2005: America Ferrera in "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants"

by Nick Taylor

We all know the story of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Four 16-year-old Maryland girls who’ve been friends since birth - Lena Kaligaris (Alexis Bledel), Bridget Vreeland (Blake Lively), Carmen Lowell (America Ferrera), and Tabitha “Tibby” Rollins (Amber Tamblyn) - are about to spend their first ever summer apart. The day before they set out on their separate journeys, they find a pair of jeans that somehow (magically?) fits each of them perfectly. They vow to share the pants the whole summer, each wearing them for a week before mailing them off to the next sister. What surprised me is that the movie did not structure itself around said paints but spent time with all four girls regardless of who had them. To paraphrase one of Carmen’s last lines, the pants aren’t so much a character in Sisterhood but a witness to some of its events. Maybe you think it’s a little iffy to categorize them as supporting, maybe you think the structure giving each one their own plot and weaving them all together at the end allows for it. What’s not up for debate, at least for me, is that America Ferrera’s performance as Carmen is the undeniable highlight of the whole film.

There are a few reasons outside of Ferrera’s performance why I think Carmen’s section of Sisterhood is the strongest...

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Unlucky 13 ???

Everyone keeps saying we're "bitter" in the comments this year, even though we're not (listen, final time saying it: 1917 is a good picture, it'll make a non-embarrassing winner but it's just a little disappointing when they had a chance to make history with a real masterpiece staring them right in the face and gently blowing peach scrapings at them while doing next to unthinkable box office numbers in the current moviescape for subtitled features!)  

ANYWAY let's lean in to the bitter in a silly numbers way and talk about something potentially icky, the infamous "unlucky number" 13. Is 13 an unlucky number with Oscar or not?  Let's find out...

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Months of Meryl: An Epilogue

John and Matthew watched every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

Meryl has been a superstar for 40 years now

MATTHEW: You never forget the performers who first reach out to you from an illuminated screen and lay claim to your gaze, mind, and devotion. Before I knew anything about the art of screen acting, I knew about the miraculous and almost mythic marvel that is Meryl Streep. Months of Meryl was an undertaking that exhausted and aggravated me without end: for every unparalleled Silkwood in Streep’s filmography, there are at least two The House of the Spirits; for every forgotten or underrecognized gem like The Seduction of Joe Tynan, One True Thing, or A Prairie Home Companion, there are at least three Still of the Nights, Primes, or Dark Matters. But, more importantly, this project illuminated a great deal about a veteran artist whose empathetic interest in the lives of others moved me at such an impressionable age and will never cease to do so.

Watching and writing about Streep’s films side by side by side for well over a year has not taught me a single overarching lesson, but only deepened my appreciation for her mastery...

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Months of Meryl: Adaptation. (2002)

John and Matthew are watching every single live-action film starring Meryl Streep. 

#28 — Susan Orlean, a New Yorker writer drawn to the eccentric orchid poacher she is profiling.

JOHN: “Why can’t there be a movie simply about flowers?” asks perspiring screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) to film executive Tilda Swinton from across a table at a posh Hollywood restaurant. “I don’t want to cram in sex or car chases or guns.” One could imagine that Meryl Streep, who has resolutely avoided nudity, drugs, and violence throughout her career, has contemplated this same question. As Susan Orlean, Streep’s outwardly demure and professional demeanor is irreversibly shaken by the oddly captivating John Laroche (Chris Cooper), a Florida orchid hunter, nursery owner, and part-time porn site operator. To watch Streep, at age 53, fire guns, appear nude (read: blatantly Photoshopped) on Laroche’s site, straddle him, and, most incredibly, snort an orchid-based narcotic, getting high and humming along to a phone dial tone, is to experience a dizzying yet satisfying whiplash.

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Beauty Break: Streep Sets

on Kramer vs Kramer with Dustin Hoffman

Since it's Meryl Streep's 68th birthday today, let's gawk at some behind the scenes photos. It's a good way to pay tribute since the Grand Dame of American Cinema has been working pretty much non-stop (except during the 90s when she spent a lot of time with her little children) since the world first fell for her.

Lots more after the jump including Death Becomes Her, Plenty, It's Complicated, Out of Africa, and more...

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