Visual Index ~ The Talented Mr Ripley's Best Shot(s)

For this week's edition of Hit Me With Your Best Shot, we stayed another summer in Italy. We didn't follow an American spinster this time but a young shapeshifter known as The Talented Mr Ripley. He was sent to Italy to fetch trustfund baby Dickie Greenleaf but he likes Dickie's life so much he fetches it for himself instead. 

Outside the film's actual narrative, based on the famous novel by Patricia Highsmith (whose work is oft-adapted - The Two Faces of January is next) things were just as dramatic. The movie was a Prestige Event since it was Anthony Minghella's (RIP) follow-up to his Best Picture winner The English Patient (1996). It wasn't quite a slam dunk with Oscar, despite the pedigree and the quality (I prefer it to Patient, myself), though it sure was a thing of beauty. The Talented Mr Ripley featured one of the most impressive collections of young stars at seemingly simultaneous points in their careers ever assembled; the world had just fallen for Gwyneth Paltrow (hot off Shakespeare), Jude Law (hot off stealing Gattaca), Matt Damon (still glowing from Good Will Hunting), and Cate Blanchett (hot off Elizabeth) and writer/director Anthony Minghella (RIP) managed to corral them all for the same movie.

Here are the 15 images that the 17 wide Best Shot club went a little mad for. Click on the link for the corresponding article and refresh your screens since more articles are bound to come in (including my own). Next week's film is Disney's grand 40s experiment Fantasia (special instructions here) and you should join us.

BEST SHOT(S)

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First & Last: What's Under the Bed?

first and last - movie puzzles

the first image (after the opening credits)

the last line of dialogue

Everything smells so much better now, yes."

Can you guess the movie? Bonus points if you can tell me what's under the bed.

Agent of L.I.N.K.

RogerEbert.com Cannes video essay the films of 1960
Reverse Shot 20 shots to be henceforth retired from film vocabulary

2. It starts off in a long shot and a guy's all far away and walking toward the camera and you're all “Uh-oh am I going to have to watch him walk the whole way?” and you do and it takes three minutes or more. “Ooh, look at me, I'm sculpting with time!” Fuck you.

Vanity Fair a great photo of Elizabeth Debicki (the new Jordan Baker from The Great Gatsby)
Reuters Cannes may ditch austerity for glitzy Gatsby opening. Stay tuned
In Contention Will Smith eyeing remake of The Wild Bunch. Although he's not fond of "bunches" since he turned down Django because the part wasn't big enough. At least Will Smith understands that Christoph Waltz wasn't a "Supporting Actor" 

Film Doctor 11 questions about The Great Gatsby 
Guardian RIP Aubrey Woods, the character actor from films like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and 
i09 first images from The Wachowski Siblings Jupiter Ascending suggest that it will be even worse than Cloud Atlas! 
i09 beautiful concept art from Iron Man Three
Playbill Potentially great news. HBO picked up a series starring the underused Jonathan Groff, one of a group of gay friends in San Francisco. I hope they randomly let him sing in it.
Empire Hailee Steinfeld to star in For the Dogs, which sounds plagiaristically much like The Professional with Natalie Portman. Sam Worthington costars
MNPP Who Wore it Best: Henry Cavill vs. Hugh Jackman 
Cinema Blend Rebel Wilson headlining a TV series? Not what I was expecting on the heels of two hit movies I must say 

And here's the trailer to Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. from Joss Whedon and Marvel.

I can't say that trailer sells me on it at all but Whedon has yet to make bad television, so I will definitely be their for the premiere. Whether or not it holds me, who can say? (Angel is the only Whedon series I didn't get religious about watching). You?

Top Ten: Cate Blanchett

Cate Blanchett in Woody Allen's "Blue Jasmine"Today is Cate Blanchett's birthday and since we just celebrated her Oscar-winning altar ego Katharine Hepburn, why not extend the love? As longtime readers know I have been notoriously cool on the Aussie star over the years equating her work with the kind of "click click click" technique-first acting that Meryl Streep was sometimes discredited for early on. But since I actually think it's interesting to hear other people talk about their favorite perfromances from actors they don't naturally respond to, I hope it will be interesting to you to hear the things I do love about Cate the to-others Great. Cate was EVERYWHERE throughout the Aughts aggravating me with her ubiquity (I have issues with this in general, I know. It's not just Cate but Hollywood's tendency, especially in the past decade, to put the same actors in every movie and wear me out on them) but after four relatively Blanchett-sparse years (2009-2012) wherein she was only doing cameos or that Robin Hood no one liked, I am actually excited to see her again. Which is a relief because they'll be no escaping her again soon...

She's coming back in a major way over the next 24 months with new pictures on the way from Terrence Malick, Woody Allen, George Clooney, and Peter Jackson. She'll cap off that new flush of activity with a blockbuster-hopeful evil queen showstopper in Kenneth Branagh's production of Cinderella. 

Here are the ten Blanchett performances of which I am most fond...

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Here's to Angelina Jolie

Additional respect to Angelina Jolie for her brave editorial about her double mastectomy. It's one thing to go public with a difficult health decision. It's quite another to go public when the health decision you make is so directly tangled up with your persona. I don't mean to imply that Angelina Jolie's breasts have made her career but they sure as hell haven't hurt it. She's a global sex symbol and though she doesn't make as many movies as she used to she'll always be a beautiful sexual woman. She mentions in her editorial that she doesn't feel any less womanly. I hope she drives this point home with a really sexy movie some time soon.

I chose the word "additional" as a modifier for respect because "newfound" would have been inappropriate. I've admired her for a long time. Sometimes I am amused at how much philanthropic celebrities become targets of scorn in certain pockets of the media (I mean the shit Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon get!) and with certain sections of the populace but mostly when this happens I feel sad. I think deep down a lot of the anger that philanthropic celebrities stir up in us is shame-based -- this person is better than me! Yes, even if I was drowning in money. I personally love outspoken do-gooder celebrities but I'm also man enough to admit that my own charitable impulses (which I do have on occasion) are meager in comparison. I'm sure I would do charitable things were I suddenly blessed with hundreds of millions but would I use it to build schools and orphanages and so on? I'm doubtful. I'd more likely spend it on friends and family and shrines to great actresses (by which I mean investing in movies starring them which wouldn't get made otherwise).

So here's to Angelina - a seismic screen presence, a very good actress when she applies herself, but mostly a good person. She has demonstrated over and over again that she thinks about the greater good and cares more about the world than herself.

(Her boyfriend is pretty cool, too.)