Link Trip

Decider this Tiffany Haddish Oscar nomination could happen. 'Let's do this!'
Guardian when should cinemas turn their house lights on? During credits? After them?
Movie City News Jodie Foster talks at length about The Silence of the Lambs 
NathanielR... you've maybe already seen my anger about this topic when it comes to Call Me By Your Name, which is absolutely not over when the credits begin no matter what the house lights or your fellow moviegoers think. Stay in your seat. Respect the art. 
IndieWire Paul Thomas Anderson explains why there will be no cinematographer credited on his new film Phantom Thread

 

EW interviews Beanie Feldstein who is so wonderful in Lady Bird
GQ Dacre Montgomery on his shirtless dancing audition tape for Stranger Things 2
Guardian a new exhibit on 100 years of Australian film in pictures from the silent pictures through The Babadook
Variety Critics Choice Awards return to the CW. January 11th. 
Boy Culture reviews the new production of Harvey Feirstein's Torch Song
Coming Soon Jessica Chastain for the It sequel. Sure sounds plausible
TFE... in case you missed it: the full awards calendar for the rest of the season
Awards Daily Kathryn Bigelow's Detroit is getting a rerelease with a new FYC trailer to try to generate awards buzz
Tracking Board in the worst idea we heard this week news, there's a discussion about making The Lord of the Rings into a TV series. make it stop make it stop. Not everything needs to go on eternally. Let some things be. 
Variety Swords and Scepters, a historical epic about an 1857 Indian rebellion led by the Queen of Jhansi, is assembling a great cast including Rupert Everett, Devika Bhise, Derek Jacobi, and Jodhi May. There's also a Bollywood picture coming about the same story

Must Watch Video
Uma Thurman on the recent Hollywood flood of sexual harassment stories.

Uma Thurman's response when asked about the flood of sexual misconduct allegations....wow. pic.twitter.com/Sw5Br1GwFg

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) November 4, 2017

If she can channel this rage (it's so audible despite her careful reflective words) into a performance, she'll be Oscar worthy again. Have always loved her. Hoping for another classic role soon to go with Mia Wallace, The Bride, Mrs H, Cecile de Volanges, and June Miller. 

Kevin Spacey Continues to Take Low Roads

by Nathaniel R

a famously cheeky magazine cover from 1997Sigh. How do you solve a problem like Kevin Spacey? The actor's career started off splendidly but soon after those hugely popular double Oscar wins (The Usual Suspects and American Beauty) in the second half of the 1990s, he became rather insufferable both onscreen and as a celebrity. Acting is a subjective art but I personally can't make it through a single episode of House of Cards (I've tried a few times) with that pitched to the rafters hamminess. 

The Netflix star has been resisting public admission of his open-secret homosexuality since he became famous. He's let decades go by without comment, while dozens of braver less famous actors took up the challenge and made the world a better place for future generations by coming out.

Now that he's accused of sexual assault by another man he chooses THIS moment to do it? For shame!

Click to read more ...

Harvey Weinstein Expelled From the Academy

By Nathaniel R

It's the end of an era. Harvey Weinstein has been expelled from the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences given the avalanche of sexual harassment and rape claims that have hit in the past week. That's quite a downfall for a man once synonomous with Oscar Night. Or as The Los Angeles Times succinctly puts it

The move... in symbolic terms, amounts to a virtual expulsion from Hollywood itself.

The Oscars aren't the house that Harvey built, of course. They have survived many scandals and scandalous members and will survive this. The organization predates his birth by 25 years though how's this for an eery bit of Oscar/Harvey trivia: the very first televised Oscars were held on the night of baby Harvey's first birthday on March 19th, 1953. The producing giant didn't come into prominence until the early 1990s with the rise of Miramax but once he did he changed the way Oscar campaigns ran, was thanked relentlessly in acceptance speeches, and made prestige mini-majors the dominant Oscar players across town. 

Of course one could argue that the Weinstein era had ended years ago. The Weinstein Company has struggled in recent years against the rise of now-powerful awards players like Fox Searchlight, A24, Amazon Studios and more. There isn't even much to say about the way the Weinstein sexual harassment scandals will affect the Oscars this year. TWC only had one release this year that was successful enough to justify a campaign of any kind (Wind River) but that was a long shot at best even before the company was embroiled in this scandal. The period drama The Current War was their Christmas hopeful but its festival response was tepid and with the company falling apart and cries to "dissolve the board" out there it seems unlikely that it will see release any time soon.  

The Academy's Board of Governors (incidentally just one woman shy of being 50% women) was right to get this scandal off their plate immediately given that the Honorary Oscars are just around the corner. Who could be celebratory with anything like this depressing hurtful story on their minds? But on a deeper level they're taking a stand against the way Hollywood has been run for years. They state that they made the move in order to send a message:

The era of willful ignorance and shameful complicity in sexually predatory behavior and workplace harassment in our industry is over.

Well done. 

Doc Corner: Laura Poitras' Risky Business

By Glenn Dunks

There is a knack to watching Laura Poitras’ latest film, Risk, her first as a director since winning the Academy Award for Citizenfour. And it’s not being abreast of the life and controversies of its on-screen subject, Julian Assange. Although that certainly helps to a point, his journey felt to be of little consequence to me in regards to how I ultimately felt about the movie. The film is messy and often perplexing, no better personified by an utterly surreal and bizarre sequence with Lady Gaga that is not kind to either of its participants.

Rather, the key to Risk’s success is to not view the film as about Assange at all, but rather  Poitras herself. Sure, the WikiLeaks co-founder is front and centre in the film, and documenting him was the modus operandi, but as a documentary subject he’s often far less interesting than the people that orbit him. I am not unaware that I am cutting Poitras an awful lot of slack here...

Click to read more ...

Middleburg Festival 2017: James Ivory, Dee Rees, Greta Gerwig and More...

by Nathaniel R

Awards season is really heating up now that release dates (or lack thereof) are firming up, and various pre-Oscar honors are being announced. Last year, you may recall, The Film Experience was invited to attend the Middleburg Film Festival and we're invited for a second round next month.

The fest, now in its fifth year and closer to something like Telluride than Toronto or Cannes considering its Oscar focus and brevity, is growing each year and all takes place at one well-heeled resort. Last year they had big events for La La Land and Lion as well as very crowded talks with Cheryl Boone Isaacs on the Academy's diversity efforts as well as a fascinating discussion of US presidents and cinematic depictions with Janet Maslin and David Gergen where the danger of Trump was discussed at length (before the election - sigh). At that event they spent a lot of time on Nixon's disproportionately large place in cinema as presidents go. (Unfortunately since we're in Nixon Round Two only much more vile and, well, stupider... we can safely expect there to be many many films on Trump and Trump's corrosive effect on the nation for decades to come! "Wheeee," he squealed with much sarcasm)

More info about this year's festivities to come but for now we know this...

Special Honorees:
The legendary James Ivory (Call Me By Your Name's screenplay, Howard's End, Maurice, Room With a View etcetera)
Director Dee Rees (Mudbound)
Composer Nicholas Britell (Battle of the Sexes, Moonlight) with an orchestral concert of his work!

Opening Night: DARKEST HOUR (Ben Mendelsohn in attendance)

Saturday Centerpiece  LADY BIRD (Greta Gerwig in attendance)

Sunday Centerpiece  THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI 

Other Screenings:  CALL ME BY YOUR NAME, MUDBOUND, and I, TONYA