Frances McDormand & McDonagh's "Three Billboards..."

Chris here. Provocateur playwright/filmmaker Martin McDonagh has a new movie coming this year, and like some of his plays the title is a mouthful. Get ready for [deep breath] Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri, about a woman seeking justice for the local authorities' poor handling of her child's death.

What's most exciting about this round of McDonagh acidity is that the typically male-focused writer-director is giving us a female protagonist. And star Frances McDormand is quite a perfect fit to deliver his tricky balance of dry humor, tragedy, and bitter allegory. Her work looks to be a real showcase. Are you already picturing a bleep-heavy Oscar clip? She's surrounded by a solid ensemble which includes Woody Harrelson, Sam Rockwell, and John Hawkes.

It's strange the film has no release date considering we have a full-length trailer, so maybe this one is Cannes bound before awards season? McDonagh won an Oscar for his short Six Shooter before bringing In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths to the screen. This looks like another step up with some gorgeous, brooding visuals and typically ferocious dialogue. Could this be a potential awards player for more than McDormand? Take a look at the first foulmouthed NSFW trailer...

Frances McDormand: from Blood Simple (1984) to Olive Kitteridge (2014)

1984 is our year of the month for August. Here's Matthew Eng to talk about a treasured actor that made her on camera debut back then...

For the better half of her nearly four-decade film career, Meryl Streep has managed to compel generations of moviegoers to accept a self-styled character actress as not only an acting heroine for the ages but also a bona fide movie star with mass-market appeal and unimpeachable box office credentials. Like no other actress since Bette Davis, Streep has perfected a once-unfeasible practice of playing the sort of idiosyncratic women she has always drifted towards, but within the safe confines of midrange, studio-supported moviemaking that seems to satisfy audience expectations as well as her own.

Sometimes Streep’s projects—and, it must be said, Streep herself—can disappoint. For every quietly graceful gem (like her underrated Hope Springs performance) or skillfully uninhibited turn (as in the best passages of It’s Complicated), there are another two or three within Streep’s latter-day canon that could stand some sharper finesse or at least more dexterous directorial guidance. Whenever I’m let down to by Streep, I can’t help but wonder what one of her less-viable peers might do with the opportunities that are scarce for any actress born before the Kennedy administration and which Streep barely has to put up a fight for.

The Beginning: Blood Simple (1984); The Most Recent Triumph: Olive Kitteridge (2014)

For as long as I can remember, Frances McDormand has served as the purest and most intimidating embodiment of what a character actor should be. “That woman has no vanity,” my mom remarked with clear admiration after watching her in Lisa Cholodenko’s Olive Kitteridge, where McDormand delivers one of the decade’s most masterful star turns, a perfectly prickly meeting of actor and role that might have been a surefire Oscar winner had the project aimed for a bigger screen...

Click to read more ...

Happy Birthday, Frances McDormand

Kieran, here. There are certain actors whose absence would create a huge void in cinema. It’s not always the movie stars, despite their merits. It’s often the character actors. The beautiful, interesting, wholly human faces that populate our films, only semi-regularly leaping forward to truly headline a vehicle, but still remaining a vital part of the movies we love. Few actors working today embody this more fully than the wondrously versatile, endlessly watchable Frances McDormand whose entry into the world we celebrate today.

What’s your favorite Frances McDormand performance? Okay...that’s a rhetorical question. We all know what it is. But her filmography is diverse and fascinating to explore, who what's your #2?

Frances McDormand’s 5 Best Movie Performances

 5. Burn After Reading (2008)
Broad, but undeniably funny and completely understanding the tone of the vehicle. Mileage varies in terms of McDormand’s many outings with the Coen Brothers, but it’s almost never uninteresting... 

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Podcast: Cannes 1996 Revisit

Nathaniel, Nick, and Joe revisit the Cannes film festival of 1996 (you might wanna quickly check that lineup & those prizes before listening) and the Best Actress race that started there. We also recommend other 1996 goodies that you may or may not have seen... or thought of in years.

Index (43 minutes)
00:01 Intro, Juries, and Crash's audacity prize
03:00 Best Actress: McDormand (Fargo) vs Blethyn (Secrets & Lies) vs Watson (Breaking the Waves)
10:09 Goodbye South Goodbye, The Eighth Day, Pillow Book, and Microcosmos
17:50 Trainspotting, Flirting With Disaster, A Self Made Hero, Lone Star, and Love Serenade
30:07 David Cronenberg's Crash
37:45 We each recommend a few more 1996 titles from Bound to The Long Kiss Goodnight

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversation in the comments. Which 1996 picture have you still not seen? Who got your Best Actress vote that year?

tfw when you're turned on by car crashes

Articles We Mention
• 5 Contentious Cannes Juries 
• Nick's Annual Cannes Project 
• Nick on Cronenberg's Crash 

Cannes 1996. Recommendations

In Ebbing

Jason from MNPP here with today's best news if you ask me, and you didn't, but here I am anyway -- perhaps you'd heard about In Bruges writer-director Martin McDonagh's new film when it first got announced back in September? You had to at least have heard the whooping sound I made since it was very loud, for Martin McDonagh's new film is going to star Frances McDormand.

Frances McDormand!!! You know her recently from scowling through last year's awards-shows even though she gave probably the best performance out of anybody at said awards-shows in HBO's Olive Kitteredge. Scowl away as much as you want, glorious Frances, you have earned it. (McDormand-related side-note: yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the release of Fargo, meaning yesterday was also the start of my 20-year torrid love-affair with Frances McDormand from afar, and over at my own site I made a list all about that movie's ladies -- check it out here.)

Anyway McDonagh's new film is called Three Bridges Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which is a title I want to give a great big bear hug to, and it's about a woman who takes on the local police after her daughter is killed. They are set to start filming in April, so today's news is casting news! The always-under-appreciated Woody Harrelson has just joined the cast -- Woody is very nearly always the best thing happening in his projects (he gave five times the performance McConaughey did in True Detective for example) and yet nobody takes decent notice. Take notice!

And then there's Sam Rockwell, who worked with McDonagh on Seven Psychopaths, who is also on board for Ebbing. He too is also a right and proper good egg, that Rockwell. All signs for this movie point to "Heck Yeah!"

One thing though: I do hope that we hear more actresses' names dropped into the cast, since McDonagh's films are always heavy on the sausage-fest (poor Abbie Cornish in Psychopaths) and having McDormand in the lead's giving me hope that he wants to broaden that POV out a bit with, you know, some broads. Wonderful broads!