Q&A: Hitchcock Presents Reader Questions

Oops. The 'Ask Nathaniel / Q&A' column is a Monday experience. And here it is on Tuesday. I blame... what really matters is the blame  somebody to blame. well if that's the thing you enjoy placing the blame, if that's your aim,  give me the blame.

HI EVERYBODY! Are you glad that the themed banner is back up top? I'm going with photography this week so here is a picture of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for laughs before we get to eight reader questions after the jump starring Alfred Hitchcock, Daniel Day-Lewis, Drew Barrymore and The Golden Girls.

Why? I don't know. So, it's your fault then!

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Eddie is a Danish Girl

Straight from the Oscar stage to the hair and makeup room...

In case you've forgotten The Danish Girl, which had a difficult development period going through different stars and directors (it went through, I kid you not, FIVE Oscar winning actresses before and three directors) is coming out late this year though we had originally been told 2016. That's presumably to give Eddie Redmayne a chance at back-to-back Oscars (I know it's so gross to mention this already. It can't be helped!). The biopic is from Tom Hooper (The King's Speech and Les Miserables) and is the story of transgender Einar Wegener and her transition and surgery to become Lili Elbe "The Danish Girl" with the encouragement of her then wife Gerda. Alicia Vikander, the wonderful Swedish actress from Anna Karenina and A Royal Affair, is playing Gerda so watch for her in Best Supporting Actress. NooooOOOoooooooooo Oscar talk. It can't be helped.

Read news about a release date, almost tweeted something about the 2016 Oscars. Reminded myself that this is a disease. One day at a time.

— Mark Harris (@MarkHarrisNYC) February 24, 2015

So let's see it's another biopic about a complicated marriage where the wife has to stand by her man who becomes not what she expected him to be after she falls in love with him? Way to mix it up, Eddie Redmayne! I kid I kid. I hope it's good and I hope Eddie is more sensitive and better at handling the difficult press that comes with this sort of thing (especially now that we have real trans actors playing trans roles on TV) than Jared Leto was. The film is really piling on the gorgeousness because Eddie & Alicia's co-stars are Amber Heard, Ben Whishaw and Matthias Schoenaerts. Costumes are by the superb Paco Delgado who was Oscar nominated for Les Miz and also did genius work on Blancanieves and fun subversive stuff for Pedro Almodóvar a couple of times.

Readers Poll Results: Who *Should* Win?

With the Oscars arriving in 12 hours and your host (er, Nathaniel -- your host here at TFE-- not NPH) still sick as a dog, I turn the time over to you. Your votes have been tallied from the polls we ran on the individual Oscar Chart pages over the past month and here's who YOU -- the collective you at least -- are rooting for tonight.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Grand Budapest Hotel won 37% of your hearts. In solid second place was Birdman with 30%. Nightcrawler and Boyhood had their fans with 16% and 12% of the vote respectively. Trailing them all with a poor showing was Foxcatcher with 4%.

acting, director, picture after the jump

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Stage Door: Bradley Cooper in 'The Elephant Man'

Jose here for a special weekend edition of Stage Door, starring one of our Best Actor nominees...

The stage directions for Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man strictly call for “no prosthetic makeup” to be worn by the actor playing the severely deformed character of Joseph Merrick. It's only during a scene in which surgeon Frederick Treves explains to the audience what his deformities consisted of, that we get to see the actor playing Merrick become “the Elephant Man”.

Seeing Bradley Cooper play the part of Merrick, it's tough to believe it's as same actor you've just seen in his Oscar nominated role as Chris Kyle in American Sniper. [More...]

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Black History Month: Song of the South's Forgotten Oscar

Tim here to kick off a daily miniseries for the team. It might seem disingenuous, if not outright perverse, to begin The Film Experience's rough chronological celebration of Black History Month by taking at peek at one of the most infamously racist movies ever made, but for good or bad, Song of the South (1946) is an important milestone in the all-too-thin history of African-Americans and the Oscars. Seven years after Hattie McDaniel's groundbreaking Best Supporting Actress win for Gone with the Wind (we recently dove deep into that film else we'd start with her) James Baskett became the very first black man to receive an Academy Award, and the last for 16 years.

Not, mind you, a competitive Academy Award. Baskett was the last adult actor to receive an Honorary Oscar for a single performance (rather than for a career), with the inscription:

For his able and heart-warming characterization of Uncle Remus, friend and story teller to the children of the world, in Walt Disney's Song of the South".

[More...]

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