Podcast: Best Actor Captain Phillips? Plus Inside Llewyn Davis

For this weekend we have a mini podcast but good things come in small packages.

Katey & Joe attended the Inside Llewyn Davis premiere at the New York Film Festival and tell Nathaniel about it from Garret Hedlund's ponytail, Carey Mulligan doppelgangers, Coen ambience shenanigans and film festival fashions.

All three of us loved Tom Hanks performance in Captain Phillips and Nick joins us, finally, to chat about the Best Actor race. We reference this "no frontrunners" article if you missed it. You can listen at the bottom of the post or download it on iTunes. Join in the conversation in the comments.

[Editor's Note: Because iTunes only hosts the 10 most recent episodes (I'm not sure why that is), the podcasts for this year's films we'll start disappearing after this particular episode so make sure and download them if you haven't yet listened to any episode.]

Inside Captain Phillips, Best Actor

NYFF: Outside Llewyn Davis

TFE's coverage of the 2013 New York Film Festival (Sept. 27-Oct 14) continues. Here's JA taking on the Coen's latest, Inside Llweyn Davis.

I've for some reason still not seen Intolerable Cruelty so this statement's only ninety-seven-point-five percent factual, but Inside Llweyn Davis is the first Coens movie that I haven't loved in forever and a day, sad to say. What is it that left me cold? Is it because I am a dog person? Is it Justin Timberlake's smug facial hair that out-acts him? Or is it just that I think I might be incapable of ever really coming to appreciate Oscar Isaac on-screen? I'll openly admit he's an actor whose appeal, even after this showcase, remains elusive to me. Or maybe it's the fact that Carey Mulligan, an actress I actually really love, is given a fairly one-note joke of a role, shrewing it up under a sad damp hair-do. I don't know. I might just check off all of the above and call it a day.

It's not a movie that is trying to help me overcome any of these things, that's for sure - it's cold, from up on high with the beautiful icy blue-whites of the cinematography on all the way down. I usually happily admire actively off-putting protagonists - a world filled with characters that really couldn't give a damn if I like them or no. But the pleasures of being cinematically antagonized usually have that friction between loving to hate and just hating, and here I kept tipping towards the latter.

Oh hate is too strong an implication - I just never sparked to the story, I stayed aloof and indifferent at most every turn. There were passages I enjoyed - Isaac has a lovely voice and the songs were lovely, and that first dinner scene at the Gorfeins is classic Coens, jazzy and bizarre. Adam Driver turns out to be golden in the brother's hands - as always Joel and Ethan create a rich world that you feel like you could wander off in a million directions inside of... I just kept wanting to shoot off in the direction the movie wasn't taking me. Hey let's ride to the police station with Garrett Hedlund instead, eh? Eh? No? Okay then.

And so the film sputters along for chapters that I never quite found an in to. One look at what Michael Stuhlberg did in A Serious Man (a film and a performance I adore) with a similarly unsympathetic lead shuffling about in an icy Coen kingdom and the difference for me is immeasurable - that film had a pulse, a nervous stutter, a life to it. Llewyn just left me wanting to make like that darn cat and shoot out the closest window to freedom.

Belated Birthday Flowers: Carey, Annette, Helena

Belated Birthday May Flowers ~  Andrew here.

It’s the end of May and with the end of the month comes the end of May Flowers (*tear*). This past week saw three significant birthdays pass by for The Film Experience – Helena Bonham Carter (May 26), Carey Mulligan (May 28) and Annette Bening (May 29). Although we didn’t carve out proper time at TFE to fête each of them  – a combined celebration of May Flowers will surely suffice. True, they’re all at different stages in their career but if there’s one thing that we at The Film Experience know it’s that actresses are the flowers in the garden of cinema and we just couldn’t survive if they stopped prospering. So, on with the celebration. 

First up, Carey Mulligan...

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Random Thoughts on Upcoming "Best Supporting Actress" Race

Being a month late to my usual "April Fool's" predictions has caused me a lot of behind-the-scenes strife. Trying to stare into the open future through a crystal ball when things are actually happening in the present overseas (i.e. Cannes) is incredibly ineffective. Next year I must be more prompt and buy a plane ticket. I have made a few adjustments on the charts mostly in regards to more research on American Hustle and Saving Mr Banks but also in regards to Cannes hits like All is Lost and Philomena (I know, I know -- it didn't show but it still had a great week!).

Carey sings in "Inside Lleywn Davis". The last time she sang onscreen ("Shame") critics fell madly in love but mysteriously zero awards traction happened. 

Cannes buzz
A note of caution to everyone taking each word out of Cannes like its holy scrit. Cannes can be like a magician's misdirect in regards to the Oscar race because for every Jean Dujardin and The Artist there are ten films and performances that get people hot and bothered there under those very special circumstances that don't go anywhere in the real world or, for our purposes, don't excite the mainstream sensibility of Oscar. And quite a few films each decade see their critical fates changed once they leave the festival circuit with its foolishly instant pronouncements of grandeurs and foibles. Take it all with a grain of salt or at least a whiff of the ocean-scented air. Especially if a new Coen Bros' film takes the Palme D'Or. Cannes always loves them so it's like Michael Haneke or the Dardenne Brothers taking a prize. What else did you expect?

But on to this afternoon's topic... 

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Red Carpet Convo: The Great Cannesby

Because we aren't in Cannes, we're gazing at the gowns and only dreaming of the films -- I personally don't like to read too many reviews months before seeing the pictures -- for this edition, which was actually recorded a couple nights ago, I have Jose with me. He's been tracking Nicole Kidman's every move but he's stepping away from the Australian Icon (okay, being dragged away. He really dug his heels in) and joining me to talk other beauties...

NATHANIEL: Hey, Jose. Welcome back to Red Carpet Convos and thanks for taking up the Kidman-Watch. She was absentia today in Cannes (at least to the paparazzi) so it's going to take 11 women to replace her.

JOSE: No one replaces Nic *sobs*

NATHANIEL: Eleven beauties, Jose. Let's start with the ladies who came out for The Great Gatsby but weren't in it.

Bai Ling, Juli, Rooney, Fan Bingbing, and Moneypenny

I'm cheating a little bit to include her as, as far as I can tell, she wasn't at the actual premiere but at some sort of afterparty. [lots more after the jump]

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