Would you rather?

This is our excuse to share Instagram photos we love this past week or so, so please indulge us. Answer the question in the comments. Would you rather...

real fishness pride

• cosplay mermen with KJ Apa?
• shop for bathroom tiles with Christina Hendricks?
• do posture exercizes with Alec Utgoff?
• dress-up and read storybooks with Channing Tatum?
• dance to WAP with Laverne Cox?
• have espresso with Salma Hayek?
• arrive in Venice stylishly with Pierre Niney?
• stage a one-man musical like David Dastmalchian?
• relax in the pool, Mariah blasting, with Kerry Washington?
• watch Cape Fear with Juliette Lewis herself?

Pictures are after the jump to help you decide. (If there's a gif you should click for the video)

Click to read more ...

Podcast (ICYMI) at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Have you had a chance to really bite in to the delicious Smackdown 1991 podcast yet? We know you read the article given the plentiful comments but there's so much to chat about within the podcast conversation. Nikki M James, Rory O'Malley, Nick Westrate, Mark Harris, and Katey Rich were all terrific guests, don'cha think? Dying to hear your thoughts on the specific things we discussed, but especially...

- Fried Green Tomatoes' 'food fight as lesbian sex' metaphor (!), the confusion over Ninny's identity, and its rose-colored lensing of race relations
- Whether Cape Fear's ending is confusingly botched or confusing on purpose... "my reminiscence"?
- Rambling Rose's Laura Dern / Lukas Haas sex scene driving mothers and spouses from the room!
- The camp of all the Barbra scenes in Prince of Tides. What word was Dr Lowenstein looking up in her Pocket Oxford Dictionary? 
- Michael Jeter's "sprinkling for fairy dust" ("Sprinking?!") in The Fisher King and the AIDS crisis just beginning to hit the movies

download right here or hit iTunes

Smackdown at the Whistle Stop Cafe

Martin Scorsese: Master of the Remake

by Cláudio Alves

As a general rule, remakes don't represent a particularly respected type of film among cinephiles. Concerns about lack of originality abound, as do questions of necessity and the way remakes can lead to the obscuration of older movies. That being said, to characterize every remake as a mercenary minded waste of time isn't fair to the filmmakers involved. Moreover, it can result in the unfair dismissal of interesting cinematic propositions. Remakes can recontextualize past narratives, respond to aesthetics of yore and comment upon them, reinterpret texts and revitalize forgotten styles, deepen pre-established themes or even make us look at a classic through new eyes. They can also highlight the specificities of different artists' visions, exposing how their particularities shape the same raw material. Not all remakes are good, but we can say that about every kind of film project.

Some directors have shown a particular aptitude for this type of project, like Luca Guadagnino with A Bigger Splash and Suspiria. Still, we're not here to talk about that epicurean delight or the transfiguration of Dario Argento's post-Giallo masterpiece. Our subject, today, shall be Martin Scorsese and his mastery of the remake… 

Click to read more ...

Horror Actressing: Jessica Lange in "Cape Fear"

by Jason Adams

It was said that the director Ken Russell helped the actor Oliver Reed modulate his performances with a scale ranging from "Moody One" to "Moody Two." And while I am in no way insinuating that the actress Jessica Lange has in any way that sort of limited range -- step off, Lange-anistas, I love her too! -- it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility to gauge her work on a sliding scale of how much hand fluttering each role involves. And using that system Cape Fear comes out, blissfully, near the top.

Normally if I was feeling inclined to talk about the terrific actressing going on in Martin Scorsese's hot-brained 1991 remake I'd make a bee-line straight for the (rightfully) Oscar-nominated Juliette Lewis, who's the best in show over every single one of her far older and more experienced co-stars...

Click to read more ...

18 days till Oscar

by Nathaniel R

18 is today's magic number. Everyone knows that Oscar's acting branch sometimes takes a shine to little kids for acting nominations (almost always it requires a Best Picture nomination for the movie that houses them) but how often do they nominate kids who've just become adults? Not too often! There have only been three 18 year olds who've ever been nominated* and curiously none were in Best Picture nominees. Still, all of them gave unforgettable performances and the latter two could have easily be argued as "shoulda wons" in their year. They are...

•  Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan (1979), Best Supporting Actress
•  River Phoenix in Running on Empty (1988), Best "Supporting" Actor 
•  Juliette Lews in Cape Fear (1991), Best Supporting Actress

Fact: No 18 year-olds have ever been nominated in either lead acting category.

* It's possible we missed an 18 year old in Supporting Actress (though we could only think of 19 and 20 year olds like Angela Lansbury and Saoirse Ronan beyond the 16 and under famous inclusions) since it's the category that is most favourable to teenage nominees and most trivia and articles list don't go beyond age 15 or 16 in that category. If we did we trust you'll tell us who in the comments.