Sunday, March 22, 2015 at 8:05AM My imaginary coffee date this morning is Carole Lombard.
On a shag rug!
(Whatever became of shag rugs?)
Who do you wish you were having coffee with this morning?
Sunday, March 22, 2015 at 12:25AM Thank you for making the return of Hit Me With Your Best Shot, a success with its first three episodes The Sound of Music, Paris is Burning and The Quiet Man. We hope you'll join us Tuesday night for a special "triptych" episode (inspired by the current anthology craze in film & tv. Have your pick posted anytime before 10 PM on the day of the event and send us the link to be included.
Tues March 24th - YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW (1963)
*SPECIAL EPISODE* Let's look at the anthology romantic comedy from the great Vittoria DeSica starring Oscar's favorite Italians Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren. It won Best Foreign Film for 1964. I saw it for the first time last year and l-o-v-e-d.. There are two options for this episode: pick three shots, one from each mini film OR if you're pressed for time, pick one of the three films within the film to choose a shot from. It breaks down like so if you're instant watching:
Adelina of Naples (00:01-51:30) Sophia is always pregnant, Marcello her perpetually unemployed husband.
Anna of Milan (51:30- 1:13:00) Sophia is a wealthy callow socialite, Marcello her frustrated side piece.
Mara of Rome (1:13:01-1:58:00) Sophia is a flirty call girl, Marcello her favorite client.
[Netflix Instant Watch | Amazon Instant]
Wed, April 1st - MOMMIE DEAREST (1981)
PLEASE NOTE THE DATE - this is a Wednesday instead of Tuesday, we're moving back to Wednesdays as in previous seasons due to Tuesday schedule difficulties. This is our second annual April Fools Day episode. We had so much fun last year with a 'Bad Movie We Love' and first Razzie Winner, Can't Stop the Music that we're trying to chase that high. Meet Joan Crawford, one of the great stars, by way of the very committed Faye Dunaway (another one of the great stars, whatever this movie did to her career).
[Amazon Instant | iTunes | Netflix -- currently rental only but moves to Instant Watch on this very day if you're running late.]
Complete list of April titles will be announced on March 26th
Saturday, March 21, 2015 at 2:00PM 
In the We Can't Wait series, just wrapped, we looked at our team's most anxiously awaited movies for the 2015 film year that's just begun. ("It's March!" you cry. It's okay. You're new. Our calendar goes Oscar to Oscar.) For the curious, the team decided and yours truly (Nathaniel) looked at the list -- essentially a top 20 at that point -- and voted only on the finalists... which amounted to a couple of "executive saves" I suppose you could say. Here's to hoping that all 15+ of these movies provoking Pavlovian drooling in our corner of the cinephile blogosphere satisfy.
Now that the list is fully up, I wonder how much of the next Oscar battles for Best Actress & Supporting Actress we've inadvertently prophesied what with Blanchett, Streep, Moore, Page, Cotillard, Winslet, Swinton, Rampling in juicy leading roles and Mara, Paulson, Chastain, Wasikowska, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Judy Davis and Dakota Johnson all featured (we assume) prominently in these 15 features, too. (yes, first our Oscar predictions arrive in April)
What movies DIDN'T we cover for the summer and following prestige season that you're most excited about? And which movies on our list did we properly whet your appetite for?
Lady MacBeth (Marion Cotillard) and her would be king (Michael Fassbender)
We Can't Wait
#1 Carol in which Blanchett ♥ Mara and her husband does not ♥ that
#2 Ricki & The Flash in which Streep rocks out / returns home
#3 Macbeth in which Fassbender seeks the crown whilst Cotillard tries to remove that damn spot and though we've had enough Shakespeare they're both too irresistible to deny
#4 Mad Max: Fury Road in which all post-apocalyptic hell breaks loose
#5 The Lobster ...who knows but electic cast and Dogtooth director intrigue
#6 Crimson Peak in which del Toro goes Gothic with scrumptious cast
#7 45 Years in which Andrew Haigh (Weekend) directs Rampling ♥ Courtenay
#8 Bridge of Spies Spielberg + Hanks ÷ The Coen Bros
#9 Taxi in which Jafar Panahi continues to make movies despite the ban
#10 Freeheld in which Moore ♥ Page and they reenact a true LGBT rights story
#11 A Bigger Splash gets the I Am Love team back together for erotic drama
#12 The Dressmaker in which Kate Winslet seeks revenge... with fashion!
#13 The Hateful Eight in which it's Tarantino so... our best guess (we don't read bootleg scripts) is sausage party mayhem + elaborately poetic shit-talking. One thing that's an absolute certainty: not enough actresses. Contrary to Hollywood's entire western genre, women made up half of the population back then, too.
#14 Knight of Cups in which we view Hollywood sellouts through a Malick prism?
#15 Arabian Nights in which Miguel Gomes (Tabu) makes a 6½ hour political fable
Related Sidebars & Prologues
You didn't see that coming?"
Animated Films
Tomorrowland
Jake Gyllenhaal & Franchise Returns
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Magic Mike XXL
Saturday, March 21, 2015 at 9:57AM It's time for the final two categories in this year's Film Bitch Awards, the Limited or Cameo roles. Which is to say the actors who have only two scenes or less or who are continually backgrounded but for like one spotlight scene. It's an inexact science for sure and the line becomes blurry sometimes with supporting. [Breaking news: a former nominee in these limited/cameo categories whose star is rising will be guest blogging next month for a special day! More on that soon.]
This may sound silly to more casual readers but I agonize over these categories nearly as much as their Oscar correlatives. In fact the entire reason that I still haven't posted the women -- I had planned to post both at once naturally -- is that I haven't narrowed it down to 5 yet. I'm stuck at 8 and don't want to lose any of them.
So first up, the men...
Though Wild and Selma (nominee Henry G. Sanders as "Cager Lee" pictured above), offered plentiful options, and Two Days One Night was undeniable (kudos Timur Magomedgadzhie, left) the possibilities actually weren't obviously abundant. Perhaps this is because men dominate movies so thoroughly that the very small parts tend to be played by women and maybe there's a slight possibility that this actressexual doesn't notice the men quite as much who fill out the frame in group scenes. But let's not distract ourselves from the business at hand: Here's the nominee and finalist lists.
Friday, March 20, 2015 at 7:00PM 
Team Experience is counting down our 15 most anticipated. Here's Matthew Eng with our #1 choice, which incidentally also topped this list last year when we used wishful thinking to pretend it would be done early...
Who & What: Living genius Todd Haynes directs playwright and Mrs. Harris scribe Phyllis Nagy’s adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s gently subversive lesbian novella (originally published under the much grittier-named The Price of Salt) about a sensitive shopgirl (Rooney Mara) who falls in love with the lonely society dame of the title (Cate Blanchett) in lush 1950s New York.
Why We’re Excited About it: The cinematic “comeback” of Haynes, returning to the big screen a full eight years after I’m Not There (despite a six-hour pit stop at HBO for Kate Winslet’s Mildred Pierce), is obviously incentive enough. But he’s also compiled a cast so charismatic, it basically makes you salivate: Mara and Blanchett, of course, but how about Ace Team Player and Perpetual Dreamboat Kyle Chandler as Blanchett’s snooping husband?
Lots more and several photos after the jump...
