West Side Story... is forever.

by Nathaniel R

Rita Moreno, still sensational at 88 years young.It occurred to us last week while looking at photos from Steven Spielberg's 2020 remake of West Side Story that a huge swath of the original cast members from the 1961 Best Picture winner are still with us today. It's not just the legendary trailblazer Rita Moreno though she's the liveliest of the bunch despite being the oldest at a spritely 88. 

So after the jump all the surviving cast members!

We honor their contributions to an indelible piece of film history even though there are a great many of them that didn't say in movies thereafter. Anyway, thiis is us doing our small part to suggest and hope that they get a bit of attention when the new iteration of the greatest musical ever written arrives. Invite them to the December premiere at least, Spielberg, won'tcha?

Here they are...

Character names in white = the actor is still with us today

THE JETS

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Beauty Break: The Celebrity Portraits of Victor Skrebneski (1929-2020)

by Nathaniel R

One of the most celebrated fashion and celebrity photographers of the 1960s-1980s, Victor Skrebneski, has passed away at the age of 92.  Above you'll see a self portrait and next to it one of his most iconic images, Vanessa Redgrave shot in 1967.

Skrebneski's heyday was a smidgeon before our pop-cultural awareness dawned (we grew up during the heyday of celebrity photographers like Herb Ritts, David LaChapelle, and Annie Liebovitz), but we knew Skrebneski's images before we ever learned his name. He did amazing portraits of Bette Davis, Dolph Lundgren, David Bowie, Diana Ross, Kathleen Turner and more. His black and white work was often extremely sexy and there are a few NSFW images after the jump. He shot movie stars masterfully, you must agree...

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Stilted Humanity: Acting Lanthimos

by Cláudio Alves

Since his third feature opened at the 2009 Cannes Film festival, Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos has been something of an international sensation. Dogtooth, that masterpiece of perverted domesticity, even conquered a surprising Academy-Award nomination along with its sterling reviews. From relative obscurity, Lanthimos thus became a household name for cinephiles all over the world and his next projects were followed with breathless anticipation. The formalistic precision, violent nature of his scenarios and the unsettling horror of the stories enchanted many and disgusted even more.

All of these choices are transgressive as it's fitting of the cinema of the Greek Weird Wave. However, such elements aren't as uncommon as many suppose. If you look hard enough through the wilderness of festival offerings, it's easy to find many similar aesthetic and narrative propositions. Yorgos Lanthimos does them with rare perfection, but that doesn't mean they are radically rare. Much more off-beat and idiosyncratic is the way this provocative filmmaker works with actors…

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All About Link

My New Plaid Pants Jake Gyllenhaal accepts Tom Holland's challenge to put on a shirt while doing a handstand (everyone is bored these days!)
IndieWire Pedro Almodóvar and Spike Lee will both curate exhibits for the new Academy Museum. Great choices, right? 
Film School Rejects a psa "what's on Quibi and what can I watch on it" good question!

Artemis Fowl, ever-shifting release dates from Marvel and otherwise, The Prince of Egypt, Ryan Murphy's Hollywood, All About Eve and more after the jump...

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Don't Miss "Invisible Life"

by Cláudio Alves

After a limited release in US theaters, Karim Aïnouz's Invisible Life is now available to stream on Amazon Prime. The film was Brazil's submission for last year's Best International Feature Oscar and, although the Academy chose to overlook its merits, that doesn't mean the picture is undeserving of our attention. This tropical melodrama is one of 2019's most ravishing cinematic experiences, a saturated explosion of deep feeling and chromatic excess, as beautiful as it is devastating. Harkening back to the glory days of Old Hollywood's women's pictures, Invisible Life is like a cocktail made of equal parts Douglas Sirk and Black Orpheus, a hint of Fassbinder adding an abrasive zing to the recipe…

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