Annette Funicello (RIP)

Tim Brayton here again. With the cinephile world still reeling from the passing of irreplaceable film critic Roger Ebert a few days before, and The Iron Lady Margaret Thatcher’s death the same day sucking up every available scrap of oxygen in the news cycle, the loss of Annette Funicello on 4 April to the MS that had forced her into retirement over two decades ago was generally reported as a sort of afterthought. A sad thing, but not remotely surprising, and not of particular importance in the grand scheme of things.

While it is true that Funicello’s death doesn’t represent the end of an epoch in quite the same as Ebert’s, it’s still worth stopping and reflecting on her career and what it represents. 

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Visual Index ~ Jurassic Park's Best Shots

By now you know the drill. Each week on Hit Me With Your Best Shot we ask interested bloggers to select one shot they think of as best from the pre-assigned movie and tell us why. (Next Wednesday is A Star is Born (1954) which was coincidentally just the focus of a Mad Men scene) This week's movie is Steven Spielberg's '93 blockbuster JURASSIC PARK (just discussed on the podcast) which is currently in rerelease. Great movies back in theaters is the only upside to the 3D craze according to The Film Experience.

So let's helicopter in to that island of intentional amusements and unexpected terror. The 13 blog collective's choices are  after the jump

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Podcast: The Place Beyond the Desiring Images of the 90s

Surprise Podcast Attack!

For this impromptu conversation, Nick Davis, Joe Reid and Nathaniel R (c'est moi) travel back in time to the 1990s to talk VHS, Jurassic Park, Box Office vs. Lasting Power, Charactor Actors, and Desired Images (on account of Nick's book!) like Brad Pitt or Velvet Goldmine.

In addition to the time travelling we check in with new movies like the documentary Leviathan, the Ryan Gosling/Bradley Cooper drama The Place Beyond the Pines and Tyler Perry's Temptation. 

You can download the podcast on iTunes or listen right here at the end of the post. 

Beyond the Desiring Image

Top Ten 1990s

I promised longtime TFE super fan Ryan that I would one day write up a big top ten of the 90s piece although THIS IS NOT IT. This is like those tossed back "shots" of past decades wherein we tell each other our favorites. I'll tell you my ten favorites which are wildly unstable and could be replaced by anything in the "with apologies to" list if I'd ranked on another day. Well, not the top three. I mean... let's not get crazy.

1. The Piano (Jane Campion)
2. Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson)
3. Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott)
4. Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson)
5. Beauty & The Beast (Trousdale & Wise)
6. All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar)
7. Trois Coleurs Trilogy (Krystof Kzielowski)
8. T2: Judgment Day (James Cameron)
9. Fargo (The Coen Bros)
10. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino)

Most of them weren't even nominated for Best Picture. (Sigh). Oscar is so...

With apologies to 15 more. Let's call it a top 25: 
Being John Malkovich, Titanic, [safe], Howards End, The Thin Red Line, Se7en, The Truman Show, Schindler's List, The Silence of the Lambs, Postcards from the Edge, Edward Scissorhands, The Grifters, Waiting for Guffman, Husbands and Wives, and Election.

other "favs" if not all of them as 'respectable':
Death Becomes Her, Babe, Ed Wood, Dead Man Walking, Strictly Ballroom, Tie Me Up Tie Me Down, A League of Their Own, Addams Family Values, Bullets Over Broadway, Reality Bites, Queen Margot, Clueless, Romeo + Juliet, My Best Friend's Wedding, Wings of the Dove, Celebration, The Idiots, High Art, Velvet Goldmine, Run Lola Run, My Own Private Idaho, Priest, The Fisher King, Leaving Las Vegas and The Last of the Mohicans.

P.S. After Jurassic Park (best shot tomorrow night!), I promise we'll leave the 90s behind and come back to the now. So get it all out of your system in the comments!

Previous Top Ten Quickies
1930s | 1950s | 1970s | 1980s

Hot Docs '13

Hi everyone! Amir here, to bring you exciting festival news at month's end. Nathaniel is heading to the Nashville Film Festival as a jury member and for the first time at The Film Experience, we’re also going to cover the Hot Docs Festival, North America’s largest documentary fest, which is held in Toronto. It’s a record breaking year for their ever-expanding programme: there are 205 documentaries screening, 44 of which are world premieres.

The Manor, Hot Docs' opening film

Hot Docs hits two important milestones this year. First, the festival turns 20: “It’s not a teenager anymore” as the director announced at the press conference; it's a major triumph for a niche festival to become a mainstay. Second, Bloor Cinema, the theatre that hosts most of the screenings turns 100! It’s one of Canada’s oldest and most nostalgia inducing cinemas. Had it not been for their incredibly cheap memberships and close proximity to my university, I’d never have seen masterpieces like The 400 Blows, A Space Odyssey, Talk to Her, Rear Window and many, many others on the big screen, so I personally hold it very dear. Hot Docs’ ownership of the theatre, however, means that in recent years the screenings have been mostly limited to documentary films, but I’m certain the festival will acknowledge the theatre’s long history.

For the Oscar-inclined, I should note that Hot Docs' relationship with the awards season isn’t a consistent one, which is understandable given the low exposure many documentaries receive outside the festival circuit. However there are films like The Cove and Hell and Back Again that premiere here and go on to march towards Oscar's red carpet. 

The festival runs from April 25th to May 5th and will open with a Canadian film called The Manor, directed by Shawney Cohen, about his personal experience of growing up in a Jewish family that run a famous strip club in Suburban Ontario.