Happy 51st Julianne Moore. What's Next?

In honor of Julianne Moore's birthday today, let's go all list-manic.

Julianne earlier this week in NYC

This morning, realizing it was her birthday, I flashed back to our interview in 2010 and her responses to my feverish fandom "I've seen all your movies"...

My god, you've seen some junk then!" 

So after the jump in her holiness's honor, my rankings of ALL her performances I have seen... some of which I barely remember at this point but what can you do. Plus, the ones I haven't seen. Plus, what's next (2012 could be a big year for her!) Plus questions for you. Plus. Plus. Plus. 

Click to read more ...

11•11•11

To mark this historic occassion at 11:11 am of 11/11/11 and to continue procrastinating review writing (ugh writer's block) 11 lists of 11 things. Just because. Comment party: Please state your favorite 11 things of today in the comments!

11 Favorite Movies of the Year That Have Already Come Out On DVD (no particular order). 
Beginners, Poetry, Heartbeats (Les Amours Imaginaires), Bridesmaids, Jane Eyre, Rango, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, The Tree of Life, Captain America: The First Avenger, ...and is Certified Copy on DVD yet? I mean other than in the UK?

11 Favorite Colours
Purple, Silver, Turquoise, Green, Almodóvar Red, Blue, Black, Burgundy, White, Platinum Blonde, and any color by Krzysztof Kieslowski

11 Prettiest Male Movie Stars of All Time (no particular order off top of head)
Gene Kelly, Jude Law, Keanu Reeves, Paul Newman, Montgomery Clift, Brad Pitt, Alain Deloin, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Gary Cooper, Warren Beatty, Oh and Marlon Brando for a teeny tiny window of time.

11 Young Actresses I'm Currently Most Excited About (off the top of my head: NON-BINDING!)
Emma Stone, Anne Hathaway, Carey Mulligan, Elizabeth Olsen, Kim Ok-Bin, Saoirse Ronan, Ellen Page, Jurnee Smollet, Mia Wasikowska, and Dakota & Elle. THIS LIST IS NON-BINDING. I'm sure I forgot someone truly amazing.

11 Favorite Edibles
Coffee, Cheese, Ice Cream, Pizza, Pad Thai, Flavored Vodka, sun dried tomatoes, sushi, enchiladas, cake, and a tall glass of water

11 Books That Are Closest To Me As I Type
"Made to Stick", "Inside Oscar", "What You See in the Dark", "Three Stooges FAQ" (what the hell?), "Hollywood Madonna: Loretta Young", "The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael" "Anonymous William Shakespeare", "Swanson", "Eyewear: A Visual History", "Steve McQueen", and "Monsters in the Movies" (by John Landis... more on this one soon)

11 Favorite Animals
cats, elephants, racoons, ladyhawke, snakes, birds, panthers, butterflies, tigers, Monty and mermaids.

11 Things I Have Done This Morning That I Already Regret
not writing a review, typing up all these lists.... and running out of time to actually finish them. I only finished 7 of them. I ruined the 11 mania.

Faces of Future Movies, The Men

In this week's column at Towleroad, I meant to just type up a few words about The Ides of March and continue the possibly tired 2011 motif of drooling all over Ryan Gosling as he completes his ascendance to alpha dog of Hollywood's new pack.

What 's your take on Hollywood's male talent pool (under 35 division)?

Instead I went hundreds of words overboard and it morphed into a substantial but by no means complete summary of the male acting talent under 35. I figured why not since the movies currently in theaters are all about the male stars: Gosling, Gordon-Levitt, Jackman, Clooney, Pitt, etcetera.

In the article you can read about whose work I'm most looking forward to and who may have already peaked (though I hope not). There's also a brief bit about the overvalued that still need to justify Hollywood's faith in them... and my personal pleas for the grossly undervalued.

It's an extension of the conversation we started here a month ago about whether Gos' and Fassy had any competition as "Future of the Movies". (Naturally, this made me want to do a similar longer piece on the actresses but that's so much more expected and will have to wait.)  

Answer me these questions three
1. Who are you rooting for in the next five years of the movies?
2. If you were a casting director which undervalued lesser known player would you go to bat for?
3. Would you dig more Film Experience digging into the depth of the young(er) talent pool?  

Top 100 "Characters" From 50 Years of Best Actressing

This past summer we polled you once or twice a month about the Best Actress characters that you think of the most often from the past 50 years of the cinema taking us all the way from 1961 through to this past spring's Oscars for the films of 2010! With the new fall season of The Film Experience kicking off and the Oscar films arriving, I thought we'd take one last look back at that polling.

It was quite fun for little OCD actressexual me to peruse and "sort" and all of that in excel. If you're OCD like me and want to know how I compiled the chart, which is listed in alphabetical order below and pictured in slide show format in chronological order, there's more information after the list. I'd love to say that we'd do 100 articles to celebrate (one for each of your fav' fictionalized ladies) but that would be an insane thing to promise. But we'll use the chart for inspirational somethings! Give these characters a big round of applause for all their years of entertaining service.

By all means if you haven't seen any of the 98 films represented, make it a viewing priority. 

Your 100 Most Memorable Best Actress "Characters"
50 Years | 100 Greats (1961-2010)  

List presented visually (chronologically) and in text form (alphabetically) after the jump. Plus: Statistics!

Click to read more ...

List-Mania: Goodbye Summer 2011

Before we move on to our new and hopefully joyous Fall Movie Season (which begins September 13th here at TFE) let's look back briefly on the season that was... the movies that opened from May to August. How do we look back? With lists of course.

Three Best Uses of 3D

• Glee: The 3D Concert Movie - Heather Morris's boobs. ("Brittany S. Pierce" has long since surpassed "Coach Sylvester" as Glee's comedic MVP. If only the Emmys had noticed for their season 2 specific nominations).
• Transformers Dark of the Moon - the top of that building cracking and tipping over... and that time that Shia Labeouf almost fell to his death.
• Every Movie That Opted Not To Use It.

Ten Performances That Made the Summer

• Vera Farmiga and Dagmara Dominczyk all sisterly sensual with palpable chemistry in Higher Ground [INTERVIEW]
• Andy Serkis continues to elevate mo-cap into a new acting artform in Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
• Viola Davis helps The Help overcome its limitations.
• "I also have an announcement!" and that's this: Kristen Wiig is awesome in Bridesmaids.
• Michael Fassbender moves metal and hearts in X-Men: First Class.
• Powerfully moving father/son relations were the story in both Beginners and The Tree of Life courtesay of fine direction and the efforts of Ewan McGregor & Christopher Plummer (Beginners) and Brad Pitt & Hunter McCracken (The Tree of Life).

Three Movies I'm Relieved I Didn't Have To See

• The Smurfs (22% RT rating), Zookeeper (12% RT rating), and The Change-Up (22% RT rating).

Most Terrible Twosome I Did See

• Green Lantern (27% RT rating), and Cars 2 (37% RT rating).

Eight Movies I Feel Weirdest About Missing and I'll Get To ½ of Them Eventually...Or Sooner

• One Day, The Whistleblower, The Future, The Devil's Double, Winnie the Pooh, Horrible Bosses, Trollhunter and The Beaver

 Two Quickest Memory Fades

• Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 and that's the actual truth and not meant as a diss on franchises which overstay their welcome. I'm using a spreadsheet of all screenings for this list and barely remember any single exciting moment from either picture... though the mermaid attack in On Stranger Tides lingers the most from these two pictures.

Delicious Looking Edibles

• Minnie's pies in The Help (well, excluding the one with a co-starring role)
• All "Cake Baby" items from Bridesmaids
• Ryan Gosling "Seriously? It's like your photoshopped."

Great Moments in Movies That Didn't Totally Work For Me Otherwise

• Super 8's best moment comes very early as the crew of child filmmakers prep for a big train station scene in their zombie epic only to be gobsmacked by Elle Fanning's prodigious screen presence; they almost don't notice that train hurtling towards them, such is the power of actressing. [reviewed]
• X-Men First Class has several fine moments -- almost all of them involving Magneto -- so why didn't the movie work for me? In retrospect I mostly blame the actual first class of dull, less then fully embodied mutant students. [full review]
• Thor's (Chris Hemsworth) comic fish-out-of-water arrogance in the diner amused. [reviewed]

Movie I Didn't See ...Except That I Did

• The Hangover Part 2 - I accidentally saw the first one again during the summer, and based on reviews and internet commentary that means that I did see Part 2 provided I can imagine it taking place in Bangkok which, as it turns out, I can. Saved myself $13!

Ten Best Animals (Ranked)
This list is dedicated to the narrating cat in The Future which I really am going to see soon. What's up with my procrastination?!?

1. Nim (chimpanzee) Project NIM
2. Cesar (chimpanzee) Rise of the Planet of the Apes 
3. Arthur (dog) Beginners 
4. dinosaurs (dinosaurs) The Tree of Life
5. Flora (elephant) One Lucky Elephant
6. Maurice (orangutan) in Rise of the Planet of the Apes
7. Bridal Party Shower Favors (puppies) in Bridesmaids
8. Buck (gorilla) in Rise of the Planet of the Apes
9. Willie Nelson (dog) in Our Idiot Brother
10. Nagini (snake) in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt 2

Ten Best Movies (Chronologically Speaking)

• MAY: Bridesmaids, Midnight in Paris, Tuesday After Christmas, The Tree of Life; 
• JUNE: Beginners (review) a dark dark movie month it would've been without this moving film;
• JULY:  Project NIM (which opened just one month too early to capitalize on what an amazing double feature it makes with Rise of the Planet of the Apes -- thoughts on the movie), Captain America: The First Avenger (review) and Crazy, Stupid, Love (thoughts on the movie).
• AUGUST: Rise of the Planet of the Apes and either The Help (review) or Higher Ground... both of which have their problems as films but make up for it with plentiful actressing.

ONE MORE LIST...
and that's yours in the comments. Name your 3 or more favorite anything from Summer 2011. GO!