Beauty vs Beast: The Princesses of Borovnia

Jason from MNPP here -- with most holidays I think it would suck to share a birthday - who wants their birthday on Thanksgiving? Or even worse, Christmas? Everyone else getting presents on your day? What a nightmare. But Halloween is the exception - I would love my birthday to be on Halloween. Costume parties every year! A cake shaped like Frankenstein's head! Or even better - a cake shaped like the Bride of Frankenstein's head! (Because more cake.) 

And you wanna know who I bet has the best Halloween Birthday Parties? Peter Jackson, that's who. I bet he dresses up like the STD-riddled rabbit from Meet the Feebles or like the Mouth of Sauron every year. Damn you, Peter Jackson. 

Oh well - we'll go ahead and wish him a happy day today with this week's edition of "Beauty vs Beast" anyway, and since we're going to be seeing his 1994 masterpiece Heavenly Creatures on a big screen (with Film Experience fave Melanie Lynskey in person!) in just a couple of days thanks to the brand new Alamo Drafthouse in Brooklyn, we'll go with a show-down between teen dreamers Juliet (Kate Winslet) and Pauline (Lynskey). Good luck choosing with this Sophie's Choice, folks...

Instead of doing the usual "Previously On..." here (Eli won last week's Let the Right One In contest though) I want to keep aboard the Melanie Lynskey Express for a minute since we're here and she's wonderful and we all love her so - she's got a new movie coming out this weekend! It's called Rainbow Time and it stars Lynskey as a woman pulled into the weird relationship between two brothers (played by Timm Sharp and Linus Phillips) and the movie's really fine and funny and I highly recommend it. Watch the trailer now:

Beauty vs Beast: My Best Friend is a Vampire

Jason from MNPP here wishing everyone a happy week's worth of Halloween fun & spooky frivolity. Now that the New York Film Festival's behind us I feel as if I can properly focus in on the reason for the season - horror movies! So let's devote this week's "Beauty vs Beast" to one of the finest examples of the genre from our young new millenium - Tomas Alfredson's 2008 Swedish stunner Let the Right One In, which tells the tale of young Oskar and the strange "girl" named Eli who moves in next door. Eli puts the "bad dream" into the term "Manic Pixie Dream Girl," but Oskar, bullied though he may be, ain't no saint himself...

PREVIOUSLY Last week we wandered into the woods with Into the Woods and the battle between the Baker's Wife and The Witch was quite the doozy, but in the end (unlike the film) it was Emily Blunt who came out singing with 52% of the vite. Said PoliVamp:

"Baker's Wife easily. I was very unhappy with Streep's nomination, as she was only the 5th best performance in the movie (and Blunt is in that top 4 group). Also, Moments is my favorite song from the musical, give or take Agony, so this was an easy pick for me."

Drama Desk Nominations, Tony's More Inclusive Cousin

Lin-Manuel Miranda as "Hamilton"The Drama Desk Nominations for the 2014/2015 theater season have been announced and the Tony Awards follow suit in a week's tim (theater seasons run summer to spring). The chief difference, besides the level of fame, is that the Drama Desk categories have more nominees but also more eligible contenders since Off Broadway productions (and there are lots more of those) are also considered for the top prizes. Hamilton, the new hip-hop Off Broadway musical about the founding fathers from Lin-Manuel Miranda of "The Heights" fame dominated with 13 nominations but it's not eligible for the Tonys.

It's also impossible to get tickets to and popular with celebrities (Madonna famously was barred from going backstage after using her cel phone -ugh - but everyone's been to it including Michelle Pfeiffer). In the reverse situation, "Fun Home," which is an absolute must see and could lead the Tony nominations, is not eligible for the Drama Desk nominations since it was already eligible in its Off Broadway run last season. "Hamilton" is moving to Broadway in the summer which means it'll be eligible for the 2016 Tony Awards.

The full nominee list, which also included a lot of nominations for screen-to-stage transfer "Let the Right One In" is after the jump...

Click to read more ...

NYFF: A Swarm of Surrealism

Our coverage of the 2014 New York Film Festival, which opens today, continues - here's Jason with an askance look at some of the unsung heroes of The Wonders and their cinematic precedents...

Earlier this week Glenn wrote up a review of Alice Rohrwacher's really very fine film The Wonders, which I also heartily endorse. I was sitting next to him at the press screening and besides being communally delighted (that sounds dirty but I mean it in the most innocent way possible) by the movie together we squirmed, writhed, and let out little moans of discomfort (alright it sounds dirty again, just bear with me here) when the screen repeatedly filled with bees - so many bees! If I'd given it any thought beforehand I might have skipped the film because despite not having an allergy I am a total melissophobic and watching them crawl on human skin is akin to water torture - you might know me as a horror movie fan, a badge I wear with pride, but nothing will make me cover my eyes and climb backwards in my seat quicker than a plain ol' minding-his-own-business honey-bee. Know the real enemy.

That said there's a surrealistic beauty to ways the bees are shot in The Wonders (there's a reason that the poster uses the imagery), and also another animal in the film (which I won't name since it contributes a nice jolt of WTF), and all this got me thinking about the use of animals as surrealist props. It's got a long, sometimes sordid (think of Jodorowsky blowing up all those poor frogs in The Holy Mountain or the tortoise being slaughtered in Cannibal Holocaust) history - I'm sure there have been plenty of dissertations written on it but what I think it comes down to is the unfathomable interior life of The Beast - we cannot know what is going on behind the eyes of these creatures, and so they will always remain strange, the Other. They're a nice short-cut to Uncanny Land, in other words.

And now, because I agree with Nathaniel that lists are super fun, here are the 5 fun instances of animals being used to inject a little surrealism into a film.

The Giraffe in The Great Beauty

The Escaped Zoo Animals in Twelve Monkeys

The Cat Attack in Let the Right One In

Chaos Reigns: The Fox in Antichrist

The Elephant Funeral in Sante Sangre

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Name some of your favorites in the comments!

TV @ the Movies: "Hoosiers" vs. "The Notebook"

I know that MTV's Teen Wolf is based on an 80s movie but it's not set in the 1980s so what to make of the bizarre opening scene of its latest episode "The Tell" in which Jackson (Colton Haynes) and Lydia (Holland Roden) visit that nostalgia-inducing endangered species, The Video Store, and have the following  ½ "80s" argument... 

Jackson: "Hoosiers" is not only the best basketball movie ever it is the best sports movie ever made. 
Lydia: No.
Jackson: It's got Gene Hackman and Dennis Hopper!
Lydia: No.
Jackson: Lydia, I swear to God you're going to like it.
Lydia: No.
Jackson: I AM NOT WATCHING "THE NOTEBOOK" AGAIN

[cut to: Jackson, defeated, inside the store]

Jackson: Can somebody help me find "The Notebook"? 

Haha. So, maybe this was intended it as a Men are from Mars / Women are from Venus argument but do today's teenagers (non film-fanatic variety... not you reading, obvs)  even know who Dennis Hopper and Gene Hackman are? It seems like this argument was between a 30something man and a teen girl. Or maybe Hoosiers mania still lives on in high school boys? I'm not a sports person or a high school boy so I cannot speak from authority.

Once inside the store, there are a ton of movies on view but none of them seem intentionally placed there for the camera. Lazy set dressers (kidding!). For instance, there's telltale signs of a dead body (a foot!) peaking out from behind the I Am Love row. But I highly doubt the director's were like "ooh, someone dies in that Tilda Swinton / Italian melodrama that won Best Pic at the Film Bitch Awards, so let's put the body there!".

This one on the other hand is 100% intentional.

Turns out there's an evil werewolf in the store and Jackson ends up hiding right next to a copy of Let The Right One In, the only movie with its own closeup. "The Tell" that it's intentional: It's out of sequence with the other movies sitting next to it, which begin with "S". Video stores may be on the verge of extinction but surely they still alphabetize.