Sunday, July 13, 2014 at 12:23AM Remember when Lee Pace and Amy Adams played the romantic leads in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008) ? Every once in a blue moon I flash back to that movie because Lee Pace is so dreamy and Amy sings so sweetly.
But things are rocky between them at first.
Amy: Kiss Me?
Wednesday, June 4, 2014 at 5:00PM 
Episode 23 of 52: In which Tracy and Hepburn make a Western because why not?
A lone figure looks out over a vast, unending prairie. A wagon traverses rocky desert trails. Virgin land, a justice-seeking posse, a citified lawyer who brings civilization riding on his pinstriped coat tails. The Western dominated American film for over half a century with images like these. It stands to reason that two American stars and a director on his way to becoming a (controversial) American legend himself would take aim at the genre. The Sea of Grass, the resulting collaboration between Elia Kazan and the Tracy/Hepburn team, is an epic story covering multiple generations in the New Mexico Territory. It’s a Western, but not struck from the same heroic mould that John Ford was making them in Monument Valley. The Sea of Grass is meaner, more melodramatic, and ultimately a maverick mess of a movie.
The Sea of Grass comes so close to being a great film. Spencer Tracy plays Col. Jim Brewton, a rancher who’s spent his life herding cattle on the millions of acres of untouched prairie that spread across New Mexico. He marries a St. Louis girl named Lutie (Kate Hepburn), who loves him but can’t love his untamed wildlands (not a euphemism). She tries to bring the people to the prairie, or her husband home to bed, but she can’t tame nature or the Colonel. These are familiar archetypes to anyone who’s watched more than two Westerns: the Lone Hero and the Prairie Wife. He is the champion of the settlers, she is his pure-hearted moral compass. Right? Well sure, up until the part where Jim causes the death of a few farmers, and Lutie runs away to sleep with the Judge (Melvyn Douglas) and bear his illegitimate son. And that’s just in the first hour. Suffice it to say, John Ford would not approve.
Cowboys and cynics after the jump...
Tuesday, March 11, 2014 at 11:03AM Change.org a petition to get Lupita Nyong'o cast as Storm in the next X-Men movie. Too bad there's still one more round of Halle Berry!
Ellen TV somehow I hadn't see Cate Blanchett's post Oscar win visit to Ellen until just now. So funny and I love what she says about sleeping with her statue at the 4:30 mark
Cinema Blend Kristen Bell planning to work with the Frozen songwriter team again. More musicals, yay!
In Contention lessons learned from this Oscar season. I've been preaching the "don't open in December" thing for a long time but finally other pundits are coming round!
Comics Alliance whoa. superhero figures are getting way more realistic than when I was a kid! Here's Black Widow -- I assume Scarlett Johansson gets a huge cut of this for allowing her likeness. Can you imagine the market if they could make sex dolls this realistic. Did I just type that aloud. My deepest apologies but it's Scarlett. She does things to people.
small screen
Slate talks to True Detective's costume designer
The Guardian Lee Daniels and Gabby Sidibe of Precious fame are reuniting albeit not as spectacularly. This time she'll play the assistant to a lead character (Terence Howard) in a new TV series about a hiphop record label.
The Week is there too much nudity on HBO?
TFE If you love Faith the Vampire Slayer than you must please stop goodie Buffy in this reader's poll. Buffy Buffy Buffy
Pajiba on dead TV characters they'd like resurrected
Comics Alliance Oh my Dark Phoenix. They're reviewing every episode of the 90s X-Men animated series
Salon the vague plans for Season 2 of True Detective
Today's Watch(es)
For the adults... Strangers kissing for the first time, an experiment. (Weird that the gay guys are the most demure about it!)
)
For all ages... Sesame Street does Les Miserables with Cookie Monster taking up the lead duties
)
Do you hear the cookies crunch?
It's really more than we can bear
That's the sound of Jean Bon-bon
He's the guy who would not share ♫
Wednesday, August 28, 2013 at 10:42PM 10th Anniversary Special! Ten years ago on this very night the VMAs were happening and Madonna was doing her thing (her thing being Performing / Button-Pushing) and this happened...
Britney Spears in a Like a Virgin gown and Madonna laying one on her. Christina Aguilera was also lip-smacked but no one ever talked about that... like Christina was the spin the bottle participant nobody in the room wanted the bottle to point to or something, poor thing.
In Britney & Madonna's honor I thought about doing a top ten of girl-on-girl kisses from the movies but instead, pressed for time, I polled readers on facebook (like us!) and on twitter and in the wave of responses three things became clear. I'll share them after the jump along with my three favorite kisses.
Friday, January 18, 2013 at 11:00PM [Editor's Note: for the centerpiece of our 10th anniversary celebration of The Hours, I asked Joe Reid and Nick Davis if they'd like to talk about the movie and it turned out they already had. A heretofore unpublished conversation. I'm sure you'll enjoy it as much as I did! - Nathaniel ]
JOE REID: Three (!) years ago, I had planned out an end-of-decade feature for my own blog, wherein I would converse about my favorite films of 2000-2009 with a selection of writer friends. The logistics of it got away from me, but I did manage to get started. One such conversation lost to history was with my fellow Film Experience Podcast panelist Nick Davis on the subject of The Hours. With the ten-year anniversary of The Hours upon us, I thought I'd dig up this abandoned reflection and let it see the light of day.
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JOE: The Hours is absolutely on the list of movies from the past decade that I truly, unabashedly loved. I suppose there's something chromosomal about a movie starring Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Julianne Moore (and Toni Collette, and Allison Janney, and Miranda Richardson). But it's more than just watching all these fantastic actresses hand off scenes to each other for two hours. It's also the suicides and the repression! Of course, after signing you on to correspond with me on this entry -- and many thanks for that, by the way -- I checked up and found that your feelings on it were decidedly more ambivalent. Is this an "every time I watch it I feel differently about it" kind of thing, or is it always the same kind of mixed bag for you? As for me, while there are a BUNCH of aspects of The Hours I'm hoping we can touch on, for some reason, my most recent screening of the movie made me anxious to mention two things: kitchens and hands. I couldn't stop watching Nicole Kidman's hands, either when Virginia is gripping her pen with a desperately tight claw grip or deep inhaling those cigarettes. And Meryl Streep separating egg yolks as she's unraveling in her kitchen has always been a favorite image.
And that brings me to the whole kitchen thing...
kitchen melodrama and sapphic smooches after the jump...
