Tuesday, March 17, 2020 at 6:00PM 
We've talked before about how instrumental legendary movie star Natalie Wood was in getting the groundbreaking gay play Boys in the Band made. It was such a hit off Broadway in the spring of 1968 that it a film version was in theaters two springs later; The film version premiered 50 years ago on this very day...
Monday, February 3, 2020 at 10:18AM This week The Film Experience will be celebrating Lana Turner for her Centennial. Here's Cláudio Alves
According to legend, Lana Turner was discovered in 1936, when she happened to be spotted by the publisher of The Hollywood Report while drinking a Coke at Schwab's Pharmacy. As with most myths of the cinematic Olympus, the story is unlikely to be true, though that doesn't take away from the allure of the actress. Whatever her origin story, Turner appeared in her first film the following year and quickly became one of Hollywood's most beloved sirens, an icon of glamor and sensuality, a megawatt star the likes of which we haven't seen in decades.
Despite it all, stardom doesn't necessarily equal prestige. Turner was often seen as little more than a pretty face and her acting craft was underappreciated. In 1957, a conflagration of many scandals, personal and literary, secured her a single Oscar nomination for Peyton Place. That wasn't the first time she was in the running for awards, however...
Thursday, January 23, 2020 at 5:00PM A few volunteers from Team Experience are revisiting Federico Fellini classics for his centennial. Here's Cláudio Alves...
If Rome is the Eternal City, then Federico Fellini might be the Eternal Filmmaker. His cinema exists outside of time, both ancient and strangely new. A filmography that's a circus of pleasures where the grotesque and the beautiful are hand-in-hand, always dancing to a song of transgression and perversity. The faith of the church and the clown's laughter coexist too, precariously, but assuredly, and the images their communion produce are profane marvels. Like ancient frescos, there's a patina of age to these pictures, but they're bright as if they were freshly painted by master artists.
Perhaps no single film better exemplifies these wonderful contradictions than Fellini's Roma…
Monday, January 20, 2020 at 11:00PM A few volunteers from Team Experience are revisiting Federico Fellini classics for his centennial. Here's Mark Brinkerhoff...
My first recollection of watching La Strada is in a class at school as a youth. Oddly though, I neither can recall which class nor at what age exactly I saw it. But Federico Fellini’s 1954 breakthrough is nothing if not a film that sticks with you, like a bracing force which leaves an imprint that lasts.
A masterwork in Italian neorealism, La Strada (“The Road”) is set largely against the backdrop of a traveling circus, centering on a triangle of sorts between a trio of street performers...
Wednesday, December 18, 2019 at 12:30PM ;)
Anne of a Thousand Days (1969) was released 50 years ago today.
Even before her famous death, Anne Boleyn had become a legend. I don't say this to aggrandize the historical figure, but to explain that the second wife of Henry VIII had transformed into something not quite human. Legends aren't people so much as abstractions of them, told and retold, morphed by cultural shifts and the interest of those who tell them.
With the birth of cinema, Anne Boleyn would come to be one of the stalwarts of the historical drama on the big screen. Unfortunately, the cycles of empty mythologizing wouldn't end with the advent of new technology. As a character, Anne Boleyn is more often than not a symbol. She's a monstrous harpy or she's a martyred victim, she's a seductress who brought disgrace upon herself or she's an icon who died at the hands of a perfidious tyrant. Even on the rare instance when she gets to be protagonist, rather than a supporting player in another's tale, she's not allowed to be a person with a full characterization. For what it's worth, 1969's Anne of the Thousand Days, at least, tries to do right by Anne Boleyn.
I'm unsure if this is the filmmaker's doing or the singular feat of Geneviève Bujold...
