Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Yentl (1983) and Ex Machina (2014)

In Hit Me With Your Best Shot we choose a favourite images from selected films. Click on the images herein to be taken to the corresponding article from the participants.

Bronze - a star very much in control of her own image and its various crescendos into iconography

by Nathaniel R

Is there any generation that was so deprived of the movie musical as Generation X? The eighties and nineties were so bereft of live action musicals that whenever one did arrive it felt like both an anachronism and an event. Yentl (1983), as it turns out, still feels like both...

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Judy Garland @ 100: “The Wizard of Oz”

Team Experience is revisiting a dozen Judy Garland movies for her Centennial. Here’s Brent Calderwood to kick us off...

The Wizard of Oz is more than an insanely watchable film—it’s a gateway to a lifelong appreciation of Judy Garland.

“It was a place. And you and you and you and you were there.” Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale took us along with her to Oz, and we believed. It was more than the glorious art direction—head-high hibiscus, an acre of artificial poppies, and real birds in the forest including cranes and a peacock. It was Judy Garland’s performance. No, not her performance—it was Garland inhabiting Dorothy. The then sixteen-year-old became a nine-year-old girl. This woman-child made us feel her vulnerability, and revealed a heart as big as a farmhouse. (One of my personal favorite moments is when Dorothy is trapped in the Wicked Witch’s castle, trembling with fear, and Toto escapes. “He got away! He got away!” she cries, with real tears of joy and empathy for her terrier streaming down her cheeks amid the terror.) ...

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Which shows will be Tony Award nominated next week?

by Patrick Ball

Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga in a modern "Macbeth"

It’s only been 8 months since last year’s long delayed Tony Awards, but it’s time to celebrate the best of The Great White Way once more. This year’s crop represents the first full season since 18 months back when Covid chaos  closed the industry that depends on gathering patrons en masse in close quarters. Though at times it was a bumpy road back to anything approaching normal for Broadway, come Tony season we actually have a pretty robust roster of new shows ready for their turn in the awards season sun.

Nominations will be announced by Tina: The Tina Turner Musical’s Tony Winning Adrienne Warren and Joshua Henry on Monday May 9th. The Tonys will be broadcast live June 12th on CBS and Paramount+ and will be hosted by our newly minted Oscar winner and former Tony nominee Ariana Debose. 

Unlike the Oscars, the Tonys are in a bit of a world unto themselves in the landscape of theater awards...

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Red Flag Alert: "Wicked" will now be two movies long!

by Nathaniel R

Though we've been anxiously awaiting the Wicked movie for (checks IBDB) 18 years, 6 months, and 6 days, we are suddenly dreading it. We were fairly pleased with the casting and the director choice but this new information is a major red flag. In keeping with Hollywood's money-grubbing franchise mania in which they attempt to wrestle as much money from consumers as possible even if they have to pad the stories or extend them well past their breaking point -- popularized by finales that were cleaved in half to guarantee an extra billion in ticket revenue (see Twilight and Harry Potter) or three movies based on a single book (The Hobbit) -- they've decided to make Wicked a two part movie.

Director Jon M Chu (Crazy Rich Asians, In the Heights) writes...

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954)

by Nathaniel R

Jane Powell is no Julie Andrews but she does take a spin on a hilltop while singing in MGM's "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"

Our film title this week on Hit Me With Your Best Shot is Seven Brides for Seven Brothers which is streaming on HBOMax. We knew we'd need to chase The Godfather with something lighter so we opted for a musical. So saddle up, and ride into this absurdly problematic but bouncy and colorful comedy after the jump...

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