Venice: The Mara Sisters in "Bucking Fastard"

Elisa Giudici reporting from Venice

BUCKING FASTARD © Gateway to Orkney LLC

Back in the 1980s, Werner Herzog met the Chaplin twin sisters for a project, but he is the first to warn against connecting his return to fiction filmmaking after a string of documentary projects too closely to that real story. In his new film Bucking Fastard, Jean and Joan are not twins but sisters who "speak, move, dress, dream and even slip their tongues, as the title proves, in the very same way." The movie is about their quest for true love, one that is neither particularly well planned nor particularly successful, as if the point were simply to find a way not to feel alone. Joan and Jean feel that way - alone together - even though they are always together, even though their understanding of each other is absolute...

Click to read more ...

1946: Olivia & Joan's feud goes public

Team Experience is revisiting 1946 in the lead up to this week's Smackdown.

by Baby Clyde

As she triumphantly left the stage of the Shrine Auditorium after winning a long awaited Best Actress Oscar for To Each His Own, Olivia De Havilland was approached by a very familiar figure offering congratulations. 

I don’t know why she does that when she knows how I feel...” 

...Olivia muttered as she turned away from her equally famous sister, the 1941 Best Actress winner Joan Fontaine. Unfortunately for all involved it was captured on camera, which lead to the infamous picture above. It's one of my favourite snapshots in Hollywood history. The look of genuine delight on Joan’s face, the look of pursed lipped distaste on Olivia’s. You could write a book about it; I’ll try and stick to a few hundred words...

Click to read more ...

SXSW: Uncanny sibling chemistry in "Our Father"

by Jason Adams

As a person without any close siblings (I have a half-sister who I wasn't raised with) the tricky alchemy of sibling-hood often escapes me. I watch my friends who do have close relations with their brothers or sisters with some fascination. It's not quite a foreign Twin Language every time but it might as well be, to me, the weird ways you people relate and the fiery push-pulls of it; the way you can be meaner to a person you were raised beside than anybody else on earth and then turn and snap fangs at anybody trying to do the same at that person. 

But, like too many things in life, I've learned the most about those relationships from watching them in the movies...

Click to read more ...

Alexis Arquette (1969-2016)

Alexis Arquette, the youngest sister of the Arquette acting family, passed away today at the age of 47 after a lengthy illness. She was the fourth of the five Arquette kids, all of whom became actors, with Rosanna Arquette leading the way to fame in the early 80s. Alexis was surrounded by all her siblings when she died as they listened to her favorite songs. She passed during David Bowie's "Starman." (So many sad goodbyes in 2016.)

Born Robert, she took the name Alexis early on, long before coming out officially as transgendered. Onscreen her first appearance was uncredited in the Bette Midler comedy Down & Out in Beverly Hills  (1986).

as "Georgette" in Last Exit to Brooklyn

Her official debut though was as the trans prostitute "Georgette" in one of Jennifer Jason Leigh's most critically acclaimed showcases Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989)... 

Click to read more ...

1984: John Cassavetes' Farewell "Love Streams"

by Bill Curran

The story of an irredeemably chaotic, forever ailed pair of siblings—Robert (John Cassavetes), a louche, bestselling (but never working) author and alcoholic, and Sarah (Gena Rowlands), his troubled, manic sister just divorced and now separated from her daughter—Love Streams doesn’t care much for a Story, capital “S”.  There is no dissolution or sea change in Cassavetes’ swan song*. If one of the chief pleasures of any good narrative is the suggestion of lives lived before and after the story itself, it’s striking to note that, unlike previous Cassavetes works like Faces and A Woman Under the Influence (with their forever altering moments), Love Streams exists on a continuum. We know Robert and Sarah will never really change. And there is a poignant resignation in realizing at the film’s end, as a thunderstorm pounds the windowpanes of Robert’s home and Sarah’s new companion’s car, that we’ve witnessed only a beautiful stepping stone in their zigzagging roads to nowhere.

Instead, the film achieves a dreamlike intensity, moment to moment, by giving free reign to Robert and Sarah’s thoughts and associations...

Click to read more ...