Beauty vs Beast: To Catch a Hitch

Jason from MNPP here with this week's edition of "Beauty vs Beast" -- this Thursday will mark the birth of one of the greatest movie stars of all time, Mr. Cary Grant. His filmography of course reads like a dream with classics of all stripes under his belt, but it's his four collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock (Notorious, North By Northwest, Suspicion and To Catch a Thief) that I want to focus in on today because I want to force a question upon us, an unnecessary frivolous question that nevertheless nags at my frivolous brain - know who else starred in multiple masterpieces for Alfred Hitchcock? Jimmy Stewart, who made The Man Who Knew Too Much, Rear Window, Rope, and Vertigo. And I think you know where I am going with this now... Which is the better Hitchcock Star? Choose!

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PREVIOUSLY As with all things Three Billboards related last week's poll devoted to its two shitty cops played by Woody Harrelson & Sam Rockwell brought out some strong opinions, but only in the comments - the contest itself was won handily by Woody, who took 3/4s of the vote. Said Michael R, summing up my own feelings about Three Billboards:

"Write in vote : Lucas Hedges for Lady Bird. I love that performance so much!"

72 days until Oscar nominations. Let's talk '72

What's your favorite movie of 1972? My top ten goes like so...

01 Cabaret (Bob Fosse)
Come to the cabaret 🎵

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Fontaine Centennial: Mrs de Winter in "Rebecca"

For the next few days we'll be celebrating Joan Fontaine's Centennial. Here's Eric on her most famous picture...

David O. Selznick, Joan Fontaine, and Alfred Hitchcock at the Oscars for Rebecca. The film won... but Fontaine and Hitch didn't.

One of the best things about writing for The Film Experience is the chance to open up windows of your film history you haven’t explored before.  For some reason, throughout all the years, I had never seen a movie with Joan Fontaine.  Just one of those black holes.  And because she stopped acting before I was born, I have zero frame of reference for her (unlike, say, sister Olivia de Havilland)... 

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"78/52" Trailer teases method behind madness of Hitchcock's "Psycho"

by Daniel Crooke

Arriving just in time to slice and dice screens during the Halloween season comes Alexandre O. Phillipe's documentary 78/52, named after the 78 shots and 52 cuts that comprise the primal terror of Psycho’s infamous shower scene. A frame-by-frame deconstruction of the sequence, the myth, and the way it changed moviegoing culture forever, 78/52 debuted to warm reviews at Sundance earlier this year and will no doubt be a sweet seasonal treat for fans of Alfred Hitchcock, legacy horror, and the precise construction that goes into the craft of filmmaking.

Aficionados and genre experts such as Guillermo del Toro, Jamie Lee Curtis, Karyn Kusama, and Danny Elfman provide their own insights in the documentary...

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Beauty vs Beast: Burbank in the Bubble

Jason from MNPP here - just this morning I wished director Peter Weir (one of my favorites) a happy 73rd birthday on my own site, and it struck me that hitting up his 1998 classic The Truman Show (which at almost 20 years old can rightly be considered a "classic" now, can't it? God I am old) would make for a very fine installment of our "Beauty vs Beast" series. On the left we have Jim Carrey's second greatest performance as the manic man in the bubble Truman Burbank, and on the right we have one of Laura Linney's funniest supporting turns as his pretend wife turned hostage Meryl. And I know you all lean Lovely Linney (as a religion) but it's awfully hard to root for Meryl if you ask me...

PREVIOUSLY I'm actually a little bit surprised that you guys gave last week's Strangers on a Train competion to Farley Granger's Guy over Robert Walker's Bruno with 56% of the vote - Walker's sinister flamboyance is like oxygen to me personally! Said forever1267:

"That is a toughie, as this might be my favorite Hitchcock. I went with Team Guy, who's delusional in not reciprocating Bruno's desires, at least in the bedroom, but not at the carnival. Naughty Naughty! Ruth Roman is just sort of there, but Patricia Hitchcock and Teresa Wright should have teamed up to make a movie together where they solve mysteries while going Boy Crazy! Make it retro so!"