Links: Bette's bunny theory, Martin & Lewis all wet, and a follow up to "The Father"

• /Film Florian Zeller has already lined up the cast for his follow up to The Father. It's called The Son, also based on one of his stage plays, and will star Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern as ex-spouses dealing with a troubled kid. No word yet on who will be playing the step-mom or the kid
• Cinea If you've been missing Cláudio, here's an essay he just wrote on Jennifer Jones and David O. Selznick for a Flemish film culture site. (It's in English so happy reading!)  
• /Film Trailer to Barry Jenkins upcoming Amazon series Underground Railroad
• MNPP They made a Funko Pop of John Waters?! On a related note The Film Experience will be doing a week long celebration of John Waters starting Sunday. Stay tuned! 

Carey Mulligan, Billy Magnussen, Mariel Hemingway, another Let the Right One In adaptation, and more after the jump...

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All hail The Prince of Darkness!

by Cláudio Alves

In the annals of American film history, you'll have difficulty finding a filmmaker as influential as Gordon Willis. He's one of the best cinematographers that's ever lived, a man who almost single-handedly invented the look we most quickly associate with the great cinema of the 70s. Low-lit and underexposed, his pictures were rich in shadow play and gloomy frames, a materialization of the decades' paranoia and moral ambiguities. Because of such a characteristic style, he gained the nickname 'prince of darkness,' though maybe we should have called him the king of cinematographers. Both titles feel correct…

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Beauty vs Beast: Say it With Streep

Jason Adams from MNPP here with our fourth and final LGBT themed "Beauty vs Beast" poll of this year's Gay Pride Month, and what happier -- dare I say gayer -- coincidence could we stumble into than a rainbow bright overlap with the 70th birthday celebration of our queen, all hail, Meryl Streep. Yes it was this past Saturday, but this is the sort of thing that should also get its own month, ya know? For our purposes we turn our eyes to Meryls two explicitly queer roles, that of the wife-turned-lesbian-turned-author Jill in Manhattan and that of the party-tossing Janney-kissing Clarissa in The Hours. 

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PREVIOUSLY Y'all killed Eve, but just barely, with last week's Killing Eve poll, giving it voer to Jodie Comer's turn as the villanous Villanelle with just 52% of the vote. Said Dancin' Dan:

"Look, I LOVE Sandra Oh and I LOVE her performance as Eve... but Jodie Comer's Villanelle just steals the show. I love the little smile she gets whenever she's about to go into assassin mode and kill somebody. She just enjoys what she does, and enjoys the lifestyle it has allowed her to live. She's an icon."

Months of Meryl: Manhattan (1979)

Hi, we’re John and Matt and, icymi, we are watching every single live-action film starring Streep.

#3 — Jill, our neurotic protagonist’s chilly lesbian ex.

MATTHEW: So, you’ve just played a chatterbox and a near-mute, the former defined by her gaucheness, the latter by her almost ethereal warmth. What role do you take on next? Why, an ice queen, of course!

The overarching worldview of Woody Allen’s beloved Manhattan is cruel, chaotic, and self-absorbed, even as its fleet, monochromatic presentation retains the smooth and deceptive romanticism of that rightfully-iconic opening montage...

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Smackdown 1979: Barbara, Candice, Jane, Mariel ...and Meryl Streep!

Presenting the Supporting Actresses of '79. Three divorcées trying to find themselves or build new lives (a white hot character type / movie theme in the late 70s) battled for the statue with a simple suburban mom and a precocious student at the 52nd Annual Academy Awards.

THE NOMINEES

 

Candice Bergen and Mariel Hemingway were first-time Oscar players in 1979, but they shared the interesting distinction of being previous Globe nominees in the long since cancelled category of "Promising Newcomer/Acting Debut" in 1966 (The Sand Pebbles) and 1976 (Lipstick) respectively. Barbara Barrie , the eldest nominee, was no stranger to good reviews having previously won Cannes Best Actress (for the little seen interracial romance One Potato Two Potato in 1964) but was largely considered a TV actress. She returned to the small screen immediately after her most beloved film role  -- in a TV series based on that film no less making her the rare performer (the only one?) to have received both an Emmy nomination and Oscar nomination for the same exact role! But the Kramer vs Kramer ladies were the marquee draws in 1979 and not just because the public response to their divorce drama was so seismic: Jane Alexander and Meryl Streep had been nominated before and would be again. Especially La Streep. No one could have then predicted that she'd continually obliterate Oscar records over the next thirty plus years but everyone knew she was the Next Big Thing. 1979 was the year of her true ascendance, a third consecutive year co-starring in a Best Picture contender (Julia, The Deer Hunter, Kramer vs Kramer) and the small matter of two other much-raved about performances in the same year (Manhattan and The Seduction of Joe Tynan). 

THIS MONTH'S PANELISTS

Here to talk about these five turns are author KM Soehnlein ("The World of Normal Boys") and film bloggers Kristen Sales (Sales on Film), Bill Chambers (Film Freak Central), Brian Herrera (StinkyLulu), and your host Nathaniel R (The Film Experience). There's also a must-listen Podcast companion conversation to the Smackdown where we flesh out some of these thoughts and expound on the movies themselves.

Without further ado, the Smackdown...

1979
SUPPORTING ACTRESS SMACKDOWN 
An in-depth discussion after the jump... 

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