The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Howdy, folks - Jason from MNPP here with this week's edition of "Beauty vs Beast" is which we'll be celebrating the 61st birthday of the great Debra Winger. I assume most of you, being right and proper actressexuals, have seen the terrific documentary bearing her name Searching For Debra Winger, but if not, get on that. I haven't seen it since it came out in 2002 and part of me wonders if it's maybe, hopefully, begun to feel a bit dated? That film feeling dated can only be a good thing because it means roles for actresses are getting better. If nothing else, Winger herself has been working somewhat steadily over the past few years with recent roles on In Treatment and the Netflix series The Ranch.
All that said, we're really here today for Classic Winger...
PREVIOUSLY Two weeks back we celebrated the sexy time that is A Bigger Splash with a glance back at its original (and also sexy) incarnation, 1969's La Piscine - stuffing the ballot box like he did those speedos, Alain Delon carried off about 80% of your votes. Said Steven:
"Alain Delon>>>>>>>every young pretty boy out there in Hollywood."
Let's hear it for siblings, fictional and otherwise! Today is National Siblings Day so I dedicate this to my sister and brothers even though they're not movie people and won't read this. But let's look at beautiful photos of three of our favorite sets of screen siblings. Starting with the most successful of all...
This week we're celebrating the three Honorary Oscar winners. Here's abstew on Debbie Reynolds' favorite role.
Molly Brown is my favorite of all the roles I've played. I love something about almost every part I've done, but I identified with Molly as soon as I met her. In the sometimes blurry line between art and and real life, Molly is the woman I've become as the years have passed. I'm right there with her when she declares, "I ain't down yet!"
In her decades long show business career, amid the watchful eye of media scrutiny, Debbie Reynolds has endured trials and tribulations and come out the other side of it stronger. Caught in a Hollywood scandal, the original jilted girl-next-door (long before Jennifer Aniston was even born), Reynolds stood by while then husband Eddie Fisher left her and her two young children for screen siren Elizabeth Taylor. Her luck with men didn't improve later as second husband Harry Karl spent years gambling away her hard-earned money, leaving her with mounting debts to cover. Even her dream of finding a permanent home to house her legendary collection of movie memorabilia never came to pass and forced her to put them up for auction. So you can see how playing a character like the real life Molly Brown, who survived the sinking of the Titanic, earning her the moniker "Unsinkable", would find a kindred spirit in the guise of feisty spitfire Debbie Reynolds. The actress, like the legendary woman, simply doesn't know what it means to be defeated...
Before We Get Started... Here's the only sane reaction to the news that The Lovely Laura Linney (who has barely been on movie screens these past five years) has joined the cast of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2. This comes from Aaron Fullerton on Twitter:
Laura Linney was cast in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 and, for her sake, I hope she simply introduces it like an episode of Downton Abbey.
The Links NY Times profiles Tom Hardy on the cusp of even wider stardom with Mad Max: Fury Road The Guardian looks at five great moments from Shirley Maclaine's career CHUD Director Josh Trank (Chronicle) has left the as yet untitled Star Wars spinoff film EW interviews Matthias Schoenaerts about Far From the Madding Crowd, being called "the Belgian Brando" and his favorite movies (he loves David Lynch!) Coming Soon from Shakespeare to a video game adaptation? The MacBeth team (Fassy, Cotillard, and director Justin Kurzel) are doing Assassin's Creed together. The Dissolve Helen Hunt reuniting with the director of The Sessions for a road trip movie. Dakota Fanning co-stars The Dissolve Because A24 is the best one of their next projects will have Cary Fukunaga telling the true story of a father who went on a cross-country walk to work through his grief about his gay son's suicide Deadline Channing Tatum to star in an adaptation of the old sci-fi novel "The Forever War" from the 70s which is about soldiers fighting an endless war with no clear concept of why they're fighting. Apparently the novel has ideas about the future including the eliminating of heterosexuality (?) and the melting pot creating one homogenous race that are hard to imagine in movie form, given Hollywood's timidity about race and alternative sexuality MNPP a fun new poster for the horror comedy Cooties
Superhero Mania Time Out the first ten Marvel films in 40 gifs -- this would have been so much faster than that Marvel Marathon I attended! Comics Alliance shares 11 in universe or comics references within the movie Bryan Singer keeps releasing photos of his new X-Men team from the set including Jean Grey () in acid washed jeans and Jubilee in that familiar yellow jacket Mark Ruffalo is calling Marvel out on their lack of female action figures Pajiba collates a list of actors and directors considered for all the Marvel movies - what a difference many of them would have made Dark Horizons they've narrowed down the new Peter Parker to Asa Butterfield and Tom Holland. Holland is the better actor but immensely less famous so let's hope they realize they don't need pre-movie fame for one of the most globally famous heroes ever created
Showtune to Go! Remember Robin De Jesús, that awkward drag-loving teenager from Camp (2003)? He recently turned 30 and here he is from his new cabaret show #TheStruggleisReal (May 4th at 54 Below) doing Miley Cyrus ("Wrecking Ball" is totally a standard already) and reminding us that there was more to that movie than Anna Kendrick's breakout.
Anne Marie here in Hollywood, reporting on the end of the TCM Classic Film Festival.
The 6th Annual TCM Classic Film Festival came to a close last night after four days. Though the theme of the festival was History According to Hollywood, the diverse programming of the festival showed that not only was TCM celebrating historical events and the films that portrayed them, it was also highlighting the this histories of the films being made, and - most importantly - the shared histories of the audiences that watched them.
It's impossible to cover everything the TCMFF screens (though The Black Maria did try), so instead I attempted to focus on the diversity of the programming. I watched Greta Garbo kiss a woman and renounce her throne for a man in Queen Christina. I watched two Pre-Code Hollywood musicals, Lubitsch's The Smiling Lieutenant and 42nd Street. I saw Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in a Tennessee Williams-penned movie called Boom! that was so bad that it made Lindsay Lohan in Liz and Dick look like Meryl Streep. I saw Christopher Plummer honored twice, but as a result missed Sophia Loren. I had three festival highlights: the French Revolution film noir Reign of Terror, a program of single reel films run using a hand-cranked projector from 1905 (have you seen a short called The Dancing Pig?), and the newly restored 1919 Houdini film The Grim Game, constructed from the only surviving complete print.
Monday, May 16, 2016 at 1:00PM 
PREVIOUSLY Two weeks back we celebrated the sexy time that is A Bigger Splash with a glance back at its original (and also sexy) incarnation, 1969's La Piscine - stuffing the ballot box like he did those speedos, Alain Delon carried off about 80% of your votes. Said Steven:
