Friday, January 13, 2012 at 12:00PM Amuse us. Add a caption or dialogue for this photo of Jessica Chastain and Chloe Moretz from last night's BFCA red carpet...
You know you want to!
BFCA, Chloe Moretz, Jessica Chastain, Say What? Friday, January 13, 2012 at 9:30AM Robert here w/ Distant Relatives, exploring the connections between one classic and one contemporary film.
Jenny Agutter in "Walkabout" and Michelle Williams in "Meek's Cutoff"Western people have something of a parasitic relationship with nature. But that's okay. If Werner Herzog is to believed, nature doesn't much like us either. The two films we look at this week, Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout and Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff look at the relationship of people trapped within the land and how it compares to their relationship with people of the land or who represent the land in their foreignness and threat to those considered 'civilized.' Along the way issues of trust, understanding, innocence, power, gender and whether one can overcome the attitudes and beliefs into which they're boxed, are encountered along with predictably arrid conditions.
Walkabout starts to roll when a teenaged girl and her younger brother (Jenny Agutter and Luc Roeg) are violently abandoned in the Australian outback. They wander lost for a good deal of time until they encounter an Aborigine (David Gulpilil) who becomes something of their guide despite the great distance in culture and understanding between the three. Meek's Cutoff follows a wagon train lost on the Oregon Trail. Of no help is their wilderness guide Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), though of some help may be an Indian they've captured. Leading the contingent to trust in and follow their captives lead, though more out of desperation than principle is one woman, Emily (Michelle Williams).
Both films could be read as tales of reversal of fortune where individuals from the intruding aggressor class find themselves at the will of someone they consider strange and savage...
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 11:36PM 
Kirsten Dunst presented Best Supporting Actress to Octavia SpencerWe tried a live blog experiment which was very chaotic though conversational if you'd like to relive it vicariously through us if you weren't here. But otherwise, let's review the big speeches and the winner's roster.
Do you think all five of the major acting wins will translate to Globe and SAG hoopla... and then on to Oscar? It's been a surprising season to date so will it suddenly become a normal season where the same films and performances win each time?
SUPPORTING ACTRESS -Octavia Spencer for The Help
Okay um. Well I'm not prepared. I wasn't a Girl Scout. I guess the operative word here is Best Supporting becasue I was truly supported by the most amazing cast and crew. Oh my god this is really kind of crazy. Okay. Uh. I'd like to thank everyone at Dreamworks -- Stacey Snyder thank you for giving me this chance. Holly Barrio. Chip Sullivan. Everyone at Disney. Rich [series of names that all blurred together for us] ...and then of course my two champions Tate Taylor and Brunson Green who have always believed in me. And thank God you believed in me enough to give me a job that actually paid this time!
But thank you so much to the BFCA. I am truly truly humbled by this. Thank you.
SUPPORTING ACTOR - Christopher Plummer for Beginners
Christopher Plummer, young againWinners and a Tearful Viola after the jump...
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 8:02PM 
Kathleen Turner as Molly Ivins
Those of you in the Los Angeles area have two enticing theater options coming up. The first -- an absolute must see -- is the Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim's Follies. It's coming to LA soon from Broadway intact but for Bernadette Peters who will be replaced by another major but less famous talent, Victoria Clark (The Light in the Piazza). The other theater option is currently playing. I can't vouch for since I haven't seen it, but it's the one and only Kathleen Turner playing Molly Ivins in the one woman show Red Hot Patriot.
I have however seen Kathleen Turner live on stage twice (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and High) and she doesn't lose even one ounce of her charisma or gift on the stage the way many screen stars do when they attempt the transfer. Earlier this week she had a live chat at the LA Times Culture Monster and, though I've never participated in one of those before it was my darling Kathleen (she along with Pfeiffer and Streep is how I became such an actress-obsessive in my formative years) so I had to!
I told her I missed her onscreen and her response went like so.
I have a film coming out called A Perfect Family sometime this Spring. I still enjoy camera acting, but it's not as exhilarating to me as being on stage."
Ten other things I learned during her chat with fans after the jump...
10 Notable Bits From Kathleen Turner's Live Chat
10. Her favorite actors are Dame Maggie Smith and Dame Judi Dench. How strange is that? MOMENTS before this live chat we had just made a major plea for them to present at the Oscars together. This is empirical evidence that Kathleen was reading the Film Experience as she answered questions! ;) But in all serious lord knows if she ever googles herself, she's seen the site.
"PUSSY WILLOW"
09. Her favorite of her own films is Serial Mom because she has so many wonderful memories from the set ("most laughs") and she is still close with John Waters. This movie prompted the funnest questions from her gathered fans. Had she ever made a prank phone call "For heaven's sake, no! Nor will I". One fan said the house the real Serial Mom lived in in Baltimore was for sale. Should he buy it and give tours? "Good luck!" was her perfect succinct response.
Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 7:20PM As frightening... as bewildering... as wrong as it is to say after a decade of breakthroughs (Moulin Rouge!), critical triumphs (Dancer in the Dark, Hedwig and the Angry Inch) and box office hits (Chicago, Dreamgirls, Hairspray) and problematic but Oscar nominated efforts (Nine, Sweeney Todd, Phantom of the Opera) ... the movie musical is still in trouble. It probably will be until another Vincente Minnelli or Bob Fosse arrives on the scene, someone who understands and breathes and trusts the very cinematic language of the musical. Until then we'll get bored directors detouring or novices who think it might be "fun" to try one... or Rob Marshall.
Will no young director challenge Rob Marshall as King of the Musicals?
Stage turned film director Rob Marshall was initially seen as something of a savior of the form when Chicago (2002) became a smash hit and Best Picture winner. It had been 34 years since a movie musical had had that honor. But his musical follow up Nine (2009) proved a massive flop and a target of critical derision. Though I thought it was better than it got credit for being (how could it not be given the vitriol?) in tandem with Chicago it revealed too little range and an inherent distrust of the form he had been handed, without competition, to rule; the music in both films emerged on sound stages as hallucinations or performative fantasy. His two subsequent non-musicals (Memoirs of a Geisha and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides) were much worse, with listless dramatics and overstuffed weightless business for plot. Nevertheless, Hollywood logic prevails. Disney, looking at the colossal gross of On Stranger Tides, has obviously forgiven Marshall for Nine's red ink and rewarded him with the reigns of the film version of a bonafide masterpiece, Stephen Sondheim's twisted fairy tale classic Into the Woods. Never mind that I could have directed On Stranger Tides (it would have been all about the mermaids and they would have drowned Captain Jack in the first half hour) and it would still have been a top grosser. In Hollywood you get credit for blockbuster grosses even if you are obviously replaceable since anyone helming a long running franchise will produce a similar size hit. Audiences are lemmings when it comes to those big franchises.
So though I weep that Into the Woods isn't getting a world class auteur, and I shudder most of all to think of those glorious songs sung by people who can't handle the intricacies of the music -- Marshall casts for stardom first even if they can't sing and Sondheim obviously writes only for great singers who can act -- we should try and stay positive. Let's play...
Bernadette Peters leads the cast of the original INTO THE WOODS (1987)
