By a nose...

by Cláudio Alves

When presenting the Best Actress Oscar during the 75th Academy Awards, Denzel Washington famously said "by a nose" before announcing Nicole Kidman as that year's winner for her work in The Hours. It was a reference to the way that, throughout that awards season, the actress's prosthetic enhanced transformation into Virginia Woolf had caused much controversy. Some people appreciated how Kidman left vanity at the door and allowed herself to be made unrecognizable, while many others found it to be distracting. In any case, it was a good booster to her Oscar campaign. The quality of a performance notwithstanding, there are few things that the Academy loves more than beautiful celebrities de-glamming.

Unfortunately, as it sometimes happens, while the performer was showered in gold, the team of makeup artists that made the physical transformation possible was left unrecognized. In the case of The Hours, they were even made ineligible…

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OUTStream Film Festival - It's Happening Right Now

by Nathaniel R

Last night we told you about the Cannes selection. While that's glitzy information it's not particularly useful since none of the films are available and Cannes isn't actually happening. But there is a festival happening right now. It's called OUTStream and 2020 is its inaugural outing. The queer festival runs through this weekend (Sunday, June 7th) if you wanna have a mini queer film adventure over the next few days. You purchase virtual "tickets" to the movies and watch (if you want to see the Q&As though you have to watch at the alotted times, otherwise it functions like a normal rental). 

HERE ARE SOME OF THE HOT TICKETS

Song Lang is a Vietnamese drama from debut filmmaker Leon Le. It's about the romance between an opera performer and a debt collector in 1980s Saigon. We've heard nothing but good things about this one on the festival circuit but we haven't seen it yet. Leon Le won Best New Director at the Beijing Film Festival for this. There's a livestream Q&A on Friday June 5th...

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A few notes on the Cannes "lineup" that won't make it to Cannes

by Nathaniel R

Steve McQueen would have had TWO films at Cannes this yearCannes won’t be held this year due to the Coronavirus pandemic but the powers that be at Cannes have announced that 56 films that would have filled out various programs will bear the Cannes label as in "we selected them!". i.e. they would have played there. This will give the films a leg up moving forward should any of the fall festivals actually take place. This does not however tell us anything about what would have “competed” this year at Cannes since they generally only have 20 or so films in the main competition. Spike Lee was meant to preside over the competition jury this year but instead he'll do the honors next summer instead.

It will forever be lost to an alternate history what might have been this year and what film might have held the difficult task of following in Parasite’s footsteps to the Palme d’Or...

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The Furniture: On Frida's Mirrors and Diego's Walls

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

Nearly 20 years on, Julie Taymor’s Frida remains both breathtaking (those Quay Brothers puppets!) and befuddling (why isn’t it in Spanish?). It holds up better as a visual experiment than as a biopic, despite the richness of Salma Hayek’s performance. Filmmakers have long struggled to bring the lives of visual artists to the screen in dynamic, resonant ways. Some fail.

When Frida does succeed, it’s largely due to its Oscar-nominated team of art director Felipe Fernández del Paso and set decorator Hania Robledo. Their work doesn’t simply represent the art of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, but interprets it. By transforming Kahlo’s paintings into the stuff of cinema, they directly engage with their meaning - or, rather, Taymor’s own interpretation of those meanings. The result is a film with a lot to say about materiality and identity, the value of brick and the value of life.

We begin with Frida’s bedridden journey to her first solo show in Mexico City. She is carried out of the house aloft, head resting on an embroidered pillow that reads “Amor” and “Tesoro Mio.” But then we see her through her eyes, as she looks up to the mirror into the canopy of her bed, the flowers reflected back at her.

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The many screen faces of Catherine the Great

by Cláudio Alves

Hulu's The Great is just the latest in a long string of portrayals of Catherine II of Russia, most commonly known as Catherine the Great. Since the time of the silents she's been a recurring topic for filmmakers, whether they're portraying her as the sex-crazed tyrant some propaganda painted her as, or trying to celebrate the legend and legacy of her time as empress. The Great makes her the spunky heroine of a black comedy, but she's also been a romantic lead and a romance's foil, an innocent pawn, and a Machiavellian master.

Looking back at the documentation we have about the real Catherine, one thing's for certain – she was incommensurably more interesting than any single movie character can ever hope to be. That's not going to stop us from exploring her various screen portrayals…

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