Beauty Vs Beast: War of the Plastics

JA from MNPP here, bringing our weekly "Beauty Vs Beast" competition to North Shore High School for Mean Girls Week, The Film Experience's ongoing celebration of the film's 10th anniversary. That's right, it's time to pick a side - will you put on your bathing suit even if you're a lesbian and stand in defiance of Regina George, mean queen of the Plastic machine, or will you side with her, the devil you know, in the face of Cady Heron, that cruel interloper from the carcass-strewn wilds of the home-schooling system? Take a stand (and make sure to get your pink shirt back too)...

poll by twiigs.com

You've got one week to make your preference known and to scribble down your thoughts in the Burn Book that is the comments, so have at it.

PREVIOUSLY Last week we went mutant-crazy and asked you to choose between Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and whaddya know, evil has triumphed! It was closer than usual but Fassbender found the metal-core of your affections and yanked it his way, 60%-wise. Kate spoke truth to most everybody's feelings regarding the difficulty of this choice...

"I'd actually call it draw, myself. Xavier and McAvoy are the emotional core/grounding force of the film, while Magneto/Fassbender provides a kind of electric energy that jolts the audience. Their powers mirror their dramatic function in XMFC. Both of them are needed for the film to work."

Jane Campion's Gorgeous Cannes Jury

Cannes is but 17 days away and we'll have a TFE team member there this year! Alas it's not me so I'll have to be envious of Diana as she jets off to France in two weeks. We already knew that the brilliant auteur Jane Campion, who regained some cultural caché recently with Top of the Lake (she never lost it with us: Bright Star, hello!) would preside over the jury but this morning the full nine member panel was announced.

Joining Campion this year is a great mix of onscreen talent that happens to include a few people The Film Experience is generally just gaga for from left to right: TFE's favorite Mexican actor ever since Amores Perros, Gael García Bernal;  the future reinterpreter of The Little Mermaid, one of our favorite ladies Sofia Coppola (USA);  former Bond Girl Carole Bouquet will represent the hometeam of France; A Touch of Sin/Platform director Jia Zhangke (China) who I was literally just talking about at brunch yesterday; TFE's favorite Korean actress Jeon Do-Yeon (Secret Sunshine, The Housemaid); the other Mad Dane Drive's Nicolas Winding Refn (Denmark); Hollywood star, experimental indie fixture, and Wes Anderson repertory company player Willem Dafoe (USA); and Leila Hatami, the beautiful Iranian star of A Separation.

 I am in a puddle for this jury. LOVE. 

Oscar Bait 2015 Alert: "Genius" With Kidman, Firth, and Law

Yes, dear concerned reader, I know I know. I'm supposed to be thinking about 2014 and who might be Oscar nominated 9 months from now. I'll get there. I will. But I can't let this latest dazzling dangling carrot of 2015 cinematic possibility pass without mention. Because a curious trend continues...

Thomas Wolfe, Aline Bernstein, and Max Perkins to be played by Law, Kidman, and Firth

We've already noted, with raised eyebrow, the shocking rapidity of Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth veritable obsession with working together. As previously mentioned they have THREE films together coming out this year. Add a fourth to the pipeline. They will co-star again in Genius which is based on the super acclaimed biography "Max Perkins: Editor Of Genius," by A Scott Berg.

The screenplay is by three time Oscar nominee John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator, Hugo) and the cast is similarly Oscar-favored. Two time nominee Jude Law, Kidman's Cold Mountain "husband" (I will marry yoooo) has taken over the incredibly juicy role of the novelist Thomas Wolfe (which means a viable shot at a Supporting Actor trophy for Jude Law even though the best guess is that he's actually co-lead) which was once to be played by Michael Fassbender. Oscar winner Colin Firth headlines playing the influential book editor Max Perkins and Oscar winning Kidman plays Wolfe's lover, the multihyphenate writer/costume/set designer Aline Bernstein. The film takes place in the 1920s/1930s literary scene so stay tuned. Who will they cast as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway? Both of those legends also have major roles in the book.

The big obvious question mark here is budget (can it get the lush period treatment it deserves?) and Michael Grandage in the director's chair. This is the 52 year old stage director's first feature gig behind the camera though he's acted in front of it before. 

Wanna read the book?

Tribeca: Locked Up with Daddy Issues

More Tribeca reporting from Abstew

Later this year, young British actor Jack O'Connell has the potential to breakout in a big way when he takes on the lead role as real-life hero Louis Zamperini in the Angelina Jolie directed Oscar-bait film, Unbroken. But before seeing him in the noble prestige film in December, O'Connell gets down and dirty in David Mackenzie's excellent prison drama Starred Up. Eric Love (O'Connell) is a 19-year-old inmate that despite his young age is such a violent threat that he has been 'starred up' to join older convicts in a high security adult penitentiary. O'Connell bites into the role, and quite literally - in an early tussle with the the guards he clamps down on one of their testicles. O'Connell makes his dangerous young prisoner unpredictable and unsettlingly charismatic.

Although we are never informed of what Eric has actually done to land him in prison, judging from the way he quickly acclimates himself in his new cell (fashioning a weapon out of the melted end of a toothbrush and the blade of his safety razor, knowing the perfect hiding place to store it when he needs it), it's not hard to imagine prison has already played a large part in shaping his young life. Perhaps his issues can be traced back to his own convict father? As fate would have it, Eric's new confines include none other than his fellow inmate, dear ol' dad, Neville (Aussie actor Ben Mendelsohn once again bringing nuance and complexity to the role of a volatile thug, as he did in both Animal Kingdom and The Place Beyond the Pines).

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Tribeca: Courteney Cox Delivers a Dud in 'Just Before I Go'

Glenn reporting from Tribeca

Oh Courteney!

Courteney Cox looms large in my personal history as a central figure in two long running franchises (Friends and Scream) that played a major role in my teenage (and further) life. So it takes a lot for me to dislike something Courteney Cox does so violently as I did her directorial debut Just Before I Go. I went in to her new film intrigued and with some mild expectations that she’d be able to transfer the strange, often very dark humor of her current TBS sitcom Cougar Town into something somewhat funny. This new film’s elements of suicide, homophobia, racism, and other eye-raising topics certainly lend themselves to a wicked, taboo-pushing comedy, but what she and screenwriter David Flebotte have delivered instead is one of the most offensive pieces of trash to have come out in quite some time. [more...]

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