Happy Birthday Peter Jackson!

In seems fitting yet not too obvious that Peter Jackson's birthday would be on Halloween. Imagine the costume fun one could cull from his films alone? 

Since today is his half century mark, we couldn't not tip our pointy Gandalf hats to the man. Whether you're counting down the days until he returns to The Shire with The Hobbit films or wishing he'd move away from Tolkien and on to greener other pastures, it's worth checking in on the official Hobbit blog from month to month (though they sadly haven't had a production video since July and those were fun.) 

Do you think The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) and The Hobbit: There and Back Again (2013) will continue the Rings Oscar streak? Perhaps you're more doubtful like me... even if The Hobbit films are great won't AMPAS voters feel that 11 Oscars in February 2004 was more than enough?

I would rank his films like so.

1. Heavenly Creatures (1994) -check out Melanie Lynskey's memoirs and our "Hit Me..." blog party if you're a fan of this brilliant hysteria.
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
5. King Kong (2005)
6. The Frighteners (1996) ...a revisit is definitely in order. Would I like it more or less?)
7. Meet the Feebles (1989)
8. Forgotten Silver (1995)
9. The Lovely Bones (2009)
   
   P.S. I have not seen Bad Taste (1987) or Dead Alive (1992) but I'm quite certain I'd prefer them to The Lovely Bones.

You?

A History of.... Winona Ryder

We haven't done a new edition of "A History of..." in so long! So herewith a new episode of our exhaustively researched 100% true* constantly on "hiatus" series... today's subject is Winona Ryder who turned 40 this weekend.

1971 Near Lake Winona in Minnesota an immaculately beautiful girl child "Winona Laura Horowitz" is born to Cynthia Palmer and Michael Horowitz. Three wise men, family friends, attend the birth: poet Allen Ginsberg gifts her with angel-headed hispterism and non-conformity (the things she'll say in early interviews!), scifi author Philip K Dick gifts her with the ability to question reality itself (her onscreen eye-rolling will become legendary!), and her godfather LSD guru Timothy Leary will gift her wi ---- so much history to get through! We'd better keep moving.

1978 The Horowitzes move from Minnesota to a ranch commune in California and live with 7 other families so that young "Noni" will not feel alone... utterly alone.

1983 Little Noni nearly drowns and fears water from that point forward. (She will later be frequently to compared to Natalie Wood but not for this reason.) She also takes her first acting class inciting immediate debate among her teachers and class members as to whether or not she has any aptitude for it at all. Their heated arguments will soon spread to critics and moviegoers and rage on ever after. No consensus has ever formed twenty-eight years later. (Early comparisons to Natalie Wood involve her youthful peak, and raven beauty but this, too, applies.)

1986 Winona gets her first film role in Lucas after a failed audition for the director's previous film. This is her entrance into the cinema.

[Historians should remain unobtrusive objective observers but here, we must pause to travel from Noni's history to our own. In this very moment, little Nathaniel sitting in the theater wonders why none of his classmates are this bewitching and what the hell is wrong with Corey Haim for not noticing her perfection and tells everyone "she is going to be a big star!" and ends the movie praying that he can marry her someday when they both grow up! He doesn't know it yet but this makes him an actressexual.]

Noni on the night she met Johnny Depp1988 Beetlejuice gives Noni her first hit and endears her to the Goth community forever. Or at least for the time being. She feels 'so alone... so utterly alone.'

1989 Winona plays her signature part "Veronica Sawyer" in Heathers and immediately thereafter begins to sell the press the loud worrying prophetic notion that she's peaked at 17. Stop it Noni, do not feed the trolls! She also plays the child bride of Dennis Quaid's Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire. She meets 26 year old Johnny Depp at her premiere. He wants her for his own child bride; they're engaged by the following summer.

1990-2012 AFTER THE JUMP

Click to read more ...

Centennial: Mahalia Jackson

Mahalia's voice heals the blind in "St Louis Blues"Mahalia Jackson was born 100 years ago on this very day in 1911 New Orleans as Mahala Jackson (she added the "i" sometime in the early 1930s). After a troubled childhood she moved to Chicago where her music career began in earnest. Despite never recording any secular music -- she refused to -- international fame hit in the late 1940s and she's been virtually canonized sense. Though she's never had a biopic (why not?) her history is closely tied with the story of Black America. She was part of The Great Migration in the 1930s. She was the first gospel singer to perform at Carnegie Hall and became famous all over the world. She sang at the March on Washington in 1963 and later at Martin Luther King Jr's funeral. (When she died in 1972, Aretha Franklin returned the favor and sang at hers.)  

As is true with most music icons, there are film connections. Spike Lee's Jungle Fever uses her music prominently and she also appears in archival footage in his documentary Four Little Girls.  Though she wasn't an actress per se, she did appear in films as a singer. You can watch her performance in the musical St Louis Blues (1958) on Netflix Instant Watch currently. (It's a treasure trove of famous African American celebrities: Nat "King Cole, Eartha Kitt, Ella Fitzgerald, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, etcetera). Two-thirds of the way through the film, her voice actually heals a blind man! You have to have a voice like Mahalia's to get away with that even within a spiritually-minded melodrama.

Mahalia's most indelible contribution to cinema came a year later. The Douglas Sirk classic Imitation of Life (1959) halts in its gorgeous colorful tracks to listen to Mahalia's soulful wail to the heavens. "Trouble of the World", indeed.

Her voice is so emotionally acute that even Ice Queen Supreme Lana Turner couldn't help but be visibly shaken by it.

'I Want Love'... and Actors in Music Videos, Please

Justin Timberlake as Elton John in 2001Ten years ago right about now, Elton John's "Songs From the West Coast" dropped. I bring this anniversary up because...

a) I love to celebrate anniversaries
b) music videos are short films
c) an irregularly curated side-obsession of mine is tracking film actors who've appeared in music videos.

For the videos from the album, his last hit-parade album (though not his last album), he used actor/musicians rather than himself, including a pre comeback Robert Downey Jr back when everyone still worried for the actor's very life and he seemed like an open wound... which really worked for this video.

Just love that one, don't you? It was directed by Sam Taylor-Wood before the days of her award winning narrative short Love You More and before she graduated to features with the John Lennon early-years bio Nowhere Boy (starring her future babydaddy Aaron Johnson).

In the follow up videos "This Train Don't Stop Here Anymore" and "Original Sin" Elton John used two pre film-stardom singers: Justin Timberlake as Elton himself and Mandy Moore as a devoted fan. In the latter Elton does appear and drags Elizabeth Taylor along with him in pink-turbaned cameo as "Doris" because, you know, Elton does love to flaunt the company he keeps. Was "Doris" an inside joke of some sort between them? 

Maybe JT got a taste for his acting future right here because he keeps playing important men from the music industry (Sean Parker in The Social Network and now Neil Bogart in Spinning Gold)

What's your favorite Elton John song? And if you were celebrity-aware back in 2001, did you ever dream of such enormous movie stardom waiting just around the recovery corner for Robert Downey Jr.?

All Male Revue: Brad, Andy and Ryan (who is just too Ryan).

The Film Experience is known the world over for its actressy devotions but for this quickie link-list, we've gone Men Only for some reason. Must be all that Best Actor talk in the air... or rather in the internetz. On that front I would like to note that my Best Actor chart is HAUNTING ME. It went the way of the dinosaur once Moneyball hit... rendering past speculations moot and the html coding is suddenly acting up, too. Yes, Brad Pitt vaults up when the charts are all redone on Friday. Weekly updates, however minor, follow from then on. Aren't you excited?

Okay okay. Enough screams and tears of joy for weekly charts. Settle.

Hello Giggles a must-read letter to Ryan Gosling. "You have to stop. Just stop. It’s getting to be too much."
Oscar Metrics Mark Harris in the lonely outfield, doubting Brad Pitt's nominatability for Moneyball.  
In Contention surveys the crowded Best Actor field and talks Michael Fassbender and Michael Shannon.
Cinema Blend  Justin Timberlake has already played one man who rocked the rock world (Napster founder in The Social Network.)  Next he'll play Neil Bogart who introduced 70s acts like KISS and The Village People to the world in Spinning Gold.

Towleroad Actor Sean Maher (of Firefly and The Playboy Club) comes out of the closet.
Movie|Line talks to Corey Stoll of Midnight in Paris career-boosting.

Oh and only because I know I'll forget. A very happy 50th birthday to Andy Lau tomorrow. He's been super busy lately what with festival appearances, multiple new films and headlining the Hong Kong Oscar submission A Simple Life which stars Deannie Yip (Best Actress Venice) as his life long nanny who suddenly needs him to caretake. Please to remember that Lau was Matt Damon before Matt Damon was Matt Damon in The Departed by way of the original film Infernal Affairs. Have you ever seen that one?  

Here's the subtitled trailer to his Oscar entry A Simple Life.