Link People

Towleroad a few words about what's out in theaters and about Black Swan's midnight movie plans.
AV Club Chloe Moretz to play La Pfeiffer's daughter in Tim Burton's Dark Shadows..
Movie|Line interviews Barbara Hershey on Black Swan and her new role in Insidious. She also name checks some of her best work. Yay, Hershey.
The Awl a "write in" campaign for a particularly stone faced Best Villain performance at the MTV Movie Awards

My New Plaid Pants "ways not to die" visits Psycho's staircase. Yes, it's been a Psycho heavy week. I blame Manuel Muñoz.
Self Styled Siren one more Elizabeth Taylor tribute but it's wonderful. The Siren always is.
Cinema Blend All Superman movies are coming out in a dvd box set. My fav is #2 of course.

Kneel before General Zod!

Tom Shone reviews Mildred Pierce in full. I didn't finish the article though it was quite good because we're only halfway through but he has interesting things to say on Wood vs. Winslet, with Wood triumphant.
The Fug Girls think this is the best that Liv Tyler has ever looked? What's going on with Liv anyway? Few movie moments of the past decade thrilled me more than her "If you want him, come and claim him" Fellowship of the Ring bit.

Finally, I must thank the fab Lipp Sisters of Basket of Kisses for always keeping us up-to-date on Mad Men news. They are wonderful ladies and good bloggers which is a combo I quite like, don'cha know. A deal has been reached for AMC's flagship show. You can read the details and lots of daily conversations about Mad Men at their fansite. But the nuts and bolts of it is that we get at least two more seasons of the show (it will end with either season six or seven) but we have to wait for March 2012 for Season Five to begin. It'll be so weird not to have Mad Men to fill the space inbetween Oscar seasons.

First and Last, On the Move

the first and last images from motion pictures.

the first and last lines of dialogue for extra help.

first: [frantic] What did you do? What did you do?
last: Bye

Can you guess the movie?

UPDATE: Curious. Two hours without so much as a guess? That's not like you! Here's another clue: This film was Oscar nominated and it introduced us to one of the best new actors of the past decade.

Check your guesswork after the jump with the answer.

Click to read more ...

March. It's a Wrap

Thank God March is over! It's basically Sad Bridge Month between Oscar Insanity and "okay so what's this year going to be like?" Then our Beloved Dame Elizabeth Taylor died and so the month was a bit of a bummer. But, I must add, for our time spent getting to know you with Reader o' the Day! In case you've been a fair weather reader -- it's a pleasant 78° in here year round. There's no need to migrate -- here's what'cha missed on TFE.

It was unusually animated. Pun intended.

A History of Women in Film -From "American's Sweetheart" Mary Pickford to Best Director winner Kathryn Bigelow.
101 Dalmatians 50½ thoughs on its 50th anniversary. Woof woof.
Salo and Dogtooth Robert bridged the distance between two shock classics.
Hit Me With Your Best Shot We all shouted "STELLLLLAAAA" with Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire. (As part of a weeklong Tennessee Williams Retrospective)
Akira Redux On the impending whitewashing of this classic Japanese movie.

Toy Story Nathaniel's fav moments from Pixar's promising debut. They lived up to the promise, huh?
Princess Anne an overheard conversation about Anne Hathaway
Manuel Muñoz an interview with a great new novelist on Hitchcock's Psycho
Crimes of the Heart Kurtis looked at "the other Steel Magnolias"
Aronofsky Breaks Up With Wolverine an exposé of the real reasons he split.

Most Popular: Best Actress Finale, Peter Pan, and When Did Stars Start Posing Like Each Other?
Most Discussed: Best Actress Finale, Cast This: Les Miz and  Cast This: Game Change

Coming in April: We're getting really wet and sudsy for the return of "April Showers" since we kept hearing from readers about it (honestly didn't realize it was that popular). We're going a little mad with Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures (1994). And the guesswork for next year's Oscars begins. Plus we're going to both Nashville (the Film Festival) and the circus -- or to circus movies that is with Water for Elephants on the way.

Distant Relatives: Dr. Strangelove and In the Loop

Robert here, with my series Distant Relatives, where we look at two films, (one classic, one modern) related through theme and ask what their similarities/differences can tell us about the evolution of cinema.

Great and powerful leaders

The world is run by idiots. Here’s an observation that is not at all new in the history of comedy or for that matter, humanity. Political satire is more often than not based on the assumption that the people at the top are at best incompetent to enact the right priorities, at worst adamant in their pursuit of the wrong ones. There’s a line of thinking that suggests anyone with the desire to become a politician is, by that virtue alone, unfit to be one. Never is this assertion more comically rife than in times of war, when we’re all scared and confused and asking our leaders to help us through the fog of conflict.

Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and (cue the teasing female voice) Love the Bomb and In the Loop are two films during two times of war, one Cold the other Middle-Eastern, that aren’t exactly overt anti-war political statements. That is to say the films could, I suppose, get behind a war if the people promoting and running it were ever even slightly better than horrible human beings. But in their realities that could never be the case.

Fingers on the big red button

In case you’ve never seen it, Dr. Strangelove starts off with mad General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) giving an unauthorized go code to go nuclear (literally) on the Soviet Union.

Click to read more ...

Reader of the Day: Yonatan

We're wrapping up Reader Appreciation Month but so many people seem to be enjoying "reader of the day" that we'll keep doing them... just not every single day. Stay tuned...

I thought we'd close the month with Yonatan (you can call him "Jonathan") from Israel. Why? Well because he had a job a couple of years back that I think all of you (not to mention me) would be jealous of: talking about the movies on TV! Sweet.

He started reading The Film Experience due to the foreign film Oscar pages and he was one of many readers who started sending me regular info on their home country so I could keep up the pages. Yonatan and I share a love of really insignificant trivia. For instance, he recently wondered aloud by e-mail if Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days (1995) and Jane Campion's Portrait of a Lady were the longest English language films directed by women... I countered with An Angel at My Table, also by Jane Campion, at 158 minutes but he argues that what conceived as a miniseries so it shouldn't count. Referee!?

Nathaniel: Do you remember your first moviegoing experience?
YONATAN: I'm sure I've been to a movie theater before this, but the first movie I remember being taken to see was The Journey of Natty Gann, a few months before my sixth birthday! A few months later my mother let me stay up late two nights in a row to watch the 1985 star studded mini-series "Alice in Wonderland". I had no idea at the time who those "stars" were, but I had to see it!

What's your moviegoing diet like right about now?
Three years ago I got the chance to have a weekly live movie review segment on TV. Unfortunately, I don't appear on TV anymore, but I do write reviews (in Hebrew, at edb.co.il), and attend 2-5 advanced screenings a week. On slow weeks, I also watch movies at home, bringing me to a healthy average of 200 movies a year (not including movies I watch again just for fun).

[Here's Yonatan talking about WALL•E. I couldn't understand a word but I'm certain he is saying adorable things.]

 
Your 3 Favorite Actresses. Go!
Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep. Can I say Cate Winslet and Kate Blanchett to count them as one?

Elkabetz photographed by Jérome Bonnet I haven't seen a movie with Parker Posey in years, so she's been demoted. And let me just slip in Jodie Foster, Debra Winger, Jane Fonda, Gong Li, Carole Lombard, and everybody in the world should know the Israeli actress Ronit Elkabetz.

Ohmygod. She was brilliant in Late Marriage. I need to see her in other things.

Okay... They make a movie of your life. Tell us about it.
I like my life but it's pretty boring from the side and I wouldn't want to see that movie; you'll have to wait for the movie I wrote which is in early stages of development.

What's one movie you always recommend to people?
A movie that tops my list of recommendations is The Big Chill (1983). It's just perfect. The cast, the soundtrack, the dialog. It's touching and it has humor- so many great lines! Every scene ends with a punchline.

all reader of the day posts: Yonatan, Keir, Kyle, Jamie, Vinci, Victor, Bill, Hayden, Dominique, Murtada, Cory, Walter, Paolo, Leehee and BBats