Game of Thrones. The Final Season Approaches

Though The Film Experience has not covered Game of Thrones in the past beyond the occasional mention, a couple of our contributors are big fans and since the final season is the television event of the year, we're opting to break tradition and cover each episode. Here are Eric Blume and Ben Miller, who will be writing up the final episodes, to grill each other on their experience of the series to date if you'd like to join them in this refresher. - Editor.

ERIC:  Ben, I’m excited about working on this project with you. Let's start at the beinning: Have you been a fan of the show since the first episode, or did you join somewhere in progress?  What made you fall in love with it?

BEN: I got into it on the ground floor.  I was never much of a fantasy book reader (no Harry Potter, no Lord of the Rings), but this seemed like one of the first shows where people were genuinely excited for the potential of what it could be.  I knew a few people who had read the books, but I went in fairly cold and with an open mind.  You also have to keep in mind of what HBO was doing at the time...

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Beauty vs Beast: School's Out Forever

Jason from MNPP here with our weekly "Beauty vs Beast" -- tomorrow is the 20th anniversary of Wes Anderson's film Rushmore, and so you celebrate the battle between Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) and Herman Blume (Bill Murray) we shall. This was Anderson's second film (after Bottle Rocket) and an instant cult hit - it only made 17 million dollars in theaters (it ranked 97th at the box office, between The Big Lebowski and 54) but I was in college at the time and believe you me, us youngins loved it right out of the gate.

Now it's rightly heralded as a classic - you're not going to hear an unkind word from me on the hermetically crafted direction that Wes started taking his film-making after this (Moonrise Kingdom is my favorite of all his films, after all) but Rushmore does feel airy in a way that he's moved far far away from (especially with the to the millimeter specificity of his animated efforts) and it might be nice to see him sample some of this looseness again?

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PREVIOUSLY I'm real glad that Judith O'Dea got to beat back the zombie horde this one time with last week's Night of the Living Dead anniversary edition - poor Barbra has had enough to deal with. Said Nick T:

"Without getting into details, I'd say this answer was a NO BRAINER!!! Hyuk hyuk hyuk"

Extra! Extra! Link All About It

So much news and other things to link up. Okay, here we go...

Polygon <-- I wrote this piece for them on The Dark Knight and the Oscar quake that followed. Have a look won't you? 
The Ringer LOLZ. The forthcoming Downton Abbey movie ...with zombies
Variety Weinstein Company's library of hundreds of Oscary films and TV shows like Project Runway now owned by a new company Lantern Entertainment. 
MNPP Tab Hunter marathon on TMC this Friday!
/Film Batwoman series in development at CW. It's another one of those Berlanti superhero shows. I enjoyed The Flash for a time but I really wish if we're going to have this many shows that there would be some differentiation of producing teams so that there wouldn't be so much homogeny with point of view.

More after the jump including MoviePass trouble and new projects for Halle Berry, Taraji P Henson, Rose Byrne, and Kate Winslet... 

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Resident Evil: A Bloody Valentine

By Salim Garami

What's good?

We're already one week into October and so that means a lot of us are in the middle of binging our favorite Halloween watches or trying out some new ones. Personally, I'm revisiting the long-time zombie science fiction action franchise Resident Evil, based on Capcom's survival horror games that made up my childhood and starring the brilliant Milla Jovovich as apocalypstic ass-kicker Alice (self-promotion moment: it's more than likely I'm going to be writing about the series on Motorbreath within the month) and I have a bit of an observation about the concept of the character that I think might at least amuse the Actressexuals among this site's audience...

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The Grace of Keanu Reeves

TODAY'S MUST READ ELSEWHERE
Our sometimes contributor Angelica Bastien wrote a great piece for Bright Wall / Dark Room called "The Grace of Keanu Reeves" in which she argues against the common dismissals of his acting ability. As a longtime fan of Keanu (Point Break/Private Idaho being the peak era of devotion) this was a joy to read.

One of her greatest points deals with "the crossroads of virile and vulnerable, territory previously charted by actors as legendary as Montgomery Clift, James Dean, and Paul Newman. But there's a difference.

These actors often seem to fight against the lustful gaze of the camera, while Keanu supplants himself to it. Where they seem cynical, disinterested, or too wounded as a romantic lead, Keanu is utterly open.

In "Point Break," he’s a hotshot with a gun and a badge. But he’s also an object of lust for the camera (and audience), with a disarmingly open smile. Furthermore, without the help of a woman—the short-haired pixie vixen surfer Tyler (Lori Petty)—he wouldn’t be able to integrate himself into the gang of robbers/surfers led by Bodhi (Patrick Swayze). This artful dynamic—a woman of greater skill guiding a passive man into a world beyond his imagination—develops even further in "The Matrix" (1999). Some of this, of course, exists on a plot level. But Keanu tends to let his scene partners take the lead, becoming almost a tabula rasa on which they (and we) can project our ideas of what it means to be a hero, a man, a modern action star. 

Do check it out. And share your feelings about Keanu in the comments. This article brought the guilt down that I have yet to see John Wick (2014).