Review: "Rocketman" blasts off

This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

Pop stardom is a notoriously fickle thing. For every “legacy” artist out there, there are thousands of one-hit wonders, and hundreds of sort-of famous B listers. One imagines that anyone in the center of the hurricane of New Fame imagines it will last forever. If you find yourself engineering your own biopic in your golden years, congratulations, it did. Which brings us to Reginald Dwight… better known as Elton John.

In the first frames of Rocketman, Elton John (Taron Egerton) strolls into focus, cheekily dressed as a horned devil to confront his own demons in a therapy session framing device...

Click to read more ...

Beauty vs Beast: Won't You Remember Me

Jason from MNPP here on this chilly March afternoon thinking of leaving it all behind and boarding a train out to Montauk -- tomorrow marks the 15th anniversary of one of the Great Films of the new century (née millenium), Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which rescrambled our brains for the first time on March 19th 2004, and we've never been the same since. Have you watched it lately? I watch it basically once per year, which guarantees I have one great big sobbing session at least once per year. Anyway we've already done one of our "Beauty vs Beast" contests for the film's leads before, so today we'll dive a little deeper into the film's exceedingly fine stable of supporting players -- on one side we have the delectably weaselly Patrick (Elijah Wood) and on the other the more-confused-by-the-minute Mary (Kirsten Dunst), who both enrich the film's main romantic thrust in surprising and sad ways...

survey tools

PREVIOUSLY Y'all truly surprised me with last week's contest that pit Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool's lead lovers against one another -- Jamie Bell took the lead early on and never looked back, taking 65% at the end; it's very rare for actresses to lose here on TFE! Why do you think it happened this time? Said Mareko:

"I'm #TeamGloria in life (what an underrated talent) but lean toward #TeamPeter in this movie. Annette and Jamie really are sublime together, and isn't it interesting that she did back-to-back movies set in 1979? Imagine Dorothea Fields and Gloria Grahame in the same universe, living a mere hour away from each other!"

Beauty vs Beast: Liverpool Lovers

Happy Monday, Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast" -- we'll be wishing one of TFE's favourite actors a happy 33 this week when Jamie Bell celebrates his birthday on Thursday. We love Jamie and are hoping for good things from his turn as Elton John's right-hand-man Bernie Taupin in Rocketman this spring... and yet we can't help but feel like it's another bridesmaid role. Why won't Hollywood let Jamie shine? He was the lead in the indie crime thriller Donnybrook which came out a few weeks back -- did any of you catch that?

Anyway for this week's poll we're probably dooming his chance to shine, again, by pitting him against one of our most beloved actresses (and one who's in the biggest movie of this past weekend, to boot) -- his co-star in 2017's Film Stars Don't Die in Livepool, the queen Annette Bening. This movie got lost in the Oscar shuffle last year, which remains a damn shame -- both Bening and Bell are stunningly good as the dying actress Gloria Grahame and her late-life love Peter Turner. But now you gotta pick!

polls

PREVIOUSLY And speaking of Captain Marvel stars, Brie Larson might've crshed the box office this weekend but she got her bum handed to her in last week's Scott Pilgrim poll -- Ramona Flowers used her crazy big sledgehammer to drum up 64% of the vote. Said Bushwick:

"Can we get these two actresses together again?! Preferably in a film that garners Larson another nomination (and Winstead her first)!"

Showbiz History: The Sheik, Never Cry Wolf, Wicked

9 random things that happened on this day (October 30th) in showbiz history

Rudolph Valentino cheekily decides you can't watch him undress in behind the scenes footage about his Sheik movies (he made two of them)1821 Novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky born in Moscow. His work, particularly the Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, has been adapted to film and television many time.

1921 The Sheik starring Rudolph Valentino premieres, inventing the male movie star sex symbol. The world swoons. Women faint.

1938 Orson Welles radio broadcast of HG Wells "The War of the Worlds" causes mass panic when people are convinced it's real...

Click to read more ...

TIFF Delivers an Oscar bound-surprise with "Green Book"

by Nathaniel R

Go figure. The winner of TIFF's "Grolsch's People's Choice Award" is a film that literally none of my TIFF airbnb troupe (Joe Reid, Chris Feil, Nick Davis and I) saw during our 10 day stretch in Ontario. Green Book by Peter Farrelly (yes, of Dumb and Dumber and There's Something About Mary fame) took TIFF's most coveted prize. (the runners up were Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk and Alfonso Cuarón's Roma). So we'll have to add it to the Best Picture chart when we update this week (we're looking at probably Wednesday night for across the board updates to reflect all the festival madness).

In the entire 40 year history of this prize, stretching From Girlfriends (1978) through Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), 16 of the winners went on to Best Picture nods at the Oscars. The 40 winners also include 7 future Best Picture winners, 6 future Best Foreign Language Film winners, and 2 future Best Documentary Feature winners. The Oscar correlation is getting stronger all the time, too...

Click to read more ...