Top 25 Reasons to Watch "White Christmas" This Season

Members of Team Experience have been asked to share their favorite Christmas movie. Here's new contributor Eurocheese...

25 Reasons to Watch White Christmas (Again)

01 Eye popping color (the first VistaVision film!) at every opportunity

02 The “Sisters” number! A surprise drag number where the actors can’t stop giggling in the 1950s? Yes please.

03 The way the movie teases snow until we almost demand it...

Click to read more ...

99¢ rentals to fill in the Oscar gaps

UPDATE 10/23 Sadly these deals have all expired and they're back up to $3.99 per film.

While we wait (impatiently) for the major Oscar contenders to show themselves to general audiences, why not check out an older Oscar nominees for kicks and to fill any gaps in your Oscar knowledge. Here are a few that iTunes is offering to rent for just 99¢... naturally I have to share the posters for the ones with exclamatory taglines.

• Sunrise (1927)/ Street Angel (1928) for Janet Gaynor, the very first Best Actress winner and the only Best Actress winner to win for multiple roles simultaneously (they changed the rule thereafter)
• In Old Chicago (1938) Tyrone Powers in a six-time nominated film which won Alice Brady supporting actress
• The Rains Came (1939) starring Myrna Loy and up for six Oscars
• Blood and Sand (1941) this torreador drama starring Tyrone Power won Best Cinematography
• This Above All (1942) a romantic drama starring Joan Fontaine and Tyrone Power received 4 nominations and a win for Art Direction
• The Snake Pit (1948) Olivia de Havilland in an asylum (!) in one of the original 'deglam' roles. Six nominations including Best Picture
• Pinky (1949), a racial drama about a woman who can "pass" as white received 3 acting nominations

• Come to the Stable (1949) a comedy about nuns which was up for an inexplicable 7 Oscars losing all of them -- we recently wrote about it
• The Young Lions (1958) three nominations including cinematography for this Marlon Brando / Montgomery Clift World War II picture.
• The Best of Everything (1959) three nominations including costume design for this Joan Crawford picture that January Jones hated so very much in that one episode of Mad Men

Posterized: A Star is Born

by Nathaniel R

How many versions of the oft-remade A Star is Born have you seen? There have been four now, five if you count What Price Hollywood, often forgotten because it has a different title but so alike in story beats that the first official A Star is Born was clearly lifting from it wholesale. Since the Judy Garland version they've all been musicals and as of the Barbra Streisand version, the Grammys replaced the Oscars as the key awards show moment when the new superstar wins big while her husband hits rock bottom. But more on all this later maybe..

WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD? (1932) Director George Cukor 
Starring Constance Bennett & Lowell Sherman (1 Oscar nomination for writing)

A STAR IS BORN (1937) Director William Wellman (Cukor declined)
Starring Janet Gaynor & Fredric March (7 nominations including Director, Actor and Actress, 1 win for "original" writing even though the plot was lifted from the 1932 film!, 1 Honorary for its color photography in a then mostly black-and-white world. This is the only version that was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars)

A STAR IS BORN (1954) Director George Cukor again but this time it's a musical
Starring Judy Garland & James Mason (6 nominations: Actor, Actress, Costume Design, Art Direction, Score, Original Song "The Man That Got Away")

A STAR IS BORN (1976) Director Frank Pierson
Starring Barbra Streisand & Kris Kristofferson (4 nominations including Cinematography, Sound, and Score, 1 win for Original Song "Evergreen")

A STAR IS BORN (2018) Director Bradley Cooper
Starring Lady Gaga & Bradley Cooper (Oscar fate to be determined)

Since the space inbetween each A Star is Born movies is growing each time, the sixth version should arrive around 2070. Mark your calendars! ;) 

Perfect Things Which Are Perfect. "Rear Window" Edition

by Nathaniel R

This past weekend Jason and I went to a big screen showing of Hitchcock's masterpiece Rear Window (1954). Or one of his masterpieces that is; has more than his share, that one. We went just because it was playing (bless you rep scene) and it was the absolutely best thing to see during an actual heatwave in NYC because it's set during one yet it's its own air-conditioning. It's utterly cool...

I love that so many characters in the picture but especially LB (Stewart), eternally in pajamas and broken leg cast, come across like the heat is wearing at their nerves, temper, and clothing. Except Grace Kelly as Lisa Carol Fremont, who just floats onto the screen in a cocktail dress, in slomo no less in one of the cinema's all time greatest entrances. Lisa always looks like she is immune to common people concerns like the weather. This only benefits the film because it plays deliciously to L.B.'s (James Stewart) conflicted perception of her as somehow both above the mortal world but also too fragile for it. He thinks his rough and tumble travelling photographer existence too much for her. But isn't the rich dichotomy of the film that she's actually braver than he is when all the dangerous seeds the picture so gleefully places, eventually bloom? 

I've seen Rear Window several times but somehow I always forget big chunks of it. Like that it was set during a heatwave -- how did I forget that? But the heatwave ready to melt me again once I left the theater is beside the point. As I sat there totally engrossed and then delighted and then tense and then elated, I was reminded of a simple fact: Oh riiiiight, this perfect thing is perfect.

COMMENT PARTY ☛ So my spread-the-good-vibes question to you is this. When was the last time you saw an old favorite only to be surprised anew at its total perfection?