The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
[Editors Note: In the neverending soap opera of Nathaniel's lifelong on again/off again romance with Meryl Streep, they are in love again at the moment. Just thought you'd like to know.]
Everything about this clip is promising. Streep's raspy voice, that low-key estranged but still domestic comfort vibe, the fluffy dogs, it's matter-of-fact history "...a long time ago". People didn't seem thrilled by the trailer to Ricki and The Flash but but with Jonathan Demme behind the camera and behind the script, there will surely be moments to savor regardless of whatever it does or doesn't amount to as a film.
Jenny Lewis wrote original songs for the film including this one. Do we have our first Oscar contender in that category? (I updated that speculative chart to include this tune as well as the two Southpaw songs by Eminem.)
Tim here. We're talking about 1948 this week at the Film Experience, and it's my turn to take you back to the world of American animation in the aftermath of World War II. It was a fertile period: of the three studios that had dominated the medium prior to the war, Fleischer had been absorbed into Paramount and disappeared, while Disney had been badly damaged by an animators strike in 1941 and the loss of overseas markets, and spent the second half of the decade in desperate survival mode. That left a vacuum, which was filled by a sprawling variety of competitors that thrived even after Disney managed to find its footing again.
Pictured: Disney in 1948. Literally: it's from their film Melody Time.
In tribute to this unusually diverse marketplace, arguably not matched again in theatrical animation until the early 2000s, may I present three of the most unique and important animated milestones of 1948 after the jump...
Good luck finding an actress today that looks like thisFilm School Rejects a biopic of Ingrid Bergman during the Notorious era might be coming from James Mangold. I'm always hoping they'll cast unknowns rather than stars for these things, so that they'll look more like their subjects Decider really funny ranking of all of Meryl Streep's Oscar nominated work, judged by accents, struggles, co-stars, and random intangibles Movies Now the box office wealth gap between blockbusters and everything else - interesting piece and worrisome, too ArtsBeatSmash's "Bombshell" musical MIGHT (sigh) actually become a Broadway musical. Yes, they're still dangling that carrot since the one night only cast reunion of Smash went so well MCU Exchange the deal is done and Ava DuVernay (Selma) will direct Marvel's Black Panther film /bent is thrilled that Inside Out passes the Bechdel Test so easily on all counts
A Must Read "The Decline of the American Actor" is a really engaging piece about today's leading men, the "Chris"es and beyond and the struggles they face without challenging roles or all that much in the way of training like their foreign counterparts. It's really fascinating and the writer Terrence Rafferty only threw me out of it once when he makes a very strange rather off topic dig at Masters of Sex's second season which had me questioning his sanity (I couldn't disagree more on all counts of what he's saying in that section). It also has a nice little detour into current 20 and 30something actressing by clever way of Clouds of Sils Maria... that movie sure did get a lot of people talking so it's a mystery why it didn't break through in a more major way since actual stars were involved.
RIP - Exit Music The film composer James Horner died in a plane crash at age 61 yesterday. He was a favorite of James Cameron and Ron Howard, and moviegoers of course. He composed so many well liked movies that it's tough to name a favorite though I remember always liking the scores to Aliens, Avatar, Apollo 13 and Willow. We will be treated to his three final scores this year with Southpaw, Wolf Totem and the Chilean Miners movie The 33. The Oscar favorite won both of his Oscars from the phenomenon that was Titanic (for score & original song) and was twice nominated for movie songs. So here's a little Celine at the Oscars and a little something from An American Tail, too.
I can't let Dick Tracy go quite yet! All that discussion and no tremulous ode to Stephen Sondheim's brilliant song score? It won't stand! Every moment when Breathless Mahoney (Madonna) and 88 Keys (Mandy Patinkin) are in frame together is gold.
(Eagle-eyed early 90s obsessiveness will know that Mandy Patinkin also pops up briefly in a celebrity-filled party scene in the Madonna documentary "Truth or Dare")
BEST ORIGINAL MOVIE SONGS OF THE 1990s Beautiful Song Craft and/or Cheesy Epic Ballads For the Wins * Oscar nominee ** Oscar winner
"Wise Up" -Magnolia (Aimee Mann) technically this song first showed up on the Jerry Maguire soundtrack which is why it wasn't eligible for the Oscars for Magnolia but let's make an exception
"Sooner or Later"** - Dick Tracy (Stephen Sondheim)
"Gangsta's Paradise" - Dangerous Minds (Coolio) deemed ineligible by Oscar due to sampling -- people were obsessed with the scary new "is this songwriting?" world of sampling back then. What to make of it?
"Stay" - Reality Bites (Lisa Loeb)
"Be Our Guest" - Beauty & The Beast (Alan Menken & Howard Ashman)
"More" - Dick Tracy (Stephen Sondheim)
"You Must Love Me"** - Evita (Andrew Lloyd Webber & Tim Rice)
"God Help the Outcasts" - Hunchback of Notre Dame (Alan Menken)
April is almost over and we MUST finish our April Foolish tradition - the first wave of Oscar nomination predictions before anyone knows anything. The film year is still only a toddler but they grow up so fast. The first third of the year always features the least amount of Oscar content but from movies already released we'll hope for miracles that Cinderella and Ex Machina could be remembered in the places they deserve to be. But the bulk of the heavy hitters are yet to come. Even in the more popcorn categories like Visual Effects.
NEW CHARTS --> ORIGINAL SCORE, ORIGINAL SONG, SOUND MIXING, SOUND EDITING Which movies will have original songs? Will the composer Thomas Newman ever win an Oscar? Will Skyfall, atypically embraced by the Academy, have any sort of afterglow with AMPAS to help Spectre win nominations as well? And who will the composers be on a whole slew of Oscar Bait movies that haven't revealed their composer yet (since the score is one of the last things to happen)? These are the questions we're already asking so please do suggest answers in the comments once you've looked at the charts.
NEW CHARTS ---> VISUAL EFFECTS, MAKEUP AND HAIR Is Ex Machina too subtle for Oscar? Will Mad Max Fury Road be too outre for them? Will the visual effects category just be a quintet of franchise favorites they've honored before like Jurassic World, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Avengers: Age of Ultron and so on? Will the makeup category be dominated by old age latex, fantastical character creations or a trans woman's journey?
Friday, July 24, 2015 at 5:30PM 
