The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Since The Film Experience obsessives over actresses almost daily, the actors could use a little spotlight from time to time. So this entry into our year in review party is a beauty break starring the year's best man candy in cinema ...with a little TV thrown in for extra flavor.
15 A superhero... but which one? Any of The Avengers will do but if actors are going to be expected to be on special diets and grueling workout routines daily for those spandex ready bodies, you'd think Marvel would let them go shirtless for more than 10 seconds each movie. Chris Evans is still the most delicious among them but we'll give this round to Paul Rudd for the sleeker non-steroidal fitness regimen (which we hope becomes more the norm because Henry Cavill's Superman body is so cartoon weird; it's like a giant chest and shoulders with random stick appendages and face).
Runner up goes to Chris Hemsworth When Wet: in that silly pool of visions in Age of Ultron; shipwrecked and starving but still somehow maintaining the workouts in In the Heart of the Sea; or even just those carefully wet stray Blackhat bangs
Fourteen more people or categories after the jump. But fair warning... it's slightly nsfw. So it's a good thing you're on Christmas break. In the immortal words of Tina Belcher...
Nathaniel, reporting from TIFF, where the French still love la petite mort. Due to the graphic nature of these films the reviews of Gaspar Noé's 3D explicit sex movie Love and the French teens-gone-wild Bang Gang: a modern love story (which is about exactly what it sounds like it's about) are both hidden after the jump where naughty things must go... Think of the children!
She appears to have had quite a change of heart as she was emphatic on this point when we spoke and she is still very much among the living!
So since she's changed her mind, it's time for CAST THIS! Who should play these two iconic American artists in their twenty-something years for the miniseries? You'll need actors who can play raw emotion, uninhibited sexuality and bohemian charisma (For extra credit you can also cast playwright/actor/ex-partner of Jessica Lange Sam Shepard since he was also Patti's lover in the early 1970s and Sam Wagstaff who became Robert's older lover around the same time and his devoted mentor/patron/lover until his death.)
Both Smith and Mapplethorpe were poor 21 year-old transplants to NYC in 1967 (they were the exact same age) and lived together as roommates and lovers and later, he was homosexual after all, as devoted friends until 1974. Their fates were tied together and they both became famous, she as a musician with the release of her debut album "Horses" in 1975. His fame built more gradually as the fame of photographers and artists, tends to.
must read "Want to work in Hollywood? Only straight, white men need apply?" this new study from USC is getting a lot of attention and it is pretty damning evidence all told. (How did diversity issues get so much worse instead of better? - It boggles the mind.) That study is just for films but TV is doing a lot better. On that note it looks like we lost Lee Daniels to TV for good (*sniffle... no more Paperboy or Precious). In addition to "Empire" Season 2 he's developing a girl-band series called "Star". NYT also looked at the diversity gap on the bigscreen from that study and Dana Delany tweeted in response underlining why she doesn't do film anymore.
The migration of actors (particularly female) and creatives to television has been well documented. I can only blame moviegoers at this point. They just only seem willing to look at "adult" and female stuff on television and save their ticket dollars for fx films
links Variety Todd Haynes to get a tribute at this year's Gotham Awards Empire remember when Lasse Hallström was a big deal? His breakthrough was MyLife as a Dog (not a literal title) and now he'll be directing a movie called A Dog's Purpose which is actually about a dog, a reincarnated dog who helps various owners in his lives imgur a native of Florida photographs Edward Scissorhands locations 25 years later. The foilage sure grew and the colors sure are drabber now Interview republishes an archival interview with Warren Beatty from 1972 as we await anything on his long-gestating Howard Hughes biopic MSZ "Unloved" series looks at Peyton Reed's Down With Love and The Break-Up Filmmaker Magazine talks to Randal Kleiser about Summer Lovers, an 80s guilty pleasure starring Daryl Hannah and Peter Gallagher. Indie Outlook compares American Sniper and Selma to find the structure of "Oscar Bait". It's interesting but I wholly disagree on the notion that Selma's focus on the mechanicas of civil disobedience makes it dry and unsatisfying. I think that's exactly what makes it so good and so much more worthwhile than a simple "great man" biopic would have been. Love that movie. This Is Not Porn Jessica Lange on the set of King Kong (1976). Hee
spandex city CW Seed This is actually cool. CW, which had a major hit with their fun and well-crafted Flash series is now streaming the original Flash television series from 1990 - I had forgotten that existed even! Comic Alliance "why I'm boycotting Marvel Comics" more on Marvel's very real diversity problem Htxt.Africa talks Star Wars and The Jungle Book from a Disney Africa presentation. Also says Doctor Strange looks "horror-movie-dark"
for London readers FacebookDesperately Seeking Susan is getting a 30th anniversary screening at the Prince Charles Cinema
the Leftovers
Oooh, here's the Season 2 trailer to HBO's "The Leftovers" which had so many good parts for ladies last season. This new season shakes things up a lot so we don't know quite what to expect.
free the bacon Kevin Bacon demands more male nudity in Hollywood
This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It is reprinted here with in the Director's Cut version. i.e. it's longer this time...
When Magic Mike opened three years ago it was something of a risky proposition. Male stars exploiting their bodies for a young male star’s dream project loosely based on his own stripping career which he felt no shame about? Who would have guessed? Cut to three years later: Magic Mike and Friends (minus The Kid and Dallas “alright alright alright”) have returned to movie theaters with much teasing and blockbuster fanfare to a relatively new pop cultural context they helped create: male objectification is increasingly the norm. Just ask Chris Pratt, the ascendant superstar of the moment (Guardians of the Galaxy, Jurassic World) who has acknowledged that his new body was key to his ascendance and that he’s all for it… the objectification.
This wondrous new world of happily exposed man-flesh makes Magic Mike XXL feel curiously demure. Usually sequels go for more-more-more but XXL (the title is a misnomer) downsizes even as the stages get larger. There’s less plot since it’s essentially a road trip movie but most curiously there’s much less nudity even if the women this time around seem a lot more eager to see it.
This withholding is smart and funny at the beginning of the film in a sensational opening dance number starring Mike alone in his workroom. [More...]
Wednesday, December 23, 2015 at 8:00PM 
Since The Film Experience obsessives over actresses almost daily, the actors could use a little spotlight from time to time. So this entry into our year in review party is a beauty break starring the year's best man candy in cinema ...with a little TV thrown in for extra flavor.
