The Lord of the Links: The Return of the Link

whoa. no link roundups in forever. time to catch up on movie news and/or must see web droppings

Yahoo Movies Fine Thelma Adams piece on Prometheus' "foreign object" sequence. [shudder]
24 Frames Noomi Rapace and Sigourney Weavers' Alien franchise screen tests
IndieWire six life saving tips for cinematographers from the great Darius Khondji (Se7en, Evita, Midnight in Paris, and more...)
Empire Penelope Cruz will star in her fifth Pedro Almodóvar movie Fleeting Lovers (title may change) which starts shooting this summer. Yay! Double Yay! All About My Mother star Cecilia Roth is also in the cast.
YouTube if there's anything I hate about YouTube it's the ability to name your videos "official". But this "Official" Les Miserable trailer starring (gulp) Katie Holmes is kind of a good prank... I mean Nightmare!
In Contention production designer J Michael Riva (Django Unchained, The Color Purple) has passed away at 63.

Awards Daily Singin' in the Rain is getting a 60th anniversary rerelease on July 12th. Just in time for the Gene Kelly Centennial. And yes, if I can manage it here at the Film Experience July and August will house a big Gene Kelly retrospective right here at the Film Experience. He's up there with Montgomery Clift in my favorite (male) movie star charts after all.
Life of Pi the tiger growls memorably for the first time on the official website. Also he looks amazing.
Movie|Line Better three years late than never. Xavier Dolan's award winning debut film (and Canadian Oscar submission in its year) I Killed My Mother is FINALLY getting a US theatrical release. 
Guardian hears that The Avengers might get a three hour version for theatrical rerelease this fall. Considering Joss Whedon's comments on the deleted material (indulgent, killing the rhythm) and his own feelings about different versions of the same story (no) perhaps this is a very bad idea.
Queerty the red band ass abundant Magic Mike trailer.

filmmaking tips
IndieWire six life saving tips for cinematographers from the great Darius Khondji (Se7en, Evita, Midnight in Paris, and more...) 
Movie|Line twenty-two pieces of storytelling advice from a Pixar artist
LA Times offers up awards show tips for the Oscars (hey, that's sorta filmmaking tips) via the Tony Awards though I will continue to hate everyone and especially every writer who suggests very publicly that we don't need to see Costume Designers winning their prizes. A pox on all your craft-hating houses!

casting news we don't have much to say about but we should probably share anyway...

Greer takes over for Buckley in the Carrie remake

• Jean Dujardin is in talks to join Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street
• Amy Ryan and Dane DeHaan may join an upcoming non-documentary take on West Memphis Three currently starring Colin Firth and Allesandro Nivola (my god how many movies will this story inspire by 2020?)
• John Madden's "Exotic Marigold" follow up is a comedy called Murder Mystery and may star Charlize Theron
• Judy Greer (recently interviewed right here) wins the gym teacher role in Carrie, previously played by the great Betty Buckley. I only wish I weren't so dreading the movie.

off cinema
Gawker an alligator eating a croc? 
Sound Cloud she may have lost the Tony but Jayne Houdyshell keeps giving it from Follies. She rerecorded "Broadway Baby" as a solo for a compilation. It's wonderful! 
Cinema Blend an amusing piece about that George Bush head on spike story from Game of Thrones 

Zachary Quinto, Claire Danes, Chris Rock, The Fanning Sisters... and that's just a tiny sample.Finally...

 Have you seen the Paramount Pictures celebration? They gathered 116 stars together -- NOT photoshopped, actually there -- for a Centennial Photo.

The photo is so big you have to scroll to get the whole thing on your computer. You can mouse over it to enlarge see who's in the shot but without doing so I spotted George Clooney, Jamie Lee Curtis, George Takei, Julianne Moore, Meryl, Mark & Marty, Jane Fonda and Eddie Murphy straightaway. Watching the video gives you a closer look at the star networking. Watching stars mingle is the best part of starry events... though they never share enough.

It makes you wonder who knows each other and who doesn't. And who really does or doesn't want to be talking to whom. Did the stars who haven't had a good role in decades bee-line to the directors present (Lynch, Fincher, Scorsese, etcetera) or have they given up but for anniversary shindigs to honor their past glories? All I know for sure is that photo events like this make me happy.

The Fabulous Linker Boy

Forbes an awesomely nerdy calculation of Smaug's wealth from The Hobbit. It's from the "fictional fifteen" of the wealthiest characters from movies, books, and tv. 
Grantland looks at the end of the full frontal wang era, which peaked with Shame last year and will supposedly die with Magic Mike this summer.
Los Angeles Times Two of the stars of the Tribeca winning Una Noche have defected from Cuba and are seeking asylum in the US. They're a couple in real life and siblings on the screen.
Movie|Line asks everyone to calm down with their "best picture!" proclamations in April. Oopsie. We just completed all of our predictions. But at least The Film Experience has never been driven to "lock!" proclamations before movies are even finished.

The Wrap Any Day Now, a gay adoption drama starring two fine actors (Garrett Dillahunt & Alan Cumming) won the audience award at Tribeca
My New Plaid Pants James Franco and Michael Shannon in compromising positions for The Broken Tower 
24 Frames Henry Selick still hush hush about his Coraline follow up, another spooky sweet stop motion film. It will probably be released in 2013. Scribble it down on your Oscar predictions for next next year. Then he's doing Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book.
The Mary Sue eye makeup looks inspired by The Avengers. As colorful as any superhero comic.
Collider yes, they're still planning to reboot The Fantastic Four
Guardian Olivia Williams isn't one for "flamboyant self display". Perhaps she'll rethink that if she wants Oscar traction this year for Hyde Park on Hudson.

Finally...

if you follow the Oscar race religiously and have for at least a few years you've probably discovered that the craft categories are inherently like the acting categories in that some giants of the trade can't seem to win the gold man despite rich filmographies and stunning year-best work. The Oscars require some luck as well. So I'm very happy to congratulate Michael Ballhaus, pictured above, an amazing cinematographer for his lifetime achievement award at Germany's Lolas this past week. 

His Oscar nominations came for The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989), Gangs of New York (2002), and Broadcast News (1987) but he also lit Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), The Age of Innocence (1993), and The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (1972)... and that's only a handful of the visual wonders he's produced. The Film Experience ♥s him and has ever since La Pfeiffer spun around on that piano and Made Whoopie. We congratulate him sincerely on this career honor.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "Bonnie & Clyde"

This week's episode of 'Best Shot' features one of my all time favorite films Bonnie & Clyde (1967). Even if you just want to look at one scene and stop you're pulled in, right into the cramped cars and you're along for the whole ride. It never stops until it's so bullet-riddled it can't get back up again. Few films have ever felt as alive as this classic. The most impressive thing about Bonnie & Clyde nearly a half century later is that it still feels electric. Is it the way it fuses 30s and 60s and in so doing transcends anything to do with "dates" of production? Is it how completely adult it is in tone despite the youthful abandon?

Bonnie (Faye Dunaway) meets Clyde (Warren Beatty) in the first scene and by the eight minute mark she's lept in his car for good. Because the movie moves so quickly we're doing the same. My choice for best shot comes right before this crucial decision. The couple have been flirting for roughly eight minutes of real time, and Bonnie is so hot for the beautiful thief that she's practically felating her coke bottle while staring at him. Bonnie expresses doubt that Clyde's a real criminal, essentially daring him to prove it, and he pulls out his gun.

But you wouldn't have the gumption to use it."

Naturally she, uh, strokes it. Such a perfect image for a movie about a love affair that's consummated through crime.

Their horny paired reaction shots to the gun stroking...

This movie is dirty.

Rather shockingly, they do not immediately tear each other's clothes off. It's not for lack of trying on Bonnie's part but Clyde is quicker to whip out his gun than his cock so a substitute it'll have to be.

In the casting alone the movie achieves greatness. It's hard to believe that the infamous loverboy Warren Beatty is an impotent charmer and Bonnie (Faye Dunaway, utterly brilliant) can't believe it either. She's angry and devastated. Bonnie and Clyde's unfulfilling sexual life paired with Faye & Warren's undeniable chemistry eroticizes the entire movie even when "sex" is not the subject.

The early gun stroking shot finds a brilliant counterpoint later in the film when Clyde can't get it up in a love scene and Bonnie roll over, away from him. Clyde isn't even in frame but his "gun" is.

The French call an orgasm "the little death" and this 1967 masterpiece channeling the French New Wave for America makes the same connections. From the minute Bonnie leaps in Clyde's stolen car, desperate to sex him up, she's a goner. In one terrific seemingly incongruous scene, the Barrow gang pick up a married couple and tease and taunt them until the man reveals that he's an undertaker. Bonnie clouds over, instantly demanding their rejection from the car. She knows that death is imminent. For her it's right there in the car.

The Best Shot Gang.
(Wanted in five states)
Antagony and Ecstasy has a smart post on the film's synthesizing of '60s pop culture.
Serious Film has a wonderful post that's more than just Bonnie & Clyde. It's that moment when you know it's coming.
The Film's The Thing looks at the people in the pictures, Depression era style.
Film Actually  Bonnie seeks solace in the oddest places
Pussy Goes Grrrr  "lust blossoming from small town tedium."

Next on "Hit Me..."
04/04 Easter Parade (1948)
04/11 Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937) 

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "Ladyhawke"

Time for Season 3 of Hit Me With Your Best Shot. Wednesday evenings.

from left to right: Goliath, Navarre (Rutger Hauer) and Isabeau (Michelle Pfeiffer's stunt double)

I thought we'd kick off this season with a personal favorite from the 80s. I use the word favorite emphatically because in many ways, Ladyhawke (1985) is a movie with a confusing relationship to objective quality. It's both great and bad, the score arguing that it's a feature that absolutely should not exist outside of 1985 while the mythic story fights for timelessness. The sound (Oscar-nominated) has wonderful details, maximizing the earthly details of fluttering wings, wolf howls and horse hooves while also embracing the transcendently romantic voices (Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer) but it's marred by jarring score cues that take you out of the action and weird post-production "comedy" vocal work from extras. It feels, at least for its first half, like it's a movie with several authors and endless studio interference from people who didn't believe in a romantic fantasy epic in a time long before fairy tales were hot commodities and sword and sorcery epics were the furthest thing from bankable. So, would you laugh at me if I claimed I thought it was thisclose to being a classic? People are always reediting the Star Wars prequels to try to make them into the movies they should have been but the fantasy with the easiest fix to nudge it from punchline to greatness is Ladyhawke.

The one area where Ladyhawke can lay legitimate claim to greatness without lengthy conditional explanations is in the cinematography of three-time Oscar winner Vittorio Storaro (most famous for Apocalypse Now and various Warren Beatty epics). Many films throughout history have used sunsets and sunrises for their sheer beauty but Ladyhawke's reliance on light is more than vanity; it's storytelling.

Pfeiffer's beauty and Hauer's pain after the jump

Click to read more ...

'Hit Me' Baby One More Time

Are you flesh or are you spirit?"

I am sorrow."

Oh cheer up, 'Chelle. "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" returns in exactly one week here at The Film Experience.

Join in on the Ladyhawke (1985) fun by selecting your favorite shot from this 80s fantasy by Wednesday March 21st at 10 PM when we post ours. The movie is filled with beautiful shots with the great cinematographer Vittorio Storaro behind the camera and Rutger Hauer & LaPfeiffer in front of it. We'll link up to all participating entries.

03/21 Ladyhawke (1985)
03/28 Bonnie & Clyde (1967)
04/04 Easter Parade (1948)
... and more to come provided y'all participate.