Splendid Sally makes "Maudie" a delight

by Murtada

If you are a fan of Sally Hawkins then Maudie is a gift full of joy made just for you. Hawkins plays real life folk artist Maud Lewis, a smart lively woman who’s hunched with crippled hands from arthritis, as she finds solace and purpose in becoming an artist. Maud works a housekeeper for a hardened reclusive bachelor, Everett Lewis (Ethan Hawke). Of course she thaws his heart and they eventually couple up. The film is a two-hander even as Hawkins is its unquestionable center and beam of delight...

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May!

And you... and you... and you... you're gonna love May! 🎵

That's my promise to you readers. We're planning to work our asses off this month for you after a slow April. When you feel energy comin' off the blog, given back in the form of comments, shares, donations, good vibes, or subscriptions, won'cha?

May is the month of the Virgin Mary, emerald birthstones, Tauruses and Geminis, and all sorts of ultra specific things you can celebrate on this very day if you're feeling festive.

10 things work celebrating on this day in history (May 1st) after the jump including Batman and our third living 100 year-old movie star...

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Stage Door: "Dead Poet's Society"

Andy Warhol's prescient statement 'in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes' has been requoted to death. If he had been even more specific in his prophesies he could have added '...and every movie made in the 80s and 90s movie will become a stage play.' The latest film to make the jump is Peter Weir's boy's school drama Dead Poet's Society which was a big hit with the public and Oscar in 1989. For those who've never seen it (I'm sure you're out there somewhere) Robin Williams plays an unconventional teacher who convinces high school boys to "carpe diem / seize the day!" but this inspirational message has unintended tragic consequences when one boy's dream (Robert Sean Leonard) clashes with his reality in the form of a disapproving father. In the new play film actors Jason Sudeikis and Thomas Mann (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, The Stanford Prison Experiment) get those two marquee roles...

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Reader's Choice: a look back at Gattaca (1997)

Welcome to the new bi-weekly series "Reader's Choice." For the first episode I gave you a choice of several films currently streaming and you picked Gattaca (on Amazon Prime). I hope you enjoy and comment since we haven't talked about this movie ever, that I can recall. - Nathaniel

Memories of Gattaca are fuzzy at best. I saw it only once in theaters 19 years ago. I remember: Jude Law in a wheelchair; sterile, sleek, and awesome production design; Uma Thurman being an icy receptionist?; Ethan Hawke being less of a perfect specimen than Jude Law in the context of the movie (this remains true out of context); a hard to buy premise about violence being bred out of the human race?; something about brothers swimming? That's it. 

Join me in this revisit...

A fascinating juxtaposition: When the costume design credit arrives we're looking at a naked body

Gattaca begins with a beautiful blue credits sequence which becomes eerier as it goes along once you realize what its macro imagery is telling you. Ethan Hawke is ridding himself of all human detritus: dead flesh, body hair, cuticles, until he's smooth as a statue. He repeats this in several ways though sometimes (at work) the detritus isn't his. All the workers at his job get their fingers pricked upon entering like its a diabetic research center. There are even daily urine tests... which seems extreme for a world that's so into cleanliness. What if someone misses the specimen cup? 

At the pee test the doctor (Xander Berkeley) looks right at his penis and says the following. [more...]

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Valentine's - Before Sunset

Team Experience is citing favorite love scenes. Here's Chris...

Richard Linklater's Before... trilogy is the perfect love story for the hopeless-romantic-turned-cynic in all of us. The romance between Jesse and Celine (Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy giving their flawless best) is the kind of pure human connection that we hope for in adulthood, and only the tiniest bit of the fairy tale we're promised in youth. Each of the series' three chapters were released nine years after its predecessor, with the years in between a surprise for the audience. [more...]

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