The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R.
Gemini, Cinephile, Actressexual. Also loves cats. All material herein is written and copyrighted by him, unless otherwise noted. twitter | facebook | pinterest | tumblr | letterboxd
COMMENT(s) DU JOUR
Those Who Have Gone "Before..."
❝I have never been as nervous about watching a film as I was when I sat down to see Before Midnight. It did not disappoint.❞
-BrianZ
❝Can't wait for this. This is like my Star Wars❞
-sad man
THEATRICAL
The Great Gatsby (2013) C+
Iron Man Three B+
Hot Docs various
dvd/tv
The Talented Mr Ripley first half A / second half B
The Great Gatsby (1974) C+
Summertime B
Double Indemnity A
Friday, May 17, 2013 at 10:00PM They’re arriving so late in the day because Mrs. Wilcox is a nymph who travels at night.
As far as evocative film openings go this lush green opening for Howards End ranks among the top for me. Really, though, many films would be vastly improved if they open with a strolling Vanessa Redgrave. more...
Saturday, October 20, 2012 at 10:30AM David here reporting on three homegrown participants in the 56th BFI London Film Festival.
Steve Oram & Alice Lowe in 'Sightseers'A distinctly British melding of comedy and horror grew from the roots of Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, and it’s telling that Wright has an executive producer credit on Sightseers, director Ben Wheatley’s follow-up to his terrifying, schizoid Kill List, which made it to US theatres earlier this year. Sightseers proves similarly unclassifiable, but the black magic horror of Kill List is replaced by a crunching absurdity. Co-writers Steve Oram and Alice Lowe star as Chris and Tina, a young couple who leave behind Tina’s demanding, cruel but dependent mother and set out on a sightseeing tour around England that quickly becomes a killing spree after Chris reverses over a tourist he witnessed littering. Justifications for the killings range from a rambler’s “smug complacency” to Tina’s sexual jealousy, removing any kind of social agenda from Oram and Lowe’s anarchic, cruelly witty script. Instead they parody usual clichés – Tina is still affected by the loss of her dog, who meets an unfortunate end by knitting needle in flashback – and affectionately mock bullshit social rhetoric. There’s a guilty pleasure in our enjoyment of the escalating brutality of the situation and how the pair’s romantic entanglement evolves through this. Despite their obvious issues, Chris and Tina are genuinely entertaining people to spend time with, and the surreal, morbid flourishes of humour combine with dark flares of blood to make for a generic hybrid that has been deftly melded together. Sightseers is worth making tracks to see. (A-)
Friday, June 15, 2012 at 9:00AM Witches of Eastwick 25th anniversary week ends this weekend. I intended to do much more but we'll see what little can be conjured still.
Cherries, Oatmeal, Satan and her weak husband just make her sick!
Film Experience Trivia: Veronica Cartwright was the star of the very first episode of Craig's "Take Three" series right here (well, at the old location) in 2010. He spotlighted her work in three genre pieces (Alien in which she was originally cast as Ripley (!!!) , Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Witches of Eastwick) concluding that she is the sci-fi-horror scream queen. On Witches:
Cartwright's skill at creating profoundly memorable characters is none more evident than in Witches: you see the very bile rise up in Felicia's face; she vehemently means every word in her religious rants, summoning up as she does some kind of wicked, wrathful acting goddess. With cherry-scented vomit (or even hospital oatmeal) smeared ungainly across her mouth, and spitting hellfire sermons at everyone who'll listen, Cartwright was unafraid to eschew vanity to maintain supporting performance perfection. If the "Alien" lead was stolen away, a Best Supporting Actress nod was more so here. Remote-control fruit-based possession doesn't get any classier than this.
...she exited the film way too soon.
There were surely people at the time who thought she over reached but when you're the god-fearing counterpart to Jack Nicholson's Devil, you have to go big.
SO, LET'S TALK OSCAR 1987. Here's how the year shook out for Best Supporting Actresses but did you agree with their choices?
The Oscar List
I saw Moonstruck for the first time in 2 decades last year. My god it holds up. Dukakis, Cher, the screenplay, Nicolas Cage even? All fantastic.
The Globe List
the same list but for the following
Vanessa, like Shirley Maclaine, is an oft-nominated Oscar caliber performer who also happens to have a surprisingly large list of snubs (despite the oft-nominated part) suggesting that if they don't love her work in a given year, they don't feel welcoming.
Martha Plimpton in a very unsettling scene in "Shy People". Good movie that's hard to find now.The Indie Spirit List
I haven't seen Street Smart or The Whales of August but I remember liking the other three performances quite a lot. Sometimes I think I should watch The Dead again as an adult because I'm pretty sure I didn't fully understand it as a teen. I'm always hoping (in vain) that Martha Plimpton's current fame as a dramatic stage star and Emmy nominated comedic lead on Raising Hope will remind people of what a fresh compelling presence she was on the big screen in the 1980s. So talented that one.
The BAFTA List
Though I've seen all of these films I'll admit to trouble recalling Aitken and Dench's work in those films. But I haven't seen them in 20 years so...
Other Key But Less Kudo'ed Supporting Actresses in 1987
the scene to end all scenes for foot fetishist everywhere. Maggie Han and Joan Chen in THE LAST EMPEROR (1987)
Sean Young's current reputation as a Crazy Person is a bit unfortunate considering that in the '80s (when properly utilized) she was just on fire.
In other retrospective news... I'm never eager to call Oscar "racist" the way so many pundits do. The truth is that they can only choose from what's put in front of them in any given year. Roles for actors of color have never been as juicy nor as abundant as those offered white actors in English language fare and when they get plum opportunities they usually win attention. That said, if there's a "racial" issue with Oscar it's one that doesn't get any attention. For whatever reason, Oscar rarely ever nominates Asian actresses for anything even when they achieve international stardom or headline blockbusters of the arthouse or the multiplex (think Gong Li, Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Michelle Yeoh) -- both of which are achievements that get European foreign-language actresses nominated on occasion. They don't even notice Asian actress when they're key players in movies that voters can't otherwise get enough of (Joan Chen right here or Ziyi in Crouching Tiger) I'm not saying Chen should have been nominated -- I haven't seen the movie in way too long -- but wouldn't she have been in other circumstances considering that she plays a drug-addled royal in a Best Picture winner?
WHAT WOULD YOUR NOMINEE LIST LOOK LIKE?
Do you like Cartwright in Witches or do you wish she (and Jack) would tone it down? Which performances do you most wish you'd seen from 1987 that won attention?
Saturday, April 7, 2012 at 6:05PM Nowhere is the "April Foolish" descriptive more appropriate than in the Supporting Categories. They're generally the last major categories to clear up in each Oscar race since so much rides on the success of a film and/or its leading players. Coattails are often required even if the performance is great all by its lonesome. Witness the sad fate of Vanessa Redgrave's Coriolanus performance in the last race. She was easily the greatest but barely any awards group noticed since reviews for the film were lukewarm and it was barely released at that.
Vanessa Redgrave and Terence Stamp are old married in "Song for Marion"
Redgrave might be in play again this year, though, with a warmer title role in Song For Marion. The last time she was in the Oscar race (20 years ago) she was playing a dying woman who worked as a catalyst for the protagonist's emotional journey and the same is probably true here in this film about her husband (Terence Stamp) who joins the church choir to please her. The supporting categories are often home to heartwarmers like that and they're much kinder to senior actors as well so the cast of Quartet (Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly and Pauline Collins) Dustin Hoffman's directorial debut about retired opera singers, might win kudos too.
If Oscar wants to lean darker -- they love villains in both of the supporting categories -- they might latch on to the sure to be controversial Django Unchained but it's worth noting that Pulp Fiction is the only Quentin Tarantino film that has managed multiple acting nominations. So it's anyone's guess as to who will be named "best in show" this time out but my money is currently on the villain (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his captive (Kerry Washington)
Crowded Films
We can't possibly know this early on who the standouts will be in various crowded films but we can guess. Ben Affleck's Argo, Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, and Steven Spielberg's Lincoln might be key films to watch for the Supporting Actor category since they all involve dangerous military operations and the cast lists are deep. Les Misérables will undoubtedly be the film that will spark the most early discussion about the Supporting Actress category since Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Samantha Barks and Helena Bonham-Carter will all have key moments they can own.
Can David O. Russell get two of his supporting ladies nominated again? The Silver Linings Playbook has Jacki Weaver and Jennifer Lawrence
Double Dipping?
Oscar has really gone crazy for doubling up in Supporting Actress this past decade. It just keeps happening that two actresses are nominated from the same film. Two more films which might be in play for the ol' twice over are Hyde Park on Hudson (The Olivias, Williams and Colman) and David O. Russell's The Silver Lining Playbook (with previous nominees Jennifer Lawrence and Jacki Weaver)
Can all those "Rampart" raves, help Woody Harrelson in his next role as a dog-loving mobster?
The April Foolish Predictions...
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
See where they rank: Amy Adams, Redgrave, The Bening, JLaw hot off Hunger Games, Mary Todd "Sally" Lincoln, Nicole Kidman, The Olivias and the Les Mis girls.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
See where they rank: All those men still waiting for a win like Leo, Woody & Joaquin, plus previous winners Lee Jones, Waltz, and many more.
Naturally you'll want to sound off on all the wonderful possibilities. Which performances do you have warm fuzzy hunches about? Which performances do you think I'm overestimating?
Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 10:41PM 
"I Simply Cannot Do Alone" might well be the theme song all lead actors should sing to their stellar supporting castI felt a list coming on so I didn't fight it. Neither did I fight the order as I slotted them in, though you know how this goes if you've ever made such insane list. The order might change with a moodswing and it would definitely change (perhaps drastically) if I had an opportunity to rewatch all these pictures back to back.
Ten Most Deserving Best Supporting Actress Oscar Wins
Runners up: I'm crazy about Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker and Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon but they're both unarguably leading roles so I'm not voting for them. My apologies in no particular order to Ruth Gordon, Wendy Hiller, Catherine Zeta-Jones and, oh, dozens of people. Never mind. Moving on! (The one winning performance I'm most frustrated to have not yet laid eyes on is Gloria Grahame's in The Bad and the Beautiful (given the hosannas I read about it... even right here.)
10 I want to offer the tenth spot to either Mercedes Reuhl in The Fisher King (1991) or Dorothy Malone in Written on the Wind (1956) though I haven't seen either performance in aeons. Both are sometimes regarded --even by me -- as performances that are so over the top they're buzzing about King Kong's head like tiny airplanes. But given that the films they're in are as colorful and eccentric as the Empire State Building is tall, they're truly excellent and memorable contributions to their movies if you ask me.
She's got poise. The way she holds her head at just the right angle. That takes training. That takes years of training. I see what Willy sees. Willy's got big ideas, Jack."
-in All The King's Men
09 Mercedes McCambridge, All the King's Men (1949)
She slices right through the thick air of political grandstanding. Modern and mercurial, I sometimes like to imagine McCambridge dropped right into today's pictures. Imagine her starch and steel freed up by looser contemporary mores. She'd be even better about complicating her movies.
Where did April come up with that stuff about Adolf Loos and terms like "organic form"? Well, naturally. She went to Brandeis. But I don't think she knows what she's talking about. Could you believe the way she was calling him David? "Yes, David. I feel that way, too, David. What a marvelous space, David." I hate April. She's pushy."
-Holly's interior monologue in Hannah and Her Sisters
#8 through #1
Tilda, Rita, Dianne and More after the jump