Almost There: Julianne Moore in "Magnolia"

by Cláudio Alves

Though the year is still relatively young, Julianne Moore has already staked her claim on 2023. She stars in two early releases, Jesse Eisenberg's When You Finish Saving the World and Benjamin Caron's Sharper and has some juicy upcoming projects lined up. For instance, Todd Haynes' May December has already wrapped filming and is in post-production, maybe headed towards a festival release later in the year. With all this in mind, it felt like a good time to shine the Almost There spotlight on the 2014 Best Actress champion. And so, let's think back to the afterglow of Moore's first brush with Hollywood's most coveted trophy.

In 1997, she was nominated for Boogie Nights, grasping mainstream acclaim. Two years later, Moore was back working with P.T. Anderson on another prestigious project - the Berlinale-winning hyperlink nightmare of Magnolia…

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Top unheralded performances in PTA's filmography

by Cláudio Alves

Across the years, Paul Thomas Anderson's films have earned nine acting Oscar nominations, including a win for Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood. It's fair to say that actors love the director. Why shouldn't they? While these movies' leading players earn prizes, every part, no matter how small, is written with complexity, directed, and framed with attention. Indeed, some of the best performances come from those bit players, sometimes glorified cameos, sometimes supporting roles within a sprawling cast. If you've seen his latest, you'll know that, beyond Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman, Licorice Pizza is almost entirely made up of such actorly turns.

With that in mind, a list of favorite unheralded performances from PTA's filmography. These are thespians who earned no accolades for their work, beyond ensemble prizes, and whose roles tend towards the diminutive. But, of course, as these ten master artists make evident, there are no small parts, only small actors… 

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Streaming Roulette, August: Pray away those freaky requiems

New month. Time for another round of Streaming Roulette where we point out a handful or two of random titles that are newly streaming and just for fun, freeze frame them at totally random places in the scroll bar...

[No dialogue. Confused, looking around.]

FREAKY (2020) on HBOMax
This must be when the serial killer and the teenager find themselves in each others bodies, in this horror comedy riff on the Freaky Friday template. We didn't see this one (did you?) but are a tiny bit curious. Tangent: Do you ever wonder how actors and musicians feel when they watch movies and see their own faces as set decoration, on character's bedroom walls? (Hi Brendon Urie.)

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Showbiz History: "Roots" takes America by storm and Tom Cruise nabs a "Magnolia" win

7 random things that happened on this day, January 23rd, in showbiz history

1962 François Truffaut's new wave classic Jules et Jim is released in France and Canada. It makes it to the US a couple of months later though it's not immediately embraced in the US. In the UK it's a different story and the film receives two BAFTA nominations: Best Film and Best Foreign Actress... 

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Familiar Faces: The P.T. Anderson Players

We're celebrating PTA this week for his 50th birthday!

by Nathaniel R

Famed auteur Paul Thomas Anderson is not, perhaps, the creature of habit we expected him to be after his first three films made him a legend-to-be and suggested a steady stable of actors shifting guises with each film like a Scorsese or an Altman or an Allen. Since that magnum ensemble opus Magnolia (1999) his films have shifted closer to the traditional one or two man focal point employed by most auteurs even as they've gotten more experimental in other ways. It's as if he was purposefully shaking off the Altman-progeny tag.

That's a wee bit disappointing since auteurs who are particularly genius at assembling a whole mess of actors and watching the idiosyncratic group dymanic spark are few and far between. With PTA's next project set to be a drama about a famous child actor in high school, it's unlikely we'll see many repeats from his troupe, though there's always a possibility one or two of them show up as a teacher or parent or co-star on set.  Let's look at the actors he's used the most in his filmography thus far...

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