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"Lindsay MacKay on 'Wet Bum,' 'Clear Blue'": My interview at Indie Outlook with the extraordinary Canadian director, whose feature debut ("Wet Bum") is currently available on Netflix Instant.
"'Wet Bum' is actually somewhat based on my own experiences. I grew up with parents that run and own a nursing home, and I worked there as a cleaning woman like Sam. I had a lot of experiences at a young age where I would be confronted with people who were towards the end of their life. It rocked me to my core, in terms of understanding that my young adolescent life is not the most important thing. I also realized that old people aren't just sweet grandmas and grandpas who are going to give you Werther's all the time. Their lives are super-complicated and they are going through some really tough things. Even if they aren't, it doesn't mean that they are just grandparents waiting for you to arrive to make their lives better. What I experienced through that job and what I've learned from an older generation is really important to me and obviously influences my work on all levels. 'Clear Blue' is a mythical tale, but it's also about our bodies and how age can isolate us from others. Underwater, Flova's a beautiful young woman, and above water, she's an old woman that no one would pay attention to. The film was about the way in which we put those barriers up through life. What I really loved about 'Wet Bum' was how both Sam and Ed are going through a big life change and they are coming into their new selves. Ed lost his wife and he's trying to figure out who he is without her. Sam is becoming a woman and trying to figure out who she is in that situation. They are both going through transitions that are similar and not similar at the same time, but both are experiencing change and can find a connection with each other and support each other through that."
"Notes From the Unashamed": A spectacular essay about Barbara Payton from Sunset Gun's Kim Morgan.
"Barbara, in her own words, only knew how to act. She tried to employ herself, wash hair, work at a hotel, move to Mexico (which she enjoyed) but that was short lived. This is an actress and, so, even her bedtime escapades became something of a show; she's still the star of her own movie (as detailed in O'Dowd's book she often left the shades open with clients, so those outside world could get a proper screening). She was the big, peroxide, blonde star lead in her seamy little world, with all its ups and downs, bounced checks, stolen purses, court appearances and police pick-ups -- she would continue to make money pleasing her public. Once they were fans, now they were Johns. And they were as worshipful and as critical as the public and the writers and the lovers ever were. And nasty. The judgment of her seems especially harsh, twisting her beauty into continual ugliness and the (gasp!) horror of growing old and not just blousy, bloated. The way people viewed Payton (though some friends felt for her) is with the underlying sense of "she deserves it." Franchot Tone can mess up his life and relationships three times over, but once Barbara took up with 'Detour' actor Tom Neal after marriage to Tone (Neal almost killed Tone in a beat down that was the scandal of Hollywood – something you can't even imagine today, and Neal didn't fare much better than Payton in the end) the limited but powerful actress (she really had it on screen – even up to her last film, Edgar G. Ulmer's 'Murder is My Beat') was done for."
"Across the Aisle: 'The Family,' Political Entertainment for the Age of Hillary": Great commentary from Jim Hemphill at The Talkhouse.
"Even when 'The Family' gets into well-covered territory, like the idea that political campaigns are won more by celebrity and personal narratives than issues, it does so in surprising ways, and with characters whose relationship to the audience is constantly shifting. I can't think of another show that so deftly takes advantage of the ensemble format to consistently force the viewer to reexamine his or her own assumptions – not just about the characters, but the larger implications of what they represent. This show about politics is ultimately anti-politics in its repudiation of politics' vulgar simplification, making multiple perspectives its guiding principle in both the structure (which jumps back and forth between numerous time periods and characters) and visual form (which relies heavily on split screens, split diopters and an elaborate manipulation of depth of field). It gives us something our polarizing politics (beautifully dramatized in the battle between Allen and Show's characters) can't: nuance and empathy. In 'The Family,' everyone is capable of monstrous acts (often the result of the best intentions) and everyone has his or her reasons, and the line between self-interest and self-sacrifice is disturbingly blurry. McCarthy's extraordinary performance as Hank is key here, sympathetic without any sense of false softening or sentimentalizing – he's as chilling as he is heartbreakingly human."
"The Director and Star of 'Dheepan' on the Refugee Crisis and Taking Inspiration from Scorsese": Slate's Aisha Harris interviews director Jacques Audiard and actor Antonythasan Jesuthasan.
"[Harris:] 'This movie is very timely right now, considering everything that's going on with the Northern African and Middle Eastern refugees who are seeking asylum. In light of the news this week about France taking in, I think, 25,000 refugees, how do you feel about that? And do you think that nations that can do it should be opening their borders?' [Jesuthasan:] 'In my opinion, these Western countries that have the ability to take in refugees have the duty to take them in. Because what happened in Sri Lanka was not just the result of just the Sri Lankan government—it was the result of many international governments feeding in and causing that war and the genocide. So they have the duty to take in those who are affected or who are victims of that war. So just like things happening in Syria and other countries right now—that is a result of a lot of other governments having a hand in them, so they have a duty to clean up what they started.' [Harris:] 'How about you, Jacques?' [Audiard:] 'I totally agree with what Shoba said ... I think that's just the beginning. What we are seeing today is just small images of what's going to happen in the future. And we are very late to react, especially in European countries. If you are small in Europe—you have a small country—they think they are gonna continue their own lives by themselves—national identity, so on and so forth ... It's garbage. It is going to explode. It is going to explode. The world of tomorrow will be like that—that's gonna be our culture: total worldwide migrant movement.'"
"'The Shining' Anniversary: Stanley Kubrick & His Mysterious Classic": Variety's Tim Gray chats with "Toy Story 3" director Lee Unkrich about the 1980 masterpiece.
"May 23 marks the 36th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining,' one of those rare works that wasn't a huge hit when it opened but has grown into a movie classic.Among its many fans is Lee Unkrich, the director of Disney-Pixar's 'Toy Story 3' and the upcoming 'Coco,' who says it's one of the reasons he was inspired to become a filmmaker.Unkrich has been collecting memorabilia for years and decided to share it with other devotees, via TheOverlookHotel.com. Since the website's debut several years ago, other admirers have shared things with him. There are now about 700 pieces online, including photos and notes on the film's production, as well as work inspired by the movie: paintings, sculptures, songs, perfume, clothing, vinyl figures, a skateboard, even a gingerbread house re-creating the Overlook Hotel. The site also offers a few short films, such as 'Wes Anderson's The Shining,' a 75-second faux trailer by Steve Ramsden that brilliantly intercuts footage from the film with 'The Grand Budapest Hotel.' Unkrich continues to collect ephemera for an upcoming book on the making of the film, interviewing the surviving crew and cast members, and finding rare bits that had been stored away, 'including some photos that have only been seen by eight pairs of eyes.' In the Variety Archives, 'The Shining' was first mentioned as a possible Kubrick project in January 1977, the same month that Stephen King's novel debuted. Anticipation was high, since Kubrick was a source of fascination for the industry and King was hot from his two earlier novels, 'Carrie' (a hit film in 1976) and 'Salem's Lot.'"
Complex's Justin Korkidis celebrates Akira Kurosawa's birthday by presenting some of his glorious "hand-painted storyboards."
"DARTH BY DARTHWEST"-"VADOR AUX TROUSSES". Short Film. from Fabrice Mathieu on Vimeo.
Fabrice Mathieu's eye-popping Hitchcock/Lucas mash-up, "Darth by Darthwest," makes marvelous use of Bernard Herrmann's timeless music.]]>
"As Cannes closes, a new breed of female lead emerges: empowered, careerist and gender-neutral": According to The Guardian's Catherine Shoard.
"Friday saw the emergence of perhaps the most formidable of this new breed of female heroines: Jesse, played by Elle Fanning, the teen supermodel at the heart of Nicolas Winding Refn's 'The Neon Demon.' The director described how the film, his first with a female lead, allowed him to 'live out my perverse dream of being a 16-year old girl, which I think every man has inside them.' When he first met Fanning, he said, his first thought was 'Oh my God, you're me'; though he was keen to stress that the actor needed to 'take the lead,' given his distance from her age and gender. What Refn has done in 'The Neon Demon,' however, is to wholly demote the focus offered to his male characters. 'I wanted to make all the men like the girlfriends in other movies. All the women are the focus; everything else is secondary. I wasn't particularly interested in the men's world but in order to create a story, we needed the 'girlfriends' to toss in here and there.' Refn's gender-reversal is taken one stage further by Maren Ade, whose three-hour German comedy 'Toni Erdmann' is the current frontrunner to win the Palme d'Or on Sunday. The film is the story of Ines, a serious, successful businesswoman in her mid 30s whose larky father pays a visit. Ines is, by and large, emotionally, intellectually and sexually self-sufficient. That she is a woman seems an afterthought rather than a mission statement. 'Maybe it's best to think of Ines,' says the director, 'as a contemporary, gender-neutral character – much like a man who cries now and then and has father issues.' The current debate can be frustrating, adds Ade, 'especially when it's given so much weight. As a woman I'm used to identifying with male characters. When I watch a James Bond movie, I'm not just the Bond Girl, I'm James Bond too.'"
"Amy Nicholson's Cannes Diary: A Tale of Two Fishers. And One Adam Driver. And Some Dogs.": A hilarious entry published at MTV News.
"Carrie Fisher and Fisher Stevens were the guests of honor for teatime at the Hotel Majestic, a double billing that my friend joked 'sounded like a dare.' But this wasn't a PR gag — they'd teamed up by themselves to make the documentary 'Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds,' a mother-daughter biography codirected by Fisher Stevens and his partner Alexis Bloom.The two Fishers have been friends for years, explained Fisher Stevens, 'ever since we did this terrible movie.' Suddenly, producer Brett Ratner burst into the salon, squinted at the poster, and saw he'd been misattributed as the composer. He sat down at our table, then popped up again to point out the mistake and laugh. Stevens nodded his white Panama hat and signaled that it was time to open the champagne. 'Bright Lights,' which premiered at Cannes before playing on HBO next year, feels like an intimate portrait made by friends. In one scene, Carrie Fisher lounges on a bed and talks about losing her virginity to actor Griffin Dunne — who's sitting right next to her. According to Carrie, Debbie suggested she sleep with one of her own older friends who had more experience. The teen girl said no. Jokes Dunne, 'I took the pressure off your hymen.' Both women have spent their entire lives as movie stars, and they have the big personalities to match. Carrie and Debbie still live next door to each other in Los Angeles, and their proximity, plus Carrie's frankness about her figure (at one point, 'The Force Awakens' sends a trainer to empty her fridge of Coca-Cola), makes 'Bright Lights' play like an updated 'Grey Gardens.' 'Thank god we don't have the cats!' laughed Carrie in green-rimmed sunglasses. 'But we do have the dog.' She stroked her French bulldog, Gary Fisher, who wore a matching green rhinestone collar."
"Cannes Premiered This Hate-Watch For The Ages": BuzzFeed's Alison Willmore reviews Sean Penn's "The Last Face."
"'The Last Face' is rife with imagery reminiscent of a Unicef commercial — a child cries a single tear to the camera, another drinks out of a puddle, and an aid worker announces that the girl he was just dancing with was raped, ripped open, and 'she leaks urine, but she's dancing — she's beautiful.' But the film offers virtually no context for the conflicts it presents, and Africans are given few of the speaking parts, though their wounded bodies are put graphically on display. Their suffering is the point, not the causes behind the suffering or the people themselves, because 'The Last Face' is ultimately, maddeningly, about how hard it is to want to help, not to be in need of it. It's also about an off-putting, set-in-two-timeframes romance between Wren, who also narrates the story in watery prose, and Miguel, who is the worst in ways that are tempting to read as hints of what it'd be like to actually date Penn. He's self-righteous and take-me-as-I-am, arriving at his ex's doorstep unannounced after a decade without contact, intent on winning her back. He's a Doctors Without Borders bad boy, no ties, no faith, his desire to help impossibly pure — Wren admiringly reveals in her voiceover that he's an orphan who was raised by the state and put himself through med school. 'He was not subject to the contradictions and hypocrisies those of us raised in comfort had come to accept,' she says. Wren also claims that Miguel turned her from the 'invisible blonde girl; she'd felt like into someone 'seen,' and yet the characters' romance is inert, despite the appeal of the two stars and the inclusion of a 'Bring It On'–style toothbrushing scene. Wren's most relatable moment is when she jumps out of a moving car because she's so frustrated by Miguel's fondness for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. But joke's on her, because the movie's main sex scene? Set to 'Otherside.'"
"Cannes 2016: Jim Jarmusch's 'Paterson' is Sublime, Poetic Perfection": A rave review from Alex Billington at First Showing.
"'Paterson' is a very existential film, but (and I'm borrowing this line from a fellow critic): 'like a great poem, Jim Jarmusch's 'Paterson' makes the simple feel cosmic.' It is beautifully simple in its setup and story, yet also so utterly engrossing and inspiring and invigorating and wonderful. I can't even begin to describe how it made me feel, other than to sum it by saying: 'I'm floating.' The script is brilliant and never once breaks stride. I drifted out of the Debussy Theater in Cannes in complete awe, with a smile across my face. You know the feeling, when you see a perfect film and there's nothing that can take you out of that moment. That's where this put me at. And it's such a relief to feel this, such a moment of joy to have experienced this. A perfect film is the kind where, as I'm watching it, every next scene must be as amazing as the one before it. There can't be any slip ups, or moments that feel out of character, or any big twists that take anyway from what came before. 'Paterson' is one of those films. Driver's significant other in the film is the illustrious and gorgeous Golshifteh Farahani, and even she is perfect. She is so artistic and it was inspiring to watch her scenes. Their relationship doesn't get in the way either, it enhances the story, it enhances the experience. They have a dog, and she's outstanding, and no she doesn't die or get hurt. I wouldn't want it any other way. The final moments bring it all together and make it even more substantial. Oh my goodness is it sublime."
"Why Asghar Farhadi's 'The Salesman' Signals a Post Nuclear Deal Cinematic Resurgence in Iran": As reported by Variety's Nick Vivarelli.
"Asghar Farhadi's return to Cannes with his double prize-winning 'The Salesman' comes after the Iranian auteur's Paris-set 'The Past' vied for a Palme d'Or in 2013. It also marks his somewhat unexpected return to shooting in Iran after 'A Separation.' 'The Salesman' stood out as this year's only competition film to score two nods, one for actor Shaab Hosseini and the best screenplay prize for Farhadi.Following 'A Separation,' which in 2012 became the first Iranian film to win an Oscar, Farhadi had seemingly embarked on a path similar to his revered compatriot Abbas Kiarostami, whose last two films, 'Certified Copy' (2010) and 'Like Someone in Love' (2012), were shot respectively in Tuscany and Japan. Though neither director would publicly admit it, shooting outside Iran was certainly less problematic, and the lure of A-list international movie stars, photogenic locations, and bigger budgets, had pull.Speaking after the Cannes premiere of 'The Salesman,' Farhadi (pictured) explained that after it was announced last year that he would segue from 'The Past' to shooting a film in Spain, he got 'nostalgic' and changed plans. 'I wanted to work in my country, I wanted to go back home,' he said. 'Despite all the existing difficulties, I get great pleasure and I am most satisfied from shooting films in my country,' he added.Those difficulties continue to include the risk of incarceration and censorship.As the Cannes fest got started, dozens of film organizations, including the Federation of European Film Directors, launched an appeal to Iran's government to grant clemency to Iranian filmmaker Keywan Karimi, sentenced last year to six years in jail and 223 lashes for his film 'Writing on the City,' about political graffiti spanning the period from the 1979 Islamic Revolution through Iran's contested 2009 election. Though sentenced, Karimi remains free pending appeal."
Indiewire's Chris O'Falt compiles the answers of 14 cinematographers responding to the question of what cameras they used to shoot their films that screened at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
The Playlist's Nikola Grozdanovic reports on the Cannes press conference for "Personal Shopper" (posted above), which included memorable responses from director Olivier Assayas and star Kristen Stewart.]]>
"Jeff Nichols brings 'Loving,' 'one of the most pure love stories in American history,' to Cannes": As reported by Chris Knight of National Post.
"It isn't often that a question at a press conference proves as telling as the answer. But that was the case Monday at the Cannes Film Festival after the world premiere of Jeff Nichols' film 'Loving,' about a mixed-race couple, Mildred and Richard Loving, who were threatened with jail time and banished from Virginia for getting married in 1958. The Lovings were the subject of a Life magazine photo essay at the time, and a Supreme Court case that ultimately struck down prohibitions on mixed-race marriages. 'I was surprised what a big emotional impact it had on me,' said Chaz Ebert, prefacing a question to Nichols. 'In the black community, growing up in Chicago, I remember those pictures in Life magazine. I remember the stigma of not just interracial marriage but interracial dating. And in law school, Loving v. Virginia was one of the biggest cases I studied before I did some civil rights litigation.' In addition to her law degree, Chaz is well known as the wife of film critic Roger Ebert, from 1992 until his death in 2013. She attended Cannes for many years with him. This is her fourth such festival without him. 'Loving' is a quiet film, focusing closely on the couple, played by Australian actor Joel Edgerton and Ireland's Ruth Negga (soon to be seen in Warcraft). Edgerton noted the absence of high-fives in the courtroom, or a big party to celebrate the victory. 'A lesser screenwriter … might have rearranged the truth to make it more Hollywood. There was something very simple about the truth.'"
"'Cherchez la femme' in Cannes": At Macleans, Brian D. Johnson reports on the fight for gender equality in cinema.
"Cherchez la femme, that retro French slogan, has taken on a whole new twist in Cannes. Women have never had trouble finding the spotlight at this, the mother of all film festivals, from actresses on the red carpet to a vintage image of Marilyn Monroe or Faye Dunaway on a festival poster. But finding female directors is another matter. In both 2010 and 2012 there wasn't a single film made by a woman considered worthy to compete for the Palme d'Or. Last year, there were two. And at the current 69th annual edition of Cannes, among 21 features in the main competition, there are three, still a paltry share. But this year, issues of gender politics have leapt to the fore, with women stirring things up behind the camera, in front of it, and in the conversation. Although it's too early to be making Palme d'Or predictions (at the midway point in the festival), one of the competition's three female-directed movies appears to be one of the most popular contenders so far: 'Toni Erdmann,' a moving and hilarious father-daughter comedy by German filmmaker Maren Ade. Audience reaction to the film went through the roof, with spontaneous eruptions of applause midway through both the press screening and the black-tie premiere. There is even a cautious festival buzz about possibility that Ade could become the second woman in Cannes history to win the Palme, after Jane Campion who won for 'The Piano' in 1993. But winning for a comedy is even rarer in Cannes than at the Oscars, never mind a comedy by a woman."
"Critics in Cannes Recommend 'Daniel,' 'Honey' Thus Far": A conversation between Owen Gleiberman and Peter Debruge at Variety.
"[Gleiberman:'] Well, Peter, we're six days into the festival, and as always the holy grail I'm searching for is a movie that wows me as a work of art, but that also looks like it can wield a significant impact in the world beyond Cannes. Last year, two such movies played early on in the festival: Todd Haynes' 'Carol' and 'Mad Mad: Fury Road.' This year, I don't think there's been anything comparable — Woody Allen's 'Café Society,' for instance, which was the opening-night film, is one of his suavely crafted but minor ersatz-romantic baubles. For me, though, the closest thing to the ideal I'm talking about has probably been Ken Loach's 'I, Daniel Blake.' It's the story of a Newcastle carpenter who's falling between the cracks of the British welfare state, but it's really about something more global: the fraying of the social safety net in our time. It may be the first Loach film that, I think, can speak to a relatively wide audience in a crowd-pleasing, populist way.' [Debruge:] 'It's funny to encounter a movie like 'I, Daniel Blake' at Cannes — not surprising, mind you, since Loach (now 79) has sort of a standing invitation to premiere whatever he makes in competition, but funny in that Cristi Puiu (the great Romanian director of 'The Death of Mr. Lazarescu') essentially told the same story — about how a decent man is let down by 'the System' — better 11 years ago, but is now here with a new and far more challenging work, 'Sieranevada.' Loach, like Allen, seems to have slipped backwards into easy, Hallmark-caliber treacle. 'Sieranevada' is one of a trio of films in competition whose running time veers dangerously close to three hours, and in its own way feels like a riff on a film by a more nuanced British realist. That would be Mike Leigh's 'Secrets and Lies.' At any rate, it's my least favorite of the three slice-of-life epics on offer, the other two being Maren Ade's 'Toni Erdmann' and Andrea Arnold's 'American Honey.'"
"Cannes: Why STX Paid $50 Million for a Scorsese Movie That Doesn't Exist": Indiewire's Anne Thompson and Graham Winfrey investigate.
"It's a question, as always, of supply and demand. There are plenty of low-budget indie movies available, but higher-quality, mid-budget, more commercial fare aimed at general audiences is hard to come by. And so in recent years the market has radically shifted. Now companies have to buy at earlier stages, hoping to affect the productions to a degree, but mainly they have to place their bets ahead of the competition. The great reveal at Cannes — the most surprising buy of all — was STX Entertainment acquiring international rights before production had even begun of Martin Scorsese's 'The Irishman' in the Cannes market. No footage. Scripts have been passed around, not final. Just a handful of semi-attached major movie stars —Al Pacino, Harvey Keitel, and Robert De Niro, who was saluted by the festival Monday night with a screening of Weinstein Co.'s mainstream Roberto Doran biopic 'Hands of Stone,' co-starring Edgar Ramirez—and auteur Martin Scorsese directing a mob hitman script by Oscar-winner Steve Zaillian ('Schindler's List'). And this was on top of paying $9 million for U.S. and foreign rights to Aaron Sorkin's directorial debut, poker movie 'Molly's Game,' starring Jessica Chastain and Idris Elba."
"Mean Dreams' Canadian landscape, love-on-the-run story thrill at Cannes": The Star's Peter Howell reviews Nathan Morlando's thriller.
"Morlando draws great performances out of his two young leads, Quebec's [Sophie] Nélisse and America's [Josh] Wiggins, who are like fugitives out of a French New Wave film, discovering love while also hatching a plan on the run.They've had to suddenly leave their rural homes, in the mythical U.S. state of Great Lakes (according to car licence plates), because Jonas has grabbed a big bag of cash from Casey's abusive bad-cop dad Wayne ([Bill] Paxton), after furtively witnessing a criminal betrayal that turns into a bloodbath.The two teens take off, with Casey's dog in tow, but Wayne isn't far behind. Neither is the chief (Colm Feore), Wayne's police superior but equal partner in malfeasance. The road ahead has twists and so does the story. As good as the two teen actors are — Nélisse, 16, reminds me of Anna Karina from Jean-Luc Godard's 'Band of Outsiders' and Wiggins, 17, is like a young Matt Damon — they're almost outdone by the menacing brilliance of seasoned players Paxton and Feore, who don't often do villains this hiss-worthy.Paxton is particularly good at being bad, as Director's Fortnight artistic chief Edouard Waintrop observed in a pre-Cannes interview.He quoted Alfred Hitchcock in observing that 'when you've succeeded in creating the bad guy, the movie has a chance to be a good one. And we can tell you that Bill Paxton in 'Mean Dreams' makes a wonderful villain.'"
At Twitch, Jason Gorber reviews "Visions of Light," a tribute to revered cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, screening at Cannes.
FRANCE 24'S Lisa Nesselson and Genie Godula provide an overview of this year's Cannes Film Festival.]]>
"Sex, Skin & Nerve in Cannes: 5 Top Lessons From the French Film Festival So Far": According to The Wrap's Steve Pond.
"When asked about the proper length for a man's legs, Abraham Lincoln once famously said (or was reputed to have said) that they should be long enough to reach from his waist to the ground. Going by the cinematic version of Abe's rule, a film should be long enough to last from its beginning to its end – and in the view of many of the directors who have brought films to Cannes this year, that can be a long time. Of the nine competition films that have screened so far, four are longer than two hours and 25 minutes and three top 2:40. The talky Romanian drama 'Sieranevada' lasts for 2:53, Park Chan-hook's 'The Handmaiden' has two hours and 25 minutes of stylish sex and intrigue, and Maren Ade and Andrea Arnold both came up with films that meandered for 2:42 in 'Toni Erdmann' and 'American Honey,' respectively. Excessive length can be fine: In the case of 'Toni Erdmann,' I thought it gave the film's character studies room to breathe, and the film felt far shorter than its running time. Or it can be distracting, as I felt it was in the interminably episodic 'American Honey.' Still, most of Cannes' marathon films were frontloaded into the first few days: Of the dozen films left to screen in the main competition, six are longer than two hours but the longest, Kleber Mendonca Filho's 'Aquarius,' is only 2:20. So maybe 2:40 isn't the new 2:00 after all."
"How Jodie Foster stays one of the most 'real' stars in Hollywood": In conversation with The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday. Related: USA Today's Bryan Alexander explains how "Cannes struggles with representation of female directors."
"One need only consider an exceptionally painful chapter to appreciate Foster's struggle when, during her freshman year at Yale — when she was supposed to be enjoying a hard-won period of young adulthood in relative anonymity — a man who had been stalking her attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. That's just the most anguishing example of an existence defined by a private life that Foster has guarded with single-minded determination and a public version of herself she still has trouble comfortably inhabiting. 'I see George and Julia and I'm like, 'Oh, my God, they're really good at that,'' Foster says of the glad-handing, glib small talk and feigned intimacies of the fame game. 'And I'm getting worse and worse!' That's not entirely true. She's eager to talk about 'Money Monster,' in which Clooney plays Lee Gates, the swaggering, superficial star of a cable financial show who's taken hostage by a young man, played by Jack O'Connell, whose savings have been wiped out by one of Gates's stock tips. Roberts plays Gates's director, Patty, whom Foster calls the host's 'Jiminy Cricket' and 'the hero he can't be.' In addition to being a 'Speed'-like thriller, complete with guns, SWAT teams and a ticking time bomb, 'Money Monster' is about a specific, now increasingly common form of male shame at its most wounding and unspoken."
"Cannes Review: 'American Honey' Proves Andrea Arnold is One of the Best Working Filmmakers and Finds a Breakout Star in Sasha Lane": A rave review from Indiewire's Eric Kohn.
"Anchored by a stunning turn by newcomer Sasha Lane, 'American Honey' finds the British Arnold importing her style to the American midwest. Lane plays 18-year-old Star, a soft-spoken Texas native raised in squalid conditions by her abusive father in Oklahoma. In the opening minutes, she encounters a peculiar group of energetic youth at her local supermarket, headed by the suave Jake (Shia LaBeouf), who talks the young woman into escaping her broken home and joining the merry gang in a cross-country odyssey. Arnold's usual combination of lyrical imagery and gritty behavior reaches its apex here, as Star gets swept up in the excitement of fresh, unfiltered reboot. Before long, Star finds herself huddled in the back of a minivan with the boisterous crew as they continue through small towns selling magazine subscriptions to finance their hedonistic exploits. Through the colorful group of characters — with names like Pagan, Katness, and QT — suggest that Star has finally found her place with pariahs who, like her, don't really belong anywhere. Imagine 'Spring Breakers' with a clearer trajectory: 'American Honey' invokes the explosive sense of liberty that comes with living dangerously."
"An apocalyptic air hangs over the Cannes Film Festival": A report from Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times.
"Darker thoughts seem everywhere at the festival this year. Instead of its usual story featuring smiling stars arriving at the airport, the local daily newspaper Nice-Matin ran the words 'High Security' on its front page followed by a two-page spread headlined 'The 69th edition faces a terrorist menace.' With France remaining under the state of emergency that began after the November Paris attacks, the city of Cannes has hired a top Israeli consultant to beef up security, but people are still worried. 'I'd be happy,' Sony Pictures Classics co-president Tom Bernard told the Hollywood Reporter, 'to see dogs roaming the lobby of the Carlton.' Even the billboards for forthcoming films posted around town have something of an apocalyptic air. Yes, a revolving sculpture created from enormous playing cards that advertised 'Now You See Me 2' is charming, but then there was the poster for something called 'Tsunami L.A.,' complete with an illustration of the world's biggest wave smashing into Pacific Coast Highway and the head-shaking tagline 'Traffic's Gonna Be A Bitch Today.' Still, the hope for the more than 200,000 cinephile visitors (including a mind-boggling 5,000 journalists) who annually flood this resort town is that the films, starting with Allen's record-breaking third opening night (after 'Hollywood Ending' in 2002 and 'Midnight In Paris' in 2011) will lighten the mood."
"Critics's Notebook: Todd McCarthy on How Francis Ford Coppola and 'E.T.' Turned Cannes Into a Frenzied Mammoth": A terrific piece published in The Hollywood Reporter.
"It took a long time — more than two decades — for the American press to even begin to take notice of Cannes in any serious way. The occasional glamorous or outrageous photograph — of Grace Kelly with her husband-to-be, Prince Rainier of Monaco, or Robert Mitchum being embraced by a topless French starlet — might make its way into U.S. magazines back in the 1950s. But other than in trade publications, specialized film journals and a handful of European papers and magazines, Cannes in those days was never covered extensively or in any serious way, and was perceived, if at all, primarily for its glamour. After its initial edition was aborted in September 1939 due to Hitler's invasion of Poland, and following a hiccupping relaunch from 1947-51, when insufficient financing forced its cancellation every other year, the Cannes Film Festival got rolling as an annual April event in the early 1950s. Hollywood was quick to jump on board, but it's little remembered that for nearly 20 years the American selections were hand-picked by the Motion Picture Association of America and were either established prestige titles and Oscar winners ('Marty,' 'Around the World in 80 Days,' 'Ben-Hur,' et al.) — or films that served as effective propaganda against the Russians and Eastern bloc nations (which were active participants in Western European film festivals in the Cold War era). Two Paris-based American fixtures at the festival from the very beginning until their deaths were Thomas Quinn Curtiss, who wrote mostly for the Herald Tribune, and Gene Moskowitz a World War II G.I. who covered Cannes for Variety from 1949 until his untimely death in 1982. But even into the early 1970s, however, precious few American journalists or critics were making the Atlantic crossing to cover Cannes. The New York Times' lead critic of the period, Bosley Crowther, did pop over on occasion, but the only legacy of his coverage was a heavily negative one: His multiple pans of Orson Welles' 'Chimes at Midnight' at the 1966 festival served to delay the American release of this brilliant film for two years (there were no other American critics present to counter Crowther's hostility)."
Chloë Sevigny chats with Steven Zeitchik of The Los Angeles Times about her short film, "Kitty," screening at Cannes.
Manohla Dargis of The New York Times chats with Steven Spielberg about his latest film, "The BFG."]]>
"The Feminine Grotesque: On the Warped Legacy of Joan Crawford": In this special RogerEbert.com edition of Thumbnails, we are highlighting recent pieces from the site, including this excellent essay from Angelica Jade Bastien.
"It should be noted that the stars from this era we remember weren't really products of the star machine in the first place and were able to retain something essential about themselves even when going through the rigors of Hollywood during their early years. Crawford pivoted from setbacks like the end of her tenure at MGM to signing with Warner Bros. and delivering arguably the best performance of her career in 'Mildred Pierce.' She had the uncanny skill to adjust her looks to simultaneously reflect and seem slightly ahead of whatever was the conception of the modern woman at the time. Her films particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, which often paired her with Franchot Tone and Clark Gable, showed her as a hard-working young woman on the make, able to find love and success thanks to her own intelligence and sheer will power. Looking at these roles only through Crawford's biography do her skills as a performer, and understanding of what film actors needed to bring to the table, a disservice. But her hardscrabble, poor upbringing undoubtedly lends these roles an authenticity and edge they wouldn't have had if played by someone else. Even after having to mount a campaign of self-promotion to get the quality roles she deserved during her early years at MGM, Crawford wasn't the kind of star to take up issues with the studio. Unlike other actors like James Cagney and Olivia de Havilland, who rightly fought their draconian contracts, Crawford was a professional and knew her limits even as she became one of the most powerful stars in the business during the 1930s. In the 'Star Machine,' film historian Jeanine Basinger offers a behind-the-scenes story about 'When Ladies Meet' (1941) that illustrates this writing, 'Crawford knew her own stardom depended on being professional rather than always getting the key light. She was smart about her career—and cooperative.' Basinger mentions how Crawford mutes her performance when acting against Greer Garson, who was being groomed as a star, while Crawford was already well established and a few years away from leaving MGM. Even as the production team 'clearly favors [Garson]' and the politics behind her place at MGM became more fraught, Crawford was always the utmost professional. This anecdote of actresses at very different points in their careers illustrates Crawford's own professionalism and the short shelf-life of female stars, even those as beloved and well-paid as Crawford. That Crawford was able to last long beyond this moment professionally is a testament to her own acumen."
"Burn The Witch: The Gender Politics of Being an Auteur": Arielle Bernstein explores the latest work of Radiohead and Beyoncé.
"Radiohead and Beyoncé may be equally wealthy and powerful purveyors of pop culture, but the very different gut-level response to their work showcases how we think that male artists who reach great heights are deserving, while female artists are often met with skepticism. It's also a reason why Radiohead can draw on two very specific white, British references and be seen as conveying a 'universal' message, while Beyoncé's exploration of black womanhood is considered a 'niche' topic that is potentially divisive. And it's the reason why male artists like the late Prince and David Bowie are consistently heralded for their amazingly avant-garde outfits and experimental performances, while female artists like Lady Gaga and Sia are more often looked at as simply seeking attention. In her 2015 article 'The Fragile Ears of Men' Leah Finnegan contends that male reviewers are to blame for the dismissal of female artistry. But this oversimplifies a very complex problem—there are plenty of male reviewers who 'get' artists like Joanna Newsom and plenty of female reviewers who dismiss her work. It's the subconscious cultural bias against female artists, especially those who gained some measure of success, that we need to look at more closely."
"Memoirs of a Geisha, Part I: Memoirs of Postmodern Orientalism": Provocative commentary from Jana Monji. Click here to read Part II.
"In his movie review, Roger Ebert wrote, 'I suspect that the more you know about Japan and movies, the less you will enjoy 'Memoirs of a Geisha.' Much of what I know about Japan I learned from Japanese movies, and on that basis I know this is not a movie about actual geishas, but depends on the romanticism of female subjection. The heroines here look so very beautiful and their world is so visually enchanting as they lived trapped in sexual slavery.' Yet he also acknowledged that he could list Japanese movies that better illustrate a different view of geisha, 'but the last thing the audience for 'Memoirs of a Geisha' wants to see is a more truthful film with less gorgeous women and shabbier production values.' This movie's audience wanted to see 'beauty, sex, tradition and exoticism all choreographed into a dance of strategy and desire.' While he acknowledged that a geisha 'is not technically a prostitute,' Roger asserted that they were prostitutes and clarified by stating, 'certainly the traditions of the geisha house are culturally fascinating,' but continued by writing, 'if the movie had been set in the West, it would be perceived as about children sold into prostitution.' Ultimately, he felt somewhat uneasy about the movie, in the same manner he had for the 1978 film 'Pretty Baby' where Brooke Shields played a 12-year-old girl having her virginity auctioned away in New Orleans. But Roger concluded by writing, 'The difference is that 'Pretty Baby' doesn't evoke nostalgia, or regret the passing of the world it depicts.' Ebert didn't object to the Chinese women playing the leads, but he doesn't speak Japanese. In her 2006 essay, 'Orientalism and the Binary of Fact and Fiction in 'Memoirs of a Geisha,' Kimiko Akita notes that 'Westerners would not recognize any differences between the movements or speech of Chinese and Japanese actresses. Asian-accented English might seem fetchingly exotic to Western ears.' Akita graduated from Nanzan Junior College in Japan and eventually earned her PhD in Communications from Ohio University. She currently teaches at Aichi Prefectural University in the Foreign Studies department in Japan."
"Chuck Jones Meets 'Sunset Boulevard': On Robert Zemeckis' 'Death Becomes Her'": Jessica Ritchey champions the 1992 cult classic.
"For those familiar with [Meryl] Streep, [Goldie] Hawn, and [Bruce] Willis, all three are revelations in "Death Becomes Her." Streep is hilarious as a diva whose ego is matched only by her screaming insecurity. In the film's opening, she leads a chorus line in a terrible musical. She puts her back into it, smiling like she's trying to punch you with her teeth, grimly stomping through the choreography like she doesn't notice the audience rapidly leaving for the exits. Hawn is wonderful too, as her sweetness goes psychotic. Her obsession with Ernest is all the more pitifully funny for what a twerp he is. It's startling to be reminded of just how good an actor Willis can be when he makes an effort. Doing a complete heel turn from the macho swagger of his action roles, in 'Death Becomes Her;' he's a squealing straight man in Streep and Hawn's battle royale. Gulping down his morning Bloody Mary with supreme self loathing and flinching at every one of Streep's hurled barbs, he comes close to stealing the movie. Thanks to the sheer heights Streep and Hawn are willing to go, he doesn't quite get there. It's a shame they didn't reunite for a couple more comedies together, they made for a terrific team."
"Driven to Discussion: An Interview with the Hosts of the 'Black on Black Cinema' Podcast": In conversation with Craig D. Lindsey.
"[LINDSEY:] 'What's brilliant about the show is the fact that you're obviously all friends, so the podcast mostly sounds like guys just getting together and shooting the shit about movies and whatnot, and the listener feels he or she is part of the gang. Is that camaraderie what you guys were looking to exude in this podcast?' [JAY JACKSONRAO:] 'That camaraderie, as you put it, isn't something we planned. We are all friends and we just wanted to be real so it comes out naturally. A lot of shows seem to force relationships for the sake of better airplay, but what you hear from us is real. There has always been an effort to make sure the show sounds like you are getting a seat at the table of a conversation rather than us talking to the audience similar to the evening news broadcast.' [TERRENCE CARPENTER:'] To be honest with you, I never really thought about that. I've known Micah for about 10 years. I'd met Rob in passing because all three of us worked for the same company at one point or another. I met Jay strictly through the podcast. I'm so cool, it's hard not to like me. I guess over time we've built a certain rapport with each other that makes us click while doing the show. I'm just being myself when we record.'"
Laura Emerick offers a recap of the 2016 TCM Classic Film Festival, featuring such living legends as Angela Lansbury.
Matt Fagerholm awards four stars to "A Light Beneath Their Feet," directed by Valerie Weiss. Here is the film's trailer.]]>
"The Woody Allen Interview (Which He Won't Read)": An excellent piece from Stephen Galloway of The Hollywood Reporter.
"'People often have said, 'Gee, you live in a bubble' — and maybe I do,' admits Woody Allen as he settles into an armchair inside his private screening room on New York's Upper East Side. A creature of habit, he has been watching movies (and taking meetings) in this somber little theater for the past 35 years. 'I get up in the morning,' he says, 'take the kids to school, then do the treadmill, then get into my room and work, have lunch, go back and work, practice the clarinet, see friends or go to a basketball game. It's a bourgeois, middle-class worker's life. But it's enabled me to be productive over the years.' Productive is putting it mildly. Allen has churned out a movie a year — from classic New York comedies ('Manhattan,' 'Hannah and Her Sisters') to Bergman-esque dramas ('Interiors') to stylish London-set crime capers ('Match Point') — since the 1980s, with combined grosses of nearly $600 million. He barely missed a beat even during the tumultuous 1990s, when his split from Mia Farrow threatened to blow up his reputation (accusations that Allen abused their then-7-year-old daughter Dylan were not pursued by police after an investigation, but the battle still rages, with a grown-up Dylan reasserting the claims two years ago in The New York Times). Right on schedule, Allen is about to bring his 47th picture to Cannes — 'Cafe Society,' a coming-of-age tale set in the 1930s about a young man (Jesse Eisenberg) who moves from New York to Hollywood, where he lands a job with a big-time agent (Steve Carell) and falls in love with a pretty assistant (Kristen Stewart). 'It was such a glamorous time in California,' says Allen. 'You'd read about the Mocambo and the Cocoanut Grove and Ciro's and all the movie stars going out at night. And then there was New York nightlife — socialites and politicians and gangsters.' At 80, Allen no longer is the bespectacled, saddle shoe-wearing comic genius who famously was too busy playing clarinet at Michael's Pub to collect his Oscar for 'Annie Hall' (at least he doesn't wear saddle shoes anymore). But on this April morning, the razor-sharp director invites THR inside his 'bubble' for a conversation covering everything from his 20-year marriage to Soon-Yi Previn, now 45 (they have two daughters, 15 and 17; he also has three children with Farrow), to his nonexistent relationship with technology. He doesn't use a computer but, ironically, is now part of the Amazon revolution. The internet giant not only bought 'Cafe Society' for $15 million — marking the end of Allen's six-film run with Sony Pictures Classics — but also is funding Allen's first streaming TV series, a limited-run comedy in which he will co-star with Elaine May and Miley Cyrus."
"Is Acting Really Just Being the Drunk Uncle Who Shows Up On the Couch with the Bag of Fritos? Andrew McCarthy on Directing TV": Another wonderfully titled interview conducted by Filmmaker Magazine's Jim Hemphill.
"[Filmmaker:] 'I would think it would be challenging to lose self-consciousness in the way that you need to as an actor when you're directing yourself, since to direct you have to be hyper-aware of everything.' [McCarthy:] 'I'd only done it once before, and it was the first time I ever directed episodic. I was on a show called 'Lipstick Jungle,' and directing that was a lot more overwhelming – mainly because it was all new to me. It wasn't as hard as you would think on 'The Family,' because the guy was so specific and not really me, whereas so often characters are just an extension of yourself. Here it was like putting on a hat, because everything about Hank was so different from me both internally and physically, down to his walk. But it did take a little adjustment, because he's very insular and doesn't speak a lot, and directing is anything but that – you have to really take the floor and communicate well to a large group of people so that they all know what they're supposed to be doing. So it took a few minutes sometimes to make that shift; when I was directing myself I probably slowed down a bit. But there was also great liberty because the first thing I had to check at the door with this character was my vanity, so I wasn't ever looking at the monitor thinking, 'Oh God, that's not a good angle for me.' Making sure I was attractive was removed from the equation, because nothing about this guy was attractive! [laughs]'"
"Movies About Women Nearly Impossible to Finance, Say Indie Producers": An infuriating report from Variety's Katie Van-Syckle.
"'Tallulah,' the story of a homeless woman who steals a baby, reunites the 'Juno' team of Allison Janney and Ellen Page, but despite the film's star power, bringing the indie to the big screen was a decade-long struggle. The reason? Producer Heather Rae pointed the finger squarely at Hollywood's boy's club mentality. 'At the time this film was deemed not commercially viable, because it was a woman's story, and it wasn't about getting the guy,' Rae said at a private screening on 'Tallulah' in New York, noting that executives said as much to her face.But despite profitability concerns, the film was snapped up by Netflix for $5 million, before it even premiered at Sundance last winter. 'Tallulah' will be released on Netflix on July 29, and in select theaters.Rae was joined at the panel on shifting roles for women in the entertainment industry by two prominent female producers, Lydia Dean Pilcher ('The Namesake') and Alix Madigan ('Winter's Bone'). All three said that despite increased noise about the need for diversity, and even though female-driven films such as 'Bridesmaids' and 'The Hunger Games' have been financially successful, it is still hard to get pictures driven by, starring, and directed by women financed."
"Interview: Terry Eagleton": From the archives: An enlightening chat with the literary theorist at Times Higher Education.
"It has been 50 years since Terry Eagleton, at the age of just 21, became the youngest junior research fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge since the 18th century, thereby embarking on a career that, as early as the 1980s, made him one of the world's best-known literary critics and left-wing public intellectuals. Given his political reputation, it was perhaps surprising that he went on to become the Thomas Wharton professor of English literature at the University of Oxford, although perhaps less surprising that he was, reputedly, once described by Prince Charles as 'that dreadful Terry Eagleton.' When we meet at Lancaster University, where he is now a distinguished professor, to talk about his half-century – years that Eagleton had suggested we might call the 'disaster years' – I begin by asking, as if to double-check his literary credentials, for his favourite novelist and poet, respectively. Proust, he says, and Wallace Stevens. And music? 'Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A Major,'he replies, 'and Teddy Bears' Picnic, though not necessarily in that order.' Proust, Mozart and Oxford might seem, I suggest, a long way from his childhood in Salford. He agrees, recalling that 'they used to say of the river there that not even canned fish could survive in it.' He is quick to mention his father, himself a socialist – 'a highly intelligent man, a deeply intelligent man,' says Eagleton. 'I doubt he ever read a book in his life.' Eagleton has no idea where he himself got the strange idea of reading books, but recalls that 'about the age of eight, I was seized by the idea that I had to read the classics. I didn't know what the classics were, or whether they were three books or 300, and so dragged my poor mother to a second-hand bookshop in the middle of Manchester, and there was a row of Dickens novels. I said to the man, 'Is that the classics?' And he said, 'Well, yes, part of the classics.' So my mother put down five shillings and paid the rest off in installments of two-and-six. I read my way doggedly and uncomprehendingly through quite a few of them.'"
"Anna Karina Recalls Her Life in Film With Jean-Luc Godard": In conversation with our own Glenn Kenny at The New York Times.
"In 'Le Petit Soldat,' their first film together (although its release was held up for several years by French censors), she was the young revolutionary as object of desire. In 'A Woman Is a Woman' (1961) she was a stripper flirting with domesticity. In 'Vivre Sa Vie,' Ms. Karina played a desultory beauty who drifts into streetwalking on the way to cinematic sainthood. 'Band of Outsiders' saw her as naïve, coquettish but clever, with a streak of mischief. In 'Alphaville,' she was a robotic woman of the bleak future, introduced to love via poetry by the tough guy Eddie Constantine. For their final collaborations, Mr. Godard made his soon-to-be-ex-wife a femme fatale. (They divorced in 1965.) In 'Pierrot Le Fou,' she seduces and double-crosses Jean-Paul Belmondo, and in 'Made in U.S.A.' she gender-reverses the trench-coated noir antihero, leaving a trail of corpses. 'We appreciated that what we were doing was different through the way Jean-Luc directed us, physically,' she said on the phone. 'In older Hollywood movies, a character will make an entrance, close a door, light a cigarette, sit down, have a drink. In Jean-Luc's movies, you were doing everything at once, and sometimes you wouldn't shut the door all the way. Sometimes your cigarette wouldn't light on first try. You were always moving through the scene in an active way that was more like being than acting.'"
"Allison Janney surprises White House pressroom with briefing as 'The West Wing's' C.J. Cregg," as observed by Libby Hill of The Los Angeles Times.
Paul Thomas Anderson directs Radiohead's latest music video, "Daydreaming."]]>
"All the Colors Left With You: Grieving in Life and 'The Courtship of Eddie's Father'": An achingly beautiful essay penned by Sara Freeman for MUBI.
"On January 22nd of this year I lost someone very close to me. The someone I was closest to, in fact. She was (is) my best friend, my daughter. The love of my life a lot of people say, though this someone wasn't actually a person. She was better—she was a dog. A nearly 19-year-old Silver Dapple Dachshund named Elizabeth Alaina Freeman, Libby for short. I got her when I was 11 and going through my Queen Elizabeth I phase. I was there when she was born, was the first person she saw when she opened her eyes and the first to hold her. As fate mercifully had it, I was also the last person she saw and the last one to hold her. She died in my arms while I was sleeping. I woke to find her looking at me, eyes unmoving. Last week I turned 30. It was the first birthday of mine she hadn't been part of in almost 20 years. She was with me when my dad was in prison, when my mom worked two jobs, when I came back from the hospital after trying to kill myself, for my first kiss and high school and college graduations. She was there when I got married, when I got my first piece published, when I found out my first book was going to be published. She was even there when I watched my first Howard Hawks movie. We traveled all over the USA and Europe together. We moved across the world twice. Libby was puppy-sized her whole life and her small size coupled with her badass personality made everyone stop and take notice when she walked down the street. She has admirers around the world. We did everything together—went to the movies, grocery shopped, worked, you name it. I never left her at home like a lot of people do with their pets (and children) because, well, I wanted her to be included in everything and she wanted to be included. In the last year of her life, she walked on the Brooklyn Bridge, pranced around Prague and celebrated her last Christmas in Portland's Pearl District. She loved life. She loved adventure and smelling and exploring new things. I loved it a little too much when we had matching nail polish. She loved it a little too much when we shared an ice cream cone. I can also safely say that Libby loved movies or, at least, loved watching them with me. She watched damn near every movie I watched from 1997 to January of 2016. That's a lot of movies."
"Donald Trump, Baby Boomer": Slate's Stephen Metcalf explains how the candidate was shaped by his generation.
"Little in Trump's biography suggested he would grow up to lead a mass protest movement rooted in anti-establishment rage. How can a person who was handed such a plushy life speak so naturally to working-class resentments? How is it a man who inherited a fortune can so confidently reassure the Last—men and women who only a year or so ago he would have cheerfully called out as 'losers'—that they, under President Trump, shall be First? Avoiding a lot of Rosebud doublespeak, I think we can trace Trump's political instinct to a less personal, more sociological source. In this we need only look to his birth certificate. There we see that Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946. Is it possible Trumpismo, in its disdain for norms of speech and conduct, in its underlying craving for apocalyptic violence, is traceable to one simple fact? In almost plain sight, beneath the worldly swagger and breathtaking arrogance, lies Donald Trump the baby boomer. Here is what I am not arguing: I am not arguing that Trump turned on, tuned in, and dropped out, that he stuck it to the man, that he smoked a skunky kush and freely loved. (Or whatever, pick your own cliché.) It is only one lamentable aftereffect of the '60s that they cast their paisley mythomania on all related topics, not least upon the demographic journey of the baby boomers. One did not have to be at Berkeley, baiting the pigs on the steps of Sproul Hall, or even, really, to touch upon the counterculture at any of its points, to experience the deepest and most formative aspects of being a baby boomer. To understand how, it will help to pause for a moment and meditate on the idea of a generation."
"Sexploitation Star Kitten Natividad on Russ Meyer, Roger Ebert, Porn and the Hot Docs-premiering 'League of Exotique Dancers'": In conversation with Filmmaker Magazine's Lauren Wissot.
"[Filmmaker:] 'For the cinephiles, I have to ask, what was it like working, or socializing, with Roger Ebert?' [Natividad:] 'He was a really, really cool guy. I just felt very at home with him. When we went to Chicago he had a great house, so many floors. He had books from floor to ceiling, and I said, 'Have you read them?' and he goes, 'Every one of them – that's why they're here. I buy 'em and I read 'em and they get stacked.' He read a lot. He loved to drink. We would go to all the jazz bars. He was fabulous, an arty guy. [He and Russ] loved to drink, and that's when I became also an alcoholic. Trying to keep up with the boys! But, what was really interesting about them was they tried to outdo themselves with vocabulary. They had big books that had all these words that nobody ever, ever uses, and I never even knew they were in the English language. And, then they would carry on conversations to see who could top each other. It was fabulous. This could go on all night. Russ was a very intelligent man. It wasn't just entertaining — it was very knowledgeable and educational for me. I'm not just tits, baby. I have a brain, too. To survive in this? You gotta have a brain, honey.'"
"Your Media Business Will Not Be Saved": An enlightening read from Medium's Joshua Topolsky.
"What's The Problem, you ask? The Problem is that we used to have a really neat and tidy version of a media business where very large interests controlled vast swaths of the things we read, watched, and listened to. Because that system was built on the concept of scarcity and locality—the limits of what was physically possible—it was very easy to keep the gates and fill the coffers. Put simply, there were far fewer players in the game with far fewer outlets for their content, so audiences were easy to sell to and easy to come by. Then digital. Then you and me. And all of a sudden all those old, fixed channels started falling apart. Papers didn't sell. Magazines died. Networks scrambled. Local news meant a lot less. Local papers even less than that. Suddenly a lot more free stuff was available online, and anyone could start a blog! But the media industry is a hulking, stupid, slow moving beast that has little awareness about its threats and surrounding environs. I'm skipping over a few parts, but by and large the industry responded to the promise (or threat, as they treated it) of digital by ignoring it or denying it. So instead of the content creators and advertisers who paid them shifting their attention and understanding of user value towards the future (digital everything), they kept plugging away at the old system. Basically: it was really hard for them to figure out the internet, and all of the money (like subscriber dollars) were still going to traditional outlets. So magazine ads remained orders of magnitude more valuable than their digital counterparts (if said counterpart even existed). TV was not even in the same class. Pennies on the dollar doesn't begin to describe it. It is still mostly this way today. A broken model that is aging badly."
"'We're not all warriors': South Sudanese filmmakers are working to revamp their national image": A must-read report from Anne Quito at Quartz Africa.
"There is not a single movie theater in South Sudan, the world's newest nation. But that doesn't mean the people of the war-riven country aren't movie buffs. In the absence of an organized local film-making industry, the 'enormous appetite' for stories is satisfied by pirated Hollywood movies passed around on DVDs and USB sticks, Internews explains. But in the capital city, Juba, a gang of 20 merry South Sudanese filmmakers armed with cameras, boom microphones, and umbrellas are working to correct that. The filmmakers are taking part in the Juba Film Festival, the country's first ever festival of its kind. Working through torrential rains and the tense political climate, the filmmakers are racing to finish four movies in time for the festival's culmination in July. 'There is a great need to tell our own stories,' says the festival's founder, Simon 'Bingo' Lokwang Paul, an orphaned refugee turned local TV personality. He described the festival as a kind of creative, peaceful revolt, to combat—or at least diversify—the pervasive stereotypes about the four-year old nation in the foreign press. Instead of military coups, tribal factionalism and poverty, Bingo hopes to vivify stories about everyday life in the resource-rich east African country, traversed by the White Nile river. 'We are laughing people, we are determined people,' he says. 'The war ruined things, but we're not all killers and warriors.'"
At Vanity Fair, Donald Liebenson discusses Universal's restoration of five Marx Brothers classics.
Nelson Carvajal presents one of his best video essays to date, dissecting Beyoncé's fascinating visual album, "Lemonade."]]>
"The tragic romance that shaped Meryl Streep's life": A touching piece from Maureen Callahan of the New York Post.
"In 1978, a young Meryl Streep was on the verge of becoming the greatest actress of her generation. She was also about to lose the love of her life. 'She doesn't talk about it much,' says Michael Schulman, who explores this time in his new biography 'Her Again.' 'But that year was so wildly eventful and dramatic in her life. It was instrumental in shaping who she was as a person and an actor.' Streep was 29 years old, a gosling in the New York theater world. She was living in a loft on Franklin Street with her boyfriend, actor John Cazale. He was 14 years her senior and a legend among his peers. 'I learned more about acting from John than anybody,' Al Pacino has said. 'All I wanted to do was work with John for the rest of my life. He was my acting partner.' Streep and Cazale met in 1976, when they were cast opposite each other in 'Measure for Measure' in Central Park. By then, Cazale was not quite a star — he lacked that ephemeral quality — but he was regarded, in the industry, as a rare talent, in demand among the great directors of the era. He was Fredo in 'The Godfather' and 'The Godfather Part II,' and had lead roles in 'The Conversation' and 'Dog Day Afternoon.' Of the five movies he starred in, all would be nominated for Best Picture, and three would win. 'One of the things I loved about the casting of John Cazale,' said 'Dog Day' director Sidney Lumet, 'was that he had a tremendous sadness about him. I don't know where it came from; I don't believe in invading the privacy of the actors I work with or getting into their heads. But my God, it's there — every shot of him.'"
"Why the Algorithm That Promised to Save Hollywood Destroyed Relativity Media": According to No Film School's Jack Zhang.
"Monte Carlo does not build models. People build models. Statistical model-building is both a science and an art. The person who builds the model needs to design the underlying input variables the model is going to use—the relationships between these variables and the statistical distribution he/she is going to use for the model. Most of the time, making these choices means taking an educated guess: by observing real-world data, you try your best to match it. While Monte Carlo is useful for recognizing risks and variation involved in the already built model, it certainly cannot tell you which variables to put into the model and how to formulate the relationships—such as between actors, directors, and plot—in any given film. In the restaurant example, we already know that the underlying model is Profit = Revenue - Expense, with the randomness of the revenue and expense matching the randomness of the dice. However, for complex problems like movies, there are many more unknown variables. How do we formulize the revenue of a given film (Film's Revenue = Actor, Plot, Production Budget, etc.)? Is it even possible? All of these are factors that can determine the performance of the final model, and many of these factors are assumptions. Without knowing all of the above information of Ryan Kavanaugh's model (I don't think he told anyone; these type of models are usually highly proprietary), it is very hard to say what he did wrong. Likely, he misused Monte Carlo without fully understanding the fundamental framework of statistical modeling."
"Breaking free of his demons, David Milch stays in the Hollywood game": A terrific article by Tim O'Shei of The Buffalo News.
"The place has the feel of a startup production company, one started by a scrappy pair of young producers who scraped together some money, salvaged some furniture and masked their bare-bones operation with unbreakable self-belief. But it's not. This is the headquarters of a 71-year-old Hollywood legend, a man who's widely considered to be one of the most celebrated writers in television history, a man whose creativity danced with demons to bring him to this place. On the wall above the sofa are index cards with the names of characters from 'Shadow Country,' a novel Milch is adapting for HBO. Steps away, in the writing room, are stacks of treatments and scripts for a revival-to-be of 'Deadwood,' his acclaimed HBO series set in the lawless Wild West. There's a painting, done by his wife, Rita Milch, with colorful splashes of greens and blues. It shows the Milches' estate on Martha's Vineyard, the place where they used to bring their three now-grown children. They don't go there anymore. That place, along with their Southern California mansion, was put on the market. Today, the Milches live in a Santa Monica rental home. They're in debt – $17 million of debt – according to media reports. But they don't seem unhappy. They don't seem defeated. 'Today I'm blessed to be relieved of certain obsessions that have organized my behavior in the past,' Milch said in his soft growl of a voice. 'Is that adequately euphemistic?' Milch is writing. He's teaching. And the only bets he's making are on his own creative muscles."
"I Don't Know If I'm Coming or Going: An Appreciation of 'Nine Lives'": At Indie Outlook, I discuss Rodrigo García's 2005 masterpiece.
"That sense of stasis is felt by all of the characters in 'Nine Lives,' who find themselves trapped in situations that have stagnated their growth. My favorite scene (and the one I paired with 'Rope') features Robin Wright as a pregnant wife who runs into her former flame (Jason Isaacs) at the supermarket. As they talk, they settle into the playful rhythms of their past courtship, strolling down aisles that were built for couples to walk down side by side. Yet the coziness turns claustrophobic as Wright awakens to reality, as if breaking out of a trance. When Isaacs asks Wright for her husband's name, she resists, explaining, 'If I say his name to you right now, I won't know if I'm coming or going.' One aspect of the film that becomes clearer upon repeat viewings is the way in which each woman's story echoes throughout the surrounding vignettes. The first scene establishes the recurring theme of imprisonment by focusing on a mother (Elpidia Carrillo) in jail. Later on, we see a budding adult (Amanda Seyfried) who is encouraged by her parents to leave home and 'spread her wings,' despite the fact that her father (Ian McShane) suffers from a debilitating illness, and her mother (Sissy Spacek) is teetering on the brink of exhaustion. Faced with her childhood home haunted by memories of abuse, a tormented woman (LisaGay Hamilton) exclaims, 'This place is a f—king graveyard,' a line that eerily hints at the setting for the film's final scene. The lyrics of a childhood song Hamilton recites with her sister, 'We are made of dreams and bones,' turn up again in the film's warmest segment, as a patient (Kathy Baker) grows temperamental while preparing for her mastectomy. 'I'm so angry with you,' she rants at her husband (Joe Mantegna). 'What did I do?' he asks. 'I don't know, ever since I was diagnosed, I've hated your guts,' she replies."
"Veronica Cartwright discusses the famous chestburster scene from 'Alien'": As reported by Examiner's Ben Kenber.
"Legend has it that neither Cartwright nor the other actors in 'Alien' had any idea of what exactly was going to erupt from John Hurt's chest. Cartwright, however, said that the actors had read the script and knew that something was supposed to come out of there. Also, she and Sigourney Weaver had a scene where they were supposed to know what it looked like, but they had no clue what they were going to be talking about. As a result, they visited the studio where the infant alien was being built. 'A few weeks earlier we had gone down and seen the little mockup of that little penis guy with the tail, but it wasn't working at that point,' Cartwright said of the alien. 'It was sort of a gray thing and the artists were saying 'oh his teeth will be like this and he breathes…' It was just like a little puppet thing that came out.' Then came the day when the 'chestburster' scene was shot, and Cartwright described it as though she had just filmed it yesterday. 'We're all upstairs in the dressing room and they take John (Hurt) down, and for four hours we never saw John. John was having his false chest made,' Cartwright said. 'When we were told that we could come down to the set, the entire set was dressed in plastic, everybody's wearing raincoats, and there were big buckets of this awful stuff that smelled like formaldehyde. It stank and you gagged when you first went in there.'"
Marcello Mastroianni and Jeanne Moreau in Michelangelo Antonioni's "La Notte," courtesy of Photography IS-Art.
Doug Walker, a.k.a The Nostalgic Critic of ChannelAwesome.com, offers his thoughtful take on the divide between critics and audiences.]]>
"Fans, Fiction, and Representation: A New Hope": A great essay from Nicole Dieker at Longreads.
"Clearly we have a long journey ahead; it isn't enough to make queer characters and polyamorous characters and characters of color heroes in fiction if the world isn't granting them the same status in life, for starters. Likewise, until we get greater representation among the people who create and tell our biggest cultural narratives, we'll end up with situations like J.K. Rowling's egregious characterization of Native Americans in her recent History of Magic in North America. As researcher Adrienne Keene writes, in 'Magic in North America': The Harry Potter franchise veers too close to home" at Native Appropriations: 'We fight so hard every single day as Native peoples to be seen as contemporary, real, full, and complete human beings and to push away from the stereotypes that restrict us in stock categories of mystical-connected-to-nature-shamans or violent-savage-warriors.' A lot of 'Star Wars' fans see a character like Poe Dameron as a complete human being, but that's also because we've ascribed characteristics to him from the few hints we're given in his brief screen time. We've created the character we wanted, and we're hoping that the remaining 'Star Wars' episodes deliver, if not precisely the Poe we've written for ourselves, one that feels similarly whole. If he becomes a stereotype, we'll turn away from 'Star Wars.' We've done it before. Other 'Star Wars' fans are taking to social media to argue that the franchise has 'too much' representation; that including a female protagonist in both 'The Force Awakens' and the upcoming 'Rogue One: A Star Wars Story' is 'SJW bullshit' and 'feminist propaganda,' as Mic (and numerous other outlets) reported. The two-minute trailer features two female characters along with half-a-dozen male characters, but since the women are not shunted into supporting roles, the movie is labeled 'feminist.' (It may very well be a feminist movie, but that shouldn't be the reason why.)"
"Emer Kinsella on a Life in Music": At Indie Outlook, I interview the immensely talented composer about her work in film, radio and other mediums.
"[Indie Outlook:] 'One of the most fascinating projects you've done thus far took place in Vienna, where you attended the University of Music and Performing Arts. Tell me about the site-specific concert entitled, 'Soundproof,' that you performed with your group, ArtISTmotion, at the Schönbrunnerstr 111.' [Kinsella:] 'I was looking to do an urban music project in a community in Vienna, and I wanted to combine my skills as a composer and an artistic director. I was playing with my band at the time in a concert, and the organizer of the concert was involved with a grassroots organization that took over a building that was being used for interim use. They were allowed to use the space as residencies for artists. They were looking for any collaborative ideas, and I just happened to meet them there to discuss my project with the band. I told them that I was looking for a location to do an interactive music project in the urban field. I was working with a quartet and dancers at the time, and we ended up molding the project into a form that didn't require dancers. The quartet that I was working with had an accordion, a cello and two violins, and I realized that the artists' residency location was perfect for the project. It had a huge courtyard in the center of the space, and artists were always being invited to check out the location, so it received a great deal of visibility. They agreed to let me use the space, so I kept visiting the building to get inspiration. I wanted the musicians to interact with the architectural aspects of the building itself, as well as interact with the audience. They'd become one with the building as a single breathing entity.'"
"Sorry, 'Erotic Connoisseur' Fans—Why I'm Not Turning Up On Starz's 'The Girlfriend Experience'": Our critic Glenn Kenny explains at Decider.
"The Starz series takes its title and its premise from 'The Girlfriend Experience,' a 2009 film directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Sasha Grey, who was making her first move out of XXX movies here, with her role as a high-end New York call girl. I had a small but pivotal role in the movie as a character who called himself 'The Erotic Connoisseur,' the majordomo of an escort-review site. My sleazy character tries to extort sex out of Grey's escort, and then gives her a witheringly bad review for her troubles. I was one of the movie's bad guys, in other words. In interviews, the principals of the series have emphasized more than once that all it shares with the movie is the title, the premise, and the nom de guerre of the high-end-escort main character (Chelsea). So that should be enough to explain my non-return, flattering as these inquiries have been. Another reason I'm not in the television show should be self-evident: I'm not an actor. I'm a writer, one who mostly makes his living as a film critic, and I like that. The Starz series, which is executive produced by Soderbergh, features a cast that's stacked with superb actors drawn from film and television. While if you look at the IMDB page for the movie, unless you're a real showbiz maven, Grey's name is the only one that stands out. And, as it happens, she's the only cast member who had any training in acting. (No wisecracks from the porn-savvy peanut gallery, please.)"
"Held Hostage: How an LAPD Officer Kept a Man from Becoming a Killer": An amazing story unearthed by Los Angeles Magazine's Michael Barrett.
"Sound City studios was only a few years old then, but Neil Young had already recorded there. Fleetwood Mac and Elton John would soon tape there, too. The studio and its storied soundboard would later be the subject of Dave Grohl's documentary, Sound City. In the '70s, L.A. recording studios were as ubiquitous—and as crowded—as strip clubs. Everybody, it seemed, wanted to lay down tracks, and demand for studio time was high. If you were financially strapped, like this drummer, you would book the cheapest studio time, from midnight to seven. These overnight gigs usually went to the young engineers—the new guys who needed more experience. On this morning it was a 21-year-old named Gary Brandt. This last session had been a party. The drummer had invited a few friends from a drum circle he'd joined the day before in a city park. He'd jammed with these guys late into the night. Then, one by one, they'd drifted away, leaving him alone as the sun rose. It was his 28th birthday, though he looked years older. His face was somewhat hidden behind a full beard and long dark hair. He stood on a narrow set of legs with a lean, strong body that appeared taller than its five feet, six inches. He had worn the same outfit for days—army pants, a light-colored cotton shirt, desert boots—the uniform of choice for antiwar radicals of the era. Normally he was an empathetic man. Gracious and fun. Full of good energy. He looked people straight in the eyes. But that good man had been driven out by the demons of excessive drug use, migraine headaches, and chronic sleeplessness. He'd begun to believe the engineer had switched the tapes to trick him into taking someone else's music. The person pacing back and forth in that hot, tiny studio was now a very dangerous man."
"Why we grieve artists we've never met, in one tweet": An updated version of Caroline Framke's great piece at Vox.
"Prince is dead, and millions of people are mourning. He was 57 years-old. His death is sudden, shocking, and for many, devastating. Any time a revered person dies, the established stages of grief seem to launch into hyperdrive. The second the news drops, final and cutting to the quick, the ripples start to spread. Soon enough, the grief feels magnified, becoming an ever-complicated web of shifting memory, gutted despair, muddled controversy over their worth, stark regret. Maybe there will even be some joy. But as the deceased begins to settle into the past tense, a couple of questions remain: Why did this person matter so much? How hard are we allowed to grieve, if we're just one among so many? When I found out David Bowie had died, for instance, I reached out to the two people I know who loved him most: my college friend M, and my father. They couldn't be more different from each other, but they both loved Bowie's relentless commitment to his own space oddity, which opened their minds, blew them apart, and put them back together again as something a little different. A little shinier, maybe. When I asked M how she was doing, she responded with a flurry of confused texts: 'I don't know,' 'I just couldn't stop crying,' 'am just gutted.' Then, a little sheepish: 'I am more upset than I should be about a celebrity death?'"
At Art of the Title, Will Perkins interviews title designer Dan Perri and illustrator J. William Myers about their work on Robert Altman's 1975 classic, "Nashville."
Prince performs "Starfish and Coffee" on a 1997 episode of "Muppets Tonight." RIP.]]>
"'I'm not going away, people.'": BuzzFeed's Adam B. Vary pens a must-read piece on the excellent, criminally undervalued filmmaker, Karyn Kusama.
"Once the glare of the Sundance spotlights had dimmed, however, Kusama quickly began to experience another side of 'the crush of the business.' Rather than catapulting into success, or even slowly building out her body of work, Kusama seesawed between years of demoralizing industry indifference and directing two studio features that were challenging in the extreme: the sci-fi spectacle 'Æon Flux' in 2005 and the horror-comedy 'Jennifer's Body' in 2009. The latter was a flop, but it has become something of a cult favorite. The former, however, was nothing less than a filmmaker's nightmare, a self-described 'eviscerating' disaster that nearly killed her career before it could really get started. On Friday, Kusama's fourth film, the taut psychological thriller 'The Invitation,' opens in limited release and on VOD. When it premiered last year at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, the venue held just 298 seats, and after the film's Q&A, there was no mad swarm of Hollywood types eagerly waiting for Kusama to step off the stage. However, once again, the movie played like gangbusters, earning acclaim for Kusama and screenwriters Phil Hay (also Kusama's husband) and Matt Manfredi. In many ways, 'The Invitation' is the ferociously entertaining, idea-packed showcase for Kusama's considerable filmmaking talents, which were always central to the promise of that heady week in Utah. It just took 15 years for it to arrive."
"Why music biopics so often fall flat": More superb commentary from The Washington Post's Ann Hornaday.
"To paraphrase H.L. Mencken, no one ever went broke overestimating the combined pull of generational nostalgia, actorly vanity and the tried-and-true formula of a genius brought to an early demise by intractable demons — or, better yet, one who comes back from rock bottom in high-note-hitting triumph. Except, of course, when they did. (We're looking at you, 'Jersey Boys.') The musical biopic has become such a cliche-riddled genre that it's already been suitably parodied, in the 2007 comedy 'Walk Hard,' in which John C. Reilly plays Dewey Cox, a singer who falls prey to the usual rock-star depredations of drugs, fame and petulant self-indulgence. 'Walk Hard' goes broad in its comedy, but it aptly calls out what has become the audience's morbid fascination with watching talent and promise being summarily extinguished: In 'I Saw the Light,' Tom Hiddleston's able portrayal of country singer Hank Williams is all but swamped in a drab, 'Behind the Music'-like rehash of Williams's history of alcoholism, drug abuse and marriage troubles. Viewers may leave the film impressed with Hiddleston's physical resemblance to Williams, but with no deeper perception of what made his writing and singing so achingly powerful."
"Pupinia Stewart is Stealing My Sanity": My appreciation of the very funny online performance artist (or is she a God?) at Indie Outlook.
"The reason why many people are fooled by Stewart is because they are blindsided by how good of an actress she is. Her monologues to the camera have the spontaneous flow of improvisation, and you never sense her straining to sell a punchline. The insanity in her words speaks for itself. Consider 'England is Confusing,' the video that apparently received howls of outrage online. After declaring that she speaks fluent American, Stewart reveals her confusion about the British term 'pounds,' and whether it indicates that England exists in a different part of the solar system. The illogic in her theory defies all calculation, and the fact that people took it seriously is rather astonishing. It all has to do with Stewart's performance, which is like a masterclass in the art of deadpan line delivery. Other things that prove to bewilder Stewart are her mother's bra, which she mistakes for a slingshot, and her menstrual cycle, while she believes is satanically influenced. In a style akin to Sarah Silverman's parody of ignorance, Stewart's persona is unable to deal with the complex reality of existence, opting to reside in a surreal fantasy of her own creation. She can barely contain her bewilderment at having to deal with a 'gender binary' customer at her shaving shop, and her delivery of the line, 'So how was your…day?', reminded me of Parker Posey's cavernous pauses in 'Waiting for Guffman.' There are even videos, such as one called, 'I joined a fandom,' where it takes her a seemingly eternity to get around to acknowledging the alleged subject of her post. That's because she's too busy coughing, burping and fiddling with Silly Putty. It's almost as if she's daring you to switch her off, and yet I found myself unable to look away (Andy Kaufman would've approved)."
"How interactive storytelling is shaping the future of cinema": According to Andreas Kirkinis of Little White Lies.
"In 2006, former LucasArts employees resurrected the genre with Telltale Games, a company that re-introduced the formula through shorter, more cinematic games with less of a focus on puzzle solving. The company licensed hugely popular film and television franchises like 'Back to the Future,' 'The Walking Dead' and 'Game of Thrones,' allowing gamers to experience cherished worlds in an immersive new way. For the first time, players were being challenged on a moral level, presented with gut-wrenching ethical dilemmas – like choosing which team members would be left at the mercy of a zombie horde, or deciding if 'just a scratch' required an immediate, drastic remedy. Other studios quickly followed suit. Supermassive Games, inspired by popular genre titles like 'The Shining' and 'The Evil Dead,' produced the critically acclaimed 'Until Dawn'. The company's managing director, Pete Samuels, reveals that their intention was to keep the players centred on the filmic elements of the story rather than fiddling with controls. 'We felt it was important to keep the significant complexity away from the player so that they could focus entirely on the character arcs that they we're creating, their choices, and their story,' he says. The game utilises a 'butterfly effect' system, allowing players to experience an entirely different narrative depending on the choices they make. Imagine going to see a film where the audience has the power to vote on, say, whether the protagonist should take the steeper, quicker path down the mountain, or play it safe and follow the long way down. Do you stand your ground and fight the serial killer edging towards you, or turn and run?"
"The price of 'The Girlfriend Experience' might be too high; it taxes one's dignity": A provocative review of the new Starz series from Mary McNamara at The Los Angeles Times.
"Like Showtime's 'The Secret Diary of a Call Girl,' 'Girlfriend' attempts to be 'nonjudgmental,' i.e. to show the bad with the good. Christine is initially shocked to learn that some folks in the sex trade are not to be trusted (seriously, how did this woman get into law school?) while others, including some of her clients, are just as sad and displaced as she apparently feels. For a while, the 13-episode season, which will begin streaming live on the Starz website and app even as it appears episodically on the network, seems mostly interested in presenting the logistics of Christine's new life — how do women juggle all that they do and still manage to look so great? Well, sometimes it's, you know, hard. Like a sex-trade Supergirl (down to the buttoned-down 'disguise' of messy bun and flats), she is a mild-mannered intern/increasingly borderline law student in one life while being an apparently wildly successful prostitute in another. Her charm appears to lie in her enigmatic amiability — the 'girlfriend' of the experience; certainly the sex, though frequent, is mostly fat-free vanilla. A sub-narrative emerges involving possible misdeeds at work (where Mary Lynn Rajskub is wasted as a potentially scheming patent attorney), but mostly the half-hour segments move in and out of often disjointed moments of Christine's escort-driven life at a pace that seems intentionally, and unforgivably, elliptical."
Chicago Tribune critic Michael Phillips investigates why the acclaimed film, "Krisha," vanished so quickly from theaters.
Sterling K. Brown delivered an Emmy-worthy performance as prosecuting attorney Christopher Darden on the FX series, "American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson." Here is footage of the real Darden declaring that the case "is a circus."]]>


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AS NIGER DELTA AVENGERS (NDA) THREATENS ACTION AGAINST TANK FA...Emerging Militants Damn Military Beef up, Blow up NNPC Pipelines Emerging militants in the oil-rich region of Nigeria, Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) on Friday threatened to attack tank farms of major oil companies operating in the region with a rider ... Metro Watch Online, 1 hour ago
We Bombed A Heavily Military Guarded NNPC Pipeline Niger Delta Avengers - Uncova, 1 hour ago
We beat the military to attack NNPC pipeline —Militants - News Express Nigeria, 2 hours ago
400 images for Nnpc
Nigerian oil output as low as 1.1 million b/d: NNPC official
Nigeria's crude oil and condensate production has fallen almost 50% from the start of the year to around 1.1 million b/d, an official from state oil firm Nigerian National Petroleum Corp. said Friday, after reports of a fresh attack on an oil and ...Platts, 5 hours ago
Reps direct NNPC to stop joint venture investments
The Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Dr. Emmanuel Ibe Kachikwu Lasun laments losses recorded in oil earnings The House of Representatives yesterday directed the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to stop its joint ...The Guardian Nigeria, 1 day ago Nigeria to end fuel importation by 2019-Kachikwu ForNaija.com, 3 days ago Fuel Price Hike: FG, Labour Meet Today, to Continue Negotiations This Day Online, 2 days ago Fuel price hike: How Nigeria wasted N10trn on subsidy Vanguard, 2 days ago
The NEITI report on NNPC
THE Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) is once again under intense searchlight. A recent audit of its financial operations by the Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) revealed that the agency and some of its ...Daily Sun, 1 day ago NEITI Wants Fresh Investigation into NNPC's Oil Block Transfers This Day Online, 2 days ago NEITI alleges N2.23tr fraud in NNPC The Guardian Nigeria, 3 days ago 2005 2013: NNPC failed to remit N2.23trn to federation account NEITI Newsroom.ng, 3 days ago
NNPC operated gas pipeline attacked in the Niger Delta
A spokesman for a local community group and a witness said on Friday that a gas pipeline in Nigeria's restive Niger Delta region operated by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) was attacked late on Thursday, Reuters reports. The ...Energy Mix Report, 5 days ago Gas pipeline in Niger Delta operated by Nigeria's NNPC attacked - community group Reuters India, 1 week ago UPDATE 1-Gas pipeline in Niger Delta operated by Nigeria's NNPC attacked - community group Reuters Africa, 1 week ago NNPC Gas Pipeline In Niger Delta Attacked Newsroom.ng, 1 week ago
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I regret not privatising NNPC, says Obasanjo
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo (left); Minister of Transport, Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi and Chairman, Senate Committee on Marine Transport, Ahmed Yerima, at stakeholders conference on maritime industry in Lagos. PHOTO: NAN Ex-leader seeks ...The Guardian Nigeria, 1 week ago Former President Of Nigeria Olusegun Obasanjo Regrets Not Privatising NNPC NewsofAfrica.org, 1 week ago I regret not privatizing NNPC when I was president - Obansanjo Newsroom.ng, 1 week ago Nigeria: Obasanjo Advises Govt to Privatise NNPC AllAfrica.com, 1 week ago
Niger Delta Avengers attacks NNPC facility, vows to shock the whole world
The group dismisses a proposed meeting with government as an insult. The post appeared first on Premium Times Nigeria.Newsroom.ng, 7 hours ago Nigeria: Niger Delta Avengers Attacks NNPC Facility, Vows to "Shock the Whole World" Sokolako, 7 hours ago Shocking! See what Niger Delta Avengers Want From Buhari ForNaija.com, 2 hours ago What we need is a sovereign state militants Newsroom.ng, 3 hours ago
NNPC,CBN deny details on oil licenses Reps
A panel of the House of Representatives set up to review and determine the number of Oil Prospecting Licenses (OPL) and Oil Mining Licenses (OML) currently in operation in Nigeria said the operations of the oil and gas sectors are shrouded in ...Daily Trust Nigera, 11 hours ago Nigeria: NNPC,CBN Deny Details On Oil Licenses - Reps AllAfrica.com, 3 hours ago
No plans to sell refineries — NNPC
By Odunewu Segun The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC has debunked the claims by the House of Representatives Committee on Privatisation that it was planning to the sell Port Hacourt, Kaduna and Warri refineries. An Executive ...National Daily, 5 hours ago House of Reps halts privatisation of refineries Newsroom.ng, 1 day ago Reps Stop NNPC from Selling 3 Refineries Newsroom.ng, 1 day ago Stop Outsourcing of Refineries, Reps tell NNPC This Day Online, 1 day ago
Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation commends Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps on curtailing fuel scarcity
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has commended the efforts of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) at curtailing the recent fuel scarcity across the country. This is contained in a statement signed by Emmanuel ...Reporters365, 6 hours ago NNPC Commends NSCDC On Curtailing Fuel Scarcity Newsroom.ng, 1 day ago Nigeria: NNPC Commends NSCDC On Curtailing Fuel Scarcity AllAfrica.com, 9 hours ago Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation cash call debts hit $7 billion 23 May 2016 Asoko Insight, 4 days ago
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Jon Cheuvront
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Yugi and Kaiba have a duel to the death!4.48 / 5.00 33,727 Views
Vampire Pixel in the Neon City
A sinister deal is underway in the underbelly of Neon City4.35 / 5.00 10,785 Views
Nice! It makes me hesitant to release my second cartoon on Dark Souls haha
I hate people thinking I copied a cartoon despite working on it for months prior haha
Thanks man! To be honest I really tried to not copy your Dark Souls General! You really set the bar high :]
very well animated
good voice and sound
good style
"Yes. Kill moar bosses."
This sums up the whole of Dark Souls storyline. <3
Ninja Gaiden 3 is harder, despite the maliciousness.
He has mii character hair :P


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Posted: 9/26/2012
I called at 646 p.m when they were closing and Rose told me to come on in. Rid is so gracious, she offered me a soda or water. Their pedi chairs are great and we had such a great conversation I felt like family. I highly recommend this salon Ns their first rate service and tje way they pampered me. My nails look great thank you Rose!