Frames Within Frames in Labyrinthine "Blow-Up"

This week's Hit Me With Your Best Shot topic is in honor of the release of the book Vanessa: The Life of Vanessa Redgrave.  Imagine my surprise, given that dedication, when I watched Blow-Up for the first time since I was maybe 17 or 18 and realized that Vanessa is barely in it! Oops. Her presence looms large and plays tricks with the memory. Is it because we are constantly staring at her photograph and she takes on mythic dimension. Or is it because the actress herself is adept at playing not quite a flesh and blood woman but a projection, a prism of Mysterious Woman? 

But, then, Vanessa aside. What isn't tricky about this enigmatic classic? The plot, as skeletal as it is, centers on a womanizing fashion photographer (David Hemmings) who sneakily follows a statuesque beauty (Redgrave) and her lover on their stroll through the park. He snaps away. Later he becomes convinced that while he was shooting them an actual shooting took place and he's inadvertently caught a murder in progress on the negatives. But has he? I love this noncommital bit of dialogue between the photographer and his friend late in the movie...

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Cast This: Can We Get a Patricia Highsmith Biopic Up in Here?

We're getting three starry Patricia Highsmith adaptations in the next year or so at the cinemas. First up is The Two Faces of January (Viggo, Kiki & Oscar Isaac) and then Carol (Cate, Rooney & Sarah Paulson). 

 The latest to ready itself for the cameras is The Blunderer. The cast will include Patrick Wilson, Jessica Biel, Imogene Poots and Toby Jones. 

Highsmith adaptations are nothing new for the cinema and soon there will be little left to adapt.

Walter Stackhouse (Wilson) is a successful architect married to the beautiful Clara (Biel) and leading a charmed and perfect life. But his fascination with an unsolved murder leads him into a spiral of chaos as he is forced to play cat-and-mouse with a clever killer (Jones) and an over-ambitious detective. Walter's obsession, his lies and his lust for another woman (Poots) will collide in a crush of guilt, innocence and, ultimately, fate.

Highsmith adaptations are nothing new for the cinema and soon there will be little left to adapt.

But why hasn't anyone made a biopic yet?

She was a complicated character in her looks, her art, and her temperament: famously misanthropic (and racist, too), an alcoholic, complicated lifelong relationship with her mother (who once confessed to trying to abort her) who lived to be 95, bisexual with volatile affairs, and a crazy cat lady to boot.

Who should play her in a biopic?  Two names came immediately to my mind but I want to know your thoughts before I reveal them. A few more pictures after the jump [one NSFW] and a few more notes about Hollywood's interest in her work. 

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Oscar Bait 2015 Alert: "Genius" With Kidman, Firth, and Law

Yes, dear concerned reader, I know I know. I'm supposed to be thinking about 2014 and who might be Oscar nominated 9 months from now. I'll get there. I will. But I can't let this latest dazzling dangling carrot of 2015 cinematic possibility pass without mention. Because a curious trend continues...

Thomas Wolfe, Aline Bernstein, and Max Perkins to be played by Law, Kidman, and Firth

We've already noted, with raised eyebrow, the shocking rapidity of Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth veritable obsession with working together. As previously mentioned they have THREE films together coming out this year. Add a fourth to the pipeline. They will co-star again in Genius which is based on the super acclaimed biography "Max Perkins: Editor Of Genius," by A Scott Berg.

The screenplay is by three time Oscar nominee John Logan (Gladiator, The Aviator, Hugo) and the cast is similarly Oscar-favored. Two time nominee Jude Law, Kidman's Cold Mountain "husband" (I will marry yoooo) has taken over the incredibly juicy role of the novelist Thomas Wolfe (which means a viable shot at a Supporting Actor trophy for Jude Law even though the best guess is that he's actually co-lead) which was once to be played by Michael Fassbender. Oscar winner Colin Firth headlines playing the influential book editor Max Perkins and Oscar winning Kidman plays Wolfe's lover, the multihyphenate writer/costume/set designer Aline Bernstein. The film takes place in the 1920s/1930s literary scene so stay tuned. Who will they cast as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway? Both of those legends also have major roles in the book.

The big obvious question mark here is budget (can it get the lush period treatment it deserves?) and Michael Grandage in the director's chair. This is the 52 year old stage director's first feature gig behind the camera though he's acted in front of it before. 

Wanna read the book?

Pulitzer Prize Winners

Congratulations to this year's Pulitzer Prize winners. 

FICTION - "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt
DRAMA - "The Flick" by Annie Baker
HISTORY - "The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772-1832" by Alan Taylor 
BIOGRAPHY - "Margaret Fuller: A New American Life" by Megan Marshall
POETRY - "3 Sections" by Vijay Seshadri
GENERAL NONFICTION - "Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation" by Dan Fagin
MUSIC - "Become Ocean" by John Luther Adams

Have any of you read or listened to any of these? I'm intrigued by the description of the Drama winner "The Flick" since it's film related:

The Flick, a still from the Playwright Horizons production last year

a thoughtful drama with well-crafted characters that focuses on three employees of a Massachusetts art-house movie theater, rendering lives rarely seen on the stage.

Many Pulitzer Prize winning plays end up as movies eventually. You can see past winners after the jump including three recent Oscar nominated films...

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Tattooed Lady & Gent

The Film Experience does not endorse tattoos. That shit is crazy permanent and who wants to wear the same thing every day of one's life? But tattoos can sometimes look good in a photo shoot, with the right body, or work well in dramatic or comic context. Two current magazine covers remind us of the ink fad which shows no signs of abating. (When I was a wee bairn the only tattoos I ever saw were on bikers and Popeye the Sailor Man. Now every third person on the street is sporting them.)

Ass dimples forever!

You guys. I got the best swag in the mail yesterday. A copy of Veep Season 2 along with Vice President Selena Meyer's book "Some New Beginnings - Our Next American Journey" which I hope is a plot point on Season 3. The jacket is very funny, with choice pull quotes, and a lot of vague meaningless inspirational double speak.

Here is just one excerpt...

In "Some New Beginnings - Our Next American Journey", Selina Meyer sets out her vision for a journey that could start now, or in the not-too-distant future, with a single step, taken by us all, together. America, she says, is "both a nation of journeys and a journey in itself."

This is an invitation to be a part of that journey. A journey from an old New World to a new New World. A journey from USA to "USA Plus." "

The book, like the content of Meyer's brain, is blank inside. 

Those are some ugly tats but "ugly" is not a good word to use in a sentence with Tom Hardy. So glad he's slimmed down. I'm glad Esquire saw fit to add the question mark after "The Greatest Actor of His Generation" because, really, as much as I love him and he's impressed on a few occasions. He hasn't yet come close to proving that. He even has tough competition within his birth year alone which also brought us Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Édgar Ramirez, and Matthias Schoenaerts. 1977 was an extraordinary vintage.

JA has a comment about an interesting quote from Hardy in the cover story. Hardy is currently headlining the solo act film Locke and soon we'll see two gritty crime dramas The Drop and Child 44. In 2015: the long delayed if not necessarily long awaited Mad Max reboot, Mad Max: Fury Road. And then a possible Oscar grab in 2015 or 2016 as Elton John in the biopic Rocket Man.