Cate and Sandy on the Set of "Ocean's 8"

by Chris Feil

We're pretty excited for the Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett-led Ocean's retooling here at The Film Experience - no surprise considering the cast also includes Sarah Paulson, Anne Hathaway, Mindy Kaling, Helena Bonham Carter, Rihanna, and Awkwafina. Can you believe we have to wait almost two years for this thing?!

Well, the film recently began filming and we're of course foaming at the mouth to see our first glimpse of these actresses together! Here are some shots of our headliners in action, with Bullock looking like Miss Congeniality's Gracie Hart back in action but Blanchett giving her audition for a Prince version of I'm Not There. One can hope that costume designer Sarah Edwards (The Last Days of Disco, Michael Clayton) has even more outfits like this for Blanchett to play with.

More looks and thoughts after the jump...

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Box Office: Moonlight Fever

What did you see this weekend?

For the box office charts this week, let's focus in on the platform releases out there since the mainstream offerings were uninspiring. Moonlight had a miraculous opening selling out its shows all weekend long at 4 locations on the coasts. That resulted in one of the strongest per screen averages of the entire year.

The top 20 films in limited release are after the jump... 

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Middleburg Finale: "Loving" & "La La Land"

Lynn Lee here stepping in for Nathaniel, on his way back to NYC, for the final day of the Middleburg Film Festival which was Sunday. As a D.C. area resident, I’ve been observing the rising profile of this local-ish film festival over the past few years with great interest.  Festival founder Sheila Johnson seems bent on making Middleburg a lower-altitude Telluride of the East, and she certainly has the Hollywood heavy-hitter connections to do it!  This year’s lineup was easily the most impressive so far in the festival’s short history; it’s as if the program was constructed specifically to highlight likely Oscar contenders.

The Lovings in the beloved Virginia.

In both that ambition and its picturesque Virginia setting, there was no more fitting film to cap the festival than Loving...

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Oscar Horrors: "Dr Jekyll and Mr Mouse"

Boo! It's time for "Oscar Horrors". Each night at 7 through Halloween we look back on a horror film or horror-adjacent film's Oscar nomination until Halloween. Here's Nathaniel R...

Here's an odd statistic to consider. Did you know that Tom & Jerry was Oscar's favorite character-based cartoon franchise? The MGM cat and mouse team won seven Oscars in the Best Animated Short category, more than any other series but for Disney's "Silly Symphonies" which also won seven times. Tom & Jerry's very first short was nominated and they won for four consecutive years from 1943-1946 at the peak of their fame.

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Thoughts I Had Looking at Binoche, Fiennes and Scott Thomas

by Murtada

This weekend the Rome Film Festival celebrated the 20th Anniversary of The English Patient with a special screening, attended by its three stars Kristin Scott Thomas, Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes.

• The English Patient was 20 years ago????
• Juliette laughing and KST mistily looking away is reminiscent of their characters, warm melancholy Hannah and icy melancholy Katharine.
• I miss KST’s icy grandeur… now that she is a Dame will she get a new wind to her career?
• Am I K in your book?
• I still lived in Sudan in 1997 where cinemas were scarce. I remember wanting to see the movie for months and finally managed to see it on a trip to London a month after it won 9 Oscars. I went straight from the airport, dropped my bags and rushed to an afternoon screening in Leicester Square. That’s how bad I wanted to see it, I couldn’t wait another minute.

What are your memories of the first time you saw The English Patient?