Best Shot: Final Two Episodes!

We promised two episodes to conclude our sixth season of Hit Me With Your Best Shot. Join us in these parties by picking what you think of as the movie's "best shot" on the following days. We'll link up.

A ROOM WITH A VIEW (James Ivory)
Deadline Wed October 21st - Here are the first articles ! 
One of the greatest movies ever according to sane people like your host. "Merchant/Ivory" became a substitute name for an entire genre (the costume drama) for a time but there was never anybody as good at as them in their heyday. See Helena Bonham Carter & Daniel Day Lewis as engaged young Brits back when they were babies before anybody knew who they were. Plus Rupert Graves and Julian Sands at their prettiest. And, last but not least, Dame Maggie & Judi, best friends in real life, as best friends on screen. And so much more! 
Netflix Instant | Criterion Collection | Amazon Instant 

REPULSION (Roman Polanski)
Deadline Thursday Evening October 29th
In which virginal Catherine Deneuve totally loses her (mental) shit. A psychological horror and the first of Polanski's three consecutive films about people losing their minds in apartment buildings. (Rosemary's Baby was right around the corner.) 
Netflix Rental | Criterion Collection | YouTube Full Movie

You in?

Q&A: Sexy Vampires & Dolled-Up Monsters

For this week's Q&A we asked for questions that would get us in the Halloween spirit. So let's talk sexual vampires, scary monsters, queer horror, and unsettling auteurs.

Let's jump right in to nine creepy spooky occasionally queer questions, shall we? 

Ryan T: What are your favorite vampire performances onscreen, film and TV?

The glut of bad vampire movies over the past couple of decades may have killed my former passion for bloodsuckers but nothing can kill the love of great acting so this must be answered. With due respect to the Lugosis, Schrecks and Lees who pioneered, let's fast forward to contemporary-ish cinema and television after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Tippi's Brood

In deference to Marnie's fear of red, we presume to imagine, Classic Hitchcock heroine Tippi Hedren's brood all arrived in black for the annual Women in Hollywood event. From left to right: Dakota Johnson (50 Shades of Granddaughter), Tippi Hedren (The Original), Melanie Griffith (her Bad Seed), and Stella Banderas (The Baby). 

That's three generations of film stars. The only non-leading lady among them is Stella. Do you think she'll also be a force given that both of her parents were significant movie stars in their heyday? She just turned 19 and her only real movie role to date was as a toddler for them. She was just 3 when she appeared in Mama Melanie & Papa Antonio's Crazy in Alabama (1999).

Curio: Heartbeats Club

Alexa here with your weekly art break.  Ivonna Buenrostro is an illustrator from Toluca De Lerdo, Mexico with a love of film. Watching movies daily with pencils handy, she creates wonderful sketches that she later colorfully transforms in Photoshop.

Enjoy several after the jump...  

Click to read more ...

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer

If you yearn to go into the movie theater cold -- as I am longing more and more to do -- can you resist watching the official trailer. Can I? I'll try but the Dark Side (of Hype) is strong...

On the Yes No Maybe So scale this is a yes without hitting the play button given that it's a culture event. One hates to be a slave to nostalgia but Han, Luke, and Leia returning pushes certain buttons that cannot be unfelt. But, personally speaking, it's a yes without the mania that is felt in most quarters of the internet. Yours truly has no willful amnesia about how utterly terrible the last three Star Wars films were. But let's all hope this one is good for the sake of the masses (ourselves included) who would taste test even if it came with a poison label.