10 Years Ago, This Weekend, "The Hours" Won Best Picture at the Globes

Nicole Kidman was having a pretty great night. 

Meryl won for "Adaptation" and Nicole won for "The Hours"

Hanging' out on all sorts of red carpets with Meryl Streep usually helps in that regard. If you can't share scenes with her at least have her on your team by way of a shared movie.

Our 10th Anniversary Celebration of The Hours

• Nicole Kidman remembers her Oscar win (Exclusive Interview!)
• Breakfast with... Clarissa, Virginia and Laura Brown
• Epic Discussion Part 1: Ravenous Kisses, Fidgety Hands
• Epic Discussion Part 2: Score, Performance, Re-Casting

We hope you enjoyed this look back. I imagine The Film Experience would be more popular if it stuck to current movie news all the time like every other site but I cannot live without my retro celebrations. I'm greedy. I need films from all eras in my movie diet. 

This next part is for Hours and Film Experience Obsessives only...

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Steven Soderbergh @ 50

You guyz. I totes forgot to honor Steven Soderbergh on his 50th birthday on Monday but The Stubborn Jodieness of Jodie, who also just turned the half-century mark, was all I could process. And process. And process. Anyway... Soderbergh announced his retirement so long ago and kept right on making movies that it's started to seem like a comic dark cloud that's hung over his career since, oh, sex, lies and videotape (1989).

I couldn't begin to list my 50 favorite things about him, or even my top ten films since I haven't been a completist and he's often as much of a deterrent as a draw for me (especially this past decade). But there's no denying that he's a restless, creative guy who occassionally crafts something masterful.

Here are his five essential films according to my brain... aka my favorites. I love them so much more than the rest of his output that it's not even close. That said I have very very dim memories of King of the Hill (1993) and some people swear by it. (Which five Soderberghs are closest to your heart?)

• sex, lies and videotape (1989, Palme D'or at Cannes, Oscar screenplay nom)
• Out of Sight (1998)
• Erin Brockovich (2000, Best Director nomination with Oscar)
• Oceans Eleven (2001)
• Magic Mike (2012)

And how thrilled are you that Behind the Candelabra, his Liberace biopic, is not so very far away now?

"Come to bed, Laura Brown"

Programming note: Actressexuals unite! We'll be celebrating The Hours 10th anniversary Friday, January 18th through the 22nd. We'll look back on its Globe winning night, it's Holy Trinity of Actresses and much more. (Suggestions welcome in the comments). Pass it on and join in the fun - we'll link up to any off-blog celebrations of this great film that week, too.

P.S. The Hours is available on Netflix Instant Watch making things much easier for discussions that week!

10th Anniversary: Nicole Kidman On Her Oscar Win

Today is the 10th anniversary of the release of The Hours. That's just another reason to feel merry today and remember that gratitude isn't just for Thanksgiving. Especially not when it comes to the gift of cinema. We celebrate the movies all year long but we get extra weepy about the greatness of the artform right about now when drowning in awards and top ten lists .

Christmas 2002 brought three very special actresses together

Not that The Hours is an especially festive or celebratory movie but each Christmas does seem to bring us a super-depressing Best Picture Event (this year's iteration: Les Misérables). The Hours tracks three parallel women Virginia Woolf (Oscar winning Nicole Kidman), Laura Brown (Oscar nominee Julianne Moore) and Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep) who are connected by difficult personalities, anxious spirits ("I feel as if I'm unravelling"), and Woolf's masterpiece "Mrs Dalloway" which she is writing and Laura and Clarissa are reading in the braided plots. 

The 2002 Best Picture nominee is a beloved classic to actressexuals the world over and, as such, I know it's close to the heart of many of you. When I spoke with Nicole Kidman recently, we took a time machine detour to talk about her winning year. (I thought I'd save that piece of our conversation for a surprise Christmas gift for you. Surprise!) The Oscar winner herself was totally taken aback when I mentioned the approaching anniversary. "Wow. That was ten years ago?!?" 

Indeed it was, Nicole, indeed it was. 

NATHANIEL R: You've been invited back to the Oscars with Rabbit Hole recently but what's your most vivid memory of that winning journey with The Hours?

NICOLE'S PERSONAL MEMORIES AFTER THE JUMP...

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And the Oscar Goes to... Snow White?

YEAR IN REVIEW BEGINS NOW! Many Best ofs and Film Bitch Awards to follow...

Did you know that today marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of the controversial "Die Kinder und Hausmärchen (Children's and Household Tales)" by the Brothers Grimm? (Google is celebrating) The book, a collection of fairy tales both pre-existing in oral form and original, has a complicated legacy in Germany and outside of it. But modern pop culture would be unthinkable without its existence. I mean without Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and the rest you'd have no "Into the Woods", no Grimm or Once Upon a Time, no gingerbread houses, and no global Disney Empire as we know it!

But today, when it comes to the legacy of the Brothers Grimm, I'm thinking about Snow White. If you're reading any list on "Entertainers of the Year" for 2012 and Snow White isn't present, there is a problem. Or if not Snow White (who has, on occassion, defined The Bland Protagonist), than the Evil Queen Stepmother. The Former Fairest of Them All nearly always pulls focus and ends up the defacto star of each iteration.

Earlier this year we celebrated the 75th anniversary of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) with an animated edition of "Hit Me With Your Best Shot"  and the cinema gave us not one not two but three new movie versions of the classic tale... [more]

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