Beauty Vs Beast: A Dog Eat Dog World

JA from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty Vs Beast," which is a real Hemingway-esque battle between the forces of Man and the forces of the Untamed Wildnerness. On the one side we have Tom Hanks, multiple Oscar winner, as the determined Detective Scott Turner, trying to solve the most important make-it-or-break-it case of his career. And on the other side... there's Hooch, the junkyard dog who witnessed this most heinous act of murder.

As the VHS box said at the video-store I worked at in high school, they're the oddest couple ever unleashed! Today is actually the 25th anniversary of Turner & Hooch's release, and heck, somebody should note it. Tom Hanks would probably rather it be forgotten, and I probably haven't seen the movie in 20 years, but I was 11 when it came out and dang it... I totally saw it. That means something.

T&H was actually a pretty big hit though (as movies with adorable feisty doggies sometimes are). It was in that period post-Big pre-Philadelphia where Hanks was flailing a bit - people look back fondly on The Burbs and Joe Vs The Volcano now but at the time tweren't so, and then there's the giant sucking sound of The Bonfire of the Vanities. And Turner & Hooch, of course. Of course! The story of a neatnik cop learning to love a tower of slobber. And in return, as the film's Wiki puts it, "on a positive note Hooch also instigates a romance between Turner and the new town veterinarian Emily Carson (Mare Winningham)." But I think the main user review of the film at IMDb says it best:

"My boyfriend loves this movie so I watched it and I laughed. Hooch acts exactly like our dog- big and messy and destructive. Tom Hanks was very convincing as a meticulous detective and Hooch is a hoot as a dog that can rattle him.. All in all this is a good movie to watch on a rainy afternoon like we did."

What more could you ask for? Now on to the choosing!

poll by twiigs.com

One week is all you've got to slap a leash on your winner and march them around the ring - tell us in the comments who you're barking for!

PREVIOUSLY Last week I asked you guys to choose between the Devil and an Oscar-winning actress, and I'm not surpised the actress took it but proving he's no fluke the Devil really put up a good fight. Still it was Chris MacNeil who walked about with 3/4s of the ultimate vote, winning not just her daughter back from the depths of Hell itself, but also your validation (clearly the bigger prize). Said brookesboy:

"Ellen is so brilliant in this film, I have to go with Chris. Still, that devil has some impressive tricks up his sleeve, even if theoretically he is against vulgar displays of power. Team Chris! Give her that damn crucifix already!"

Introducing Pt 2... Blair and Candy

Previously on "Introducing": Tatum, Sylvia & Madeline

It's just 3 days until the Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1973. Bless StinkyLulu for dreaming up this event years ago because it's still so fun. But first some unfinished introductions: how do Candy Clark and Linda Blair enter their movies. If you hadn't yet seen the movie would you be expecting an Oscar nomination from these first scenes? What do the scenes telegraph for first time viewing? 

Sure do love you.

Hi, Mom!

11½ minutes in. Meet "Regan" (Linda Blair in The Exorcist)
How fitting that she first appears in bed, since she'll spend the bulk of the movie in one albeit it under far more horrific circumstances than a good night's sleep. As the scene begins her mother Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) has heard noises in her Georgetown rental and checks on her daughter first. Sound asleep. But there's a telling pan left to the open window, curtains blowing, and despite the maternal warmth and blissful lack of scoring or over-done sound design at this moment (it does sound plausibly like a rat or racoon in the attic) the scene is subtly chilling. The Exorcist understands the slow build and modulation and starts pianisssimo.  Chris kisses her daughter and pulls the covers up. When we see Regan again five minutes later she's just a typical bouncy teenager who talks pretty horses and steals cookies. If you'd never heard of The Exorcist before you first saw it (fat chance) you could safely assume that both the mom and the daughter might soon be in peril, but nothing else. The Exorcist establishes home life normalcy first before demonic insanity betrays its fragility.

Babe. What a bitchin' babe!

30¾ minutes in. Meet "Debbie" (Candy Clark in American Graffiti)
American Graffiti is about four friends after high school graduation but by the half hour mark they've all split up and the film becomes four parallel films as they cruise around the strip in different cars or on foot. We meet so many characters, first spotted from car windows, including one previous blonde fantasy girl that Debbie's entrance doesn't seem major... at first. Initially Debbie is presented in completely objectified fashion as Terry (Charles Martin Smith) calls her a Babe (to himself) and hears other men cat call her. He follows her in the car and she's getting nervous in this neighborhood and walks faster. But after a minute of fruitless one-sided conversation from his car he tells her she looks like Connie Stevens. Her temperature changes and she beelines straight for him, suddenly a different person. It's a special entrance just from Clark's offkilter switch. She's the one suddenly objectifying... only its the car she's lustfully eyeing and possibly more compliments, too.

She'd get the ultimate compliment with an Oscar nomination.

Be here on Thursday afternoon when our awesome panel discusses these five nominated performances in the monthly Smackdown event. This is your last day to vote on the 1973 supporting actress shortlist by sending me heart ratings -- for only the ones you've seen -- on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being unimproveable feats of acting. (Reminder: Next month is 1989)

ICYMI

Super jam-packed week here at TFE. We were possibly over-posting which brings us to ICYMI because sure you did miss something. I've put the goods under song headers this morning just because.

We Can Be Heroes
TFE got schizophrenic as Amir bitched about superhero franchises just as Anne Marie was celebrating them with live Comic Con coverage.

You're Beautiful
We gave Sandra Bullock a teensy look-back for her 50th. But I was mostly feeling love in short post form for players who get too little attention these days: Mary Steenburgen is always boss, John Leguizamo is an oft inspired clown, and on a clear day you can see Barbara Harris forever. I'm glad to know there are other fans out there of all three. 

Anticipation
I was worried that YNMS efforts were getting stale but the inspiration faucet was suddenly turned back on for Imitation Game. And how about a double feature of Miss Julie & 50 Shades of Grey?

You're History
To give the upcoming Smackdown (Thursday!) some context we looked back at 1973 in particular: The Long Goodbye, Badlands, Day For Night, Box Office Hits, and Introductions of the Supporting Actresses. (There's still a couple more goodies coming.)

That Thing You Do!
Drew Bond on a banana. Got under ScarJo's Skin. Discussed 1999 mythologizing. Drooled on Jake. Saw red.

HELP WANTED: I want to thank everyone who responded to the post about new contributors. It's going to take me awhile to get through the samples but know that I appreciate and have received.

UP NEXT: 
Cries and Whispers, The Smackdown of 1973, Masters of Sex and more Emmy Award Countdown silliness, and Patricia Arquette from Boyhood.

Scarlett's Weekend. What Did You See?

Amir here, with the weekend’s Scarlett Johansson re Box Office report

‘twas a battle between two kickass heroes at the multiplex this weekend, and the The Rock’s old school muscles and sword and sandals fell to the fierce power of ScarJo and the wonder of technology. Lucy beat Hercules to top the weekend. Those weren’t the only new releases that entered the top ten: the anonymously titled And So It Goes starring Diane Keaton and Michael Douglas started with a tepid $2k per screen average for the slightly older crowd, while A Man Most Wanted did really solid business on only 361 screens. Experts are currently analyzing whether the audience interest stems from Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final performance or the work of Iranian character actor Homayoun Ershadi.

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE
01 LUCY $44 *NEW* Trailer thoughts
02 HERCULES $29 *NEW* 
03 DAWN OF PLANET OF APES $16.4 (cum. $172) Review
04 THE PURGE: ANARCHY $9.8 (cum. $51.2)
05 PLANES: FIRE & RESCUE $9.3 (cum. $35.1) 
06 SEX TAPE $5.9 (cum. $26.8)
07 TRANSF4RMERS $4.6 (cum. $236.3)
08 AND SO IT GOES $4.5 *NEW*
09 TAMMY $3.4 (cum. $78.1) Review
10 A MOST WANTED MAN $2.7 *NEW*

and...
11 22 JUMP STREET $2.5 (cum. $185.6) Podcast
12 HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 $2.2 (cum. $165.6) best movie dragons
13 MALEFICENT $1.7 (cum. $232.1) Podcast
14 BOYHOOD $1.7 (cum. $4.1) review
15 BEGIN AGAIN $1.5 (cum. $12.3) top ten thus far

But the real star of the weekend is surely Johansson. What a difference a couple of years can make. After the promise of her early years, for nearly a decade it seemed like she would never be able to fulfill her potential. But consider what she has given us in the past 10 months: two Oscar-worthy performances in Don Jon and Under the Skin, a wildly acclaimed voice performance in Her, the only positive element of the otherwise forgettable Winter Soldier and an ensemble part in the surprise hit Chef. In the process she’s worked with two of America's hottest auteurs and proved her acting chops in a variety of genres. It’s almost impossible to think the same actress is behind both the gum-sporting Jersey girl Barbara Sugarman and the nameless alien of Skin. If the final piece of the puzzle of her resurgence was to show that she can carry a film to box office success without the help of other spandex-clad superheroes, Lucy seems to have given us the answer. With exciting reports that she’s in talks with Coen Brothers to join the cast of Hail, Caesar!, there are no signs of her slowing down. Long may her reign continue!

On the limited end of things, Woody Allen’s new film, Magic in the Moonlight, received the customary Allen treatment of opening in very few locations to very strong per screen average on its way to wide release. Furthermore, in line with the other recent Allen tradition of making one dud for every hit, Magic has so far ended on the lower side of the spectrum, critically speaking. I haven’t yet seen it, so I’ll reserve judgment until I do. Unless it suffers the same fate as You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, which means I’ll never find out.

What did you watch this weekend?

1973 Look Back: The End of the New Wave, the Beginning of My Cinephilia

The team is looking back at 1973 as we approach the Smackdown. Here's Amir with a personal history...

the first known photo of this famous cineaste pair. Before they were filmmakers. [src]Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut were the poster boys of the French New Wave, its most recognizable faces. Their friendship that had begun in the 1940s had carried them through all their years at Cahiers and into their directing careers, was evidenced by Godard’s adoration of Truffaut’s The 400 Blows and the latter’s providing the story for his friend’s first film, Breathless. Their early writings manifest the division they had from the beginning about their outlook on the mechanics and politics of cinema. Nonetheless, their friendship continued even through the fraught days of political disagreement in 1968; but no further than 1973. Truffaut’s Day for Night (La Nuit Americaine) was an unforgivable crime in Godard’s eyes, and the latter’s disapproval of the film was a massive act of hypocrisy in Truffaut’s.  They were to never see each other again, and only after Truffaut’s death did Godard find nice words to say about his old friend.

It’s easy to see why Day for Night made Godard’s blood boil. It’s as conventionally constructed a film as one can expect from a nouevelle vague filmmaker, an unashamed love letter to Hollywood and cinema itself – and with an Oscar in its cap, no less. By this time in his career, Truffaut had already been branded a sellout by some and would continue to be called as such. He had, in the opinion of some of the New Wave’s proponent’s, become the very cinema he criticized in his youth. There was no political edge to Day for Night; no radical revision of how the medium operates. It was “a lie,” thought Godard. Some of those accusations might be true, but there is another truth that isn’t mentioned as often: this is an incredible film.

When I first watched Day for Night, I was 19. It was in the days when Toronto’s Bloor Cinema wasn’t yet devoted to screening documentaries. It was a cheap, dingy but friendly gathering place for the neighborhood’s elderly and University of Toronto’s students. [More...]

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