Red Carpet: BAFTA PreParty, Sci-Tech, and WGA

Eight beauties for you this afternoon as we get closer and closer to Oscar and more and more awards are handed out. We'll know the BAFTA winners in a few hours (though they still don't televise it live making it hard to take seriously in this day and age) but here are four women from the pre-party.

Sandy Powell (just interviewed!), Dakota Johnson, Cate Blanchett, and Bel Powley. Was the dress code black and white? 

Olivia Munn co-hosted the Academy's Sci-Tech Awards. Meanwhile at the WGA Awards, Adepero Oduye (gorgeous in yellow!) showed up to support The Big Short, Gina Gershon, and Diane Lane were also out on the red carpet. Olivia's busy but these other three deserve bigger roles than they've been getting -- they've got the talent and the charisma for them. Hopefully the guild members, all writers after all, will be inspired by their presence to create richer roles for them or actresses like them. 

WGA WINNERS
Original SPOTLIGHT
Adapted THE BIG SHORT
Documentary GOING CLEAR
Television FARGO

We've every reason to expect that Original and Adapted will tilt the same way at the Oscars on the 28th but what do you think is running second in both races? We're guessing Inside Out (Original)  in distant second and Room (Adapted) a closer second.

Podcast: Anomalisa & Great Films to Stream Right Now

Previously on Pt 1: The Hateful Eight and Comedy Performances of 2015

Pt 2 is here now. Joe, Katey and Nick --soldiering on awesomely without Nathaniel at this week's recording session -- are talking Anomalisa, and streaming recommendations to complete your film year. I hope you enjoy their conversation as much as I did! 

36 minutes 
00:01 Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson's Anomalisa has attracted obsessed fans. Do Katey, Joe and Nick number among them? Find out. 
14:40 Reader Question: Great performances in not so great films? When actors do all the work themselves. 
20:10 Catching up with 2015 films we missed. Streaming recommendations!
34:30 Goodbyes & Plugs & Happy New Year

Films discussed include but are not limited to: Phoenix, The Man From UNCLE, Blackhat, and Goodnight Mommy  

Further Reading: 
Joe's Decider column on future cult classics
Nick's new giant Actress project 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. 

Anomalisa, Phoenix, and More...

Tippi's Brood

In deference to Marnie's fear of red, we presume to imagine, Classic Hitchcock heroine Tippi Hedren's brood all arrived in black for the annual Women in Hollywood event. From left to right: Dakota Johnson (50 Shades of Granddaughter), Tippi Hedren (The Original), Melanie Griffith (her Bad Seed), and Stella Banderas (The Baby). 

That's three generations of film stars. The only non-leading lady among them is Stella. Do you think she'll also be a force given that both of her parents were significant movie stars in their heyday? She just turned 19 and her only real movie role to date was as a toddler for them. She was just 3 when she appeared in Mama Melanie & Papa Antonio's Crazy in Alabama (1999).

A Splash of Sexy

 ...Murtada here with a very important question: Is this the sexiest family vacation photo of all time? 

It must be. Matthias Schoenaerts in all his manly glory, Ralph Fiennes giving us foxy intellectual older gentleman, Dakota Johnson lovely as a blond. And of course no words needed for Tilda Swinton (as they never do her justice). In their new film Tilda and Matthias are a famous married couple on vacation in Italy when Ralph and his screen daughter Dakota arrive to visit them unexpectedly. Trouble follows. 

A Bigger Splash is one of our most anticipated 2015 movies, and this newly released photo is a “GIMME NOW”. No wonder it looks so much more enthralling than the usual publicity still -  it was shot by Italian fashion photographer Paolo Roversi. The four pairs of blue eyes staring at us, invoke David Hockney’s same titled 1967 painting, that we assume has inspired the filmmakers.

For a change of pace let's talk about the guys and not the actresses. If you’ve seen Rust and Bone (2012) or Bullhead (2011) you know that Schoenaerts is sexy trouble on screen. However in his English language movies, he hasn’t fired up the screen quite as boldly despite an alluring duet with Carey Mulligan earlier this year in Far From the Madding Crowd. Schoenaerts also gives good quote.

"I’m also an animal. I can also be a beast. I know about sex”.

So the idea of him playing a rock star in a thriller about sexual intrigue has us captivated beyond words.

For a while Fiennes lost his sexy mojo. That glistening beauty in turmoil that made us fall in love when The English Patient (1996) came out had vanished. However with his delectable, funny and oh so sexy M. Gustave last year he got it back. And from the looks of this, he kept it.

This quartet might win awards at Venice, where A Bigger Splash is in competition, but they’ve already won our anticipation and impatience. That red carpet will be on fire.

Can you think of other cinematic quartets this sexy?  

We Can't Wait! #11: "A Bigger Splash"

Team Experience is counting down our 15 most anticipated for 2015. Here's Nathaniel... 

Who & What: No, kids. NOT the watery pop art David Hockney painting. Not even the highly naked 70s era fictionalized bio sprung from that painting, though we'd happily see that too should someone screen it. (Curators?) What it is is FINALLY the Luca Gaudagino follow up to I Am Love which topped our charts when it was released in 2010. That film's inimitable star Tilda Swinton and its gifted cinematographer Yorick Le Saux (Only Lovers Left Alive) and editor Walter Fasano are all returning. New collaborators are production designer Maria Djurkovic (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Imitation Game), Dakota Johnson untied, and two of the best male screen actors in the world in Ralph Fiennes and Matthias Schoenaerts.  

Here's the only photo that I'm aware of from the set:

Why We're Excited About It: Swinton and Fiennes hinted at fabulous chemistry in Grand Budapest Hotel in their ultra brief screentime together. They're playing ex-lovers this time -- with Tilda married to Schoenaerts so just those names all smooshed together in a daisy chain sound like a bodice ripper for art film fans. The characters all collide on vacation in Italy including Fiennes screen daughter (Dakota Johnson) and things get... well, no spoilers but there's obviously TROUBLE and that trouble is at least somewhat sexual. It's adapted from La Piscine (1969) a French film starring the beauteous coupling of Alain Delon & Romy Schneider. If you want spoilers, go there. 

What if It All Goes Wrong: Guadagnino has been doing shorts and documentaries for the past several years after I Am Love, just as he had before that international breakthrough. Following up a masterpiece is never easy. It's probably not safe to expect something that brilliant again though we wish him enormous success so he might finally get that proposed remake of Auntie Mame with Tilda in the leading role made after all. Another concern: Margot Robbie was originally cast in Dakota's part and, ,apologies to Dakota, but that feels like a downgrade on the evidence of what we've seen so far from both of them.

When: Fox Searchlight has distribution rights for America and filming has wrapped so we'd expect a TIFF or Telluride bow followed by a November or December release if people are wild for it. But you never know. I Am Love did Venice and TIFF in 2009 and then waited until summer of 2010 for release. 

previously in We Can't Wait, Kate Winslet in The Dressmaker