Drag Race RuCap: “Drag Race Vegas LIVE! Makeovers”

Nick Taylor and Cláudio Alves are watching and recapping RuPaul’s Drag Race season sixteen. This week, it’s time for episode thirteen…

Like last week, thank heaven for the hunks.

CLÁUDIO: Like many a makeover challenge over the series’ herstory, the latest season 16 episode is rather lovely up until the judges deliver their critiques. After that, it’s the usual shit-show of inconsistent rulings and baffling decisions, a nonsense cocktail that sours everything that came before and leaves a bad taste in the mouth going forward. As if inverting its predecessor’s trajectory, this season seems intent on decreasing in quality as it reaches its final stretch, each episode a bit more disappointing than the one it follows. At least we have hot men to ogle, eye candy from start to finish, with a spoonful of potential fetish content to make things sweeter. That is the one saving grace of these past few chapters. 

NICK: I’m very sad that my French Vanilla Love Dion fantasy was shot down this episode. Don’t look at me, I’m distraught . . . .

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Three more critics groups go wild for "Everything Everywhere..."

Ke Huy Quan continues his Best Supporting Actor dominance with two more prizes for "EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE"In today's critics awards news, Las Vegas Film Critics Society (LVFCS), the Southeastern Film Critics Association (SEFCA), and Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA) announced their wins. All three groups chose the multiverse hopping chaos of  Everything Everywhere All At Once as the year's best film...

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Once Upon a Time ... in more critics prizes!

by Nathaniel R

Pint sized big talent Julia Butters and Quentin Tarantino both won prizes recently for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

In the latest round up of critics prizes we have critics from the SouthEastern US, Las Vegas, Boston (online) and one of the two (or is it three now?) female critics organizations called "Women's Film Critic's Circle". Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Parasite pick up several more prizes as do Portrait of a Lady on Fire and... Harriet? 

Tomorrow one of the historically coolest and most discerning critics groups is naming their winners (Boston Society of Film Critics -- don't fail us!) but until that potentially exciting announcement here are the latest four associations to announce. The winners and a few comments are after the jump...

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Happy Halloween, Everyone!

Happy Haloween. Please enjoy this Photo of Oscar nominee and birthday girl Sally Kirkland wearing a live tarantula Halloween isn't only for trick or treating and costume parties though it is most definitely for those things. It's also home to many fine birthdays and events on this day in showbiz history... 

1795 Poet John Keats is born. Two hundred and fourteen years later Ben Whishaw plays him beautifully in the still undervalued Jane Campion movie Bright Star
1864 Nevada becomes the 36th State. Without Nevada no Las Vegas, one of the favorite cities of filmmakers and storytellers. It is entirely untrue that what happens there stays there -- it's always broadcast!
1879 Oscar nominee Sara Allgood (How Green Was My Valley) is born in Dublin
1892 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle publishes the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Movies and TV haven't shut up about the Great Detective since they were invented as mediums. 
1906 George Bernard Shaw's Caesar & Cleopatra premieres on Broadway. 39 years and 11 months later the film version starring Vivien Leigh is released.
1922 Barbara Bell Geddes of Dallas and I Remember Mama fame is born in NYC
1925 Oscar winner Lee Grant (Shampoo) is born. Have you read her recent autobiography yet? 
1926 Harry Houdini dies

Mount Rushmore, River Phoenix and more after the jump...

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'Happy 50th Nastassja' That's One From Our Hearts

Nastassja Kinsi by Richard Avedon

Editors note: For Nastassia Kinski's 50th birthday, I asked Glenn to write up a bit on her appearance in "One From the Heart" since it's a movie I know he loves (even more than me and I like it quite a lot) and also because I like to mark the big milestones for actresses and films. If you haven't seen this movie rent it. If you're too young to know Kinski's work, other must sees include Roman Polanski's Oscar nominee "Tess", the horror remake "Cat People" and Wim Wenders "Paris Texas". Here's Glenn from the great blog Stale Popcorn.

I’m going to commit what must be one of the ultimate cinephile no-no’s and go on the record as stating One from the Heart is my favourite Francis Ford Coppola film. Yes, moreso than The Conversation or Apocalypse Now, even moreso than The Godfather parts one and two, Coppola’s One from the Heart is a personal favourite that, to be sappy and pun-tastic at the same time, I hold very dear to my heart. I don’t have time to get into the hows and the whys, because I’m here to discuss Nastassja Kinski!

Is she for real?

Kinski’s Leila first enters the picture over 30 minutes in, her hair slicked back, waving a sparkler, wearing a beaded yellow one-piece costume and draped with a cape. When Frederick Forrest asks “Is she real?” you have to wonder the same thing. This was Kinski’s first American production and her film following her breakthrough in Roman Polanski’s Tess and she couldn’t have a more eye-popping entrance.

Before long she’s romancing Forrest by performing a dance routine in a neon-lit martini glass to the bluesy trumpet of Tom Waits’ Oscar-nominated music. Coppola himself has said that he envisioned Kinski’s Leila as a "Felliniesque circus performer to represent the twinkling evanescence of Eros,” whatever that means, but her sexy gymnastic routine around the rim of this giant, novelty prop remains the film’s most lasting, and seductive, image. Coppola didn’t exactly make Kinski stretch herself by casting her as an exotic, German goddess, but in the mean time he cemented the image that we all still have of her. And then, poof, “like spit on a grill” Leila is gone; the perfect encapsulation of Las Vegas’ intoxicating, but short-lived high.

But didn’t she leave quite the impression?