Kirsten Dunst Becomes a God in Central Florida

By Spencer Coile 

Back in 2017, I wrote about Kirsten Dunst’s “return to glory” with her performances in The Beguiled and Woodshock. What I foresaw as glory didn’t exactly materialize - The Beguiled had its ardent fans but no real awards traction, Woodshock was quickly forgotten. Two years later, and Kirsten Dunst receives a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is center-stage in the Showtime original series, On Becoming a God in Central Florida, but for Dunst, something still feels missing. 

Her interview on SiriusXM’s “In Depth with Larry Flick” gave Dunst a chance to discuss how she feels slighted by the film industry - an industry that, she claims, pans her films and then celebrates them years later. Major awards? She’s nabbed two Golden Globe nominations and an Emmy nomination. She even won Best Actress at Cannes for Melancholia though that doesn’t necessarily translate to mainstream attention. It is our sincerest hope here at TFE that Kirsten Dunst’s performance on On Becoming a God in Central Florida starts getting her the credit she's deserved for decades...

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Beauty vs Beast: Girls Gone Wildin'

Happy Monday to one and all, Jason from MNPP here with this week's brand new edition of "Beauty vs Beast" -- enfant terrible provocateur Harmoney Korine is tossing another neon grenade our way this forthcoming Friday with his film The Beach Bum (reviewed at SXSW), twisting our sexual stoner preconceptions of Matthew McConaughey to suit his perverse needs. So for this week's contest, with Britney's voice still warbling in our heads, let's toss it back seven years to Korine's last much celebrated ode to the wacky Florida lifestyle, Spring Breakers.

In one corner we've got our four bikini kill co-eds (played by Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine) and everywhere else we've got the drug-dealing pistol-fellating Alien (James Franco), owner of shit.

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PREVIOUSLY I figured last week's Eternal Sunshine contest wouldn't be close but it really, really, wasn't close -- Kirsten Dunst walked away with 92% of the vote over Elijah Wood's mega-creep; said Fitz:

"Mary, Mary, Mary. No contest. I think Kirsten Dunst's performance, as a supporting actor, was perhaps more impressive than Kate Winslet's with the limited time she got. Mary's arc was devastating, and Dunst (no surprises) was heartbreaking in the role. Sadly—just another Oscar nod that was denied Dunst who should have at least 6 and 1 win by now (her turns in Melancholia, The Beguiled, Bachelorette, All Good Things, The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, The Cat's Meow, Eternal Sunshine, Interview with the Vampire were all Oscar-worthy performances)"

Beauty vs Beast: Won't You Remember Me

Jason from MNPP here on this chilly March afternoon thinking of leaving it all behind and boarding a train out to Montauk -- tomorrow marks the 15th anniversary of one of the Great Films of the new century (née millenium), Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which rescrambled our brains for the first time on March 19th 2004, and we've never been the same since. Have you watched it lately? I watch it basically once per year, which guarantees I have one great big sobbing session at least once per year. Anyway we've already done one of our "Beauty vs Beast" contests for the film's leads before, so today we'll dive a little deeper into the film's exceedingly fine stable of supporting players -- on one side we have the delectably weaselly Patrick (Elijah Wood) and on the other the more-confused-by-the-minute Mary (Kirsten Dunst), who both enrich the film's main romantic thrust in surprising and sad ways...

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PREVIOUSLY Y'all truly surprised me with last week's contest that pit Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool's lead lovers against one another -- Jamie Bell took the lead early on and never looked back, taking 65% at the end; it's very rare for actresses to lose here on TFE! Why do you think it happened this time? Said Mareko:

"I'm #TeamGloria in life (what an underrated talent) but lean toward #TeamPeter in this movie. Annette and Jamie really are sublime together, and isn't it interesting that she did back-to-back movies set in 1979? Imagine Dorothea Fields and Gloria Grahame in the same universe, living a mere hour away from each other!"

Great Moments in Kissing: "Spider-Man"

For Valentine's we asked Team Experience to share favourite screen kisses. Here's Salim Garami...

What’s good?

When I think of THE most cinematic of movie kisses, what pops into my mind isn’t necessarily my favorite (which would be Alfred Hitchcock’s explosive fireworks button on To Catch a Thief) or what I think of as the best (which would be Hitchcock’s taboo-busting “Another one! And another one!” in Notorious). I think of the kiss that was most formative. The kiss that showed me how image and movement could communicate ardor to somebody as young as 6. The kiss that came in possibly the most formative movie in all of my childhood: Sam Raimi’s 2002 superhero landmark Spider-Man. A film that has long informed the majority of what I love to see in movies and established itself deep in my heart (although it is quite possible that Into the Spider-Verse has now embedded itself deeper), it should be no surprise that it informed what I love in romantic scenes, especially the moments in movies that are accused of oversentimentality and cheesiness...

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Beauty vs Beast: She's Got the Brainnnsssssss

Jason from MNPP here for another round of "Beauty vs Beast" and on a very special day at that - not only is today the first day of October, marking my favorite season of the year (the spookey season) but today is also the 50th anniversary of George A Romero's masterpiece Night of the Living Dead! There were "zombies" of a sort before NotLD came out - mostly folks put under "voodoo curses" or the like - but Romero refined the monster to its modern form and created billions upon billions of dollars for entertainment executives in the process. But nothing's gonna top the stark simplicity of that original 1968 nightmare.

Facing down the horde I was torn between choosing our hero Ben (the magnificent Duane Jones) or his leading (comatose) lady Barbra (Judith O'Dea) - I went with the latter because Barbra gets a bad rap if you ask me. Ben is the hero we'd like to be - Barbra is the we we're probably gonna be. People don't like to want to think we'd go into total shock in an apocalyptic situation but you know what? Watch your sibling get eaten by a strange man in a cemetery and get back to me.

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PREVIOUSLY And speaking of siblings (and now I'm picturing a zombie rampage at the March house) last week's Little Women off brought the expected results, because Amy's awful, that little book burning witch, we hate her. Jo with 80-plus percent, huzzah! Said chasm301:

"Evil finds a human form in Amy March. Only Kiki stans are voting for her. But wow I love everything about this movie. I watch it multiple times a year. Winona is perfection and the score is one of my faves."