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.)
5 random things that happened on this day, January 25th, in showbiz history...
1949 The first Primetime Emmys ever were held at the Hollywood Athletic Club. But the Emmys then were not as we know them today. They were purely local celebrating Los Angeles television programs and stations. Over the first decade they morphed into the national TV celebration we have today... albeit with far fewer categories.
Jason Adams reporting on the New York Film Festival which kicks off Friday night.
Calling a movie "Woody-Allen-ish" in 2018 is less of a double-edged sword than it is a single-edged one - there's not a lot of benefit; mostly just wounds. And yet Olivier Assayas' Non-Fiction kind of demands the comparison to Classic Woody - it's about a group of chatty literate urbanites having literate urbane chats in luxurious apartments and outfits, all of them sleeping with each other while being obsessed with death and sex and books, order TBD. It's terribly witty in that very specific way that certain New Yorkers love, where they can turn to the person next to them and smile and nod, everybody content that hey, they got that one.
And listen, hey, I am one of those Certain New Yorkers myself, so I'm allowed to make fun...
"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.
Personal Shopperis a film about ghosts, and where to find them. Maureen (Kristen Stewart) is a bereaved twin, waiting in Paris for a sign from her recently deceased brother, Lewis. But it doesn’t come easy, not in the least bit due to some unpleasant cross-currents in her professional life. She acquires clothes and accessories for Kyra (Nora von Waldstatten), a celebrity who has an irritating penchant for holding onto things she was meant to return. Maureen jets across the city and rockets under the English Channel on her behalf, toting jewelry boxes and garment bags.
All of which is to say that the material of this film is transient and fleeting, the inevitable intangibility of the personal shopper’s trade. And, of course, it is also about the translucent transience of ghosts, especially ghosts that struggle to make contact. Olivier Assayas has created a layered projection of Maureen’s psychology that refuses her the simple clarity of the mirror. Instead, she seeks her brother and herself in all of the wrong places, only slowly understanding the nature of presence.
Jason reporting from NYFF on the spooky and stylish reunion between Clouds of Sils Maria's director and star...
When I first read that Olivier Assayas was making a haunted house movie starring Kristen Stewart my reaction was both "a record needle scratching to a halt sound-effect" and "a cartoon figure running through a wall only to leave a perfect cut-out of their shape in said wall." That is to say I was taken aback, but I wanted to be at that place immediately. Important Directors, those who get the word "important" capitalized, look down on genre too often. But it's almost always fascinating to see what these talents make of the well-trod constructs and conceits - how they twist and shape them to their personal auteurial demands.
And you could say ghosts hovering over sad stylish actresses has been a theme that Assayas has returned to time and again...
It wouldn't be Cannes without the reports of boos from the always feisty crowd. While reviews and early word from the festival's first days were mostly positive, the jeers are just starting to begin. This year's unluckiest victims have been Personal Shopper and The Neon Demon.
If the reported response to The Neon Demon is to be believed, it may be one for future Cannes lore. The most vocal detractors were hurling obscenities at the screen and many responses were repulsed by the film's more twisted, violent elements and shallow veneer. But the question remains: What else did they expect from a Nicolas Winding Refn horror film? Perhaps the boos themselves could have been expected as well, given the reaction to his previous effort Only God Forgives.
Personal Shopper reunites director Olivier Assayas with his Clouds of Sils Maria star Kristen Stewart as an assistant suffering from ghostly visitations. Its many early fans have defended it as misunderstood, ambiguous, and difficult to categorize, and Stewart has garnered some Best Actress buzz for the festival. By my estimation, the film has inspired some of the best writing of the festival, like Richard Lawson's aching take over at Vanity Fair. The first international trailer promises something unique indeed:
Neither film needs to worry: they join the long tradition of films that have been booed at the festival, including Taxi Driver, Marie Antoinette, The Tree of Life, and Inglourious Basterds. Not every film booed at Cannes turns out like Vincent Gallo's The Brown Bunny - so consider our excitement for both Shopper and Demon increased.
Monday, January 25, 2021 at 9:00AM 
