The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Follow TFE on Substackd
We're looking for 500... no 390 Subscribers! If you read us daily, please be one.
THANKS IN ADVANCE
Thursday, May 25, 2017 at 10:40PM By Dancin' Dan
Ten years ago right about now, William Friedkin's adaptation of Tracy Letts's play Bug opened in theaters, introducing most of America to Michael Shannon and gifting Ashley Judd with the best part of her career. Unfortunately, though, Bug was marketed as a body horror movie from the director of The Exorcist, which is... not what it is. At all...
Monday, May 22, 2017 at 3:15PM Tim here. With Alien: Covenant opening to #1 over the weekend, it's fortuitous timing that today marks the 25th anniversary of Alien3. The 1992 sci-fi thriller is probably best-known today for two reasons: introducing music video director David Fincher to the world of theatrical features, and knocking all the shine off of the Alien franchise for the first time (and alas! not the last).
Underperforming at the box office, and outright flopping with critics, Alien³ has never since recovered its reputation; if time has been kind to it, it's only because at least we can now say, "well, at least it's not as bad as Alien: Resurrection"...
Monday, May 1, 2017 at 11:24AM "The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail. Here's Daniel Walber...
My Gal Sal is a pack of lies. The 1942 musical, ostensibly a biopic of songwriter Paul Dresser, is almost entirely fabricated. Of course, that hardly matters. Accuracy is no prerequisite for the Best Production Design Oscar, which Richard Day, Joseph C. Wright and Thomas Little won for the picture. No one will be mad if some details are fudged in musical numbers like “Me and My Fella and a Big Umbrella.”
That said, My Gal Sal is interesting because it’s all nonsense. It’s a window into the way Hollywood projects itself onto the past, a compendium of historical kitsch.
Dresser (Victor Mature) begins the film in a strict, Indiana home. His minister father objects to his music, so he runs away and gets a job with a medicine show.
Eventually he meets Sally Elliott (Rita Hayworth), an established Broadway star. They don’t hit it off right away, but he meets her again in New York City. Their on-again-off-again romance, troubled by his sudden success, drives the rest of the plot...
Monday, May 1, 2017 at 7:00AM 
And you... and you... and you... you're gonna love May! 🎵
That's my promise to you readers. We're planning to work our asses off this month for you after a slow April. When you feel energy comin' off the blog, given back in the form of comments, shares, donations, good vibes, or subscriptions, won'cha?
May is the month of the Virgin Mary, emerald birthstones, Tauruses and Geminis, and all sorts of ultra specific things you can celebrate on this very day if you're feeling festive.
10 things work celebrating on this day in history (May 1st) after the jump including Batman and our third living 100 year-old movie star...
Thursday, April 27, 2017 at 12:00PM by Nathaniel R
Franco Nero and Vanessa Redgrave at Cannes '67Fifty years ago on this very day over in France the 20th annual Cannes Film Festival opened with the French film I Killed Rasputin directed by Robert Hossein. The jury was headed by the influential Italian director Alessandro and featured both Shirley Maclaine and Vincente Minnelli, two of our favorites.
When the festival closed that year the awards were spread out (as they should be) with lots of countries winning something. The Palme d'Or went to Michelangelo Antonioni's brilliant Blowup at the end of the festival (a film we tried to interest y'all in a few years ago to crickets. *sniffle*). Check out Vanessa Redgrave's frankly awesome full-body get-up on the red carpet with her then brand new lover Franco Nero (of Camelot fame). They finally married 11 years ago!
Both of the acting prizes went to young actors...
