Tuesday, November 12, 2013 at 5:44PM Alexa here. While Thor hammered the box office into submission this past weekend, 25 years ago another brawny blonde was dominating the box office. They Live, John Carpenter's campy sci-fi film starring "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, featured a six-minute fight over sunglasses and Reagan-inspired class paranoia that still resonates today. Here are some curios celebrating the cult favorite.
Monday, November 11, 2013 at 5:00PM 
Andrew Stanton with the first of his Animated Feature OscarsTim here. This November, we’ve been reflecting on the films of 2003, in preparation for the newest edition of the Supporting Actress Smackdown, and I’d like to use this as the opportunity to return us all to a simpler time. An easier time. A saner time. A time when the Best Animated Feature category at the Academy Awards wasn’t routinely filled up with five nominees because some much-too-small arbitrary threshold had been reached.
There were three nominees in the category that year, out of a field of eleven. And even that was not quite a small enough number to keep away from something a bit like a filler nomination (looking at the list, the fact that Satoshi Kon could have two eligible titles in Millennium Actress and Tokyo Godfathers, and swing a nomination for neither of them, depresses me something fierce). But it’s not a bad mix of films at all, anchored by two films that have survived the intervening decade as bona-fide classics of the medium, and one film that… hasn’t, though it’s clung to an appreciative cult.
Fish, Bear and Other after the jump
Thursday, November 7, 2013 at 10:30AM Dancin' Dan here to wish a happy birthday to the romantic comedy to end all romantic comedies. Love Actually surely caused fans and haters of the genre alike to spontaneously combust upon seeing it – so packed is the film with cliché after cliché after cliché (seriously, the only cliché that isn’t here is the one where an unattractive girl removes her glasses and suddenly becomes hot). Richard Curtis’s film tells the stories of no less than twenty-two Londoners (and one Portugese and four American girls), pretty much making this the first rom-com epic.
It’s true, we have Love Actually to blame for the insipid Valentine’s Day and the even worse New Year’s Eve, but those two films don’t have nearly the lightness of touch, the humanity, the… well… British-ness of the 2003 crowd-pleaser.
Monday, November 4, 2013 at 1:01PM TFE's Vivien Leigh Centennial Celebration continues with Abstew on Leigh's own favorite
Even if Vivien Leigh had only created Scarlett O'Hara and Blanche DuBois on film, her place as a Hollywood legend would be unquestionably well secured. Her portrayals of those two Southern Belles are so iconic that the rest of her modest filmography tends to get overlooked (she made only 19 films in her career, more than half of them British films before her star-making performance in Gone With the Wind). It certainly doesn't help that many of the films are not easy to find and some, like the 1955 film version of Terrance Rattigan's play The Deep Blue Sea (another film version of the play was released last year with Rachel Weisz which, incidentally, earned her many comparisons to Vivien Leigh), have never been made available for home viewing (although you can watch the entire film on youtube here. Not the best quality, but worth it for die-hard Vivien Leigh fans). But if there's one film that she should most be remembered for past GWTW and Streetcar, it's the film that Leigh, herself, claimed as her personal favorite of all her films, 1940's Waterloo Bridge.
Saturday, November 2, 2013 at 7:34AM 
Anne Marie here to celebrate a Hollywood icon on his 100th birthday.
November 2nd is the centennial of that charismatic giant of an actor, Burt Lancaster. He had Clark Gable's charisma, Cary Grant's charm, The Grin, a mop of hair that couldn't be tamed, and a voice that dripped sweetness from every syllable. With all of these admirable qualities, Lancaster could have settled into a career as a leading man, however he chose to pursue challenging roles and a career directing and producing as well. I first saw him in The Rainmaker starring opposite Katharine Hepburn. It takes something special to tear my attention away from Kate The Great, but the minute Lancaster appeared I was starstruck.
But if we're going to talk about iconic Lancaster performances, we have to start here:
While this particularly sexy kiss is what we all remember the film for, it's worth mentioning that Lancaster's also very good in the film. As Sgt. Warden, Lancaster balances military bravado, empathy for his soldiers, passion, vulnerability, and steeliness on his well-muscled shoulders. He was rightfully nominated for an Academy Award for his performance. [Trivia Note: From Here To Eternity is tied with 8 other pictures for "most acting nominations from one film" with 5 (!) an achievement that is now extremely rare, ending with Network (1976)]
Lancaster wouldn't win the gold until Elmer Gantry in 1960...
Elmer Gantry is a role tailor-made for Lancaster's particular brand of charm. Gantry is a con man who starts starts evangelizing at revivals because he wants to get into the habit of Sister Sharon (Jean Simmons). Gantry is a bad man preaching the Good Book. But my goodness, I could listen to him read the phone book! It's impossible not to root for him or fall for him. Lancaster roars and cajoles and cries while he's preaching, but his quiet moments are equally powerful. One such quiet scene is between Gantry and a prostitute played by future Partridge Family matriarch Shirley Jones. Lancaster portrays Gantry's powerful personality with an equally potent physicality, so when the wordsmith is temporarily broken, you can see it in his shoulders as well as his eyes. Elmer Gantry is more a whirlwind than a simple performance.
Burt Lancaster's career was as long as it was diverse. He played pirates, preachers, thugs, Nazis, conmen, convicts, and cowboys. One thing's certain: he was definitely never dull. Happy Birthday, Burt!
What's your favorite Burt Lancaster movie?
