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Saturday
Jul162011

Attack of the 26 Foot Woman

A statue celebrating one of Marilyn Monroe's most famous film moments was unveiled in Chicago yesterday. Thanks to Michelle for the heads up. More photos here.

You know what this means: Film Experience readers in Chicago should immediately snap pics of themselves with Marilyn and send them in for our viewing pleasure. Do it! You know you want to. Do I have to offer prizes? If I have to, I will.

If you could erect a giant statue of a movie star in front of your home, who would it be?

 

Saturday
Jul162011

Friday Night Links

Emmys for Chandler and Britton, please 

Don't mind me. I'm just weeping over here in the corner that my beloved Friday Night Lights is no more. The end of that 'Texas Forever' era ended the same day as a certain record breaking pop culture phenomenon but if you ask me Tammy & Coach & Riggins & Dillon were where the true magic was at. While I dab at my leaky eyeballs, enjoy these articles...

i09 remembers the time (aka screen tests) when Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Gint were embryos
IndieWire new release dates for upcoming critical contenders: Weekend (9/23), The Skin I Live In (10/14) and Melancholia (11/11) and more...
MTV Movies Chris Evans on working with Joss Whedon on The Avengers
Film Flam Flummox honos Aishwarya Rai's superior Bollywood dance skills. Now that she's pregnant she won't be doing these moves for quite a while. 

Serious Film "Line Reading Hall of Fame" you betcha
The Awl 5 secondary characters who dominate Harry Potter fan fiction (and why).
My New Plaid Pants on the Spider-Bum and other photos from The Amazing Spider-Man.  

I find it so odd that I have to defend the hotness of Andrew Garfield so much to people. Are people just blind? Is that it? Is this that Julianne Moore movie? 

Change the Thought spotlights celebrity photographer Matt Hoyle and here's a talk he gave on portraiture, idealization and concepts of beauty. It's pretty interesting. 

Off Cinema
Art of the Title Sequence investigates the nominees for "Outstanding Main Title Design". I'm rooting for Game of Thrones but I'm perplexed as to how Boardwalk Empire is eligible. Doesn't this Emmy race cover its second season?
Critical Condition Mark & Joe discuss the Emmy nominees. They funny. 

The Wrap I'm finding all this news about Glee Season 3 departures to be very odd. High School series often have problems with people graduating so EASY FIX: Stagger your cast a little bit to include freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. It's not like a story about Glee clubs needs everyone to be in the same year. Why do TV shows keep making this mistake? The solution is so simple. In other words do it like Friday Night Lights. ;) 
Cinema Blend on the Friday Night Lights finale 

Finally, check out the Rufus Wainwright Timeline a really cool interactive feature created by fans that details his whole life and career. I had totally forgotten about that "Across the Universe" video he made with Dakota Fanning. Ha. This is way better than a Wikipedia entry. (hat tip to Arjan Writes)

 

Friday
Jul152011

My Bellatrix vs. Minerva Fantasy

Today at a critics screening, upset that the film was out of focus, I ran out of the theater to tell the people in charge. On my way out I tripped on a step I didn't see in the dark and literally went tumbling, face first (luckily my hands hit the ground before my face). After the screening -- which I winced through in pain -- I looked down to see my foot covered in blood! My toe is all F***ed up.

This is a really long way of saying that maybe Potter fans put some sort of hex on me today, anticipating a negative review of the last chapter of the beloved franchise. But the truth is I was somewhat nice to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two in my review at Towleroad because it is 100 times better than Part One -- not that that's a high bar to jump -- even if I think it's wanting in a few key ways*. Let's say B/B- for solid if limited entertainment. In short: it's a worthy finale and totally representative of the series. 

*Like, for instance you have all these great adult British actors and they rarely interact. I mean I was D-Y-I-N-G for a Helena vs. Maggie / Bellatrix vs. Minerva showdown so I could pretend that Lucy Honeychurch was finally done with "Poor Charlotte"'s constant fussy meddling and enlisted the dark arts to take her down! (Merchant & Ivory's Harry Potter. Haha. Just try to imagine it!) I knew this battle wasn't going to happen because I've read the book but instead all I got was like a disappointing three seconds between Julie Walters and Helena (I'll readily admit it was a great moment in the book.)

Was the Harry Potter finale satisfying for you? Do you think Stuart Craig will win the Art Direction Oscar as a thank you for the whole series? He's been nominated for Harry Potter movies three times out of seven thus far (plus six noms with three Oscars before it).

Friday
Jul152011

Yes, No, Maybe So: Contagion

In this edition of Let's Count the Oscar Winners, err, Yes, No, Maybe So, we take a look at Steven Soderbergh's Contagion. Details of this film had been kept quite secret until this trailer was released a few days ago. I'd seen snippets from the film at a distributors event a few months ago but they highlighted star wattage over plot. So now the trailer has arrived and in a move that has some condemning Soderbergh for spoiling his own film, he pulls off a Game of Thrones seconds into the trailer (at the bottom of the post)

YES - That cast!

 

All of them either have Oscars or have been nominated on multiple occasions but the best part is that they're not just "movie stars", they're all incredible actors. Is this like the "serious version" of Ocean's 11? Soderbergh gets bonus points for that The Talented Mr. Ripley reunion, but where is Cate when you need her?

NO - How can Steven Soderbergh deliver such a superb trailer and threaten us with early retirement? Also, considering he has developed a tradition of delivering one artsy film followed by a fun one, which one is this? His last movie was a documentary, so does it count or should we use The Informant as reference? The director has a tendency to work with genre and this looks like it could be his take on the psychological film or the disaster movie (I smell a fun double bill with Melancholia!)

Soderbergh is also one of the most ambitious directors in contemporary history. Most of the time he gets away with whatever he wants, but given the political references spotted in this trailer this could either be brilliant or end up turning into a bland piece of meh like Blindness.

MAYBE SO - With the revelation that Gwyneth Paltrow's character dies, we have to ask ourselves, how much will this affect the rest of the film? Some people have already called this a monstrous spoiler and are pissed at the director for letting this piece of information come out.

 PSA: Gwyneth Paltrow in The Perils of Gambling!


Killing one of your main stars isn't something completely new but it still sends waves of how-dare-they and where-are-we-going-now terror among audiences who want it the easy way. This revelation tells us that either her character was meaningless and there are bigger shocks to come or that Soderbergh is the kind of director you want to work with so badly that you don't care if he kills you before the movie is even released. 

 

I for one am beyond excited to see what he has up his sleeve this time. How about you? Are you as impressed by the cast? Should Soderbergh retire yet?

Friday
Jul152011

Unsung Heroes: The Think Tank of 'Minority Report'

Michael C here from Serious Film. With Spielberg poised to dominate the end of the year discussion with the one-two punch of Tin Tin and War Horse, I felt now was a perfect time to look back at his last film I enjoyed without reservation.

On screen, every historical era comes packaged with its own handy kit of movie clichés, most likely because a lot of lazy screenwriters did no more research than to watch other movies. The Old West has the bartender drying the glass with a rag and the draw down over someone a-cheatin’ at cards. Medieval periods come standard with a foppish lute player and a crowd of filth encrusted peasants. You know the drill.

This gets particularly egregious with movies set in the future. The majority of stories opt for either the Blade Runner urban hellscape treatment or the slick, sterile 2001 route. Each approach has its appeal but seldom do either have a real ring of truth. To my mind the most plausible vision of the future was done in Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film Minority Report. More than any film I’ve seen the 2054 of Report is recognizably a believable extension of the time we live in.

This was the result of a lot more than clever art direction. Spielberg was determined to have the most believable future world ever put to film. So where most directors would lock a bunch screenwriters in a room to brainstorm variations on the flying car, the man who directed E.T. convened a three-day think tank of the world’s brightest minds, including computer scientists, biomedical researchers, the architectural dean of MIT and various other luminaries, to brainstorm a bible of predictions for his production team to work from.

Let me quickly add that Mr. Spielberg should get points here for not letting all this technical info stymie his movie’s artistic mojo. It seems to have had the opposite effect, providing the film with a springboard for some unforgettably imaginative riffs, from the Fantastia-evoking conducting of the computer screen to the creepy metallic spiders that skitter about scanning retinas.

 

And now that it’s 2011 and the future world Minority Report envisioned is nine years away from fantasy and toward being a provable or disprovable collection of educated guesses, what do we find? Turns out so far Minority Report was scary accurate in ways too numerous to list here.

It may not be surprising to learn that the identity recognition advertisements are in the works or that the use of retina scan equipment is become increasingly prevalent, but would you be surprised to learn that that the US Military is developing work along the lines of Report’s insect robots? Or how about the fact that crime prediction software is being developed at the University of Pennsylvania attempting to predict future crimes based on past ones? True, it’s not exactly Samantha Morton floating in a tank of milky water, but it’s way too close for my taste.

Most future-set movies eventually inspire chuckles at its creators for assuming we would all be zipping around in jetpacks by the late 70’s or some similar naïveté. So far, Minority Report appears to be experiencing the opposite fate. One where we look back and admit we can’t say we weren’t warned.