couldn’t have chosen wiser – Guilluame Canet’s movie star satire Rock'n Roll is as broad and goofy and absurd as they come, and while it might overstay its welcome (I’d say no comedy should run over two hours but Toni Erdmann did recently prove that golden rule incorrect) it’s also a lively good-natured farce that had the audience half rolling in the aisles. 

Canet co-wrote and directed Rock'n Roll, and he stars as Guillaume Canet, famous French actor and director, partnered with and father to the child of Marion Cotillard, world-famous Oscar winning actress – the two actors (and a troupe of famous French faces that they enlist to star alongside them and fill out their world) all send up their own images, taking them to absurd (and man does it go there) extremes...

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Monday
Apr242017

Feud 1.08: You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends? - Season Finale

In the season one finale, Joan goes to the dentist, Bette gets roasted, and the show answers the question “If you could have any four people over for dinner, dead or alive…?”

by Jorge Molina

Last night, after seven weeks of behind-the-scenes introspections, gargantuan character work, and many, many hats, Feud reached its conclusion. And if it accomplished anything, it was making clear that, underneath the two legends the world knows as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, there were two broken women with an eternal strive for outside validation, left empty once the cameras stopped rolling.

The finale presents the last years in the careers of Joan (Jessica Lange) and Bette (Susan Sarandon). But mostly Joan. Because she seemed to have been the most natural recipient of all the themes Ryan Murphy and company wanted to make evident: ageism, mysogny, merciless sacrifice for Hollywood, estrangement, ingratitude, and, mostly, pain...

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Monday
Apr242017

Tribeca 2017: November

Jason Adams reporting from the Tribeca Film Festival 

You can practically feel the mud caking beneath your fingertips while watching the Estonian fog folk nightmare that is November, which for once to this city boy felt like a good thing – that grounding sense of atmosphere helps situate us, keeping which way is up, in a topsy-turvy unknown world. If you’ve ever wandered in a country where you don’t speak the language then you’ll know the vibe director Rainer Sarnet dredges up here...

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Monday
Apr242017

Beauty vs Beast: Look Who's Still Here

Jason from MNPP with our weekly "Beauty vs Beast" fun-time - I'm surprised it didn't occur to me to do this one at the start of this year when we were mourning the epic loss of both Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds (I even re-watched this film at that time) but perhaps the pain was too much. Anyway as Nat told you earlier it's Shirley MacLaine's birthday so the right time has revealed itself, and today we'll tackle Mike Nichols' glorious 1990 comedy Postcards From the Edge, starring MacLaine and some Meryl woman, based on Fisher's thinly veiled book about a drug-addict actress and her let's-say-ebuillent actress-mother. Mother-Actress? Actress-Singer-Mother? Well that's the question, isn't it?

PREVIOUSLY I'm shocked and flabbergasted by you people - hasn't Jennifer Garner suffered enough? We wished her a happy birthday last week with some 13 Going on 30 love and y'all rejected her star-making performance for Adorable Mark Ruffalo. I... well he is pretty damn adorable. Said Dave S:

"Ruffalo in this movie is top-tier among underwritten love interests; I think him ceding the stage for the female lead is actually a point in his favor. He gets to fill the somewhat vaguely defined dream guy role in a way we're more used to seeing actresses relegated to. See also: Aidan Quinn as the projectionist in "Desperately Seeking Susan"."

Monday
Apr242017

The Furniture: Tom Sawyer's Stovepipe and Steamboat Nostalgia

"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...

[PART ONE OF OUR CELESTE HOLM CENTENNIAL SERIES]

On paper, 1973’s Tom Sawyer might be the oddest project of Celeste Holm’s entire career. It was her first big screen appearance in six years. She’d been splitting her time between TV and theater, making guest appearances on shows like The Fugitive and leading the national tour of Mame. And while it’s not unexpected that her return would come via an independent production, the company in question may surprise you.

Tom Sawyer was made by Reader’s Digest, during the company’s six year foray into the industry. This was their first feature, the accompanying risk of which might explain the bizarre product placement. Child star Johnny Whitaker is actually credited as appearing “through the courtesy of Elder Manufacturing Company, manufacturers of Tom Sawyer wearing apparel for boys.” Still selling uniforms today, their signature line of boys’ outfits appears not to have changed in a century.

For our purposes, however, the notable thing is the location. Tom Sawyer and its sequel are the only films based on Mark Twain’s beloved characters to be shot in Missouri after the silent era...

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