Beauty vs Beast: Hannah's Sisters

Jason from MNPP here, looking out across this rainy New York City day and thinking of Woody Allen, as I'm wont to do. Today specifically we're thinking about his great 1986 film Hannah and Her Sisters, because today is the great Dianne Wiest's birthday, and that film won Wiest her first of two much deserved Oscars. (It doesn't hurt that the movie just celebrated its 30th anniversary on March 14th.) So today's edition of our "Beauty vs Beast" series it is!

We're facing off the "and the Sisters" of the title -- Weist as the recovering actress Holly and Barbara Hershey as the brother-in-law snatching Lee. Granted the awardage (and the general consensus that she totally deserved it too) might immediately tilt this contest in Wiest's direction in your mind, but slow yourself and don't make the mistake of under-valuing Barbara Hershey's fine work in the film; she makes the difficult and confused character of Lee pretty darn sympathetic and funny too. Much to my emotional consternation if they made online quizzes asking us which of the three sisters we are in this film I am sure I'd end up being a Lee.

PREVIOUSLY Last week nathaniel took over and delightfully went Full Tabloid, asking you to choose between the recently y'all to choose between the recently fractured power-couple Bennifer 2.0 -- y'all had the good sense to stand with Jennifer Garner to the tune of just under 70% of the vote. Said John T:

""I mean ehh on both of them but Jen seems like a nice person off screen and Ben like a jackass. As they're both gorgeous I will use that as my tiebreaker"

Links

Fistful of Film Fisti is sharing 100 reasons why Xavier Dolan's Mommy is his all time favorite film
Buzzfeed has an extensive interesting essay on Jennifer Garner's transformation from promising actress to magazine-celebrity mom
Tracking Board Bong Joon-Ho (Snowpiercer, Mother) is doing a monster movie for Netflix that will star the Gyllenhaal, Tilda, Kelly Macdonald and Lily Collins. Somehow they chose the only boring cast member in that list for the photo

Pajiba 11 examples of terrible singing in movie musicals - fine list except for including Christian Bale & Ewan McGregor - love both of those performances and I'm a total nitpicker with movie musicals
Demanders great piece on The Flash's vision of masculinity (so different than other superheroes, thank god)
Ali Benz "Reasons why Nicole Kidman is a legend"
Towleroad wide ranging Sir Ian McKellen interview with Owen Jones
Playbill The Fosters had a musical Romeo & Juliet episode
AV Club an archive of unsold TV pilots
Variety Jenna Dewan Tatum (Mrs Channing Tatum) will host a new dance competition series for ABC
The Russo Brothers show "Chris Evans" the finished Captain America: Civil War and get his reaction. What's his favorite part?
Guardian has a very oddly timed screed against the mediocrity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Oddly timed because a certain DC behemoth is opening right now and...
Rotten Tomatoes... reviews are abysmal for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

Titles / Release Dates:
Woody Allen's 2016 picture (starring Steve Carell, Kristen Stewart, Parker Posey and more) takes place in the 1930s and is called Cafe Society. It might debut at Cannes; Ben Affleck's next Oscar hopeful as a director, the Prohibition era drama Live by Night (which he also stars in) will open October 20th, 2017 

OffScreen For Fun
Cracked 10 Facts to make you feel better about the upcoming presidential election
Kenneth in the (212) a catty meme
The Gaily Grind  Easter Egg Butts (nsfw)

Important!
Goldie Hawn has joined Instagram.

My happy hour cocktail 🍸#greenjuice

A video posted by Goldie Hawn (@officialgoldiehawn) on Mar 9, 2016 at 6:37pm PST

 

Beauty vs. Beast: Ben v Jennifer

Generally speaking The Film Experience is not deeply invested in any celebrity relationship offscreen w/ a couple of notable exceptions. The larger media, quite to the contrary, doesn't obsess over acting but over famous actors. With Jason on vacation, it is left to me Nathaniel, to exorcize our annoyance over the media's ubiquitous obsession with the long breaking-up of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner (they've been divorced for nine months and somehow they're still showing up in every news feed daily). Ben & Jen are two of our most seemingly normal and thus dullest celebrities offscreen, so we're not sure why people care.

But since people do, let's use them for today's Beauty vs Beast and be done with them as a unit since they themselves are already done with them!

 Speak now. Make your case in the comments or forever hold your peace.

PREVIOUSLY
We asked for a rematch between Bill the Butcher (Daniel) and Amsterdam Vallon (Leo) via those Gangs of New York. It was a landslide for glass eyed Bill, who buried Amsterdam with 91% of the vote.  The prevailing sentiment was that it would be so. Squasher and BVR agreed: 

This isn't a fair fight.

Please. It's not even a contest.

Tuesday Top Ten: Oscar Fashion

Jose here, reporting for red carpet duty, and wishing I was half as cool as perennial nominee Sandy Powell (pictured left).

Full disclosure: I did not watch the Oscars on Sunday. I know, I know (I will be banished from TFE soon or burned at the stake later this week and you know what my last words will be) --  so all my red carpet knowledge is coming from pictures. If there was a fabulous dress that made an appearance during the ceremony I missed it, but expect you all to fill me in in the comments. Perhaps it was my general boredom with this particular awards season, or people taking less fashion risks than usual, but it was a lackluster affair when it came to most red carpets, and the Oscars were no different. Seriously, off the top of your head, can you come up with three or five iconic looks that people will be talking about for years to come, from this season? 

Without further ado, the ten best looks on Oscar night...

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10 years later: Elektra, the last female superhero

Tim here, with a palate cleanser. We’re all in hardcore Nominations Eve mode, of course, but the world of movies is broader than the couple dozen films that are about to be granted the right to put the words "Academy Award Nominated" on their DVD cases. Much, much broader. As broad as you can imagine. Nope, broader still.

About as far from Oscar worthiness as it gets – no matter how much or how little sarcasm you layer around the phrase "Oscar worthy" – we find a certain Elektra, which opened ten years ago on this very day. It's not the kind of movie that typically gets fêted on its birthday: it's very, very bad, but not so transfixingly bad that it developed a cult of ironic worship. [More...]

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