Threads: "Know your place. Accept your place. Be a shoe"

Each Wednesday in "Threads" we'll be obsessing over a single costume we're fixated on that week. This one's an apology: how on earth did Snowpiercer get left out of those Halloween Costume Suggestions yesterday?

Tilda Swinton spends the bulk of her screentime in Snowpiercer, now on DVD, in a politican-conservative white top and matching skirt adorned with medals. Well, as white as clothing can be in the sooty environs of this dystopian movie where the earth's only living citizens have lived on a speeding train for decades. But when we first see her she's wearing an burnt orange fur with matching tinted glasses, over a brilliant purple skirt suit and boy does it pop surrounded by the grays, blacks, and dour miserabilism of the train. The costume's purpose? Surely to intimidate with its wealthy grandeur and add to that same miserablism. Or, as costume designer Catherine George put it in an interview with Clothes on Film, her inspiration was

...images of women from the from late 60’s/early 70’s, a certain type that I remembered growing up who would wear their fur to go into town and scoff at people who were less better off, a bit of a Margaret Thatcher type, really. The suit was a typical conservative politician shape and style – the purple has the royal quality and it pops with the colour of the fur.

Minister Mason launches into her instantly classic "Be a shoe" monologue in this ensemble in order to put the low class citizens in their 'back of the train' place.

The costume is glorious but Tilda is crazy enough to be hideously unattractive within it. Despite her fashion icon status and ageless alien beauty, the actress has always been without vanity as a performer and the cinema is all the better for it.  The tables are eventually turned on Mason, a self proclaimed "hat" to inferior "shoes," and she is forced to wear a shoe on her own head.

A shoe is not a hat. Except when Tilda wears it, fully revelling in its absurdity.

New group fantasy for the weekend: What if everyone on earth dressed up as their favorite Tilda character this weekend? All  these unforgivingly cruel and icy dystopias that are so in vogue would melt away leaving a Swintonian Utopia in their place.

Snowpiercer is now available on Netflix Instant Watch 
Related: this year's Oscar race for costume design 
Previously on "Threads": Outlander 

A Year with Kate: The Corn is Green (1978)

 Episode 44 of 52: In which Katharine Hepburn bids farewell to her lifelong friend and director, George Cukor.

Who’s up for another catfight? Way back near the beginning of this series, I manufactured a rivalry between young Kate Hepburn and Miss Bette Davis, both sporting ear-splitting accents in two movies from 1934. This time, I don’t have to fake a competition. Katharine Hepburn’s 1979 TV movie happens to be a remake of a 1945 Bette Davis film.

The Corn Is Green (based on the play by by Emlyn Williams) is the story of Miss Moffat, who gets off her tuffet to teach the Welsh miners to read. The role of a strong-willed woman who changes the lives of her impoverished pupils would be catnip for either of our great actresses, so it’s no surprise that Bette and Kate both played Miss Moffat 34 years apart. What is surprising is how different Bette and Kate’s performances are, because the two films they star in are polar opposites in mood and moral. Just how often do you get to compare your favorite actresses on a scene-by-scene basis like this?

The Eyes vs The Cheekbones after the jump.

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Scream coming to TV

Manuel here bringing you an in-depth look at Marvel's upcoming slate is what I would write if I wanted Nat to never invite me to write for TFE ever again. 

Not that we're straying far from Hollywood cash-grabs. At least MTV seems to be having fun with its latest Scream TV show pickup order. In true 2014-fashion, they broke the news... with emoji:

🔪.....💃 🔪....💃 🔪...💃 🔪..💃 🔪😭 💀 😱 310-461-4299 @mtvscream

— MTV (@MTV) October 28, 2014

As with all rebooted, retooled, revamped, repurposed, remade, and rejiggered properties, we'll hold judgment until the series airs next October (why they couldn't wait an extra year to have it coincide with Scream's 20th anniversary is beyond me, though yes, understandable). The big question is whether Ghostface will actually make it to air. You read that right, because of copyright issues, we may be getting a Scream TV show without Ghostface to go with our Gotham TV show without Batman and our S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show without any Avengers.

Which got me thinking, if I ran Hollywood, what famous property would I adapt to a TV show only to strip it off its main selling point to make it more budget-friendly? Herewith are my top three pitches:

- Le Moulin! Before there was Satine, there was... the Moulin Rouge. Set at the turn of the century, this highly stylized musical show follows the burlesque performers at the infamous Paris cabaret. In a world of decadence, can a can-can girl really have it all-all? 

- Lacuna, Inc. Before Clementine and Joel, there was a small start-up company called Lacuna, Inc. This mockumentary workplace comedy follows the shenanigans of Stan, Patrick and Mary, three twenty-something slackers whose dating life is put into relief every week by the grief-stricken people who visit their office to get their memories erased.

- Munchkinland. Before there was Dorothy, there were Glinda and Elphaba (or whichever name we can use without infringing copyright). But even before them, there was the mundane, if quirky life of the people of Munchkinland. Think Twin Peaks but without murder, or maybe there's a murder? There might be songs. I'm hoping we can do a crossover episode with Oompas the gritty reboot about slave labor in Wonka's factory.

Are you excited about Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson's property getting the MTV treatment?Are you hoping it'll be more Bates Motel than Once Upon a Time? What series would you pitch and hope to see on screen? 

The Three Phases of Link

Sight on Earth On Gone Girl's women...  "Psycho Bitch: Qu'est-ce que C'est?"
Awards Circuit Power Hour Actress Oscar categories with Nathaniel R (c'est moi) as guest 
In Contention looks at the Best Original Song race
Vulture Most Valuable Stars List methodology...
Vulture 100 Most Valuable Stars rankings with JLaw up top followed by the usuals RDJ, Leo, Bullock... but what's far far more interesting is the lower tiers like Jake Gyllenhaal at 57 'The Modest Movie Star' and Anna Kendrick at 98 'The Songbird' and some inexplicably high placements like Mila Kunis at 37 'The Ingenue in Intermission'

Yahoo funny piece on Britney Spears terror-laden smiles 
Wired  has a Disney cover and I'm only linking because shouldn't Wired of all places do a little something more creative with an interactive cover than Youtube links? I mean...
BFI is Paris the animation capital of the world for art-driven cartoons?
Esquire "films stupid people think are clever" shameless click bait!
IndieWire does some investigation as to exactly how Poland's Ida became such a big arthouse hit this year. 
Slate on the "Bottom Shaming" of How To Get Away With Murder. I think this piece is really smart. While it's true that depiction is not endorsement (see all the dumb misogyny arguments on every movie ever with a female lead who is mistreated) but I'd argue that depiction is endorsement when multiple characters with presumably varying points of view all sound off on said topic and all agree on said depiction. 

Marvel Made A Teensy Announcement Phase 3 Today
But I'm feeling cranky about superheroes so it doesn't get a whole post. Every godforsaken movie site on the planet will continue to cover it ad nauseum and will probably publish another 5 thinkpieces tomorrow alone on what we "might" see in each of the 8 movies. Repeat for the next five years. Good god film bloggers get a grip and start talking about actual movies that exist for a change! You're turning film culture into a fast food restaurant that only serves air. Zero calories but there's absolutely no nutritional value in publishing your 10,001st post on Dr. Strange's casting.

Anyway...

/Film has video of Marvel's annoyingly ubiquitous Phase Three commercial from earlier today in which they announced 8 new movies including The Black Panther with Chadwick Boseman and Carol Danvers/Captain Marvel in a very late attempt to stave off those "no diversity!" complaints. Those films arrive in 3 to 4 years respectively because we can't have people of color and women before that, you know? That's RISKY BUSINESS. Never mind that women and people of color have led box office hits since the 1920s and 1960s respectively. That's just too progressive for Marvel right now)
The Stake has a great suggestion for Captain Marvel casting but since we're 4 years away still the actress who will eventually be cast might not even be someone anyone has even heard of yet.  

Finally... a trailer but perhaps not the trailer is here for Suite Française is here. EOneUK, releasing the trailer on YouTube claims this will open in January. It's hitting the American Film Market this month too supposedly but it still isn't scheduled for a US release. The buzz for this one started strong last year and nosedived as less and less news was announced. It was starting to feel like a fictional film until this trailer, actually. My yes no maybe so entirely consists of Yes (production team, crazylust for Matthias, tearful farewell to Kristin Scott Thomas), No (WW II prestige fatigue) and Maybe So (is it any good?)