... please enjoy this photo of JJ Abrams sharing a twizzler with Chewbacca.
This is not a still from the movie but will give you a feel for how much JJ Abrams loves Chewbacca. It comes through in the movie, trust! (Our review will be up sometime tomorrow but in short: it's good family entertainment fun and nothing like those awful awful prequels!)
Also here's Oscar Isaac singing that silly Star Wars theme song. Quoth Katey...
This video makes me want to throw my underwear at the screen ."
Greetings from Chris! As the newest member of Team Experience, I'm so grateful to be able to share my point of view with you loyal readers in a space for our collective obsessions, unique observations, and global perspectives. Thank you all!
So, I am thankful for
...all of the vibrant and fully-realized women in minor roles that populate Brooklyn. Any one of them could have their own film, and I want Jessica Pare's sales manager to be my bestfriend/life coach.
..."This makes me wish they had been able to find my father's remains" in Trainwreck.
...Jason Robert Brown. We got The Last Five Years on big (but mostly VOD) screens this year, but if his masterpiece "Parade" was getting the big screen treatment, this list would be entirely comprised of that news.
Unfortunately it's fugly (not Carey. She pretty). Incidentally purple and green are my favorite colors but I never like them in combo unless I'm looking at The Joker.
Film/TV Pajiba marvels that 'Tom Cruise does his own stunts' is way more than just lip service Southpaw a Featurette as Jake Gyllenhaal trains for the movie Towleroad Rob Lowe dubsmashing The Sound of Music AV Club Oscar Isaac headlines Show Me a Hero for HBO, which now has a trailer AV Club hating on Teen Wolf's current season - I'm finding the show more and more incomprehensible every year. Considering quitting The Guardian in "current weirdest movie news" Mel Gibson is now a "Creative Adviser" on a Chinese WW II epic The Bombing
Off Arts I'm really struggling to be more well rounded as a person - i only think of the arts! - so every once in awhile i must share current and extremely random items of fascination New Yorker "The Really Big One" -- this article on the fault lines in the Pacific Northwest is more terrifying than any disaster movie Slate investigates the tails of seahorses -- they're actually square unlike the traditional round
Showtune to Go I saw On the Twentieth Century a couple of weeks ago starring Kristin Chenoweth (one-of-a-kind amazing as usual) and you only have a few more days to see it (it closes on the 19th). The show was a little too manically staged for me but Chenoweth as a movie star and Andy Karl as her coattails riding actor boyfriend were both delicious and sensational and more than the sum of their parts. Unfortunately there's precious little quality video of Andy Karl online so here's a promo for his turn in "Rocky The Musical" in 2014 which seemed to prophesy the revival of that franchise - Creed coming at you soon.
For whatever reason Karl barely ever does TV or film (unlike a lot of other stage stars) so his profile is weirdly low with the general public considering he's funny, sexy, good-looking, traditionally masculine, talented and all of that. I was enraged all over again watching his extremely funny work in "On the Twentieth Century" as a narcissistic actor that Christian Borle won a generous second Tony for "Something Rotten" when his category was filled with so many better and truly inspired performances from Tony-less men (one of them even in his own show). The Emmys tendency to love the same people over and over again is much documented and groused about online, but the Tony habit of the same is even more mystifying since they're dealing with different shows and characters altogether each time. With the exception of a few people as default nominees, I'm deeply grateful that Oscar voters have somehow not inherited this usually* awful and stingy gene!
* there are people who have deserved multiple Tonys of course (Cheno, McDonald, Foster, Bernadette, etcetera). But... generally spread the wealth is a wiser and more justified impulse.
Katey Rich rejoins Joe Reid and Nathaniel R to discuss Alex Garland's buzzy sci-fi artificial intelligence thriller Ex Machina, now A24's biggest box office hit. Amir Soltani, from Hello Cinema & TFE, guest stars.This podcast is filled with many spoilers about a surprising movie so please see the movie before listening, if you haven't made it to the theater yet.
Running Time - 43 Minutes 00:01 Intros, Randomness, Cannes project 06:00 Ex Machina - Misleading promos vs going in cold 11:22 [SPOILERS] - Mood versus Substance, sexual issues and slavery metaphor, Princess and Mad Scientist and Frankenstein Tropes, seduction and porn profiles. And we're split on the ending. [/SPOILERS] 29:45 What else we're excited about this summer 36:20 Reader Questions: Bald women, Oscar Isaac 41:50 Goodbyes
Please to enjoy and continue the conversation in the comments. You can listen at the bottom of this post or download from iTunes.
I have been an avid Star Wars fan since as far back as I can remember (blame my mom who was obsessed with Harrison Ford!) and so I couldn't let this celebration go by without throwing my two cents.
Nathaniel already wished you all a Happy May the Fourth, but as if intent on making sure the franchise isn't resting on nostalgia, Vanity Fair has just released a number of beautiful portraits of the new recruits of The Force Awakens and I couldn't not share three of them with you:
Oscar Isaac: woofworthy since 2011 (and probably even before but I do love him in Drive)
The helmet is off and we get a first glimpse at bad guy Kylo Ren (Adam Driver)
And I saved the best for last:
Lupita: luminous even when doing motion capture (her character is apparently a pirate named Maz Kanata)
Wednesday, December 16, 2015 at 4:45PM 
