Team Experience: Great Losers, Actress Edition (Pt. 2)

As long time readers know The Film Experience started out as a one-man show. That man being myself, Nathaniel R. (Remember in Ye Olden Times when posting two goodies a week made you a prolific must-read web star? I still remember David Poland's Hot Button which did just that!) Over the years the royal "We" has stopped being royal and become literal... both from necessity of content-need and desire of companionship - writing can be lonely! I still do the bulk of the posting but now there are a handful of regular columnists and a dozen more occasional voices. Seeking out perspectives other than one's own keeps you fresh and alert. 

So I love these Team perspectives (and I love Amir for dreaming them up / hosting them!) even when they cause me pain. Of course, I get to vote too but, being a Benevolent Dictator, my vote only counts once. DAMNIT. Which is to say that though I loved reading the "Team Top Ten: Oscar's Greatest Losers Best Actress Edition" I was more than a little freaked out not to see a picture of unravelling Deanie in her bathtub staring back at me needily.

the best performance of 1961: Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass

Where is Natalie Wood in Splendor in the Grass?!?" 

I bellowed internally.

Then I imagine this reaction was shared by many of you 'out there in the dark' albeit with a rotating snubbed actress /film causing the indignation. As it turns out Natalie Wood did make lists other than my own but not enough to secure her a top ten placement. Natalie and other divas who missed the list are after the jump...

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Reader Spotlight: Zé Vozone

We're getting to know The Film Experience community with little spotlights on YOU the readers. Here's Zé from Portugal who you've talked to in the comments section as he's a regular.

What's your earliest movie memory?

Zé: The dinner scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, what with the beetle hors d'oeuvres and the "chilled monkey brains". I live for Kate Capshaw's histrionics in that scene and throughout the whole movie.

Your three favorite directors?

Zé: Roman Polanski, David Lynch and John Cassavetes 

When did you start reading The Film Experience?

During the 2006 Oscar season. I had always been a huge movie and awards buff and in that year I was particularly outraged that Helen Mirren (who I nevertheless thought was wonderful in The Queen) was steamrolling what I thought was one of the best Lead Actress line-ups ever. So more than ever I started looking up "second opinions" on the matter and eventually ran into The Film Experience, where you had just awarded Meryl the gold medal for Prada. I loved the weekly charts for each category and the more I explored the more I came to appreciate such a witty, unpretentious and most of all passionate take on cinema, its history and the inevitably love/hate affair we have with The Academy Awards. 

I've always loved the special care you give to actressing without ever disregarding other aspects of moviemaking. I do admit having a bit of nostalgia when I go dig for old posts. Speaking of which, the quartet with you, Joe, Katey and Nick on podcast is one of the msot delightful online experiences out there. I still crack up thinking about that mess of the 2008/2009 awards season and those back-to-back Globe/SAG podcasts, with Nick being pissed off at Salma Hayek for going all "there she is. my sister. my friend. it's an honour to be presenting this movie on which my soulmate's in" to everything Penelope Cruz-related and how Meryl reenacted the running through the woods scene in Mamma Mia! after beating Kate Winslet at the SAGs. The best!

Nick is too funny. Speaking of that moment... which 3 movies make you running screaming like Meryl, filled with crazy joy? 

I have to go with both Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. Can we count them as one? They're so different though... I watched both back to back when Sunset came out and I was like 16, and for a while I was in the narrow camp which preferred the whole naive and carefree vibe of Sunrise. As the years have gone by though it's been Sunset that keeps hitting home. I don't think I've seen any other movie where a feeling and the chemistry between the two leads remains so intact 9 years after the first was made. It's mesmerizing that they made that specific format work.

Zé's first actress crush reveals...awesome taste!

Same Time, Next Year used to be a (random) favorite of mine when I was a kid. I watched it like a gazillion times and again the uncomplicated nature with which those two characters so genuinely enjoyed each other's company really moved me. Ellen Burstyn was the first of my (many) actress crushes. I was 8 or 9 when I watched Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore for the first time, and that was probably the moment the Oscars really started meaning something to me as my mom told me she had won.

I can't not talk about Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. At first I found it extremely depressing even though I kept watching it. I thought that ending was so disencouraging, that yeah you just have to deal with the fact that you can't live without a relationship which is way past its expiration date. But now I have a brighter take on being dependable and that needing someone is can actually be a sweet thing.

I'm seeing a weird pattern in these three... so I'm going to say The Witches. "You may remove... YOUR VIGS!"

Previous Reader Spotlights

Stage Door: "Picnic" Packs a Lot of Starpower

Occasionally on Mondays, Broadway's "dark" night, or uh... It's Wednesday (oops!)... we'll talk theater.

As I sat waiting for the revival of William Inge's "Picnic"  to begin in its new Broadway run, I noticed that I couldn't keep my mitts off of Sebastian Stan. Playbills can get so smudgy if you keep pawing at them but it couldn't be helped with his face so blown up big on the program. The collection of actors onstage was about to experience the same handsy problem with Sebastian Stan as "Hal" the hunky drifter in this classic drama about the power of beauty and the complications of sexual attraction. Only it wasn't his face they wanted to rub themselves all over.

No sooner had the play begun than Ellen Burstyn was talking him out of his clothing (please to note: Sebastian Stan has been working out. A lot. God bless, presumably, Captain America: The Winter Soldier in which he'll square off with Chris Evans as his former friend 'Bucky' now resurrected/brainwashed as an arch enemy.) He spends the better part of the three act play sweaty and shirtless or half sweaty-shirted if you will.

more after the jump...

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Stripper of the Day: Jacy Farrow

Michael C here. I think it's safe to say a lot more people can relate to Cybil Sheperd's striptease in Bogdonavich's The Last Picture Show than they can to Magic Mike.

Strippers in movies usually hit the stage with the confidence of Greek Gods and the choreography of Madonna's back-up dancers. Rarely do movies strippers capture the truth that even for people as stunning as a young Cybil Shepherd, the idea of undressing in front of a room full of strangers is the stuff of nightmares.  The Last Picture Show Bogdanovitch captures that feeling in excruciating detail.

In one of those scenes impossible to forget once seen, Sheperd's small town heartbreaker Jacy Farrow has given her sweetheart the slip and run off with doofy Randy Quaid to an out-of-town party where it's rumored there will be skinny-dipping. Cut to a record player and a dozen naked Texas teens arrayed around an indoor pool, filmed by Bogdonavich with a matter-of-factness that must have left jaws on the floor in 1971. 

come on in, the water's fine

One of the ringleaders delights in informing Jacy that newcomers have to undress out on the diving board in full view of everybody. Jacy feebly agrees, and it's here that the tension spikes...

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "The Exorcist"

The Hit Me With Your Best Shot series is deceptively simple. Choose a single shot from a pre-selected movie that you think is best, best being in the eye of the beholder. Tonight we're looking at The Exorcist (1973). And for me at least, it's the first time I've looked at it. That's not quite as shocking as your 12 year old daughter's head spinning 'round 180º, but maybe it's close.

Nearly every horror classic I've seen I've resisted in some ridiculous way: I saw Halloween at a sleepover movie marathon but it took my horror-loving friend five holidays to convince me; I first saw Silence of the Lambs because I had five nightmares about it beforehand and wanted them to end; I can't remember what prompted Rosemary's Baby but I'm willing to bet that I rented the video five times before actually watching it. And so on. 

If I was ever going to watch The Exorcist, the power of blogging would have to compel me. And so it did.

And here we are in the haunted upstairs bedrooms of actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) and her daughter Regan (Linda Blair). The first thing that impressed me about the  movie was how rooted in character it was. Director William Friedkin and the novelist screenwriter William Peter Blatty spend more than half hour with the four main characters before the devil (The Devil?) crashes the party. The first shot that I truly loved foreshadowed the horrors to come in a wonderfully lived-in nonchalant way. After Chris MacNeil unleashes a stream of profanity on an angry phone call (including, pointedly, several "Jesus Christ!"s) we cut to the middle of the night when she's woken by a phone call. I love that the shot starts in the dark and when Chris flips on the light the only face that's really illuminated, given her bleary banged face, is Regan's in a photo on the bedstand; the young girl looks actively worried for her mother which is a brilliant set decoration move. Chris hangs up the phone and the camera tracks her movements to the right until we and she realize that her daughter has crawled into bed with her. It's the first time Regan is essentially split in the film, surrounding her anxious still oblivious mother.

Chris: What are you doing here?
Regan: My bed was shaking. I can't get to sleep.

Here in a sweet mother/daughter moment, Regan's telling us where all the horror will be found. The next voice we here, overlap edited over the end of this shot but just barely is the devil's if you want to get metaphoric about it is Captain Howdy's (The Devil's) who is banging about in the attic. Oh Chris, soon to be overwhelmed Chris, it's not rats. 

The Exorcist builds beautifully towards its truly grotesque last act but at least half of the reason it's so effective is that it never forgets who is terrified while it's terrifying us. My second favorite shot in the film is a beautifully quiet character beat for the title character(s) in the "intermission" of the exorcism. 

The Exorcist(s): Father Karras and Father Merrin

One of the movie's most disturbing famous images is "Help me" scrawled on Regan's stomach from the inside.  If Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller) were to remove his clothing, wouldn't we see a similar cry for help from his private hell?

It's these quiet glimpses of internal terror that really sell the movie for me, whether it's Ellen Burstyn's increasing impotent understanding (when no one else has accepted it -- not even the priests) or Father Karras's personal doubts. This silence, this vacuum, lets the terror flood in, often courtesy of the Oscar winning sound work. In the shot above we still hear Regan's possessed wheezing from inside the bedroom, less shocking but even more unsettling than her loud profane outbursts.

This push and pull between external and internal terror, room-shaking chaos and sudden absences of sound but for Exorcist chanting to fill the void powers, for me, the most hypnotic shot in the film. The room suddenly goes quiet and we see Regan lift off the bed in crucifix pose until she's nearly touching the ceiling. A simple familiar image, yes, like you'd see in a magic show. But somehow alien and unnatural, too. Only the exorcists can break this unholy spell.

The Power of Blog Compels Them
Movies Kick Ass is Hollywood the devil?
The Tomas Experience "as sure as the sun rises, you can find evil anywhere"
Film Actually the mysteries of faith and science
The Sketchy Details Regan split in two
Antagony & Ecstasy a single mother's personal hell
Cheerful Cynicism the slow burn is the best part 
Cinesnatch has mixed feelings about the movie 
Okinawa Assault colours and threats 
Encore's World is moved by the mother/daughter bond 
Beau McCoy "The Exorcist and Nothingness" 
Stranger than Most find horror in the hospital
Pussy Goes Grrr "body and soul" and Linda Blair's eyes

Next Wednesday: Edward Scissorhands (1990)... will we catch you dancing in it?
Previously: Pariah (2011), Raise the Red Lantern (1991),  Serenity (2005)