Friday, May 17, 2013 at 10:00PM They’re arriving so late in the day because Mrs. Wilcox is a nymph who travels at night.
As far as evocative film openings go this lush green opening for Howards End ranks among the top for me. Really, though, many films would be vastly improved if they open with a strolling Vanessa Redgrave. more...
Thursday, May 16, 2013 at 11:39AM Last night I posted the Best Shot group roundup of The Talented Mr Ripley, but not my own choice. Why? Well every time I began I wanted to start over. If this blogpost were a passport I would have been defacing my own photo. I chose eight shots - at least -- but each one seemed to beg for a wholly different article to accompany it. Which is not to say that the film is any more gorgeously shot than others we've covered in this series (though John Seale easily deserved the best Cinematography nomination he was denied) but that it is several films at once. Which is why I've titled this post with its less condensed but truer title. Those sixteen extra shuffling adjectives in the brilliant title design say it all.
Light bulb!
Not actual light bulbs but figurative ones (we'll get to the actual ones in a minute) though actual lights figure into this perfect shot of Marge, backing through a hallway in what would handily be my choice if I thought of this film as only a thriller. This moment is just terrifying, aided immeasurably by a virtuousic turn by Gwyneth Paltrow. [more...]
Wednesday, May 15, 2013 at 7:22PM 
For this week's edition of Hit Me With Your Best Shot, we stayed another summer in Italy. We didn't follow an American spinster this time but a young shapeshifter known as The Talented Mr Ripley. He was sent to Italy to fetch trustfund baby Dickie Greenleaf but he likes Dickie's life so much he fetches it for himself instead.
Outside the film's actual narrative, based on the famous novel by Patricia Highsmith (whose work is oft-adapted - The Two Faces of January is next) things were just as dramatic. The movie was a Prestige Event since it was Anthony Minghella's (RIP) follow-up to his Best Picture winner The English Patient (1996). It wasn't quite a slam dunk with Oscar, despite the pedigree and the quality (I prefer it to Patient, myself), though it sure was a thing of beauty. The Talented Mr Ripley featured one of the most impressive collections of young stars at seemingly simultaneous points in their careers ever assembled; the world had just fallen for Gwyneth Paltrow (hot off Shakespeare), Jude Law (hot off stealing Gattaca), Matt Damon (still glowing from Good Will Hunting), and Cate Blanchett (hot off Elizabeth) and writer/director Anthony Minghella (RIP) managed to corral them all for the same movie.
Here are the 15 images that the 17 wide Best Shot club went a little mad for. Click on the link for the corresponding article and refresh your screens since more articles are bound to come in (including my own). Next week's film is Disney's grand 40s experiment Fantasia (special instructions here) and you should join us.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013 at 11:00PM april showers & a tuesday top ten in one!
Do you ever think of The Truman Show (1998)? I really and truly loved it in 1998 naming it 'The Best Film of the Year!' to anyone who would listen. (This was in my pre Film Experience days of course... though it's hard to remember such a time).
My Top Ten Of 1998 - Unranked
...with Central Station and Shakespeare in Love just outside the top ten though I'm always considering reinstating them. They were both once on the actual list (The Idiots and the Malick I saw a little later). I haven't seen any of them save Velvet Goldmine for at least...seven years? Would my list hold up? Would yours? How often do you revisit your #1s from various years and do you ever lose track of them completely the way I did The Truman Show.
Today the movie popped into my head in an existential "is this all there is?" crisis moment I was having. Then I thought about the malfunctioning sudden downpour that drenches the star of that show. Truman is played by Jim Carrey (in the first of his series of FYC performances that Oscar sadly passed on). The childllike man still hasn't figured out that his life is actually a TV show. Despite his ignorance oddities like the malfunctioning rain start waking him up to life's surreal absurdities if not yet fully to his own life's precarious relationship to reality. He stares in confusion and disbelief as the shower follows him and eventually he ends up laughing and yelling with joy as the glitch gives way to a fullfledged rainstorm.
I worry that I wouldn't be as amused if this happened to me.
I need to find a way to be that lighthearted and childlike when I'm suddenly drenched. After all, when it rains it pours and we aren't always carrying umbrellas.
previous shower
Anna Karenina's stylish snowfall
Monday, April 29, 2013 at 6:33PM To celebrate the 55th birthday of the one and only I thought we'd resurrect an old post about her Catwoman performance. If she's got nine lives so should this post. Please to enjoy...
Tim Burton's Batman Returns, the best Batman film (you heard me... throw down!) is now 15 21 years old and still one of the best comic book films. The movie didn't change cinema or its genre or significantly alter any careers. But it did send yours truly and millions of other Pfeiffer inclined moviegoers into a pfrenzy, arguably marking the apex of La Pfeiffer's cinematic reign. She was still in Oscar chasing mode (Love Field) and the full fledged move from heavy dramatic lifting into light mainstream fare (One Fine Day) and then blink and you'll miss her erratic appearances (Dark Shadows) was years away.
Ten Best Catwoman Line Deliveries
All the dialogue rocks but these are my favorite Pfeifferian readings
10 "Life's a bitch. Now, so am I"
Blockbusters love to shove quips on the public, in the hopes of catchphrase afterlife. This one’s pretty basic but Michelle sells it with true believer zeal.
