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.)
When Agnes Varda was honored at Cannes in May, a lot of titles were tossed around: Ancestor of the French New Wave, New Wave's Godmother/Mother/etc. But I began to wonder: how accurate are those titles? Can we safely lump Agnes Varda, photographer-cum-director-cum-documentarian, into the French New Wave boys club? After all, the New Wave conjurs very specific images: detached Frenchmen smoking cigarettes in black and white, long takes, jarring edits, staged closeups and jazz soundtracks. Does this mesh with our dimunitive director?
More seriously, the French New Wave represents a specific group of radical individuals. They were cinephiles and critics whose radical new ideas came from a love of film, and a conscious decision to reject classical cinema. Varda, by contrast, freely admits that she'd almost never seen a film before her 1955 debut, La Pointe Courte. So is she New Wave? Ur-New Wave? In parallel or in contrast? I don't have the answers yet, I just have a Hulu+ account and some books on French Film. It's going to be a hell of a month.
Jason from MNPP here with a look at the first trailer for this our brand new MacBeth movie, which stars Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard and yeah you all already knew that. The film already played Cannes and won some auspicious notices there; I do believe some people were upset that Cotillard walked away from the fest once again empty-handed. The film has an October 2nd release date in the UK but still nothing official here in the States. Anyway let's give this thing the ol' "Yes No Maybe So" treatment shall we? (We'll try to pretend for argument's sake that my "YES" can't already be seen from space.)
Team Experience sharing their personal Emmy dream picks every day at Noon. Here's Manuel on Lisa Kudrow...
For anyone who watched the criminally underseen first season of Lisa Kudrow’s The Comeback, you know how the former Phoebe Buffay created a portrait of an actress so intent on controlling her image and reclaiming her sitcom career that the dark humor and awkwardness of it all was perhaps too much to bear. If the first season was an excruciating exercise in reality TV satire, the second season was an indictment of Hollywood sexism that used the show’s meta structure (Valerie gets cast as the thinly veiled version of herself in an HBO show about the very show she starred in The Comeback’s first season) to force us to yes, laugh at Valerie’s seeming cluelessness but also to examine why and how those laughs are being elicited. There’s humor in Valerie quite literally living out the demented humiliations that a former writer thrusts upon her as part of making his HBO show “edgy” but with every laugh at Valerie (in a trunk full of snakes, standing awkwardly next to two naked women, going down on Seth Rogen) there was a performance that asked you to empathize with this yes, self-deluded character.
Benjamin Walker: still waiting for the mainstream breakthroughPajiba If you needed some contrarian Grace & Frankie critique try this. I love Dustin but he actually thinks that Grace & Frankie are the problems with Grace & Frankie. Say what? Is this opposite day? The Dissolve Xavier Dolan's Tom at the Farm getting US distribution two years late. (sigh) So weird that it took so long since it's a) good b) marketable being of the thriller genre and c) only 90 minutes long (that's practically a "short" by the standards of the Dolanverse) People Actress Jennifer Grey (Dirty Dancing) honored her legendary dad Joel Grey (Cabaret) at a recent event Broadway World The awesome but still relatively unknown Benjamin Walker (aka 'Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson' Himself and Former Streep-Son-in-Law) will star in American Psycho: The Musical on Broadway next spring. Towleroad Tony Award predictions Gold Standard predicts Best Drama Series at the Emmys - suggests that Breaking Bad dominance will continue with Better Call Saul. NOOOooooooo
Today's Must See(s)
Color me so impressed that this site did a video entry for "Hit Me With Your Best Shot". Why didn't I think of that? Maybe it'll inspire others to join us! *crossing fingers* Now go read Movie Motorbreath and subscribe totheir YouTube channel (I hope STinG does this every week).
This short video is like Action Filmmaking 101. And obviously a lot of action directors working in Hollywood need to go back to school since John Seale (cinematographer) and George Miller (director) and Margaret Sixel (editor) just reminded everyone how it's done. This video describes one of the main reasons that Mad Mad Fury Road is so incredibly exciting without ever being disorienting. (Hat tip to Polygon for bringing this to our attention.)
Superhero Link Quota Heroic Hollywood looks at Marvel/Netflix's Defenders plans post Daredevil success. The proposed Black Widow series is never happening though, get real. ScarJo is too much of a movie star to settle Comics Alliance Luke Mitchell promoted to series regular for Agents of SHIELD S3. (I liked him a lot but I'm done with that show. It's just far too incoherent and inferior to other Marvel product out there - Agent Carter runs circles around it for one and you can't watch everything.)
Show Tune To Go!
Musical hater Jason would not approve of me commemorating his baby My New Plaid Pants's 10th birthday this week by sharing a showtune but that's why I have to. Otherwise this would be way too sentimental because MNPP is my personal favorite blog (4realz). It's always hilarious and sexy and puts a smile on my face when I'm down and Jason is genius. So go and wish him well. For his tenth anniversary he counts down the ten hot movie stars he's posted about the most over the years. Naturally Jake Gyllenhaal wins but the order is interesting and for the show tune to go I've selected features Bachelor #8 Dominic Cooper's Bathing Suit from Mamma Mia! I can't imagine most TFE readers aren't already aware of Jason's blog (since he posts here regularly, too) but if you aren't, get familiar. There's something for everyone: cinephiles will love "The Moment I Fell For..." and "Five Frames From..." and his succinct reviews; Horny admirers of the male form \will love NSFW stuff like "Gratuitous" and "Anatomy IN a Scene" and "Do, Dump, or Marry"; if you're a horror fan you'll be way more at home over there since he has totally gross but inspired series like "Ways Not To Die," too.
So happy anniversary and keep making the internet a better place with "nonsense incarnate," everyone!
Dancin’ Dan here with a quick run through one of the Tony front-runners in preparation for this weekend’s festivities! As a big fan of Mark Haddon’s 2003 novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, I was… concerned when it was announced that there was a stage adaptation in the works. Some books just don’t feel like they would translate to the stage, and this, with its singular first-person narration, certainly felt like one.
Thursday, June 4, 2015 at 5:31PM 
When Agnes Varda was honored at Cannes in May, a lot of titles were tossed around: Ancestor of the French New Wave, New Wave's Godmother/Mother/etc. But I began to wonder: how accurate are those titles? Can we safely lump Agnes Varda, photographer-cum-director-cum-documentarian, into the French New Wave boys club? After all, the New Wave conjurs very specific images: detached Frenchmen smoking cigarettes in black and white, long takes, jarring edits, staged closeups and jazz soundtracks. Does this mesh with our dimunitive director?
