Ask Nathaniel... Plus Next Week's Festivities

It's time for another round of reader questions, so, ask yours in the comments. There's no particular theme for the questions this week but we need a new banner so the "question of the week" recipient will get to choose our next theme. I'll answer a handful or so of your questions on Tuesday.

P.S. On Tuesday or Wednesday we'll start a few days of "Halfway Mark - Year Thus Far" festivities. If you'd like a teaser check out my new piece at Towleroad where I look at the year through the lens of Inside Out's emotions (and no, as you may have guessed, I didn't much like Jurassic World). Naturally we'll go into more cinema nerd detail here by naming Best Performances and the like.

Are you playing along at home?

Look at this cute portrait a reader made for me. You know him as "Seisgrados" in the comments!It's my birthday and I don't ask for much from y'all. Only that you obsess over actresses with us and constantly readjust your instant watch and DVD queues to play along with our many series! To maximize your enjoyment this week make sure to catch Spy (2015), "The Knick" Season 1 (2015), Oscar favorite Amadeus (1984), Agnes Varda's highly watchable masterpiece Cleo from 5 to 7 (1962), The Tony Awards, seminal miniseries "And the Band Played On" (HBO, 1993), and any film starring Cara Seymour!

Today's Reader Assignments

1. ASK NATHANIEL (right now) ~ he needs questions for this Wednesday night's Q&A column

2. COMMENT - It's like blog fuel for the writers - pick any article

3. DONATE THROUGH SUBSCRIPTION- This blog is a full time commitment (as you can imagine) and it's been going forever to try and entertain you and it's always tough financially. If you subscribe for a small monthly donation ($2.50 or, you know, a cup of coffee) it helps a lot -- if only a few hundred more of you would do so it would make an enormous difference in stability.

cup o' joe : $2.50USD - monthly popcorn : $5.00USD - monthly movie ticket : $10.00USD - monthly

I ♥ The Film Experience

4. OR MAKE A ONE TIME DONATION for either your favorite series or something like "here's 5 bucks for each year I've been reading" If you specify why you're making the donation that would help. Let's say you want to support Anne Marie's "Women's Pictures" or Manuel's "HBO LGBT" project or whatever then I would know to pass your donation along to the writer responsible rather than keeping it for expenses.

KTHNXBYE

HAPPY UNBIRTHDAY TO ALL OF YOU!
Unless you share my birthday and then happy day, Gemini Twins!

Q&A Pt. 2: Rain Men, Paperboys, Oscar Greats

We had too many good questions last week to keep it all confined to one post. So now that you're read part one, so here's part two of the week's reader question roundup. I saved all the Oscar questions for this round to motivate me to update those Oscar chart this weekend. Ready? 

SONJA: Why do we mourn/rage about "undeserved" wins so often? In reality it doesn't change anything....

It's as useless as making your bed in the morning but we still make our beds, right? Or in my case throw the comforter haphazardly across the sheets - close enough! Listen, I consider it a sign of good character to mourn poor choices from awards bodies as long as one does so pointedly and briefly and doesn't allow it to become part of one's whole character like hating an actr- OH WAIT OOPS.  

People like to be dismissive about awards and say 'they don't matter!'  but it's simply not true. THEY DO. Awards permanently influence resumes and entire careers by way of their temporary affect on opportunities and, yes, praise (once considered a "great" it takes decades for the petals to fall off that rose... it took decades for people to start getting snippy about Al Pacino & Robert DeNiro's work!

Plus it goes in the history books. Baby cinephiles decades later still look these things up and watch the movies that were awarded to teach themselves movie history. I speak from experience. I know this to be true.

CASH: Dustin Hoffman's win for "Rain Man" baffles me...

more after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Two Women. Two Questions

First a Question For You
Have you ever been baffled or resentful of an Oscar win (any category) only to finally see the picture and go "Oh, okay. I get it" and feel sheepish about your past dismissal (even if it wouldn't quite change your vote)? 

Such was the case with me and Sophia Loren's Two Women (1961) the only 1960s Best Actress win I hadn't seen, largely because I was so angry about it growing up given my intense love of Natalie Wood, who lost her best shot at the statue (Splendor in the Grass) in the peak year of her popularity (West Side Story). But when the Walter Reade screened Vittoria de Sica's Two Women this weekend I decided to fix the gap. Sophia was terrific, particularly in the final act when the movie takes quite a dark turn (in some ways it's a very strange film, a mix of lightly charming Star Vehicle, brutal Neorealism, and Melodrama)

My Turn. "Ask Nathaniel..."
Once you've answered my question in the comments, ask me one! (It should not be Sophia related. I just needed to ask you that question.) I'll answer two handfuls of your questions tomorrow night in the Q&A column.

Ready. Set. Go...

Ask Nathaniel About...

Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979) was the first movie to get a Happy Meal tie-inFollowing this week's pure emotion and best (second) actress... it's time for more reader questions. Before you happily type away, do remember: the more cumbersome and enormous your Q, the least likely it gets an A. Not every question is answered but every one  is absorbed and sometimes they inspire later posts.

Questions involving 1979 (our year of the month) or summer movie season in general are especially welcome this week (though you can ask other questions too). Did you know that two hugely destructive forces that caused miners to starve and children to become obese, respectively, came to power in the summer of that year: Margaret Thatcher and Happy Meals!