You Can Count On Me: Fraternal Cinema

In preparation for Thursday's Smackdown Team Experience is traveling back to 2000.

by Cláudio Alves

Mainstream cinema, such as it is, has an understandable fondness for the portrayal of interpersonal relationships. That's what happens when narrative cinema dominates and character-based drama is the rule. Nevertheless, it's interesting to note how some bonds are more privileged than others in storytelling. Romantic love is common. Friendship has its own subgenres. Parents and children are at the center of many tales. Enemies, rivals, hateful adversaries have their place too. But sibling relationships, though very common in life, are very rarely at the forefront of any given motion picture. Consequentially, when such a film appears, there's an added value to its existence. At least, that's how I feel.

Kenneth Lonergan's debut feature, You Can Count On Me, is probably one of the best examples of this rare fraternal cinema…

Click to read more ...

Beauty vs Beast: Sibling Rivalry

Jason from MNPP here wishing us all the happiest Lovely Laura Linney Day! Today Linney is celebrating her 54th birthday, which means we're celebrating as well because she's a national treasure that one. But that happiness and celebration might not last long, I ruin everything, because I'm about to force a horrible choice on you with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" contest and ask you to consider choosing between the siblings of Kenneth Lonergan's 2000 sibling masterpiece You Can Count On Me -- Linney's hometown mama and boss-schtupper Sammy versus Mark Ruffalo's home-crashing money-grubbing seatbealt-wearing Terry. Vote and then tell us why you voted how you voted down below in the comments!

surveys

PREVIOUSLY Last week's Best Actor contest handed Timothee Chalamet a win as sound (to the tune of 87% of the vote!) as his trounced competitor Gary Oldman's eventual win at the Oscars next month is assured, so let's just enjoy us getting it right anyway. Said hepwa (and this is a fine list that I'd love to hear if anybody has any of their own to add to this list, too):

"There are five great young male performances in the past forty years, in chronological order: Dennis Christopher in "Breaking Away", Michael O'Keefe in "The Great Santini", Timothy Hutton in "Ordinary People", River Phoenix in "Running On Empty" and now Timothee Chalamet in "Call Me by Your Name"."

6 Days Until Oscar: Manchester vs Hacksaw vs Lion

With 6 days to go until the big show, let's play like we did with 8 days, and look at the Best Picture nominees with that particular number of nominations. Three movies received six nominations this time though they'll facing off less directly and only in the marquee categories at that. Nevertheless, remove the other nominees from the equation for this exercize and tell us who wins in these particular face-offs...

HACKSAW RIDGE	LION	MANCHESTER
Their six nominations
Picture	Picture	Picture
Director		Director
Actor Andrew Garfield		Actor Casey Affleck
	Supporting Actress Nicole Kidman	Supporting Actress Michelle Williams
	Supporting Actor Dev Patel	Supporting Actor Lucas Hedges
	Adapted Screenplay
		Original Screenplay
	Cinematography
Film Editing
	Original Score
Sound Mixing
Sound Editing

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

Click to read more ...

27 days until Oscar

Here are 27 ways you can celebrate today...

Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill01 Ponder Winston Churchill's awards pull after John Lithgow's SAG win last night for the crown and Gary Oldman's upcoming portrayal in Darkest Hours... will we be talking about that next year at this time? The beloved Prime Minister's very big deal state funeral was held on this day in 1965
02 Go see Fences which won two SAG awards last night
03 Then read some more August Wilson and decide which upcoming adaptation you're most excited to see
04 Send out those invites to your Oscar party - time's a wastin'. Or
05 ...RSVP to that Oscar party if you're not hosting one.
06 Go see Hidden Figures which took the "outstanding cast" prize
07 Wish two time Oscar winner Gene Hackman a happy 87th birthday and beg him to come out of retirement
08 Watch Vanessa Redgrave's Oscar winning turn in Julia (1977) on her 80th birthday today because it's streaming on Netflix 

19 more ways to celebrate today after the jump...

Click to read more ...

The Oscar Week

In this weekly feature from Murtada we will follow the Oscar contenders and examine how their many interviews and appearances impact their chances. This week we check in with Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, Ryan Reynolds, and Michelle Williams.

Emma Stone
It seems every week there is some event or interview with one of the stars of La La Land. That campaign is going on full throttle to maintain the film’s frontrunner status...

Click to read more ...