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.)
Chris here. With the long (lonnnnnnnnng) road to production, reshuffling of realease dates, and confusing messages on a spin off series, I can't blame you if you've lost track of Stephen King adaptation The Dark Tower. The franchise hopeful has tradeed hands from Ron Howard to A Royal Affair's Nikolaj Arcel, and lost a few potential stars along the way. But with a looming summer release, it's about time to start seeing some of the goods (even if those set photos of a leather-clad Idris Elba should have kept this at the top of our minds). At long last here is the first poster, with some thoughts after the jump...
Happy Monday folks, it's Jason from MNPP back from the turkey dead and ready to "Beauty vs Beast" with you all again! Have any of you seen Laurie Metcalf and Bruce Willis doing Stephen King's Misery on Broadway? I have not but as a recently admitted obsessive over Metcalf's work on Getting On - also especially her wild-eyed turn in Scream 2 - I'm curious to see what she does with the role of number one fan Annie Wilkes. (Also please tell me they updated the play and made Annie have a Tumblr account.) The shadow of Kathy Bates' original performance looms large, and speaking of...
Rob Reiner's 1990 film is turning 25 today! The film was a big hit, making over 60 million bucks and earning its leading lady that most rare of rare Oscar wins - one for a horror movie performance. And she certainly earned it, but credit where credit's due: James Caan's performance is always over-shadowed and he's just as good, grounding the film (literally) with every hardworking bead of sweat chugging down his panicked face. The film wouldn't work without him; they play a perfect duet. That said...
PREVIOUSLY We celebrated the holiday last week with all the Christina Ricci Thanksgiving Speechifying you could handle, and y'all went straight for the dark meat - Wednesday Addams, much to her chagrin, is a winner at life! Said denny:
"Ricci's Wednesday Addams may be what turned me into an actressexual. I LOVED her. I think she was my first real actress crush. The Shakespeare scene in the first Addams Family movie was when I well and truly fell. By the time the sequel came out, I was madly in love. It's such a perfect performance. I really hope her show for Amazon as Zelda Fitzgerald gets picked up. I need more Christina Ricci. Lots more."
Mic Manuel on the transgressive feminism of Bring it On 15 years later Grantland Mark Harris on four takeaways from this summer's box office - great piece as usual Stuff this piece is old but I was shocked to learn (sorry if I'm way late) that the 80s posters (like Madonna's debut album) in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night weren't real. I loved that vampire bedroom! Awards Daily reshares the Lady in the Van trailer. I guess it's back on for 2015? Such a crowded year for Best Actress already but I'm expecting an onslaught of "weak year for best actress" pieces any moment since we get those every year even when it's a good one A Fistful of Films shares his personal awards from 1988 - fun choices including Married to the Mob and Salaam Bombay both of which are underloved
Empire I'm trying to avoid reading about the new Star Wars -- doesn't anybody like to be surprised in the movie theater anymore? -- but I ended up clicking on this piece about Kylo Ren (with the jagged lightsaber) and now I'm more excited about the premise behind the villains Empire Léa Seydoux offered female lead in Channing Tatum's Gambit Pajiba catches us up on what's going on with Tom Hardy's TV projects including a new one called "Taboo". (Somehow Tom Hardy is making time for TV every year despite his ever increasing In-Demandness in big movies, too) Guardian the great Jacques Audiard will make his English Language debut with The Sisters Brothers. John C Reilly headlines. Audiard's past leads have tended to be fascinating dangerously sexy actors like Matthias Schoenarts, Romain Duris, Vincent Cassel and Tahar Rahim. John C Reilly as follow up?
Stage Door Playbill Kevin Bacon will star in a stage adaptation of Rear Window in October. THR fun guests at Taylor Swift's Monday concert including Ellen Degeneres Playbill Top US colleges for Theater Majors? from NYU to Florida State via the highly specific metric of which colleges are represented on Broadway right now Theater Mania Steven Pasquale on a painful audition. He has been working on stage and TV forever and somehow people don't realize how incredible his singing voice is. Movie musical please.
For LOLZ "Rock Dentistry" fun tumblr of the moment The Poke lost Stephen King books recovered. Need to read "Brian's Arse" EW "how the internet would have GIF'ed the first MTV Music Video Awards" - the title is more exciting than the GIFS chosen but a highly worthy topic and of course, the internet would have GIF'ed the hell out of Madonna's "Like a Virgin" and "Hi, I'm Marvel... and I'm DC"
Vanity Fair "Introducing Caitlyn Jenner" Annie Liebovitz's great photo of Caitlyn (née Bruce) is all the rage on the internet today. Vanity Fair's cover story will be 22 pages in print form VF Tumblr also has behind the photoshoot footage Awards Daily wonders what the Academy's documentary branch will do about the new New York Times policy -- previously their policy was to review every single movie that opened in New York City In Contention the screenwrite of Grace of Monaco live tweets it to "correct" the record You Must Remember This I'm so behind on this podcast which is typically great and educational about Old Hollywood -- the latest episode is about the Manson Murders in Hollywood but don't let a ton of "Star Wars" titled episodes fool you. It's not Lucas's space opera but 40s-era stories about stars during wartime The Film Stage looks at the 10 favorite films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder which include Johnny Guitar and Salo, or: The 120 Days of Sodom; sounds about right! The prolific gay auteur would have been 70 this week
The AV Club with some funny news: E.L. James will basically rewrite 50 Shades of Grey to make more money oh and to tell things from Christian's perspective. Variety bummer news: Sofia Coppola stepping off the director's chair for The Little Mermaid The Stake urges you to remember that Point Break (1991) is "tremendous" before you see the inevitably terrible remake - while on that topic... RedBubble has a cool graphic poster of that movie for sale The Playlist a new tearjerker project for Channing Tatum, Two Kisses for Maddy about a widower raising his daughter Cinematic Corner falls hard for Furiousa and Mad Max Fury Road Reel Talk thinks we need to start taking Nicholas Hoult seriously (as do I post Fury Road... though I was far less convinced previously) CineMunch wonders who your favorite drunk actresses are on their latest podcast -- with gin drink recipes! CHUD great new poster for the final Hunger Games movie. Those movies are dull but I will give them this: they've always had wonderful smarts about the teasing MNPP's quote of the day reveals two Stephen King properties that the studios actually don't want. Weird MNPP gets excited like Chris Pratt for Jurassic World
Tweet o' The Week Squarespace no longer seems to allow tweet embeds -- they say they do but they never show up at TFE anymore so this is a snapshot of a tweet from the ubiquitous Jessica Chastain herself. (About the formerly ubiquitous Bryce Dallas Howard). It is wonderful. Gingers forever.
Showtune to Go! June is Pride Month and with Caitlyn Jenner kicking things off with that Vanity Fair reveal today let's go back to one of the most moving original gay anthems "I Am What I Am" from La Cage Aux Folles. It's only one of the greatest songs ever written about being true to yourself. (I adore that moment at the beach in Paris is Burning when the two ladies start singing it).
Cinemascope Ari Folman (Waltz With Bashir) is working on a stop motion animated film about Anne Frank. Yes, that Anne Frank The Stake has a great piece on Tina Fey's firestarter comedy, especially its willingness to constantly poke at our racial discomforts Playbill has fun making Stephen King's books into stage musicals Pajiba has seen (well the first ten minutes) of a porn parody of Guardians of the Galaxy with characters named Star Load, and Bonin EW shares the 20 best episodes of Mad Men. Great choices overall - I'll be furious forever that Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss didn't win Emmys for "The Suitcase" MNPP I missed Matthew Goode's birthday but this is the perfect gif set with which to celebrate
Women and Hollywood the annual Crystal Awards for women in film are here and this year's honorees are Nicole Kidman and Ava DuVernay Boy Culture celebrates the one and only Buster Crabbe with some pre-code footage Deep Dish celebrates Bette Davis on her birthday with lots of clips from TV & film The Guardian raves about Carey Mulligan's career and artistry. She is currently playing Bill Nighy's ex-lover on Broadway at the moment in Skylight. Yes, Nighy. He is 36 years older. Theater Mania yes, it's true. Cats will be revived on Broadway Salon Michelangelo Signorile writes about the bleak state of gay characters on TV, usually sexless even in shows where their straight counterparts have plenty of physical intimacy (this is especially sad to read after Looking's cancellation though the article doesn't mention that) Comics Alliance the superhero craze has officially jumped shark? an Avengers inspired menswear line is upon us. No, not a boys underoos line, a menswear line. Kind of brings us back to that gender doublestandard discussion again, right? Huff Post Comedy speaking of double standards read this great piece on the headlines that would follow Madonna if she did the same things celebrity men her age or older did Maria Shriver's Blog also has a piece on ageism and sexism via the prism of Madonna i09 proof that awards are always political -- and it isn't just Oscar that's perpetually under attack -- in this investigative piece about a very weird two years for sci-fi's "Hugo" Awards TV Line "The Muppet Show" will be returning to ABC at some point. Let this serve as your reminder that they tried to revive it one other time in the 1990s and Michelle Pfeiffer was a guest! Here is video proof. (Yes, I was very excited that night)
Unfortunately, as in The Muppets (2011) they thought it wise to invent a new Muppet character that wasn't even a tenth as good as any of the originals. Why does this keep happening? I'm all for shaking things up lest one be fossilized in nostalgia but if you can't come up with a good character DO NOT steal screen time from the good ones!
Tuesday, March 21, 2017 at 8:00AM 
