Luca Guadagnino @ 50: A Trilogy of Desire

Happy belated 50th to Luca Guadagnino.

by Cláudio Alves

Like many a director in film history, Luca Guadagnino's cinema is characterized by common themes, through lines transversal to all his works, though more evident in some than others. During the release and promotional tour of Call Me By Your Name, the Italian auteur came to realize that his last three films could be construed as an unofficial trilogy of desire, though he later repudiated the notion. Nevertheless, akin to Bergman's Silence of God tercet, Guadagnino's I Am Love, A Bigger Splash, and Call Me By Your Name complete a three-part thesis in cinematic form. Instead of the Swedish master's spiritual dread, we have a multifaceted portrait of human desire as a force so great it's both overwhelming and life-changing, magical and terrifying, a blessing, a curse, perchance a deliverance…

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Luca Guadagnino @50: Melissa P

Happy 50th Birthday to Director Luca Guadagnino today! Here's a look back at his little seen sophomore feature

by Jason Adams

For Luca Guadagnino, the process of making his second feature film Melissa P. in 2005 was not a good one. The signs were all there in advance, if he hadn't been lured in by the big American studio Sony that was financing the film -- for one, well, Sony itself. The studio ended up being terrifically intrusive, shoving on a puritanical ending and even hiring an on-set handler for the filmmaker, and he's said he feels the finished project was more their work than his own. But even earlier than that he'd only been able to make it halfway through the novel One Hundred Strokes of the Brush Before Bed on which the film was based. A sort of modern The Story of O it tells the loosely autobiographical story of a teenage girl discovering her body alongside a few sado-masochistic tendencies, and he's said he found the book schlocky but that he thought he could patch over those bits with some psycho-analysis. And, of course, Cinema. Always that...

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After the Coven Comes the Blood

by Jason Adams

While we're all sitting on our hands waiting for Timothee Chalamet to hit his mid-20s so they can get around to shooting the Call Me By Your Name sequel already (did you see my video of author Andre Aciman talking about it?) it looks like film director Luca Guadagnino is finding something else to do, with his hands that is -- Luca has finally (informally) announced what his next movie will be, now that his remake of Suspiria's out there knocking our brains and eyeballs for loops. 

It's called Blood on the Tracks and yes it's called that after the 1975 Bob Dylan record, which will serve as the "inspiration" for the film...

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Beauty vs Beast: Sibling Rivalry

Jason from MNPP here wishing us all the happiest Lovely Laura Linney Day! Today Linney is celebrating her 54th birthday, which means we're celebrating as well because she's a national treasure that one. But that happiness and celebration might not last long, I ruin everything, because I'm about to force a horrible choice on you with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" contest and ask you to consider choosing between the siblings of Kenneth Lonergan's 2000 sibling masterpiece You Can Count On Me -- Linney's hometown mama and boss-schtupper Sammy versus Mark Ruffalo's home-crashing money-grubbing seatbealt-wearing Terry. Vote and then tell us why you voted how you voted down below in the comments!

surveys

PREVIOUSLY Last week's Best Actor contest handed Timothee Chalamet a win as sound (to the tune of 87% of the vote!) as his trounced competitor Gary Oldman's eventual win at the Oscars next month is assured, so let's just enjoy us getting it right anyway. Said hepwa (and this is a fine list that I'd love to hear if anybody has any of their own to add to this list, too):

"There are five great young male performances in the past forty years, in chronological order: Dennis Christopher in "Breaking Away", Michael O'Keefe in "The Great Santini", Timothy Hutton in "Ordinary People", River Phoenix in "Running On Empty" and now Timothee Chalamet in "Call Me by Your Name"."

70 Original Songs Eligible for Oscar

Chris here. Though the conversation around Oscar's Original Song category sways negative these days, there is the potential this year to have one of the strongest lineups in some time. And we now have the massive list of 70 tracks eligible this year to support that claim.

While there are the annual "huh?!" titles among the contenders, the lineup has some strong outsider fare like Patti Cake$, Step, and The Meyerowitz Stories. Among the things you won't see in the longlist are "I Get Overwhelmed" from A Ghost Story or "Cut to the Feeling" from Leap, as both of those weren't explicitly written for their films. Also two musicals, Coco and The Greatest Showman, are only eligible for their biggest tracks - however both remain likely players here, though curveballs should be expected in this category at all times.

Let's take a look at the eligible songs/films:

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