Queer TIFF: "Vita & Virginia" and "Tell It To the Bees"

Nathaniel R trying to catch up on those festival reviews! 

Herewith two films about married women breaking out of their heteronormative bonds for passionate lesbian affairs. And what I thought were two movies written by famous actresses though, in fact, only one was...

What would Virginia Woolf make of the multiple cinematic attempts to capture her enigmatic persona in two hours flat? Hell, what did the literary icon make of the movies themselves since they were invented in her lifetime? If I'm ever able to interview Woolf expert, actress/writer Dame Eileen Atkins, I plan to ask her. Woolf was most famously played onscreen by Nicole Kidman in The Hours in which Atkins had a small role. Now it's the ever bewitching Elizabeth Debicki's turn in Vita and Virginia, written by Atkins from her play of the same name...

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Girls Gone Wild -- Favorite Bad Girl Oscar Winners

Kieran, here. We've been celebrating Girls Gone Wild this month at The Film Experience. If you haven't already done so, make sure to check out Team Experience's wonderful relay-style Thelma & Louise 25th anniversary retrospective. 

As the month comes to a close, it felt fitting to take a look back at some of the Best Oscar-winning "bad girl" star turns. Here are 11 of the juiciest...

Honorable Mention:

Cristal Connors in Showgirls (Gina Gershon)

Should have been nominated. Very possibly should have won. Haters be damned.

Top Ten Oscar Winning Bad Girl Roles

10. Addie Loggins in Paper Moon (Tatum O'Neal - Best Supporting Actress 1973)

A charismatic yet unsentimental child performance that perfectly nails the tone of its film. The only complaint is that she wasn't promoted to lead Actress where (judging by that roster) she very well could have contended.

9. Barbara Grahame in I Want to Live! (Susan Hayward - Best Actress 1958)

Delightfully over-the-top and melodramatic. Barbara refuses to wear a nightgown while in prison for murder. She wants to "sleep raw!" 

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April Showers: Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret

In April Showers, Team TFE looks at our favorite waterlogged moments in the movies. Here's Chris on Margaret (2011).

If you missed Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret during it's microscopic release in 2011, you aren't alone. The film spent four years in the editing room after wrapping in 2005, leading to a litigious post-production and a bare bones theatrical run. Even with its bursting ensemble of recognizable faces like Mark Ruffalo, Matt Damon, and lead Anna Paquin, Margaret couldn't get an audience without promotion, so it died.

But if you ever want to complain about Film Twitter, remember Margaret as the poster child for its ability to create a movement around a worthy film. Thanks to #TeamMargaret, led mostly by the film's passionate British fanbase, word of mouth (and curiosity) spread quickly. Eventually distributor Fox Searchlight made the film more readily available, even sending screeners out to a handful of critics for end-of-the-year consideration. The home release also features an extended version closer to Lonergan's original intention.

Sometimes we just miss a masterpiece, but they always have a way of coming back. (more after the jump)...

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Yaaas, Link!

Guardian Daisy Ridley won't apologize for how thin she is! (Great. First she stole Keira Knightley's voice and face and now she's stealing her "too skinny!" controversies) 
/Film interviews Anthony Mackie about playing the Falcon and finding out he was going to be an Avenger
Pajiba gets excited about the new true story movie Hidden Figures (due January 2017) starring Janelle Monae, Taraji P Henson, and Octavia Spencer.
i09 swears that Elektra (2005) is worse than you remember. That would be difficult to be! 
Film School Rejects on the fascism that Rotten Tomatoes breeds 
Facebook Russell Tovey wants to know which pic of him you like best 
A Fistful of Films has a great piece on seeing your own private moments in Carol
Interview talks to Mary Elizabeth Winstead about Mercy Street, Scott Pilgrim, and 10 Cloverfield Lane 

Our Friend Teo
Teo Bugbee is one of our favorite friends and people and she contributed to The Film Experience a few times in the past. But alas, MTV snatched her up for their rebooted blogging and such and they don't share! But check out two of her latest beauties.

"Thirty, Flirty and Thriving" - on Daniel Day-Lewis's 30 years of movie fame: the man, the myth, the legend.
"15 Movies to Freak Ya Boy Out" So funny and true from The Exorcist (1973) through Fatal Attraction (1987) and on to The Diary of a Teenage Girl and Carol (2015)

Off Cinema
Towleroad a heartwarming story about a penguin and the man who saved his life. Awwww 
Facebook Russell Tovey wants to know which pic of him you like best 
Tracking Board Anna Paquin starring in a new series called Broken. Another legal drama show ARGHHHHH the genre that just won't die or even take a wee break.

I was going to end with a few words on RuPaul's Drag Race but it deserves its own post, henny.

Women's Pictures - Jane Campion's The Piano

The Piano contains many stories. It is a love story between two outsiders: a mute woman, and an uneducated man. It is an allegory about oppression: a white landowner in New Zealand treats his wife and the Maori people like children or property. It is a study of conflicted characters: a repressed, oppressive landowner; his passionate, mute wife; the lower class man who falls in love with her; and her wild, intelligent daughter. It is a warning about the hazards of refusing to listen: a failed marriage, a soured initial seduction, and the climax of the film are all spurred by lacking communication.  The Piano also has its roots in the fairy tale “Bluebeard;” a sinister story about a newlywed who discovers that her husband murders his wives. But as we’ve seen, Jane Campion doesn’t do easy fairy tale morality.

Campion’s story opens with the only words we will hear its main character speak:

The voice you hear is not my speaking voice - but my mind's voice. I have not spoken since I was six years old. No one knows why - not even me...

Ada (Holly Hunter) is a mute Scottish woman shipped to Victorian New Zealand to marry a stranger, Alisdair (Sam Neill). Ada carries with her the two possessions that make up her voice: her headstrong daughter (Anna Paquin), and her piano. Alisdair leaves the piano, to Ada’s dismay, but a former whaler named George (Harvey Keitel) senses the piano’s importance, and shelters it in his house. He uses it to start an affair with Ada. Considering that this is a story set in the Victorian era, it is a welcome surprise that Campion refuses to make Ada a victim of anything (except maybe circumstance). But that initial image, the piano on the beach, lingers. The incongruous image of a piano on a beach sets the theme for the film - melancholy, and tinged with magical realism.

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