Cannes at Home: Day 7 – Long Live the New Flesh!

by Cláudio Alves

I can't wait to plunge into the enigmas of THE SHROUDS.

Another day, another lackluster reception to a highly anticipated Cannes title. Ali Abbasi's Donald Trump film, The Apprentice, seems neither thrilling nor especially deep, with various comparisons to Wikipedia entries throughout naysayer's reviews. At least, its cast got general praise, with highest honors to Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn. Then again, it did receive one of the festival's longest standing ovations yet, so make of that what you will. On a more somber note, David Cronenberg's The Shrouds is being described as the director's most transparent movie, laying bare the grief of an artist dealing with his wife's passing. In a recent interview, the Canadian master described cinema as a cemetery, and it seems his latest work follows that idea to literal ends.

For the Cannes at Home odyssey, let's examine two horrors from the directors' past - Abbasi's Shelley and Cronenberg's Videodrome, where a very different vision of death awaits…

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John Waters @ 75: Hairspray (1988)

by Cláudio Alves

As Oscar fever dies down, we return, here at The Film Experience, to the John Waters retrospective in celebration of the director's 75th birthday. I'm immensely grateful for Nathaniel, who invited us each to choose a movie, since it gave me a grand opportunity to dive deep into the filmography of this auteur. Before this month, I had only seen three of Waters' movies, but now I've watched most of his features, including five of the projects he did with legendary drag queen Divine. The picture I'm here to explore is fundamental in the legacy of both artists. Hairspray was to be Divine's last movie before a tragic death at the age of 42…

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Amy Adams Channels Warhol's Portraits

by Chris Feil 

Just when we thought the sting of Amy Adams missing an Oscar nomination last year for Arrivalhad gone away, the actress give us another immersive performance, this time in photo form...

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Soundtracking: "200 Cigarettes"

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Chris rings in 2018 by looking back at the 80s via the 90s with 200 Cigarettes!

Remember theme parties? Well, 200 Cigarettes is a film version of an 80s theme party, set over New Year’s Eve as several lovelorn folks slowly make their way to Martha Plimpton’s house. Sounds like a party we would all want to go to, so you would think that the film would have had a longer shelf life than it did. The film is as forgotten as the old acquaintances "Auld Lang Syne" talked about, and shouldn’t be considering its easy charms, famous cast, and relentless gifability. But while parties are meant to be replaced by other parties, the music stays the same.

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OTD: Vera Drake and Lily Tomlin

On this day (Sept 1st) in showbiz history...

1934 Metro Goldwyn Mayer releases their first animated short, The Discontented Canary. It wasn't Oscar nominated but they soon begin to crash Walt Disney's stranglehold on that particular category back then, with nearly annual nominations (for a time) beginning in 1939 (Peace on Earth) and regular wins in the 1940s thanks largely to the Tom & Jerry series. 

1952 Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea is first published. It wins the Pulitzer and gets adapted to the movies twice, the first time as a feature in 1958 with Spencer Tracy and the second time as an Oscar winning Russian animated short in 1999 which was painted on glass. 

1977 Blondie signed their first major record company contract. Whatever happened to that Debbie Harry biopic we were supposed to get? Wasn't it going to star Kiki Dunst or was that just our TFE fantasy?

2004 Mike Leigh's marvelously humane and potent Vera Drake wins the Golden Lion in Venice. The film is nominated for 3 Oscars including a surprise Best Director bid. Imelda Staunton goes on to lose the Oscar to a far inferior performance. We've been demanding a recount ever since.

Happy Birthday to Them
Oscar Nominees: Lily Tomlin (Nashville), Rachid Bouchareb (Foreign Film nominations for Algeria: Outside the Law and Days of Glory)
In Demand: Zendaya (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Boyd Holbrook (Logan, Narcos)
Other Famous Types: Gloria Estefan
Foreign Stars: Fengyi Zhang (Chinese movie star), Lhumnita Gheorghiu (brilliant Romanian actress), Mohammed Assaf (Palestinian pop star)