JA from MNPP here. First off, my apologies to those of you with weaker constitutions. This might not be your sort of Top Ten list today. With that out of the way, want to know why I still won't eat cherries to this very day? Since it's "The Witches of Eastwick week"I think y'all can probably put two and two together. Take a giant silver bowl of them, stir in a trio of witchy women under the influence of one Big Bad, and shake thoroughly - out spills what might be the always game Veronica Cartwright's most memorable cinematic moment. (And this is a woman who has been terrorized by Hitchock's birds and phallically attacked by HR Giger's Alien, so she knows from memorable scenes.)
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You'd be excused for expecting it to be the walls and furniture to be what tumbles out of her mouth since she spends the first half of the scene devouring the scenery in a tour de force of bravura overacting, but the devil's in the details - that red-stained torrent of cherry pits is something you just don't forget, even 25 years later. (Watch the whole scene here.)
They say it's your birthday.♬ ♩♬♩♬ it's my birthday, too.
Herewith, in semi off the cuff order, the greatest peoplethings born on this day in history. Happy June 6th!
Honorable mention... Jason Isaacs -The impossibly hot 49 year old actor studied to be a lawyer but if he had stuck with it we would have never had his Captain Hook, or his Lucius Malfoy, or his bickering married screenwriter in Friends With Money, or even known who he is. Tragedy averted.
VC Andrews - not for writing the ridiculous "Flowers in the Attic" but for inspiring the ridiculous genius of Parker Posey's Waiting for Guffman scene in which the brilliant comic actress uses it for her small town theater audition.
"and who's on top and who's on bottom now? Huh?!"
TOP TEN JUNE 6TH BIRTHDAY PEOPLETHINGS!
10 Levi Stubbs From the Four Topps to Audrey II. I ♥ Little Shop of Horrors, don't you.
09 Chantal Akerman I feel such guilt that I still haven't seen Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
08 Billie Whitelaw She hasn't appeared in a movie since Hot Fuzz but the BAFTA winning actress and Samuel Beckett muse has been giving it on stage and screen since the 1950s in everything from Quills, to Hitchcock's Frenzy to Charlie Bubbles and was even the voice of crazy ass eyeball dropping muppet astronomer Aughra in The Dark Crystal.
Fun trivia: Billie Whitelaw played the evil nanny of that little toddler Anti-Christ in The Omen, whose birthday was also June 6th. Not So Fun Triva: When I was little I snuck into the living room to watch The Omen on TV by myself. I was so scared I could barely sleep for the next two nights and since I was also a June 6th baby, I had to search my scalp for the mark of the devil afterwards!
07 TETRIS! The video game turns 28 years old today. Nine time out of ten its geometric puzzle descendants are the cel phone apps that I accidentally become obsessed with. I would have placed it much higher but for all the months of my life it has consumed... and for what?
I'll never have those months back! Curse you Tetris.
06 Aaron Sorkin For A Few Good Men, The American President, Moneyball and especially The Social Network. If he cared a little more about writing great female characters to go with his tremendously interesting male characters he'd be just about the perfect screenwriter.
05 Aleksandr Pushkin For being such a crucial figure in Russian and, hell, world literature. The Russian noble and poet's legacy can't be denied. He even inspired one of the great Oscar Best Picture winners Amadeus (1984) with his short work "Mozart and Salieri"
04 Harvey Feirstein The inimitable croaksqueak voice, the great wit, the wonderful plays and movies, the multiple Tony Awards, the homo bravery. Such a trailblazer, such a great performer and man. Edna Turnblad (#2) forever! See: Torch Song Trilogy, La Cage Aux Folles, The Sissy Duckling, and more.
03 Sandra Bernhard For her Oscar nomination worthy brilliance in King of Comedy (1983). For one of the best and bravest concert films of all time Without You I'm Nothing (1990). And for just being her own inimitable self. The best stars are always irreplaceably singular.
And though the Sandra/Madonna days are long gone *sniffle* I just have to share my single favorite talk show appearance of all time... I watch it at least once every couple years. It is serving up 1988 authenticity. It is time machine realness.
02 The drive in movie theater! For reals. On June 6th, 1933 the first one opened for business. Thank you New Jersey. I have rarely been to the drive-in in my life but I love the concept and I love drive-in scenes in movies even more than the concept.
The first movie I ever saw at a drive-in was this (incidentally the only time I ever remember my mom and dad taking me to the drive in *sniffle*) and the best time I ever had at a drive-in was this (college was so fun. sigh) and the last one I ever saw was this. Point being: it's hard to forget going to the drive-in.
me, plotting eternal youthful middle age01 Me I'm turning 40 (ugh). Again! I'm so happy that people can legally discriminate against me in the job market now. Wheeee. If you'd like to soften the blow, take the subscription rush challenge and I'll see you again on June 30th.
Since Wisconsin's citizenry tried to ruin my birthday last night I'm turning to actresses for solace, as I am wont to do: An Evening with Jane Fonda tonight and Jane Krakowksi live this weekend. Yes.
The world's number one ranked male tennis player turns a quarter century today so in honor of Novak Djokovic why not celebrate with a list of best tennis moments in the movies?
Because... uh...
Are there any? When I first thought of doing this list I was like YES -- little known fact: I played tennis daily one summer in high school and still love the game -- only to hit a brick wall rather than a low net. You may have heard this complaint before from tennis fans but given the abundance of sports movies of every other stripe it's almost like Hollywood hates the game. Those private tennis courts on celebrity acreage are all going to waste.
I've come up with ten things anyway.
BEST TENNIS SOMETHING OR OTHER IN THE MOVIES
You should know upfront that I've never seen the Chad Lowe boy-in-drag masterpiece Nobody's Perfect (1989) -- no decade ever loved cross-dressing comedies like the 80s -- so I shan't include it.
10 Wimbledon (2004) Nobody likes this movie but given the abrupt sharp decline in romantic comedy quality over the past ten years, I bet it'd look pretty good if it came out now. At the very least both Paul Bettany and Kirsten Dunst looked fresh and healthy and sun-kissed as the professional athletes in love.
09 The Witches of Eastwick (1987) We'll be sure to celebrate this movie's 25th anniversary next month but for now, remember that tennis match? Temperatures are flaring as the three best friends Jane (Susan Sarandon) Sukie (Michelle Pfeiffer) and Alex (Cher) all compete for Devil Jack Nicholson's attention. In a game of doubles things get vindicative and then supernatural.
Every once in awhile people will ask me if I really like superheroes or if I just post about them on occassion because it's good for traffic. The answers are a bold yes and an er, probably not (The Film Experience isn't so much on the fanboy traffic radar for numerous reasons including undoubtedly because actresses on the verge of onscreen nervous breakdowns are a way more thrilling visual effect than superhero powers). But in truth I've always loved superheroes and only wish that superhero movies had more variety and imagination and a fan culture that was less slobbering and homogenous. See, I grew up completely obsessed with X-Men. Just as with movies where strong casts are consistently more likely to thrill me than movies built on one performance, I generally appreciated team comics the most, so I also read (in ascending order of favoritism): The Legion of Superheroes, Fantastic Four, Alpha Flight, The Avengers and The Teen Titans. I liked the Avengers best when certain characters were present. For those of you who didn't read comics, The Avengers operated on an internal narrative wherein the roster of heroes changed fairly regularly, sometimes only one or two slots but never exactly the same roll call.
So with last week's no shit announcement that box office titan The Avengers would be getting a sequel, I thought I'd list the ten characters I'd most like Joss Whedon to consider for it. He's already on record saying he'd like another female though the pickings are somewhat slim. The unstated problem is that the best female superheroes are part of the X-Men team, characters 20th Century Fox is in control of... a thorough breakdown of who owns which characters can be found at Screen Rant. This is all assuming that Marvel Studios doesn't want Whedon to just make the first movie again with a new villain. Which, I'll quickly note, is a ridiculous assumption. The guiding rule of expensive studio sequels is "make it the same only bigger"
Top Ten Heroes To Consider for Avengers 2
With apologies to Quake who was in the original post and was accidentally deleted until it was all written.
10 Doctor Strange The Marvel Universe's premiere sorcerer has yet to make a dent outside of comic books. Name recognition wouldn't be high for mainstream audiences but that's what people worried about with Iron Man and look how that turned out? Strange got a TV movie in 1978 but subsequent planned film versions have been cursed, the spell forever uncast.
The rights have changed hands many times but last we heard, Marvel Studios had control of the mystic doctor again and had hired screenwriters. Adrien Brody was rumored for the role a couple of years ago and then Patrick Dempsey was lobbying hard in 2011. I'm not crazy about the Dempsey idea since his charisma is scaled so well for the small screen -- really it's just the hair that make people think he's right for it because as an actor he definitely lacks mystery -- but the Doctor could be an intriguing character in the right hands.
09 Ms Marvel / Binary / War Bird I've never met a soul who has any deep feelings or fandom for Ms. Marvel, which probably dooms her big screen chances altogether but hear me out. Her backstory is so fucked up, her name has changed multiple times, that nothing is canon. A writer like Joss Whedon could do virtually whatever he pleased with her without upsetting decades of story. But it's also worth noting that Ms. Marvel's most intriguing story connects to the X-Men mythology. Rogue (played by Anna Paquin in the movies) once absorbed just too much of her and gained all her memories and identity giving both women major psychiatric issues thereafter.
If handled brilliantly and with a team of great lawyers couldn't she straddle both superhero franchises as a supporting player, essentially tying them into the same universe without disrupting either studio's plans too much?
We love to do top tens on Tuesdays and more of them will be coming your way soon. Today's top ten is not strictly ascending, some of these moments I loved and some I decidedly did not but they're ten things that I'm thinking about today and that I imagine will always come up when I think of the 84th Oscars.
TOP TEN TAKEAWAYS Things to remember, for better and for worse, from the 84th Oscars
10 Direction is Everything With Dance When I first heard they were doing a Cirque Du Soleil number at the Oscars, I groaned. Not that I don't enjoy the odd acrobatic but why at the Oscars? If you want it to be a variety show, stop being so inexcusably high and mighty about the Original Song category (that music branch and those rules. sigh) and start nominating 5 songs each year like in every other category. There are several songs this year that might have made for great ceremony moments. But when it began with that graceful, hypnotic liftoff via North by Northwest, my spirit lifted off with the twinned Cary Grants And then crashed back down to earth when I realized that the guy in the control booth had ADD and felt it necessary to show me closeups during big elaborately choreographed acrobats, which made for entirely confusing moments. Sometimes you couldn't even tell what film clips they were dancing to.
There's a certain cross-section of film critics that have been so cynical and mean spirited about our Best Picture, The Artist, that you'd think it was directed by Ed Wood, Alan Smithee or Michael Bay. They've been so weirdly hyperbolic about their hatred that it's been hard to actually hear an argument within the bile. But the Cirque Du Soleil number only served to illustrate how wise Michel Hazanavicius was with the physicality of The Artist, especially in its last glorious continuous take moments where you could see (wait for it) ENTIRE BODIES DANCING. This is quite possibly the simplest visual performance concept of all, that to understand / absorb / fully enjoy a dance, you have to see the body. It's such a simple concept that 96% of the (modern) time, directors screw it up. Well done Hazanavicius. Should the Oscars choose to ever have musical numbers again, please hire a control booth with less panicy "ohmygodthey'llgetbored" insecurities. It's hardly ever boring to watch great dancing / acrobatics / performances. It's only boring when you can't see them and are forced again and again to look at one particular detail at the expense of the whole.
09David Fincher's Oscar Stride With Kirk Baxter and Angus Wall's semi-surprise win in film editing for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (I predicted it as the "spoiler" should there be one and now of course I wish I'd just gone for it fully) they achieved an Oscar miracle: it's the first back-to-back editing Oscar since 1935/1936 when Ralph Dawson took home prizes for A Midsummer Night's Dream and Anthony Adverse. Baxter and Wall won last year for The Social Network and though they really are superb editors, what this most definitely illustrates (along with the great guild showing for Dragon Tattoo) is that David Fincher has really hit his stride with the Academy. It took them a long time to get there but now that they're there expect every one of his films to win nominations in some category or another. It was hard not to view the clip selection for Rooney Mara as the Academy own cheeky response to Fincher's preemptory quipping about his movie's AMPAS fate.
There's too much anal rape in this movie to get nominated."
08 Leggy Angelina Angelina has always felt a bit like a cartoon version of a movie star, so overripe, so perfectly visual. The best part is that she knows it. Her strut to standing hip swung leg out pose was so deliciously diva that it must be celebrated (and mocked by the next Oscar winner) immediately thereafter.
07 Movie Stars Talking About Movies Is Love. King Kong Morgan Freeman talking King Kong. Brad's amusing description of The Gargantuans. Adam Sandler talking James Bond and Sean Connery's chest hair and saying "can i please do that?" (um which part?) And most of all Gabby Sidibe marveling over "My Left Foot" (who knew?) we love this sort of thing.
"Nader & Simin" watching Farhadi accept the Oscar
06 Art is Global. Art is Political. Art is Good For the World. Asghar Farhadi and cast were present and Iran won its first Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Farhadi got political in his speech and we're glad he did. Though some of the sentiment was lost in his English, we appreciate any reminder that respectful discourse and rich cultural exchange is possible and admirable, especially in the face of so much lowest common denominator politics. So many politicians these days play on people's worst instincts toward hostility and resentment for all, never thinking through the effects of war mongering rhetoric.
But back to the movies. We hope that A Separation marks a turning point and the category that used to give us the Bergmans and the Fellinis of the world will return to its roots and start giving statues to the masterpieces again. What a great start.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012 at 2:42PM 
You'd be excused for expecting it to be the walls and furniture to be what tumbles out of her mouth since she spends the first half of the scene devouring the scenery in a tour de force of bravura overacting, but the devil's in the details - that red-stained torrent of cherry pits is something you just don't forget, even 25 years later. (Watch the whole scene here.)
