Film Experience Blog

Rants of a Diva "Cate Blanchett scares me"
ONTD Sir Ian McKellen mistaken for homeless beggar
The Pixar Blog feature film newt (2012) cancelled? Awww. I love those wee things
The Evening Class Luise Rainer at 100 years of age (!) attends a screening of her Oscar-winning The Good Earth (1937)
Fin de Cinema collects gorgeous movie posters from Cannes


The DAVIDs
Restoration Claudia Shear, who previously wrote that acclaimed Mae West play Dirty Blonde is back on stage with this drama about a woman restoring Michelangelo's The David. I saw it in previews. Good stuff.
/Film When I first heard the news that Brad Pitt would be starring in The Tiger I heard the name Darren Aronofsky and immediately replaced it with David Fincher. Which has happened to me three times now!!! And which is SO strange because I've been a fan of both since their first films. Why do I keep doing this. They're really not that much alike.
CHUD David Cronenberg's next project Cosmopolis has its starry cast.

I confess between Fincher & Cronenberg and the "will Nailed ever be finished?" stories swirling about David O'Russell and the fact that I keep removing Darren Aronofksy's name from all conversations and replacing it with one of these three, the David Projects continue to utterly disorient me. I keep getting them mixed up. The movies and the men. Let's see with the three Davids and the honorary David known as Darren we've got: The Tiger, Nailed, Cosmopolis, Jackie, The Dangerous Method, The Fighter... which one is coming when and from whom? Argh.

If your name is David or Darren or if you know anyone with those names you are required to comment on this link roundup. It's only right.
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Though life expectancy has been increasing for decades, it still feels like a particularly incomparable achievement when someone lives to be the big 1-0-0. Today is the centennial of Oscar's first double acting winner, Luise Rainer. And she's still alive to celebrate it!


Depending on where you read the information Luise was born in either Vienna, Austria or Düsseldorf, Germany* to a prosperous Jewish family. She was a popular stage actress by her early 20s. She had the good sense (and good fortune) to get a Hollywood offer and hightail it out of Germany by 1935 when Hitler was consolidating power. Within her first three years in Hollywood she had already won two Oscars. In the grand scheme of cinema, she may appear now to be something like a flash in the pan, but the flash was obviously of supernova proportions. When I finally saw The Great Ziegfeld (1936) for the Best Pictures From The Outside In series I fell for her flighty emotional French diva. Here's a taste.



Luise currently lives in London and she's still giving interviews. How about that! I love this bit from her on acting

I don’t believe in acting. I think that people in life act, but when you are on the stage, or in my case also on screen, you have to be true. You must feel it, and give birth to it, like to a child, Do you understand? I was asked long ago, by Columbia University in New York, would I teach I said: 'Teach? I would wring everyone’s neck!’ I wouldn’t dream of it, because life has to teach you.

Have you seen both her Oscared turns, the other being The Good Earth (1937)? Did you want to sing Luise a rousing round of Happy Birthday in English and/or German today?

*According to some reports this confusion is purposeful, Hollywood sold her as 'Austrian' nicknaming her "The Viennese Teardrop" because Germany wasn't exactly popular in the States in the 1930s.
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Movies Kick Ass deconstructs yet another photoshop casualty (i.e. movie poster), this one for NINE . My thoughts on that film will hopefully be up later today... time is a tough taskmaster.
Cinema Styles looks forward to Luise Rainer's 100th birthday in January. We should all be celebrating! Especially since she'll (god willing) still be alive for it. She was Oscar's very first two-time acting winner... beating Spencer Tracy to the title by one year.
Topless Robot Batman's TV villains who should make the leap to the screen
Scanners (sarcastically) hates on ambiguous movie endings
Empire keeps track of Thor's ever expanding cast list so you don't have to. The only person this chart is missing (as far as I know) is Kat Dennings (Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist)
In Contention looks at the Adapted Screenplay Oscar race
Noh Way expresses photographic love for director/muse duos beyond Pedro & Penélope

Sexiest Men Alive?
popbytes is on the Brad Pitt beard watch. Did it cost Brad the title of...
People's "Sexiest Men Alive". It's not just Johnny Depp. Roughly every famous person shows up. Though...
Go Fug Yourself has a laugh about the Glee photoshoot therein
My New Plaid Pants, uninfluenced by mainstream rags, remembers his love for Jean Claude Van Damme [nsfw]

Twi-Hard
Bright Lights After Dark "tortured longing is the new coke" Erich's inner 13 year old makes a case for The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Erik Lundegaard gleans box office meaning: stop ignoring girls
Variety director Chris Weisz blames New Line for the way The Golden Compass (2007) turned out. You know, I liked that movie more than most but it was but 1/20th of what it could have been given how excellent the book is. But I'm not sure you can take this in a black & white way, blame wise. Why would they interfere so much there but not on The Lord of the Rings? Would they have interfered with Peter Jackson if he weren't such a goddamn visionary? I just think this is probably a gray area unless Weisz has suddenly shown new cinematic mastery with New Moon. And well...
Antagony and Ecstasy thinks it's "boring as fuck-all". And wouldn't that indicate some degree of problems with Weisz' powers behind the camera?

...and no, I have no real plans to see New Moon. Unless it falls into my lap, I shan't ever know if it improves upon the original (which wouldn't be a significant hurdle). Time and money are both precious commodity this time of year. I have so many movies left to see in such a short time frame before awards are passed out. So I'm not going to pay hard earned $ to be bored (and support Mormon causes financially) if I don't have to for Oscar write up purposes. I'm guessing I don't have to worry about this movie securing nominations. If I'm wrong I promise to stare at Kristen Stewart and her dead eyes (shouldn't she be playing the vampire?) for 2.5 hours and issue my mea culpas.
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Go Fug Yourself "well played" Kirsten Dunst & Demi Moore
Noh Way for counter programming purposes, here's a good piece from a writer who is not joining the Meryl Streep Julie & Julia love-in
Slate "the many accents of Meryl Streep" I wish this video was quicker and more inclusive but it's still kinda cool to hear the voices in close succession
My Internet... finally sees Reservoir Dogs
babblebook is not happy about the revisions to The Time Traveller's Wife
Cinema Blend Iron Man 2 footage leaked
Deep Focus on Dollhouse Season One. I'm itching for Season Two to start, aren't you?

three John Hughes pieces
NYTimes AO Scott's fine appraisal of John Hughes (RIP)
We'll Know When We Get There "Sincerely, John Hughes" an article from a John Hughes' fan turned pen pall
The Spy in the Sandwich on the poetry of John Hughes writing

Finally...


Finally, I neglected to spot this lengthy interview with the great Olivia de Havilland (The Heiress, Gone With the Wind and many more classics) when it was published last month. She's 93 years old and still trying to finish her memoirs. She wants people to understand what the 30s were really like in Hollywood, the sexual mores, the fame, the studio control. Unfortunately it sounds as if this book will exclude her much gossiped about multiple decades estrangement from her sister Joan Fontaine

That is one subject on which I never speak. Never.

Oh gods, please let her finish this book before she passes away. One nitpicky note, though. She is not, as this article implies, the oldest living Oscar winner. I believe that's Luise Rainer who, like Olivia, is a two-time winner (The Great Ziegfeld) who is still walking this good earth. She's 99 years old.

Streep at 60: More movie discussions to follow but today we're discussing Oscar competitive fields again
(the winner links take you to their acceptance speech)

The Best Actress races of 1982 and 1983 hold special meaning for me as they were my inaugural Oscar years. On April 11th of 1983 I saw my first Oscar ceremony. My only point of reference for the glitzy tradition was that my parents and my older siblings didn't like it -- something about Star Wars being way better than Woody Allen??? --and even though my parents didn't take me to that many movies, I had somehow seen and liked 3 of the 5 Best Picture nominees (Gandhi and the two blockbusters Tootsie & E.T.) For the first two years of my Oscar watching I saw a total of ZERO Best Actress nominees. My how life has changed.

1982...

• Julie Andrews, Victor/Victoria -this is the one I desperately wanted to see, being in love with both Mary Poppins and Maria Von Trapp. My parents refused to take me, muttering something about Julie Andrews appearing in a porno ... I was very confused.
  
• Jessica Lange, Frances
• Sissy Spacek, Missing
  
• Meryl Streep, Sophie's Choice
• Debra Winger, An Officer and a Gentleman
  

Other '82 female leads for context: Diane Keaton in Shoot the Moon, Teri Garr in One From the Heart, Carol Burnett in Annie, Dolly Parton in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Nathalie Baye in The Return of Martin Guerre and Michelle Pfeiffer in Grease 2

Streep Stats: With this win Meryl became the 4th actress to win an Oscar for a Nazi/Holocaust related drama. It didn't happen again until Winslet won this past February for The Reader. Meryl was not, at 33 then, the youngest actress to win a second Oscar. Luise Rainer still holds that title winning her second Oscar in 1938 when she was only 28. Even Jodie Foster couldn't top that (her Silence of the Lambs win came at 29 years of age).

1983...

• Jane Alexander, Testament
• Shirley Maclaine, Terms of Endearment
  
• Meryl Streep, Silkwood
• Julie Walters, Educating Rita
  
• Debra Winger, Terms of Endearment

Other '83 female leads for context: Arielle Dombasle in Pauline at the Beach, Mariel Hemingway in Star 80, Bonnie Bedelia in Heart Like a Wheel, Sigweavy in The Year of Living Dangerously, Susan Sarandon & Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger and Babs in Yentl.

Streep Stats: Despite being only 34 years old when her 5th nomination rolled around, Meryl doesn't hold the record for fastest to get there: Bette Davis held the record for 65 years (accomplishing it by the age of 33) until Kate Winslet took over earning her fifth nomination (Little Children) at 31. I'm guessing that record holds for as long as Bette's did.


What are your ideal Oscar shortlists / wins in 1982 and 1983?
If you haven't seen very many early 80s movies, which are you most eager to finally get to?

I've been so sad about Paul Newman all week. Now, everyone has to go at some point ...that's the way of life. And no one could argue that Newman, at 83, didn't have a full one. But it got me to thinking about how few truly massive screen stars remain among us. I'm talking classic film stars that were with us before the cultural upheaval of the '60s which brought a large wave of new stars to the cinematic forefront (Nicholson, Redford, Fonda, Christie, Eastwood, Streisand, Dunaway, Deneuve, Beatty, and more...) many of them still working steadily. Though Newman's work in the 1960s (Hud, The Hustler, Cool Hand Luke) is his most revered he actually ascended in the mid50s just as he was entering his thirties. Films like Somebody Up There Likes Me and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof made him a star.


There are so few stars left from the days when cinema was BIG in that way... and I'm not just referencing CinemaScope. Many still-living once household name actors have very low profiles; Olivia DeHavilland, Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Van Johnson, Karl Malden, Jennifer Jones, Mickey Rooney, Luise Rainer (all well into their 80s or 90s) aren't topics of conversation much anymore unless you're in the good, nay, glorious company of true cinephiles.

The truth of it is that most celebrated actors don't maintain the kind of decade after decade Name in Lights prominence that Paul Newman did to his very last. Shirley Maclaine and Sophia Loren who rose to fame roughly concurrently with Newman still walk the earth (in heels), god bless, both at 74. But the closing chapter I fear the most will be losing Elizabeth Taylor. La Liz, who is 76, has been internationally famous for sixty-two years now. To me she's the last of the Immortals. She's had so many health scares for so many decades that it became a joke to think of her as being perpetually at death's door. It's not at all funny anymore. I hope there's a great screening room in heaven. When Taylor finally arrives -- and I hope that's a long long time from now -- Newman, Monroe, Brando, the Hepburns, Bogie and Garland will undoubtedly have a seat ready for her: diamond encrusted, the one right between Richard Burton's and Montgomery Clift's.
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Episode 9 of The "Best Picture From the Outside In" series is ready for your eyeballs. Nick's Flick Picks hosts this week's discussion in which Nick, Mike and yours truly wax longwinded (you would too!) about 1999's American Beauty Inconsistency and 1936's bio-epic The Great Plain Ziegfeld.

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In the odd chance you're just joining us...the complete series (so far)
episode 1 No Country For Old Men (07) and Wings (27/28)
episode 2 The Departed (06) and Broadway Melody (28/29)
episode 3 Crash (05) and All Quiet on the Western Front (29/30)
episode 4 Million Dollar Baby (04) and Cimarron (30/31)
episode 5 LotR: The Return of the King (03) and Grand Hotel (31/32)
episode 6 Chicago (02) and Cavalcade (32/33)
episode 7 A Beautiful Mind (01) and It Happened One Night (34)
episode 8 Gladiator (00) and Mutiny on the Bounty (35)
episode 9 American Beauty (99) and The Great Ziegfeld (36)