Tonight's Celebrity Endorsement Fantasy

She came to check her rank on the Best Actress page but got totally sidetracked by the Kidman interview. It happens.

Happy Thanksgiving !

I hope your dinner is/was marvelous and the hugs plentiful. Thank you all for reading, donating, sharing, and commenting faithfully over the years! 

This cartoon from the latest New Yorker made me lol. Of all the things I'm thankful for, 3-D is not one of them!

3 Things I'm Thankful For Right This Second

• You, the readers. Thanks for being here, reading, commenting, donating, and sharing so faithfully and with so much movie love of your own.
• The Oscars for teaching me to obsess over movies. And then the movies for teaching me to forgive the Oscars and enjoy them for what they are: sometimes maddening but always fascinating time capsules of movie culture and what people loved when.
• In less than ONE DAY MORE I'll be seeing Les Misérables  !!!

YOUR TURN!

Game Show

Are you ready to play? After a depressing September, it's time to have fun again. The Film Fun Experience. What's more fun than games?  Each morning will kick things off with a movie quiz, poll, or trademarked game.

First and Last had a very short fifth season -- I got too fancy with the audio clues when I was getting bored -- but after a long hiatus, I'm ready again. You?  "Secret Messages", "Who's That Girl" and other unique TFE puzzles will also return. Someone fire the starting shot. I'm so ready to go. 

Also coming up this week: Monty the Cat's first psychic proclamation of this new awards season, Revenge Season 2, the first Oscar party reports, and the second season of "Oscar Horrors"... a series devote to those rare horror films that have been nominated for the golden boy.

Take Three: Series 3 Wrap-up

Craig here with a wrap-up entry for the third and final run of ‘Take Three’, The Film Experience series that looked at three notable performances from a supporting or character actor's career. Click on the actors’ names for their respective Takes.

It’s perhaps fitting that last week’s Take Three featured Brad Dourif as, when the idea for the series was first mooted, Dourif was the first actor who entered my mind. It’s odd perhaps that I left him so long, but I’m glad he was included in the end. I was also glad to include a quintet of actors – bigger names, well versed in veering between lead and character actor roles – who have vast and interesting careers under their belts: Christopher Walken (one of Seven Psychopaths due in cinemas soon), John Hurt, Tommy Lee Jones (currently sexing it up with Streep in Hope Springs), Danny DeVito and Chris Cooper. Series 3 started off with one of today’s best, Melissa Leo (receiving acclaim this week for her role as Francine); she was closely followed by another, Anne Heche.

Actors who did a lot of great work during the ‘80s and ‘90s and still continue to add class and/or grit to cinema now, albeit in perhaps more peripheral parts, got some ‘Take Three’ love this series: the always watchable Vincent D’Onofrio was a joy to write about; ditto Michael Rooker. Both Rosanna Arquette and Alfre Woodard have their many admirers, and rightly so; I hope their Takes were enjoyed by their respective fans. As with previous years’ Takes on the likes of Isabella Rossellini and Harry Dean Stanton, my inclusion of some Lynch regulars continued: first Piper Laurie, then Grace Zabriskie (both of whom appeared in Twin Peaks) received well-deserved outings during this run. Classic horror and film noir female performances were also considered with entries on Barbara Steele and Ida Lupino, two of the finest character actors who worked most prominently between, respectively, the fifties and the seventies and the thirties to the seventies.

A range of some of the most essential contemporary supporting/character actors got the T3 treatment this time out, too. Two of today’s best British actors, Samantha Morton (currently chatting up R-Pattz in a limo in Cosmopolis) and Toby Kebbell (who shared screen time with Morton in Control) were featured. Eva Mendes (presently transfixing Denis Lavant in a basement in Holy Motors) and the versatile French actor Cécile De France are both cementing their places as two of today’s most alluring screen performers. Finally, it was a sheer pleasure to research and rewatch the three films for John C. Reilly’s Takes – and, as with many of this series’ actors with vast and varied careers, I wished I could have including at least six more Takes.

As a final note, I sincerely hope all Film Experience readers have enjoyed this and both previous Take Three series. It has been an absolute pleasure to write and I’ve enjoyed all the discussions and opinions in the comments section. Thanks for reading.

Although this is the last Take Three series, I may well be writing a new column next year. In the meantime, I’ll be reporting for Nathaniel from the BFI London Film Festival in October and you can also follow me on Twitter – @DarkEyeSocket – or at my own site here. Related links: season 1 wrap-up entry here and season 2 wrap-up entry here. (Both contain all previous Take Threes between them.)

So... who were your favourite Take Threes? Show any and all of these fine actors your love in the comments...

A Whiff of TIFF

As you may have heard on Twitter, it looks like I'll be attending the last four days of the Toronto International Film Festival (i.e. the time when most of the journos have gone home) due to a very last minute window of time and my standard impulse control problems ("But... moviessssss! I must ?!!")

I love TIFF and I haven't been in way too long. So I'm winging it which is not the best way to approach one of the biggest and bestest festivals in the world but we do what we can do in the way that we can do it. If you want to help The Film Experience be on sounder financial footing next year, and help Nathaniel maybe get to Cannes or Telluride for the first time  (I can dream!) please consider the subscription donation in the right hand side bar. If everyone who loved this site spent the price of a cup of coffee on the blog every month, the world would open up to us like an oyster. No... not like an oyster... 

Amir, who covered the festival for us last year, will be doing a bit more this year and I'll pick up the baton in a week for the last few days.  (My regular podcast mate Nick Davis (first timer!) is going, too. TFE friend / podcast mate Katey Rich, and yours truly, will arrive next week.) Then, almost as soon as I return to New York, Michael Cusumano (of "Burning Questions" fame) and I will start covering the 50th annual New York Film Festival (NYFF) for you. Sound good?

TIFF's opening day features an all star live reading of the American Beauty screenplay which we really wish we coulda been there for given that Christina Hendricks is doing Annette Bening's part. The opening film is Rian Johnson's time travel head scratcher LOOPER which is already winning positive reviews, omg!you-gotta-see-this type buzz and even some playful tweetdowns like this...

Are you excited that festival season is here? Which films are you most desperate to have in front of your eyeballs right this second?