Team Experience: Swim with Mermaids, Ride on Gaga

This week I asked the contributing Film Experience team how they felt about Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and I also wanted to gauge whether we had any Little Monsters in our midst via Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" droppings.

You refused to see Pirates 4. What would ever bring you back to this franchise?

Michael: It's hard to imagine what could bring me back to the franchise at this point, (I feel like I only just got done sitting through At World's End) but a a 90 minute running time would be a step in the right direction.

Andreas: If Disney ever wants me to shell out for another Pirates movie, they'll have to go down a really surprising route, like selling it as "Andrei Rublev on the high seas." Or maybe they could introduce interesting characters! Some outrageous twist like that. What if they solved all their problems by just making Pirates 5 into Dead Man 2? They could bring in Jim Jarmusch to guest-direct, and use William Blake quotes for all of Jack Sparrow's dialogue!

Craig: Can they get all the sequels over with in one go and amalgamate the whole lot: The Hungover Kung-Fu Transformers of the Caribbean in the City of the Deathly Hallows Parts 2, 3 & 4 will be showing near you THIS SUMMER! Either that or they just cast the muppets instead of Depp, Cruz and company. I could easily do with another Muppets Treasure Island, thanks.

You saw Pirates 4. What did you think of the Mermaids?

Jose: The mermaids were truly preposterous! Where were their nice sea shell bras and their fuzzy crab and fish friends?

Although on the bright side, if it hadn't been for Syrena, we wouldn't have had a chance to see Sam Claflin shirtless. Is it only me or should Pé have played the queen of the mermaids instead of being stuck with that crappy character?

Kurt: It's such a shrug of a movie. That said, I liked the mermaids -- collectively, they were one of the film's very few inspired elements. The mermaid attack was the first action sequence I actually paid attention to. The depiction is neither totally accurate nor blasphemous. Just a new interpretation. And thank god for it.

What if Lady Gaga's "Borth This Way" was a movie?

Who should ride her cyborg self?

Andreas: I imagine Born This Way: The Movie as a cross between The Terminator, Showgirls, and Un Chien Andalou, but with extra preachiness thrown in. To be honest, I've always wanted Gaga to branch out into large-scale filmmaking just on the basis of the "Bad Romance" music video, so if she made exactly that, I'd be perfectly happy. The weirder, the better.

Jose: It would be a freaking Heavy Metal like extravaganza. Only two passengers should ever ride Gaga: Hedwig (from the Angry Inch)... 

...and  the Governator himself. Can you imagine those two in an action movie together?

Though you didn't ask who are they chasing/is chasing them  but I'll answer. There is only one being who can do that: Madonna. She needs to find the one camp movie role to make her a cinema icon.

Craig:  The Gaga videos to date, all strung together, are like a kind of movie anyway, aren't they? But if Born This Way were a movie it would be directed by Alan Smithee. Burn (rubber), baby, burn! Edward Furlong would clearly have to ride on Gaga's mutant-motorcycle. And Gaga herself would have to talk in a weird robo-Austrian-motor dialect. Doesn't she already do that in some of her songs anyway? It's part of her charm.

Kurt: If Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" were a movie, it would, of course be Labyrinth 2, and on the back of Gaga's cyborg motorcycle would ride David Bowie's Jareth, clad in his signature wig and junk-hugging leggings. Together, Gaga and Jareth would rule over their combined armies of little monsters, and anyone who spoke against their doubly strong maze of fabulousness would be swiftly tossed into the Bog of Eternal Stench.

YOUR TURN

• Who would you pay to see riding on Gaga's mutant-cycle?
• Do you prefer your mermaids carnivorous or sweet and tuneful?

May Flowers: Eyes Without a Face (1960)

Robert G from Sketchy Details here. I'm drawn to the beautiful imagery hidden in horror films. There's something intriguing about the dissonance between something so beautiful in the middle of an otherwise disturbing feature. 

Eyes Without a Face is one of the more aggressive horror films from the Black & White era. The entire film concerns a doctor trying to restore his daughter's beauty after a car accident severely burned her face. He goes so far as to fake her death after a failed medical experiment to better control his wandering child.

Even with the graphic imagery and grave subject matter, Eyes Without a Face is ultimately a film about hope and the attempt to renew a young life. This is made quite clear in the funeral scene.

After all the guests have left, Dr. Genessier and his assistant Louise are left to tend to the large quantity of flowers left at the grave. The arrangements are traditional--white lilies--but seem unnaturally bright and alive against the foggy background.

Where Dr. Genessier is unwavering in his plans, Louisa is losing faith. She's the one who always has to clean up his mistakes. She loses her composure in the Genessier family tomb against a wall of perfectly white daisies. 

A slap across the face is all it takes to bring Louisa back to reality. Her patient, Genessier's daughter, deserves a chance to be beautiful again, just like the flowers at her staged funeral. 

Armie Hammer Can Fire A Machine Gun (And Other Linkables)

FilmDetail GASP. Terrence Malick actually photographed in Cannes this weekend. Or is it a cardboard cutout?
Vulture picks the best (and worst) performances from Glee Season Two now that it's wrapped. Sound choices throughout actually.
Austin Translation the latest Pixar short La Luna wraps production.

Dan Hipp 'I am Tetsuo!' (an Akira moment)
FourFour on Kate Bush's "Director's Cut"
Gold Derby Jane Lynch (Glee) may host the Emmys
IonCinema proves that it's not just Oscars that cajole people into ridiculous predictions: herewith predictions for Cannes May 2012 edition.
Pajiba imagines worst-cast baby names from the current crop of starry couplings.
Kenneth in the (212) Justin Bartha on Matthew McConaughey's McConaunuts. What the...

Oh and mark your calendars for March 8th, 2013 if you're so inclined. That's when they'll be releasing Sam Raimi's Oz: The Great and Powerful, one of many Wizard of Oz themed projects that is stupidly not the mega-popular half a billion plus grossing Wicked. Alas.

Finally...
did Armie Hammer really need to compare kissing Leonardo DiCaprio to operating a machine gun in that you just have to pretend to know what you're doing even though you don't?

Excuse me Armie but you know what you're doing! Unless you're marriage is really unconventional. I'm constantly bemused by this topic. Hello world? Listen up. As someone who has kissed both men (duh) and women (what? I experimented in college) I'll break it down for you: both men and women are human [GASP]. Each human being has lips and a tongue whether or not they have a penis or a vagina. I know that's hard to wrap your head around, world, but it's TOTALLY TRUE. Have you ever met someone without lips or a tongue? Kissing is kissing and the  major variable, gender-wise, is facial hair. Otherwise the differences are pretty much person to person. It feels best when you're hot for each other. It feels dumbest when you're not which any professional actor is more than well acquainted with as kissing is a basic job requirement; more basic than firing automated weaponry! The end.

DVDs. Which Will It Be?

Now that we've caught up with the last Reader Request (Beauty & The Beast) and we're finally done with 2010 movies (Jesus, that took forever!), it's time to really dig into 2011. The earliest releases of 2011 are already on DVD and the summer movie is in full swing. Here is a list of newish movies from either the past couple of weeks or today's DVD batch. It's time to bring back the Reader Request.

• GNOMEO & JULIET -garden gnomes do Shakespeare in this animated film.
• I AM NUMBER FOUR- alex pettyfer shoots stuff from his hands in sci-fi/romance.
• THE MECHANIC - jason statham teaches ben foster how to kill people.
• NO STRINGS ATTACHED - natalie portman and ashton kutcher are f***buddies.
• THE OTHER WOMAN -natalie portman marries another woman's man.
• THE RITE -studying exorcism with scary-eyed anthony hopkins.
• THE ROOMMATE -leighton & minka rip off "single white female" in college thriller.

Which of those 2011 feature releases would you like Nathaniel to write-up about? Your vote is my command.

poll by twiigs.com

"at the ballet-ayyyyyyyyyy"I'll write up the winning choice for next Monday. UPDATE: HERE IS THE WRITE UP ON THE OTHER WOMAN.

There are two documentaries also hitting DVD that I've already written about, the orangutan in captivity meditation known as Nenette (brief thoughts) and the Broadway doc Every Little Step (review) which is worth seeing if you have any emotional investment in "A Chorus Line" or any intellectual curiousity about the casting process on big Broadway shows.

20:10 The Patriarch's Wishes.

The 11th annual Film Bitch Awards have wrapped... finally. Just for fun and a bit of retro nodding, here's the image from the 20th minute and 10th second of 2010's Gold Medalist,  I AM LOVE.

It's that fateful dinner time scene when the Rechhi patriarch makes a shocking announcement that will begin to tear at the fabric of the wealthy clan, eventually weakening their solidarity and collective grip on their prized exotic possession, Emma (Tilda Swinton). Ugh, I love that movie so much!

He picked me, mommy. Did you hear me?

Black Swan was the leader with 16 nominations and 13 medals all told spread out on every awards page: major nods, acting, visuals, sound, line readings, character & extras, and scene work but it was The Social Network which took home the most gold (8). The South Korean marvel Mother managed the best nomination tally without any accompanying medals (4) and Rabbit Hole, which just missed the year's top ten list, had a strangely not-so strong showing with only 2 nominations and one gold (Nicole Kidman, Best Actress) ...

But awards are never a 100% accurate reflection of one's love.