Vintage '91

The Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1991 is just a week away so get your votes in! Before we get there it's time for more context of that year in showbiz history. Ready? 

 

Great Big Box Office Hits:
The year's biggest hit by an enormous margin was James Cameron's Terminator 2 Judgment Day (which has aged spectacularly well). The other major blockbusters were Kevin Costner's hit Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, Disney's Beauty and the Beast, and Steven Spielberg's Hook. The big sleeper hit of the year was The Silence of the Lambs. Other hits that year included City Slickers, Backdraft, Sleeping With the Enemy, The Addams Family and the remakes of Father of the Bride and Cape Fear.

Oscar's Best Picture Nominees: 
Most people remember 1991 as the year of Silence of the Lambs (7 noms / 5 wins) but many Oscar fanatics remember it just as clearly for another milestone...

Click to read more ...

Links: Fletch, Hamilton, most-watched on Netflix

• /Film Exciting project alert: Viola Davis will headline 19th century drama The Woman King from Old Guard director Gina Prince Blythewood
• Deadline Paul Thomas Anderson's 1970s high school drama is shifting studios from Focus to MGM

More after the jump including Hamilton, Nine Perfect Strangers, a streaming stage recommendation, a reboot of the Chevy Chase franchise Fletch, and that 10 most watched Netflix list

Click to read more ...

Curio: Viola and "Firsts" on Vanity Fair Covers

For this week's Curio let's talk the history of magazine covers rather than fan art.

Isn't the new Vanity Fair cover a beauty?! Viola Davis's profile has gotten a lot of attention but so has the fact that this is the first cover in VF's history to be shot by a black photographer. The name of that very talented man is Dario Calmese and he's previously shot George MacKay and Billy Porter for the magazine.

There's a lot of outrage online: how can this be the first after 100 years? Because we grew up as magazine junkies (before the internet *gasp*) this factoid is interesting and indeed outrageous but also a bit misleading. We'll talk about that in a hot second but first let's focus on the beauty and power of VIOLA DAVIS who we're so proud to have been stanning right here since 2002 when we gave her a gold medal in our annual awards six years before the world at large caught on. Our awards were only celebrating their 3rd birthday then.

How time flies. Now she's a superstar and who is more deserving? No one...

Click to read more ...

The Donald Sutherland essentials

by Cláudio Alves

I don't know about you, but I love to find which people share the same birthday as me. That's especially true of artists who I admire. It's not like sharing a birthday means a whole lot, but it's nice to know that there's something in common between you and one of your idols. In my case, birthday twins include the cinematic genius Wong Kar-Wai, the fabulously talented Diahann Carroll, the eternal gangster James Cagney, Weekend star Tom Cullen, Best Supporting Actress nominee Barbara O'Neil, Sibyl director Justine Triet, and, of course, this piece's focus, the great Donald Sutherland. Our special day was just yesterday. 

Despite never having been nominated for a competitive Oscar (he received an honorary in 2018), Donald Sutherland can be counted among Hollywood's most respected thespians. With a career spanning from the 1960s to now, full of memorable hits and influential classics, complex performances, and scene-stealing turns, Sutherland is an actorly institution all by himself. In honor of his 85th birthday yesterday, here goes a list of some of the movies anyone must watch if they're fans of the actor… 

Click to read more ...

1991: Robin Hood Prince of Thieves

by Lynn Lee

- Locksley…I’m gonna cut your heart out with a spoon!

-Why a spoon?

-Because it’s DULL, you twit, it’ll hurt more!”

If you remember anything about Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, it’s probably those lines.  Or, more generally, Alan Rickman’s scrumptiously hammy turn as the villain who bellows them.  Or perhaps you remember Kevin Costner’s complete failure to master anything resembling an English accent.  If you’d just as soon forget Costner ever played Robin Hood, you’re not alone: consensus opinion generally holds that Rickman was the only good thing about the movie, which received tepid reviews at the time of its release and hasn’t exactly aged into a classic. 

It’s worth noting, however, that a lot of people really liked Prince of Thieves at the time...

Click to read more ...