Happy Earth Day: Actressexual Edition

Happy Earth Day! (It's April 22 where some of you are, still.)

 Andrew here. Isn't it s a shame that even though the earth is made up of so many natural, renewable resources we tend to get so few films about characters who are particularly interested in it? Lawyers, doctors, nurses, writers - those jobs tend to roll of the tongue easily from movie scripts. Environmentalists? Umm, not so much. When you think of how to celebrate Earth Day through film there doesn’t seem to be a large pool of cinematic options to choose from. Every now and then an An Inconvenient Truth type film will appear tackling earth related issues, but it’s not just the films completely devoted solely to the earth that telegraph the message of caring for our environment best. Oftentimes, an incidental character trait revealing an appreciation for the earth can do wonders.

Here at The Film Experience we all worship the deity that is Actresses (we're not very picky, good actresses all are welcome) and what better way to celebrate Earth Day, original Mother Earth Day than by recognising three women to celebrate both our Actressexual urges and our love for the Earth which the live on?

1. Julia Roberts in ERIN BROCKOVICH

three (plus) more divas after the jump

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First Look At "August: Osage County"

Well, lookie here. It's our first official photos from August: Osage County. Albeit tiny blurry ones.

UPDATE: What the text on that page says

This glossy promotional item with photos of Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Juliette Lewis, Julianne Nicholson, and Ewan McGregor and The House (!) where it all goes down was emailed to me by a reader who is currently attending the American Film Market.

Streep with dark hair always makes me think of Silkwood which is never an unpleasant thought and coincidentally also takes place in Oklahoma. If A:OC is anywhere close to Silkwood's quality everyone wins.

P.S. I'm wild for Juliette with red locks.

P.P.S. Back to this year's Oscar race!

Ewan joins the cast of "August: Osage County"

Julia Roberts. Meryl Streep.

Margo Martindale. Abigail Breslin. Juliette Lewis. Cumberbatch. Chris Cooper. Dermot Mulroney. And Sam Shepard as Beverly Weston.

And now, Ewan McGregor.

_____

insert squeal here to stifle the natural hyperbolic reaction.

Hollywood's Current Hierarchy (According to Vulture)

Recently we discussed Forbes list of the highest paid actresses of the last year but money alone paints a crap portrait about what matters in the movies. Vulture recently released a list of the Top 100 Valuable Stars and weighed numerous factors like Oscar pull, box office, and media interest of various kinds. It's the kind of list that Premiere and Entertainment Weekly used to do in ye olden times, a list with more to say than just "hey, we need more page views, click on me 100 times for random photos with two sentence capsules!").

Since there's way too much to say about a list of 100 for a blog post, let's recap their Actressy stance within the top 100, only 30% of that list (sigh), starting with the undisputed queens...

Queen of Action.
Queen of Everything.
Queen of "America's Sweethearts".

27 more actresses (and commentary) after the jump

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Review: "Mirror Mirror"

This review was originally published in my column at Towleroad.

Once upon a time there lived a director with big canvas visual ideas. He would stretch them across just about any surface and start painting. Serial killer craziness (The Cell), muscle queen mythology (The Immortals), and uncategorizable period fantasy (The Fall) were all fair game. Any topic would do including a comic spin on Snow White because why the hell not? 

His name was Tarsem Singh or Tarsem or Tarsem Singh Dwandwar or Tarsem Dwandwar Singh because he could never settle on a signature. He would halfheartedly skim screenplays until inspiration struck. Once the spell was cast, he'd toss the script into the fire, chug absinthe, and speed dial Eiko Ishioka. He'd sketch until the last of the words had turned to ash and only his drawings remained*. The end. 

*not his real process.

Whether you live happily ever after from watching his movies depends on what you go to the movies for. [Continue]

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