Tweetweek: Sleepovers, time loops, and one very gay summer

First, two tweets that stunned us in their perceptiveness. Exactly right on both counts.

Long overdue rewatch of A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE and it occurs to me that the exact same narrative material that is dealt with here in 96 minutes would now cover five seasons of a ‘prestige’ streaming drama.

— Jeff Billington (@faces_of_jeff) June 30, 2022

the multiverse and time loops displaced time travel as a genre bc we no longer agree on the past or believe in the future, just infinite minuscule variations on the present

— Tony Tulathimutte (@tonytula) July 5, 2022

More curated and mostly amusing tweets for you after the jump featuring George Clooney's batsuit, Barbie sleepovers, a perplexing Dianne Wiest situation, Alien  & Predator trivia, the summer of 92 at the movies, and more ...

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Smackdown '86: Tess, Piper, Mary Elizabeth, Dame Maggie, and Dianne Wiest!

Welcome back to the Supporting Actress Smackdown. Each month we pick an Oscar vintage to explore through the lens of actressing at the edges. This episode takes us back to 1986.  

THE NOMINEES  For the 1986 film year the Academy honored three newbies (Tess Harper, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Dianne Wiest) the latter of whom would become a two-time winner, and welcomed back two veterans (two time winner Maggie Smith and previous nominee Piper Laurie). The characters assembled were a nosy cousin, a savvy girlfriend, a neurotic actress, a spinster chaperone, and an estranged mother.

THE PANELISTS Here to talk about these performances and films with your host Nathaniel are two regular TFE voices Cláudio Alves and Lynn Lee as well as civil rights attorney / cinephile Jonathan Diaz, and writer/cartoonist Rob Kirby.

 SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN + PODCAST  
The companion podcast is embedded in this post and can also be heard at Spotify, Stitcher, iTunes...

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2 days til Oscar.

by Nathaniel R

Streep's 2 wins

Our final predictions will be up tonight but until then let's share a bunch of lists using the number two as inspiration...

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Showbiz History: An Unmarried Woman, Oscar Balloting, and Hula Hoops

7 random things that happened on this day, March 5th, in showbiz history...

Best Actor and Best Actress, Victor McLaglen & Bette Davis

1936 The 8th Academy Awards are held honoring the best of 1935. Victor McLaglen (The Informer) and Bette Davis (Dangerous) take the acting Oscars. Mutiny on the Bounty wins Best Picture (and nothing else). That happened three times in the first eight years of Oscar history and has literally never happened since. That same night John Ford wins the first of his four Best Director prizes (the all time record) for The Informer. Curiously only one of his Best Director wins, How Green Was My Valley, came with a companion Best Picture win. (So he's like if you combined Alfonso Cuaron and Ang Lee's records, both of whom have won twice without a companion Best Picture win, and rewrote history -- which we'd sure like to *cough Brokeback* -- to add in 1 random Best Picture win.) The four wins without much help from Best Picture frontrunner status is such a crazy record if you think on it for even half a second. It's hard to imagine that it will ever be broken...

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Lunchtime Poll: When was the last time a movie or show gave you whiplash?

by Nathaniel R

- Tell me who you are!
- I'm the worst mistake you'll ever mistake.

Watching I Don't Care (reviewed by Christopher) was a whiplash experience. I was absolutely loving it until I suddenly wasn't. Thirty-six minutes into the movie Dean (Chris Messina) arrives into Marla's (Rosamund Pike) office, to start what is essentially act two of a three act. Two sharks begin speaking in human voices, their teeth gleaming imagining fleshy bites and blood in the water. It's a superb scene. A few minutes later another violent verbal duet with Dianne Wiest.  All three actors are on absolute fire with impeccably judged reaction shots, expressive body language, and nastily imaginative line-readings. I Care A Lot felt, in that ten minute stretch, like it was taking off into the stratosphere. This is an "A" grade pitch-black comedy! The movie throws everything at you thereafter -- incidents, twists, more verbal duels, violence, and a score so aggressively present you want to remind it that Rosamund Pike has top billing-- but it's a case of either too much or rapidly dimishing returns.  I was actively annoyed and disappointed for the entire third act. 

When was the last time this happened to you? Love and hate in almost equal measure while watching a movie?