Jennifer Jones, the early years and 'years at the top'

HAPPY JENNIFER JONES CENTENNIAL!

 Paolo wasn't kidding when he said that the Centennial of Jennifer Jones (that's today!) would be a challenge. Though we usually have some buy-in for centennials literally no one else on Team TFE volunteered for this one so it'll be short. But I'll do one or two pictures. i'm annoyed that I can't do Duel in the Sun (1946), which I've never seen, but I can't find it to stream. Actually easy availability is how I came up with your choices. So vote and tell me which of these films you most want to discuss:

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But before we get there, and overview of her career.

And the eternal question: How long can any given star can stay at 'the top' from Old Hollywood to the right now...

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Jennifer Jones Centennial: Cluny Brown (1946)

For the Centennial of one of Oscar's largely forgotten superstars, we asked Team Experience to pick one of her films to watch. 

by Paolo Kagoaoan

We’ve done centennials here before but this one comes with some degrees of difficulty. It doesn’t help that someone changed her name from Phylis Lee Isley into the whitest name in the world, and that the person who gets more Google results for that name is a curler. As a Canadian I can’t say anything bad about curling, but shouldn't a Best Actress Academy Award winner be on at least equal standing to a Gold medallist? Look up all the women who have had five Oscar nominations and a win (Bancroft, Sarandon, Hepburn, Maclaine, etc...) and imagine the world forgetting them. Explaining Jones to friends is equally difficult, even to people in the film industry who know her second husband's name, David O. Selznick.

I’d only previously seen Jones in Beat the Devil, a terrible dengue fever dream of a film. And it’s on TV all time instead of films with better reputations like Portrait of Jennie, which is her highest rated film on both iMDb and Rotten Tomatoes. Or Cluny Brown, her film with the highest rating on Letterboxd, and one that also came out the same year as Duel in the Sun (the film that brough her her 4th conseuctive Best Actress nomination) so that's what I picked to watch... 

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25th Anniversary: "Reality Bites"

by Mark Brinkerhoff

Sandwiched between (and oft-overshadowed by) the so-called Baby Boomers and Millennials, Generation X, those born between 1965-1980, seems to get little attention from Hollywood — or from anyone, really. In fact, just last month CBS infamously omitted Gen X in an otherwise comprehensive chart, “Generation Guidelines Defined by Birth Year.” For Gen Xers (of which I am one), this was generally considered as simply par for the course. Of course, of course, of course! 

But 25 years ago this week, we got our cinematic Valentine in the form of Reality Bites, the seminal film of a “forgotten” generation...

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10th Anniversary: Laika's "Coraline"

by Timothy Brayton

Coraline, which opened in theaters ten years ago today, was groundbreaking in all sorts of ways. It was the first feature made by Laika, soon to become a cultishly loved, critically praised animation studio with an Oscar nomination for every one of its four films (a fifth, Missing Link, is set to open in April). It was one of the first films in the most recent 3D fad to demonstrate a real sense of the emotional and narrative possibilities of using stereoscopic effects, and it was only rarely equaled in the years following. It represents an extraordinary leap into a brand new mixed-media animation style that I refrain from calling "revolutionary" only because nobody else but Laika seems to be interested in experimenting with it.

The truly special thing about Coraline is not that it achieved any of these things. Plenty of films invent new stuff. What's special – downright miraculous, even – is that Coraline feels just as fresh and bold in 2019 as it did in 2009...

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Sir Ben Kingsley is 75

by Nathaniel R

A happy ¾th century mark to Sir Ben Kingsley today. Born Krishna Pandit Bhanji he came to global fame in 1982 for his starring role in Gandhi (Oscar, Globe, BAFTA, NYFCC, LAFCA, NBR wins). Before that breakthrough he'd appeared in several British TV shows and television movies. Other key triumphs from his filmography include: Bugsy (Oscar & Globe noms), Schindler's List (BAFTA nom), Sexy Beast (Oscar, Globe, & SAG noms, EFA & Critics Choice Awards), House of Sand and Fog (Oscar, Globe, Spirit & SAG noms), Hugo, Shutter Island, and Iron Man 3 as well as very fine voice work in The Boxtrolls (Annie Award), The Jungle Book, and Noah. 

What's your fav performance from Sir Ben? I think I love him most in Sexy Beast, Gandhi, and the underappreciated Elegy.