Lana @ 100: Love Has Many Faces

Celebrating Lana Turner's Centennial. Here's Baby Clyde...

1965 was the year Martin Luther King marched on Selma, The Civil Rights Act was signed and Malcolm X was assassinated. The Vietnam War was raging, London was swinging, The Beatles played Shea Stadium and Dylan went electric. The times they were a changing, but some things stayed the same because this was also the year Lana Turner starred in the trashiest of all her tawdry melodramas, the Acapulco-set potboiler Love Has Many Faces or as it should have been called ‘Lana Has Many Costume Changes’.

In it she plays Kit Chandler a rich, international glamourpuss, with luxury apartments around the globe, who chooses to reside in the luxury Mexican resort with her estranged husband Pete (Cliff Robertson). When a dead body washes up on the shore it transpires that the deceased beach boy was one of Lana’s many conquests and she's the main suspect in the murder investigation....

Click to read more ...

Ranking Laurence Olivier's Oscar nominations

by Cláudio Alves

The Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1965 will be up on Sunday afternoon so here's an extra list before we get there. Before each event, I like to watch every nominated movie, even those I have already seen. Because of that, I found myself with the unenviable penance of revisiting 1965's Othello. Many of you surely did the same, exposing yourself to one of Sir Laurence Olivier's most problematic star turns, a Blackface version of Othello. I figured if I was going to force myself to watch this dirge, I should something productive with it. Hence, this write-up, in which that famous thespian's ten acting Oscar nominations are ranked...

Click to read more ...

The Best Costumes of 1965

by Cláudio Alves

Last month, before the 1938 Best Supporting Actress Smackdown, Nathaniel and I discussed what could have been the Costume Design Oscar lineup had the category existed back then. Now, before the '65 Smackdown, I return to the topic of costuming and the Academy Awards. This time, though, there are actual nominees to consider, both for black-and-white films and color pictures. Furthermore, we know some of the runners-up that came close to the nomination.

Before the reveal of my personal Best Costume Design ballot for 1965, let's examine AMPAS' choices…

Click to read more ...

How had I never seen... "Doctor Zhivago"?

Every once in a while we ask Team Experience members to finally get around to a famous film they've been meaning to watch forever. Here's Christopher James...

I hate to say it, but when does one put on a three hour epic? The time never quite seems right, especially in a pre-quarantine world. That’s why David Lean’s epic extravaganzas had long been blind spots in my filmography. Both The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia become instant personal favorites after finally watching them for the first time in the past five years. Yet, somehow Doctor Zhivago (1965) always seemed just a bridge, or perilous train ride, too far. When I would think of it, I would picture the sets and costumes from stills. But was it worth sitting through over three hours of a movie just for, in the words of Aretha Franklin, “gowns, beautiful gowns”? Luckily, the epic is way more than just its trappings. As Team Experience gushed a few years back, there are so many memorable scenes and subplots in this involving romantic quartet.

To compliment Doctor Zhivago appropriately, one must go down each Oscar craft category one by one. It’s a technically stunning achievement that is beautiful, towering and simultaneously warm and cold all in the same breath...

Click to read more ...

1965: "Thunderball" and the heavenly choirs of 007

By Deborah Lipp, author of The Ultimate James Bond Fan Book

 But of course, I forgot your ego, Mr. Bond. James Bond, who only has to make love to a woman and she starts to hear heavenly choirs singing. She repents, and immediately returns to the side of right and virtue. But not this one.

The first, and arguably greatest femme fatale of the James Bond movies was introduced in 1965’s Thunderball, the fourth James Bond movie. Fiona Volpe, played by Luciana Paluzzi was both thunderously femme and stunningly fatale. We meet her as the very sensual, very beautiful lover of Francois Derval. Soon, though, she is supervising his murder and replacement by a surgical double. Next, she is the mysterious motorcyclist who murders a SPECTRE agent who was indiscreet. 

So, before Bond ever encounters her, she’s shown us the full range of thrills and chills; sex, death, and speed...

Click to read more ...