In Defense of "The Bling Ring"

by Matt St Clair

After first making her mark as a director with her one-two punch of The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation, for which she won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and became the third woman in history to be a Best Director nominee, Sofia Coppola’s work has been met with rather mixed reception. Thankfully, the response to her latest feature On the Rocks, which premiered at NYFF, has leaned positive. But this post is dedicated to what is a rather misunderstood masterpiece from the auteur and that is 2013’s The Bling Ring. A fictionalized account of a series of real-life burglaries, The Bling Ring  unexpectedly served as a prelude to our recent renaissance of “eat the rich” pictures...

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Over & Overs: Marie Antoinette (2006)

In this new-ish series members of Team Experience share movies they've watched way too often and why...

By Cláudio Alves 

I don’t think I was a very ‘normal’ 12-year-old. Whatever that word might mean, I doubt it encompasses nerdy pre-teens obsessed with The French Revolution. Looking back, I’m not even sure why I was so enthralled. Maybe it was the tragedy of it all, how its horrors were as undeniable as the social changes they brought upon were necessary. Maybe it was the moral ambivalence, the complexity of its historical narrative. Maybe it was just the prettiness of the fashions. 

One thing’s for sure, I was very excited by the prospect of watching Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette...

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Beauty vs Beast: Still I Think He's Rather Tasty

Jason Adams from MNPP, fully ready to admit that if you get me drunk enough and put me in front of a karaoke microphone I could sing to you any one of the songs from 1992's Aladdin without having to look at the words on the screen once. I don't know if that's what Disney had in mind but it is what it is and it is how I spent a hefty amount of my time, when I should have been studying, in college. I might not remember anything from that Geology class I was forced to take at nine in the morning but get outta the way when "A Whole New World" comes on. Anyway with Guy Ritchie's live-action version out this Friday, and a retrospective from Team Experience beginning tonight, what better time to "Beauty vs Beast" the original -- I'm shocked we haven't done this before honestly, since Aladdin's got one of Disney's greatest villains...

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PREVIOUSLY A week ago we wished Sofia Coppola a happy birthday by looking back upon her last film Beguiled, and today we're minded what a fool's errand it is for us to ever face anybody off with Nicole Kidman -- even Colin Farrell's hotness couldn't muster up more than 29% against the queen Kidman. Said Ben:

"Miss Farnsworth is the only one who thinks primarily with her head instead of her heart. That's why the only logical thing to do was to cut off his leg, then kill him. Makes sense to me!"

Beauty vs Beast: The Kindness of Strangers

Jason Adams from MNPP here, using this week's brand new "Beauty vs Beast" poll to celebrate the 48th birthday of the great Sofia Coppola, which is tomorrow. We are so lucky to have her! Quite honestly I think the world's been under-valuing her directing career, which's given us one great film after another after another. Her last one, 2017's remake of The Beguiled, is where we're focusing today -- another entirely under-appreciated one if you ask me. While I've long been a fan of Don Siegel's sweaty 1971 version I consider Coppola's an improvement for how it spins itself off into a gothic fable of female empowerment gone to seed. It feels like a sister film to Nicole Kidman's other movie about haunted folks isolated during war-time, The Others -- seriously, go watch them back to back. That'll be an excellent evening at the movies. But until then...

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PREVIOUSLY
Switching over to the Elder Coppola, it turns out it was too tough for us to vote for a war-mongering maniac with last week's Apocalypse Now poll, even when he's played by Marlon Brando -- Martin Sheen's "Captain Willard" managed to score 57% of your vote instead.

Summed up by Tom G:

"Shouldn't we NOT be voting for crazy people with too much power?"

Soundtracking: "The Virgin Suicides"

Chris looks at the music of Sofia Coppola's debut, now a part of The Criterion Collection.

Time has been kind to Sofia Coppola The Virgin Suicides, as effective a critique on the male gaze as anything else in the past twenty years. In Coppola’s gauzy vision of its central Lisbon sisters (as told by neighborhood boys) is a reflection of male idolatry that ignores the voice and emotional reality of real women. While the film is typically remembered for how it visually creates this perspective, it also uses music in interesting ways to subvert male self-serving worship.

The film is haunted by Air’s “Playground Love”, it’s most evocative and film-defining musical passage. It’s an apt song choice, one that tempts you into its pull like the tumble into a teenage crush, all jazzy hormones mired in lyrical thinness. And yet despite its temptation and seemingly feminine sway, its a starkly male brand of lust and the woman on the other end of its proclamations is never more than a vague idea. Naturally, it becomes the theme song to its young male obsession with the unknowable and unknown girls on the receiving end of empty crushes. Coppola sees and hears your  horniness and you willful ignorance, gentlemen, and the film sends out a subtle and cutting middle finger.

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