The Furniture: A Warm Welcome in Hunt for the Wilderpeople

"The Furniture" our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber

Hunt for the Wilderpeople, the year’s most heart-warming comedy, may not seem like an obvious example of unique production design. It takes place entirely in the backwoods of New Zealand, much of it deep in the bush. It’s a showcase for the tremendous beauty of the land, not opulent sets.

Yet while the design team may not contribute to the film’s breathtaking vistas, their work is crucial to its narrative arc. Before young Ricky (Julian Dennison) and his ornery foster uncle Hec (Sam Neill) are forced by circumstance to run from the law, they don’t like each other very much. It’s Bella (Rima Te Wiata), Hec’s wife, who welcomes Ricky into their lives. Her love and her house serve as an emotional foundation, and her sudden death sparks the adventure to come.

Were it not for her memory, Ricky and Hec would run away, each to his own wilderness.

Their love for her keeps them together, or at least the guilt it inspires...

Click to read more ...

Monty (1998-2016)

Our first photo together in December 1998, before The Film Experience existed. I lost my furbaby today (apologies that scheduled blog events are delayed). You knew him as a highly elusive cat pundit (he was most active in the prediction game from 2010-2012) but he was never easy to pin down on movies and Oscars.

Some of his classic posts:
Bridesmaids
127 Hours, Conviction, and Never Let Me Go
Hitchcock 
Olaf from Frozen 
Jennifer Aniston in Cake 

He did love a few movies unreservedly including Microcosmos (1996), Dancer in the Dark (2000), and Paddington (2014) but mostly he ignored them, preferring to imagine he was my only love. I already miss him terribly.

Beauty Break: World Lion Day

Today is World Lion Day so let's gaze at those utterly majestic felines posing with actors and actresses because it's an excuse to honor them. A beauty break gallery after the jump featuring Kirsten Dunst, Joanna Lumley, Buster Crabbe, Gregory Peck, Cara Delevigne and more...

Tippi Hedren with her pet lion "Neil" in the 1970s

Click to read more ...

Swing, Tarzan, Swing! Ch.5: Mike Henry gets his 007 on in the "Valley of Gold"

As we approach the release of The Legend of Tarzan (2016) we're ogling past screen incarnations of the Lord of the Apes...

Tarzan aficianados will cry foul that I've skipped ahead to 1966 in this retrospective but the awesomely named actor Jock Mahoney wouldn't mind. He only made two Tarzan films in the mid sixties... and barely finished those. He got deathly ill on the second, lost 40 lbs during the picture, and couldn't get out of the jungle fast enough. The first of those pictures lost money, too.

You see, in the wake of the phenomenal success of Dr. No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963) and Goldfinger (1964), James Bond was the new #1 adventure hero and Tarzan was old news. The Tarzan franchise took note and tried to combine the two with Tarzan and the Valley of Gold (1966), introducing the closest thing they could find to Sean Connery's swarthy dimpled masculinity: Mike Henry.

Mike Henry was a professional football player with the Los Angeles Rams but he left sports for the actor's life and donned the Tarzan's loincloth.

...Or, should we say his suit.

In addition to introducing Tarzan as a jet-setting perpetually-endangered looker in a suit, this new 007 style adventure also begins with a kitschy mod score over colorful credits, an opening action sequence that's somewhat disconnected from the movie that follows, and an intelligent international criminal with a taste for booby-trapped gifts. So, you know, we're definitely in Bond territory...

Click to read more ...

Links: Julie Andrews, Paul & Daniel, franchise "tone" templates

Variety Whoa. Daniel Day Lewis is going back to work. And with Paul Thomas Anderson again no less. They're making a 50s fashion drama
/Film shares concept art from Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 4... which obviously never went before cameras

Salon Actor Jake Choi on the odds against Asian actors especially the "de-sexualized" men
LA Times 100 people who could help fix Oscar's diversity problem. I'd be surprised though if at least a few of these people weren't already in the Academy since they've been nominated or close to it. The ultra strange thing is they don't list Bradford Young, one of the very best working DPs, under cinematography and I didn't think he was a member yet. Is it just a terrible oversight or did his invitation skip my notice?
AV Club a new Melissa McCarthy produced series Nobodies will be very meta. It stars her non famous comic actor friends playing themselves with a famous movie star friend (no word on who will play the Melissa McCarthy surrogate)
Towleroad Colton Haynes is working on a photo book with Tyler Shields. He promises it will be "shocking". So... the unauthorized sequel to Madonna's "Sex" book, maybe? 
The Guardian a good piece on reshoots for upcoming movies and the danger of "dark" or "light" templates for franchises 

Off Screen
Adequate Man "Please do not lick your kitty" 

Emmy Season is Upon Us...
Awards Daily is wondering if Scandal can make an Emmy comeback
Decider comedies the Emmys need to consider 

...and for the following year's Emmys we even have a Children's Programming contender worth getting excited about: JULIE ANDREWS IS BACK IN 2017!