Yes No Maybe So: Welcome to Marwen

by Salim Garami

What's good? The trailer for Robert Zemeckis' new film Welcome to Marwencol just dropped and it's quite the interesting mix of live-action and animated. It loosely follows the true story of Kingston artist Mark Hogencamp's terrifying attack by neo-Nazis and his attempts to rebuild his life in the aftermath. Turning to his creativity he built a 1/6-scale model town based on WWII Belgium and filled it with his friends and assailants. Zemeckis' film not only dramatizes the real-life tale of Hogencamp trying to pull himself back together but overlaps it with animating the dolls with his usual inclination towards effects-work. It's also the second time Hogencamp's story was commit to film after the 2010 documentary Marwencol.

Let's break down the Yes No Maybe So after the jump...

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Voila ~ the April Foolish Predictions are Complete!

by Nathaniel R

Whew. Can y'all give me a round of applause? Somehow I finished the April Foolish charts in all the early doable categories (i.e. all but documentaries and the three shorts categories) before April was done! Let this be a new leaf turned as we need lots of new leaves while we reinvent ourselves FOR 2018.

The freshly baked charts...

PREDICTION INDEX |  PICTURE | DIRECTOR | ACTOR 

And the charts that previously went up, some of which we've discussed on the blog....

ACTRESS | SUPPORTING ACTOR | SUPPORTING ACTRESS | SCREENPLAYS | FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM | VISUAL CATEGORIES | MUSIC AND SOUND CATEGORIES | ANIMATED FEATURES

As you can see if you peruse them, they're filled with all sorts of narrative possibilities. Some of those stories they tell are in direct opposition to one another. I urge all of you to try this year in advance thing at home some year. It's incredibly confusing because each time you place a movie here you have to figure how it might affect things over there since there are distinct patterns to the way things happen. 

Steve Carell in "The Women of Marwen" based on the story that also informed the documentary "Marwencol"

It's like trying to construct a crazy intricate jigsaw puzzle without the final image to work from! You can make it up as you go along but what the hell kind of picture are your fingers forming?  And no matter how careful you are some things never end up making any sense...

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OTD: Annie, John Cameron Mitchell, and Field of Dreams

On this day (April 21st) in history as it relates to showbiz...

Anthony Quinn

1904 Oscar winning cinematographer Daniel L Fapp (West Side Story and Desire Under the Elms, among many films) born in Kansas City

1914 Cinematographer Gilbert Taylor born in England. Though he was BAFTA nominated Oscar never bit despite high profile films and collaborations with famous directors. Credits include: Repulsion, The Omen, Dr Strangelove, Star Wars, Frenzy, Dracula (1979) and MacBeth 

1915 Oscar's all time favorite Mexican actor Anthony Quinn born (Lust for Life, Viva Zapata, Wild is the Wind, Zorba the Greek, La Strada, etcetera)

1918 "The Red Baron," the famous German fighter pilot, shot down in World War I. Snoopy in Peanuts fantasizes about him repeatedly and he's also been a character in many films including Wings, Hell's Angels, and Darling Lili 

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Review: Allied's Old School Beauty

by Eric Blume

The lovely opening image of Robert Zemeckis’ new film Allied has Brad Pitt falling slowly and soundlessly into the North African desert via parachute.  As he walks across the spine of an endlessly long sand dune, the film evokes the luxurious opening of The English Patient and of course the granddaddy of desert films, Lawrence of Arabia.  And Pitt’s arrival into Casablanca, Morocco tees up memories of the Bogart-Bergman classic.  Zemeckis positions us exactly where he wants us to be:  open to the possibility of the pleasures of those highly-romantic, old-school pictures that we truly don’t see anymore...

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1984: The Sexiness of "Romancing the Stone"

We're celebrating the cinematic year of 1984 this month. Here's Chris Feil on Romancing the Stone...

One of 1984's biggest hits was Romancing the Stone, a quippy twist on a harlequin romance dressed up as a jungle adventure. The film was the first big box office success for director Robert Zemeckis, though he only ever fleetingly matched Stone's glee for the sexy - it's almost odd that this film comes from a director who's film are often mostly crotchless.

But more importantly, Stone gifted us with the first cinematic gold pairing of Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas. The duo is perfectly matched for their complimentary wits and evident sex appeal, resulting in both sequel The Jewel of the Nile and The War of the Rose before the decade's end. They may have had more overt steaminess elsewhere (see: Body Heat and Fatal Attraction, et al.), but even this film's PG rating can't contain their fireworks together.

The blend of grand adventure, slapstick humor, and loin-grabbing passion begs the question "Why does sex at the movies always have to be so damn serious?" So in honor of the Stone's hot fun:

TEN OF THE SEXIEST MOMENTS...

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