Earth Girls Are Linky

Cinema Enthusiast double features Bette Davis & Miriam Hopkins in The Old Maid (1939) and Old Acquaintance(1943)
The Dissolve this sounds potentially amazing: Jonny Greenwood will play his score to live screenings of There Will Be Blood this summer and fall
Comics Alliance a brief very selective snapshot of Spider-Man convoluted history

MNPP says good morning to Rami Malek (The Master, Short Term 12). What do you make of him? I haven't yet formed an opinion. No discernible projected persona yet though that could well be an advantage at this early stage of his career.
/Film Joe Quesada talks about planning for binge-watching in series construction with Marvel's Daredevil series (due in 2015) 
Playbill because all big 80s and 90s movie hits will eventually become stage musicals (only 107 left to go), 2015 will bring us Bull Durham. If it's any good expect whoever plays Annie Savoy to win the Tony like Susan Sarandon shoulda won the Oscar (that she wasn't nominated for). 
Awards Daily Sashas surveys the very strong Godzilla reviews but then hoists a really frightening Oscar idea on us. Don't scare me like that. The Oscars aren't meant to be the Blockbuster Movie Awards (remember those?). Big blockbusters already get Oscar attention. No sense giving them their own category beyond visual effects. Look at how embarrassing those "genre" categories are at the Critics Choice Awards each year!  
Coming Soons Open Road will distribute Jon Stewart's true story political drama Rosewater starring Gael García Bernal & Shohreh Aghdashloo this fall. Yay| 

Today's Must Read. 
Serious Film the 8 kinds of awful people at movie screening Q&As. This is a good read to prep you for any film festival you plan on attending. Do not be any of these people. Sadly, they are legion. 

Weird Coincidence
Last night I asked The Boyfriend what he was reading and he said "this National Book award finalist 'The Flamethrowers'. It's about this woman in the 70s artworld and her Italian lover." And then this afternoon I read that they're making a movie of it and Jane Campion is in talks to direct. It's in the air, I guess. But The Film Experience is always YES for more Jane Campion. Let's bulk up that filmography which has been quiet all too long. 

Today in History...

Earth Girls are Easy debuted in movie theaters 25 years ago today. That was before barely anybody knew what Jim Carrey might look like under his bright red fur but when everyone knew that Mr & Mrs Jeff Goldblum/Geena Davis were a hot mutant thing, whether crossing interspecies intergalactic lines (this), giving birth to larvae babys (The Fly! ewwww), or sending up vampire movies (Translvania 6-5000). The towering 80s movie couple (six foot plus!) didn't make it too far into the next decade, though, divorcing in 1990.

April Showers: Thelma & Louise

waterworks all month long... this one's from the vaults

Tonight's shower is provided by mother nature rather than traditional indoor plumbing. That's appropriate since Thelma & Louise (1991) is elemental: all wide open spaces, blazing sun, dusty earth and women as hard driving forces of nature.

While the film belongs to Susan Sarandon's Louise, Geena Davis's Thelma is the maddening/adorable one. Among her many exasperating yet endearing qualities is her uninhibited horniness for one J.D. (early Brad Pitt). In the still above, Louise has booted the caddish hitchhiker out of their car since the friends are getting hotel rooms for the night. J.D. struts away into the rain shower, fully confident that Thelma's eyes are still on him. He even kicks up a boot heel, a private little show for her, as the car drives away.

There he goes. I love watching him go.

Wrangler butts drive her nuts... or something.

 

If you've seen more than two or three movies in your lifetime you'll know that this lustfully observed exit will not be J.D.'s exit from the movie. But Thelma apparently hasn't seen so many movies. She's surprised (and thrilled) when he comes a'knocking on her hotel room door later that same night.

J.D. is such a skilled charmer that the outcome of his neighborly call is never in doubt. The aw shucks grin is ease itself. He even knows just how to pose in the pouring rain so that the water runs, just so, off his cowboy hat. This 'I'll get out of your hair now' wet puppy act is all pretense. He's no puppy but a dog. He knows he's getting out of the rain. He knows he's getting into her bed.

Do you remember the first time you saw Brad Pitt in a movie? This was mine. 
 

"That was a tough summer for me and Modine"

GEENA DAVIS. God, we haven't seen her in way too long.  Here she is poking fun of her movie past (Yes, you were Thelma!) and a fun shout out to Matthew Modine, too.

Geena Davis Archery Tricks from Geena Davis

The Linking Daylights

Variety's "The Vote" looks at all time great film scores
NYT remembers voice actress Lucille Bliss (RIP) the voice of Smurfette and Anastasia in Cinderella. 
Art of the Title Sequence has a cup of fresh coffee with Cabin in the Woods
EW watch Anthony Hopkins become Hitchcock in under a minute (though in real life it took an hour and a half each day 
In Contention Angelina Jolie campaigning for Ewan McGregor's work in The Impossible. Whoa

Unreality Marvel superheroines as Bond Girls
Salon uh oh Activists claim that 27 animals have died making The Hobbit films 
Pajiba shows us Val Kilmer and Joann Whaley's kids all grown up. Think they'll be actors? I always wished that Whaley had had a better career. Loved her in Scandal and Willow.
Movie|Line Ryan Gosling's beat up face on the Only God Forgives poster 
IndieWire first Joaquin and now Anthony Hopkins calling Oscar campaigns "disgusting" 
French Premiere the semi-finalist list for the Best Newcomer prizes at the Césars in France. Expect a nomination at least for Matthias Schoenaerts for his awesome double attention-grabber Bullhead and Rust & Bone  
The Playlist fun gallery of behind the scenes shots from Kill Bill
Awards Daily James Franco made a music video. Lindsay Lohan is in it 

And finally here's Jeremy Renner making fun of Hawkeye on SNL...

It'd definitely been the year or archery what with Brave, The Avengers and The Hunger Games among the top blockbusters. And now we have gifted archers on two television series: Revolution and Arrow... which is also about a guy who shoots arrows. That's kind of his thing. Before this trend dies a swift death from ubiquity, can someone please give actual archer and awesome actress Geena Davis a good role and combine the two?

Oscar Horrors: Be Impressed. Be Very Impressed with The Fly's makeup

Team Film Experience is celebrating the rare Oscar nominated and winning contributions to horror films. Today Craig buzzes in with the latest edition of Oscar Horrors.

Here Lies... the remnants of the Brundlefly that Chris Walas and Stephen Dupuis (who went on to win the Best Makeup Oscar) lovingly crafted for David Cronenberg’s 1986 re-masterpiece The Fly. I don’t think they were there at the ceremony to collect it but they had it teleported to them within seconds of their names being read out.

As we know from the film, Jeff Goldblum becomes attached to a pesky, common housefly at a genetic level: he metamorphoses in a major way. Like, bummer. It was Walas and Dupuis’ job to make this as grotesquely memorable as possible. It’s fair to say they succeeded.

Walas – whose company, ‘Chris Walas, Inc.’, received first credit at the end of the film – went on to direct the sequel (which Dupuis also worked on) three years later. The makeup was definitely on par – dare I suggest slightly better – with other 1980s horror face- and game-changers The Thing, The Elephant Man and An American Werewolf in London. It was designed backwards – from full-on diseased Brundlemess at the end to light touch-up with some Max Factor at the start – and roughly created in eight stages. In accordance with this, and Goldblum’s fate, I’ll stage my Fly makeup celebration in bits, beginning from just after Goldblum teleported...

Stage One: Jeff has some increased strength thanks to the insect genes fused irreversibly with his cells. He’s full of beans and nigh-on always up for a spot of sexytime with a curiously indifferent Geena Davis. His idea of foreplay is to strip down and perform a few snazzy gymnastic moves on a horizontal bar like he’s trying out for the Olympics. Geena looks bored but straddles Jeff anyway.

Brundle-to-fly count: Jeff is roughly, I’d say, between 79 and 99% pure Brundle.

Makeup Check: There’s some light sweating from all the showing off/, so Jeff’s probably been given a once-over with a gentle covering of antiperspirant foundation; Geena has an emergency rouging because she looked a peaky. Measle-like blemishes and some protruding prickles on the shoulder blades mean a de-glistening and a bristle snip for Jeff.

Stages Two through Five after the jump. [Spoiler: He's fucked!]

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