Jessica Lange: 75th Birthday and "Men Don't Leave"

by Eric Blume

One of our great screen icons, Jessica Lange, celebrates a big birthday this weekend:  75 years, and thankfully still going strong.  Lange is one of only 24 actors to win the Triple Crown of Acting (she has 2 Oscars, 3 Emmys, and 1 Tony).

Lange is a personal favorite actor of mine, and I’ve written about her on the site numerous times, so I thought for her three-quarter-century mark, I’d hold a moment for one of her less-heralded, lesser-known performances, a bit of a departure from her usual delivery:  her soft, lightly comic, and sweetly sad performance in Paul Brickman’s 1990 film Men Don’t Leave...

Click to read more ...

April Foolish Predictions: Eye Candy and Music

by Nathaniel R

The Dietzes are back in "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" and so is costume design goddess Collen Atwood. Photo © Parisa Taghizadeh for Warner Bros

Our April Foolish tradition continues with the visual and sound categories. For this installment we're just picking highlights from our crystal ball. Read on...

Click to read more ...

Happy Birthday, Jessica Lange (& Nina Foch)

by Cláudio Alves

Like Mark said in his Veronica Cartwright tribute, this 4/20 is an essential date for actressexuals... among others. After all, we celebrate the horror queen's 75th birthday and that of Jessica Lange as well. Initially, I thought about writing about the star's upcoming adaptation of O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, but that film seems trapped in some nebulous distribution limbo. By all accounts, production wrapped in late 2022 after a brief halt due to financing issues. Since then, there's been hardly any news, and Lange herself speculated it might not yet be finished in a Vulture interview. Let's hope we don't have another Blue Sky situation in our hands, though that farrago resulted in a Best Actress Oscar.

So, instead of dwelling on that mystery, why not remember The Film Experience's collective love for Jessica Lange? Going through the site, I came up with a selection of write-ups worth revisiting, plus some bonus Nina Foch to mark her centennial…

Click to read more ...

Happy 75th, Veronica Cartwright

by Mark Brinkerhoff

Veronica Cartwright in a 2020 documentary "LIfe After The Navigator" exploring one of her 80s films

Happy 4/20, which happens to be the birthday—same day/month/year—of both Jessica Lange and one Veronica Cartwright, the British-born former child star and current character actor extraordinaire.

When did you first clock the extraordinary Veronica Cartwright on screen? Though she mainly does TV guest spots (and the occasional direct-to-VOD titles) nowadays, I can say that she made an immediate impression for me in the mid-‘80s, starting with The Right Stuff (1983), Flight of the Navigator (1986), and most notably The Witches of Eastwick (1987)...

Click to read more ...

April Foolish Predictions: What will happen in 'Toon Town'?

by Nathaniel R

Will the new emotions in "Inside Out 2" impress voters?

Last season, we finally saw another hand drawn film take the Best Animated Feature Oscar with The Boy and the Heron emerging triumphant. Will we have another rarity this year or will Oscar voters return to their Pixar and/or American CG habits? Each year we root for the underdogs in this category since great studios like Laika and Cartoon Saloon have yet to take home an Oscar. Sadly, neither of those companies will have a film ready this year. Still, we'll dream that it will prove a truly competitive year no matter what emerges. That always makes it more exciting.

Herewith our April Foolish predictions...

Click to read more ...