Almost There: Forest Whitaker in "Bird"

by Cláudio Alves

After two Cannes Best Actress winners who failed to nab an Oscar nomination, the Almost There series arrives at one of the French festival's male acting champions. In 1988, Forest Whitaker starred as legendary bebop innovator and jazz saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker in a Clint Eastwood-helmed. At Cannes, he won the big prize, and, on paper, the movie does seem like an obvious awards contender. It's from an acclaimed auteur, a traditional epically long biopic, and it came just two years after critics and the Academy had embraced the similarly-themed 'Round Midnight. However, Bird was only nominated for -and ended up winning- the Best Sound Oscar, leaving its leading man unheralded…

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FYC: Elizabeth Olsen, "WandaVision"

by Matt St Clair

Since Elizabeth Olsen burst onto the scene with her stunning debut in Martha Marcy May Marlene ten years ago, she has managed to deliver quality performances in films like Ingrid Goes West and Wind River that allowed her to make good on that early promise. Yet, she hadn’t found a role that reached the same rich, intricate heights as that debut... until now. 

After a supporting role as  Wanda Maximoff (aka The Scarlet Witch) in multiple films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Olsen was given her own miniseries with WandaVision. Though the movies underutilized her, the series proved a strong acting showcase where she could play all sorts of notes between tragedy and humor...

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How Had I Never Seen… the "Valley of the Dolls" movies?

by Cláudio Alves

As part of a robust Pride-themed selection, the Criterion Channel has added Russ Meyer's 1970 Beyond the Valley of the Dolls to its streaming roster. The Roger Ebert-penned follow-up cum send-up to the 1967 trashterpiece Valley of the Dolls is as campy as its predecessor, making the lurid underbelly of show business into the stuff of dragtastic entertainment. In other words, it's a perfect flick to put on whilst celebrating Pride Month. As I'd never seen either picture, I decided to take this as an opportunity to explore them both and share my thoughts with you, dear readers. I don't know what I was expecting from this double feature, but it wasn't what I found. Suffice it to say, I was surprised, gooped, and gagged…

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Emmys Watch: Lead Actor in a Limited Series currently has no frontrunner

Our team is breaking down the top contenders in all the major Emmy races and highlighting some of our favorites. Today, we’re looking at Outstanding Lead Actor In A Limited Series

Ethan Hawke's performance as John Brown in "The Good Lord Bird" looks to win the star his first Emmy.

By: Christopher James

Heading into Emmy nominations for this particular category, we don’t have a single actor who has won a precursor. We’re in a race without a frontrunner! The past year of awards all went to Mark Ruffalo for I Know This Much Is True, who also won the Emmy. This makes the race all the more exciting. Will the Emmys award the star of a series nominated in many categories, or will they go for a big name actor in a series that doesn’t show up anywhere else. They went with the latter last year, as Ruffalo was the only nominee for I Know This Much is True.

Read on to see who might be in contention this year...

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HAPPY PRIDE 🏳️‍🌈

It's Pride Sunday here in NYC so we're taking the afternoon off for the Queer Liberation march and to get a sunburn. The latter is assumed from past experience no matter how much sunscreen we lather on (thanks Danish ancestry).  On a more serious and celebratory note, isn't it positively inspiring how many out celebrities we have now? We grew up in the 80s when we had only a handful (Rupert Everett, Martina Navratilova, Harvey Fierstein, Jimmy Sommerville, Boy George, and maybe a couple of others). In the 1990s 'coming out' became a more regular but still 'controversial' celebrity occurrence. Today the news cycle moves on pretty quickly from a celebrity's admission of queerness and that's healthy! Today's young people have hundreds of LGBTQ celebrities to pick and choose from to enjoy or relate to or be inspired by during their formative years.

As movie fanatics we knew in our hearts all along (despite protests to the contrary, sometimes frustratingly from the queer community) that once enough actors came out the myth that it would ruin acting careers would be exposed as just that: a total myth. Strength in numbers! Happy pride to all the queer artists and entertainers and Happy Pride to all our LGBTQ+ readers and allies!