The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Thanks to reader Emmanuel for sending me this photo...
Rose Huntington-Whiteley, Uma Thurman, Michelle Yeoh and Tilda Swinton this week in Milan. What a photo, eh? This was taken at a launch party for the Vertu’s ‘Constellation’ smart phone. I thank the smart phone for requiring this much collective gorgeousity for its debut.
Though she's clearly the odd girl out here, what with three bonafide screen goddesses on the coach, I don't have the heart to photoshop Rose out (but, yes, I was tempted). She got such a severe beating for Transformers: Dark of the Moon and please... we've seen much worse when it comes to models acting! You know I'm right. People were just ready to pounce because she replaced Megan Fox and because it's Transformers which only requires that the girlfriend be fuckable.
A few readers have expressed dismay that I never talk about Angelina Jolie's directorial debut. There have even been suggestions that I have it in for Angelina. If by "in" you mean LOVE HER, than yes, I most definitely have it in for her. She once walked right past me and made eye contact (in a non-professional setting -- i.e. i wasn't reporting on anything and she wasn't promoting anything) and I absolutely treasure the memory. The reasons for not covering her film before are several but dull and almost all of them boil down to two things:
1. This is not the kind of blog that fawns endlessly on every detail of pre production and filming and multiple marketing events before a movie is released. The Film Experience prefers actual movies -- even old ones (gasp!) -- to theoretical and future movies, as out of fashion as that may be on the internet.
2. I really didn't expect it to come out this year!
I never plan to change my ways on #1 but I have totally been proven wrong about #2 so let's do a Yes No Maybe So
IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY
YES
Looks sensitively directed, shot, edited*, scored ** and acted (from both of the leads. Some of those looks just break your heart). Sensitivity is something such films need in abundance lest they hit the atrocity notes too hard. War films -- particularly modern war films -- tend to wallow so much in the atrocity that it's almost desensitizing in addition to being just fucking depressing. Our capacity for violence is worrisome as is the capacity for watching it and than just going about your daily business like it's nothing. * it's impossible to tell anything about a films editing from a trailer. We know this but it's still easy to pretend that trailers have all the same qualities as their movies.
** it's usually impossible to tell anything about the way a film is scored, too... since most trailers don't use their final score. But the temp music they were using was good.
NO
n/a
MAYBE SO
The dialogue is very straightforward, with characters speaking themes and situations aloud. That's not always inappropriate in heightened settings like war where subtext generally becomes text, everything being stripped down to its most primal parts... but will it be too on the nose?
The trailer works well with its pinpoint focus on the Lover as the Other but it hits the note repeatedly. This begs the question of what else there is to the movie and can a once passionate love affair, destroyed by fear and suspicion, be enough to sustain the whole narrative?
"In the Land of Blood and Honey"
Are you a yes no or maybe so? My mind flashed briefly to Shot Through the Heart that Linus Roache television movie: anyone remember that one?
Do you see Oscar potential here? I'm doubtful mostly (and cynically) due to the lack of Hollywood glamour on screen and the lack of American characters. Many well meaning foreign war films are made each year and Oscar rarely takes notice.
What would you like Angelina Jolie to do for an encore?
HERE LIES... Poltergeist's ghosts and ghouls. The Oscar loss for Cuesta Verde’s original residents of evil still haunts me to this day. Spielberg’s other 1982 production featuring otherworldly visitation beat Carol-Anne and Company to the FX gold. The restless undead may have lost out on hauling an Oscar back to the Beyond that day, but you never know if they might sooner or later... maybe... come back...
“Poltergeist,” stresses the creepy voiceover that ends the trailer, “It knows what scares you.” Thus so, too, do Richard Edlund, Michael Wood and Bruce Nicholson, the scare-mongering trio responsible for its Oscar nominated (and Bafta winning) visual effects. These were the guys (along with 106 other crew members) who threw JoBeth Williams around her bedroom before dropping her into a cadaver-filled watery grave. They scared seven shades of senselessness out of all of us by making us think every clown doll we saw thereafter might very well drag us under our beds.
They made us believe that our televisions might be conduits for the ‘TV people’ to enter our plane of earthly existence to cause all manner of paranormal activity. Whatever you do, guys, don’t tell us thattelevision is evil!
And that’s in between merely making doors slam shut of their own accord, building near-impossible furniture displays out of possessed kitchen chairs and making unearthly light gush forth from some otherworldly portal-slash-closetspace. In short, and to paraphrase Poltergeist’s most famous line: these guys brought ‘“them” here’. I mean, who didn’t think that evil entities were hiding within the unsettling fuzz of the TV static after seeing Tobe Hooper’s family get repeatedly spooked out?
everyday objects suddenly possessed
This is why Poltergeist’s scare tactics work their spell so well. The visual effects team, transposing the imagination of Spielberg and director Tobe Hooper, took commonplace objects and familiar environments and made them feel odd and uncanny, possessed with unwanted life where none is meant to be. The most effective scares were conjured via the careful, sly and playful subversion of the things we know to be safe and free of fear. That’s the inspired labour of Edlund, Wood and Nicholson’s work - the fruits came via the spectacular spectral show.
However justly celebrated E.T. was, Poltergeist’s ghouls were a marvel of weird and wonderful technical wizardry. They should be remembered for the impact they had on the early 1980s horror map, Oscar win or no. But maybe Poltergeist’s very best visual effect was a living, breathing flesh and blood embodiment of special extrasensory perception? The vocal and attitudinal magic weaved by Zelda Rubinstein as Tangina Barrons was key to all the polter-joy and ghastly-geist. I don’t believe there’s an existing Oscar category for Inherent Spectral Awesomeness. If there were, Tangina would banish all competition to the televisual beyond with one wave of her hand.
MTV Tom Hiddleson singing the praise of his new Thor 2 director Patty Jenkins. He just loves Monster (2003) and Kenneth Branagh assigned it to him as prep before Thor 1; how weirdly coincidental. Go Fug Yourself has kind words for Amanda Seyfried and hilarious words for Justin Timberlake. Awards Daily Sasha thinks this has been a weak year for cinema -- I'm guessing because of the lack of consensus on a single masterpiece. I'd say the opposite. I can't get over how good this year is. It's so exciting to be looking at an awards season that might not have a frontrunner. Consensus makes it boring. Bring on the passionate discussion of what is "Best" please!
Acidemic in praise of crazy "chicks of death" dangerous women from Flash Gordon (1936) through Rosemary's Baby (1968) to Trouble Every Day (2001) Reelizer How beautiful is this poster for The Iron Giant by Kevin Tong? Me want.
Movie Morlocks Kimberly from Cinebeats on Werner Herzog's excellent adapation of Nosferatu starring Klaus Kinski. Such a good movie. MNPP JA loves Carey Mulligan and thinks you do, too. Exciting projects she's lining up. /Film taking storyboarding to the next level with Darren Aronofsky's Noah's Arc movie.
Ultra Culture bitches about Rotten Tomatoes in order to praise Terri (which was recently nominated for one of Gotham's prizes) Towleroad Zachary Quinto to play a gay ghost on American Horror Story.
Empire offers up a final We Need To Talk About Kevin poster with "Joker" coloring. I love movie posters but when a movie makes this many and keeps changing it up I start to worry that they don't know what they're selling anymore.
Finally...
The Lost Boy thinks that Viola Davis is going to win the Best Actress Oscar. That seems to be going around. Here she is at the Women in Hollywood Awards.
The imagination is so potent. And that's really why we're actors because it's the power of transformation, the power of not being you, of going into a world that is different but ultimately real. And I always felt I had that I had that power even as a little black girl with the afro and using the crisco for moisturizer for my skin. I always felt that everything was possible. That I always had the power to be anything i wanted to be.
As I was walking the red carpet someone asked "What sets you apart from everyboy in the room?"
"Well... I'm black."
[Laughter] and then she launches into an honest and beautiful speech about Cicely Tyson "throwing her a rope" as a young dreaming girl and the need for stories about women of color in the movies. She is awesome.
On my way home from morning appointments I usually slip into movie theaters to see if anyone has a matinee showing that piques my interest. Though I get my share of press screenings and screeners, I love to see movies in regular release. There was a Margin Call showing at the perfect time at the gorgeous new Elinor Bunin Munroe theater at Lincoln Center but -- argh -- they don't offer matinee pricing and I just don't do full price in the morning. We can only control so many things about the egregious costs of living and one of them for me is that I do not pay full price if I see a movie in the morning. You gotta draw the line somewhere since movie theaters seem to raise their prices at least twice a year. (Do any of you get raises twice a year? Show of hands? Nobody?! Why do movie theaters keep raising their prices?!)
So I stopped at my the Loew's Lincoln Square which does offer matinee $ but nothing at the time I needed and last time I bought a ticket merely as time filler I suffered mightily for it. But I was amused to see this costume display for Anonymouswhen I entered the lobby since I had just been talking to the director (the aforementioned morning appointment) and was carrying an Anonymous book under my arml the movie was suddenly enveloping me. T'was inescapable!
The film's costume design is by Lisy Christi, who is best known for doing Michael Haneke pictures. (Quite a leap to Roland Emmerich, aesthetic-wise, eh?) Oscar loves this time period (the movie stretches from 1560 to 1603) so could the costume branch be interested? Maybe this will be the third Roland Emmerich movie to win nominations? His movies generally make a mint at the box office but only The Patriot (2000) and Independence Day (1996) have previously entered the Oscar conversation.
At the very least it won't hurt that Vanessa Redgrave is playing Oscar's all-time favorite royal. Didn't Andy Warhol once say 'In the future every actress will be famous for playing Queen Elizabeth for 15 minutes.' ???
Enough of my silly babbling. Your turn! Any interest in Shakespeare conspiracy theaters? Does your movie theater dress things up with displays? And do you love starting your day with a cheap matinee show?
Saturday, October 22, 2011 at 2:45AM 
