Cinema Swimwear: The Talented Mr Ripley

This summer The Film Experience is launching its own swimwear line! *not really

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larger viewThe High Waisted Mr Ripley Racing Brief
★★★★★ - 18 Reviews

Product Details
Designers Ann Roth and Gary Jones collaborated to bring you this blinding beauty (modelled by sneaky slim Matt Damon) which is perfect for that ex-pat trip to far-away moneyed shores. Even if you never get in the water! It's time to lose yourself with old school chums. You're so white -- grey, really -- both you and your suit will glow with purpose and the confidence you'll need to reinvent yourself.  Besides, you've always wanted to summer in Italy. "This is your swimsuit... questo è il vostro costume da bagno"

Color
Only available in Neon Lime Green! For when you positively have to be accidentally noticed because you definitely can't be remembered. 

Sizes

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Review: Depp & Tonto (and The Lone Ranger, Too)

This review was originally published in my weekly column at Towleroad

If Hollywood has its own wild wild west, a mythic frontier to tame, it is undoubtedly a time rather than a place: Next Summer. And the one after that. Release dates famously come before screenplays and the studios start laying down their tracks to get there: concept, screenplay, pre-production, casting, filming, editing, promotion, release though not usually quite in that sensible artistic order. Budgets often balloon on the way to the imagined gold at the end of the line. Or silver, as is the case with the name of a certain iconic horse, and the coveted metal driving the plot and the literal train tracks in the new version of THE LONE RANGER.

Hollywood hasn't revived this particular franchise in over 30 years, for what one assumes are three reasons: westerns have been notoriously difficult sells for modern mainstream audiences; the last time they attempted this franchise, it failed; and the Tonto character opens you up to charges of racism and cultural insensitivity in modern times. But if anyone could revive this dead franchise and skirt these issues, the thinking went, wouldn't it be director Gore Verbinski and his masses-beloved star Johnny Depp (rumored to have some sort of Cherokee heritage, and adopted into the Comanche Nation last year) who together did the impossible 10 years ago in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, making a well reviewed, Oscar-nominated, mega-blockbuster out of a famous amusement park ride while also navigating another even more notoriously pricey and difficult to sell outmoded genre: the pirate movie!

The director and star aren't so lucky this time around. [more]

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"I'd like to thank the Academy..."

...for uploading this video of the 1994 costume Academy Award presentation when I asked them to. Here's how it began...

I had found myself in one of those YouTube wormholes of watching Oscar clips at 3am. I am sure we've all been there. I've watched them all so many times that I honestly don't know why I keep going back - especially since rights issues force The Academy's YouTube channel to delete the acting nominee clips (boo! hiss!) Alas, like a masochist I just keep going back. Don't we all?

Nevertheless, I am always frustrated at the selection of videos that The Academy choose to upload. I always want to watch costume designers, art directors, special effects artists, and so on. I like hearing the applause for left-of-centre selections. I think it's fun to see how the writers and presenters represented these categories and people. So, in a joking fashion I tweeted The Academy stating that, gosh, I really just want to see the 1994 costume design category.

AND THEY UPLOADED IT. FOR ME!

"Ask and you shall receive", so they say. And quickly, too. Well, who can say no to The Academy uploading a video just because you ask? This is inarguably one of my favourite Oscar moments and I was so sad when the original video got taken down years ago, but now it's here again for us to watch and marvel whenever we feel like. Watching it now and I still grin from ear to ear when Sharon Stone (a rare Oscar presenter who surely doesn't feel like the telecast's dodgy writing is beneath her) announces a low-budget Australian movie about drag queens as the winner of an Academy Award. When winner Lizzy Gardiner gets on the stage in a dress made of American Express credit cards. When lovably weird Lizzy shoves her co-winner aside: "Shut up, it's my turn!" When they joke about going to "cry with some dignity" and "get a drink." Who can deny it was an amazing moment and now it's there to watch again and again.

"And the Oscar... goes to... And the Oscar goes to Lizzy Gardiner and Tim Chappel for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert." - Sharon Stone.

The video has already been viewed some 1300 times in just a matter of days, so there are clearly plenty of people out there that want this stuff. Are they all Film Experience readers?If you could ask The Academy to upload one category from what year, which would it be? Maybe they'll read this and upload it for you! And don't forget to watch the Priscilla video over and over again. Maybe then we'll get more like it.

Early Bird Oscar Predix: The Costume Designers

Whether or not you think Catherine Martin has already won this year's Costume Design Oscar - paging pink-suited Jay Gatsby! -- the upcoming battle for Oscar nominations is hardly an easy read even if there are only four spots to sashay towards in your suit & gown finery. Costume Design is my favorite Oscar race outside of all the Actressing, not frequently for what the Academy chooses but for the breadth and depth of the competitive field each year. Here's a few questions I'm already asking myself and by extension, you. So join me in the sartorial contemplation...

Steven Noble's work on "Two Faces of January" looks just divine in stills. How's the film?

This far ahead of the nominations (only 242 days to go!) it's anyone's guess and anyone's game. 

Which frequently forgotten designer will finally get the red carpet welcoming committee? 
The possible answers are plentiful so let's talk four of them. Your guess is as good as mine why The Lone Ranger's Penny Rose, who has delivered truly iconic costumes in major Costume Parade Jobs over the years (Evita and Pirates of the Caribbean Curse of the Black Pearl being the standouts) has yet to be nominated. I actually find it quite insane. Another frequent miss is Louise Frogley, the favored costuming goddess of the Oceans gang (both Soderbergh and Clooney call on her services). She could snag an easy nomination this year for Monuments Men but then again WW II films are hardly done deals in this category since there are a) numerous options to choose from each year b) she's been ignored for this period before (The Good German) and c) this category doesnt always choose Best Picture nominees for their nominations even if they're WWII films - remember when Inglourious Basterds missed?

plunging necklines will spice up "American Hustle" this year

For now I'll make a wild guess and say that this year's frequent snubbee finally are two: Saving Mr Banks' Daniel Orlandi and/or American Hustle's Michael Wilkinson. Orlandi been passed over for blatant Oscar-bids like Cinderella Man and Frost/Nixon and though a nomination was never going to happen for his cheeky 60s homage Down With Love that doesn't mean it shouldn't have! Will this Walt Disney/Mary Poppins era behind-the-screen story feel like grotesque corporate hagiography coming from Walt Disney Pictures or will it be good and fun and visual enough to earn respect from AMPAS members? Meanwhile,  American Hustle's Michael Wilkinson is temporarily leaving the undoubtedly lucrative but respect-challenge realm of fanboy pictures (Watchmen, TRON Legacy, and 300 among others) for David O. Russell's first true period film. Will the plunging necklines on Amy Adams and Jennifer Lawrence catch Oscar's eye? Oscar totally stands at attention for those two beauties.

Ben Barnes and Jeff Bridges in "Seventh Son" with costumes by 2 time nominee Jacqueline West

Will any of the many genre flicks make inroads here this year? 
There are just so many to choose from. Thor, Wolverine, Supes and Iron Man will undoubtedly cancel each other out even for people who love superheroes. If voters don't feel like returning to Middle Earth for another Peter Jackson fantasy, other genre films that could catch the costuming branch's eye include Seventh Son (with Julianne Moore as an evil feather caped sorceress), the apocalyptic or cyborg-riffic (Snowpiercer and Elysium), or even Hunger Games: Catching Fire. The first Hunger Games missed a nomination despite being quite Costumey at points but the new designer is Trish Summerville and people really went for her punk edge on David Fincher's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.   

Which rising stars will make it?
With Oscar's Holy Trinity (Sandy Powell, Milena Canonero, and Colleen Atwood each have three Oscars) not strongly in the discussion yet --at least at this writing -- which rising design stars might finally gain a foothold? I'm currently betting on Steven Noble whose work on Two Faces of January is drool-worthy from a distance. But will people like the film? (Patricia Highsmith adaptations are tricky things to pull off.) 

Kurt & Bart -- I'm not sure which is which... and no they are not boyfriends

And how about that Kurt & Bart team who might be the hipster favorites of the Costume world now given their club scene origins and indie entry into cinema (see John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus). They have three films this year. Their work on Stoker already wowed (though that film will win nominations only if hell freezes over or Identity Thief competes for Best Picture) and they also did the clothes for Out of the Furnace (Scott Cooper's Crazy Heart follow up) and the showy-Leto-drag and skinny-McConaughey for Dallas Buyer's Club. 

and now... THE COSTUME DESIGN CHART

thoughts?

Today's Pet Peeve: Why Doesn't Oscar Allow Embeddable Videos?

The title is all wrong. It's Everyday's Pet Peeve. I was as thrilled as any Oscar Fanatic when they established a YouTube channel and began to upload plentiful old acceptance speeches from ceremonies past. But why, pray tell, are they non-embeddable? I legitimately wonder what purpose this serves when what's shared on social networks is so determinative of what gets seen, discussed and becomes beloved.

Of course the dread "embedding disabled by request" message is most tiresome and even downright evil when a YouTube channel that uses it is just a fan channel which owns the rights to nothing but still insists that you can't steal what they stole. (This is especially icky when it's exactly the clip you need and want to share.)  I won't name account names but my guess is this refusal to share is an older generation problem dating back to mindsets that existed before the internet -- I also existed before the internet but some of us adapted --  when sharing was something your parents told you to do with your friends and siblings but would never have dreamed of telling you to do with complete strangers. This is my guess primarily because the accounts most likely to refuse embedding seem to be the ones that are most devoted to material that predates the internet be it old movies, music, tv or what have you. I think this is terrible for everyone and does a great injustice to the art. If things aren't shareable in the modern sense they're more likely to stay forgotten and relegated to the dustbins of history.

Morgan Fairchild and Robert Hays -- anyone remember them?

This came up today because the latest video the Oscar channel posted was the Costume Design presentation for 1981's "Chariots of Fire" and I wanted to discuss it for about 10 different reasons but then thought "why bother?" since I couldn't embed it with the discussion and didn't have time for screencaps. Pity that. It's not that it's 'must-see' interesting. I shouldn't oversell. 

Moving on...