Oscar Volley It's Back
Oscar Charts Updated!
Friday, November 1, 2013 at 6:48PM You delight me! I asked readers to caption or commentary to this photo of Nicole Kidman on the set of Paddington Bear.
She shared this image on her official Facebook page. And hey while you're over there "like" the Film Experience too.
Her new Vanity Fair cover and the winning caption after the jump...
Friday, November 1, 2013 at 12:00PM Grantland Mark Harris on 12 Years a Slave and the Best Actor race
/Film Jonas Cuaron made a short film that will be a DVD extra for Gravity. It takes place on earth during one scene in the movie.
Coming Soon The Addams Family getting a reboot. But I'm okay with this news since it's animated. If you're going to remake something, it's fine if you can do it in a new way.
Deadline Dustin Hoffman and Kathy Bates for the musical education drama Boychoir
Shortlist Sandra Bullock extends the Feuding with Streep joke from their 2009 Oscar war
Popnography Sir Ian McKellens super short gay sitcom Vicious coming to American tv, also getting second season
Controversies
The Switch has an interesting update on what's going on with copyright extension laws. I do so hope the internet finds a way to collectively fight back because the laws are ridiculous. So many things that should be in the public domain are not
The Wrap the ongoing drama over Ender's Game and the Orson Scott Card boycott. All reports, including this one, which seems thorough end up being kind of misleading. Apparently true: he has no profit participation or creative input; Not true: he will not make a dime on this. Fact: He already made those dimes, years ago when the deal was signed. I wish people would point this out instead of pretending/saying he makes no money from this movie. He makes no "new" money, sure other than the rise in book sales, but Hollywood already paid him and probably handsomely. So yes he does profit from the movie.
Halloween Hangover
I know I know. Halloween is over and as with all things people celebrate with excess you're probably a little relieved. But just in case it's your favorite holiday and you need a little hair of the dog, check out these horror-themed treats 'round the web...
Jessica Alba and friends as The Witches of Eastwick! Her best performance ever? (from her Instagram account)
Slant ranks the best "final girls"
Empire famous horror film child stars all grown up from Haley Joel Osment to Daveigh Chase
MNPP's hilarious "ways not to die" series gets a pervy Halloween Sssssss (1973) edition
Pajiba Miley Cyrus is smarter than Julianne Hough (the proof is in the costuming)
Cinema Blend chooses 9 movies that deserve to ascend into "halloween classics"
i09 the best halloween costumes from 'round the internet (I love the Peter Pan couples costume so much!)
Friday, November 1, 2013 at 8:59AM Two months left to go and we wrap 2013. I can't believe how close to the Oscar thick of it we are. Before we really dive in (I'm off to LA again real soon) a last look back at October. We spent a lot of time with horror films of course (tis the season) for those well received "Before Exorcist / After Exorcist" lists... but what else was hot this month? Here are 11 more of our favorite posts.
Greta Gerwig talked to us about Frances Ha's Gotham snubbing
12 Years of Horrors one of my favorite episodes ever of the Podcast
Tom Hanks as all ages training wheels for movie-star loving
Her premiered at NYFF and Jose shared a few thoughts
The Fiennes Profile The Grand Budapest Hotel promos got us gawking at Ralph Fiennes again
Cate Blanchett Glenn spent an evening with her
American Hustle who has what to prove?
Crazy Possessed Ballerinas what do the movies have against toe shoes?
Supporting Actress Smackdown '68 Ruth's witchy triumph
Blue is the Warmest Color got many of you hot and bothered
Most Comments:
"Remember when we didn't know who would star in Gravity?"
Coming in November
SO MUCH... Where to even begin? Thor: The Dark World, Julie Delpy Interview, The Vivien Leigh Centennial, The Book Thief, Supporting Actress Smackdown 2003 10th Anniversary, Interviews with the casts of Dallas Buyers Club and 12 Years a Slave, The AFI Festival, The Return of Judi Dench, two new musicals: Frozen and Black Nativity and lots more Oscar buzz.
Any Requests?
Thursday, October 31, 2013 at 11:40PM Did you ever see Angelina Jolie's directorial debut In the Land of Blood and Honey? I myself missed it, given it's blink and you'll miss it release (there are a handful of movies each year that feel like they didn't come out that, in fact, did.... Oscar qualifying shadiness is usually to blame). It received middling reviews but will she have more success with her follow up Unbroken? I hope so. I'm always wishing her well since she's one of the Earth's greatest celebrities.
The first photos from the set have emerged and in this one, it looks like she's remaking Kon-Tiki the water is so very blue and the man in the raft is so very blonde.
But actually the film is about US airman and former Olympian Louis Zamperini (played by young Brit star Jack O'Connell with whom I am unfamiliar. Anyone?) and his World War II adventures in the Pacific where he crash-landed before eventually doing time as a prisoner of war. The film which could well serve as a breakthrough for its trio of young actors also features Domnhall Gleeson (you know him) and gorgeous soap star Finn Wittrock who will also be in Darren Aronofsky's Noah next year so he's going to be so soggy and pruney in 2014. Acting while wet! The legendary Roger Deakins is behind the camera.
it will also have sharks. Lots and lots of sharks.
Hmmm.
I'd rather watch Angelina punch them than direct them.
Thursday, October 31, 2013 at 6:57PM 
Happy Halloween, everybody! It’s Tim, here to celebrate the high holy night of horror movies, when even the most squeamish can steel themselves up to watch a scary movie, and scary movie lovers stock up all our best and blackest to watch in marathons of unendurable dread.
But let’s not go prattling about every random horror film that comes to mind (which is, I’m a little sorry to admit, the way that I assembled my movie playlist for the night). Instead, I’d like to ask everybody to pitch in their suggestions for a question always on my mind this time of year:
What movies best capture the spirit of Halloween?
That question already has a lot of wiggle room baked into it – do we mean Halloween as a night of ghosts and witches, Halloween as a night of trick-or-treating and costumes, Halloween as a night of crisp autumn air and fallen leaves? I don’t know, and that’s why I want to throw it out to all of you. But before I do that, I want to offer three suggestions of the movies that best capture what enters my head when I hear the word “Halloween”. (And I’m not including John Carpenter’s Film Experience-endorsed slasher film Halloween. There’s such a thing as too damn easy).
Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Absolutely not a joke. The third of the seasonally-arranged film’s four chapters takes place in its entirety on Halloween night, and there’s not a film out there that better evokes a the feeling of dressing up and hunting for candy on a cool fall night. Not many directors in Hollywood history ever had a better grasp of what to do with color than Vincente Minnelli, and in this sequence, he and cinematographer George Folsey gorgeously capture the variations of browns and yellows that dominate the landscape during a Midwestern October (in fact, Carpenter and his DP, Dean Cundey, looked to this film as the inspiration when making Halloween). The warm nighttime lighting is just spooky enough to evoke the feeling of being a child who secretly wants to be scared, and it all couldn’t be more pleasantly nostalgic. Bonus: one of only two films that’s both a terrific Halloween movie and a terrific Christmas movies (the other, of course, is The Nightmare Before Christmas).
Kill, Baby… Kill! (1966)
Because, first, I’d be falling behind in my mission if I didn’t use an article about horror films as an excuse to talk about Mario Bava and the wide world of visually florid, narratively bonkers Italian horror cinema. And second, because my Halloween always needs a stop-over in foggy cemeteries and decaying, haunted Mitteleuropean villages, and some of the absolute best ever put to celluloid can be found in this story of a ghostly little girl making life awful for an isolated Carpathian town has some of the best. The normal rules of Italian horror apply: if you’re hunting for mood and blissed-out color cinematography, this will do you up right, and if you need a tight piece of storytelling… but hey, look at that cinematography! Still, there’s probably no place that approach is more objectively defensible than in a ghost story, where the uncanny and inexplicable is part of the fun. Nor do many movies about ghosts understand so well the primal, bedtime story impact that a good Gothic set can have when it’s been lit to be this creepy.
Sleepy Hollow (1999)
I can remember as vividly now as the day after it happened, the first time I saw Tim Burton’s last completely successful movie and thinking to myself, “That’s it! That’s autumn!” Not bad for a film shot entirely on a soundstage, without a whisper of natural lighting, for which we can credit both Rick Heinrichs’ just-exaggerated fairy tale woods, and Emmanuel Lubezki’s absolutely gorgeous lighting palette, beautifully evoking the yellow haze of light filtered through dying leaves (Heinrich won an Oscar, Lubezki was nominated. Frankly, the visuals would be enough to secure the movie a spot on my annual Halloween-time viewing schedule even if it wasn’t a pretty great ghost story, or didn’t have its own Halloween scene with quintessentially Burtonesque jack-o’-lanterns flickering in the background. There’s an atmospheric creepiness to the film that has everything to do with setting and place, not with plot (which, given the things the plot does, is for the best), and few things have ever colonized my feelings about walking in the woods quite so effectively.
What about the rest of you?
What's your favorite Halloween movie? Let us know in comments!