Beauty vs Beast: Home is Where the Hearts Are

Jason from MNPP here with the last "Beauty vs Beast" before the Oscars. This week's poll doesn't have anything to do with the Oscars though because let's face it - the Academy, bless their shiny hearts, is never going to be as cool and adventurous as our host Nathaniel is. Nathaniel dropped his Top Ten of 2017 over the weekend and at #9 was a movie AMPAS was never going to go anywhere near - Darren Aronofsky's spectacularly divisive mother! starring Jennifer Lawrence (who's got Red Sparrow out this weekend) as a sink-bracing Suzy Homemaker under, uh, extreme duress. But we're never going to forget mother!, and we doubt you will either - even if it's just to picture Michelle Pfeiffer whenever you slip a little extra something into your lemonade...

survey service

PREVIOUSLY We wished Sidney Poitier a happy birthday last Monday, wondering why he wasn't the one who got AMPAS' attention in 1967's In the Heat of the Night - he certainly got our attention, rounding up 85% of your vote from his co-star (and statue-snatcher) Rod Steiger. Said Red:

"Watching Sydney Poitier reassured me that I could grow up into the kind of adult I wanted to be. He still had what we kids had and adults had lost. He was honest, honourable, brave and full of joy."

Contest: mother!

Yes, yes, we know. We talk about mother! a lot. (We've never felt so close to Norman Bates). So herewith a contest just for TFE readers. We're giving away two prizes courtesy of Paramount. The big prize is a combo of the Blu-ray of mother! and a book on the making of. The runner up prize is just the movie itself.

The mother! Blu-ray combo pack (new this week) includes access to a Digital HD copy of the film as well as the feature film in high definition and bonus content like "mother! The Downward Spiral" and "The Makeup FX of mother!" as well as the DVD in standard definition. The book is described like so: 

 Equal parts visual chronicle and artful scene study, mother! The Making of the Fever Dream recounts Darren Aronofsky’s spellbinding second half of mother!, and how it was constructed, with corresponding screen grabs, behind-the-scenes photography, script cues, and the annotated maps of his shot list.

TO ENTER
Simply e-mail The Film Experience with your name, shipping address, and a sentence on your favorite thing about mother! --  if you haven't seen it yet, guess.
BONUS ENTRY
If you want a better chance to win, we'll give you five entries if you instagram, facebook, or tweet out a picture of yourself with your sink (or some other visual shout out to the movie) and the hashtags #thesinksnotbracedyet and #MotherBluRay. Got it?

Blueprints: "mother!"

With the announcement of the Golden Globe and SAG Award nominations this week, we are officially in the awards race. So from now until Oscars, Jorge will be examining 2017’s most talked-about movies and their screenplays. First, he shows up uninvited at a party...

mother! is a fever dream. The stream-of-consciousness journey of a woman that just wants people to get the hell out of her space. It’s a biblical allegory, a metaphor for the destruction of the environment, a hallucination of the protagonist. It’s all of these, and it is none.

Watching the movie is a trip (take that word for whatever meaning). It’s more visceral than narrative. Trying to find a traditional, cohesive plot in it is useless, and it’s better to experience it through gut reactions of the vignettes presented. But how does the screenplay look? Exactly as you would imagine...

Click to read more ...

Tweetstruck

We have to start with this exchange since Chris' love of mother! is well known. 

Where the hell am I going to fit 100 sinks, Matt?

— Chris Feil (@chrisvfeil) December 5, 2017

After the jump our tweet roundup of amusements, provocations, and random movie-loving featuring Moonstruck, I Tonya, P.T. Anderson, Big Little Lies, Meryl Streep's forehead, and more...

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Some love mother! Some don't.

by Murtada

The studio behind mother! has pivoted their second week marketing towards the bad word of mouth that the film has been receiving from moviegoers. They stopped selling it as a home invasion horror thriller and instead decided to embrace how polarizing it is.

Some people love it......some people don’t

It’s a bold move and we like it. What they don’t do though, is mention the F cinemascore that the film recieved. CinemaScore is a company that exit polls moviegoers’ opinions on opening night. They have been storing data since 1986, and in that time only 11 other films received the infamous F. Those so honored include Steven Soderbergh's Solaris (2002) and Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly (2012). And make no mistake Darren Aronofsky thinks it's an honor, he told The Frame:

What's interesting about that is, like, how if you walk out of this movie are you not going to give it an F? It's a punch. It's a total punch. And I realize that we were excited by that. We wanted to make a punk movie and come at you.

Did you enjoy Aronofsky punk move? Where do you stand on the mother! conversation?