Best Shot: Deborah's Choice From Goldfinger (1964)

Hi, Deborah here, from Basket of Kisses.  We're currently experiencing a site outage, but will be back up soon! Meanwhile, Nathaniel is graciously hosting my entry in Hit Me With Your Best Shot.

Best Shot is one of my favorite blogging series anywhere, but I've never participated until now. Nathaniel tempted me unbearably, though, by selecting a Bond movie. Goldfinger is a movie filled with iconic imagery; imagery that springs immediately to mind. So I should warn you right now.

This is not my best shot... [more]

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Bobby Holland Hanton: The Man Who Has Been Thor, Batman, and Bond

Bobby Holland HantonHave you ever fantasized about being a superhero? Bobby Holland Hanton doesn't need to. He's done it time and again.

Though he's only been in the movie business since Quantum of Solace (2008), the young fit Brit stuntman has already worn the Batsuit, Thor's cape, James Bond's suits, and... well whatever it is anyone was wearing on the set of Green Lantern before it was replaced by CGI. You can see Bobby somewhere in the battle sequences of Maleficent at the moment, albeit much less foregrounded than he usually is due to doubling a who's who of A list leading men.

A former gymnast, he competed for Great Britain until he was 17, he lives a very regimented life. Before any shoot, he shifts the training to "match" the body of whoever he'll be stunt doubling for. He's stepped in on the difficult stuff for Christian Bale, Daniel Craig, Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Reynolds, and Channing Tatum. He's with Chris Hemsworth all the time now, which is hard work due to his size.

Hemsworth is huge and when he's Thor he's massive"

To prepare for The Avengers Age of Ultron he was training six days a week, twice a day to look like the God of Thunder. You'll see Bobby -- but you won't know you're seeing him since that's the magic and the craft  -- as Hemsworth's more acrobatic twin on two 2015 pictures: Heart of the Sea and the superhero sequel. He's also doing Captain America stunt work on Ultron somehow though we hope not in the same scene. 

I spoke to this in-demand stunt man by phone. Superpowerless mortal that I am, I couldn't very well fly to South Korea to drop in on the day's filming of The Avengers! He was out of Thor's wig on a rare early finish day (it's usually "six to six and longer") and he'd already had dinner, trained, showered and applied all his Dove Men + Care products*. He'll start the routine again the next day in the wee hours of the morning, for makeup and costuming, clipped and banded into Thor's long blond tresses all of which is rough on the hair and skin, hence the products. [*Yes, this is your requisite product placement scene within the movie. Bobby is a spokesperson for the line. I received a set in the mail after the interview which was a most welcome surprise.]

I'd never spoken to a stuntman before so at first I had to get the skinny on how one gets started. Gymnasts are naturals which should surprise no one...

[Bobby talks Hemsworth, Tatum, Batman & Bond  AFTER THE JUMP...]

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Beauty Vs Beast: Him Freud, Her Jane

JA from MNPP here - The Film Experience is taking a look back at 1964 all this month and so it's the perfect time for our "Beauty Vs Beast" series to take a look at a movie that's turning 50 next month (it was released on July 22nd, 1964) and wades so deep into morally murky waters you're never quite sure which end of the screen you're rooting for (if any), making it perfect for this poll - I speak of Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie.

Starring Tippi Hedren as the titular troubled girl turned to theivery and Sean Connery as the businessman alternately turned on and repelled by that rascally blonde's baser instincts, Marnie's awash in dream symbols (so many snapping purses!) and psychiatry talk - too much of the latter by my count; like Hitch's film Spellbound I  always find his movie's at their least interesting when they're explicitly spelling out his psychological obsessions. Give me the fluid illogic of Vertigo over it any day. But like the keys and key-holes that clutter every other frame of Marnie, the film is most interesting as far as the clues it further offers us towards an understanding of Alfred Hitchcock and his never not fascinating psychological profile. It shuffles some not-before-seen puzzle pieces into place.

Hitch was always putting the audience into morally compromising situations, getting us to side with bullies and lunatics - even his most well-intentioned heroes found themselves doing terrible things (think of the scene in the 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much where Jimmy Stewart drugs Doris Day without telling her so he can calm her down). But Marnie for me is the tipping point in Hitch's filmography where his characters become almost uniformly unlikeable; there's an angriness (or worse, an indfference) to the last decade and a half of his work (yes even in the so-called comedy of The Trouble With Harry) - it reaches its apex with Frenzy, a film I find exceedingly unpleasant to watch with its cast of shrewish women and sweaty men (it works as a horror film, but it makes me extraneously sad all the same), but the seeds are planted with Mark and Marnie, two people just a little too damaged and bizarre for me to ever find myself rooting for them in any way.

So why not force us to pick?!

poll by twiigs.com

You've got one week to vote and to sell us in the comments on the frigid blonde or the manly man that's come to beat some sanity into her. Choices, oh choices.

PREVIOUSLY And speaking of choices, with last week's poll pitting Natalie Portman's White Swan against Mila Kunis' Black Swan? Y'all couldn't make one! IT'S A TIE, YOU GUYS. 428 votes, split perfectly at 50/50. I can't even tell you how giddy that makes me - the movie about doubling and dopplegangers split us right down the middle. We look in the mirror and we see all of the faces. We are legion. I'll share to two quotes from y'all since we went both ways:

"Nina only cause I don't think Lily would take the loss as hard." -- SVG

"Team Lily because that fierce little Russki NEVER would have fallen flat on her ass on opening night. Get your shit together Nina!" -- TB

Link On

click to embiggenBacklots on "the happiest marriage in Hollywood" William Haines and Jimmy Shields from the golden age
Coming Soon first image & poster from Dracula Untold starring Luke Evans which opens in October. (I always giggle when "untold" is used in titles or taglines for characters that every man woman and child has heard of.
Buzzfeed great article on Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook, and melodrama
VF Hollywood Mary Steenburgen on joining Orange is the New Black for Season 3 (I think she removed this tweet because I can't find it) 
Jezebel is the Justice League movie really only going to have one female character?
The Film Stage That's "Sir" Daniel Day-Lewis to you 
Guardian interesting read on how social media killed the official websites for new movies 
Coming Soon Frank Grillo optimistic about returning in Captain America 3 despite being kind of burned alive in Winter Soldier
Variety Adrien Brody and John Cusack joining Jackie Chan in Dragon Blade, one of the most expensive Chinese movies ever. They do know those two Americans aren't box office draws, right? 

Captain vs. Legos
You know how I was all excited about Captain America: The Winter Soldier (which I love and saw again this weekend on a whim) becoming the #1 of the year last week? Well, it's already been replaced as The Lego Movie reclaimed the title the same weekend it debuted on DVD. Only $4,000 separate their grosses - ha! That's what you call a photo finish. The good captain isn't on DVD until September but he's also only in about 200 theaters and could easily lose the rest of them next weekend. Not that any of this matters since Hunger Games: Mockingjay Pt 1 and Grace of Mona-(kidding!) have yet to arrive and will easily surpass them.

What is Valka's purpose in How To Train Your Dragon 2?

Today's Must Read
Tasha Robinson at The Dissolve on "Losing Strong Female Characters to the Trinity Syndrome". Why is it that even when filmmakers care enough to craft and introduce a fascinating female hero, they always abandon, undermine or reduce her by the third act? Two current examples are dissected: Valka (Cate Blanchett) in How To Train Your Dragon 2 who gets the whole second act (but for what purpose?) and Rita (Emily Blunt) in Edge of Tomorrow

Podcast: 2004 Anniversary Party w/ Top Ten Lists

For this hour long special edition of the podcast, we took Joe Reid's suggestion and are having ourselves a theme party. The theme is 2004, and on its tenth anniversary Nathaniel, Nick and Joe marvel at what a rich cinematic year it was and how well the highlights have endured. 

We begin with movies we think we should revisit or have shifted in our memory and then compare top ten lists. Movies discussed include but are not limited to: Dogville, Bad Education, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Tarnation, Before Sunset, Blissfully Yours, Shaun of the Dead, Sideways, House of Flying Daggers, Primer, Vera Drake, and Maria Full of Grace among others. 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download the conversation on iTunes. Continue the conversation with your own 2004 memories and revisits in the comments.

2004 Top Ten Party