Weekend Suggestions - Got Any Plans?

Some people plan weeks in advance but if you're a 'what shall we do this weekend?' last minute type like, my, uh, friend... who never has any firm plans until the last second even on holiday weekends... Here are some suggestions depending on where you live!

NEW YORK CITY
This weekend the Walter Reade has an Italian film program. You can see the Alain Deloin (mmmm) drama The Professor (1972) tonight and I personally don't plan to miss Sophia Loren's Oscar winning Two Women (1961) on Sunday (two showings) since that one is very difficult to find a good print DVD of and it's a rare chance to see it on the big screen. The Maysles Cinema in Harlem is showing Iris (2015), Albert Maysles' last film, all week long with a few Q&As scheduled. The Museum of the Moving image has a Masaki Kobayashi retrospective starting this weekend and you can see the Oscar nominated Kwaidan (1964) on Sunday. Make sure to time your visit so that you can see MoMI's great expansive Mad Men exhibit. I already want to go back to it.

If you're not in the cinema mood (gasp), see one of the Tony nominees. Several of them are super expensive / sold out but you can still get discount tickets for arguable Best Play frontrunner The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, and the gorgeous dance musical An American in Paris (reviewed). The cheapest discount tickets that are 100% worthwhile are Chita Rivera in The Visit (the music is gorgeous and it may well be your last chance to see this legend live - she's 82!) and the exuberant funny On the Town (reviewed) but I apologize in advance should you become greatly obsessed with Tony Yazbeck; It can't be helped really, you will. Great sources for discounts are Today's Tix and TDF. 

CHICAGO
Tonight at 7:45 PM TFE favorite David Dastmalchian will be at the Gene Siskel Film Center to discuss his new film Animals, a tough but teary romantic drama about two small time grifters / addicts. So buy a ticket, won't you? I personally love it when actors create their own work to show Hollywood that they're more than just whatever they've been typecast as.

LOS ANGELES
Always the perfect weather there, right? And they make use of it with several outdoor screenings. This weekend Almost Famous, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Rear Window, and Dazed and Confused at various locations.  

SAN FRANCISCO
The Roxie theater has a double feature of The Talented Mr Ripley (1999) and The American Friend (1977) as part of their "copy & paste" series on remakes and reimaginings. That could be fun.  The Castro has a 85th birthday celebration for Harvey Milk with a screening and fireside chat of The Times of Harvey Milk (1984), the Oscar winning documentary that is one of the greatest documentaries I've personally ever seen. Selling fast apparently so if you're free tonight. 

LONDON 
There's a "Bollywood Fever" festival at the OXO Tower Wharf today through Monday with 15 different films, a few of which are sold out already.

I freely admit that if I were anywhere near London I wouldn't rest till I'd seen Imelda Staunton doing "Mama Rose" in Gypsy (extended through November!)

EVERYWHERE
Movies available to rent or download from iTunes that are also in theaters OR skipped them altogether are the aforementioned Animals from friend of TFE Dastmalchian and a movie you might not have heard of called Ask Me Anything. I haven't seen it yet but full disclosure, I know people involved: a friend of mine produced it and it won Best Actress at the Nashville Film Festival last year (which I've attended as a jury member a couple of times)! Put it in your curiousity pile if you enjoy Britt Robertson. She's already headlined a few small pictures before her mainstream breakthrough-bid this year (Tomorrowland and The Longest Ride) and this one, about a girl between high school and college chronicling her life on an anonymous blog, is the most recent of them. It was even cited by Taste of Cinema as one of the ten most underappreciated indies of recent year.

 

always the open thread

Whenever I panic at the lack of comments on an entire day's worth of goodies like Cannes beauties, fun movie trailers, and throwbacks to beloved or divisive movies. I think "What is Meryl Streep up to?". Streep is like Adivan for high anxiety blogging. Find some way to post about Streep and all will be well again! But all is quiet on the Streep front and I had a really rough stressful week off-blog so instead I'm just staring at this photo of Streep kissing Kidman like it's a paper bag to hyperventilate into.

Always the years. Always the love. Always The Hours.

What has your week been like? What's on your cinematic mind?

YNMS: Shaun the Sheep Movie (and more from Aardman)

Tim here. If it’s possible for a little boutique studio with the most self-selecting audience imaginable to engage in a “media blitz” Aardman Animations (creators of Chicken Run and the Wallace & Gromit shorts) is having a very media-blitz sort of a day. 

First, they’ve released the first image from Early Man, director Nick Park’s upcoming caveman adventure that’s currently pre-selling distribution rights at Cannes (it will be Park’s first directorial effort since the Oscar-nominated 2008 short A Matter of Loaf and Death; I imagine that I’m not alone in finding his return to filmmaking something of a religious event).

Next up, Lionsgate has released the poster and trailer for their release of Aardman’s impending feature, Shaun the Sheep Movie (yes, that’s its actual, grammatically disastrous title). After the jump we break the trailer down using TFE's famed and authoritative Yes No Maybe So system.

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Women's Pictures - Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette

Who knew a period piece about Marie Antoinette would be Sofia Coppola's most controversial movie? Basically, whether or not you like Coppola's 2006 Marie Antoinette boils down to how you feel about anachronisms. Anachronistic details - modern fashion in a period piece, pop music played at a ball, a much-maligned pair of lavender Converse sneakers - are by design attention-grabbing. Like equally flamboyant directors Baz Luhrman and Quentin Tarantino, Sofia Coppola’s purpose is to jar audiences in the present, setting up a stylized world where (hopefully) audiences can relate more closely to people who lived decades or centuries ago. Coppola uses anachronisms to help the audience appreciate the rebellious streak of Marie Antoinette’s hedonism.

Surprisingly, the first half of the film plays along the standard genre rules of the period piece. 14-year-old Marie (Kirsten Dunst) is introduced as a child playing with puppies, stripped - literally - of her Austrian possessions at the border of Austria and France, and quickly married to the equally immature Dauphin Louis (Jason Schwartzman). Coppola’s ability to make the foreign both exciting and isolating is powerfully used during these early scenes. The lavishness of the receiving tent turns claustrophobic when Marie is forced to disrobe for examination by a cold courtier. Likewise, the beautiful bustle of Versailles’s court becomes ridiculous and invasive. In a cringe-inducing scene, Marie is left standing naked as the same courtier explains that dressing involves half the court and a lot of ceremony. After she is publicly shamed for failing to produce an heir (the Dauphin has intimacy issues), the contradiction of Marie’s life as a monarch is clear: she has no privacy, but she is alone.

Under such heavy scrutiny, it’s no wonder Marie rebels...

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Cannes Red Carpet 2: Dystopian Glamour + Illicit Flats

We return to Cannes glamour...

NATHANIEL: It has been a full week since the last Red Carpet conversation which is INEXCUSABLE, this being Cannes but the sheer volume of dresses (and I'm not talking about size though there is some of that) but quantity have made it rather daunting. So let's discuss 11 looks today.

Before we get to the lineups, I don't much care for white dresses at events unless someone is getting hitched so Zoe Kravitz is the only one out of an original multiperson white lineup I was going to do. Because I think the extension braids totally complete the look.

JOSE: Rooney Mara corners the market on bridal couture on the red carpet in my opinion, but Zoe looks really nice too! I wish she would've worn this in Mad Max instead of looking so dirty. That movie did nothing for my OCD. I wanted to hand everyone a gallon of Purell

NATHANIEL:  I love that her name in Fury Road was "Toast the Knowing".... LOL. You can't expect toast to not have that scrape off burnt layer though personally i think Zoe and her fellow rogue sex slaves looked pretty immaculate considering the white wraps and that they were riding UNDERNEATH A FUEL TRUCK.

JOSE: They needed more Valentino though! Have they learned nothing from looking glamorous in dystopia? Madonna pulls it off in Ghosttown beautifully...

MARGARET: Zoe clearly understands this, making up for it by rocking Valentino here. In white gowns, especially ones this simple, the pressure is on the hair and makeup to sell the look and she nailed it on both counts.

10 MORE LOOKS AFTER THE JUMP...

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