5 Days 'til Emmys: Bunk Mates and Sex for Science

It's my blog and I'll play favorites if I want to. Though I'm rooting hardest for Mad Men on Emmy night (mostly because I think it needs all the goodwill it can get at this point) my actual two favorite shows of the 13/14 television season were Orange is the New Black and Masters of Sex, both competing in various categories, though not enough of them in the latter case, for their stellar debut seasons. So for this round of group question festivities, posed to friends of TFE and contributors, I have two questions regarding my two favorites.

Answer them yourself in the comments.

1. Which Orange is the New Black character would you most want to bunk with if you were so unfortunate as to land in that prison?

Matthew Rettenmund: Sophia Burset would be a great bunkmate. She could do my hair so it wouldn't look bald on top.

Jose Solis: Not a character, but Jodie Foster directed the best episode and I'd love to be *anywhere* with her.

 Mark Blankenship: Clearly, I need to bunk up with Poussey. I speak a little German, I enjoy books, and I'm very interested in building up a tolerance for homemade alcohol.

     more answers & sex studies after the jump

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Yes, No, Maybe So: Rudderless & Revenge of the Green Dragons

Deborah here, with a double-entry of Yes, No, Maybe So. First up, Rudderless from actor turned director William H Macy. (He's up for an Emmy Monday night for Shameless)

Yes

• Directorial debut of William H. Macy. I'm a fan.
• He's using his wife, the awesome Felicity Huffman. Also Billy Crudup.
• There's a sweet naturalism to the trailer.
• It looks like Begin Again, except with more death and less money. I loved Begin Again.

No

• It looks like Begin Again, except with more death and less money. How about a new movie?

More after the jump including the trailers themselves...

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Where My (Legendary) Girls At: Jane, Lily, Diane, and Debbie

Any 24 hour period that has wonderful news about four film legends is a good day, at least in part. We have to grasp at happy straws considering the "real" world outside of the arts. So, let's start with the best best actress news of the day week month...

first still (since pulled it looks like it)

JANE & LILY
That Jane Fonda & Lily Tomlin Netflix series "Grace & Frankie" is really happening and Jane Fonda wrote about it while sharing the first still and behind the scenes photos yesterday: 

I had a brief hard spell the first day, moving away from my Leona Lansing-Newsroom mode and into comedy. Comedy requires different muscles, a subtle shifting of gears, of attitude. It’s harder, in my opinion. This kind of comedy has to be real, the comedy has to come out of reality, out of pain, yet it has to be funny... 

Some actors don’t like to watch dailies (the footage you shot the day before). I, on the contrary, benefit from watching them, and not just the footage that I’m in. I’m one of the producers on this series and I need to see everything. Besides, it helps me calibrate my performance.. 

Jane Fonda would make the best Smackdown guest because she takes acting so seriously, articulates it well and still has curiousity about it; my heart practically burst at a Fonda event a year or two ago when she mentioned her plan to go back to acting class for reasons that there's always more to learn about your craft. This from a two time Oscar winner who, at her best, is pretty untoppable in terms of acting magic. It reminded me of Madonna taking vocal lessons in the 90s and then guitar lessons in the 00s -- Mega-successful people who still stay humble about their talent and seek to improve are a rare breed and deserve enormous respect. One of the great dangers of success is laziness and coasting, you know.

As for Lily, her 75th birthday is next month and we'll be sure to celebrate it somehow.

Debbie Reynolds & Diane Keaton after the jump... 

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Gone With The Wind... Blown To Wednesday Night!

For all your procrastinators, a gift. I'm having an issue with my copy of Gone With the Wind which will postpone my own choice for "Best Shot" until tomorrow. So we'll move the Best Shot party until tomorrow night giving you an extra 24 hours to get on that if you wanted to but were having trouble cramming it in.

If you're shaking your fist into the sunset eager to read about iconic shots from Gone With the Wind (1939) do not fret. Some of our favorite bloggers are already on it:

Timothy -" one of those movies that's so much bigger than anything you can measure it against that even calling it a "movie" seems inadequate..."
Lam - "one of the first English-to-Vietnamese literary translations that my mother read as a child..."
Jason -"The film has no shortage of sumptuous images of the war's destructive power..."
Kacey- "In the seventh and eighth grade, I had this social studies teacher. We’ll call her Ms. B. [she] announces to the class that we’re going to spend a week watching Gone With the Wind..."
Shane - "No matter how you feel about the film, there's no denying its visual grandeur...."

And a brand new participant who starts with this wonderfully funny promise!

Clover - "I barred myself from anything that has been or ever will be used in an Oscar montage..."

Scarlett is NOT pleased that you aren't planning on picking your own "Best Shot". Get on it, people!

Reminder: This "Best Shot" episode is a two-parter. Choose a Best Shot from somewhere between the opening credits and the "I'll never go hungry again" intermission. Next Tuesday, August 26th, we'll complete the film with our Part 2 selections.

Frankly, you should all give a damn. Join us. There's still time.

Beauty vs Beast: Fish Witch

JA from MNPP here with this week's mite-late edition of this week's "Beauty Vs Beast" - sorry for the unexpected day-long delay, what can we say, a sea-witch stole our voice from us. Coincidentally The Film Experience is celebrating the year 1989 in the lead up to this month's Supporting Actress Showdown and whaddya know 1989 was the year that another gorgeous princess, not myself, had the exact same thing happen to her! I handled it with a much finer degree of decorum, natch, but she got Prince Eric so she wins. (Mmmm Prince Eric.) Yes I speak of Disney's The Little Mermaid, which is bringing us this week's animated face-off.

poll by twiigs.com

Life's full of tough choices... innit??? I feel like this one could go either way really, so making you cases in the comments could prove important. Sway the little fishies this way or that, people.

PREVIOUSLY If you felt a little falling sensation - kinda simultaneously plummeting forward and back - as you picked between Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak in last week's Vertigo round you ultimately made like Hitch and came out blonde - well blonde eventually (inevitably) anyway - in the end. Judy, poor poor Judy, won your sympathies along with 71% of the vote. Said Leslie19:

"Judy is the perfect Hitchcockian heroine: A blonde puzzle, with a past. A great wardrobe and the perfect palette for techicolor, in this case his use of green. Is there anything more to say?"