Saturday, February 6, 2021 at 8:30AM 6 random things that happened on this day, February 6th, in showbiz history
1942 The comic western Valley of the Sun hits theaters. Hollywood was struggling to figure out what to do with Lucille Ball that decade. This was one of those 'well, how about this genre?' attempts...
Friday, September 18, 2020 at 6:58PM From guest contributor Matt St Clair...
Oscar Winner Julianne Moore stars in the latest entry of what’s suddenly become the Gloria Cinematic Universe. Mrs America starring Rose Byrne as Gloria Steinem is still fresh in the memory (and competing at the Emmys on Sunday). And after playing the titular heroine in Gloria Bell, Moore now plays the iconic Gloria Steinem in the upcoming biopic The Glorias, which once again has Moore playing a Gloria in glasses, and has a “glorious” new trailer. Let’s give this preview the Yes No Maybe So treatment and see whether you think it’s bound for “glory.” (Sorry)
The official IMDB synopsis:
The story of feminist icon Gloria Steinem's itinerant childhood's influence on her life as a writer, activist and organizer for women's rights worldwide.”
Friday, July 31, 2020 at 5:54PM by Deborah Lipp
In the second year of Oscar’s expanded, ten-nominee slate for Best Picture, the change proved its worth. The occassion was the nomination of The Kids are All Right, a film of such perfection that there can be no doubt of its worthiness, yet who could have imagined its inclusion? In 2010, we definitely weren’t ready for a queer picture to win, and ten years later, it seems like we’re still not ready for a female-centric film to win. But inclusion is victory, and anyone who watched The Kids are All Right solely because it was nominated was also a winner.
The Kids are All Right is an intimate and human movie. Everything and everyone here has skin that is fully lived-in, fully human, and perfectly, adorably messy...
Wednesday, June 24, 2020 at 9:37AM "The Furniture" is our series on Production Design by Daniel Walber. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.
Safe turns 25 years old this week. I’d say it’s “more relevant than ever,” but just typing those words felt ridiculous. Todd Haynes made Safe about the way America responded to AIDS, and that’s still relevant because America has not changed. And so here we are, in another crisis of public health, watching the same phenomena play out in similar ways.
Let's talk about two of them. First, the way that AIDS was ignored by those who saw themselves as unaffected, even immune. Reagan could choose to do nothing because, to so many Americans, it happened to “other people.” Second, the way that its victims were blamed for their own sickness. Contracting HIV was seen as the result of a moral failure - something we’ve seen time and again, from cholera and tuberculosis to SARS and COVID-19.
25 years later, another Republican president is playing the same game. The response has been a torrent of virulent racism and an utter denial of medical reality. And once again, there is a prevailing attitude that contracting the virus is one’s own fault.
Did rewatching Safe make me feel better about any of this? Absolutely not. But it did cause me to think about a new relevance...
Wednesday, June 17, 2020 at 4:12PM The Supporting Actress Smackdown series picks an Oscar vintage and explores.
THE NOMINEES Today's topic: 2002 which featured the movies Adaptation, The Hours, About Schmidt, and Best Picture champ Chicago. This very starry field of much-beloved actresses (all but one are now Oscar winners) deliver a juicy collection of characters: a horny mother-of-the-groom, a suicidal 50s housewife, an opportunistic prison warden, a fictionalized non-fiction writer, and a jazzbaby murderess.
THE PANEL Here to talk about these 2002 divas and their movies are comedian/writer Joel Kim Booster, comedian/writer Matt Rogers, Variety's Artisan's editor Jazz Tangcay, Vox's critic-at-large Emily VanDerWerff, and lip sync assassin Ben Yahr. And, as ever, your host at The Film Experience, Nathaniel R. Let's begin...
2002
SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN + PODCAST
The companion podcast can be downloaded at the bottom of this article or by visiting the iTunes page...
