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Entries in AFI (72)

Friday
Jul242015

174 Days Until Oscar Nominations... Here Comes Festival Season!

Are you ready? My body is rehdd-deee. 

As per usual I'll be reporting from the Toronto International Film Festival (Sept 10th-20th). The films are not yet announced but here's a golden tease for you podcast fans: for the first time in recorded human history, Nick Davis, Joe Reid, Katey Rich andd Nathaniel R (c'est moi) will all be attending the same festival. We're quite excited about it even though our paths surely won't cross too often given the sheer volume of things that go on at that festival.

Team Experience will also be out in force again at the New York International Film Festival (Sept 26th-Oct 12th). Opening Night film: Robert Zemeckis & Joseph Gordon Levitt's feature version of the Oscar winning tale of Philippe Petit (Man on Wire); Closing Night film: Don Cheadle's directorial debut (he also stars) Miles Ahead about the lfe of musician Miles Davis. Nathaniel and hopefully our Los Angeles divas (Anne Marie & Margaret) will hit the AFI Festival (November 5th-12th) in Los Angeles again, if all goes well. 

We have no plans (aka funds) currently for Telluride (Sept 4th-7th)Venice (Sept 2nd-12th) Opening Night film is the all star mountain climbing thriller EverestSan Sebastian (Sept 18th-26th) , Fantastic Fest (Sept 24th-Oct 1st), Reykjavik (Sept 24th-Oct 4th) at which David Cronenberg will be the guest of honour!, Zurich (Sept 24th-Oct 4th), or London (October 7th-18th) where Suffragette will do Opening Night honors,  but you never know. Perhaps TFE will finally win a millionaire patron, finally convince hundreds of you to join our tiny circle of patrons that contribute $2.50 a month (a cup of fancy coffee - come on)  to help fund us, discover the secret to cloning so we can be everywhere at once, and/or find contributors in each city.

I ♥ The Film Experience

What are you excited about for the fall prestige season?
Sometimes it's mere existence can be enough after weak summer popcorn seasons.

 

Monday
Dec082014

Best American Films & Television This Year? 

Does production money really equal nationality? The American Film Institute does many wonderful things in the world including the highly enjoyable AFI film festival in Los Angeles each year (free for movie-lovers! and not many things are) but each year I feel the side-eye urge when they announce their top Ten American films and TV programs.

They use a shifting jury each year but I always wonder how they choose those jury members because the lists often betray an obvious desire to be "relevant" when it comes to TV usually including a defining popular hit even if the quality is shit (Look, I think "trash" has a place in "best of" lists but it needs to be good trash and How to Get Away with Murder is, frankly, bad trash. Poorly written, unevenly acted. Etcetera. I watched it and wrote about it, so I know) whereas with movies they seem quite beholden to Oscar buzz each year, often opting for films that don't fit their criteria as a result (The Imitation Game is a movie about Engand, starring British actors and directed by a Norwegian) or which haven't opened; this year's top ten list, which includes 11 films so AFI is even worse at math than I am, is 36% movies that haven't opened yet. 

AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE MOVIES OF THE YEAR

  • American Sniper
  • Birdman (Or, the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
  • Boyhood
  • Foxcatcher
  • The Imitation Game
  • Interstellar
  • Into the Woods
  • Nightcrawler
  • Selma
  • Unbroken
  • Whiplash 

Aside from Nightcrawler you could have lifted that list from virtually any 15 wide Oscar Best Picture prediction chart (like uh my own) and simply extracted the other British film (Theory of Everything), the film that opened the longest ago because "old" things are gross (Grand Budapest Hotel), Gone Girl (even though the AFI usually does try and throw one zeitgeist blockbuster into the list so its absence is surprising and at the very wrong time when we're trying to get people to notice Carrie Coon! ) and there it is, no thought processes required beyond Oscar-watching expertise!

Here is my favorite tweet about the list from A24 Films which missed...

 

 

And my own because, you know, i WOULD waste the question this way...

 

 

AMERICAN FILM INSTITUTE TELEVISION PROGRAMS OF THE YEAR

  • The Americans
  • Fargo
  • Game of Thrones
  • How to Get Away With Murder
  • Jane the Virgin -keep hearing this is great. guess I should watch
  • The Knick
  • Mad Men - here's to consistent pleasure even if the half season is a cheat
  • Orange is the New Black
  • Silicon Valley
  • Transparent - brilliant. addictive

this is what i'll be remembered for ??? *shudder*

WHERE IS BOB'S BURGERS!?!?!? My heart just pooped its pants. 

 

Tuesday
Nov182014

ICYMI November's First Half

Paul, Nathaniel & Anne MarieAs you know I just spent a week in Los Angeles for the 2014 AFI festival which kicked off with A Most Violent Year soiree and included a tribute to legendary Sophia Loren. I can't tell you how fun Anne Marie and our newest team member Margaret are in person - Margaret introduced Anne Marie to The Film Experience in college for which we must thank her or we wouldn't have "A Year With Kate" (nearing the home stretch now). Because they are young and live in Hollywood I assigned them the "Young Hollywood Panel" as well. We wrapped things up with Gala Premieres and a Podcast.

It was great to meet a handful of TFE readers at screenings! Hi Jordan. Hi Keir. Hi other people who didn't tell me your names! Paul Outlaw, pictured left who you know well from the comments, is the only person I've ever met that starred in an Oscar winning short film and he joined Anne Marie and I for the Selma premiere and festivities

5 More Highlights
Podcast Return - Gone Girl and Nightcrawler
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Maureen O'Hara's breakthrough film
Top 2014 Pop Artifacts - from priceless "Boy With Apple" to "Amazing Amy" books
Red Carpet Warm Up - Oscar hopefuls hit the Governors Awards to kick off the glamorous trek we know as awards season
A History of Animated Marvels - Tim's funny look back at Marvel's first TV efforts

Tuesday
Nov182014

Podcast: A Most Violent Citizen Four Theory in Selma, Alabama

Hooray!

It's a new festive and festivalish episode of the podcast. Since Oscar fever has begun to spread we refer to it even more than usual as we discuss the AFI premieres, Ava DuVernay's Selma with this podcast's boyfriend cinematographer Bradford Young, John Goodman's scene stealing in The Gambler, Jessica Chastain clawing her way into Supporting Actress, Citizen Four's competition for Documentary gold, and split reactions to The Theory of Everything

The podcast features Nick Davis, Joe Reid, Katey Rich, special guest Anne Marie Kelly, and your host Nathaniel R

38 minutes
00:01 Premieres: A Most Violent YearSelma, The Gambler
13:20 Jessica Chastain's fingernails
15:24 Sophia Loren's hips
18:10 Citizen Four 
28:17 The Theory of Everything


You can listen at the bottom of the post or download on iTunes. Continue the conversation in the comments! 

AFI Memories, Citizen Four, Theory of Everything

Sunday
Nov162014

AFI Fest's Gala Premieres: 'The Gambler' and 'The Homesman'

Margaret here, reporting from the LA festival beat with short takes on some would-be Oscar contenders.


The Gambler
Screenwriter William Monahan (The Departed), director Rupert Wyatt (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), and star Mark Wahlberg joined forces on this remake of the 1974 James Caan movie of the same name, and the result is certainly stylish. It's well-shot, coolly assured, and smartly paced. Wahlberg leads the movie capably as Jim Bennett, a man from a rich family with a solid career who has nonetheless dug himself to rock bottom with extravagant compulsive gambling. 

The film is at its best when it engages with the question of why someone whose life is granted so much privilege so systematically pisses it all away. John Goodman, typically scene-stealing as a dangerous loan shark, makes many salient points about Jim's decisions, which are either self-destructive or indefensibly stupid.  To its detriment, the film ultimately succumbs to the impulse to romanticize its protagonist, asking the audience to cheer and respect him when he  finally makes his first sound decision.

The supporting cast is largely excellent; it will surprise no one that Jessica Lange wrings every ounce of personality, pathos, and curdled maternal affection from her few minutes of screentime. Even so, she makes little impact on the movie because, like the protagonist, it brushes her away. The Gambler can claim the dubious achievement of completing the Stock Female Character hat trick: (1) a maternal figure who exists to thanklessly prop up the male lead, (2) a pretty young thing (Brie Larson) who we're told is a stone-cold genius, but is given no development arc and has inexplicable romantic interest in the lead, and (3) a passel of nameless and faceless strippers. Slow clap. 

These are not deal-breakers for every moviegoer, but they're emblematic of the film's general reliance on familiar beats instead of showing us something new.

 

The Homesman
BREAKING NEWS: Tommy Lee Jones smiled upwards of twice when introducing his newest film at AFI Fest. He had glowing things to say about the whole cast, particularly  "the miraculous Hilary Swank", who more than earned her praise. The Homesman is a stubbornly unromantic and prickly western, but Swank anchors it with a very fine, emotionally vivid performance.

The Homesman's portrait of life in the Nebraska Territory is bleak; life is hard, and heroism a luxury. When a town meeting is called to order the transport of three mentally ill women (Grace Gummer, Miranda Otto, and Sonja Richter) back to family in Iowa, their husbands shrink from the task. The staunchly moralistic Mary Bee Cuddy (Swank) takes on the assignment, knowing it will be a miserable and dangerous enterprise, because no one else will do it and she knows it must be done. Upon acquiring a traveling companion in a self-interested claim jumper who may be named George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones), she sets off with her dead-eyed charges.

There are many well-conceived notes in the movie. A knife fight over a disinterested captive, Mary Bee silently playing an embroidered set of piano keys for lack of a real instrument, a flashback to a passenger's slow break from sanity-- each hints at a poignancy that never feels realized in the film as a whole. The tone occasionally veers into incongruous places-- Tommy Lee Jones' introduction is oddly slapstick, and there's a vengeful sequence in the third act that would have been more at home in Django Unchained-- and while the story doesn't conform to any expected trajectory, neither does it end as strongly as it began. 

The movie didn't leave me sure exactly what story its makers wanted to tell, or at least, it never convinced me of why they were telling it. Even so, it's at times both moving and starkly beautiful, and will not be easy to forget.