We Can't Wait! #10: Freeheld

Team Experience is counting down our 15 most anticipated for 2015. Here's Anne Marie...

Who & What: Ellen Page's 6-years-in-the-making passion project teams the tiny Canadian with Oscar-winning goddess Julianne Moore in a story about a dying New Jersey policewoman (Moore) who fights to transfer her pension benefits to her partner (Page). Based on a true story, the film is written by Oscar-nominated Philadelphia scribe Ron Nyswaner, and directed by Peter Sollett of Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist fame. Rounding out the already stellar cast are Steve Carrell and Michael Shannon. With this film plus Carol (more on that later in the series), this promises to be a good year for lesbians in film.

Why We're Excited About It: So many reasons: It's based on an Oscar winning short. It's a true and beautiful story about the fight for equal rights. It's Moore's second film release after winning the Oscar. If it's successful, it will be proof that an actor (Page) can come out and actually raise her profile enough to get films made. Plus on a purely shallow level, Ellen Page and Julianne Moore are adorable separately, and promise to be twice as adorable together. Observe:

What If It All Goes Wrong: The film itself seems to be in good hands, but the MPAA is a concern. Last year, we had two wonderful LGBTQ films, Pride and Love Is Strange, strangled with R ratings despite no content unsuitable for younger viewers. While Freeheld's star power would hopefully help it overcome the box office hurdles caused by an R rating, it would be a cruel irony to allow the prejudiced pearl-clutchers at the MPAA to censor a film about overcoming prejudice. Time will tell.

When: Lionsgate just won a bidding war to distribute the film, so hopefully we should be seeing it pop up in film festivals with a wider release later this year.

Previously...
#11 A Bigger Splash
#12 The Dressmaker
#13 The Hateful Eight
#14 Knight of Cups
#15 Arabian Nights
Sidebar 2 Tomorrowland
Sidebar 1 Avengers: Age of Ultron
Intro Pick a Blockbuster

Visual Index ~ Paris is Burning's Best Shots

For a film that's less than 80 minutes long, Paris is Burning contains at least that many worthy topics of discussion presenting quite a challenge for Best Shot participants. You could write 80 articles on it on entirely different subjects. The documentary was an instant sensation winning the Sundance Film Festival in January 1991, and opening that summer to big box office ($3.7 million... which was quite a lot for a documentary). It landed on top ten lists, won critics prizes and generated yet more press when it was horrifically snubbed by Oscar in the Best Documentary Feature category. The film documents NYC's ball culture in 1987 with a few scenes from 1989. By 1989 you can already feel the scene changing, being coopted, and about to be appropriated for one of Madonna's biggest hits. 

My choice and a few more words on this landmark film after this gallery of incredible images. PLEASE NOTE: Next week's topic for Tuesday March 17th (St. Patrick's Day) is the classic THE QUIET MAN (1952) set in Ireland starring John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara. Like Paris, it's available on Netflix Instant Watch so I expect y'all here Tuesday night with your choices.

PARIS IS BURNING (1990)
Best Shots according to 21 Fine Cinephiles Round the Web

Click to read more ...

Richard Glatzer, Co-Director of Still Alice (1952-2015)

Wash Westmoreland & Richard Glatzer. I believe this photo is from around the time of The Fluffer (2001)

Just two minutes after the last post, coincidentally about Still Alice but meant to be a random amusement, I read that Richard Glatzer the co-writer and co-director had died. He had been struggling with ALS for the past few years. If you'll excuse me getting a little sentimental, I'd like to tell you my personal story about him as a way of working through my sadness today.

I can't recall the exact circumstances of our meeting but just after I had moved to New York City in 1999, we began to talk over e-mail. He was quite literally my first online friend who was actually working in movies and television around the time I was trying to launch The Film Experience. If I remember correctly our online friendship was prompted by an interview I had done with Jackie Beat, my all time favorite drag queen, for my print zine (before the website). She had worked with Richard on his first film, the underseen gay indie dramedy Grief (1993). More...

Click to read more ...

Your Daily Reminder That Julianne Moore Won an Oscar

Hat tip and Quote of the week to our friend Ali Arikan in Istanbul

Turkish bootlegs don't have time for your bullshit."
-Ali Arikan 

We Can't Wait! #11: "A Bigger Splash"

Team Experience is counting down our 15 most anticipated for 2015. Here's Nathaniel... 

Who & What: No, kids. NOT the watery pop art David Hockney painting. Not even the highly naked 70s era fictionalized bio sprung from that painting, though we'd happily see that too should someone screen it. (Curators?) What it is is FINALLY the Luca Gaudagino follow up to I Am Love which topped our charts when it was released in 2010. That film's inimitable star Tilda Swinton and its gifted cinematographer Yorick Le Saux (Only Lovers Left Alive) and editor Walter Fasano are all returning. New collaborators are production designer Maria Djurkovic (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Imitation Game), Dakota Johnson untied, and two of the best male screen actors in the world in Ralph Fiennes and Matthias Schoenaerts.  

Here's the only photo that I'm aware of from the set:

Why We're Excited About It: Swinton and Fiennes hinted at fabulous chemistry in Grand Budapest Hotel in their ultra brief screentime together. They're playing ex-lovers this time -- with Tilda married to Schoenaerts so just those names all smooshed together in a daisy chain sound like a bodice ripper for art film fans. The characters all collide on vacation in Italy including Fiennes screen daughter (Dakota Johnson) and things get... well, no spoilers but there's obviously TROUBLE and that trouble is at least somewhat sexual. It's adapted from La Piscine (1969) a French film starring the beauteous coupling of Alain Delon & Romy Schneider. If you want spoilers, go there. 

What if It All Goes Wrong: Guadagnino has been doing shorts and documentaries for the past several years after I Am Love, just as he had before that international breakthrough. Following up a masterpiece is never easy. It's probably not safe to expect something that brilliant again though we wish him enormous success so he might finally get that proposed remake of Auntie Mame with Tilda in the leading role made after all. Another concern: Margot Robbie was originally cast in Dakota's part and, ,apologies to Dakota, but that feels like a downgrade on the evidence of what we've seen so far from both of them.

When: Fox Searchlight has distribution rights for America and filming has wrapped so we'd expect a TIFF or Telluride bow followed by a November or December release if people are wild for it. But you never know. I Am Love did Venice and TIFF in 2009 and then waited until summer of 2010 for release. 

previously in We Can't Wait, Kate Winslet in The Dressmaker