What do you suppose Nicole gave Reese for her birthday?

Awww. Reese Witherspoon celebrated her 40th birthday yesterday with Nicole Kidman. They've been filming the miniseries Big Little Secrets of late. Curious that the photo makes it look like the wine is where the birthday candles go.

Over the weekend she also had a big star studded birthday bash so she was doing 40 right. What do you suppose Nicole gave Reese? What would you give Reese for her birthday? 

Judy by the Numbers: "I'm Nobody's Baby"

Anne Marie is tracking Judy Garland's career through musical numbers...

Today's clip is a plea for the importance of audio preservation. Unlike last week's short, which survives as only 3 minutes of grainy footage of Judy Garland singing to a statue, Andy Hardy Meets Debutante has been remastered and restored several times since its 1940 release. However, Judy completists who watch the movie may be surprised at what a musical it's not. That's because two songs are missing from the film.

 

The Movie: Andy Hardy Meets Debutante (MGM, 1940)

The Songwriters: Benny Davis, Milton Ager, and Lester Stanley
The Players: Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland, Lewis Stone, Ann Rutherford, directed by George B. Seitz

The Story: Judy Garland only sings two songs in the entirety of her second Andy Hardy film. Unlike most Mickey/Judy pairings, Andy Hardy Meets Debutante does not follow the "let's put on a show" plotline. Instead, the film follows Andy as he goes further and further into debt trying to woo the heart of a New York debutante. This means two terrible things for Judy Garland fans: less Judy, and less singing. In fact, the movie was originally supposed to have four songs by Little Iron Lungs. Unfortunately, "Buds Won't Bud" and "All I Do Is Dream Of You" were recorded, but cut before being filmed. (Both were eventually reused in later films: "Buds Won't Bud" was sung by Ethel Waters in Cairo, while "All I Do Is Dream Of You" used as Debbie Reynold's excuse to pop out of a cake in Singin in the Rain.) Here's the good news: both Judy versions were saved as studio recordings, and have since been remastered and released. Sometimes even restoration stories get a happy ending.

previous highlights: "The Land of Let's Pretend" (1930), "Dear Mr Gable" (1937), "Got a New Pair of Shoes" (1937),“Zing Went the Strings of My Heart” (1938), "Over the Rainbow" (1939)

Hit Me With Daredevil Season 2's Best Shots

I asked Hit Me With Your Best Shot participants to choose an episode or multiple episodes from Daredevil's second season on Netflix -- however they wanted to do it -- and write up their choice for a Best Shot. Because the second season has been available for less than a week, we're eschewing the traditional Visual Index so you don't have anything spoiled for you. Read with caution and quit on the episodes you haven't yet seen.

9 heroic blogs
Blue Canary (S1) 
Awards Madness (S2. Episode 1)
The Film Experience (S2. Episodes 1-3)
Sorta That Guy (S2. Episodes 1-3)
Cinematic Corner (S2. Episodes 1-6) 
Magnificent Obsession (Entire Second Season)
I Want to Believe (Entire Second Season)
Wick's Picks (Entire Second Season + a little Jessica Jones) 
Movie Motorbreath (Entire Second Season) 

NEXT TUESDAY:  We're a little early for April Fool's Day but we're still doing a notorious bad movie from a respected director, the psycho sexual sci-fi Zardoz (1974) directed by John Boorman and starring Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling

The Signage of the Lambs

Can we get a round of applause for Daniel's great work on the new series "The Furniture"? I'm loving it so much and we're only two episodes in.

Consider this a spin-off one-off. I thought I'd share a particular movie obsession that we haven't yet dived into in all these years of blogging - signs. Shove a professional sign or any diegetic text or hand-scrawled message in front of the camera and I go all bookworm eyes. Are they subliminal subtitles? That's surely up to the set decorator, prop man, production designer and director. But on our recent revisit to Silence of the Lambs (1991) its signs felt newly purposeful.

Probably because the film begins with such a bold aggressive dare, nailed right to a tree. [More...]

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Doc Corner: SXSW x3

Glenn here and welcome back to Doc Corner. Each Tuesday we're bringing reviews and features on documentaries from theatres, festivals, and on demand. This week we’re looking at films that screened at the just-ended SXSW about musical icon Gary Numan, self-helper Tony Robbins, and mature-age trans women.

Gary Numan: Android in La La Land

You know I hate to ask
But are 'friends' electric?
Only mine's broke down
And now I've no-one to love

Like many artists of Numan’s vintage who were experimenting with electronic music, there was a queerness to him, an otherness that the made him a symbol to hordes of young audiences who had never seen or heard anything like him before. He was a musician whose dark and complex lyrics were perfectly paired with the aloof roboticism of his performance – an android dreaming of the electric beeps and boops of a Moog synthesizer. But for a performer who made much of his early fame and success off of the obscure oddness of his lyrics and imagery, this documentary by Steve Read and Rob Alexander is awfully straight.

I can only wish that Read and Alexander had taken some of that electro-punk attitude as inspiration for while Gary Numan: Android in La La Land will be an enjoyable sit for fans of the 58-year-old British singer famous for songs like “Cars” and “Are ‘Friends’ Electric” (like myself), but as cinema it lacks something propulsive. This brand of musical comeback doc is certainly popular – recent examples like Pulp: A Film About Life, Death and Supermarkets and I Am Thor were mostly more successful thanks to meatier narrative hooks – and the two directors are wise to focus in on some of the more unique elements of Numan’s life such as his long-standing marriage to a fan and his anxious worry about an impending comeback record while on a family vacation. Still, Android in La La Land works best with it fuses Numan’s abstract lyrics and music with strange beautiful images rather than the musician-moves-to-LA narrative that forms its core. The musical sequences are as vibrant as you would expect, but the power of the songs and his genius doesn’t shine through any clearer than if simply listening to them.

Two more after the jump...

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