Monologue: Annette Bening. Still on the Grift.

1990 was the year in which I saw the least amount of movies in theaters. I was overseas and when I returned I devoured everything. I don't recommend missing an entire year of cinema but I also can't deny that it's fun to catch up in massive marathons. My favorite shiny new  plaything that year turned out to be Annette Bening. She had appeared in two movies before her breakthrough (The Great Outdoors and Valmont, the latter of which was barely released) but I wasn't familiar with her. In 1990 she ascended. She swiped a scene wholesale from Meryl Streep in Postcards from the Edge (in a way we didn't see again for another 18 years when Viola Davis rationalized away her son in Doubt) and sparkled and teased as Myra Langtry in The Grifters. She deservedly won her first Oscar nomination but the bid was doomed. "You in danger, girl" Ghost was a juggernaut and Whoopi Goldberg was impossible to deny..

Myra, delighted and curious, realizes her boyfriend is "on the grift"

Director Stephen Frears, then at his creative peak hot off Dangerous Liaisons, handed Bening The Grifter's pivotal centerpiece. It's not one scene exactly nor an unbroken monologue but a shifting series of impressions and exchanges in which Myra reveals her past (in voiceover flashback) and begins to rope in her future, altering the game board on which mother and son con artists Roy and Lily Dillon play (John Cusack and Anjelica Huston, the latter giving a mammoth Oscar-worthy performance.)

After Myra witnesses her boyfriend Roy "working the tat on those sailor boys"  she drops enough strange lingo to choke a lesser actress in an effort to rustle his cautious feathers and reveal himself.

Oh come on, Roy. 'The tat,' what you do for a living.❞

More including new Bening films...

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Mama Bening Baby Wiig

JA from MNPP here. Have you heard about Imogene? Out next year, it's Kristen Wiig's follow-up to Bridesmaids - actually it's a project she'd been trying to get off the ground for ages that the super duper success of Bridesmaids made possible. It's directed by the duo of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini who made the splendidly sour American Splendor, and is similarly dark in comic tone. Wiig plays the title character whose plan of using a suicide attempt to win back an extra boyfriend somehow, weirdly, backfires, and she's forced to move home and live with her... let's say difficult mother played by Annette Bening.

Bening! So surely you guys have heard about this movie already. Well there are some pictures and a poster online today, which you can see here. There's something reminiscent of Bening's Mars Attacks! character to the look of her character, isn't there? I say that with awe and admiration - that's one of my very favorite Bening performances.

Also in the cast are Matt Dillon and the chipmunk-cheeked croooner Darren Criss from Glee, the latter apparently playing a love interest for Wiig. Cue everybody gaping sack-jawed at the age difference - she's 38 while he's 24 - which hardly merits a mention when its say Methuselah Steve Martin pawing at Toddler Heather Graham or the like.

This is one of my most anticipated movies for 2012. While I love the ridiculous over-the-top characters Wiig hammers away at on SNL she's proven herself really smooth at how she's branching out into a movie career, playing identifiably human characters (so good in Whip It), complicating things when she could just go for an easy bug-eyed laugh.

Kristen Wiig & Annette Bening in "Imogene"

The Bening and freshly Bridesmaids minted Kristen Wiig are filming the comedy Imogene (2013) just 20 plus miles from where I type this. I absolutely cannot wait and my impatience demands that I assume this will get pushed up to 2012 calendar before long since they're already filming in summer 2011.

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Everyone knows Wiig is funny after years on Saturday Night Live and the Bridesmaids smash but people always seem to forget how hilarious The Bening is whenever her characters are called on for comic moments, even within heavy dramas. I'm guessing her status as Hollywood Royalty and Serious Actress obscures this.

In fact, one could argue that ALL of her best performances are comedic in nature, even if they're within dark, brooding or angsty films, The Grifters and American Beauty being two obvious examples.

⇐ Annette Bening's Imogene character, who is Wiig's gambling addict mama,  looks like a cross between Carolyn Burnham and Arlene from True Blood, right?

The film, directed by the American Splendor (2003) and Cinema Verite (2011) team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini , is about a woman (Wiig) forced to move back in with her mother after a staged suicide attempt to win back her ex-boyfriend fails.  In the most eye-brow raising bit of casting Glee sensation Darren Criss -- also recently spotted on set -- will play Wiig's love interest, though we assume he's not the ex in question. Wiig turns 38 next week, Criss is just 23. That age difference is absolutely normal for movies when the genders are reversed but it's still surprising and usually a large discussion point in the script (and may well be here) if the woman is older.

It sounds like a fun movie, right?

"Dick Tracy" Q&A with Warren Beatty

Alex (BBats) here, doing a lil’ scouting in LA. Oh my oh my!

BBats and Beatty! This past weekend, I had the pleasure to revisit Dick Tracy (1990) on the big screen courtesy of the Los Angeles Times Hero Complex Film Festival.  The film hasn’t aged a day due to that rich pulp style that seeps through every set piece, costume, matte painting, and actor.  The main draw was a Q & A with Warren Beatty after the film! Now, I was battling the flu and taking notes as fast as I could, so keep that in mind and I wouldn’t say anything below was a direct quote.

Beatty stood in the wings as the film’s end credits rolled. Big applause for the film followed and I saw a big smile grow across his face. The moderator brought him out to thunderous ovation (duh). He seemed a little cagey and very careful in selecting his words; this Q & A was for the Los Angeles Times, he pointed out, and would be in print the very next day.

Hit the jump for some Beatty, Dick, and a lil' Bening action!

On Stephen Sondheim
'He did great stuff for this…I’m such a fan of Sondheim’s. Everytime I see one of his shows, I just fall apart on the first song.'

On the film itself
'I’m disgusting because I really do like it a lot.'

Beatty had been attached to the propertry since 1976. The moderator asked why he chose Dick Tracy. Beatty said that he didn’t want to do some picture where everything got blasted around, and that Dick Tracy was this guy who had been around forever and wanted to start a family. He paused and said he thought of it as a gentle picture. (Aside: I love when people call movies "pictures". Super classy.)

This next part is so funny, let's get it right by quoting directly from the Los Angeles Times.

 “Little by little I found myself caught up enough in it to actually go and make a movie about it, because it was hard for me. … I always think of making a movie like vomiting. I don’t like to vomit, but I get to the point where I think, ‘I’d better go ahead and do this, and I’ll feel better.’” 

Everyone  rolled with laughter. The vomiting reference also maybe gives us a little glimpse as to why he hasn’t directed a film since Bulworth (1998). But back to the Q & A.

His desk needs a bucket.

Beatty began to compliment everyone in the cast and the moderator honed in on certain performances and how he cast the roles. Interestingly, Beatty compared the casting process to writing. When you cast someone it's an instant rewrite, even if you don’t change a word.

Madonna sings "MORE" in Dick Tracy and you know you want more, too: Bening, Pacino. Hoffman, Oscars and Dick Tracy sequel nuggets after the jump.

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Reader of the Day: Bill

For today's reader of the day meet Bill. You know him as "Billy Held an Oscar" in the comments. Enough with you 90s babies ;) Let's have a few earlier babies! Billy discovered The Film Experience through those now defunct Stinky Lulu Supporting Actress Smackdowns (RIP). I believe it had something to do with Maureen Stapleton, his favorite actress. So let's start there.

Billy Held THIS Oscar

Nathaniel: You got to hold Maureen Stapleton's actual Oscar for Reds (1981), right?
BILL:  Yup. Shortly before she passed away, I was able to spend an evening with her at home in Lenox, MA. A few years prior, I had created a site that detailed her career. As a result, a friend of Maureen's contacted me and asked if I would like to join him to visit her. It was truly wild. Maureen told me how she knew Humphrey Bogart and we talked about her role in 'Queen of the Stardust Ballroom'. The walls were adorned with autographed pictures, inscribed to her, from Clark Gable, Ethel Merman, JFK, Cary Grant, etc. If you looked to your left there was an Oscar, if you turned right there was an Emmy and a Tony, etc; Sensory overload. We also talked about our hometown (I grew up a few blocks from her childhood home). The best part of the evening was when Maureen's nurse came in and said, "Maureen, one of your films is on Turner Classic Movies". We watched as Robert Osborne introduced 'Bye Bye Birdie' and made mention of "future Oscar winner Maureen Stapleton". You don't have too many nights like that one in your lifetime.

I don't imagine, no. I mean, I can't imagine. Whose Oscar would I most like to hold in their presence? Hmmm.

Okay before Maureen there was... What's your first movie memory?
My first moviegoing experience was when my parents took me to see Grease. But my first movie obsession was Nine to Five. Having just seen The Electric Horseman on this new channel called HBO, I had fallen completely in love with Jane Fonda. Shortly thereafter, the television promos for Nine to Five aired and I was mesmerized. Jane Fonda, Dolly, and Edith Ann all in the same movie.

Fonda, Edith Ann, AND Dolly?I went through all of my grandmother's magazines (McCalls, Redbook, etc) and cut out any full-page ads I could find for the film; I checked the paper every day and clipped the 'Coming Soon' and 'Now Playing' ads too. Then I hung all the ads/clippings on my bedroom wall, along with a 'Nine to Five' sign that I made out of construction paper, and began campaigning for my parents to take me to see the film. I still have the ticket stub. 

Oh how I wish I'd kept my early ticket stubs. Did you ever dress up as a movie character for Halloween?
C-3PO. It was horrible. I hated it. Who I really wanted to be was the Bionic Woman but my parents killed that dream.

Are your coworkers aware of your movie addiction?
Coworkers are painfully aware that I am a huge movie fan. They know that the Oscars are a day of worship. I've run an Oscar pool at the office in years past. People really get into it. They research info online regarding the nominees and last year I had one co-worker attend a showing of all the nominated short films so he could cast an informed vote on his ballot.

In addition to Stapleton, I know you love The Bening. Any new actresses that are exciting you out there?
I still remember the rush I felt seeing The Bening in The Grifters and sadly, I haven't really had that rush with many of the younger actresses. Carey Mulligan came close in An Education, as did Emily Blunt in The Devils Wears Prada. For now, I am very happy devoting myself to Annette Bening and Maureen Stapleton. Another will come along ... I'm always on the lookout.