Another look at "World of Tomorrow", now available online

Tim here. First things first: you won't spend a more worthwhile $3.99 or use up a more gratifying 16 minutes and 29 seconds this week than you could by watching World of Tomorrow, the newest short by animator Don Hertzfeldt. You perhaps recall it as one of the most rapturously received films of any length coming out of this year's Sundance Film Festival, including a rave from the Film Experience's own Michael Cusumano (a rave that popped up in the short's official trailer), which traditionally means a long crawl through the festivals until eventually most people get a chance to see it a year or more after the hype has worn off. But on March 31, Hertzfeldt made it available on Vimeo, in a continuation of the filmmaker's first experiment in an all-digital environment. So now the rest of us get to see what made so many critics lose their minds.

The answer is genius. Pure, uncut genius is what made those critics lose their minds.

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Michelle Pfeiffer to Return to Television

True story: I have had this tab open for 6 hours and 14 minutes and this is the first sentence I have typed. I am a bundle of inchoate feelings about this news and may never fully process it. Reports have been coming in since last night that TFE's unofficial goddess (aka Nathaniel's all time favorite Michelle Pfeiffer) is heading to the small screen where she started 36 years ago in "Delta House" (1979), a sorority comedy trying to capitalize on the success of Animal House and "Bad C.A.T.S" (1980) a drama about young undercover cops and car thieves. 

More...

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Finger-Linking Good

No Screen
Indie Wire Patricia Arquette will pen a memoir on her career and single motherhood  
EW A chocolate sculpture of Benedict Cumberbatch. eek.
Tony Awards what's eligible? We'll be revving up more theater posts for Tony Season (everything is about to open... April being the theater's December if you will)
NY Times profiles the "Hand to God" playwright Robert Askins. ("Hand to God" is the latest risque puppet comedy post Avenue Q -- though not really like it otherwise -- and it's very funny)

Big Screen
IndieWire Manoel de Oliveira RIP (1908-2015)

Small Screen
Buzzfeed the greatest article ever written about the Starz series Outlander Season 1
Melanie Lynskey teases a second season of Togetherness. Did you watch it? So funny-sad and endearing
AV Club the 7 defining pitches of Mad Men

Computer Screen
Dartboard Patton Oswalt goes on an epic twitter rant about comedy and our delicate sensibilities in 2015
Variety thinks Marvel & Netflix have nothing to worry about with the impending launch Daredevil though correct me if I'm wrong... this review of 5 episodes (no spoilers) doesn't really say if it's any good or not, does it? 

Today's Must Watch
MISSI PYLE WANTS TO F*** YOU UP. Watch this amusing commercial and then help Missi raise funds to shoot her music video (multiple celebrity cameos promised) for her awesome revenge anthem "I Wanna Fuck You Up" -- Consider your donation a thank you for her awesomely generous guest blogging day right here at TFE. Yes, I am donating. Although I haven't decided who I want to fuck up the most. You can name your target in her video!

Women's Pictures - Jane Campion's Sweetie

Welcome to Jane Campion month! When I asked you all to vote for our next Female Filmmaker, I was surprised when the New Zealand native won nearly half of the vote. In retrospect, I should have seen it coming. Jane Campion is one of the most honored ladies on our list! She’s been nominated for two Academy Awards (one of which she won) and two Golden Globes for The Piano in 1994, garnered three Emmy nominations for Top of the Lake two years ago, and she won the Palm d’Or in 1986, before our story with her even starts! We pick up with her three years after her prestigious win, with a sad, strange, sometimes silly story of one weird woman’s even weirder family.

If taken at face value, Sweetie is a cautionary about how a daughter's untreated mental illness can cause an already unstable family to disintegrate. But nothing in Campion's surreal story is meant to be taken at face value. With the help of (lady!) cinematographer Sally Bongers, Campion shows a gift for making the mundane malevolent. When cast under shadows and seen through a wide angle lens, plastic furniture, dappled rugs, and the brightly-colored trappings of middle class suburbia suddenly suggest something rotten in the state of New Zealand. Campion refuses to shy away from the ugliness of her characters, instead covering them with candy colors that make them all the more grotesque.

Jane Campion's twisted family story after the jump

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The Smackdowns. A History

Yes, it's true. The Smackdowns will return. StinkyLulu was gracious enough to let us reboot the series here. In our one bifurcated season thus far (Aug 2013 thru Sept 2014) we covered 1941, 1952, 1964 (which special guest Melanie Lynskey) 1968, 1973 (with special guest Dana Delany) 1980, 1989, and 2003. So... where to now?

Let's look at our options after the jump...

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