Over & Overs: Sense & Sensibility (1995)

by Cláudio Alves

Films don't change. It's the viewer who is changed by the passage of time. When you watch the same film over and over again, it's easy to imagine that a transformation has occurred. What one day were negligible details, suddenly become the crux of a drama. Sentimental reactions change and so do the feelings each character brings out in the heart. To watch and rewatch across the years is to become starkly aware of how much you've changed as a person and as a cinephile.

At least, that's the experience I've had with those films that have stayed with me over time, cyclically revisited, especially in times of personal strife, as if they were the sweetest of comfort foods. Ang Lee's masterful Sense & Sensibility is one of those special films…

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Link Night

EW first pick of Jude Law as the baddie in Guy Ritchie's King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017).
Interview talks to Viggo Mortensen (audio interview)
The Playlist translates a controversial interview with Director John McTiernan in which he trashes Mad Max Fury Road and Captain America movies an discusses a potential upcoming project 
MTV Teo on how musicals got their groove back 
Variety Emmy breakdown by studio. HBO is still dominating the Emmys but not by the margins they use to.  
Playbill Live Musicals did well at the Emmys with Grease: Live and The Wiz Live! scoring big 

My New Plaid Pants new photos from Man Down starring Shia Labeouf & Jai Courtney 
EW TV's best comedies are... tearjerkers!
/Film the terribleness of Batman v Superman is not stopping excitement for Suicide Squad which is tracking for a spectacular August opening weekend
MNPP on the poster for Disorder (which is taking forever to hit movie theaters) 
Pajiba Ranking the men of Jane Austen by Swoon Factor from Sam Riley in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies on up
Towleroad a gay version of The Bachelor is currently in production because making a mockery of commitment and true love shouldn't just be for straight people! 
New York Times interviews the new lead of Hamilton, Javier Muñoz
Pajiba recommends five crime thrillers from Korea including The Yellow Sea and Memories of Murder 

Revivals & Remakes
iTunes Trailers Howards End, one of the greatest films of the 1990s is coming back to theaters in a new restoration. It really should've won Best Picture, I tell ya.
EW Power Rangers release character posters. Very attractive cast which is useless since they have those face covering costumes
The Film Stage wonderful choice - Colin Farrell in talks for the male lead of The Beguiled remake
OMGBLOG John Waters Multiple Maniacs has been restored by the Criterion Collection, coming in August 
i09 China might not screen Ghostbusters but their name for it is wondrous 
Towleroad Paul Feig blames the studio for keeping Kate McKinnon's Ghostbusters character closeted. (SPOILER: But once you've seen the movie, you'll see that McKinnon comes through loud and proud and clear, anyway.)  

Podcast: Love & Friendship, Neighbors & Apocalypse

Katey is back! Our very pregnant team member returns to discuss a few new movies with Nathaniel, Nick, and Joe and catch up.

Index (43 minutes)
00:01 Katey is back!!!
02:36 Money Monster
11:30 X-Men Apocalypse
23:36 Love & Friendship
31:28 Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising
42:05 Goodbyes

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes tomorrow. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you?  

Neighbors 2, Apocalypse, Love & Friendship

Review: Love & Friendship

Anyone who’s seen a film by Whit Stillman knows him to be an accomplished social satirist, continuing the legacy of authors like Oscar Wilde, Dorothy Parker, and of course Jane Austen. In fact, the English writer is at the center of one the most sardonic exchanges in all of his films, when one of the characters expresses “I don't read novels. I prefer good literary criticism” when asked if he has read any of Austen’s works. Like the Romantic author, Stillman captures the wants, desires and fears of the haves as they desperately try to grab onto a world the have-nots are trying to infiltrate. In films like Metropolitan, Stillman wonders if the upper classes only let someone from a lower class to share their space as means of experimenting, or amusing them in their endless ennui. In Damsels in Distress he explores the notion of people constructing strict societal divisions in all aspects of their lives, such as in college. More...

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1995: The Year Jane Austen Came to the Movies

Our look back at 1995 continues with Lynn Lee on an unexpected breakout...

Clueless turned 20 this week, but as the Internet has constantly reminded us, it hasn’t aged a day.  At once timeless ("a classic," as Cher would say) and delightfully dated, it’s a modern riff on a period piece – Jane Austen’s Emma – that's become something of a period piece itself. The latter aspect tends to draw attention away from the former, but I happened to see the movie again at a recent party and was reminded not just how perfectly it captures the ’90s, but also (1) how brilliantly it adapts Emma, and (2) how 1995 really was the breakout year for Jane Austen in film. 

Keep in mind that prior to 1995, the only film version of a Jane Austen novel was the 1940 B&W “Pride & Prejudice” starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier.  1995 changed all that...

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