anything can happen in the woods... ♪ can i link you?

LA Curbed Character actress extraordinaire Agnes Moorehead's was apparently a wealthy gal. Her former home is going for $19 million. Whoa!
Empire new stills from The Imitation Game which I'm hearing very positive buzz on
HuffPo remembers Batman (1989) with pictures from the original premiere. Such a blast from the past. Remember when Robert Downey Jr and Sarah Jessica Parker were a couple!? Glenn Close looks so young. Anybody know the unnamed woman with Tim Burton?
In Contention Kris Tapley also paid tribute to the film which he says he owes... a lot

Movie Mezzanine Lars von Trier was making movies about "rape culture" before it had a name. Discussion of Dogville & Breaking the Waves
/Film Steven Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience (2009) is becoming a TV series. Lodge Kerrigan who made the disturbing indie Clean, Shaven (1993) and the actress Amy Seimetz are writing and directing.
VF Hollywood Katey Rich on Gary Oldman's angry comments defending Mel Gibson and Alec Baldwin's language
Vulture Hollywood's leading men arranged by height with Kevin Hart and Daniel Radcliffe as the tiniest though weirdly they skip the very tallest ones like Hugh Jackman (6'2") and Chris Hemsworth (nearly 6'3") 
Buzzfeed Daniel Radcliffe sorts celebrities into Hogwarts houses. Streep for Gryffindor ("because she's awesome"), Jon Hamm for Hufflepuff, Benedict Cumberbatch for Ravenclaw, etcetera  
In Contention composer Alexandre Desplat to head the Venice Film Festival jury
Sir Ian McKellen he's now "Doctor" Sir Ian McKellen 

Corrections or Damage Control?
Stephen Sondheim has issued a clarifying statement about Into the Woods after all the negative reaction to the changes he said Disney made. Time has passed since he made the comment...

...I had not yet seen a full rough cut of the movie. Coincidentally, I saw it immediately after leaving the meeting and, having now seen it a couple of times, I can happily report that it is not only a faithful adaptation of the show, it is a first-rate movie.

And for those who care, as the teachers did, the Prince's dalliance is still in the movie, and so is "Any Moment."

I'm not sure I trust Sondheim to judge a movie. He also approved damaging changes to the film version of Sweeney Todd and just because you're a genius in one medium, doesn't mean you know what's best or even good in another.

Two Tweets
Yeah, yeah, I'm quoting myself but for those of you who aren't on twitter I'd thought you'd enjoy/relate...

Everytime someone mentions a World Cup match my first thought is "yes, but what are they submitting 4 Best Foreign Film this year?"

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) June 23, 2014

And my favorite Tweet of the day because it's good lolz

His heart was black. Blacker than midnight, blacker than tar, but not quite as black as Fairuza Balk's eyeliner in The Craft.

— Molly Manglewood (@undeadmolly) June 23, 2014

Podcast: 2004 Anniversary Party w/ Top Ten Lists

For this hour long special edition of the podcast, we took Joe Reid's suggestion and are having ourselves a theme party. The theme is 2004, and on its tenth anniversary Nathaniel, Nick and Joe marvel at what a rich cinematic year it was and how well the highlights have endured. 

We begin with movies we think we should revisit or have shifted in our memory and then compare top ten lists. Movies discussed include but are not limited to: Dogville, Bad Education, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Tarnation, Before Sunset, Blissfully Yours, Shaun of the Dead, Sideways, House of Flying Daggers, Primer, Vera Drake, and Maria Full of Grace among others. 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download the conversation on iTunes. Continue the conversation with your own 2004 memories and revisits in the comments.

2004 Top Ten Party

To Nicole on Her 46th Birthday

Tim here. The career and talents of Nicole Kidman have been well-examined at the Film Experience through the years, but never by me. So I hope you’ll forgive the indulgence if I take advantage of her birthday to launch into a little celebration of my favorite working actress, one of the only people in the world with a legitimate claim to being both movie star and serious artist. For every big bit of Hollywood nonsense she deepens and improves with her steady presence, there’s an adventurous, even dangerous film that she makes with some of the most interesting directors out there, and she’s equally great in both modes, the odd Stepford Wives remake notwithstanding.

To celebrate, I'd like to share my 5 favorite Kidman performances, in chronological order:

Grace Stewart, The Others (2001)
I yield to no one in my love of Moulin Rouge! and Kidman’s performance therein, but this has always been my pick for her best performance of 2001, and not least because Alejandro Amenábar is less interested in ceding huge chunks of the film’s landscape to her than Baz Luhrmann. Providing the human core to an abnormally handsome, ultimately generic haunted house movie couldn’t have been anyone’s idea of a rewarding assignment, but Kidman dives with intelligence and restraint into the role of a stern matriarch, terrified by the empty old house she lives in. She turns out a leading performance that is deeply sensitive and wounding (that meeting with her husband!) while also paying scrupulous attention to the mechanical needs of the horror script. She’s especially good at converting the twist ending from something ludicrous into a genuinely moving moment.

four more after the jump

Click to read more ...

Take Three: John Hurt

Craig here with the third season of Take Three. Today: John Hurt

Take One: Brighton Rock (2010)
Hurt has alternated starring roles with supporting performances since he began acting in films with The Wild and the Willing in 1962. The amount of quality supporting turns he’s delivered over the years is vast: 10 Rillington Place, Midnight Express, The Shout, The Hit, Scandal, The Field, Contact, The Proposition, Melancholia, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy are a mere few. His fine turn as accountant Phil Corkery in the Brighton Rock remake (backing up Helen Mirren, Sam Riley, Andrea Riseborough and Andy Serkis) is a recent solid addition to the list and deserves due credit. Phil’s a gaunt shambles, but loyal to Mirren’s Ida, his long-time crush. He’s one of the old guard. A proud man accustomed to propping up bars whilst waxing forth about the state of the world. He’s the kind of bloke who changes his bow tie each day but wears out the same coat and pork-pie hat. Hurt blusters when faced with the criminal element, but in his staunch moral belief and touching devotion to Ida he comes through. Hurt’s on the sidelines for much of the time, but it’s to his credit that he’s still willing to, at this later stage in his career, take small parts when he believes in the material. He adds a nod of class to the film. That he gives us a characterful turn in only a handful of scenes – a minor glimmer amid a career of solid gems – owes much to his mastery of screen acting.

Take Two: Dogville (2003) with a nod to Manderlay (2005)
We don’t see Hurt in Dogville. But I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking that they recall him being in it – so vivid is his contribution to Lars von Trier’s polemic-play.

He’s the narrator of events at Kidman’s damned mountain hideout, a disembodied stream of words. He's a sage, an all-knowing set of omniscient vocal chords from above (and he is above, isn’t he?). Yet he’s an intrinsic part of the film as its voice, conveying the fabric of the town. From the opening moments he smoothly introduces us to the inhabitants of von Trier's alloegorial enclave yet he does so with just the tiniest creakiest sliver of alarm. Dogville was an inventive stage-bound tale and Hurt the vocal master of ceremonies relaying to us the trials of the belligerent lives treading the chalk-outlined boards. Maybe ol’ Lars saw Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound (deftly narrated by, and starring, a sly Hurt) prior to choosing his Dogville storyteller. Or maybe – I prefer to think – he saw 2000’s The Tigger Movie (deftly narrated by a cuddly Hurt). Either way, Hurt’s narrator combines the shrewdness of a learned professor and the wise experience of a well-travelled uncle. It may seem a slight cheat to include Hurt’s throat work in Dogville, but his was the key, albeit invisible, performance. He may not have been in every scene, but he was within them; the thread binding Dogville together.

Take Three: The Elephant Man (1980)
Hurt and David Lynch set a particularly high bar for cinematic portrayals rich in tender empathy with The Elephant Man. It was brought about thanks to Mel Brooks’ love of Eraserhead, given its own surreal signature by Lynch’s astute direction, and completed by Hurt’s compassionate performance as ill-fated circus act John Merrick. His BAFTA winning and Oscar-nominated performance is rightly regarded as one of the best of the ‘80s. The performance's initial impression are made through a distorted middle-class accent, a laboured walk and a cloth bag covering his head which itself is shaped in elephantine fashion. But as the film continues it becomes a fully embodied performance.

Hurt plays beautifully off the facial reactions of his fellow actors: Anthony Hopkins, Hannah Gordon, Anne Bancroft and John Gielgud all convey various concerns that we as an audience are also experiencing. A great deal of Hurt's power in the role comes through his ability to create heart-rending drama through poignant interaction. Hurt's palpable delight at 19th Century niceties as Merrick revels in the elegance of high society is captivating. We’re with him in his discovery of refinement and eventual acceptance, so that when, as his condition dictates, he succumbs to inevitable death our feelings go beyond sadness into near empathic despair.

At the halfway mark Merrick sees a drawing of a child sleeping and forlonly turns to Anthony Hopkins' Treves.

Merrick: I wish I could sleep like normal people. Can you cure me?
Treves: No. We can care for you but we can't cure you.
Merrick: No, I thought not."

This last line comes without fuss or delay but with only a dreadful knowing. Hurt creates in Merrick a refined man of wonder -- it’s the age itself that's ugly. The Elephant Man is a heartbreaking experience every time. Now, ‘scuse me, I appear to have something in my eye...

Three more films for the taking: Alien (1979), Love and Death on Long Island (1997), V for Vendetta (2006). Previously on Take Three: Melissa Leo