60 Reasons Cinephiles Should Love Madonna

Happy 60th birthday to the coolest bitch in the world since 1958.

Because we are first and foremost a film site, here are 60 reasons you should love Madonna that are at connected to the cinema.

They're listed in no particular order, numbered only so we can keep count because when the subject is Madonna we tend to go on...

1. She makes a perfect animated character in the credits sequence of Who's That Girl  (1987)
2. She's been close friends forever with one of film & television's secret actress weapons, Debi Mazar
   
   
3. Dick Tracy (1990) is awesome.
4. As is Desperately Seeking Susan (1985).
5. She deserved a Best Original Song nomination for "Into the Groove" from Desperately Seeking Susan
6. She loves movies
7. "Greta Garbo, and Monroe..."

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Queer Roundup at GAZE International Film Festival

by Seán McGovern.

Last weekend I had the absolute pleasure of being invited to Dublin, Ireland to be on a jury of my queers at the 26th GAZE: International LGBT Film Festival. While it was fun to be back in MY HOME COUNTRY, it was even better to see such a diverse and compelling programme. After the jump a special spotlight on LGBT docs and the short film winners (and one spectacular narrative feature) which will be hopefully making it to a film festival near you soon. Don't forget to support queer cinema AND your local dive bar...

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Fantasia 2018: Cold Skin

by Jason Adams

The only child in me always dreams about and delights in films about people who've run away from the world of man to make a go of it by their lonesomes. They're duking it out with their own personal demons in the wilderness, of whatever sort, mano a mano. There's no greater fantasy of this sort than the Lighthouse Keeper. They wear thick-knit sweaters and write in their diaries and stare sadly into the distance at hella stormy seas - it's my fetish writ ten-fold. The old-timier the better - give me strange instruments and dials, knickers and elaborate mustaches, tweed piled to heaven, please and thank you.

Nobody tossed these fantasies into the abyss better than HP Lovecraft and Cold Skin, the new Lovecrafitan tale of terror from Frontier(s) and Hitman director Xavier Gens (it's actually based on a 2002 book by Albert Sanchez Pinol), is made of that same slippery stuff...

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TIFF Galas & Special Presentations Announced

by Nathaniel R

TIFF is around the corner y'all. Excited we are since it means the prestige film season and another round of Oscar madness is about to begin. For the first time TIFF has allowed The Film Experience two press passes so Chris Feil and Nathaniel R (that's me) will both be covering in real time for the whole fest from September 6th through the 16th. Today TIFF has announced the 47 films that will be featured in their Galas and Special Presentations sections. These are the two sections wherein you'll usually find the mainstream awards hopefuls shoulder-to-shoulder with more traditional festival fare and world cinema premieres. TIFF usually has hundreds of films so this is just the first announcement. 

The full list containing masterpieces and duds and everything inbetween (though we won't know which-is-which-is-which until we see them) is after the jump!

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Roma Takes New York

by Jason Adams

Set your calendars - the New York Film Festival is a mere seventy-two days away now! Running from September 28 to October 14 the 56th edition of my hometown's biggest fanciest movie celebration has just made its first programming announcement - this year's Centerpiece Film will be Alfonso Cuarón’s black-and-white autobiographical epic Roma! 

The movie charts the course of a family over the course of a year in middle-class Mexico City in the 1970s, and even though that seems straightforward it sounds like Cuarón is still experimenting with movie technology - NYFF promises that the film features "a sound design that represents something new in the medium." Well I'm curious!

Roma is owned by Netflix and got pushed out of consideration by Cannes because of their cantankerous relationship with the streamer - NYFF has no such qualms, having screened both Mudbound and The Meyerowitz Stories just last year, so we'll be some of the lucky movie-goers who see Cuarón's vision on a great big screen, lucky lucky us.