Happy Birthday, Julie Andrews!

by Cláudio Alves

Julie Andrews accepting her AFI Tribute Award in 2021.

Here, at The Film Experience, we keep to a 10|25|50|75|100 model when it comes to birthdays and anniversaries. Yet, as the world of entertainment lost so many bright lights in the past few days – Maggie Smith, Kris Kristofferson, Gavin Creel, Ken Page, John Amos, and Kalen Gorman – it feels right to take a moment and show some love to those who are still with us. Case in point is the jubilant Julie Andrews, who celebrates her 89th birthday today. This living legend of stage and screen is beyond compare, with a career that spans across eight decades, from entertaining the troops with her parents in the mid-40s to recent voice-over work in such projects as Aquaman and the Bridgerton franchise, for which Andrews has received three Emmy nominations.

All that said, the actress will always have a special place in my heart for reasons that go beyond her body of work. Allow me to share a personal musing…

Click to read more ...

TIFF '24: "The End" of the World is a Marvelous Musical Mess

by Cláudio Alves

Ambitious mess will always be more exciting and artistically valuable than cautious mediocrity. The timid filmmaker has their place, but they'll never rise above those whose ideas reach for the sky, the heavens, the likely impossible. Or, in Joshua Oppenheimer's case, those who burrow down below, digging to the center of the Earth, mayhap to hell. For his feature debut, The End, the director of The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence goes underground, setting the scene in a not-so-distant future when the Earth has been left ravaged by climate change and other related catastrophes, virtually inhabitable, so hostile to life that those who survive must fight one another for the scant resources around…

Click to read more ...

Nicole Kidman Tribute: Moulin Rouge! (2001)

by Cláudio Alves

Though many thought Nicole Kidman should have been welcomed into the Academy's good graces with 1995's To Die For, it would take six years until that early promise materialized in the actress' first Oscar nomination. Curiously, the path to such success went through a return to down under cinema that started to take shape with The Portrait of a Lady by kiwi auteur Jane Campion. This was also when Kidman began to challenge herself conspicuously by collaborating with true visionaries, picking projects based on who was behind the camera. That line of thinking took the actress into the dark reveries of Kubrick's swan song and, ultimately, the musical riot of Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge!, which started shooting shortly after Eyes Wide Shut hit theaters.

As Satine, the cabaret's star performer, Nicole Kidman is at the height of her powers, delivering a feat of such off-the-charts star wattage it would have been inconceivable for the Academy to look away…

Click to read more ...

Stanley Donen @100: The Most Charming Speech of All Time

by Baby Clyde

With their increasingly bizarre choices and lamentable decision to move recipients from the main telecast, long gone are the days when the Academy’s Honorary Awards made any cultural impact. We’re all the losers, because not only did truly deserving legends of the industry being belated rewarded give deep satisfaction to the Oscar nerds at home, from an ailing Myrna Loy and triumphant Charlie Chaplin to a sprightly Lillian Gish and a regal Deborah Kerr, they created some of the most memorable and moving moments in Academy history.

None more so than the man who celebrates his centenary yesterday, Stanley Donen. The master of the movie musical was unaccountably never nominated for a competitive Oscar during his illustrious career but took his opportunity at the 70th Annual Academy awards to give the most charming speech of all time...

Click to read more ...

Over & Overs: "Singin' in the Rain" (1952)

by Cláudio Alves

It's been a while since the Over & Overs series has shown up on The Film Experience's timeline, and it's as good a time as any to rectify that. Indeed, revisiting a beloved picture one has seen more times than one can count is the perfect idea for today's celebration. You see, a century ago, Stanley Donen was born in Columbia, South Carolina, the son of a dress shop manager and future movie lover. He'd also be a movie magician, capable of turning the screen into materialized joy, like an alchemist who used the camera to transform and transport his audiences. Though one finds several titles are worth appraising in his filmography, a single picture stands above all others, the musical to end all musicals. It's Singin' in the Rain, of course…

Click to read more ...