Pfeiffer Premieres, Then & Now

It's Pfeiffer Pfriday... on Saturday! (I can't be constrained by calendars and sunsets.) Joe reminded me in the comments earlier today that 20 years ago on this very day the stars were walking the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of Batman Returns (1992) -- I'd casually mentioned it a month ago but pforgot on the day of! -- and just yesterday Pfeiffer was walking the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of People Like Us (2012) so things are set right again in Pfandom-Land. She's right where she's supposed to be.

Look how happy she is hugging Chris Pine!

And just as a reminder here she is exactly 20 years earlier at the Batman Returns premiere and at the Globes and Oscars that year, too ...

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How long has it been since you've seen The Matrix?

Last weekend I decided it was time to burn through the DVD queue instead of sitting wordless at my computer. But when I opened the latest rental, The Good Fairy (1935) -- no, I can't remember why I rented it -- the disc was broken. We ended up watching The Matrix (1999) instead because when a black and white Willam Wyler / Preston Sturges comedy starring Margaret Sullavan is denied you, what other movie will do? LOL. 

Warner Bros had sent the BluRay and The Boyfriend remarked that we hadn't seen it since opening night in 1999. It seems like one of those movies we've all seen a million times but in my case that's only because it became such a pop culture staple. Not even its gobsmackingly terrible sequels could shake its grip on the zeitgeist.

The Matrix's modern blend of Alice in Wonderland, gun fetish porn, visual effects bravado, and technophobic dystopia was just what people craved in 1999 when the internet was so obviously and rapidly changing the world. It's tough to even think of a world without the web now but in the early 90s it was still something like a strange and unusual toy... unnerving even if you were hopelessly analog. Watching the movie now in 2012 is kind of a retro shock.

Six observations while watching the movie in 2012...

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Twins: "You and I... we're exactly the same"

Since we're celebrating twins until the stars move on from Gemini, I wanted to give a shout out to the figurative kind as well.

Due to sad circumstances offline I'm way behind on "Hit Me With Your Best Shot"  though I did watch Joan Crawford in Possessed recently to catch up. Crawford's camp icon status got me to thinking about the best camp masterpiece in the past 25 years, one that we already covered in the first season of the best shot series. (Showgirls is hard-wired into my neural pathways so it's very easy to access). The legendary so-bad-it's-good movie pits "Goddess" superstar Cristal Connors (Oscar-worthy Gina Gershon... and I'm 100% sincere) against naive crazyperson Nomi Malone (Razzie winner Elizabeth Berkley). Cristal insists repeatedly that they're one and the same, virtually identical. Nomi vehemently disagrees but the movie itself is in Cristal's headspace through and through.

The best shot from the movie? Cristal, Nomi, and Nipples after the jump...

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Monologue: Annette Bening. Still on the Grift.

1990 was the year in which I saw the least amount of movies in theaters. I was overseas and when I returned I devoured everything. I don't recommend missing an entire year of cinema but I also can't deny that it's fun to catch up in massive marathons. My favorite shiny new  plaything that year turned out to be Annette Bening. She had appeared in two movies before her breakthrough (The Great Outdoors and Valmont, the latter of which was barely released) but I wasn't familiar with her. In 1990 she ascended. She swiped a scene wholesale from Meryl Streep in Postcards from the Edge (in a way we didn't see again for another 18 years when Viola Davis rationalized away her son in Doubt) and sparkled and teased as Myra Langtry in The Grifters. She deservedly won her first Oscar nomination but the bid was doomed. "You in danger, girl" Ghost was a juggernaut and Whoopi Goldberg was impossible to deny..

Myra, delighted and curious, realizes her boyfriend is "on the grift"

Director Stephen Frears, then at his creative peak hot off Dangerous Liaisons, handed Bening The Grifter's pivotal centerpiece. It's not one scene exactly nor an unbroken monologue but a shifting series of impressions and exchanges in which Myra reveals her past (in voiceover flashback) and begins to rope in her future, altering the game board on which mother and son con artists Roy and Lily Dillon play (John Cusack and Anjelica Huston, the latter giving a mammoth Oscar-worthy performance.)

After Myra witnesses her boyfriend Roy "working the tat on those sailor boys"  she drops enough strange lingo to choke a lesser actress in an effort to rustle his cautious feathers and reveal himself.

Oh come on, Roy. 'The tat,' what you do for a living.❞

More including new Bening films...

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"Titanic" Times Three. And Forever.

I had grand plans for the Titanic centennial, plans filled with a supersize hubris not unlike the power players at the White Star Lines albeit without the deadly consequences. It would be the biggest boldest blog post ever and would compare every last detail of all film versions of Titanic from costuming to art direction to special effects to young loves lost in the icy waters.  Film Experience readers would feel as if they'd won the lottery for a first class ticket, no slumming in steerage required! But before I drive this analogy into an uncomfortably tone deaf iceberg moment -- like the one James Cameron collided with when he mixed "King of the World" bragging with that moment of silence for a 1517 souls lost on the tragic night -- I will stop and just get on with it. Picture time!

Titanic (1943), Titanic (1953), and Titanic (1997)

Here is a brief visual history of the Titanic sinking via the greatest of all art forms, The Movies. All images are culled from films named Titanic directed by Germany's Herbert Selpin, the Romanian Hollywood success Jean Negulesco, and Canada's box office colossus James Cameron in 1943, 1953 and 1997. These are hardly the only films about the infamous oceanic disaster even if you exclude the filmed narratives where the disaster is only a minor plot point in everything from one of the earliest best picture winners Cavalcade (1933) to today's popular British series Downton Abbey (2010-)

The three Titanics begin very differently... before settling in as narrative siblings.

The German film begins with a board meaning at White Star Line staging the event as a cautionary tale about big business. The 1953 picture begins with an eery human-free depiction of the forming of an iceberg that Malick might love (though it instantly flips back to a stuffy 50s drama). The 1997 blockbuster begins with a contemporary dive with an explorer (Bill Paxton) and an old survivor Rose (Gloria Stuart) about to reminisce... cue three hour flashback!!!

After that they're much more similar. We get...

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