The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
With Cannes two days strong now, let's survey the first round of fashions with 16 of the most memorable looks to date. Chloe Sevigny has moved past her fashion muse days but still brings the style while jurying one of the sidebars. It's sort of a starchy pleat with silver gift wrapping. (I don't know what I'm looking at exactly which is sometimes welcome!) Actress Chiara Mastroianni, child of not one but two bonafide legends (Mastroianni & Deneuve, don'cha know) appears to have stepped out of the 1980s directly into 2018. From a distance the dress is like a splatter painting on acid. And Fan Bingbing generally brings several trunks (or maybe trucks?) worth of fashion to Cannes. This Ali Karoui mint-green strapless number is the best of them so far...
Are you biting your nails yet? No prediction for this year's Best Actress shortlist can come without some degree of "I could be getting this very wrong!" nerves. We've been Oscar watching for a long time and it's genuinely never looked this open this late in the game (with the possible exception of 2003 but for nearly the opposite reason). If Best Actress is not a five-way lock up by now (and it often is) it's usually at least settled but for a minor battle between two women for the "just happy to be nominated" fifth spot. This year is different. Seven women remain strong and precursor supported and virtually any combination of five names seems possible as long as you include both Emma Stone (with the reliable boost of leading a Best Picture frontrunner) and Natalie Portman (with the reliable boost of Oscar's deep-deep love for mimicry).
We always believed that Isabelle Huppert was a genuine threat for a Best Actress nomination this season for her phenomenal star turn in Elle. It wasn't so much that Elle, in which she plays a video game enterpeneur who becomes obsessed with her rapist, was a a fresh look at an old star (against type) or right in Oscar's wheel house (a dark comedy about rape. LOL, no). The appeal instead is that in Elle is a suffusion of everything that's special about Huppert: her superior intellect, fascinating opacity, tortured psychology, and her daring sexuality. Oscar would be wise to pounce in a year where the media has been this celebratory about her unique place in the cinematic landscape. 'It's time!' feelings don't generally come around all that often for true iconoclasts or women of a certain age. She's both so they must act now.
Binoche, Cotillard, Adjani, Deneuve
Here's another far more superficial but still excellent reason why Isabelle Huppert needs to be nominated...
Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Queen Margot (1994) Director: Patrice Chereau. Cinematography: Phillipe Rousselot. Starring: Isabelle Adjani, Daniel Auteuil, Vincent Perez, Jean-Hugues Anglade, and Virna Lisi Awards: 2 Cannes jury prizes, 5 César Awards, 1 Oscar nomination.
They say that death always takes your lovers..."
When I was young and extremely sexually naive, let's say hypothetically in High School French class, I was startled to discover that the French phrase "La petite mort," which translates literally to 'the little death' referred to a sexual orgasm. I had no idea why these two towers of Human Obsession, Sex and Death, would be linked up like twins. But the movies, ever the personal tutor for young cinephiles, kept forcing the connections.
Which brings us to the decadent, opulent, erotic, violent and visceral 16th century French epic Queen Margot, this week's Best Shot subject. (The shot choices are after the jump due to the graphic nature of the film...)
Saoirse Ronan, who does such a beautiful job carrying Brooklyn, the film about falling in love with and in a new world, is only 21 years old. Should she be Oscar-nominated in two months time she'll be among the 10 youngest ever so honored in that category. She's the same age now as Marlee Matlin was when she competed for Children of a Lesser God; Matlin won and still holds the title of Youngest Best Actress Winner of all time.
Most 21 year-old Oscar nominees are newbies but not Saoirse. She was nominated at 13 for her role as the tattle-tale sister in Atonement. "I saw it with my own eyes!" But should Saoirse be nominated again, she won't break a record of first to two nominations. That record has belonged to Angela Lansbury for over 70 years when she accomplished it by the age of 20.
For fun and movie-history purposes let's look at the...
YOUNGEST BEST ACTRESS NOMINEES OF ALL TIME
The immediate reveal of note is that 70% of the top ten have emerged in just the past twenty years. How much younger can this list get?
01 Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012) was 9 (though years younger than that when she filmed it)
02 Keisha Castle Hughes, Whale Rider (2003) was 13.
Did you hear that the now 18 year old True Grit and Pitch Perfect 2 star has released a single? With "Love Myself" she becomes the first Oscar nominee to launch a music career since... um... wait, wait, it'll come to me.
Bruce Willis, Brie Larson, and Linday Lohan tried it years ago but they weren't Oscar nominees. Eddie Murphy and Kim Basinger did it briefly in the 80s but that was long before Oscar paid them any mind. Russell Crowe did it before becoming a movie star and kept on doing it. Jamie Foxx started recording years before the musical biopic Oscar win in Ray. Jared Leto abandoned the movies for quite a long time to be a rock star but that was also before Oscar love. Most recently Scarlett Johansson started a recording career but Oscar has yet to notice her. (sigh). Post Oscar Examples will come to me after we get back to our topic.
Anyway... Hailee has gone for an "I Touch Myself"/"She Bop" style single what with that Self-Service tank in the video for "Love Myself"
Hey, you'd turn yourself on, too, if you were Oscar-nominated for your debut film. Do tell us what you think of the video in the comments, won't you? (You may also recall that Hailee was the star of my choice for "best shot" from Taylor Swift's Bad Blood video)
Previous Actors To Launch Music Careers After Their Oscar Nominations I'd love this to be a comprehensive list but I'm sure I missed someone. Help if you can...
2000s
Minnie Driver's latest album "Ask Me To Dance" Toni Collette. Oscar nominated for The Sixth Sense (1999). Released one album "Beautiful Awkward Pictures" in 2006. You can also hear her great pipes on the Original Broadway Cast Album of Michael John Lachiusa's "Wild Party" Minnie Driver. Oscar nominated for Good Will Hunting (1997). Released her debut album "Everything I've Got in My Pocket" in 2004. Beautiful voice. She's since released two more albums. Juliette Lewis. Oscar nominated for Cape Fear (1991). Juliette and the Licks released their debut album in 2004 with their first hit "You're Speaking My Language" - damn that track was goood. She's since released three more albums. I miss her music. I listened to "Uh Huh" so much in 2010!
1980s
Isabelle Adjani. First Oscar nominated for The Story of Adele H. (1975). After a Cannes win for 2 roles and two Cesars for best actress in the early 80s she released her only album "Pull Marine" in 1983. Supposedly Luc Besson directed the only music video but it doesn't seem to exist on YouTube. *sniffle*
1970s
Bette Davis. Oscared twice over in the 1930s, she continued to rack up nominations through 1962's Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. She's a bit of a black sheep in this list though because she wasn't trying to start a recording career with her only album. She was nearing 70 years of age when producers asked her and she cut the album "Miss Bette Davis" which includes a few movie songs she's already sung onscreen.
1960s
Patty Duke. She won the supporting actress Oscar at 16 for her co-lead role in The Miracle Worker (1962). Afterwords she got her own television show, recorded albums and had two top forty hits.
1950s
Sal Mineo. First Oscar nominated for Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Released one pop album in 1957 at the heighth of his teen idol fame, from which he even had a top ten single. After that it was all acting again and another nomination for Exodus (1960).
Thursday, May 10, 2018 at 2:40PM 
Chloe, Chiara, Fan Bingbing, and Carey
