Curio: Too Cool For School Supplies

Alexa here. This year was the first year I had to get school supplies for my daughter and it was pretty depressing. She isn't allowed any choice, even in the color of her folders! As a form of rebellion by proxy, I've been searching for the coolest supplies out there to keep things weird at home.  Some for my daughter and, of course, why not choose a few for myself, too?  Here is a selection of film-themed supplies that could help my cause.

After the jump: Werner, Duckie, Cher, and more...

 

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"Carol" is a tease

Just gorgeous. We'll Yes No Maybe So it with the full trailer but obviously we're all in. It's Todd Haynes. It's actressy. And the cinematography, by Edward Lachman who previously shot Far From Heaven, Mildred Pierce, and I'm Not There for Haynes, is suitably ravishing.

The song, for those who are curious, is Margaret Whiting's rendition of "My Foolish Heart". Add it to your every playlist in anticipation. Whiting was a famous singer in the 40s and 50s and even had her own television series in the 50s with her sister. Margaret provided Susan Hayward's singing voice in Valley of the Dolls (1967) as well.

'Queen of Earth' and the Films of Alex Ross Perry

Glenn here to discuss Alex Ross Perry whose latest film opens in cinemas and VOD next week. He is a curious one who we haven't discussed much about here at The Film Experience. He's made four films, not one which is alike, yet which all feature obvious hints of the same creator. Impolex, his debut, is made with such a strong and unwavering idea of what it wants to be that it’d be a perfect calling card for a director if it wasn’t so different to the rest of his output. It is both a curious fascination and a frustratingly inert experimental concoction of a film with mumbled dialogue and absurd comedy (there is a talking octopus, if I remember correctly) that doesn’t so much predict Perry’s future career as it does suggest recurring ideas. If all one watched was the expert scene late in the film, dearly acted by Kate Lyn Sheil – unsurprisingly, a common figure in Joe Swanberg’s equally confounding and experimental genre-tripping films Silver Bullets, AutoErotic and The Zone from the same era – as she opens up to our dope of a lead character you might be forgiven for thinking it was something far less esoteric than the full film really it.

As that 2009 film was being released in the most limited of releases two years later, The Color Wheel was causing mayhem on the festival circuit. The much ballyhooed film was an Independent Spirit Award nominee in the blessed John Cassavetes category is the sort of that could bring about illusions of a particularly prickly Brooklyn-born twentysomething version of Woody Allen if it weren’t, you know, for that whole incest thing. It’s use of black and white 16mm filmstock was inspired and it was meticulously scripted with no improvisation and structural hints to classic cinema, highlighting Perry’s very dialogue-focused style that navigates in very specifically modern contexts the way people can change and challenge us emotionally and physically in ways we might not want or expect.

Listen Up Philip, Queen of Earth & Mad Max: Fury Road (!) after the jump

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Two Guys and Two Gals from U.N.C.L.E.

Here is Kyle with a review of Guy Ritchie's The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

 

Last week, if you told me that I’d be in love with a Guy Ritchie film, I’d have snatched you by your smoking barrels and given you what for. Yet here I am, utterly enamored of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. In a summer bloated with franchises and (ugh) reboots that willfully avoid originality—save Mad Max: Fury Road, of course—Man from U.N.C.L.E. is a welcome demonstration that a flick can be fun without being dumb. The film subverts the formula of “action” blockbusters to make us feel tense or anxious most of the time. Fight/chase scenes are not suspenseful tent poles but undercut by humor or condensed through stylish montages. Indeed, style is the subject of the film; the narrative is so patently pat that it shifts focus to the way it’s told. It’s upsetting that audiences did not flock to it in its all-important opening weekend, though it may almost be a compliment these days that the name recognition of the original property is so low that it didn’t push audiences into theaters. If Man from U.N.C.L.E. succeeds—and I still hope it will—it will be based on its own merits, of which it has plenty...

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Beauty vs Beast: Who's The Poo

Jason from MNPP here... wait, that's not much of an introduction. I should do better. Ahem. One, two, three -- I'm sexy, I'm cute, I'm popular to boot. I'm bitchin', great hair, the boys all love to stare... I'm major, I roar, I swear I'm not a whore! ROLL CALL. It's "B-b-b-Beauty vs B-b-b-Beast" time and seeing as how tomorrow marks the 15th anniversary of the little cheerleading-movie-that-could called Bring It On I figured we'd slip into our team-colors and take sides on the greatest Cheer-Off of our times.

PREVIOUSLY Last week we celebrated the anniversary of Norma Shearer and with a wade into George Cukor's The Women -- Joan Crawford's trampy shopgirl pulled out in front early on, and while the lead narrowed with time it just wasn't Norma's time; Crawford dug her heel into 53% of the vote. Said Someone:

"To those of you not voting for Crystal, as she herself would say, "There's a name for you ladies, but it isn't used in high society... outside of a kennel. So long, ladies!""