Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948)

Continuing the theme of looking back at 1948 ahead of this weekend's Smackdown. Here's Angelica discussing one of Joan Fontaine's greatest roles...

A few years ago when working at the Chicago International Film Festival I got into a conversation with a coworker about classic Hollywood actresses who, for whatever reason, do not connect with modern women as much as they did in their own time. The conversation centered on Norma Shearer but I think it can also apply to Joan Fontaine. I’ve often had trouble introducing my friends to Fontaine. Sure, they may like Rebecca but the tenor of her infatuation and willingness to lose her identity in love always hits a sour note. At her best, Fontaine made martyrdom on the altar of love an art form. This was never clearer than in the 1948 Max Ophuls film, Letter from an Unknown Woman. If Now, Voyager represents the women’s picture at its most transformative, Letter from an Unknown Woman shows the genre at its most tragic and masochistic.

Based on the novella by Stefan Zweig, the film begins in Vienna 1900. We meet Stefan (Louis Jordan) a rakish pianist planning to run out of town before a scheduled duel. Before he can do so his mute servant (Art Smith) gives him the titular letter. It begins ominously, “By the time you read this letter I may be dead.”

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Welcome to the Academy - The Lucky 322

As is their annual tradition now AMPAS has released the list of the names they've offered memberships too. If you're new to the tradition, you'll note in the following list that most of the time a first nomination will results in an invite (but not always) and that generally a few people who weren't nominated but got a lot of buzz the previous season will be invited (hi, David Oyelowo & Gugu Mbatha Raw). Lately the lists have gotten longer and much more surprising too as the Academy attempts to broaden its demographic after years of being dinged for skewing too  'old white and male'

The complete list of 322 potential inductees is below. There's a welcome to the Academy reception in September for those that accept and then the process starts again. The Academy works on a referral basis of sorts so current members can nominated new prospective members and that process (a longer list of names than this - never publicized that I'm aware of) concludes in March each year. Unless they're all "You can't sit with us!" then they end up on this list which comes out in the summer.

So let's look at who was invited.

Multiple Branches
Damien Chazelle (Writer/Director) Whiplash
Malcolm D. Lee (Writer/Director) The Best Man Holiday
Paweł Pawlikowski (Writer/Director) Ida
Abderrahmane Sissako (Writer/Director) Timbuktu
Damian Szifron (Writer/Director) Wild Tales
Andrey Zvyagintsev (Writer/Director) Leviathan
Mathilde Bonnefoy (Documentary/Editing) Citizen Four

Damian Szifron, WILD TALES writer/director

These eight people must decide which of the two branches that invited them they will join. While members can be on more than one branch -- I imagine Warren Beatty, for example, is on a few since he's been nominated in four different categories -- they can't join two in one year. You'll notice that four of the Foreign Language Film nominees are accounted for though weirdly not the director of the Estonian film Tangerines. 

Actors and Actresses are in the same branch but I've separated them just for fun as befits the Oscar categories and also to point out that they invited way more men than women, more than twice as many! Hey, I thought they were working on the diversity thing! They also invited both men who got crying closeups at the ceremony earlier this year.

315 more people after the jump...

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Beauty Break: Now They Can Get Married!

Since it's Pride Weekend and the Supreme Court has ended the silly intrastate / interstate fights about whose marriages count in the US, here's the only way we can think to celebrate. A beauty break gallery of LGBT couples from the big screen who can now get hitched or stay hitched wherever they move!

Nic + Jules 4ever

Seven more couples after the jump

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Rose's Turn

Remember Rose McGowan?

We haven't seen much of her on the big screen in the past few years (her most recent feature was the Jason Momoa led reboot of Conan the Barbarian in 2011, which is unfortunate since we would have much rather seen her proposed reboot of Red Sonja). But the Charmed actress, who broke out in the mid 90s with memorable turns in The Doom Generation and Scream, is in the news again.

A recent twitter comment about her former agent and Hollywood sexism has pushed several buttons but more importantly she's been out promoting her new role behind the camera. She is developing a feature and she's also made a short film.

Here's her short Dawn that's hitting Oscar-qualifying festivals and is available in full on YouTube. 

Boo-Boo Linky

W Magazine Taraji P. Henson, always fun, talks about getting the acting bug, auditioning for Precious and falling in love with "Cookie" on Empire even though she didn't want to do TV again
AV Club Taraji also has a new leading film role as civil rights activist Ann Atwater who in 1971 had meetings with the Klu Klux Klan leader on reducing violence. 
IndieWire a fun interview with the always amusing Jennifer Coolidge, who hopes to get a wider range of roles. "maybe I should write something"
BBC RIP "Avengers" star Patrick Macnee
Variety John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig, Rabbit Hole) will be honored at OutFest this year. He needs to stop being honored and start making another movie. 
Empire Aaron Eckhart to star in new thriller shot in real time. It's called Live! Eckhart's one of those actors I root for even though he keeps making movies I don't want to see. (sigh)
Vanity Fair is always trying to make Jennifer Lawrence happen. She already happened of course ;) but they just don't quit with the love fest -- they're already pushing for Oscar #2
New Yorker for any of you rebels who haven't been feeling Inside Out here's a negative review from the always interesting Richard Brody on "the curse of the Pixar universe"
/Film a new Star Trek started filming. Rumored title is Star Trek Beyond

Emmy Voting Ends Today
I know you diehard cinephiles are probably relieved that we won't be talking about TV so much next week but we hope you cinephiles who don't differentiate between screen sizes anymore (there seem to be more and more of you) have enjoyed this experiment. We have to keep experimenting to keep the site alive you know. In case you missed any of our FYCs here's an index of the acting writeups -- we tried to cover as many different series as possible during those --  our final ballots for drama and comedy, as well as guest blogs from Cara Seymour (The Knick) and Ann Dowd (The Leftovers) which we were super proud to host. It was fascinating to hear some of what went in to creating those memorable and surprising religious figures.

Happy Pride Month
THR on today's young male movie stars courting gay audiences. They're  trying to make "Stromo!" happen. But isn't it already called "Hetemo"?
MoMA acquires the original rainbow flag which is now 37 years old. Happy birthday flag. 

Showtune to Go!
And let's combine "Pride" with "Emmy Voting" for the finale. Since neither Jonathan Groff nor Sutton Foster are likely to receive Emmy nods for their terrific work in Looking and Younger respectively, we want them to know that they are loved. And obsessed over. In many places if not on Emmy voter ballots. So here's Jonathan's tribute to Sutton Foster in Anything Goes. It has 283,000+ views on YouTube so at least 190,000 other people besides me have watched it! And yes I've probably shared it before but it bears watching again.

and again. 
and again.
and again.