Review: Bill & Ted Face the Music

by Lynn Lee

Until a couple of weeks ago I had never seen any of the Bill & Ted movies, despite being a late Gen-Xer and longstanding fan of Keanu Reeves.  Now, having watched all three in a row, I can confirm most triumphantly that if you enjoyed the first two, you will have a bodacious time watching the third.  If you’re a Bill & Ted-curious newcomer, I recommend giving Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure a whirl first and seeing if you dig its vibe.  If not, the latest installment, Bill & Ted Face the Music, probably won’t do anything for you.

For me, getting a crash course in Bill & Ted three decades after their debut was a pleasantly surreal experience.  Not that they were total strangers to me; any adolescent with any exposure to pop culture in the ’90s had at least some familiarity with the amiably vacuous duo, their iconic SoCal-inflected catchphrases, and their penchant for spontaneous air guitar in response to anything that pleased them.  But seeing them in their original context felt like jumping into their rickety phone booth and traveling back to a more innocent time – for both me and them...

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2005: When Tilda Swinton went full Hollywood

Please welcome back former contributor Sean Donovan who returns to the fold...

With the 2005 Supporting Actress Smackdown quickly approaching TFE, let’s take a moment to think about a future Best Supporting Actress winner who was just then gathering her strength, summoning her powers of fierce alien glamour, and dipping a toe into Hollywood. 2005 was a pivotal year for Tilda Swinton in that it was her first engagement with big budget genre filmmaking. Tilda had found her way onto some Hollywood projects prior to this -- The Beach (2000) with Leonardo DiCaprio, Vanilla Sky (2001) with Tom Cruise, Jonze and Kaufman’s contemporary classic Adaptation (where she briefly shares the screen with Meryl Streep and my little gay heart explodes) -- but 2005 brought bombast, costuming, and blockbuster genre storytelling to her body of work...

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Almost There: River Phoenix in "My Own Private Idaho"

This article is dedicated to Mark, one of our subscribers (thank you!), who requested a piece on River Phoenix -Editor.

by Cláudio Alves

It's difficult to write, it's difficult to think, about River Phoenix without the tragedy of his premature death casting a dark shadow over all other considerations. His acting is often talked about in terms of wasted potential, another facet of the same mythos that James Dean inhabits in the public consciousness. Sure, his film work is important, but only as far as it adds to the narrative of a flame that burned too bright and died out too soon. That can be a blessing to one's legacy, a promise of cultural immortality. However, it's also a curse that makes a young actor's amazing career into a footnote of a Hollywood tale of doom and gloom. River Phoenix was and is more than the protagonist of a real-life story about dying young. He's a great actor, one whose performances still have the power to amaze and impress, to enlighten and hurt.

This piece is about such a feat of acting, one that takes my breath away every time I gaze upon its magnificence. It's about River Phoenix in Gus van Sant's My Own Private Idaho…

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Curio: Viola and "Firsts" on Vanity Fair Covers

For this week's Curio let's talk the history of magazine covers rather than fan art.

Isn't the new Vanity Fair cover a beauty?! Viola Davis's profile has gotten a lot of attention but so has the fact that this is the first cover in VF's history to be shot by a black photographer. The name of that very talented man is Dario Calmese and he's previously shot George MacKay and Billy Porter for the magazine.

There's a lot of outrage online: how can this be the first after 100 years? Because we grew up as magazine junkies (before the internet *gasp*) this factoid is interesting and indeed outrageous but also a bit misleading. We'll talk about that in a hot second but first let's focus on the beauty and power of VIOLA DAVIS who we're so proud to have been stanning right here since 2002 when we gave her a gold medal in our annual awards six years before the world at large caught on. Our awards were only celebrating their 3rd birthday then.

How time flies. Now she's a superstar and who is more deserving? No one...

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Tweetweek: Special Gallows Humor Episode

This message popped up on Twitter and we all had a good laugh about it. Niche humor for Oscar watchers only but something might be wrong with Twitter's notification algorithms.

They are??? pic.twitter.com/5RRsUkMzwW

— Kevin Jacobsen (@Kevin_Jacobsen) April 24, 2020

More after the jump including Mad Men, proprietary feelings about Keanu Reeves, a Nicole Kidman ditty, Simu Liu's quarantine and lots of gallows humor because that's the world we're living in...

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