we're going to need a bigger link.

La Daily Musto Jane Fonda aging like fine wine. Damn, girl! (Now if only someone in the movies would write her a rich role again.)
Boston Globe Wesley Morris notates that sex has left the Hollywood movie, even in a movie about a sexaholic (Crazy Stupid Love). He blames Harry & Sally and that time that they met.
Vogue Italia has a four minute video reel with Ludivine Sagnier, looking luscious as usual.
Acidemic on Marlon Brando as a tortured homo in Reflections of a Golden Eye (1967)
Socialite Life Maddox Jolie-Pitt is 10 years old already. Christ, time is flying by. The family celebrated with "Wicked" the musical.
Just Jared Nicole Kidman and Matthew McConaughey on the set of Paperboy.
IndieWire surveys the up and comers in indie film for 2011 

Finally... have you seen this Peanuts/Jaws mashup?

The Pot Calling the Kettle Bleech, or Hypocritical Cinema

Hello all! My name is Nick McCathy, and I’ve been a reader—and unfortunately infrequent commenter—of The Film Experience for roughly six years. Nathaniel recently introduced me here, and it's a pleasure to meet you all as well. I’ve written for The L Magazine, Boston Phoenix, Moviefone, and the Film Society of Lincoln Center Blog, and now I’m glad to find an occasional home here. I hope you find my credentials worthy, my spirit playful, and my addition to this palace of cinema and actressexuality that Nathaniel has built to be inspired.

In direct contrast to my introduction, I would like to start by celebrating a few celebrity birthdays, and congratulate them for continuing the tradition of living (well, except one of them).

Today, July 23^rd, Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, turns 22. Potbellied, Oscar-winning master of schlub Phillip Seymour Hoffman turns 44. Potboiler-cum-masterpiece noir author (The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye, and screenwriter (Oscar nominated for co-writing Double Indemnity and writing The Blue Dahlia), Raymond Chandler would have turned 123 today.

 And, most significantly, everyone’s favorite Hollywood pothead and two-time Oscar nominee, Woody Harrelson (you heard me right, Matthew McConaughey), turns the big 50 today. 

What’s your favorite performance by Mr. Woodrow Tracy Harrelson?

He has had, and continues to have, such a strange career; I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone had different answers. He's unsurprisingly awarded more for his dramatic work, which is very good, but I find his best comedic performance to be his gleefully sleazy, broken, and banged-up Roy Munson in Kingpin.

You can see two of these birthday boys in the movie theater this week: Radcliffe in a little film called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Deux and Woody Harrelson in Friends with Benefits (although I would proceed with caution since it's only an ugly gay-panic stereotype).

Click to read more ...

Linkbringer

GWB finds Raúl Esparza all villainous

big screen
Broadway.com Raul Esparza, one of our favorite song & dance men, channels his inner gangster for the new film GWB
Pajiba the fifth annual "most bangable celebrities" list. Fun writeups on everyone from Tom Hardy to Emma Stone to Fassy, who tops the list.
In Contention fans can finally choose between Magneto & Professor X for the X-Men First Class Blu-Ray. Nice covers but obviously I'd have to go with Michael Fassbender.
Scene Stealers chooses a top ten of movie super soldiers to celebrate Captain America's arrival. Hey, that's probably what I'm watching right as you're reading this. Wheeeee.
Little White Lies interviews director Mike Mills on his personal and beguiling film Beginners. I love this bit on whether he's nostalgic for old time Hollywood...

Well, I’m obsessed with history. We are the latest chapter in a long story and if we want to figure ourselves out of get out lf the prisons that we’re in then you need to figure out the past. So I’m always looking back. And I do love Louise Brooks and I do love old Hollywood through the teens, ’20s and ’30s, because it was being invented then, it was like this whole new entrepreneurial world that was just being discovered. ...I like these cultures that were born from punk, too. I was around and I watched these things make themselves a little bit and I related a lot to that. Actually Louise Brooks was a fucking punk, man. She was a really interesting, subversive person.

That she was.

Have you seen this new poster for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy?

It's nifty, yes?

I like that it feels secret messagey and that it isn't loud. But perhaps mileage will vary. I still don't know what to make of it in the Oscar predictions but it's an interesting wild card sight unseen.

small screen
My New Plaid Pants Black Book's wondrous Carice van Houten will play the sorceress Melisandre in Game of Thrones. I wish I loved Game of Thrones because between them giving Sibel Kekilli a plum role and now this (Melisandre is a totally sick character) it's like they're trying to fill their cast with my foreign film harem. Who's next: Franka and Ludivine?
Vulture Lisa Kudrow talks about Web Therapy which she's bringing to regular TV now. My greatest related dream is that she convinces Meryl Streep to reprise her sex-crazed reparative therapist Camilla Bowner because it's so topical now what with those crazy anti-gay Bachmanns flitting about on the news.
Towleroad Where in the world is Anderson Cooper?

My Magnificent 'Aliens' Obsession

Kurt here.

Some boys of a certain persuasion – which is to say young gay cinephiles – may have found themselves a kindred, tuneful spirit in Fanny Brice, or fed their fabulous longings with [insert stereotypical icon here]. More power to 'em. For me, though, it was always about Ellen Ripley, Lt. First Class. For my boundless Ripley love, I have to at least partially thank a cocktail of deep-seeded denial and flamboyance rejection, as I was much more prepared to accept an angry woman with a gun as my savior than a ballad-belting showboat. I didn't want Schwarzenegger, but I wasn't ready for Cher. And I certainly have no regrets.

Since I wasn't donning feather boas, I'm sure my parents didn't think much of it when I began strapping toy rifles together with all manner of black plastic tubes and electrical tape, so as to recreate that shell-firing, flame-throwing, grenade-launching monstrosity that Ripley uses to resurface the industrial spaces on LV-426 (if memory serves, a black snorkel was even used as an extra gun barrel). I doubt I tripped their gaydar when I put two four-legged ottomans flush against the living room chair, then proceeded to crawl on the floor, weapon in hand, through my improvised air shaft.

Was I in drag? No. But make no mistake – I was diva-channeling.

Aliens, far and away my favorite action movie of all time, was also a liberating gay outlet long before I knew I was gay. That inherent gay need to fall headfirst in love with glorious females of outsized character was more than fulfilled by this watershed movie of womanly badassness. And my obsession with it spread well beyond playacting with plastic rifles. I regularly whipped up drawings of Ripley and those H.R. Giger beasties (I dug up some of them for this post).

I was close with these twin brothers at one point, and our friendship was pretty much based on our mutual Aliens enthusiasm – that, and the fact that they had all the action figures, even the yellow power-loader thingie. The twins' backyard was home to many an Aliens reenactment, with each of us alternating the role of James Cameron (“Okay – you be Hudson, and you be Vasquez!”). The guys never knew I was actually getting my Barbie on.

Her highnessMy mother was pregnant with my sister when she went to see Alien with my dad in 1979 (needless to say, she henceforth had a nightmare-filled pregnancy). This story has never made much sense to me, as I'm certainly the one who seems to have been psychically willed into Alien Saga obsession from the womb, not my sister. My sister doesn't even like SigWeavie. “She's ugly,” she says. (Oh yes, she did.)

Of the many gifts I've received from this franchise, the most cherished is a lifelong interest in Sigourney (who is not ugly, Heather). You'll see in the doodles that I was particularly fond of her jawline, which, by my hand, is ridiculously pronounced. I like to pretend that this masculine feature had a hand in getting Siggy the job in the first place, and I don't even know where to begin in addressing the sexual themes I suddenly realize it might represent for me. That's a lot of implications for one little post...

All this, and I haven't said a lick about Aliens's greatness as a film. I have no idea how many times I've seen it, and it's a long movie to have watched so repeatedly. I can honestly say there's not a single part that bores me, not even the mess hall conversations or the Ripley-can't-sleep prelude. This is a film that gets up, gets going and keeps going. It is notable for so much more than its titular nemeses, yet I can't pick a better creature feature (for Best Shot, which I sadly didn't participate in, I choose the pan that reveals the enormity of the alien queen, in her lair, on her throne – it's absolutely jaw-dropping). I think the best way I've ever heard Aliens described is that it has a beating heart – a racing pulse that's palpable. I'd say that it's certainly close to my heart, but that might sound kinda gay.

Matthew Ludwinski in "Going Down in La La Land"

There's a new gay film from Casper Andreas (Violet Tendencies, Slutty Summer) making the festival rounds. In fact, it's currently playing at Outfest in Los Angeles. The film is an adaptation of the comic memoir novel Going Down in La La Land which chronicles the adventures of a naive young actor who gets mixed up in porn/hustling when he tries to make it in Hollywood. As one does. Model/actor Matthew Ludwinski has the lead role.

Matthew Ludwinski photographed by David Waage for Mate Magazine

I recently interviewed him for global queer culture magazine mate (previously known as "winq") and that's the splash page for the start of the article above. Interviews can be tricky -- especially if the interviewee doesn't have a big resume to talk about -- but Ludwinski and his photographer David Waage for this profile were very friendly and fun. [Clicking on the image will take you to the magazine where you can sample bits or purchase.]

an Oscar Party scene from the filmI thought I'd share a bit that I couldn't squeeze into the article. There's an Oscar party scene in the film, where the staff is naked and painted gold (Hey, I had that idea like ten years ago... but alas, my parties are not that well funded). So when I sat down with Ludwinski at the hotel, given this Oscar party scene, I had to ask him about working with the Academy's favorite joke writer Bruce Vilanche, who plays a porn director in the film.

We ended up discussing the Franco/Vilanche Oscar night fallout kerfuffle very briefly.

Was Vilanche funny in person?

Hilarious. For a couple months afterwards he would send me dirty text messages. I always appreciate that.

Two of my favorite photos from the shoot after the jump...

Click to read more ...