Beauty Break / Best Shot: "Making a Scene" with Oscar Contenders

One of my favorite Oscar traditions is the New York Times short films celebrating Oscar contenders, locked contenders and longshots alike. And by short films I mean very very short. Like one minute. You might remember that previous year's editions have given Casting Directors a ton of brilliant ideas which, for the most part, they've been slow to pick up on like Viola Davis as a frightening villain. Remember that?

This year's shorts, eleven in total, are all directed by two-time Oscar winning cinematographer Janusz Kaminski who is most famous for shooting Steven Spielberg's filmography (and less famous for once being married to Holly Hunter but that's cool, too.) The shorts are sublime in concept -- they mismatch contender actors with one or two lines from screenwriting contenders (update: not from the writer's actual contending films, which I initially thought since the Bradley Cooper bit sounds like a near lift from the All is Lost's opening monologue) -- though not always in execution since this multiplied tradition can't help but be a bit uneven each year. 

Cate Blanchett with a line from the writer of "Computer Chess"

For fun, and as a shout back to the Hit Me With Your Best Shot series that's currently on hiatus, I've selected my favorite single image from each of the shorts [10 more after the jump]. But by all means go and watch the shorts. It'll only take you 15 minutes and there will be many delicious thanksgiving feasts for your eyeballs beyond the ones posted here.

Click to read more ...

Live Blogging: THR's Actress Roundtable

HAPPY THANKSGIVING! Today I am thankful for... actresses.

In other words it's a Thursday. Well, listen, I'm always thankful for actresses but now I finally have a tiny bit of time to say so. Can you believe I've held out until now to watch The Hollywood Report's Actress Roundtable? If you've already moved on I forgive you but I wanted to do it in one sitting and finally had the time. As you read this I'm probably on my way to feast with my besties but right now as I write, I'm pretending I'm settling in for a Thanksgiving dinner with (drumroll please) two-time Oscar winning ham Emma Thompson (who I just had cocktails with!), Julia Brockovich-Roberts who brought fish ("eat your fish, bitch!"), Lupita Nyong'o who provides the appetizer (to what we hope is an overflowing career o' plenty), Amy Adams who brought stuffing (she's in everything!), Oprah Winfrey (who paid all the grocery bills) and Octavia Spencer (who brought choc... no, too obvious! abort. abort.)

So let's begin...

Click to read more ...

Team FYC: 'Laurence Anyways' for Best Costume Design

[Editor's Note: The FYC series brings together all Film Experience contributors to highlight our favorite fringe Oscar contenders. Here's Glenn Dunks on Xavier Dolan's latest]

Anybody who knows me knows I have been trumpeting Xavier Dolan’s trans epic Laurence Anyways since I saw it back in January. I experienced a lot of emotions during this gloriously decadent and painfully intimate affair on the big screen (as one should expect from a three-hour movie). Yet what caught me most off guard was the romanticism with which it painted images through costume. Oh sure, Dolan’s previous films had a way with the fashions – the suburban chic duds of I Killed My Mother and the hipster vintage of Heartbeats - but never had their colours felt so radical, their intent so cutting, their stories so vivid.

So many of my lasting memories of Laurence Anyways rotate around the clothes. In fact, the first thing we see of our lead character are the clothes. There’s the symbolic baby blue business attire with hot pink accentuated shoulders in the opening scene. There’s the billowing aubergine purple coat that threatens to consume the entire screen. There’s the paperclips as fingernails. And then, of course, there’s the film’s centrepiece sequence as the divine Suzanne Clément struts into a new wave ball to the throbbing beat of “Fade to Grey” by Visage. As her black and white spider-cape is removed to reveal a body-hugging metallic dress she joins revellers outfitted in the finest 1980s designer wear. It’s a room full of gigantic pink bows, lemon yellow princess dresses, puffy crimson floor-length gowns and stylish tuxedos with visor accessories. That scene deserves a nomination alone.

Credited to both François Barbeau and Dolan himself (ever the multi-hyphenate), the two won a Canadian Genie for their work (alongside the equally dazzling make-up). I’m not sure if the Academy are entirely up to handing out nominations to minimally-released 3-hour foreign-language films about the journey of one person from man to woman, but if ever a branch was to go out on a limb it’d be the costumers. The work of Barbeau and Dolan is inspiring and inspired in equal measure. The costumes are lux and quirky, singular and sprawling. Much like the entire film, really. Laurence Anyways just isn’t Laurence Anyways without them and when a film feels so defined by its costume work, the Academy should pay attention.

previous FYCs
Cameron Diaz in The Counsellor | Spectacular Now for Best Picture | MakeUp for Warm Bodies | Sound Mixing in World War Z 

Review: Frozen (2013)

Tim here, to talk about the last big animated release of 2013, and easily the best to come from a big studio all year: Frozen, the 53rd film in the Walt Disney animated feature canon. Adapted very loosely from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”, it’s a fairy tale about two sisters, princess of the small kingdom of Arendelle: Elsa, first in line to the throne, voiced by Broadway icon Idina Menzel, and clumsy Anna, voiced by Kristen Bell. Elsa was born with a touch of magic to her, and can create snow and ice from her hands, and when this terrible secret reveals itself on the day she’s to be crowned queen, she flees the kingdom in terror, leaving behind a thick blanket of endless snow.

Let’s clear out the low-hanging fruit first: “best Disney movie in 20 years” is just plain silly. It’s the best Disney movie since Tangled, maybe. Except for the instantly-forgotten but wonderful Winnie the Pooh. Anyway, let’s not get all daffy and pretend this is a movie at the level of achievement reached by The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, or Aladdin. It has some very wonderful elements, and a gorgeous song in Elsa’s “to hell with y’all” anthem “Let It Go”, which is absolutely every bit the “Defying Gravity” knock-off that Glenn identified, though I’m inclined to say that it’s better than its evident model. In fact, there’s probably nothing about Frozen I don’t like, up to and including the comic relief snowman Olaf (Josh Gad), who is incorporated into the movie far more elegantly and with far less gruesome “buy this toy!” stridency than the trailers suggested would be remotely in the realm of possibility.

Click to read more ...

Yes, No, Maybe So... (a mystery movie)

Dancin' Dan here, ready to play our favorite trailer game with a bit of a twist. Those of you who saw Catching Fire this past weekend were treated to what is surely one of the weirdest and worst trailers in recent memory... although you might not have realized the full extent of its awfulness until the very end, when the title flashes across the screen.

Let's break it down... chronologically this time.

YES

Things start off well enough... a pretty poor boy (Alex Pettyfer) and a pretty rich girl (Gabriella Wilde) meet-cute/creepy as pretty music plays...

Click to read more ...