Prime in September: Bolero, Gutland, Jack Ryan, and There Will Be Blood

Time to play Streaming Roulette. Each month, to survey new streaming titles we freeze frame the films at random places with the scroll bar and whatever comes up first, that's what we share! (in case you missed it we did Netflix earlier)

What does Amazon Prime offer us for free viewing this month? (Hulu will have the bulk of these, too, as their contracts are always very similar). Let's survey...

Just because we fucked three times, now you think you own me?

Gutland (2017)
Did Phantom Thread make you curious about Vicky Krieps? Here she is in a noir from her home country of Luxembourg. The guys she's arguing with in this skinny-dipping scene is Frederick Lau, who gave a fine performance in that continuous shot German movie Victoria a few years ago. 

ding ding ding. It looks like we have a winner

Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Season 1 (2018)
Jeez, how many actors have played Jack Ryan already? Now it's Mr. Emily Blunt's turn in a new Prime series. I guess they're skipping their 'pilot testing with audiences' phase and going straight to series like most of their competitors now.

Chinatown, the 2007 Oscar race, and more after the jump...

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Doc Corner: Robert Greene's 'Bisbee '17'

by Glenn Dunks

Staged realities are at the heart of Robert Greene’s films. Whether it be the wrestlers of Fake It So Real, the performative comeback of Actress or the uncanny fiction of Kate Plays Christine, his films have always blurred lines between what is real and what is… less real. Maybe.

Bisbee ’17, opening tomorrow in NYC, marks multi-hyphenate Greene’s most accessible feature to date, perhaps not coincidentally because the divide between the two realities he builds are at their most clearly defined. But even if the structure allows an audience more familiar comfort, it’s still a haven for the sort of hazy distortion that Greene does so well and which can make viewers feel off-balance, unsure about whether what they’re watching is completely real or some version of it.

The setting for Bisbee ’17 is the town of Bisbee, Arizona. A town in the shadow of the copper mining boom in the early stretches of last century; once one of the most prosperous towns in America, it now stands as a remnant of a long-since gone American ideal. It's a minor tourist destination, and the keeper of a tragic secret past that is about to get to get torn open like a scab from a 100 year-old wound that never healed...

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Old Man and the Link

• EFA You can now vote on the People's Choice Award at the European Film Awards and maybe win a trip to the ceremony (strange choices this year. I don't like it when it's easy to decide!)
• Variety Buzzy titles at TIFF without a distributor that are hoping to inspire big sales / awards buzz -a la I Tonya last year
• NWI Robert Redford's swan song in Old Man and the Gun
• Playbill Megan Hilty singing "Suddenly Seymour" (!) from Little Shop of Horrors
• Bobby Rivers TCM's "The Black Experience on Film" - set your DVRs
• Deadline Cats, the movie musical, has moved into Wicked's previous release date December 20th, 2019. It's so weird that Cats is going to happen before Wicked when the latter so clearly needs to be a movie and the former so clearly shouldn't.
• The Playlist Dave Bautista not sure if he wants to continue his Marvel Universe contract post James Gunn firing
• The New Yorker great piece on the shaming of character actor Geoffrey Owens for his grocery bagging job on the side
• Vulture let these photos of Lady Gaga be your air conditioning
• Film School Rejects Crazy Rich Asian's had a historically big Labor Day weekend. It's also the first romcom to win that weekend since Bring It On in 2000!
• Next Best Picture a potential controversy for A Star is Born
• Gothamist the Village Voice is officially dead, after publishing since 1955 *sniffle*

Finally, over at Towleroad I shared feelings about the Summer Movie Season as we bid it goodbye. You've heard most of that article's introduction feelings before here at TFE but if you want to see the silly awards I handed out like "sexiest men," "stealth MVPs," and "best quotes", click on over.

We ❤️ Viola

So proud to have been a fan since 2002! Viola Davis gets the cover story in the current Variety as she gears up for her Widows debut at TIFF. Can't wait to see it. But damn, that Best Actress race is getting crowded. (Kris Tapley even suspects Olivia Colman will go lead) 

Showbiz History: The Hurt Locker, Xena, and a Truly Great Cinematographer

7 random things that happened on this day, September 4th, in showbiz history...

1936 Swing Time is released in movie theaters starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

1945 Happy 73rd birthday to the beyond-talented cinematographer Philippe Rousselot who won the Oscar for Sun-Drenched Ode to Brad Pitt's Golden Beauty (or as they called it in 1992 "A River Runs Through It")... but that's not the half of it. Rousselot is particularly gifted with erotic period dramas: Henry & June, Dangerous Liaisons, and Queen Margot are all utterly sensational to gaze upon...

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