Celebrating 10 Years of "Sex and the City: The Movie"

By Spencer Coile 

I remember being 15-years-old, sitting in an empty theater on the opening night of Sex and the City -- precisely 10 years ago. I had just finished watching the series for the first time, and was ready to continue on with the stories of Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte. The tagline for the film was “Get Carried Away,” and I absolutely did. It was so easy to slip back into this dream-like, romanticized version of Manhattan – where money is endless, where relationships come and go, but friendship (and shoes) are forever. 

Was the movie adaptation perfect? Absolutely not. Was the sequel unnecessary and borderline insensitive? Completely. Still, that first film left me beaming from ear-to-ear. It’d be easy to pick out all the problems with the plot, the length, the way it treats Jennifer Hudson’s character (there’s no way her email password was seriously “love”). But even watching it today, I go back to when I was 15; feeling hopeful, giddy, and gay. Those are the movies that stick with you.  

Happy Birthday, Sex and the City! But most importantly: do you identify as a Carrie, a Miranda, a Samantha, or a Charlotte? 

PSA: Kim Cattrall was famous before "Sex and the City," okay?

by Nathaniel R

Just when you think the world can't get any more sexist, there's always a reminder that it can. One such reminder is the famed existence of Sex and the City, a target in perpetuity. It often brings out the very worst in journalists, critics, famous people, and the public alike (both male and female in all four cases) as people fall over themselves with new ways to hate on, be offended by, or attempt to take down that particularly glitzy femme pleasure.

The brand has beenquiet for some time now until the Daily Mail posted a gross story about Kim Cattrall supposedly stopping production of Sex and the City 3 in its tracks with "outrageous demands". I didn't personally believe this was true, even before the stars started giving quote about it. The more quotes there are the more it's clear that everyone will have a different perception of what happened and that's fine. What was shocking was not the misleading story (my best guess is that the truth is somewhere inbetween all the quotes from the cast and executives because many many people with big egos and lots of millions are involved) but how unbelievably petty and sexist the "sources" were in their quotes about Cattrall...

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Infinity Link

• Coming Soon Glow, Netflix's addictive series about the gorgeous ladies of wrestling has been renewed for a second season - yay!
• Metrograph NYC's coolest repertory movie theater has a series on Fire Island set films this weekend including Barbara Hershey in Last Summer and seminal queer indie Parting Glances
• Show-Score I did a piece for their new series on 'first times' with my experience sitting in the back row at a musical

• Variety here's a new possibility for the animated category at the Oscars this year -- Big Bad Fox and Other Tales from the director of Ernest & Celestine
• Coming Soon filming has begun on Avengers 4 which doesn't have a title yet but will end Marvel's Phase 3 in May of 2019
• Variety looks back at Fast Times at Ridgemont High as it turns 35
• Gold Derby Meryl Streep is an Emmy nominee this year. Whaaaa?
• LA Times New AMPAS president John Bailey "not as boring as you think" (FYI the media has become obsessed with Laura Dern running for this position but she actually declined the nomination)
• EW First look at Jessica Chastain in Molly's Game
• Awards Daily Sasha looks at the Best Actress race, wonders if it's finally Annette Bening's year.
• MNPP Norma Shearer can't scream
• Variety you may have heard that Disney is leaving Netflix when the current contract ends. But Netflix is still trying to get rights to some of their biggies post 2019
• /Film details on Wonder Woman's blu-ray releasese
• Boy Culture meet Carrie Dragshaw, a queen recreating SJP's iconic looks on Sex & the City

Tues Top Ten: Helen Reddy on TV and at the Movies

Appropos of nothing let's celebrate Helen Reddy's 75th Birthday today! The Pete's Dragon star (the original not this year's remake) was an Australian pop star who had a ton of hits in the 1970s. The only one that gets much airplay today is "I Am Woman" which still shows up in movies and on TV for an instant time capsule. You know how some songs become cultural shorthand. For a time Reddy was a movie and TV presence, too, including at awards shows -- and you know how we love those here at The Film Experience. She was Golden Globe nominated as "Most Promising Newcomer" a now defunct category for the disaster flick Airport '75 and she sang multiple movie theme songs, too!

Let's look back at 10 moments from her TV/Movie history just for kicks and star sightings...

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Cynthia Nixon's Emily Dickinson Dwells In Possibility of Miranda Hobbes

Daniel Crooke here, new contributor. As daily updates make their way stateside from the Berlinale, certain titles that can’t help but infiltrate and overtake your curiosity. One such film is Terence Davies’ A Quiet Passion. What a time to be alive when the promise of a film starring the soulfully efflorescent Cynthia Nixon as the spiritually untethered Emily Dickinson exists on this planet. While reactions to the poet’s biopic have been highly mixed, the overlapping of these two mustang personas is an undeniable attraction.

Obviously much of Dickinson’s public face continues to be debated – that’ll happen when you like what you like and forget the rest – but there’s still a respected wealth of fascinating, cogent theories about the manner in which Emily lived. And no study needs a peer review about how perfectly Nixon’s signature role encapsulates this iconoclast who ditched polite society for a personal universe of her own reckoning.

The ultimate role research for Emily Dickinson lies in playing the sage and self-determined Miranda Hobbes for six seasons of Sex and the City. Six reasons why after the jump...

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