Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 6:00PM 
All male periscopes down!"
Great Moments in Screen Bitchery #2,029
"Mean girls" have been around forever in High School Movies and then they weren't always the villains -- take Grease 2 for an example. The Pink Ladies are such bitches!
Wednesday, April 17, 2013 at 12:09AM 
Michelle Pfeiffer stars in "Malavita" opening October 2013
"While Michelle Pfeiffer is at the grocery store I hope she picks up some _______________ because ____________."
Tuesday, March 12, 2013 at 9:32PM for discussion fun
Tootsie, one of the inarguably great American comedies
"The Tuesday Top Ten will get more article-like soon," he said (again). "It really will." But it was so much fun to discuss the 1930s and the 1970s, which are arguably the two most respected decades (critically speaking) of American cinema. So how about a decade that gets no respect? The 1980s. The '80s are tough for me to feel discerning about because I lived through them and was a) young and b) just falling in love with the movies and c) just falling hard for the movies so how could the cinema possibly have been hitting its nadir? I still have inordinate fondness for movies that might more safely be called guilty pleasures like Yentl, Superman II, Splash, Return of the Jedi, Clue, and about half of the filmography of John Hughes... and so on. I even like revisiting really bad movies from that decade.
Off the top of my head my ten favorites of the decades.
A Sean Young polaroid from the set of Blade Runner
With apologies too... Silkwood, Reds, Diva, The Empire Strikes Back, The Little Mermaid, The complete works of Michelle Pfeiffer, Moonstruck, Raging Bull, Jean de Florette, Manon of the Spring, The King of Comedy, Heathers, sex lies and videotape, The complete works of Kathleen Turner, The Shining, Victor/Victoria, The Right Stuff, Bull Durham, Little Shop of Horrors, The Terminator, Witness, Broadcast News, Running on Empty, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Raising Arizona. I could go on and on and on but I'd better stop before I start singing Xanadu again.
I'd love to hear your lists, both guilty pleasures and critically lauded efforts you think deserve their reputations.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013 at 7:00PM Do you miss Oscar season or are you glad it's over? I'm feeling a little bit of both right now, which is why this image that a reader sent me is so great. It's Glenn Close & Michelle Pfeiffer on Oscar night in 1989, when they both lost for their roles in Dangerous Liaisons (1988). Michelle did take the stage as a presenter that night (alongside Dennis Quaid).
Who knew that the Merquise de Merteuil and Madame Tourvel could exhibit any such tenderness for each other? (Or maybe the Merquise is just looking for the softest spot on Tourvel's neck in which to sink her fangs?)
So the picture got me to thinking about stars who've never won Oscars despite multiple nods. (Of course the most egregiously mistreated stars in Hollywood are the great actors who've never even been nominated... but that's a different list.) For this Tuesday Top Ten, I thought we'd do things a little differently and the rank will be determined not by my opinion but by Oscar's through the number of nominations. I determine the order if stars have the same number of losing nominations.
TOP TEN WORKING FILMS STARS
WITH MULTIPLE NOMINATIONS WHO'VE
NEVER WON A COMPETITIVE OSCAR
Honorable Mentions: Mickey Rooney, Eleanor Parker, Kirk Douglas (yes, they're all still alive), Jane Alexander, Debra Winger, Diane Ladd and Marsha Mason each won three-to-four nominations but since none of these famous actors are working much or at all in features anymore, I decided to make this a list of top “working” stars instead. As for the bottom third of the top ten list, since there are a lot of stars who’ve earned three nominations without ever winning, I had to make judgement calls as to who to include. So my apologies to: Laura Linney, Joaquin Phoenix and Sigourney Weaver (and others with 3 nominations) who just-missed here.
Johnny Depp, The Dangerous Liaisons girls and more after the jump...
Thursday, November 8, 2012 at 12:00PM 
It's been so long since I had a cinematic arch-enemy: Daughter of Tippi who haunted my youth is rarely onscreen; The Swankster is hibernating (it can't be long before a "comeback" though, right?); Zeéeeee has receded so suddenly that it's feeling like Meg Ryan 2.0 (and Meg never deserved the sub zero shoulder she got so abruptly); and Nicolas Cage has marginalized himself into the peripheries of bargain bin movies... though he still has an uncanny ability to find ways to co-star with my most beloved leading ladies of various eras (Turner, Cher, Streep, Moore, Kidman).
Enter Chloë Grace Moretz.
It's been so long since I had a cinematic arch-enemy maybe I should try to enjoy this. In a "boo hiss" sort of way, mind you. In addition to Chloë's general smug ubiquity and her sacriligeous miscasting in the Carrie remake alongside my goddess Julianne Moore (who should know better post Hannibal) she has now decided to double down on forcing me to look at her; she's attaching herself like a parasite to my all time favorite actress. She's already played Michelle Pfeiffer's daughter once in Dark Shadows. She's doing it again in Tim Robbins next directorial effort. The film, which Robbins will also star in, is called Man Under.
In the vein of "American Beauty" and "The Royal Tenenbaums," pic follows a Yonkers family whose lives are changed forever when a photo of them ends up in the Museum of Modern Art.
Now, there's no word yet on if they're officially mother and daughter again this time but considering it's a movie about a troubled family, it's a safe bet.
The silver lining? At least this means Michelle Pfeiffer wasn't lying when she said she wanted to get back to work. If filming gets under way soon on this one, we'll have two Pfeiffer pictures in 2013! See also the crime comedy Malavita.
