Belated Birthday Flowers: Carey, Annette, Helena

Belated Birthday May Flowers ~  Andrew here.

It’s the end of May and with the end of the month comes the end of May Flowers (*tear*). This past week saw three significant birthdays pass by for The Film Experience – Helena Bonham Carter (May 26), Carey Mulligan (May 28) and Annette Bening (May 29). Although we didn’t carve out proper time at TFE to fête each of them  – a combined celebration of May Flowers will surely suffice. True, they’re all at different stages in their career but if there’s one thing that we at The Film Experience know it’s that actresses are the flowers in the garden of cinema and we just couldn’t survive if they stopped prospering. So, on with the celebration. 

First up, Carey Mulligan...

Click to read more ...

Cast This: Young Hillary & Young Elton

There's a lot of talk going around about the casting of a young Hilary Rodham Clinton in a bio with big star names like Reese, Jessica and Scarlett floating around though all seem too sexy if you ask me -- though Reese's steel could be interesting. Pajiba has one off-the-path brilliant suggestion in Eden Sher.

Another hot casting topic: the Elton John biopic Rocket Man which is currently courting though not married to Tom Hardy. He has shown a willingness to uglify for roles so his masculine beauty might not be a problem but his lips, his defining feature, are in every conceivable way not a match. Still, he's a fine actor so they could make it work outside of the closeups of the singing. Elton John originally wanted Justin Timberlake - who took over in a great music video some years back -- to do the film. But I have to ask: was Philip Seymour Hoffman not available or was he deemed too old for the role?

And if the biopic is decades spanning one, who is going to play David Furnish. And will this eventually be retitled Behind the Candelabra Pt 2? And why is no one talking about the casting of the other roles? At least in Elton John's case that's just as (potentially) interesting.

Who would you in cast any these roles?

Young Hilary?
Young Bill Clinton?

Young Elton?
Bernie Taupin -Elton John's other (musical) half
Renate Blauel -Elton's wife in the 80s
Old Elton?
David Furnish?

<--- Oh lookylol, David Furnish has a picture of himself with Hilary on his facebook! Keeping things on topic we are.

Visual Index ~ Hud's Best Shot(s)

I know it's my own fault since I failed to post on Fantasia last week but I was a bit sad that we had a lower than usual turnout for Hud for this week's "Best Shot" selection (the last of our weekly viewing assignments until the series returns in July for the second half of Season 4). If only so we could all enthuse together about one of the all time great taglines...

the man with the barbed wire soul

...and how it's not false advertising.  

I wish this fine western drama from Martin Ritt had a reputation as humongous as, oh, the one enjoyed by Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which I reference primarily because it's also a electric quartet-powered black and white masterpiece from the 1960s and just as worthy of obsessing over.

The following shots, chosen by our wee club this week [more...]

Click to read more ...

I Guess That's Why They Call It The Link

Hotel Chatter Regina King shows us the best revenge when you're dumped and your tv show is cancelled: look fabulous and happy
Antagony & Ecstasy reviews all Star Trek movies for you because Tim is generous and completist like that
IndieWire Kon-Tiki directors get the next high seas Pirates of the Caribbean gig. Typecasting!  
Broadway World what's next for the stars of the now-departed Broadway tv series Smash? 

Variety Johnny Depp leave the Whitey Bulger biopic Black Mass... no reasons have been given but I'm guess playing real humans is too scary for him! 
Towleroad Joe Manganiello in the best shape of his life and filming Ten with childhood idol Arnold Schwarzenegger
Los Angeles Times Neil Patrick Harris to host the Emmys just a few months after hosting the Tonys. With him becoming a mainstay at both I guess he'll never get to host the Oscars. 
i09 7 bad storytelling habits taught to us by comic books (most of them are very evident in today's franchise culture... even the ones without superheroes) 

Today's Must Read
Self Styled Siren goes to the ATM, withdraws movie thoughts

Today's Must Watch
How it Should Have Ended take on Iron Man Three - really funny stuff. Gold stars to every moment in the Superman and Batman coffee break

The Decline and Fall of M. Night Shyamalan

Hi, Tim here. This weekend sees the release of After Earth, the latest of 2013’s surprisingly well-stocked slate of post-apocalyptic sci-fi thrillers, starring Will and Jaden Smith. These are all things that are proudly trumpeted by the ad campaign. What is conspicuously not trumpeted, proudly or otherwise, is the identity of the film’s director M. Night Shyamalan, who for the first time since his gigantic 1999 breakthrough The Sixth Sense is not mentioned by name in the ad campaign for his latest feature.

This is, undoubtedly, because Shyamalan been steadily pissing away audience goodwill almost since the moment he started earning it, with each new film he’s made being widely regarded as worse than the one preceding it (a steady downward trend on Metacritic, down with just a single blip up on Rotten Tomatoes). With After Earth appearing to flatten or slightly reverse this trend, it’s as good a time as any to explore the exact shape of Shyamalan’s fall in such a relatively short time, trying to figure out exactly how the man anointed as “The Next Spielberg” at a tender age ended up becoming one of modern cinephilia’s greatest punchlines.

THE SIXTH SENSE (1999): Wunderkind

Click to read more ...