Morning Truth Tell: All Hospitals Need Thelma Ritter

Don't be alarmed but I spent last night in the Emergency Room*. It won't surprise you to hear that they continue to be horrible nightmare places.

One woman had been there for 9 hours when we walked in and had yet to be treated. She was crying her eyes out and dizzy with  'is this real life? will i ever leave this room?' kind of existential despair. It did not bode well for the rest of the visit.

Because few things are treated like emergencies in emergency room, you're left waiting for hours for any kind of human interaction let alone problem solving. Your mind has plenty of time to wander (harmless and unavoidable) and horribilize (harmful and likely when you're in pain). I kept thinking of Thelma Ritter's "Clancy" . Sometimes all you need is someone to hear your out, put a hand on your shoulder, and talk you through it. Someone to fetch a distracted doctor with a prescription pad at least. Nobody was doing that!!! Every hospital needs a Thelma Ritter. Thirty of them, even, but they're in short supply.

Live this truth. Be your best Thelma Ritter for a loved one who needs you this week. Offer a firm kind hand and listening ear. When needed set your internal timer to redirect their self-pity if it gets out of hand. Be that steadying Supporting presence. You won't win an Oscar for it, true, but public adulation isn't everything. Private gratitude is also golden.

*I am fine. As you may have figured, I was playing the poor man's Thelma Ritter role in this scenario. It's harder than it looks!

Curio: All Three Flavors

Alexa here. It may not be Krzysztof Kieślowski, but Edgar Wright's now-completed three-flavor trilogy also had a pretty positive critical response. Then there's the fan base, who devour every tweet from Simon Pegg with more gusto than a hung-over Ed licks a Cornetto.  So Wright has done the inevitable, setting up a tumblr for updates and for the ever-growing collection of fan art.

Here are some samples.

Little Cornetto books by Joey Spiotto.

Click to read more ...

Interior. Link Post.

AV Club what if you could hit "pause" on pop culture -- what would you catch up on?
Daily Beast an uninhibited interview with the stars of Blue is the Warmest Colour on working with "fake pussies" and watching the movie with their families
Glenn Dunks enters Interior. Leather Bar 
Cinema Blend on Zach Snyder's continued defense of Man of Steel's insane body count -- which ruined the movie for a lot of people, my friends at Panel Culture included, because... seriously, what kind of hero is that?
Pajiba wants to get away from The Getaway 

The New Yorker on the list as the signature form of our time "a comic nightmare of futile enumeration"
Ultra Culture on an important underreported piece of info from that Lars von Trier Uma Thurman Nymphomaniac clip 
Awards Daily Sasha reviews Gravity which she calls a masterpiece. Here's the thing about festivals. They are both a blessing and a curse on the world. One wants to avoid the movies that have upcoming release dates but then you end up being the last person to see them -- i haven't read this for fear of spoilers I'm just saying a lot of reviews are out there now floating in space. How to resist seeing it at TIFF when there are movies that I'm much less likely to get the chance to see next month? 
In Contention on a Marilyn Monroe Bruce Dern prophecy that's coming true with Nebraska
LA Times Jason Reitman's Labor Day premieres - sucks that it isn't in theaters now during, uh, Labor Day.

Oooh, Maggie is staring at you.

That's one version of the new poster for the 50th annual Golden Horse Awards. It looks like a delicious VIP ticket, yes? Basically Maggie Cheung's eyes are the selling point on each poster. The Golden Horse Awards are Asia's oldest film awards and still its most competitive. Nominations will be announced on October 1st and will see how well this year's hot titles like Stray Dogs, A Touch of Sin, and The Grandmaster do. The awards ceremony will be held in late November. Ang Lee, who has won two Golden Horses as Best Director (Lust Caution, The Wedding Banquet) and two Oscars for Best Director (Brokeback Mountain, Life of Pi), is president of the jury this year.

Big Stick

On This Day in History
112 years ago today Vice President Theodore Roosevelt first used the phrase

Speak softly and carry a big stick"

Not Teddy Roosevelt

Gandalf suggests pairing it with a sword and shouting.

Year of the Month: 1980?

1980. The year which brought you Sissy Spacek's Oscar winning roleThe Film Experience likes to keep one foot in the past and one in the now at all times... so as to be well-rounded like. People who never watch anything beyond the now or their own personal nostalgia hits, even if they profess to love movies or the Oscars, they're not really movie lovers just pop culture consumers. (Not that there's anything wrong with that! It's just not what we do here at TFE.)

For September I thought we'd do things a tiny bit differently and because I am easily distracted and scattered we'll probably have three running themes this month to augment the contemporary cinema coverage. We'll infrequently be checking out old Robert Redford classics as All is Lost approaches (we've already started with Butch Cassidy and The Natural), we'll be looking at high school / college movies in this Back to School Month and, finally, since y'all enjoyed the return of the smackdown, we'll be revisiting some key films from the 1980s as lead up to the Supporting Actress Smackdown "1980" Edition on September 30th. 

But imma let you choose which films (choose 3!) we revisit or see for the first time via this poll! 

poll by twiigs.com

I know I know. I overplan. But humor me by pretending that we'll have time for at least 3 of these!