The Furniture: Olivia de Havilland Embroiders Her Fate

Daniel Walber's series on Production Design. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Olivia de Havilland was in nine films that were nominated for the Oscar for Best Production Design. It’s not the record, but it’s quite something. I’ve covered three of them: Hold Back the Dawn, My Cousin Rachel and Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte. But none of those actually won the award, so I still have some work to do. I haven’t got time for Gone with the Wind, and The Adventures of Robin Hood can wait a few weeks until our 1938 celebration, so I dove into The Heiress.

I hope you’re ready to think deeply about embroidery.

Granted, I’m not entirely sure director William Wyler was thinking deeply about his protagonist’s favorite pastime. The emphasis on Catherine Sloper’s (de Havilland) stitching can feel like little more than shorthand for “spinster” status. And the mid-19th century was a high point for this association, as embroidery was a standard part of the girls’ school curriculum.

Dr. Austin Sloper (Ralph Richardson) sent Catherine to the finest boarding schools, where she would have learned the art of the sampler from an unmarried teacher. The end of the film bluntly zooms in on one of these stitched alphabets, which in this context might as well read “OLD MAID”...

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Quick Chat: Tom Mizer (Marvelous Mrs Maisel), Emmy Nominee!

by Nathaniel R

Moore (far left) and Mizer (far right) with cast members from The Marvelous Mrs Maisel

If you're a faithful reader of TFE you know that we're fans of the songwriting duo "Mizer & Moore" who wrote the songs for this season of Marvelous Mrs Maisel. Tom, the lyricist half of the duo, recently served on the panel of our Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1947 and then guest blogged for a day here at TFE to tell us about his Maisel experience and other movie musical interests. Naturally we were thrilled when he snagged his first Emmy nomination and called him right up...

NATHANIEL: Congratulations. I am doing a little happy dance for you in my chair as I type away about the Emmys. We've on this journey with you, at least in spirit (socially distanced!) for so long now. Are you shocked? thrilled? humbled? already exhausted by well wishers? 

TOM: Thank you so much! Sharing just a bit of this madness with you and your smart, supportive readers has been a thrill given I’ve been reading The Film Experience forever. It’s surreal to be on the “other side”...

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Emmy Reactions Survey Pt 1: Fav Nominations, Snubs, and the Problematic "Guest" Categories

HBO's Watchmen and Amazon's The Marvelous Mrs Maisel led the Emmy nominations with 26 and 20 nominations respectively though it was Netflix that had the biggest morning, breaking the record for most nominations (previously held by HBO) with 160 (!!!). As is our habit we polled Team Experience on their reactions. Here's what they had to say about the following three questions which we hope you'll answer, too, in the comments. 

• What was your favourite surprise this morning?
  
  
• What omission perplexes or enrages you?
  
  
• How would you fix the guest categories which are now just like the other categories repeating the same performers each year (series regulars with small parts instead of true "guests")?

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Horror Actressing: Marissa Anita in "Impetigore"

by Jason Adams

Impetigore's Tara Basro (L) as "Maya" and Marissa Anita (R) as "Dini"

The concept of the "Funny Best Friend" is nothing new, but I always tend to think of the role in the context of the Romantic Comedy. Think Laura San Giacomo in Pretty Woman, who gets to be so hysterically vulgar and dumb, all the better to make Julia Roberts seem in turn like the classy and smart one. That's what these roles are there in the script for -- these Falstaffian sidekicks, who throw our lead characters' highs and lows into contrast.

But Horror Films have a storied history with these roles as well and this week Shudder premiered one of the best I've seen in awhile -- Marissa Anita playing "Dini" in Indonesian director Joko Anwar's latest fright flick Impetigore. You can drop Anita right down alongside Rose McGowan in Scream, Greta Gerwig in House of the Devil, Paula Prentiss in The Stepford Wives -- she's that terrific.

We meet Dini right at the start...

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Emmy Nominations 2020

By Abe Fried-Tanzer

William Jackson Harper is finally nominated for The Good Place. The show received 6 nominations including 4 for acting.

Every year when Emmy nominations are announced, there are at least a few surprise snubs and inclusions. One or two inconsistencies are expected, but usually, when a series does well, it brings along its most talented performers with it. This year, it feels like that isn’t true in so many different cases in what may well be the messiest list of nominees we’ve ever seen. But let’s start with the good.

From this truly baffling announcement, there are a few very positive takeaways. Every single acting category listed below includes at least one person of color, and there’s a real diversity to the nominees. Underdogs like Yvonne Orji (Insecure) and William Jackson Harper (The Good Place) made the cut for the fourth seasons of their shows, which is wonderful (and not common). Unorthodox managed eight nominations, including for Best Limited Series and lead actress Shira Haas. Though it didn’t crack its top category, Normal People did score a nomination for Paul Mescal and for writing (we cheered on Nathaniel’s behalf). A lot of people were surely ecstatic that Zendaya (Euphoria) managed a nomination in an insanely crowded field, too.

Unfortunately, that’s about the extent of the entirely positive...

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