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.)
Tim here. May is 1979 Month at the Film Experience, and as far as animation goes, that was a pretty meager year (ardent fans of The Flintstones Meet Rockula and Frankenstone would no doubt disagree, but sadly, they do not exist). There was one clear highlight, though: 1979 was the year that a Japanese animator and TV director named Hayao Miyazaki made his first feature film. And 36 years later, he’s one of the only name-brand individuals in animation, anywhere in the world.
You wouldn’t necessarily be able to guess the full range of Miyazaki’s future career from Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro. For that is the title of this debut film, and if that whole “subtitle after the colon” thing makes it feel like it might have been part of an established franchise, that’s exactly the case. Lupin III was an anime series made by TMS Entertainment, adapting the adventures of a gentleman thief from French pulp literature; the first batch of episodes started to appear in 1971, and iterations of the animated franchise kept poking up for decades; the series still remains a cultural touchstone in Japan and it’s reasonably popular anywhere there’s an enthusiastic audience for classic anime.
Before We Get Started... First image of Emily Blunt from Sicario which will premiere at Cannes. She plays an FBI agent pushed to her limits. I'm not quite sure why I decided to get so excited about this movie but I did so I'm running with it.
Links THR Natalie Portman gears up for promotion of her Cannes entry A Tale of Love and Darkness, calls Oscar a "false idol" /Film Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon's Big Little Lies project will be a limited series for HBO now. With Michelle Pfeiffer's hubby writing it! Since it's about three women can La Pfeiff be in it, too? Just suggesting! Free advice; we got it right here. MNPP Alex Garland (Ex Machina) starts lining up a lucky female cast for his next trippy Annihilation - Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton? Wow. In Contention Angelina Jolie & Brad Pitt's By The Sea, a marital drama set in France in the 1970s, gets a release date: November 13th. Should we add it to Oscar charts? Dissolve Juliette Binoche to play Pearl S Buck in a biopic. EW features Hateful Eight on its cover. I feel robbed. Unless it's a fold-out this is only Hateful Three: Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Samuel L Jackson.
Dissolve ...okay I spoke too quickly. There are also character posters of the other ones Pajiba "Pants-Igniting Things Oscar Isaac Is The Absolute Best At" TMZ Tyson Beckford losing his towel to promote that Magic Mike rip-off Chocolate City
Still cherry-picking good Age of Ultron links because there are interesting articles out there! Sound and Nerdery Terrific read on the complexity of Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow, especially focused on Age of Ultron (which has taken so much flack for her portrayal) CNet on Joss Whedon's twitter exit. Why we should care when celebrities leave social media Esquire Age of Ultron reviewed by a 9 year old:
If you like movies about robots who make jokes, or movies about girls singing lullabyes to the Hulk, or movies about cities that float into the air for no reason, Age of Ultron will be right up your alley.
I like movies about all those things except the cities floating in the air part. Never dug that. Not even in The Empire Strikes Back.
Exit Video Today's intriguing watch. A trailer for the Netflix series Sense8 by the Wachowski siblings.
It looks to have a very confusing sci-fi premise (what else is new with them?) about 8 people in different cities being mind-connected or something. But Doona Bae (yes) and Max Riemelt (very sexy German actor who you might have seen in Free Fall, streaming on Netflix) star. Plus Daryl Hannah (!!!!!!!!!). Plus they throw some gay-leaning group sex into the trailer so... why the hell not try it out in June? You can always abort the binge-watching if they show doesn't grab you.
Eeep. We haven't even mentioned the Met Gala which is like the Oscars of May for how many stars come out. Each year the Met Gala theme comes from the new event exhibit which this year is "China: Through the Looking Glass." It's tough to say what is Chinese inspired about many of the looks we saw a few nights ago but who cares about themes when you get THIS photo (shared by Jessica Chastain) of three of the best and most beautiful actresses on the planet. As I said on twitter...
My brain / heart / cinephilia just exploded. See you next week once i’ve collected the pieces.
When the red band trailer for the revival (not a reboot but a long distant "next generation" sequel) of Vacation premiered yesterday, with Chris Hemsworth swinging a big fake one around for a cheap laugh, it got me to thinking about how phallic-centric Hollywood has become. This is no new thinkpiece notion of course. But with the incredible amount of material from the 1980s that Hollywood has been mining and regurgitating, we're getting about the sharpest resolution picture possible of how Hollywood has regressed in terms of equal opportunities for female stars. Hollywood has always had its share of sexism but today's Hollywood seems especially female-averse. How did it happen exactly? Hollywood will reboot ANYTHING from the 1980s. So long as it did not star a woman. No, not even if it was a smash hit. They won't do it... although they will allow those titles to be remade for television if you're really desperate to see them revamped.
To prove the point here are a list of the most successful 1980s movies starring women. I only looked at the top 25 or so box office hits from each year of the 1980s. To give you a contemporary correlative of their success that's like from the tippity top American Sniper sized behemoth down to the Lucy-sized hit levels last year if you pretend that each year is roughly the same as the last in terms of gross domestic box office.
Disclaimer: This list should in no way be mistaken as a plea to remake these pictures -- we have more than enough remakes. We need original material! It's just to make a point.
An open question for all readers. We've often expressed disdain for the internet model (prevalent on most well-read movie sites, even the good ones) in which the bulk of conversation about a movie happens BEFORE its release. But what to do about it? We try our best here to talk about movies mostly after they open (with the exception of the YNMS series, Oscar predictions and short news bits) which has surely cost us readers in the anticipatory-madness of current online culture. However one thing we're not good about is knowing when to discuss films. WHEN DO YOU SEE NEW MOVIES? Are you at the movie theater every week? Do you VOD? Do you rent DVDs? Do you just bit torrent everything (naughty-naughty)? Or are you totally beholden to when Netflix decides to stream something if, in fact, they ever get around to streaming it at all? (Netflix, once a godsend for cinephiles, has become something of a curse.)
It used to be so much simpler when there was just one release date but now viewing is so staggered between so many types of services, subscription and pay-per-view models, and so many exclusivity windows that it's hard to even have a DVD column that's anything close to relevant. (It's the chief reason, I believe, why piracy has grown so large and rampant: there are just too many obstacles to audience seeing a movie they want to see when they want to see it). I ask these question because so many movies we've discussed in the past but perhaps in not as much detail as we should have are released each week on DVD. Recent newbies that I've wondered if we should discuss again or in more detail (links go to previous coverage) include: The Last Five Years, Miss Julie, Mr Turner, Selma, Fifty Shades of Grey, Paddington, Mommy, The Boy Next Door, Inherent Vice. And each week brings new titles fitting that same criteria. In the coming weeks Beloved Sisters, Blackhat, Still Alice, American Sniper, and Leviathanamong others arrive.
Any thoughts on the problem of staggered viewing and how to unite us all?
Saturday, May 9, 2015 at 8:06AM 
Tim here. May is 1979 Month at the Film Experience, and as far as animation goes, that was a pretty meager year (ardent fans of The Flintstones Meet Rockula and Frankenstone would no doubt disagree, but sadly, they do not exist). There was one clear highlight, though: 1979 was the year that a Japanese animator and TV director named Hayao Miyazaki made his first feature film. And 36 years later, he’s one of the only name-brand individuals in animation, anywhere in the world.
