We're celebrating 1979 this month so let's talk about one of its most underused / overtalented showbiz babies: LAURA BENANTI.
She's a Tony Winner (Gypsy) with great pipes, Broadway's Queen of Twitter (giving her 71 thousand followers more joy with hilarity than you can fathom if you don't follow her), and this decade she's been making inroads to television stardom with recurring characters on several shows including "Nurse Jackie" and "Nashville" but she's still without a big leading role which she more than obviously deserves!
She'll next be seen as Supergirl's birthmother in the pilot of "Supergirl" (2015) - currently having pirating problems -- so add psychic to her many gifts. See, In 2013 she stripped down into Supergirl costume at a Skivvies* concert! See the video after the jump...
Baz Bamigboye talks to an acting coach about the lead acting nominations Washington Post Nick Davis dispels five Oscar myths Buzzfeed Jennifer Lawrence and the types of Cool Girls In Contention on the first Oscars concert. Sounds like it needs to become a tradition! New York Theater on that West Side Story screening with Rita Moreno last week (I so wish all these things weren't happening DURING Oscar season. I have no time. Sad face.)
BDCWire You know the McConaissance has gone over big when Matthew McConaughey starts winning comparisons to Brando and de Niro VF live blogs the 1993 Oscars - twenty years ago looked suspiciously like now with Leonardo, an AIDS drama and more... MNPP a review of Enemy which has been intermittently flashing into my brain since Toronto Carpetbagger on the pundit confusion and predictions for the big night Salon a reminder: Jennifer Lawrence doesn't want a second Oscar right now We Recycle Movies charts some Oscar stats involving Best Picture and the original vs adapted situation
Fun Interactives Slate is really killing it this year and I'm not saying that because they did such a great job with my acceptance speech piece. This "name that screenplay" quiz is super weird/hard/gripping... I didn't do as well as I was expecting (I did get Braveheart, Crash, Schindler's List and Chicago on their first word clues but the rest were much harder for me) but it was exciting to play. They've also got a tool where you can adjust percentages of what will win Best Picture based solely on math of which "lower" categories mean the most to a Best Picture win. It's worth noting that before you even begin they have Gravity as the projected winner with 37.5% to 12 Years' 35.1% and American Hustle's 27.4% so that's their baseline. The percentages adjust as you click on winners. But usually Gravity comes out on top. (sigh)
Today's Must See People magazine did a little photoshop wonder pairing the nominees (and Tom Hanks?) with their younger selves with conversations. It's super cute/cheesy but somehow kind of wistful at the same time - neat trick.
Are you afraid of me? That's all right – I'm afraid of me, too."
Letters of Note "I feel every cut" an intimate glimpse back at Terry Gilliam's Brazil madness Self Styled Siren a happy ending for For the Love of Film Blogathon III. The money raised towards film preservation (a digitial copy of a super early piece of the Hitchcock puzzle) will result in free streaming of the surviving reels this November. Well done, all! 24 Frames Broadway star Kelli O'Hara will star in not one but two new fillm drama to stage musical adaptations: Far From Heaven (previously discussed) and... The Bridges of Madison County? The Daily Notebook 1948 was a good year for mermaids: Glynis Johns & Ann Blyth
Rope of Silicon new character photos from Anna Karenina including Keira Knightley, veiled Pajiba says goodbye to sci-fi legend Ray Bradbury (RIP) Antagony & Ecstacy "in space no one can hear you yawn"... on Alien Ressurection. Or is it Alien: Ressurection? Slate "Woman: The Other Alien in Alien" Tom Shone investigates Academia and the Alien franchise... with a Ripley focus of course Ultra Culture "fixes" the teaser poster for Robert Zemeckis' Flight starring Denzel Washington
Broadway Blog my friend Tom makes his educated Tony prediction guesses. Are you watching Sunday night? The New Yorker's this new true story article "The Yankee Comandante" about an American helping Cuban rebels overthrow their president in 1959 is already on its way to being a movie. George Clooney will direct. Vulture the scariest thing ever seen on television via Twin Peaks. I wholeheartedly agree. I remember actually attempting to move backwards. (Maybe I also whimpered / screamed. Shut up. You had to be there in 1991)
Finally... I giggled this morning when reading Stranger Than Most's "Jenna tells it like it is" a reminder of one of 30 Rock's most hilarious scenes. I'm linking because tonight I'll be at Town Hall enjoying Jane Krakowski in concert, a birthday gift from my besties. Yay. I loved Jane truly madly and deeply even before 30 Rock finally convinced everyone else that she was a comedy genius. Every drink I consume tonight will be (re)named in her honor: Jenna'sSide, The Krakowski, 'That'sADealBreakerLadies', Sexual Walkabout, CallFromTheVatican, and MuffinTop. Erm... not that I'm going to drink six drinks. No Lost Weekends for me!
Tell me how much you love Jane Krakowski and how much she deserves the Emmy for this season of 30 Rock after the jump. Don't be anything less than effusive, bitches.
Woman#1: (Defeated sounding) I have to take my son to see The Lorax. Cheerful Female Friend: Ohhh, you can't go wrong with Dr. Seuss!"
Cheerful Female Friend has clearly not registered the atrocities Hollywood has often made from the good doctor's work. And when one thinks of the colorful wit and profound whimsy of Dr. Seuss surely mainstream heartthrobs like Zac Efron and Taylor Swift pop immediately to mind! What a, uhhhh, perfect vocal match.
But Cheerful Female Friend speaks for all of America. So testifies the box office!
BAKERS DOZEN (Estimates) 01 THE LORAX $70.7 new 02 PROJECT X $20.7 new 03 ACT OF VALOR $13.7 (cum. $45.2) 04 SAFE HOUSE $7.2 (cum. $108.2) 05 TYLER PERRY'S GOOD DEEDS $7 (cum. $25.7) 06 JOURNEY 2 THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND $6.9 (cum. $85.6) 07 THE VOW $6.1 ($111.7) 08 THIS MEANS WAR $5.6 (cum. $41.6) 09 GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE $4.7 (cum. $44.8) 10 THE ARTIST $3.9 (cum. $37)
Reese, Amanda, and Jen have seen better box office days
• BLONDE BUT BANKABLE? Reese Witherspoon's movies are generally expensive to make but that return on investment these days. Yikes. This Means War is still a long way from recouping its budget. Jennifer Aniston movies have always had schizophrenic box office performance but Wanderlust is definitely on the weak side of her ticket-selling. How on earth was that sperm-switching comedy more attractive to moviegoers than this one? Meanwhile Amanda Seyfried hasn't been able to scare up crowds from Gone which is weirder. It's a genre flick and can't those usually open even without a name? $8 million for a serial killer picture after two weeks? Ouch. I'm sure it doesn't help that the ads totally make it seem like something Ashley Judd was making in the early 90s.
• EXCUSE ME, BUT WHO IS PAYING TO SEE GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE? I mean, besides our masochistic Michael C. It's already made more money than 2011's "Best Picture"... which had a big uptick post Oscar of course (The Artist's co-nominees took falls but Hugo fell only 14% despite also debuting on DVD so maybe its constant name-checking on Sunday night convinced some holdouts?)
• A SEPARATION more than doubled its screen count and had its first million dollar weekend, bringing its total to $3.7 million at the US box office. That there is a big big number for a non-genre subtitled picture.
What did you see this weekend? Was it worth the money? I was having an offline recuperation weekend so I went to see a Norwegian band at The Bitter End that one of my friends recommended called Mhoo. They're so good. Have a listen!
They told me they're going to SXSW so if you're heading to that festival check them out.
Even when I'm at non-film events I can't stop thinking of movies. While the girls were singing I kept thinking "Kiki Dunst and Leelee Sobieski should play them in a movie!"
It's long been my goal to up the visibility of the craft of costume design here at The Film Experience. So when the W.E. team was making the press rounds, I jumped at the chance to talk with Arianne Phillips, who has long been a designer I admire both for her technical and visual invention and for her uncanny ability to hit the pop cultural bullseye with instantly memorable looks whether she's designing for musicians (including longtime collaborator Madonna) or for actors. Her film career took off with the one-two comic book punch of The Crow (1994) and Tank Girl (1995). And it's continued to fascinate through Hedwig and the Angry Inch and on to her first Oscar nomination for Walk the Line (2005).
Arianne Phillips in front of her W.E. costumes. Photo via Society News
She received her second nomination last month forW.E. (2011) which has an absurd amount of use for her skills. In my mind they really ought to have done away with typical star "billing" and listed Arianna Phillips up top. No disrespect intended to Abbie Cornish and Andrea Riseborough, who lead the picture through its double-sided narrative.
Years before W.E. materialized Phillips has been living her own double-sided career "by design". Arianne speaks with a mixture of confidence, sincerity and appreciated bluntness: she agrees that costume designers don't get enough credit calling it an "a gorllina in the room. It's such an annoyance" but she corrects my slight misunderstanding about her past collaborations with musicians. She freelances as a stylist and editor for print photography, concerts and music videos. She doesn't dress stars for events.
a recent Madonna/Riseborough photoshoot styled by Arianne
I do videos and album covers, mostly narrative based: fantasy, illusion and character. It's very connected to film. You're creating the fantasy of who that person is. -Arianne Phillips on her second career as a fashion editor and stylist.
Tuesday, May 26, 2015 at 4:00PM 
We're celebrating 1979 this month so let's talk about one of its most underused / overtalented showbiz babies: LAURA BENANTI.
