Wednesday, July 22, 2015 at 9:30PM Presenting: a "very special" (ahem) edition of Hit Me With Your Best Shot in which Nathaniel climbs on a speeding train of thought for an impromptu journey into this year's celebrated music videos. Lots and lots more after the jump...
Tuesday, July 21, 2015 at 11:28PM 
The gangs all back together to discuss two riotous female comedies: Amy Schumer's mainstream Trainwreck, already a hit and packed with famous faces, and the LGBT festival favorite Tangerine, which features no famous names or faces but abundant ragged laughs. See them both and listen in!
Contents
00:01-23:30 Trainwreck
We all like it but how much: It's a very good comedy but maybe not a very good movie? The division of duties between Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer and the trouble the movie has navigating its outre sexuality with its traditional romcom trajectory. Also discussed: the great supporting cast including Tilda Swinton, Brie Larson, and James LeBron.
23:30-42:36 Tangerine
We discuss Tangerine's aggressive charms, iPhone lensing, one-day structure, and charismatic actors. But mileage may vary on how people perceive its portrayal of trans women of color as prostitutes again. We were all won over by the movie's specificity of place and character but will people ever stop mistaking it for the Estonian Oscar nominee Tangerines?
You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Please continue the conversation in the comments...
Friday, July 17, 2015 at 7:30PM I ain't afraid to die anymore. I done it already."
We don't yes no maybe so teasers but if we did this would be a YES with the small NO of "can already tell we won't be able to tell all these bearded sweaty fur clad men apart during action sequences and mayb even some closeups"
Question
As our Oscar charts have suggested all year we expect this one to go over well but this very gripping teaser makes you wonder: Could Inarittu win Best Director back-to-back? It has only happened twice before and that was several decades back (John Ford won for Grapes of Wrath and How Green Was My Valley (1940/1941) and Joseph L Mankiewicz for A Letter To Three Wives and All About Eve (1949/1950). No one has ever won Best Picture back-to-back... though David O. Selznick would have in 1939 (Gone With the Wind) and 1940 (Rebecca) if they had awarded Best Picture to producers back then as they do now. Four men have won Best Cinematography twice consecutively including Emmanuel Lubezki(Gravity & Birdman) and since he's lensing this one in what looks like continuous shots with only natural light, he could conceivably break the record and be the sole most consecutive Oscar winning DP.
Wednesday, July 15, 2015 at 10:00PM 
For this week's special edition of Hit Me With Your Best Shot -- temporarily redubbed "Hit Me With Your Second-Best Shot" as I've declared that iconic finale off limits -- we're looking at the finest Movie About the Movies ever made. Or one of them at least. The point is it's entirely unmissable and a candidate for any sane All Time Greatest Movie list. The film never gets old or becomes irrelevant even though those are two of its best and most horrifically stared-down topics.
Billy Wilder's masterpiece (or one of them at least), immeasurably aided by inspired performances from William Holden as the screenwriter to Gloria Swanson's screen siren, is not just an acting and writing triumph. It's also a stunner in all the craft categories, particularly its Oscar-winning art direction and its cinematography by John F Seitz, a seven time nominee. His work is magnificent throughout, providing maximum pleasure to "those wonderful people out there in the dark" with his expressive lighting.
So let's get right to those (second) best shots...
A Visual Index of Sunset Blvd (1950)
(Second) Best Shot. According to these 15 movie-loving participants
Click on any image to be taken to the corresponding article
Images presented in rough order as to when they appear in the movie
My New Plaid Pants - this is not technically an entry but people, let this be a lesson to you. If you've already chosen a shot, write a sentence or two about it. The hard part is choosing after all. If you've chosen, do it. We'll link up!
100% macabre
- Movie Motorbreath *video entry*
'Stars are ageless.' This shot disagrees."
-I Want to Believe
There is one entity who has never betrayed her: her 'celluloid self.'"
-The Entertainment Junkie
Everyone, including Norma, can't help but look at Norma...
-Sorta That Guy
This image sums up Sunset Blvd., and even more than that, the entire psychological universe of noir...
-Antagony & Ecstasy
No matter how crazy Norma Desmond may be, I always find her incredibly sympathetic...
-Film Actually
We might be entering the movie’s world through Joe Gillis’s point of view, but unlike him, we *are* here to see Norma Desmond.
-Coco Hits NY
It's easy to imagine she does this ever year, even without a handsome writer..."
-Awards Madness
Already too attached to Norma and her gifts...
-Dancin Dan on Film
If Norma Desmond is a fictionalized version of Gloria Swanson, Max Von Mayerling is a quasi-(auto)biographical portrait of Erich von Stroheim...
-Paul Outlaw
We expect cold humiliating truth but what we get is the film's most genuinely warm moment...
- The Film Experience
Norma Desmond would be proud of the leading lady portraying her..."
-54 Disney Reviews
A true star always finds the light...
-Jija Crazy Movie *first time participant*
A one-man army of servants, for her sake, steps back into his role as director once more..."
-Allison Tooey
Please do visit each article, share, and comment. The more eyes the merrier when it comes to worshipping great stars. You haven't forgotten what a star looks like.
NEXT WEDNESDAY: 1995's [safe] starring Julianne Moore
Wednesday, July 15, 2015 at 4:00PM 
When I issued the challenge of Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Sunset Blvd (1950), with the caveat that you couldn't use that final close up for Mr DeMille, I knew it would make for a great episode. What a stone cold classic it is, filled with potent images in every scene that are too often taken for granted given the combined impact of its haunting iconic opening and closing. What I had dumbly not remembered was how intoxicatingly full Sunset Blvd feels on every repeat viewing inbetween. You can go into each screening with one topic in mind ("I shall write about this") and come out with a dozen more topics boiling, your original thoughts crowded out of the mind's frame. So I must painfully set aside the self-deprecating script, the gestural bravado, the timelessness of its time capsule, its shame-trigger economics and sexuality. So much of it distracts from the real purpose of HMWYBS which is to zero in on a particular image from a public piece of art that seizes your individual imagination with its beauty or thematic resonance or what not, and discuss.
So Joe McGillis will have to wait. Which is a shame. He's worth at least 11 essays of his own according to my easily distracted notes. They're messier than Norma's epic handwritten "Salome" opus which visually buries Joe long before she works up enough actual crazy to really bury him. [More...]
