FYC: Sarah Paulson, Carol's Best Supporting Actress

The Film Experience is proud to welcome back Matthew Eng for this personal FYC

Sarah Paulson photographed for VarietyThese days, to simply see Sarah Paulson’s name in the opening credits of any project is enough to make me sit back, relax, and sigh with deep and reverent relief that — no matter the lapses in storytelling, the dubiousness of politics, or the haphazard efforts of other actors — I am in the hands of at least one supremely assured and eternally convincing performer.

As someone who missed Aaron Sorkin’s infamous Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip and the extensive list of sitcoms and serials she appeared in from the mid-nineties to the late-2000s (not to mention her numerous stage roles and occasional film appearances), my Sarah Paulson fandom is fairly recent. Of course, like many, I’d seen and admired her wry gal pal in Down with Love, which remains a fun but frankly flaky memory.

But truthfully, I wasn’t fully onboard the Paulson bandwagon until 2012, when she offered American Horror Story’s peak Asylum season a truly new and refreshingly tough-minded depiction of devastated-turn-mobilized female victimhood and then, a year later, sauntered into Steven McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave as one of contemporary cinema’s most memorably unrepentant villainesses, terrorizing Lupita and manipulating Fassy with ferocious, bone-chilling conviction.

When I heard Paulson had joined Carol, I took another of those deep and reverent sighs of relief, as if to say, 'Alright, this film will actually be as perfect as I need it to be.'  [More...]

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Best of '15: Hunkalicious Screen Beauty

Our Year in Review party continues! Cue mood music.

Since The Film Experience obsessives over actresses almost daily, the actors could use a little spotlight from time to time. So this entry into our year in review party is a beauty break starring the year's best man candy in cinema ...with a little TV thrown in for extra flavor.

15 A superhero... but which one?
Any of The Avengers will do but if actors are going to be expected to be on special diets and grueling workout routines daily for those spandex ready bodies, you'd think Marvel would let them go shirtless for more than 10 seconds each movie. Chris Evans is still the most delicious among them but we'll give this round to Paul Rudd for the sleeker non-steroidal fitness regimen (which we hope becomes more the norm because Henry Cavill's Superman body is so cartoon weird; it's like a giant chest and shoulders with random stick appendages and face).

Runner up goes to Chris Hemsworth When Wet: in that silly pool of visions in Age of Ultron; shipwrecked and starving but still somehow maintaining the workouts in In the Heart of the Sea; or even just those carefully wet stray Blackhat bangs

Fourteen more people or categories after the jump. But fair warning... it's slightly nsfw. So it's a good thing you're on Christmas break. In the immortal words of Tina Belcher...

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Q&A: Hotel's Casting, Woody's Men, Oscar's Quartets

It's time for our semi-weekly Q&A session. Let's just jump right in since there was no uniting theme this time. If I didn't answer your question, apologies. I select by a very scientific process of Which Ones I Feel Like Answering. 

Jeff Daniels should've been Oscar nominated for The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)LIZZY: What are your favorite male performances in Woody Allen films?

Hee. So typical that I've never even thought of this before as the ringleader of Actressexuality. Let's see. Towering above them all has got to be Jeff Daniels in The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985). Both Mia and him should have been nominated that year at the Oscars with threats to win. It's such a delicately specific, stylized, and endearing performance in a movie that's aged superbly well. Completing a top five in no particular order I'd go with: Woody himself in anything/everything between 1977-1986, Max von Sydow in Hannah and Her Sisters, Corey Stoll in Midnight in Paris, and Chazz Palminterri in Bullets Over Broadway. But I really had to think on this one... his movies are all about the women, for all his neurosis and intermittent misogyny and/or misanthropy.

It's true. The only man who's ever won an Oscar for acting in a Woody (Michael Caine in Hannah and Her Sisters) is not one I'm particularly fond of. I wouldn't call myself allergic to Michael Caine but he's in the "don't quite get the appeal" column of legendary actors. 

PATRYK: Do you consider Kate Winslet's performance in Steve Jobs annoying? I was surprised how drastically her accent changed. Shame on the Academy if she wins on a tag-a-long nomination instead of someone like our Elizabeth Banks, who might actually be a real contender without tag-a-long Winslet and fraudulent Vikander and Rooney. 

No. I thought Kate was great in the movie. Yes, the accent was dodgy but I've already explained why I'm okay with that. Otherwise she really nailed the most important part: a psychic kind of work wife connection to Fassy's Jobs. I also agree that Banks was fabulous in a potentially dull/underwritten part in Love & Mercy but I'm not so sure she isn't the lead of that movie. I'd like to see it again before determining. 

TYLER: What is your favorite film set in New Orleans?

the answer (not Interview with a Vampire) and enticing Oscary questions after the jump

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Q&A: Sexy Vampires & Dolled-Up Monsters

For this week's Q&A we asked for questions that would get us in the Halloween spirit. So let's talk sexual vampires, scary monsters, queer horror, and unsettling auteurs.

Let's jump right in to nine creepy spooky occasionally queer questions, shall we? 

Ryan T: What are your favorite vampire performances onscreen, film and TV?

The glut of bad vampire movies over the past couple of decades may have killed my former passion for bloodsuckers but nothing can kill the love of great acting so this must be answered. With due respect to the Lugosis, Schrecks and Lees who pioneered, let's fast forward to contemporary-ish cinema and television after the jump...

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12 Questions: A Room with Ultron's View of the XXL Freakshow

It's easy to get lost in future film excitement this time of year. So let's step back for a moment into the now. Here are two handfuls of key new releases on DVD. Answer nine questions about them in the comment party (it's not a party if people don't show up so do RSVP, wont'cha?)

The Avengers: Age of Ultron in which Joss Whedon juggles dozens of powereds but struggles to make the whole as good as all the parts
Q1:  Would you kill me if I went deep on this in a future miniseries? Yes, I'm a crazy person who has already seen it thrice. And yes I speak out loudly about the damaging effects of superhero culture on cinema but... but... but I have this terrible soft spot for all things Captain America

Dark Places the Gillian Flynn adaptation that never seemed to open!
Q2: Are you covering your ears right now delusionally "Charlize Theron only made one movie this year and it was awesome!!!" ?

Going Clear: Scientology & The Prison of Belief in which Alex Gibney (and presumably a team of top HBO lawyers) take on the "Church" of Scientology and its famous disciples
Q3: Did you feel more or less for Tom Cruise in His Bubble after seeing this? 
Q4: Do you think this has a shot at the Documentary Oscar?

Magic Mike XXL in which Channing Tatum and Company attempt to recapture lightning in a bottle without as much flesh peddling
Q5: What is your favorite scene in this movie other than "Chez Andie MacDowell" ? (obvs the best scene)
Q6: Which of the strippers do you most want a lap dance from? 

Dame Besties (Smith/Dench) are pure delight in "A Room With a View"

A Room With a View (Criterion Collection) in which Merchant & Ivory found their breakthrough hit, provided the world with ridiculous amounts of joy (seriously this movie) and helped launch the careers of three-named wonders Helena Bonham Carter and Daniel Day Lewis in this picturesque influential comedy about stuffy Brits at home and abroad.
Q7:  Will you join us for BEST SHOT on this one if we do it on Wednesday October 14th?

Spy in which Melissa McCarthy gets to star in her own comedy James Bond movie. 
Q8: It's weird to think of McCarthy movies on DVD or BluRay right? They all  feel like they are all made specifically to be on loop on cable channels for years to come until everyone can quote them verbatim.
Q9: Do you know what a sad Bulgarian clown looks like? 

When Marnie Was There in which a lonely young girl is sent to live in the country and encounters a mysterious mansion
Q10: Do you think Studio Ghibli will somehow rally and start making features again? 

Zipper in which Patrick Wilson has trouble keeping it in his pants
Q11: Why didn't they just use that for the tagline? 

TV Seasons
The Leftovers (S1), Jane the Virgin (S1), iZombie (S1), Fresh Off the Boat (S1), Penny Dreadful (S2), Vikings (S3), Grimm (S4), AHS: Freakshow (S4), South Park (S18)

Q12: Do you watch any of those shows or did you stop reading this the second you realized that American Horror Story Freakshow is now on Netflix Instant Watch where you can watch Finn Wittrock oil himself up, bathe in blood, and suck alcholo from nippled baby bottles whenever the mood strikes you?