Tuesday, October 29, 2013 at 8:00AM Alexa here. With spooky season almost behind us, it only seems right to feature these illustrations of various film monsters on their day off by Chicago illustrator Kiersten Essenpries. Ever wonder how Michael Myers keeps his jumper so crease-free? How Pinhead makes a little extra cash? Whether Leatherface works in any medium besides flesh? Kiersten has the answers after the jump...
Monday, October 28, 2013 at 9:44PM Team Experience is assembling our own coven of preferred witches for Halloween. Here's Michael C on Kurosawa's eery old ghost woman
The Japanese title of Kurosawa’s noh-inspired adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth Throne of Blood is literally “Spider Web Castle”. So in keeping with the films pervasive arachnid imagery, Kurosawa ditches the cauldron and transforms the play’s famous trio of future predicting witches (“Double, double toil and trouble”) into a single, demonic hag, who sits out in the forest like an eerily still, deadly spider, spinning her silk and waiting for prey like Toshiro Mifune’s Macbeth equivalent, Washizu, to stumble into her web.
It’s a stretch to call her evil, seeing as she only sets the stage for her prey’s downfall. The victim still has to do all the heavy lifting. On the other hand the unexplained piles of skulls around her lair do rate a raised eyebrow!
Broom: No. The witch in question punctuates her prophecies by floating straight into the air and vanishing in a blinding white light. The broom business might qualify as overkill, don’t you think?
Favored Spell: This lovely lady’s go-to move is providing misleading, selectively edited predictions of the future. Other pastimes include cackling in your face after you’ve been foolish enough to act according to her predictions and shape shifting into ones enemies so as to goad you into make an even greater mess of things.
Chieko Naniwa in "Throne of Blood"Pointy Hat: You don’t hide witch hair of this magnitude under a hat.
Familiar: She works alone but spider imagery is pervasive.
"Only bad witches are ugly": How to be diplomatic about this. On a scale from Glinda to Elphaba she’s definitely not going to travel by bubble, if you catch my drift. That said, if you can get over her creepy, disconcertingly masculine voice she does lack all the traditional ugly witch traits like warts and a long pointy nose, so she might have a shot with guys who find themselves strangely attracted to the ghost from The Grudge.
Monday, October 28, 2013 at 2:30PM [This article was originally published in 2010 but we're adapting/rewriting it a bit for our celebration of the 1968 film year as we march towards the latest Supporting Actress Smackdown.]
1968's Best Picture Oliver! is commonly disparaged these days as an Oscar blunder and a typical example of the bloat that eventually derailed the musical genre. Musicals were big business back then and like animated family features now or action films roughly a decade ago, the running times got more and more padded. It's a common hubris problem for whatever genre is the reigning box office champion. 1968 featured at least four big ticket musicals -- Funny Girl, Finian's Rainbow, Star! and Oliver! -- and they all clock in well over 2 hours with all but one of them tipping over to be closer to 3 hours in length. Combine this problem with the critical endurance of 2001: A Space Odyssey's legend and add in that six Oscar haul and what do you get? Critical animosity. Oscar enthusiasts are familiar with this phenom and they know that winning the big prize isn't always good for your place in film history.
So Oliver! will have to settle for its place in personal histories and in mine it looms large. (It's weird that as a child I had such a long attention span. As an adult I get antsy once you've past the 110 minute mark but wee Nat couldn't get enough of all 153 minutes of this musicalized Oliver Twist whenever it played on television.) It probably won't surprise you to hear that literally every one of my favorite scenes was focused on Nancy, the prostitute with the heart of gold (Shani Wallis).
Monday, October 28, 2013 at 11:28AM Team Experience is assembling our own coven of preferred witches for Halloween. Here's Deborah with the true star of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)
Why choose between the sexy vamp witch and the classic hag? With the Wicked Queen, you get two, two, two witches in one! Honestly, I don't know why anyone roots for Snow White in this movie. The Queen has the wardrobe, the jewelry, the sexy butch henchmen, and a castle. Snow White has wooden shoes, dwarfs, and a lot of housework.
I always wanted to be the Wicked Queen when I grew up. And who does her makeup? Those lips! Those eyes!
Broom: If only. Disney villains die in falls from cliffs (it's a rule). If she had a broom, she could have survived.
Favored Spell: Poisoned apple.
Pointy hat: Ha! Jeweled crown, darlings. Jeweled everything. She's fabulous.
Familiar: Magic Mirror.
"Only Bad Witches Are Ugly": Wrong, Glinda. This one's both hag AND femme fatale
Monday, October 28, 2013 at 9:00AM I miss the Google Doodle's that were interactive. Sigh. The glory days that evaporated so very recently. But today's honoree is a rare TFE appropriate treat. Google's banner is honoring Edith Head, 8 time Best Costume Design Oscar winner on her 116th birthday.
She won her Oscars for The Heiress (1950), Samson and Delilah (1951), All About Eve (1951), A Place in the Sun (1952), Roman Holiday (1954), Sabrina (1955), The Facts of Life (1961) and The Sting (1974) but the nominations were practically endless. For comparison's sake, today's reigning costume queens Sandy Powell and Colleen Atwood have but 10 nominations and 3 wins each -- stunning track records unless you place them next to Edith's 35 & 8!
My favorite modern tribute to Edith Head's costuming dominance, though, is still "Edna Mode" from The Incredibles (2004). The resemblance being perfectly uncanny, though Edith would still tower over her mini-me Edna at 5' feet 1½
This is as good a time as any to tell you that TFE will be debuting a new series this week "Threads" wherein we'll start giving Costume Design its (weekly) due. We'll begin with 82 year old Patricia Norris who after a longish absence from the movies is back with 12 Years a Slave.
