Beauty vs Beast: Girl-On-Girl Power

Jason from MNPP here feeling sweaty and gross here in the annual inferno named July -- I wish I could say I was using this week's "Beauty vs Beast" to cool us down but instead I'm turning the heat up up up thanks to today being the 78th birthday of the spicy Paul Verhoeven, helmer of the hotly anticipated rape-revenge thriller Elle with Isabelle Huppert, and of legendarily epic dumpster-fires (a term I use in this context with extreme admiration) like Showgirls and Starship Troopers and today's honoree, 1992's Basic Instinct. Muy caliente! So everybody slip off your underpants (if you're wearing any), straddle your favorite gal-pal in the bathroom, and help me slash away at this one...

PREVIOUSLY Anticipating this past weekend's Ghostbusters we hit rewind to Paul Feig's last great comedy Spy, forcing you to choose between Head Funny Lady Melissa McCarthy and Supporting Funny Lady Rose Byrne - well it was as called in these parts a total Supporting Actress Smackdown, with Byrne slinking off with 73% of your votes. Said Jakey:

"What a stupid fucking retarded poll."

Beauty vs Beast: Bustin' Spies Makes Me Feel Good

Well here we are and it's Monday and I'm Jason from MNPP and this is your weekly "Beauty vs Beast" moment. Ya ready? This Friday (otherwise known as my birthday!) Paul Feig's loooooong awaited and ultra discussed reboot of Ghostbusters comes out. Maybe you've heard something? Something about ovaries or something? I don't know. All's I know is the reboot's got four of the funniest lady-people who make funny today in Melissa McCarthy & Kristen Wiig & Kate McKinnon & Leslie Jones, and I'm all in. Hell, I even liked the much-reviled trailer.

In fact the only thing that's given me a sad face in the lead up to Ghostbusters was when I scanned through the cast list and I realized that Rose Byne's not in the movie. How great would Byrne have been playing the dastardly William Atherton role from the original? But then I did just re-watch Feig's previous film, the gets-funnier-every-time-you-watch-it Spy, and speaking of...

PREVIOUSLY Two weeks ago (sorry for the July 4th lapse) we celebrated the 30th anniversary of Jim Henson's film Labyrinth by pitting a pretty girl against a Golbin King, and this time around David Bowie's bulge came out on top with almost 3/4s of your vote. Said Glenn:

"The tights are most definitely not a con."

Keep your Swiddlestons and Hiddleswifts...

Despite whichever exotic beach you may find yourself on, it’s simply impossible for anything remotely I Saw The Light-adjacent to win the crown for hottest celeb couple snapshot this week. Compare yourself to Rose Byrne – studio comedy’s reigning queen of deadpan and broad gesture alike – and her hammy man Bobby Cannavale, exuding effortless shimmer at Sunday’s Tony Awards, and you can’t help but look like someone’s demented aunts on vacation – no matter who you are. Behold.

The Natural Comic Genius of Rose Byrne

This weekend's Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising certainly has enough antics to discuss for this month's Girls Gone Wild focus, but its most delightful element is returning star Rose Byrne. While she's not as impactfully utilized in the sequel as she was in the original, she is still just as charming as a slightly reluctant adult who understands what makes the youngsters tic.

The film leaves you wanting more time with her, but when isn't that true even when she is better served?

Over the past decade, Byrne has been steadily becoming our most reliable comedic actress. Her peers may be larger box office draws or recognizable names, but none of them match her consistently rich performances or surprising hysterical highs. The trifecta of Spy, Bridesmaids, and Neighbors are all starkly different women, for Byrne never fails to surprise us with the type of laughs she can deliver with ease...

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Dean & The Meddler: A Grief Dramedy Double Feature

Team Experience is at the Tribeca Film Festival. Here's Manuel on two grief-driven features.

Dean (Winner of The Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature)
Dean (Demetri Martin, who wrote and directed the film) is a professional illustrator whose first book of drawings was described as “full of whimsy.” The same could be said for the film itself. Just as Dean’s illustrations (Martin’s own) are simple, at times humorous, sketches (a faceless man wearing a t-shirt that reads “Ask me about my face,” a centaur to a horse-headed human body: “It’s not bestiality if we 69!”), the film finds comedy in simplicity; there are some surprises here but mostly this is a straightforward affair. You could say that Dean is a whimsical bicoastal dramedy about grief and it succeeds precisely because it's so assured.

Brooklyn-based Dean has lost his mother, and the narrative follows his attempt at coping with this loss. His father, played with relish by Kevin Kline, is seemingly moving on too fast, wanting to sell the house he shared with his wife, a decision that pushes Dean to flee to Los Angeles. Both men find themselves engaging with women that help push them past their comfort zones. Lessons are learnt, and personal growth is unavoidable, but Martin uses the film’s whimsy to his advantage: split-screens and his quirky drawings visually highlight the levity that runs through his script (a meet-cute with Gillian Jacobs is impossibly twee and surprisingly spunky at the same time). That I’m using words like “whimsy” and “twee” in positive terms should tell you that I fell in love with this film even as I know it works within a very specific register that may not be for everyone; then again, any film that gives Mary Steenburgen and Kline a flirtatious scene centered on criticizing a Broadway play about (maybe?) time travel was always going to appeal to my interests. Grade: A-

Susan Sarandon shines after the jump...

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