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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Doc Corner: The retro hippy futurism of 'Spaceship Earth'

By Glenn Dunks

Would you believe that I also dream about documentaries? You probably would. We surely all dream about movies in some form. Well, just a few weeks ago I found myself awakening after a dream about a (non-existent) documentary that went back to the first ever series of Big Brother and interviewed the participants—none of whom I would know or have any sort of facial recognition of as I surprisingly did not watch turn-of-the-century Dutch TV—about living in isolation and what we could all learn while in our own contemporary COVID-19 isolation.

At the time it struck me as actually quite an interesting concept, a rare occurrence of wishing I had any inclination towards actually making documentaries instead of simply watching them. I needn’t have spent the mental energy. While crass reality television isn’t the theme of Matt Wolf’s Spaceship Earth, what it is about is the futuristic science experiment of the early 1990s known as Biosphere 2, a trial in inter-planetary life preservation that began rather improbably with a San Franciscan experimental avant-garde art troupe and ended, somehow just as improbably, with Steve Bannon.

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"The Daniel Orlandi Experience" is coming!

by Nathaniel R

Daniel Orlandi's favourite set pic... amongst the costumes of "The Da Vinci Code"

It's been awhile since The Film Experience has been hijacked for a full day by a super-talented Hollywood player. We figured it was time for another one. In the past we've handed the reins over to visiting embodiments of awesomeness like the rapidly rising writer/director Leslye Headland, and brilliant actor/writer David Dastmalchian, as well as a handful of actresses we deeply love: Missi Pyle, Ann Dowd, Melanie Lynskey, and Cara Seymour.

Our latest overlord for a full day: Costume Designer Daniel Orlandi !  

Daniel with Ewan McGregor on the set of "Down with Love"Orlandi's design gigs include but are not limited to: Cinderella Man (2005), The Da Vinci Code (2006), Saving Mr Banks (2013), Jurassic World (2015), Logan (2017), and three Best Picture nominees Frost/Nixon (2008), The Blind Side (2009), and  Ford V Ferrari (2019).

We don't know exactly what he'll be choosing to share with us -- we like a surprise -- but we did demand a behind-scenes peek at our personal favourite, the ever fabulous Down With Love (2003). We know you love it, too, so it'll definitely be featured.

It's all happening Monday, May 18th!