Beauty vs Beast: The Princesses of Borovnia

Jason from MNPP here -- with most holidays I think it would suck to share a birthday - who wants their birthday on Thanksgiving? Or even worse, Christmas? Everyone else getting presents on your day? What a nightmare. But Halloween is the exception - I would love my birthday to be on Halloween. Costume parties every year! A cake shaped like Frankenstein's head! Or even better - a cake shaped like the Bride of Frankenstein's head! (Because more cake.) 

And you wanna know who I bet has the best Halloween Birthday Parties? Peter Jackson, that's who. I bet he dresses up like the STD-riddled rabbit from Meet the Feebles or like the Mouth of Sauron every year. Damn you, Peter Jackson. 

Oh well - we'll go ahead and wish him a happy day today with this week's edition of "Beauty vs Beast" anyway, and since we're going to be seeing his 1994 masterpiece Heavenly Creatures on a big screen (with Film Experience fave Melanie Lynskey in person!) in just a couple of days thanks to the brand new Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn, we'll go with a show-down between teen dreamers Juliet (Kate Winslet) and Pauline (Lynskey). Good luck choosing with this Sophie's Choice, folks...

Instead of doing the usual "Previously On..." here (Eli won last week's Let the Right One In contest though) I want to keep aboard the Melanie Lynskey Express for a minute since we're here and she's wonderful and we all love her so - she's got a new movie coming out this weekend! It's called Rainbow Time and it stars Lynskey as a woman pulled into the weird relationship between two brothers (played by Timm Sharp and Linus Phillips) and the movie's really fine and funny and I highly recommend it. Watch the trailer now:

Throwback Fun: Favorites of 1994?

Tuesday's revisit to the essential and apparently sorely underseen Queen Margot (1994) and the comments thereafter had me thinking about favorite films from 1994. This website wasn't around back then of course (I think the internet was just in listserv mode at that point?) but I was already making lists. So what would I have nominated had our Film Bitch Awards been around back then? What would you have nominated had you had an Oscar ballot?

The answers (fluid as they are should rewatching ever occur) are after the jump...

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Top Ten 1990s

I promised longtime TFE super fan Ryan that I would one day write up a big top ten of the 90s piece although THIS IS NOT IT. This is like those tossed back "shots" of past decades wherein we tell each other our favorites. I'll tell you my ten favorites which are wildly unstable and could be replaced by anything in the "with apologies to" list if I'd ranked on another day. Well, not the top three. I mean... let's not get crazy.

1. The Piano (Jane Campion)
2. Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson)
3. Thelma & Louise (Ridley Scott)
4. Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson)
5. Beauty & The Beast (Trousdale & Wise)
6. All About My Mother (Pedro Almodóvar)
7. Trois Coleurs Trilogy (Krystof Kzielowski)
8. T2: Judgment Day (James Cameron)
9. Fargo (The Coen Bros)
10. Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino)

Most of them weren't even nominated for Best Picture. (Sigh). Oscar is so...

With apologies to 15 more. Let's call it a top 25: 
Being John Malkovich, Titanic, [safe], Howards End, The Thin Red Line, Se7en, The Truman Show, Schindler's List, The Silence of the Lambs, Postcards from the Edge, Edward Scissorhands, The Grifters, Waiting for Guffman, Husbands and Wives, and Election.

other "favs" if not all of them as 'respectable':
Death Becomes Her, Babe, Ed Wood, Dead Man Walking, Strictly Ballroom, Tie Me Up Tie Me Down, A League of Their Own, Addams Family Values, Bullets Over Broadway, Reality Bites, Queen Margot, Clueless, Romeo + Juliet, My Best Friend's Wedding, Wings of the Dove, Celebration, The Idiots, High Art, Velvet Goldmine, Run Lola Run, My Own Private Idaho, Priest, The Fisher King, Leaving Las Vegas and The Last of the Mohicans.

P.S. After Jurassic Park (best shot tomorrow night!), I promise we'll leave the 90s behind and come back to the now. So get it all out of your system in the comments!

Previous Top Ten Quickies
1930s | 1950s | 1970s | 1980s

Melanie Lynskey's Photos from the Set of "Teddy Bears"

[Editor's Note: The Film Experience is pleased to welcome Melanie Lynskey, star of Hello I Must Be Going (opening September 7th), as today's special guest blogger - Nathaniel R]

PHOTO TIME. I'm sharing photos! (Part 1)

Most of my old photos are at my parents house in New Zealand, but I did find one good oldie. So I will post one old one, and the rest are from four films I finished filming in the last year. That way I can totally plug those movies!

© Melanie Lynskey for The Film Experience

The first photo was taken at the Venice Film Festival in 1994. I want to tap myself on the shoulder and say, "hey, you're at the Venice Film Festival! Put some mascara on!" But I was going through a time in my life where I refused to wear makeup or high heels or anything form-fitted, partly to drive my mother crazy and partly because I was reading "The Beauty Myth" every few months and getting angrier every time. Also it would really delight Peter Jackson when I showed up to a premiere in Converse, and I love his little laugh, so I was happy enough. I love this picture because I am So. Excited. to be meeting the director of Reservoir Dogs. I love that Quentin Tarantino. (He literally would not stop talking long enough to get his picture taken, he's just carrying on with some amazing comprehensive story.) Sarah Pierse, who played my mother in Heavenly Creatures, is that gorgeous lady to my left. She's one of the greats, I think. An amazing actress. My beloved David Lynch was the head of the jury that year and I got to meet him. I cannot even tell you how into Twin Peaks I was at that point, not to mention the fact that I would re-watch one of his movies pretty much every weekend of my life. I started crying as soon as I was out of his sight. It was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to me.

This next little group of photos is from the movie Teddy Bears, which we filmed in April. I'm posting these photos to say look at this cast, yo!

Click to read more ...

Happy Birthday Peter Jackson!

In seems fitting yet not too obvious that Peter Jackson's birthday would be on Halloween. Imagine the costume fun one could cull from his films alone? 

Since today is his half century mark, we couldn't not tip our pointy Gandalf hats to the man. Whether you're counting down the days until he returns to The Shire with The Hobbit films or wishing he'd move away from Tolkien and on to greener other pastures, it's worth checking in on the official Hobbit blog from month to month (though they sadly haven't had a production video since July and those were fun.) 

Do you think The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) and The Hobbit: There and Back Again (2013) will continue the Rings Oscar streak? Perhaps you're more doubtful like me... even if The Hobbit films are great won't AMPAS voters feel that 11 Oscars in February 2004 was more than enough?

I would rank his films like so.

1. Heavenly Creatures (1994) -check out Melanie Lynskey's memoirs and our "Hit Me..." blog party if you're a fan of this brilliant hysteria.
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
5. King Kong (2005)
6. The Frighteners (1996) ...a revisit is definitely in order. Would I like it more or less?)
7. Meet the Feebles (1989)
8. Forgotten Silver (1995)
9. The Lovely Bones (2009)
   
   P.S. I have not seen Bad Taste (1987) or Dead Alive (1992) but I'm quite certain I'd prefer them to The Lovely Bones.

You?