Beautiful Dolores, Princess Anne, Merylish Mamie, and Olympic Jesse

on this day in history as it relates to the movies...

Dolores Del Río auditioning for Catwoman. No wait that's not right. Dolores Del Rio in Journey Into Fear (1943)1885 Carlo Montuori, famed cinematographer of Italian neorealism is born. He went on to lens the essential Bicycle Thief (1948)
1904 Dolores del Río, one of the first three Mexican actors to become movie stars in Hollywood (the others being her cousin Ramon Novarro and Lupe Vélez - they all started in silent films and moved into talkies), after which she used her fame and beauty as part of Mexican cinema's Golden Age with the occasional Hollywood film thrown in. Credits include: Bird of Paradise (1932), Flying Down To Rio (1933), Journey Into Fear (1943), Cheyenne Autumn (1964) and multiple Best Actress winning films in Mexico:  Las Abandonadas (1944), El Niño y la Niebla (1953), and Doña Perfecta (1951).
1906 Alexandre Trauner, Oscar winning production designer. His credits include The Nun's Story (1959), The Apartment (1960, Oscar win) and The Man Who Would Be King (1975, Oscar nomination), Subway (1985), and 'Round Midnight (1986) 
1923 Jean Hagen. I "caaaaiiiiinnnnt stan' it" that she didn't win the Oscar for Singin in the Rain (1952)
1926 Fifties beefcake Gordon Scott is born in Oregon. Later stars in five Tarzan movies (including one of the best of the franchise, Tarzan's Greatest Adventure) and sword and sandal flicks

More after the jump including The Princess Diaries, Unforgiven, Mamie Gummer's debut, and the Summer Olympics...

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Grace & Frankie. Final Thoughts & Emmy Wishes

We recapped the first half of Grace and Frankie and then abruptly quit talking about it, but since it's been renewed, we should tie this up in a neat bow. As with other Netflix shows in the past like OITNB and Daredevil it didn't quite engage people in the blogging model as weekly series coverage does despite the fact that it was clear that most readers were watching. The problem, as documented in ongoing media hand-wringing and cultural conversations about binge-watching, is that nobody's ever on the same page. 

But on the other hand people do seem to have ended up on (mostly) the same page with Grace & Frankie in terms of its overall quality. More...

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Grace and Frankie S1:E3 "The Dinner"

Anne Marie here, taking over recap duties for an episode! In Episode 2, physical possessions were divvied up for the divorce (for now), so Episode 3 is when we focus on feelings and family. Grace and Frankie, suddenly devoid of social obligations and artistic inspiration, decide to combat their own sense of irrelevence by getting jobs. Grace returns to the beauty company she founded, now run by her daughter Brianna, only to discover that Brianna has steered the company in a new direction. 

Elsewhere, Frankie attempts to interview at an old folks home, but is mistaken for a potential client. For most of this epiosde, Grace & Frankie's storylines felt a bit too much like a B plot from Sutton Foster's age-and-cliche-obsessed show Younger on TVLand (is anybody else watching Younger?). But on the other hand, the episode does culminate in Grace having a meltdown in a supermarket and Frankie stealing a pack of cigarettes like a middle-aged Thelma & Louise.

Meanwhile, on our favorite Law & Order/The West Wing crossover fanfiction, Jed Bartlett & Jack McCoy Robert & Sol are enjoying the honeymoon phase of their incipient relationship...

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1973 Look Back: Terrence Malick's Debut "Badlands"

To give the impending Smackdown some context, we're looking at films from 1973. Here's Abstew on a spectacular debut...

With only a half dozen films released over the past 40 years, director Terrence Malick has already earned his place among the greatest American filmmakers. Despite his relatively small filmography, he has carved out a distinct brand of filmmaking that inspires (sometimes as much as it confuses or bores). But before he was an admired and respected filmmaker, he was just a former Rhodes scholar that graduated from Harvard working as a philosophy professor at MIT. His first film, Badlands, began to take take shape as he studied film at the American Film Institute. It was immediately hailed by critics on its initial release in 1973, where it was the closing night film at the New York Film Festival. That year's festival also saw the debut of Martin Scorsese's Mean Streetsm proving that 1973 was not only a very good year for film, but a landmark year for new voices. Both films were sold to Warner Brothers on the same day.

Set in South Dakota in the 1950s and loosely based on the real-life incident of Charles Starkweather who went on a killing spree with his teenage girlfriend in 1958, Badlands follows former garbage man Kit Carruthers (played by Martin Sheen in the role that established his own career in film, having working almost exclusively in television up until then) as he and his 15-year-old girlfriend Holly (Sissy Spacek in only her second film) take off cross-country after Kit kills Holly's disapproving father. Although seen as rebels (Kit is often compared to the original rebel without a cause, James Dean), the two are more simple-minded than that. They seem to be going along for a ride not quite knowing what they're doing or why exactly they're doing it. 

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Links: Brawling Badlands, Wonder Woman, Coy Cleopatra

Twitch an open letter to visual effects artists. Wow, I had no idea that they weren't unionized like other movie crafts. Hollywood is ripping them off!
GQ an oral history of the making of Terrence Malick's Badlands. Great quotes including some discrepancies about his nature. Paul Lee, a Harvard philosophy instructor, says  "he was so robust, like Belushi. Like a wrestler, even though he wasn't aggressive in any way" Not aggressive? Martin Sheen says he literally beat up a producer on the set!

Heat Vision X-Men First Class skywriting. Now there's some advertising for you.
Pop Matters "Trouble in Wonderland" the fairy tale's current cinematic crisis.
Cinema Blend Bizarre story that I'm hoping is just an interview pull out of context: Angelina Jolie doesn't want to portray Cleopatra as a sex symbol this time. Uhhhh
Movie|Line Nine milestones in the evolution of Brad Pitt

Off-Cinema
Not Racist But... This is a horrifying website but I'm glad someone is taking the time to collate these. It needs a companion site, Not Homophobic But... anytime someone starts the sentence with a disclaimer, watch out.
Lemonwade is exhausted by Lady Gaga's ubiquity. Will we see more defectors?
iFanboy reviews the Wonder Woman pilot that didn't get picked up. And the verdict is mixed but more positive than you'd maybe expect given the homogenous sight-unseen online vitriol.
A Socialite Life Alexander Skarsgård covers Interview magazine. In blue.