Introducing... Matty Walker / Kathleen Turner

by Nathaniel R

We thought that a nice subversive way to end our 1981 retrospective party would be to focus on the year's most memorable beginning.

A lot of very famous actors began their big screen careers in 1981 including (but not limited to) Ben Affleck, Kim Basinger, Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise, Jeff Daniels, Holly Hunter, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bill Nighy, Alfred Molina, Kenneth Branagh, Demi Moore, Sean Penn, and Meg Ryan. Some of those debuts were quite promising. Others gave no clear sign of a superstar to come, just the site of an unknown actor with the ink not yet dry on their SAG card.  But the year's most exciting debut, hands down, belonged to Kathleen Turner. She was the only one of them to emerge fully formed right out of the gate; a movie star merely waiting at the bar for her filmography to arrive.  Risking the ghosts of both Lana Turner (figuratively) and Barbara Stanwyck (literally) for your debut and coming out the other side without remotely suffering from the comparisons is an all time flex...

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Introducing the Smackdown Panel for '47

We're excited to bring you a new super-sized season of the Supporting Actress Smackdown. We just celebrated 1981 with an awesome panel and we're not slowing down. Next up is 1947. In two weeks time we'll be talking the Best Picture winner Gentleman's Agreement,  Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case,  the noir Crossfire, and the countrified comedy The Egg and I on Thursday May 28th, right here. So watch those four flicks, won'cha?

We've gathered a panel of actors, industry types, and cinephiles for you. Ready? Let's meet the people who will be talking about the Oscars and actresses of 1947.

RETURNING TO THE SMACKDOWN ...

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Zainab Jah and Jayme Lawson reminisce about Sundance

by Murtada Elfadl

 

In the final part of the conversation I moderated between the actresses Zainab Jah (who will next be seen in Seacole) and Jayme Lawson (who will next be seen in The Batman), they talk about going to Sundance for the first time. They were there in January to premiere their film together Farewell Amor in which they play mother and daughter immigrants. With nostalgia for film festivals in full bloom, let's take a trip back to a happier time just a handful of months ago...

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Adrian, God of Glamour

by Cláudio Alves

Born Adrian Adolph Greenberg, the designer best known as Adrian was one of the most influential costumers in Hollywood history. After working in his family business of millinery, Adrian went on to study costume design in New York and Paris and later found work dressing the starlets of Broadway. His talents soon took him to Hollywood, where he found a home from the mid-1920s to the 1940s, designing the costumes for many an MGM classic. Throughout his tenure in Tinsel Town, Adrian perfected the on and offscreen looks of such great divas as Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, Vivien Leigh, Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr, and others. Among them, his most essential collaborator and muse was the one and only Joan Crawford…

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Over & Overs: Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

In this series members of Team Experience share their feelings for movies they have watched multiple times and that they can never get enough of. Here's Michael Cusumano

I can’t remember what originally drew me to Anatomy of a Murder. I certainly never held strong feelings toward the courtroom genre in general or the films of Otto Preminger in particular. I do recall a youthful obsession with George C. Scott that might explain it; Dr. Strangelove and The Hustler both would both qualify as top contenders for this series.

Whatever path I took to Anatomy of a Murder, once discovered it was never far from my rotation. You would think courtroom movies would be ill-suited for repeat viewings since most are structured like mysteries where the truth is gradually forced out into the open. Once the secrets are spilled, what is left for the return visit? But therein lies the appeal of this surprisingly idiosyncratic title...

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