Marion Cotillard and Brad Pitt Got Us Thinking

Released exclusively through People Magazine

by Murtada 

There are a couple of ways to look at this first released picture from the Marion Cotillard - Brad Pitt November release, Allied. Your mileage might depend on your feelings about the actors. So if you like them, you might be saying glamourous movie stars! Pretty period costumes! Why isn’t it November yet?. If not, your reaction might be that the picture is a bit posed. Maybe a bit too studied. Even cheesy...

Click to read more ...

Malick Goes to IMAX

Leave it to Terrence Malick to always keep us guessing when his next film will drop. Recently we got word that his long-rumored documentary Voyage of Time would finally be dropping this fall and on massive IMAX screens to boot - before the star filled Weightless that he shot back-to-back with this year's Knight of Cups. Like his movies, I guess the release schedules and post-production meander as well.

But even without Weightless's star power, Voyage will pack wattage of its own. Ennio Morricone will be scoring the film, reuniting him with the director after almost forty years since they collaborated on Days of Heaven. And there may not be recognizable faces on screen among the eyepopping visuals, but Brad Pitt narrates (Cate Blanchett is set to narrate the extended, non-IMAX version that is also rumored).

If you have your doubts about another Mallick meditation on existance, consider that this version will be running at a swift forty minutes. Without a narrative to distract from the auteur's transfixing visuals (albeit this time without Emmanuel Lubezki behind the camera), this one should give us precisely what we want from him without the frustrations of his recent work. Check out the just released trailer and imagine it on a huge IMAX screen:

Voyage of Time opens in IMAX on October 7. What other Mallick film would you see in IMAX?

Moonlight Gets a Release Date

Yesterday Mahershala Ali got invited to be an Academy member and now he has a movie that might get him nominated next year. Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight, based on the play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue (what a great title, why change it?)  by Tarrell Alvin McCraney, is scheduled to open limited on Oct. 21. The movie tells the story of a young man who comes of age in 1980s Miami, focusing on on his quarter-life crisis, challenging environment and awakening sexuality. 

The ensemble cast includes many fantastic actors we’ve all loved and wished they’d get the movie showcase that their talents calls for. In addition to Ali we get Naomie Harris and Andre Holland. Playing the lead character, at different times of his life, are newcomers Trevante Rhodes and Ashton Sanders. The movie not only has good buzz (word is that Harris in particular is a revelation) but also excellent pedigree. One of the producers is Brad Pitt. The director Barry Jenkins was named by NYTimes as one of 20 Directors to Watch, a couple of years ago. His first film was the little seen but hugely admired Medicine for Melancholy (2008), a grittier less romantic but no less absorbing Before Sunset.

Not a lot is known about the film - there are even no pictures released. We have to make do with those three very attractive faces at different awards ceremonies in lieu of that. But it’s definitely one to keep an eye on and get excited about in these slow summer days of great weather and bad blockbusters. 

Are you ready for fall movies? (20th Century Women was also announced for 4th quarter). 

Thelma & Louise, Pt. 3: Pitt Stops

25th Anniversary Five-Part Mini Series Event 

In Pt 1 of our lookback at Thelma & Louise, a fateful night at the Silver Bullet threw Thelma & Louise off their course. In Pt 2 the best friends weren't so friendly  as they struggled to find a new one. When we left them, they'd picked up a charming hitchhiker (Hellooo, Baby Brad) and but Louise needed a cup of coffee and to collect herself. Anne Marie & Margaret, our own superheroine duo in Los Angeles were grappling with the surprise killing of a would be rapist. Was it rage and pride that motivated Louise to shoot after she had already saved Thelma? It certainly provoked audiences but was there any other way to play the film's themes?

Louise is trying to plot their next move when we return to them, just before they jump back in their '66 Thunderbird - Editor

Pt 2 by Daniel Crooke

50:58 – Surprised to see her leather-faced boyfriend, Louise looks like she’s seen a ghost. Based on their last phone call, it didn’t sound like she was planning on casually bumping into Jimmy north of the border anytime soon. These men just can’t get out of our heroines’ way; is it that maddeningly impossible to trust an independent woman to chart her own course in this world? (more...)

Click to read more ...

Thelma & Louise, Pt 2: The Venetian Blindside

25th Anniversary Five-Part Mini Series Event 

When we left our heroines in Pt 1 of our 25th anniversary lookback at Thelma & Louise, they were fleeing the scene of their (first) crime but Louise needed a cup of coffee and to collect herself. Anne Marie & Margaret, our own superheroine duo in Los Angeles were grappling with the surprise killing of a would be rapist. Was it rage and pride that motivated Louise to shoot after she had already saved Thelma? It certainly provoked audiences but was there any other way to play the film's themes?

Louise is trying to plot their next move when we return to them, just before they jump back in their '66 Thunderbird - Editor

Pt 2 by Nick Davis

Now's not the time to panic. If we panic now, we're done for."

24:50 You could say this is the moment where Thelma and Louise shifts from a movie about two women fleeing some problems, at least temporarily, to two women solving a problem, probably permanently. Sure, I'll run to any movie where two women let their hair down, but I will fucking jet-propel myself to any movie where two or more women join forces to think their way out of a fix.  Well, not Mad Money.  And not The Boss.  Okay, there are exceptions.  But Thelma & Louise is the glorious rule, and this is where the drama of deduction, cognition, mutual examination, and deep self-reflection really kicks into fifth gear.

I should mention that I saw this film in the theater at 14.  Sheltered and naive about sex and violence, I didn't completely understand what rape was--which is to say, I think I learned it here.  I had never had a drink, much less been drunk, or even seen a margarita.  Ironically, the post-shooting moment when Thelma and Louise start spiraling into unknown territory was  when I started to connect with their world and feel common ground with the heroines.  I didn't know from waitressing jobs, fishing trips, honky tonks, convertibles, freeways, mesas, relationship troubles, shitty husbands, hitchhikers, horny moods, pistols, or structural misogyny, but I absolutely related to relying on wits to think your way out of a problem, and disclosing aspects of yourself in how you did so, and concealing parts of yourself at the same time.

Click to read more ...