Coven: Bell Book And Candle

Team Experience is assembling our own coven of preferred witches for Halloween. Here's Anne Marie on Kim Novak and her kitty.

 

How does a studio follow up one of the most iconic thrillers ever made? With a supernatural rom-com, of course! Bell Book And Candle was released in 1958 a few months after Vertigo. Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak once again play a bewitched man and the woman who desperately loves him, but this time Kim Novak wields magic and doesn't die twice.

As Gillian Holroyd, Kim Novak is the sexiest sorceress to ever sling a spell. By day, Gil sells "primitive art" from her chic New York art gallery. By night, she weaves powerful enchantments to ensare her rival's fiance and exact her revenge. One thing that never changes is her sense of style: Gil pulls off this double life in some stunning (Academy Award nominated) ensembles.

Broom - Who needs cumbersome transportation in New York City? A true Greenwich girl can walk most anywhere she wants. (Preferably barefoot.)

Favored Spell - Love potions with a tendency to backfire.

Pointy Hat - Instead of a drab dull hat, why not this gorgeous backless gown?

Familiar - A communicative siamese cat named Pyewacket. Bonus - he matches her eyes.

"Only Bad Witches Are Ugly" - If Glinda is right, then Gil must be the Queen of the Good Witches. Never mind that she ruined an engagement through her witchcraft - she looks fabulous! Besides, she gets her comeuppancce: Gil falls in love and loses her powers as a result. Karma can be a real witch.

Review: Blue is the Warmest Color

Adele (Adele Exarchopolous) is voracious. We first note this when she’s devouring a huge plate of spaghetti at her family’s table. She practically hoovers it down, tomato sauce staining her mouth, before going back for seconds. She reads and writes the same way, albeit offscreen, devouring 600 page novels and writing intimate diaries. But what we see is her various oral fixations and one doesn’t eat literature. If she’s not shoving cigarettes in her mouth, it’s food (and, later, body parts). In one endearing moment she shoves a chocolate bar in her wet face during a crying jag getting a huge laugh from moviegoers who've also eaten their feelings.

Adele will eat anything but seafood. That would be a sly tongue-in-(uhhhh)cheek joke if the new lesbian drama BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR didn’t make a point of it in two separate scenes. Instead this provocative film -- already famous round the globe for its explicit sex and post-Cannes disputes between its actresses and director – risks camp by playing it straight. It shamelessly equates oysters to ladyparts and in one scene that is either comical, ridiculous, perverse or all three, Adele’s older girlfriend Emma (Léa Seydoux) teaches her how to eat them… in front of the parents!

Guess what? She likes it.

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Our Coven: Hermione

Team Experience is building its own coven of favorite screen witches. Happy Halloween! Here's JA on that know-it-all from Hogwarts. 

It's only been two years since the Harry Potter saga ended film-wise and for awhile I felt the need to take a break from it, it having eaten up a good decade of pop-culture and all, but I've got to admit I'm feeling some nostalgia for it these days all the same. And nowhere moreso than with Hermione, always my favorite character (I never stand a chance with the bookish ones, they always win) - what's she up to these days anyway, in between when the Battle of Hogwarts was won and that kid-laden flash-forward? Did she momentarily move to LA to take up robbing the rich and famous? More...

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Two (Links) of Every Kind

Directors
Empire Darren Aronofsky's Noah is having post-production / test screening trouble. Duh! Like evangelicals would love Black Swan or Requiem or or or 
Huffington Post has a candid interview with Alan Taylor the director of Thor: The Dark World. Apparently there's a shit ton of exposition in the movie. I wish it wasn't locked yet because cut cut cut  

Actor
Vulture I would have done so much better on this Brad Pitt Hair Quiz (I scored 11/15) if it was about which girlfriend he was imitating with which red carpet look
EW I was thinking Emile Hirsch was getting a little pudgy recently... now he's putting it to (potentially) good use: he's signed to star in a John Belushi biopic. Guess he'd like to get a little closer to Oscar than he got with Into the Wild

Actresses
Backstage remembers Penélope Cruz's brilliant career makeover in Volver  
Cinema Blend Noomi Rapace taking on seven roles in sci fi flick What Ever Happened to Monday? This is totally messing with my plans to continue being uninterested in her.

Bests & Worsts
IndieWire stands up for 10 actresses that are running in longshot position for year-end honors
Salon calls The Counselor "The Worst Movie Ever Made"  

LGBT
Guardian marketing gay films for straight people
Queerty has a two parter on the most realistic gay sex scenes on film

Friends
Nicks Flick Picks does his usual "anticipation" post set to diva beats. These are always amazing to return to for updates
My New Plaid Pants wraps up his amazing "13 Snakes of Halloween series. You need to watch them slithe

Today's Visuals
Anne Elizabeth Moore and Gabrielle Gambo investigate dozens of horror movies and discover disturbing gender/racial politics (in comic book form)

Click the photo for "The Truly Scary Politics of Horror Movies"

and Todrick Hall has fun with Disney Villianesses in this Chicago spoof "Spell Block Tango" 

Sarah Polley, Seaworld and 'The Act of Killing' Top the IDA Nominees

The International Documentary Association (IDA) aren’t necessarily the most indicative of where the Academy’s documentary branch will go, but they’re important and prestigious so it’s always good to see where their members go. This year’s selection of nominees is quite a highbrow collection with a heavy slant towards politics and activism with three very high profile contenders battling it out against a pair of smaller-scale, yet mightily intimidating, documentaries about prejudice some 30 years apart.

Best Documentary Feature
The Act of Killing
Blackfish
Let the Fire Burn
The Square (NYFF review)
Stories We Tell

I am a big fan of Jehane Noujaim’s up-to-the-minute look at the Egyptian democracy crisis, The Square, Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s disturbing look at SeaWorld’s animal cruelty, Blackfish, and Sarah Polley’s fragmented family tree, Stories We Tell, but the other two – sadly, two I have not yet had the chance to catch  are perhaps the most acclaimed of the IDA nominees. It will be interesting to see where this organisation goes when they announce their winners. They can go super mainstream (last year’s Searching for Sugarman) or super arthouse (Nostalgia for the Light in 2011). I’d put my money on Joshua Oppenheimer’s Indonesian genocide doco The Act of Killing, but with so many strong contenders who can tell?

'Blackfish' not 'Rust and Bone'

It is worth noting that all five nominees are on that epic 151 title-long list of Oscar-eligible docs along with contenders from two other IDA categories as well as the recipient of the special “Pare Lorentz Award”.

Humanitas Award
Anton's Right Here
Blood Brother (Director’s interview)
Let the Fire Burn
The Square

Pare Lorentz Award
A Place at the Table

ABCNews Videosource Award
All the President's Men Revisited
Free Angela and All Political Prisoners
Let the Fire Burn
The Trials of Muhammad Ali
We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks

The only titles listed that aren’t eligible for Oscar are All the Presidents Men Revisited and Anton’s Right Here, neither of which I had heard of before today. Furthermore, I can’t say I’m a fan of Steve Hooper’s Blood Brother, but it showed up in the right category at least. This year has been a rather incredible one for documentaries – although maybe it’s just because I’ve been exposed to so many more now living in New York City – so I’m not surprised to see the year’s highest grossing doc, the feel-good 20 Feet to Stardom, not get a citation. I’ve long suspected the Academy will follow suit.

One last factoid: the only of the IDA’s documentary shorts to cross over with the Academy’s shortlist is Joshua Izenberg’s Slomo. Could certainly do worse than chalking that one up for a nomination at this stage.