April Showers: "Single White Female"

waterworks each weeknight at 11 in April

Have you ever had a flatmate you just didn't trust? Bridget Fonda as "Allie" thought she'd found a good one in Jennifer Jason Leigh "Hedy" after placing an ad in Single White Female (1992). But once JJL moved in, things got so weird. Any of us could've told Bridget that'd happen since JJL is rarely "right" in the head onscreen, yknow? So Hedy gets weirdly needy and steals Allie's whole look, complete with ginger helmet bob! So Bridget, who is pretty damn stupid even as thriller heroines still has enough functioning brain cells to know a good snooping opportunity when she hears one.

I'm going to take a shower."

Now's your chance, Fonda. 3...2...1... SNOOP, BRIDGET, SNOOP!!!

Oh, don't pretend like you haven't snooped on a roommate before! The Film Experience is a safe space. You can say. Show of hands? I thought so. And, besides, all ethical bets are off once someone starts stealing your identity, right?

At first Allie seems like she understands the danger she's in as she does a little stealth jog to JJL's room where she discovers a box of personal things in the closet. All people, crazy or otherwise, keep shoeboxes filled with secrets in their closets. Known Fact. What she finds in this shoebox is those very secrets as well as proof that Hedy has been intercepting her boyfriend's mail. That Bitch!

Single White Female was shot by Italian cinematographer Luciano Tovoli. It's beautiful.

Oh and Allie, get the hell out of there. That bitch who steals your mail also takes really short showers.

More after the jump. NSFW

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Best Shot: "HEAVENLY CREATURES"

Hit Me With Your Best Shot. Each week we assign a movie. Participants are asked to select its best shot and post it to their own webspace by Wednesday evening. Everyone is welcome to join in. Next week's topic is Beauty & The Beast (1991) and there had better be a big crowd. Who doesn't love that movie?

Today we're gazing at...

HEAVENLY CREATURES (1994)

With last year's mania for the dehumanizing Kick-Ass, this Spring's death-skilled Hanna and the internet's current casting obsessions with Hunger Games, in which a young girl Katniss (to be played by Jennifer Lawrence) becomes a killer to stay alive in a future that loves murder games, you'd think just about every other violent act in the world nowadays was committed by teenage girls. This type of violence can still shock onscreen -- and I hope it always will -- but it almost never arrives with both bludgeon force and emotional acuity the way it does in Peter Jackson's hysteric and hysterically imaginative Heavenly Creatures.

The problem that Heavenly Creatures poses with a "best shot" blogging experiment is not that it doesn't have these images, but that the images are rarely static and eager to be captured with your typical screen capturing devices. Only full on film clips would suffice. Peter Jackson loves the motion in his motion pictures and Juliet ("Introducing... Kate Winslet") and Pauline ("And Introducing... Melanie Lynskey") are about the most spastic female characters of the past couple of decades outside of maybe Molly Shannon's "Superstar!" They're constantly flinging themselves about. (read the full post.)

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links get physical. physical.

Let's divvy up our links into body types today. (yougottahaveagimmickifyouwanna...)

Bears  Gold Derby is wondering if Robin Williams can complete his EGOT in June at the Tony Awards. Maybe.
Invisible Woman a lot of sites are sharing this Cannes poster to your left. Faye Dunaway circa 1970 is the 64 year old festival's pinup mascot. Does this mean Cannes now views itself as a strangely tucked and surgeried unrecognizable version of its former self?
Tiny Princess Deadline reveals that Tarsem Singh has cast 22 year old Lily Collins (Phil's daughter) as his Snow White (this is the competing project to the one with Kristen Stewart) instead of the rumored Saoirse Ronan. My guess is it's a good move since this is a sexy reimagining and Saoirse is only 16 (well 17 next week). Armie Hammer would've been robbing the cradle as Prince Charming.
Brokeback Kenneth in the (212) has some smart words to the CMAs and People Magazine for their lame homophobic humor directed at Jake Gyllenhaal. For shame.

Drawn That Way Here is the new footage 4 minutes of Green Lantern. I'm still weirded out that even Ryan Reynold's god-like body is too imperfect to be used rather than CGI'ed. What hope is there left for mere mortals let alone increasingly frumpy bloggers who keep "forgetting" to go the gym! This doesn't change much for me in whether or not I think Green Lantern will be any good though the f/x do seem to have had a wee polish since that first trailer and that will be important to its reception.

The best addition from the original trailer is actually a subtraction: there's none of that hideously wooden dialogue between Reynolds and whasthsername as the generic love interest. But that said I didn't hate this new footage as much as Pajiba. I'm guessing that bile is bright green.

The Foreign Body Indie Wire reveals step two of China Lion's strategy towards real inroads into the US market for Chinese films.
Adamantium-Laced Serious Film has an a-ma-zing visionary idea for the replacement director of The Wolverine.
Rapidly Aging Access Hollywood has an amusing interview bit with Reese Witherspoon, who is complaining about people viewing her as way too old for Robert Pattison in Water for Elephants.

Finally, Today's Must Read...

Voluptuous The Boston Globe Wesley Morris (such a fine writer) traces the evolution of the Actress's body from Elizabeth Taylor's voluptuousness to Christina Hendrick's Mad Men-only stardom. Inbetween notes on Jennifer Lopez, Kate Winslet, Penélope Cruz and Audrey Hepburn follow. I found the theories on Jane Fonda's evolution as a transitional figure fascinating.

Tennessee 100: Night of the Iguana

JA from MNPP here, continuing Tennessee Williams Centennial Week with a look at John Huston's 1963 film The Night of the Iguana. I chose Iguana because it's one of the few adaptations of Williams' work that I hadn't seen already, and because IMDb's summary made it sound torrid in the best Williams way. Defrocked priests and wanton teen girls and sapphic spinsters all flitting about a Mexican beach cut off from civilization? Yes please.

But truth be told, I found the film a little wanting, not wanton. Richard Burton's in full bluster, screaming and sloshing about as the drunken ex-man-of-the-cloth Shannon, Deborah Kerr barely registers as the sexless traveling painter he's too big a mess to end up with, and not a whole lot seems to gel.

 

I was fond of Grayson Hall as the lesbian intent upon Shannon's destruction (she was nominated for an Oscar, but lost to Lila Kedrova in Zorba the Greek), and kind of loved Ava Gardner as Maxine, the owner of the motel where they all end up marooned who keeps a couple of cabana boys for herself...

... but then, she was speaking my language. Bette Davis played the role of Maxine in the original staging of the play for four months before, according to her, her co-stars undercut her and she left the production and was replaced by Shelley Winters. I can picture both of them doing exquisite work in the role, but I really did like Ava Gardner here. (And scanning through Gardner's filmography I realize this is the first time I've ever seen her in anything!)

Iguana was shot in the Fall of 1962, right at epicenter of the tabloid insanity over the affair between Burton and Elizabeth Taylor - they'd just worked (among other things) together on Cleopatra - and Taylor actually accompanied Burton on the shoot in Puerto Vallarta, which led to all kinds of scrutiny upon the set. From Wikipedia comes this fun fact:

"By March 1964, months before the film's release, gossip about the film's production became the subject of a public parody when Huston received an Writers' Guild of America award for advancing "the literature of the motion picture through the years"; at a dinner where the award was presented, Allan Sherman performed a song, to the tune of "Streets of Laredo", with lyrics that included "They were down there to film The Night of the Iguana / With a star-studded cast and a technical crew. / They did things at night midst the flora and fauna / That no self-respecting iguana would do."

As you can tell, the stories surrounding the production are more interesting to me than the movie itself now. Perhaps the mega-quake that was Burton-Taylor was too strong a distraction to gel together an entirely satisfying, coherent film. Still there's some gorgeous black-and-white photography to be had...

And it did walk away with an Oscar for Best Costume Design (B&W), beating Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte and Edith Head for A House is Not a Home, so in summation let's take a look at a couple of those. It's refreshing to see an example of a non-period film winning a prize for its costumes, isn't it?

 

Sassy Gay Black Swan

Given the veritable dogpile (birdpile?) of Black Swan joking on the web for the past four month, you'd think there'd be no laughs left to wring from it. But trust Sassy Gay Friend, to choke a few more out.

I can't even decide what my favorite part is but maybe it's a tossup between the Mila Kunis bit, the awkward Natalaughter and this opening gag.

Nina: Is this heaven?
Sassy Gay Friend: No, it's the hospital. In heaven Annette Bening wins the Oscar for The Kids Are All Right. WHAT WHAT WHAT were you doing?

Oh Sassy you stupid bitch.

FWIW if you've never seen any of these The Giving Tree is still the best one.