Barbie Prep: Letterboxd, Watchlists, Oh My!

by Cláudio Alves

We're in the home stretch, less than a week until Barbie arrives in theaters like a shock-pink supernova. The promotion has been near manic in intensity, with the cast showing off their best Mattel cosplay worldwide and Warner Bros. pulling no punches. However, it's not all red-carpet glamour and real-life dream houses, with writer-director Greta Gerwig doing much to excite the global cinephilia by hinting at her Barbie's debt to great cinema of yore. She's been very vocal about the cast and crew watch parties, studying the hyper-artifice of studio classics, and even getting on the phone with Peter Weir to get some tips relating to The Truman Show.

In a recent Letterboxd interview, Gerwig went into a personal watchlist she curated, starting with 29 titles that eventually expanded to 33 during the conversation. It's a vast collection of titles, from 1930s screwball to modern Almodóvar…

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Teknolust: Four Tildas is better than One

by Cláudio Alves

We live in a time when what was once conjecture is becoming a perilous reality, dreams of advanced tech crashing into the nightmare of actual artificial intelligence. Facing these newborn terrors of our digital age, the Criterion Channel looks back. Spanning fifty years of film history, a collection of 17 titles investigates how cineastes have approached the topic of AI, from decades when it was just narrative device or metaphor, to our present state of sci-fi as a direct response to concrete real-world anxieties.

This cinematic tasting menu of techno-cinema offers many gustative possibilities, though none more surprising than Lynn Hershman-Leeson's Teknolust. Criminally underseen upon its 2002/2003 release, the unorthodox comedy posits a scenario where Tilda Swinton plays four roles, mad scientist Rosetta Stone and her three cybernetic creations cum clones – Ruby, Marinne, and Olive…

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Emmy Predictions: Comedy Categories

By Abe Friedtanzer

Anthony Carrigan and Michael Irby in Barry

Whereas the drama series race can only bring back three of last year’s nominees, six of the comedy honorees are eligible again this year (Hacks and Curb Your Enthusiasm are the two that aren’t). It’s also the final season of heavyweights like The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Barry, and Ted Lasso  along with two other past nominees, Atlanta and Dead to Me. There’s a slate of new shows in contention, like The Bear, Wednesday, Shrinking, and Poker Face, and it’s important not to forget the show that’s on the rise and likely to be the one to beat this year: Abbott Elementary.

The true challenge of predicting these races is the number of nominees in each based on the number of submissions on the ballot, especially in comparison to the drama categories. Both supporting races only have seven nominees, not eight. Lead actor and actress have five, not six. And the directing and writing categories each have six, but one of the directing nominees has to be a multi-camera show (which has resulted in surprising nominees like B Positive and especially The Ms. Pat Show, which is eligible again this year). There are going to be many deserving shows and performers snubbed as a result, and it’s almost impossible to choose what will get left off and what will make the cut. But let’s try…

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Emmy Predictions: Limited/Anthology Series & TV Movies

By Abe Friedtanzer

Lizzy Caplan and Jesse Eisenberg in Fleishman Is In Trouble

Maybe it’s just been a busy year, but I feel like I’m very out of the loop with this whole slate. As is my practice  I watched the first episode of just about everything, but with a few notable exceptions, like Fleishman Is In Trouble, The Patient, Ms. Marvel, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, I didn’t actually make it to the end of many of this past seasons contenders for limited series. In most cases, it wasn’t lack of interest but rather time. That’s going to make for an unusually hectic summer when I’m inevitably going to try to finish up all of the eventual nominees. Fortunately, I have been paying attention to the heavy hitters in awards buzz. That doesn't help narrow down the contenders much, though, since the field feels wide open.  

The surest things across the board in the limited categories are Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and Black Bird, both of which performed well at the end of last year for those awards groups that aren't quite on Emmy's timetable...

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A Marilyn Monroe Top Ten

by Cláudio Alves

In June, we don't just celebrate Pride. For those in the know, it's also the time to honor the immortal memory of Marilyn Monroe, born in the dying breaths of spring, June 1926. As a birthday present to her fans, the Criterion Channel organized a sampling of the actress' best films, making a delicious collection everyone should check out. Inspired by that list, here's my own selection of Marilyn's peak, her ten most excellent performances in a career, a life, cut tragically short. After all, one mustn't confuse the iconographic impact with a lack of substance beyond the surface. Too many have done that already. 

Marilyn Monroe was a tremendous thespian, so seamless that people, in her time and our own, still assume character and interpreter were one and the same. In any case, let's forego defensiveness for joyful exultation. Without further ado, here's the Marilyn Monroe top ten, in chronological order, unranked…

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