Hit Me With Your Best Shot: All That Heaven Allows (1955)

by Nathaniel R

Cary: I suppose these old beams are rotted.
Ron: No they're oak. They're good for another 100 years

Do any of you remember that short burst of retro Douglas Sirk-enthusiasm in 2002? Todd Haynes, Pedro Almodóvar and François Ozon (all of whom cite Sirk as an influence) all had new very stylized films out, and the lost art of melodrama was suddenly in the air and being discussed. Sirk was briefly exalted (especially in Haynes' Far From Heaven, a direct homage to All That Heaven Allows our topic today). Those were good times. It should happen every few years, trotting Sirk back out again, to marvel at his gifts.

Realism has not always been the most prized end-game of art, but for most of our lives the consensus, from critics audiences and awards bodies has wildly favoured it. Give us something real and gritty! Melodrama, then, is a hard ask for many moviegoers though we've never understood why...

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Sally Kellerman (1937-2022)

by Nathaniel R

The original "Hot Lips" Houlihan, actress Sally Kellerman has passed away at 84 after a battle with dementia. The willowy California blonde landed her first screen role when she was just a teenager in the B movie Reform School Girl (1957) after which she paid her dues with over a decade's worth of guest spots on various television series and small movie roles. Fame took its time arriving. She finally broke through as the lusty nurse in Robert Altman's hit war comedy MASH (1970), landing an Oscar nomination...

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Linkshelf

• The Film Stage great interview with Kyle Buchanan on his book "Blood, Sweat and Chrome" which is about the making of Mad Max Fury Road
• TFE on Instagram I am also going to celebrate this book by devouring it between every deadline
• /Film Teaser for Under the Banner of Heaven starring Andrew Garfield who is messing with the Mormons again (see also Angels in America)
• Vanity Fair "The minions do the actual writing" a fascinating report on the composing industry in Hollywood and name composers as 'brand leaders' rather than actual composers

The Boogeyman cast, Britney Spears tell-all, a great role for Stephan James, an award for Guillermo del Toro and more after the jump...

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Doc Corner: Salomé Jashi’s 'Taming the Garden'

By Glenn Dunks

Streaming now on MUBI.

The notes for Taming the Garden reference Werner Herzog and it’s not hard to see why. The absurd relationship between man and nature is as pivotal to Georgian filmmaker Salomé Jashi’s quiet and observant documentary as it is to so many of Herzog’s.

But Jashi’s film is nonetheless one all its own, blending modesty and spectacle in ways that may have its audience questioning the crux of its narrative just as much as its subjects do. It is the bizarre story of one (unseen) billionaire's efforts to uproot seemingly half of Georgia for his own pet arboreal project. Full of mesmerising static shots as trees are lumbered through the landscape looking like the Ents from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies and where the sight of a 30-metre high tree being shipped over the Black Sea attains a surreal grandeur that belies its otherwise restrained tone.

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Why can't the Oscars love themselves as much as we love the Oscars?

by Nathaniel R

"If you can't love yourself, how the hell you gonna love anybody else?" RuPaul's famous episode ending quote on RuPaul's Drag Race is profundity in silly soundbite form. "Amen!" How different might our current but lifelong Oscars obsession be if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences took this fact to heart. How much more fun would the annual Oscar circus be if they just learned to love themselves again. For you see, the more they think poorly of themselves, the more we begin to question our own lifelong love for the event. Have we wasted decades of our lives obsessing over this annual holiday/event/ritual? If they no longer feel any love, perhaps we should consider a divorce?

As you may have heard the Oscars will not be airing 8 of their 23 categories LIVE this year, but instead do them an hour before the broadcast and then edit them into the evening...

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