"Yesterday Today and Tomorrow" - Best Shot Visual Index

This week's Hit Me With Your Best Shot subject is Vittorio de Sica's gorgeous comic love song, three of them, to Italy and super-sized movie star charisma. Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni are special on their own but together it's something else again. Vittorio de Sica is one of Italy's great directors but usually when people reference him they're talking about neo realism and his classic The Bicycle Thief. That's nothing at all like this colorful playful romantic comedy. The film was shot by Giuseppe Rotunno who also lensed Rocco & His Brothers (previously covered in this very series) and later went on to an Oscar nomination for the Bob Fosse masterpiece All That Jazz (1979). Yesterday Today and Tomorrrow was a hit, another feather in both stars caps (they were already international superstars) and won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and a BAFTA for "Foreign Actor" for Mastroianni but today it's underdiscussed.

It remains most famous for one scene in particular, Sophia's modest but ultra sexy little striptease pulling a stocking down to the horny delight of childlike Marcello. The stars later riffed on that scene together in Robert Atlman's fashion comedy Pret a Porter. Since there are so many images in this post (one from each short film from most of the participants) they'll have to go after the jump. And if these images and great articles don't convince you to see this Oscar winner, all hope is lost!  

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Open Thread

Apologies but we're not doing so well at TFE headquarters today (after a particularly nasty bout of insomnia). Nathaniel is an inadvertent zombie and not the beautifully smoky-eyed high-functioning Nicolas Hoult kind. 

Talk amongst yourselves. What's on your cinematic mind? Best Shot roundup late tonight -- have you watched Yesterday Today and Tomorrow yet on Netflix? -- and more goodies tomorrow

Q&A Part 2: Guilty Pleasures, Boytoys, and Best Animated Feature

Yesterday I  answered reader questions about film sets worth living in and all time favorite actors and I hope that conversation keeps going because I haven't heard from too many of you what your choices are. There were so many good question this week let's keep the party going for an extra day. Here's the next six questions featuring Guilty Pleasures, Oscar's Best Animated Feature and Unseen Classics. One question will be answered in a forthcoming theme week that's already been planned and one final question is getting its own post. 

You can't say we've been slacking here at TFE.

LADY EDITH: Do you have a favorite Altman? 

I do. And it's no contest. I just shout Nashville (1975) as enthusiastically and loudly as I can when asked. Which is not to dismiss the rest of Robert Altman's always at least interesting filmography. My other two favorites are Three Women (1977) for its psychosexual actressing and Gosford Park (2001) for the sheer pleasure of it but I love his movies... well, maybe not Dr T and the Women but I love quite a few of his movies.

JEFF: What's your biggest guilty pleasure movie? Or a movie that most of the readers would be surprised that you happen to love.

After so many years writing online about movies I fear I have no secrets left. I love the usual guilty pleasures and probably talk about them too much (Xanadu and Showgirls chief among them). I suppose in terms of things I rarely write about the #1 guilty pleasure would be that I do kind of have a (small) thing for B grade action movies and affection for the sometimes limited actors that star in them like Jean Claude Van Damme, Jason Statham, and Schwarzenegger of course. This is not a blanket genre appreciation; I never was interested if the movie starred Steven Seagal or Sylvester Stallone. I've seen Highlander (1986) with Christopher Lambert several times because my brother and his friends loved it. I loved Universal Soldier (1992) for some reason. One truly terrible movie that I used to enjoy with an old friend was Showdown in Little Tokyo (1991) starring Dolph Lundgren and Brandon Lee. This actually happens in it...

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Curio: Black Sheep White Sheep Designs

Alexa here with your weekly art appreciation. I am a real lover of collage as an art form. Anyone who picks up this tome on my coffee table is likely to hear an earful from me as to why I think it is the perfect medium for our age.  So I'm always seeking out artists that do it well for inspiration.  I recently stumbled upon the etsy shop Black Sheep White Sheep and bookmarked it immediately.  Designer Maria Simeonova has created some particularly lovely film posters using collage and illustration that would look gorgeous in any room; she's also done wonderful portrait illustrations of her favorite directors. Best of all, her prints are affordable, at around $30-$50 each.  

You can see all her prints here. After the jump, more of my favorites...

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Looking For Home: I am a simple man

Manuel here, back from a week away to chat up last night’s season’s (series?) finale. Thank you Nathaniel for filling in, though I’m sorry you had the unlucky job of recapping my least favorite episode so far! We’re clearly of one mind of the way the show hit a low-point mostly by telegraphing rather than embodying its own story beats. Thankfully, the season finale worked wonderfully as an introspective examination of the fraught ride to successful gay intimacy.

By the second episode of what turned out to be a self-assured and all-out fantastic second season, when the illicit domesticity of Kevin and Patrick took center stage, I noted that the HBO show was great at asking the following question:

“What does intimacy look like within a community that is still encumbered by secrets and closets, even as it prides itself on openness and honesty?”

That question could just as easily work as preface for this episode...

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