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The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)

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Friday
Aug192016

Jared Leto and the Art of Disavowing Your Film

by Kieran Scarlett

You may have read earlier this week Jared Leto’s claims that he was “tricked" into doing Suicide Squad. These claims of course came in the wake of the film’s poor critical reception and steep box office drop off after its opening weekend. In a nutshell, Leto alleges that he initially believed the film would be much a much more artistic outing than what was on the screen and he feels duped. Now, we could certainly sit here and speculate how (with whole plot details and often times entire scripts being leaked online to the lay public prior to a film’s release) the arguable star of a major motion picture could ever be tricked into thinking the film was X when it’s really Y. But rather than unpacking that dubious version of events and the spinning and "taken out of context" responses there’s something else that needs to be addressed here—the art of shifting the blame for your participation in a critically panned film.

There’s a way to do it tactfully and believably, without the claims seeming like sour grapes. It’s a one-step process. It’s incredibly easy to remember and it will help actors avoid the side-eyes that Jared Leto and his claims are surely receiving. Here it goes...

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Friday
Aug192016

Review: Spa Night

by Sean Donovan

In Andrew Ahn’s feature length debut Spa Night, our main character David is introduced hunched over in a dimly lit sauna, a towel draped over his head. The sound mix emphases his heavy, sighing breath, which is audible but blocked by the weight of the towel. In this 2016 Sundance competition film, towels become a provocative motif, suffocating expression and concealing desire.. At the intersection of his existence as a second generation Korean American and a fledgling queer man exploring his sexual desires, pressure hits at David from multiple angles. The admiring but unenthusiastic praise which has greeted Spa Night’s release is a recognition of Ahn’s exciting early command of framing and craft, but fails to truly meet this remarkable film on its own level, that of a profoundly emotional, and refreshingly serious point of view. Jump on in! The water’s fine...

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Friday
Aug192016

Posterized: Natalie Portman

by Nathaniel R

Natalie Portman in a new photoshoot for Diorskin ForeverWhat odd careers child stars eventually look back on. Natalie Portman was an instant sensation when she appeared in The Professional as a junior assassin. When the film was released late in 1994, Natalie was just 13 years old. She became an instant favorite for directors filling their prestige ensembles and by the time she was 18 she was a leading lady and also the mother of Luke & Leia (though the Star Wars prequels contain her worst acting by far). By 23 she was a Golden Globe winner and by 29 an Oscar Best Actress champ. Afterwards she receded as so many actresses who win Oscars in their twenties do (what is there left to strive for?) presumably enjoying their riches and in some cases their new domesticity. Pregnant during her Black Swan Oscar campaign, Portman & her ballet world husband Benjamin Millepied are now the parents of a five year old and she's not seen in public nearly as often as she once was.

(Fun Trivia: did you know that Portman, Millepied and their son Aleph all have birthdays in a single week every June?)

After the jump posters from all of her theatrical releases, except the ones where she played herself or only appeared in cameo or in a section of an omnibus film, and a few notes on her filmography.

How many have you seen?

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Friday
Aug192016

Links: Nate Parker, Ben-Hur, and Donald Trump as Film Critic

Variety Amber Heard donates her entire divorce settlement from Johnny Depp to charity
Pajiba ... she also apparently passed on receiving residuals from his movies
Monkey See funny talk about the new Ben-Hur and the long shadow of its 1959 Best Picture predecessor
Kenneth in the (212) alerts us to a new webseries on Woody Allen movies. 10 things about Interiors this time 

Olympic play, Nate Parker controversy, and Donald Trump as movie critic after the jump...

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Friday
Aug192016

Tweetweek: Julieta, Dune, and Jaws Embroidery

How sweet is that?

Almodóvar & Julieta, Apocalypse Now, Brie Larson and 80s nostalgia, Kyle Maclachlan and Dune, Lupita & co-star and more after the jump ...

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