Here's Eric Blume to celebrate the 25th anniversary of What's Eating Gilbert Grape, currently available for rental on most services...
It's now been a quarter century since the release of Lasse Hallstrom’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. That deeply felt family drama earns its tears not through sentimentality but through true sentiment. It’s arguably Hallstrom’s best film, and likely the best performances Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio have ever given. I'm happy to report, after a recent revisit, that it only looks better with age.
Hallström lays out the canvas of these characters’ lives with none of the condescension or cliché that we often see in films about small-town America, and he keeps everything fizzy and surprising...
John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep.
#24 —Lee, a frazzled single mom and aspiring hairdresser who reunites with her ailing sister.
JOHN: Marvin’s Room begins with a slow outward zoom of assorted pill bottles and other medical paraphernalia scored to whimsically upbeat music that immediately establishes the film’s split personality between dysfunctional family comedy and sentimental illness drama. We soon learn that the titular Marvin is the bedridden and near-death father of Bessie (Diane Keaton) and brother of Ruth (Gwen Verdon), three members of a looney Floridian family. No sooner than Marvin’s illness and medical routine is introduced, Bessie is herself diagnosed with leukemia by Dr. Robert De Niro (who also produced the film). He recommends that Bessie's family members be tested for a possible bone marrow transplant. This diagnosis is the film’s engine, reuniting her with her sister Lee (Meryl Streep) and nephews Hank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Charlie (Hal Scardino), bridging a twenty year gap between this estranged family...
Seeing Zooey Deschanel without bangs or glasses made me accept that maybe people couldn't figure out that Clark Kent was Superman. pic.twitter.com/fQKfXDSimv
— Heroic Girls - #MoreThanCute (@HeroicGirls) May 28, 2018
More after the jump including "favorite thing about the 90s", a great Roseanne replacement suggestion, and the beginning of the gayest month of the year...
Two women talking: a recipe for witchcraft, an unnatural feedback loop, a cursed redundancy. Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 masterpiece Persona is a landmark for many reasons, but its legacy, which has show no signs of age in the 50 years since it was released in the U.S. and the U.K., is how it stared that anxiety in the face and opened up a loopy, meandering conversation that’s still going on to this day...
More Linkage Keyframe 'The Year of Nicole Kidman' don't force her to prove herself all over again Variety Cannes lineup is "high on "awards intrigue, low on safe awards bets" /Film Aquaman is overflowing with villains, 3 already for a first solo film? (not a good sign) and a fourth may have been added Coming Soon Antonio Banderas will headline Lamborghini -The Legend (working title) a biopic about the Italian entrepeneur of automobile fame. Alec Baldwin will play his rival Enzo Ferrari
Boy Culture "STREEPSHOW" a drag comedy about "characters one played by Meryl Streep" living together in the East Village will be playing NYC in June. Sounds hilarious but I have to admit that it took me quite some time to figure out the characters in the photo (and there seem to be two Miranda Priestleys?) which is maybe not a good sign. Shouldn't they be instantly recognizable? Guardian Mixed messages from Cannes as TV premieres from auteurs are happening but they've also banned Netflix from future competition unless they stop skipping theatrical releases Variety Gay gasp! The BBC is producing a series of 15 minute monologues called Queers which is set to star Ben Whishaw, Alan Cumming, and Russell Tovey and others Awards DailyGypsy teaser, a new series starring Naomi Watts Variety Hugh Bonneville will play Roald Dahl in a biopic set in the early to mid 1960s. This means they're going to have to cast someone to play both Dahl's wife Patricia Neal and her most famous co-star Paul Newman (see Hud) and both of those roles will be a Herculean casting task! The Guardian there's a documentary playing Cannes about Cary Grant's experimentation with LSD from 1958 through 196 Tracking Board Kenneth Branagh to direct himself in a movie about the father of Anne Frank The Keeper of the Diary
Not Remakes Though You Might Mistake Them For Such /Film Martin Scorsese starts filming mob drama The Irishman this summer with Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci Gothamist Leonardo DiCaprio will star in The Black Hand about an undercover mob cop... (Ummm, haven't all these people already made these movies? Why not mix it up with a romantic comedy or a sci-fi picture?)
Exit Video Look it's the first clip from Todd Haynes's Wonderstruck. It may be impossible to follow Carol but we're glad that he got back on the horse so quickly after that long time away from us. How does this clip strike you?
I've somehow never seen this photo of Mark Rylance trying not to step on Brie Larson's train. Adorable.
AMPAS has announced that last year's acting winners will each be presenting on Oscar night. One assumes they will present their corresponding opposite-sex category as is the tradition, but who knows. Perhaps Oscar will mix it up. I'm all for tradition at the Oscars, don'cha know, but I don't mind a curveball now and then. You?
Alicia Vikander is back on screens February 24th (Oscar weekend!) with long delayed costume drama Tulip Fever in which she dumps Christoph Waltz for Dane DeHaan because who wouldn't.
Brie Larson is back on screens April 21st in the ensemble crime comedy Free Fire, from Ben Wheatley (High-Rise).
Mark Rylance is back on screens July 21st in Chris Nolan's WW II epic Dunkirk.
...and Leonardo DiCaprio is back on screens in... 2018? 2019? 2020? He appears to have taken a whole victory year off after winning the Oscar and still has no immediate plans to be in front of the camera. It was just announced that he'll headline The Black Hand because what the world really needs more of is mafia movies (sigh) but in truth that one is a long way off since there's no screenplay yet. There's also the possibility of the Olympic bombing movie The Ballad of Richard Jewellwhich Leo was once set to star in but might only be producing now. Whatever happened to The Devil in the White City with Martin Scorsese? That project was announced just over a year ago and not a peep since. If they've dropped it, I hope it becomes a miniseries instead because that book is dense with information, history, cause and effect through lines, and reams of characters.
Tuesday, December 18, 2018 at 12:42PM 
