Happy 50, Leonardo DiCaprio!

by Cláudio Alves

ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD earned DiCaprio his seventh and, to this day, final Oscar nomination. Do you think he’ll be back in the race anytime soon?

Former teenage heartthrob turned Academy Award-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio just hit the half-century mark. Happy birthday to the superstar who has been entertaining audiences since his youth and has, in recent years, expanded his work to producing movies and fighting the good fight in the name of our crumbling environment. Over time, many of his performances and most iconic movies have been explored at The Film Experience by various team members. It seems logical to revisit some of those posts, like we did to celebrate Jessica Lange's 75th birthday and Maggie Smith's passing. It's time to go down the blogging rabbit hole and share some love for the man immortalized on screen through roles like Shakespeare's Romeo, Jack Dawson, a handful of Scorsese leads, and more – the list goes on and on…

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Shutter Island is 10 ... Remember Leo's "Dead Wives Club"?

by Nathaniel R

Ten years ago Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island (2010) opened in movie theaters. Or did it? It did but what if I were an unreliable narrator?!? Once you start worrying about fact versus self-fiction, well, it can drive a person crazy. Curiously given its hit status (though perhaps not so curiously given its release date) this is the only Scorsese film from the 2010s to not receive a single Oscar nomination. 

Are you a fan? What's your most intense memory of it? I'll tell you mine after the jump...

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Almost There: Kate Winslet in "Revolutionary Road"

Here's Cláudio Alves with a new series on performances that got lots of precursor love but no Oscar nomination. Previously we discussed Emma Thompson in Saving Mr Banks...

January 11th, 2009 was Kate Winslet's night. After years of scoring endless nominations and very few victories, her effortful Oscar campaign was finally kicking into high gear. She had not one, but two triumphant victories on the Golden Globes' stage. In Best Supporting Actress, she won for her (leading) role inThe Reader and secured her frontrunner status. In Best Actress - Drama, she won for Revolutionary Road. After such a merry evening, many were expecting a double citation come Oscar morning. One thing was for sure – one way or the other, Kate Winslet would end the Awards Season with a little golden man in her hands.

Still, the campaign manipulations that worked hard to secure her two nominations failed at the last minute, when the Academy showed rare lucidity against the folly of category fraud...

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Top 7 David Harbour

A surprise list to start your morning off right. We've been thinking a lot about Stranger Things these past couple of weeks, and many of those thoughts have revolved around the unexpectedly hefty role for usual supporting player David Harbour. I personally think he's Best in Show in that sci-fi fantasy 80s nostalgia trip. The first time I remember seeing him was on Broadway in 2001 as the object of Robert Sean Leonard's crushing in Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love. His profile has been growing slowly ever since and its a treat to see him make so much of such a big opportunity in the Netflix hit.

Favorite David Harbour Performances

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Never felt so LIVE!

Filmed stage productions are becoming more and more common with The National Theatre in London finding great success streaming their high production shows across cinemas all over the world. Cinephiles and theatre goers are big overlap on the venn diagram. A live TV production seems like the next logical step. As recently reported, Aaron Sorkin’s play-turned-film A Few Good Men is getting the live TV treatment in 2017 on NBC. This follows in the successful footsteps of live musicals The Sound Of Music, Peter Pan, The Wiz and Grease but is certainly an ambitious task without the razzle dazzle of musicals or the tomfoolery of live comedy to smooth over the awkward edges live TV can contain.

Whilst these filmed non-musical stage productions have found success, particularly when big names are headlining, there is always something missing that makes in an incomparable experience to being in the theatre with them. By tailor making the work for at home audiences, this could be overcome. An Aaron Sorkin script seems the perfect vehicle. The pace of his scripts in the hands of a strong cast is edge of your seat viewing, and anyone familiar with his work on stage on screen will be excited by the prospect of seeing those character sparks fly live. There’s no word on cast yet, but so far NBC have (mostly) done a good job of casting their live productions, and have a particular knack for picking up and coming stars.

Should this prove fruitful, there’s an array of plays and films that could be all the more tantalising with the electricity of live performance. Let’s speculate after the jump on some other plays and even films that could make the transition after the jump...

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