The New Classics: First Reformed

Michael Cusumano here with the most recent film I've yet to induct into this series. Despite its newness, it's one of the titles I'm most confident will earn the label of classic in the course of time.

Can you pinpoint the moment someone crosses the line between faith and fanaticism? Is it even possible to fully define the boundaries between the two? Most reasonable people would agree it’s around the moment someone commits an act of violence in the name of God, but an individual crosses that boundary internally long before he straps on a suicide vest. 

That elusive moment of radicalization exists somewhere in the vast gray silences of Paul Schrader’s First Reformed. It passes by so quietly that it is possible to be late into the film and have no inkling of the wild-eyed zealot Ethan Hawke’s Reverend Toller will become in the film’s shocking final movement...

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RIP Naya and Kelly and Nick

2020 continues to be a hellscape year. Apologies that we can't give these recently departed talents larger tributes. They will be missed for their contributions to the arts that we love so much here at TFE. 

• CNN As you've probably heard the very talented Naya Rivera ("Santana" on Glee) went missing days ago. Her body has now been found,  police learning that she saved her son just before drowning. She was just 33.
• Pinkvilla The Glee cast came together at Lake Piru as tribute (on the anniversary of another Glee star's death. This is when we lost Cory Monteith in 2013) 
• People Kelly Preston, John Travolta's wife, and an actress of numerous 80s and 90s movies, has also died. She passed away from breast cancer. 
• The Guardian pays tribute to Preston with a photogallery of her biggest movie roles
• NYT Grant Imahara, an engineer who worked on the Star Wars prequels and other Hollywood blockbusters and co-hosted "Mythbusters" has died from a brain aneuryism. He was just 49.
• NYT Ragaa el-Gedaway, Egyptian cinema star, has died from COVID-19
• ABC Tony-nominated Nick Cordero, who we just loved on stage -- for our money he even surpassed Chazz Palminterri's performance in Bullets Over Broadway when he played the Oscar-nominated role in the stage version -- has finally succumbed to COVID-19 after months of a torturous struggle. 

The biggest question marks before the Emmy nominations

By Abe Fried-Tanzer

We’re less than two weeks from the Emmy nominations announcement, and voting has officially closed. We have plenty of information now, including who’s on the ballot and how many nominees there will be in each category. Before we unveil our final predictions next week, let’s address some of the major unknowns and how they could play out across the board.

Just how well will frontrunners Succession and Schitt’s Creek do? Most prognosticators expect that these two shows could win the top prizes, with nominations at least  are guaranteed. But, looking to last year, neither actually performed all that well in other categories...

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Almost There: Liv Ullmann in "Scenes from a Marriage"

by Cláudio Alves

I confess that, when I first came up with the idea for this week's Almost There write-up, I didn't expect its subject to be so weirdly topical. First up, there's the actual raison d'être for the piece, which is the Criterion Channel's new "Marriage Stories" collection, in which Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage is featured. Then there's the whole Hamilton kerfuffle, which caused controversy over the Academy's definition of what is and isn't cinema or what should and shouldn't be eligible for the Oscars (two importantly different questions). This is relevant because the ineligibility of Bergman's film caused a major ruckus back in 1974 and even prompted a couple of notorious open letters (another topical subject, unfortunately). Finally, we have the recent news that the television cut of Scenes from a Marriage is going to be remade by HBO with Michelle Williams and Oscar Isaac in the leading roles. 

We'll return to some of those matters later on, but, for now, let's concentrate on Liv Ullmann's masterful performance as Marianne in Scenes from a Marriage…

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Introducing the Smackdown Panel for '91

Are you enjoying our super-sized Supporting Actress Smackdown season? We've already discussed 1947, 1957 (new!), 1981, and 2002. Ready for the fifth episode this season? It's focused on 1991 and it's coming up in just two weeks on Sunday July 26th so get watching and voting. Ready to meet the panel?  

PLEASE WELCOME IN ALPHA ORDER ... 

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