Beauty Break: China Through the Looking Glass?

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. 

[more photos after the jump]

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Revenge of the 80s ~ Now With More 10s Sexism!

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. 

40 BIGGEST HITS LED BY WOMEN IN THE 80S
(in very rough order of success) 

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When do you see movies? When do you like to read about them?

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 Leviathan among others arrive. 

Any thoughts on the problem of staggered viewing and how to unite us all?

Women's Pictures - Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides

Welcome to Sofia Coppola month! Over the course of this series, I’ve noticed a pattern. So far, the first films our directors made have been smallish, personal movies; unpolished films that carry the seeds of themes and images that will grow as the directors do. The Virgin Suicides is not that movie. Sofia Coppola’s 1999 first feature film is neither small nor unpolished. While the film carries themes of isolation and adolescence that Coppola will continue to explore throughout her career, this is not the unpolished or underfunded first film of someone still learning the business. Starring two stars on the cusp of breakthrough (Kirsten Dunst and Josh Hartnett), as well as several well-loved actors (Kathleen Turner, James Woods, Danny DeVito), and shot by a cinematographer with 20 years of experience (Edward Lachman), this may be the most well-varnished first film we’ve seen.

Adapted by Coppola from Jeffrey Eugenides’s novel, The Virgin Suicides is a nostalgic suburban gothic. Set in 1970s Detroit, an unnamed narrator reminisces on his high school crush on the girls next door, five sisters who committed suicide for reasons he still can’t understand:

Everyone dates the decline of our neighborhood from the deaths of the Lisbon girls.

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Review: Welcome to Me

Michael C. here with your non-Avengers review of the week

When we daydream about striking it rich the objects of our fantasies usually fall into tangible, straightforward categories. The things we will buy, the places we will travel, the jobs we will quit. Alice Klieg, the lottery winner with borderline personality disorder played by Kristen Wiig in Shira Piven’s Welcome to Me, has more abstract ideas. Alice has spent her whole life trying and failing to live in the world everyone else seems to inhabit with ease. Now, fresh off the decision to go off her meds and with 86 million at her disposal, she can finally force the rest of us to live in her world.

When we meet Alice prior to striking it rich, she is filling her lonely days watching her vast collection of Oprah episodes on VHS, mouthing the words along with the host. It makes perfect sense then, that when she finds herself thrust into the spotlight her first instinct is to cast herself in the role of self-help guru, albeit one with her own life as her first and only subject. [More...]

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