A.I. "Robot & Frank"

We're going Sci-Fi (in part) and Artificial Intelligence especially in these last days of April. Here's Sebastian... 

Here's a film featuring artificial intelligence very much unlike those in theaters right now: Jake Schreier's Robot & Frank (2012) starring Frank Langella as an aging man reluctantly learning to accept a robot, voiced by Peter Sarsgaard, taking care of him when he begins to show signs of dementia. Robot & Frank garnered some critical acclaim but didn't make much noise at the box office. It's a quiet film, a deliberate one, set in "the near future" with a sentient, talking robot as a title character. It might be labelled as science-fiction but it isn't actually all that interested in playing to that genre's tropes and familiar storytelling devices.

The exact year Robot & Frank is set in is never explicitly stated, but it can't be too far off into our future from what we see on screen. In fact the technological advances shown in the film aren't so much future as they are extremely current present. The phones, screens, cars, and appliances in Robot & Frank are of our time, they're just not common in our time. Some of those choices are made out of necessity by the film-makers – it's cheaper to have characters drive the very latest car models than make up and build new ones – but it also serves to give the world of the film a rich, lived-in feel that wouldn't be achieved if every single thing in it was new and shiny and ultimately strange to us. [More...]

Click to read more ...

Bates, Sarandon & Curtis: Actressexual News Galore!

Manuel here bringing you some delicious actressexual news that'll make all of you 80s/90s film lovers really happy. 

A photo posted by xavierdolan (@xavierdolan) on Dec 12, 2014 at 3:41pm PST

Xavier Dolan's upcoming English language debut film, The Death & Life of John F. Donovan is slowly amassing quite the cast. The Mommy director had already announced the casting of Jessica Chastain and Kit Harrington but he's also added Susan Sarandon and Kathy Bates to the cast. Needless to say, the boy has taste. Also, if you're not following him on Instagram, you're really missing out. That's where he's been sharing tidbits from his upcoming film, but also more NSFW-ey stuff like this (think he was celebrating casting Kit, Susan & Kathy?).

In other news, Ryan Murphy, who has yet to meet an 80s or 90s cinema goddess he doesn't want to shower with a juicy part (see: Kathy Bates, Jessica Lange, Angela Bassett), has conscripted Jamie Lee Curtis for his upcoming horror/comedy anthology series, Scream Queens. You have to admit, that's some amazing casting. Joining her is Emma Roberts, a regular member of the Murphy AHSacting ensemble (and a Scream queen herself!). I won't hold my breath for this being a great show, but I will look forward to the sure to be batshit crazy stuff he'll have Curtis do. If nothing else, he'll have rescued her from a career as yogurt spokesperson so we should be grateful for that. 

Which 80s/90s star do you wish were given a plum role by an established TV mogul and/or a tantalizingly exuberant up and comer? 

Baz, Rocky, Sarandon and Me

Editor's Note: Faithful reader and frequent Best Shot participant Derreck (see his tumblr here) attended a special film event that we desperately wanted to make it to last week, a screening of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" with everyone's favorite red curtain Aussie auteur hosting. I invited Derreck to share his memoir of the event, so here he is to do so! - Nathaniel R.

I've never seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’ve heard about it. I’ve seen images of Tim Curry in a corset, fishnets and makeup, heard about shadowcasts and seen its enduring cultural presence in movies like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, but I’d never actually watched the film. I was born way after it was released and even though to this day, it is one of the longest theatrical releases in the history of cinema, it never made it to theatres in my homeland of the Bahamas. Rocky Horror ended up in my “I’ll get to that eventually” pile along with other much-discussed 70s movies like Apocalypse Now and Xanadu. 

Fast-forward to me living in New York. I was doing my daily blog readings and saw that Rocky was playing at the IFC Theater in Manhattan as part of Super Week leading up to Comic-Con. I thought “oh, that’s nice. Maybe I’ll go.” Until I read on and saw that Baz Luhrmann would be there in person to conduct a Q&A about the film and speak about how it influenced his work. 

Baz Luhrmann. The man behind the film that remains forever close to my heart and inspired my ridiculous obsession with love: Moulin Rouge!

I immediately left my apartment to get a ticket. 

Fast-forward to the big night. I was sitting in my chair shivering with "antici--

….

Click to read more ...

The Linkage

IndieWire takes the Verge to task for publishing a pro-torrent essay on Expendables 3
Nicks Flick Picks Nick & Joe Reid are doing Nick's trademark halfway'ish "Fifties" thing (which starts as soon as Nick has hit 50 movies in any given year. Delicious smart writeups on editing, screenplays, supporting actors and more
Comics Alliance the internet is all excited about this old test footage for that Deadpool movie that's not going to happen for some reason. Starring Ryan Reynolds.

Lincoln Center standby only for the John Waters and Isabelle Huppert event tonight. I'm sure the Q&A will be great but I didn't like that movie Abuse of Weakness much (my review)
CNN Money spends a day with a working Broadway actress
Newsweek explains the recent Buzzfeed scandal in the only way anyone should... through gifs of Shattered Glass
The Daily Beast has a great Susan Sarandon interview icymi where she talks David Bowie, drugs, politics and age discrepancies on film 
Variety Jessica Lange to be honored at the Santa Barbara Fest this year
MNPP who wore it best: Tom Hardy face masks
The Guardian the changing demographic of the movie audience that Hollywood is still ignoring in their quest for young white male dollars
AJ Bowen declares Melanie Lynskey the best actor of his generation 
Slate has an interesting review of two new sitcoms, one starring Judy Greer called Married 

Post Script
Remember The Village (2004)? It turns 10 years old today.

I remember so little about it but ten years turns out to be a long time. Back then people were still excited by the phrase "an M Night Shyamalan film," Joaquin Phoenix wasn't yet a Hallowed Serious Thespian (despite already being an Oscar nominee) and everyone thought Bryce Dallas Howard was THE FUTURE. How foolish we all were in 2004! Okay I remember a smidge more: people loved the score;  the colors red and yellow meant Something Significant (I enjoy my colorology); Sigourney Weaver and William Hurt were in it playing vaguely sinister intimidating stern "elders" - you know how they do for paychecks.

Do you have less vague memories of this one?

All That Link

It's been so long since we had a link roundup! You were all partying over the long weekend anyway. But we're back to normal. Please to enjoy these fine, discussable or just fun posts around the web...

Antagony & Ecstasy looks back at Thelma & Louise now that Susan Sarandon is on the road in Tammy's crime spree
VF Jennifer Lawrence meets Emma Watson
Leigh Alexander on internet sexism - the dos and don'ts 
BuzzFeed Matt McGorry and Samira Wiley from Orange is the New Black recreate Matthew McConaughey movie posters. Love.
WSJ Taylor Swift fancies herself a journalist suddenly and writes about the future of fandom, music careers and record sales 
AV Club on that potato salad kickstarter 
Deadline on new controversial strict rules for documentary eligibility at the Oscars. I understand the arguments against the new ruling but I would also like to caution documentarians to think about what they're asking for. The Oscars are larger than your particular craft and they really are supposed to be about CINEMA (i.e. things that play in theaters) so shush. These kinds of rulings may hurt at first but there should be a difference between television and movies. Television has its own awards for you to win if your film is great. Don't be greedy. I do agree with one complaint though: what's fair for docs should also be fair for features so Oscar needs to tighten up its eligibility rules across the board.

Hey, Look

It's the first image of Don Cheadle as Miles Davis in a forthcoming biopic. Filming has just begun. I guess Cheadle hasn't moved to TV for good (i *really* hate House of Lies) but at this point he seems far more likely to win an Emmy than an Oscar. The movie is apparently more about his marriage than his music. The best news about the project by far is that it gives Emayatzy Corinealdi a follow up leading role to her great work in Middle of Nowhere. She plays Miles first wife Francis Taylor.

Bob Fosse and Roy Scheider at Cannes for "All That Jazz"Fosse Fosse Fosse
Sound on Sight has an excellent retrospective of Bob Fosse's astounding but weirdly forgotten cinematic career from Mynt Marsellus. I wish Marsellus hadn't hedged on his ending - Fosse absolutely is equal to the other far more famous auteurs cited (Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg, etcetera). They are only better remembered / respected I'd argue because they:

a) have comparatively gigantic filmographies
b) are still alive and working twenty-seven years after Fosse's death (Fosse was older than all the other crucial 70s breakout auteurs save Robert Altman and Fosse also died relatively young at only 60)
c) made their best films in genres that are more typically male than the film musical and thus escaped the pervasive destructive sexism that tends to devalue all rich work in more traditionally "feminine" fields like musicals, romances, and melodramas. We see this all the time in film criticism. Still.