Reviews: I'm So Excited & The Heat

This review was originally published in my column at Towleroad

and i know i know i know i know i know i want you i want you ♫

Here's a film you'll never see on an airplane. Pedro Almodóvar's latest, I'm So Excited!, takes place (almost) entirely aboard an airplane like some lost "bottle episode" of an aborted Almodóvarian sitcom. But the stewards and pilots are less concerned with fastening your seat belt than unzipping your pants and more interested in spiking drinks than pouring them. It's arrived just in time for Gay Pride Weekend and what great timing; this is by far the gayest thing Pedro has done since Bad Education (2004) in which Gael García Bernal famously both tucked his junk for drag duties and showed it off in wet underwear poolside.

I think it was the internet critic David Poland (of Movie City News fame) who dubbed that earlier film "fag noir" and took some heat for that but I personally don't think Almodóvar would have minded. In fact, for a long time I miscredited the tag to Pedro himself. Pedro's characters are often outrageously hedonistic from nympho nuns to homicidal hotties to transgendered hookers and even the sanest among them act on melodramatic or comic impulse without shame or apology. In short, to appropriate a quote from Rich Juzwiak they're 'as faggy as they want to be'. And that's just the ladies! [more...]

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Win the "I'm So Excited" Prize Pack

I would personally like to thank Sony Pictures Classics for latching on to Pedro Almodóvar all those years ago and nurturing his ongoing fandom in arthouse circles. As you may have heard his latest, I'm So Excited, is in the theaters this weekend. SPC is offering five prize packs to readers right here at TFE! 

Enter to win an I'm So Excited! Prize Pack!

The I'm So Excited Prize Pack includes one  I'm So Excited flight attendant t-shirt, one I'm So Excited flight inflatable neck pillow and one I'm So Excited pilot wing pin.

To enter just send me an email by Monday July 1st at Midnight with...

• "I'm So Excited" in the subject line
• Your name and shipping address
• And the answer to this question: If you found yourself on a full flight with all the characters from Pedro's filmography, who would you sit next to and why?

The official synopsis goes like so...

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The Film Experience. Where To Now?

Running a niche blog is tough business. It doesn't pay the bills. Traffic peaked in 2011 (I was unemployed and had more time to write) and though we held steady in 2012, more or less, no growth *sniffle*. Is the plateau a sign that I should close up shop? More corporate blogs emerge with big paid teams devoted to Oscar coverage each year.

The existental and practical question: how to compete?

But after a decade of writing for the internet, it's actually my life so I have no desire to quit. I fear becoming the boy who cried wolf since I've freaked out publicly before a few times about quitting but always kept writing.  "People" tell me that traffic is noteworthy but ads are still had to come by so I have to beg for donations / subscriptions (see righthand sidebar - if everyone who read gave a nickel a day I could do this full time!). I'll be brainstorming about how to make this work in 2013 and by June, I'll make decisions. So don't go anywhere post Oscar - Give me hope for the future. I'll sing for my supper. What would keep you coming back post-Oscar? 

I may even try a weekly Podcast though that would surely have to involve a rotating panel of guests instead of the regulars. ANYWAY. There's more to come before a possible summer hiatus (we'll see how the next two months go)...  

Reader Appreciation Month
Quentin Tarantino Week (March 25-30)
April Showers
Spring-Long Pedro Almódovar Retrospective

Meanwhile if you can contribute in any way (maybe you're a personal publicist? an interactive web designer? a brilliant emerging writer who doesn't want to run his/her own blog? a movie star or connected character actor who reads silently? a massage therapist? a personal trainer? a life coach?) towards boosting the site's profile let me know with a private email or with a comment. 

National Link Registry

The Hollywood Reporter  A former sitcom writer "kvells and kvetches" about The Guilt Trip and Parental Guidance starring Babs and Bette
PopWatch Mark Harris on Hollywood's love of gun violence. I highly recommend reading this but I highly caution NOT reading the comments because as per usual the gun crazies come out. They'd have us all packing and I so don't want to live in their preferred world.
Cinema Blend Katey & Eric on 12 Unfairly Overlooked Movies of 2012 from Hello I Must Be Going (Yay, Melanie!) through Cosmopolis

Awards Daily Whoa. Ann Dowd is footing the bill for her own Oscar campaign.
The Hollywood Reporter talks to Emayatzy Corinealdi on her breakthrough in Middle of Nowhere. You know. I've been trying not to talk about this because I can't figure out a way to say it that doesn't sound indelicate but in some ways I really hate falling in love with new black actresses in the same way that falling hard for new theater actors can be nerve-wracking. Chances are (unforgivably) strong that no one will give these gifted performers another plum opportunity after their breakthrough and that truly sucks. So I'm crossing my fingers for Corinealdi but I'm still waiting for something real to happen for Pariah star Adepero Oduye, last year's breakthrough actress of color. And I'm still trying to wrap my head around the non-career of the brilliant Kimberly Elise so... 

The Carpetbagger on screenwriter Lucy Alibar's (Beasts of the Southern Wild) crash course in cinema
The Onion "Top Movies of 2012"
David Poland gives himself a new nickname. Or adopts one given.
Vanity Fair Barbra Streisand talks about her legendary duet with Judy Garland in the 60s. Really interesting comment from Babs I think.  
MNPP joins the Zero Dark Thirty fan club 

Oooh, look Quentin Tarantino pays tribute to Pedro Almodóvar saying that his filmography is "the one to beat" -damn straight! Nobody else in the modern era compares.

Finally, I want to extend my annual congratulations to the 25 films that are newly announced for preservation by the National Film Registry. They are:

• "3:10 to Yuma" (1957)
• "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959)
• "The Augustas" (1930s-1950s)
• "Born Yesterday" (1950)
• "Breakfast at Tiffany’s" (1961)
• "A Christmas Story" (1983)
• "The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Title Fight" (1897)
• "Dirty Harry" (1971)
• "Hours for Jerome: Parts 1 and 2" (1980-82)
• "The Kidnappers Foil" (1930s-1950s)
• "Kodachrome Color Motion Picture Tests" (1922)
• "A League of Their Own" (1992)
• "The Matrix" (1999)
• "The Middleton Family at the New York World’s Fair" (1939)
• "One Survivor Remembers" (1995)
• "Parable" (1964)
• "Samsara: Death and Rebirth in Cambodia" (1990)
• "Slacker" (1991)
• "Sons of the Desert" (1933)
• "The Spook Who Sat by the Door" (1973)
• "They Call It Pro Football" (1967)
• "The Times of Harvey Milk" (1984)
• "Two-Lane Blacktop" (1971)
• "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1914)
• "The Wishing Ring; An Idyll of Old England" (1914)

As per usual that's a lot of titles that I know nothing about but I'm most thrilled by The Times of Harvey Milk which is one of the most moving and important documentaries ever made. And on a sillier note, can we talk about how ever-watchable the female baseball comedy A League of Their Own is? Sometimes I pine for the 1990s. It's tough to imagine that movie breaking $100 million now but the 90s were a good time for girlpower narratives.  

If you're a fan of A League of  Their Own (who isn't?) I want to know which scene just popped into your mind when you heard that it made the list!

I Want To Squeeze You, Please You

JA from MNPP here - I don't want to speak for Nathaniel, but I can't imagine him having to do one of his patented "Yes No Maybe So" takes on this here first teaser for Pedro Almodovar's next flick, a comedy called I'm So Excited - as in The Pointer Sisters' big hit song, which we see some male flight attendants perform therein. I can't imagine Nat having to to a "Yes No Maybe So" since this is Almodovar, and it is always HELL YES with Almodovar. 

So I will just present it unto you, in hopes it can maybe put a smile on your face on this dreary horrible day. And I will add this informational nugget - I stole pizza from a pizza party that The Pointer Sisters were having during a drag show I attended when I was in college in the late 90s, and that's all this song ever makes me think of. So thanks for the pizza, ladies!

[UPDATE: The comedy about a flight where passengers begin to reveal their secrets to one another when the plane runs into trouble will feature familar Pedro regulars Javier Cámara (Talk to Her), Lola Dueñas (Volver) Cecilia Roth (All About My Mother), Carmen Machi (Broken Embraces) and a lot of new blood. Actors doing just their second tour of duty for the great auteur including Paz Vega ("Amparo" in Talk to Her), José Luis Torrijo (a doctor in All About My Mother), Antonio de la Torre ("Paco" in Volver) and Blanca Suarez ("Norma" in The Skin I Live In). We will also see quite a few Pedro virgins, most of them male: Hugo Silva, Miguel Angel Silvestre, Raúl Arévalo, Willy Toledo, José María Yazpik, Carlos Areces, and the lone new actress Laya Martí. What's more, according to Fotogramas, the comedy will also feature Pedro's movie star darlings Penelope Cruz & Antonio Banderas though they don't appear in this 47 second look.]