That Shakespeare + Gods & Monsters conversation

We received word from readers that the Apple Podcast/iTunes service has suddenly gone glitchy with The Film Experience so we wanted to let you know that you can also listen on Stitcher or on Spotify if you haven't yet given the conversation a go. One more round of applause please for writer/director/showrunner Leslye Headland (Russian Doll, The Acolyte), actor Mitch Silpa (Bridesmaids, The Heat), DJ Rob Campion (Cooler Than Ecto), writer Jenelle Riley (Variety), and animator/illustrator Dashiell Silva. 

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Conversation Index (74 minutes)

00:01 - Introduction of the Smackdown Panel and the 1998 Nominees
04:00 - Primary Colors. What works (Kathy Bates) and what doesn't, and how it plays in today's much different political climate.
15:41 - A detour to the 2020 Oscar race and "Da Butt"
17:00 - Hilary and Jackie's odd structure, sadness porn, and tortured artists
28:30 - A detour to The English Patient (1996) and the Weinstein/Miramax industrial complex
34:45 - Shakespeare in Love "a rom-com for theater nerds". Why Judi Dench deserved the Oscar.
50:20 - The disastrous miscalculations of Little Voice, and Brenda Blethyn, hot off of Secrets & Lies
59:30 - Gods and Monsters, hampered by its budget, and maybe even its Oscar winning screenplay. Beautiful performances!
1:12:28 - Wrap-up / Goodbyes.

And in case you missed our 1998 "extras" we revisited Velvet Goldmine, High Art, Beloved, Central Station, The Prince of Egypt, A Bug's Life, The Truman Show, Hollywood's onslaught of blonde ingenues, and the pop culture hits that year. 

Smackdown '98: Kathy, Brenda, Dame Judi, Rachel, and Lynn

Welcome back to the Supporting Actress Smackdown. Each month we pick an Oscar vintage to explore through the lens of actressing at the edges. This episode takes us back to 1998. 

THE NOMINEES  A politically savvy lesbian, a bawdy working-class mother, a theater-loving Queen, a failed musician / devoted sister, and a homophobic immigrant housekeeper in Hollywood walk into the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion...

For the 1998 film year, the Academy invited one new actress (Rachel Griffiths) to their Supporting club while offering a second nomination to four respected women of a certain age (Dame Judi Dench, Brenda Blethyn, Lynn Redgraves) only one of whom (Kathy Bates) had already won.

THE PANELISTS Here to talk about these performances and films are (in alpha order) DJ Rob Champion, Writer/Director Leslye Headland, Journalist and playwright Jenelle Riley, Actor/writer Mitch Silpa, Illustrator Dashiell Silva and, as ever, your host Nathaniel R. Let's begin...

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Vintage '98

The Smackdown of '98 (with special guests) arrives in just one week. Before we get to the main event let's just soak in that year a bit. Were you old enough to be conscious of pop culture in that year? If so, nostalgia warning. If not, here's what people were talking about before your time.

Great Big Box Office Hits: Titanic (1997) reigned long into 1998 as the then the biggest hit of all time. In fact it didn't fully cede the #1 of the weekend placement from Christmas '97 through Easter of '98. What's more it didn't leave the top ten box office chart until JUNE. That kind of run is unthinkable now. But the biggest hits released in the actual calendar year of 1998 were...

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A look back at Gods and Monsters (1998)

Please welcome guest contributor Anna to discuss Gods and Monsters for its 20th anniversary. You can follow her on Twitter @MovieNut14

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Based on Christopher Bram’s novel "Father of Frankenstein," Gods and Monsters – which references a line from Bride of Frankenstein – focuses on the final months of retired film director James Whale (Ian McKellen). Recovering from a series of minor strokes, he lives alone with his housemaid Hanna (Lynn Redgrave) and memories of his past. Because of his weakening state, he slips into a depression and contemplates suicide (which he would ultimately follow through in 1957). But the presence of gardener Clay Boone (Brendan Fraser) gives the aging man something to live for...

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Gods, Monsters, and Master Detectives

JA from MNPP here - want to feel old? Well here ya go - in two months time Bill Condon's Gods & Monsters is turning 15 years old. Fifteen! Some of you were probably barely even born, but I was in college working at the local movie-house and man, that movie bowled me over. It's easily my favorite thing that Condon's ever done, but then it was about movies, monsters, and prime Brendan Fraser's towel half falling off while he wore a gas mask, so it was pretty much made just for me. And remember how McKellen brought a hot young thing as his date to the Oscars? McKellen totally should have won the statue that year though. (Let us not speak of who did.)

Anyway I bring up G&M for a reason - McKellen and Condon are set to reunite finally! Next year they're going to make A Slight Trick of the Mind, which is an adaptation of a 2006 Sherlock Holmes book written by Mitch Cullin. It's about a long retired Sherlock who gets pulled back into a mystery that he'd never been able to solve. Have any of you read it? This will be Condon's follow-up to The Fifth Estate, the Cumberbatch-starring bio-pic of Julian Assange hitting this Fall.