Review: Jessica Chastain and those "Eyes of Tammy Faye"

By Nathaniel R

A makeup artist fumbles, discovering she can't undo what Tammy Faye hath wrought. It's not a matter of removing the makeup and starting fresh as some of it is tattooed right on. The former televangelist's lips are permanently lined and the raccoon eyes are there to say; mascara as monument. Was this scene at the beginning or the end of the new biopic The Eyes of Tammy Faye? One can never remember with framing devices that flashback to tell you the whole story that got us there but it hardly matters. The point that comes across is not so much how we got there -- though perhaps the filmmakers think go given the framing device-- but that Tammy Faye's clown makeup bioqueen persona is an absolute. She didn't will into it existence so much as uncover and reveal its eternal nature. 

Is this laying it on too thick? The prose, I mean, not the mascara. Of course! But "too much" is just right for anything Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker related...

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Yes No Maybe So: The Last Duel

Please welcome new contributor Patrick Ball...

Jodie Comer in "The Last Duel"

One of the more anticipated fall releases, Ridley Scott’s The Last Duel finally got a trailer. A medieval swords n’ beards tale, it boasts the first joint screenplay from Matt Damon and Ben Affleck since their Oscar winning effort on Good Will Hunting (1997), this time joined by Nicole Holofcener. Starring Matt and Ben, Adam Driver (having yet another big year with this and Annette and House of Gucci) and Killing Eve breakout Jodie Comer, let’s raise the drawbridge on another installment of Yes No Maybe So... 

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Yes No Maybe So: The Eyes of Tammy Faye

by Nathaniel R

The Eyes of Tammy Faye was once the title of a popular 2000 documentary and now it's the title of a biopic about the rise and fall of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, with the emphasis being on the more sympathetic Tammy (who is no longer with us, having died of cancer in the Aughts). For you youngsters out there they were VERY famous in the 1980s with their scandal and downfall happening in 1989. The movie is directed by Michael Showalter (The Big Sick, Hello My Name is Doris) and gives plum roles to Oscar nominees Andrew Garfield and Jessica Chastain as the famous fallen couple. Will it be great, terrible, a mix of both simultaneously or (most dangerously) blandly mediocre? Will it be up for all the Oscars or none of them? Let's give this the full Yes No Maybe So™ treatment after the jump...

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Interview: Nadia Stacey, Cruella's Hair and Makeup Designer

by Nathaniel R

Nadia Stacey talks "Cruella"

When I sat down with Cruella's Hair and Makeup designer Nadia Stacey over Zoom we just had a few minutes to talk. To break the ice quickly, a true story. When I first saw the image of Emma Stone as Cruella, my mind immediately lept to Olivia Colman as Queen Anne in The Favourite and her disgruntled "I look like a badger" quip. I had no idea why. Only when prepping for our Cruella interview did I realize the films had the same makeup designer. Stacey laughs, fondly remembering her BAFTA-winning film. "I feel like there’s a theme going on with me doing mask-kind of faces!"

And with The Favourite (a beloved favourite) duly cited, we jump right in to our conversation about her impressive filmography and her biggest assignment yet, designing Disney's live-action Cruella. [This interview is edited/condensed for clarity]

NATHANIEL: You've done a few movies with Olivia Colman and two with Emma Stone. Are you just going to keep The Favourite-ing from now on?  

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93rd Academy Awards: on the "Makeup and Hair" Nominees

by Nathaniel R

Throughout our "gulp" twenty years of covering the Oscars, no branch has proven more confounding than the Hair and Makeup designers. Like all branches they have weird and glaring blindspots (for some reason despite adoring makeup effects prosthetics they loathe the genre that most commonly deploys them: horror) but many of their rulings have been bizarre (remember how a little CG touchup on Nicole Kidman's prosthetic nose in The Hours disqualified the film in this category but throughout the rest of the Aughts huge CG spectacles were regularly honored?!). They love old age and prosthetic effects makeup regardless of quality, except when they suddenly get fussy about it and don't.  Sometimes they love wigs and other times only the makeup matters, hair be damned. They're tough to get a bead on but it's easier to suss out what might win once they've made their often perplexingly random finalist and nominee calls (Like how was Possessor and its innovative makeup effects not even on the finalist list? Oh, right, Horror film.) 

The nominees are listed in ascending order of how likely we think they are to win the Oscar...

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