Laura Dern Week: Rambling Rose (1991)

by Jason Adams

When it came time to choose a performance to honor here for Laura Dern Week I was a bit flummoxed - how does one on narrow it down? She's one of my favorite actresses, maybe the most favorite. So I did what any (semi)sane person in such circumstances would do: I made our host Nathaniel choose for me. I gave him two choices - I am pro-choice! One was my favorite performance of hers as Ruth in Alexander Payne's brutal abortion comedy Citizen Ruth, which I've written about a million times. And there was the one I said I had never seen before. Nathaniel went for freshness...

... but I realized ten minutes into 1991's Rambling Rose that I had actually seen it before. And I hadn't liked it! I'd blocked out the whole damn thing, actually. But a funny thing happened this time around - I found myself charmed.

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Laura Dern Week: "Smooth Talk" and "Mask"

Surprise -- It's Laura Dern Week!

With HBO's event miniseries Big Little Lies arriving in less than two weeks (February 19th - wooo) and with Laura Dern's 50th birthday happening even sooner (this Friday!) Team Experience will be celebrating the freakishly expressive Laura Dern, aka "The Face," every afternoon this week.

Though some of her earliest revelatory performances are not as readily available as they should be (none are streaming) let's talk about a few of them with an emphasis on Mask (1985) after the jump...

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On This Day in History: 1988 & 1994's Opposing Best Pic Lineups!

Feeling festive today but not quite ready for Christmas? Celebrate one of these anniversaries!

1805 Joseph Smith Jr, founder of the Mormon Church is born in Vermont. Here's a very random piece of trivia: Outside of the very early movie Brigham Young (1940) about his successor with Vincent Price in the Joseph Smith role, the only actually famous actor to ever play him is Dean Cain of Lois & Clark fame in a movie called September Dawn (2007)? It's kind of hard to draw a line connecting Vincent Price and Dean Cain otherwise, right?
1867 Madame CJ Walker, cosmetics mogul and the first black female millionaire in America, is born in Louisiana. Where's her biopic, Hollywood? History has more than just Great White Man stories.
1887 Underappreciated director John Cromwell who guided Bette Davis's breakthrough role in Of Human Bondage , and the all female wonders of Caged was born in Ohio. One more Bette related anniversary after the jump...

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YNMS: "Wilson"

Chris here. Next year has more than enough to offer with comic book adaptations, but here's a first look at something outside of the superhero variety. From Daniel Clowes's graphic novel, Wilson stars Woody Harrelson as a rascally buffoon partnering up with an ex-wife (Laura Dern) to find the daughter she had put up for adoption. Fans of Clowes's Ghost World and Art School Confidential (both the films and graphic novels) can expect some off-kilter humor and sharp character study - with The Skeleton Twins director Craig Johnson taking the directing reigns from Terry Zwigoff.

Take a look at the NSFW trailer and our YNMS thoughts after the jump...

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Actressexual Alert: Big Little Lies Trailer Drops

Manuel here starting our Monday with the best of news. "Who knows what lies there beneath the surface?" Reese Witherspoon asks us in the first trailer for her latest collaboration with her Wild director, Jean-Marc Vallée. Yes we finally get our first look at Big Little Lies, the HBO miniseries based on Liane Moriarty's best-selling novel (which I devoured in one day; it is that addictive and appropriately sudsy). 

The project is a smorgasbord for us actressexuals with Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, Zoë Kravitz, and Shailene Woodley joining Reese in this suburban mommy thriller. As the trailer suggests, we'll be introduced to an idyllic seaside suburban enclave where certain revelations (it's best not to spoil, and thankfully the teaser doesn't really) send shockwaves throughout the community, leading to a violent, murderous end. It'll be a fine tonal balancing act but the show, written by David E. Kelley looks like it might just pull it off...

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