Contest: See Toni Collette & Marisa Tomei on Broadway!

I have a special surprise for you NYC-area readers whose actressexuality extends beyond the silver screen to the stage. I have one pair of tickets for the March 12th dress rehearsal of the new Broadway play The Realistic Joneses to give away. It stars Toni Collette, Michael C Hall, and Marisa Tomei. I've seen all of them perform live and they're every bit as good on stage as they are onscreen (not something that can be said of all film actors!).

"How well do you know your neighbors?" THE REALISTIC JONESES asks.

...a new play about love and life, friends and neighbors.

Written by Pulitzer Prize finalist WILL ENO and directed by SAM GOLD (Fun Home, Seminar), it's an outrageous, inside look at the people who live next door, the truths we think we know and the secrets we never imagined we all might share. Hailed by The New York Times as "a tender, funny and terrific new play with the spring's most enticing new cast," THE REALISTIC JONESES moves into Broadway's Lyceum Theatre on March 13.

Marisa Tomei at a Golden Globes party recentlyTickets are not on sale for this event. This is an invite only performance so you'd be with the very first audience to see it! The show begins previews the following day. 

The play also stars Tracy Letts, the playwright, of Killer Joe, Bug, and August: Osage County fame (you've seen him act on Homeland and he won the Tony recently for yet another revival of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf"). I spoke to him at the Critics Choice Awards and he told me that he'd be in rehearsals for this very thing on Oscar night when Meryl & Julia are competing for statues in his August: Osage County. 

TO ENTER THE CONTEST: Email The Film Experience by Sunday February 23rd with the following information:

1. "Joneses" in the subject line
2. Your full name and email
3. And a sentence or two naming your favorite Toni Collette & Marisa Tomei performances or your favorite neighbor-to-neighbor relationship from a movie (so many to choose from)

Good luck! 

Crying Jags via "Hollywood Acting Studio"

Have you ever watched "Hollywood Acting Studio" it's often quite funny even if, like a lot of web series,  it doesn't quite realize that online audiences are allergic to anything over 3 or 4 minutes. (We sympathize here at The Film Experience with our epic length posts). Here's the latest episode starring the brilliant Drew Droege (you know him as "Chloe") in which he teaches his class how to cry on queue and announces his departure as teacher to join the cast of Fifty Shades of Grey. Ha!

(My favorite part is the group jagged cry finale so many great lines.)

Speaking of acting class humor, since laughter is the best medicine, mental health professionals recommend that you memorize and rewatch Parker Posey's apotheotic "Emmy Speech Master Class" at least once during the buildup to each and every awards show until you die. 

Interview: Michael O'Connor on "Fussy" Costumes & Principal Actresses

A curious reversal: I'm discussing Oscar-voting with costume designer Michael O'Connor, an Oscar winner for The Duchess (2008) nominated again for his work on the Dickensian romantic drama The Invisible Woman and he reveals that, though he takes voting seriously, he doesn't really think it's a good thing to know too much about the behind the scenes achievements on movies, beyond what you can see and judge visually. 

Michael O'Connor and one of his Oscar-nominated designs from The Invisible Woman

That’s why I don’t teach or do classes. I don't think it would be a good experience. I want the discussion when I’m doing it because it helps me work but when you watch [a movie] you shouldn’t know the discussions. When you watch a film sometimes and stay for the Q&A it’s changed the experience because now you know some of the secrets. Some of the magic is not knowing. 

And, yet, once you get Michael O'Connor talking about his craft, he doesn't quit (a wonderful problem in an interview) and his passion for Costume Design is always front and center. I'm not at all convinced that he wouldn't make a good teacher but his students would have to be quick, as he leaps from topic to topic, sometimes without warning. 

From our vantage point in 2014 his current status as an Oscar winning costume designer seems inevitable...

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About Last Weekend...

TFE loves the 80s all up in our modern bizness, here's Jose to do the remake vs original battle

As you well know by now, the holiday weekend at the box office saw the arrival of four new major film releases. Three of those were remakes of 1980s films. Over the weekend I (mis)treated myself to screenings of the originals followed by their remakes. I'm devoted.

Here I present you with my findings. Read the very scientific results after the jump starting with the horny melodrama Endless Love...

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12 Days Til Oscar: Best Picture Nominations by the Dozen

Tim here, with your daily dose of Oscar numerology. We’re now in the third year of the Academy’s undoubtedly well-intentioned "some random number that always turns out to be nine" approach to selecting Best Picture nominees, and for some of us, this is irritatingly arbitrary. But it could be so much worse. Think of how awful it must have been to been a rabid Oscar fanatic in the first decade of the award’s existence: depending on the year, there were anywhere from three to twelve Best Picture nominees, until it was finally nailed down at a nice, round ten at the 9th Academy Awards, for the year 1936.

The magic number of the day being 12, I'd like you to join me, for a closer look at 1934, the first of two years with 12 nominated films (for space reasons, I am alas compelled to leave 1935 to fend for itself) - the first year, as well, that the awards corresponded to a single calendar year. What can we learn about the Academy’s tastes and habits down the decades from each of these?

BEST PICTURE – It Happened One Night (released by Columbia)
What It Is: One of the greatest of all screwball comedies, in which the sexily odd-looking pair of Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable cross country and banter.
The Slot It Fills: The long-abandoned "comedies are a valid form of artistic expression like anything else" spot. But, of course, the period in which the film came out was unusually good at producing top-notch comedies starring the best movie stars of the day.

Only 11 more slots to fill after the jump

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