When Luca Met John

I had completely forgotten (read: blacked it right the hell out) that John Waters was going to be interviewing Luca Guadagnino at the Provincetown Film Festival this past weekend -- if I couldn't be there I didn't want to think about it! The weird thing is the internet doesn't seem to've noticed either, and so I haven't been able to find any proper photos of the directors together! Well I do have the one above, which comes at us via MovieMaker Magazine, where they also have some choices quotes (getting to those in a second), and I managed to find one -- one! -- on Instagram, which I'll share down below. Otherwise do people just not have telephones in Provincetown? I know the average age of the gays in P-town is older than the Fire Island types but come on, y'all! You had one job! Anyway I recommend clicking over to MovIeMaker, it sounds like Luca & John had a fun chat via the quotes they share -- they talked sex scenes (Luca said he'd be fine getting naked if it'd make his actors more comfortable) and Call Me By Your Name and social-media brouhahas. I love that Luca's like, just fucking ignore social media, haha. Sage advice that I will unfortunately never ever adhere to. Speaking of...

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Christine (2016)

Christine: Is it paranoia if, indeed, 

everyone is coming after you?

Having now watched Antonio Campos' film a couple of times I think I can pretty easily state with real conviction that, as I suspected on my first watch back in 2016, this movie is a masterpiece and Rebecca Hall's performance in it is one of the all-time greats. This is one of the ones that proves the rule that the Oscars are fuck-witted numbskulls who wouldn't know a great performance if it slapped them in the face.

And I was tempted here on Hall's 40th birthday to do a big list of all my favorite performances from her -- of which there are at least a dozen, maybe more, at this point -- but I just kept coming back to that cold hard fact. This performance. This one. This one deserved all the marbles and all the pies and yet here we are six years later and this woman's writing and directing a truly great movie like Passing and she couldn't even score an Oscar nomination for that? Fuck the Oscars, man. Rebecca Hall is everything. Okay fuck it, talking about her awesomness has gotten me all worked up! I gotta do a damn list! Here are...

My 5 Fave Rebecca Hall Perfs Besides Christine

Beth, The Night House

"You were right. There is nothing.

Nothing is after you."

Loretta, Tales From the Loop

"See, there's nothing to be afraid of. 

It's just different."

Elizabeth Marston, Professor Marston...

"When are you going to stop justifying

 the whims of your cock with science?"

Anna, Permission

"It was different... different different."

Vicky, Vicky Christina Barcelona

"You're using me to rewrite your own history."

Runners-up: The Gift, The Prestige,

Godzilla vs Kong, Please Give, Red Riding: 1974...

And stay tuned for her movie Resurrection, coming in 2022!

I reviewed it right here. It is further proof of her rule.

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What are your favorite Rebecca Hall performances?

5 Off My Head: Keen on Keaton

I have to admit that I am a wee bit surprised, having glanced back through our Diane Keaton Archives here on the occasion of the actress' 75th birthday, that I have never done this before, but it appears true -- I have never done a list of my favorite Diane Keaton performances. Now perhaps there's a reason for this -- perhaps I knew beforehand that my list of favorite Diane Keaton performances wasn't going to light anybody's beak on fire? My favorites are kind of exactly what you'd think my favorites are. But still -- my favorites are really favorites -- when she's good she's so very good. That run in the 70s is just gee-gosh-gee I mean you know. An all-time fave.

My 5 Favorite Diane Keaton Performances

Kay, The Godfather (1972)

Theresa, Looking For Mr Goodbar (1977)

Louise Bryant, Reds (1981)

Sister Mary, The Young Pope (2016)

Annie, Annie Hall (1977) 

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Runners-up: Manhattan Murder Mystery, Love and Death,

The First Wives Club, Something's Gotta Give, Manhattan

Never seen: Crimes of the Heart, Marvin's Room, 

Baby Boom, Shoot the Moon, Mrs. Soffell

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What are your favorite Diane Keaton performances?

Rainy Skies Gonna Clear Up

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Woody Allen's film A Rainy Day in New York, starring Elle Fanning and Timothee Chalamet, might not ever see the light of day here in the US (I hope that's not true, but whatever, we have the internet now, we'll see it somehow) but it's getting a rather big push in Europe -- it's opening the Deauville American Film Festival in France on September 6th, and that picture of its two stars up top is a new one to my eye. The movie's already out in a few random countries -- Poland and Greece and Lithuania, sure why not -- and is hitting several more over the next several months. We posted its trailer here, if you missed it. I suppose whenever it hits DVD somewhere, that's when we'll see it...

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I Wish it Would Rain Down On Me Now

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I'm sure that the cast of Woody Allen's banned-in-America latest A Rainy Day in New York is real real excited it's getting a release overseas this fall -- Timothée Chalamet (who donated his salary to charity) and Jude Law and Elle Fanning and the rest of 'em are probably looking forward to answering those questions. Whatever, the film's dropping in France in September and a bunch of other countries after that (and inevitably it'll leak online for the rest of us who care after that), and now there's a trailer. Watch:

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

Holly: I love songs about extraterrestrial life, don't you?
Mickey: Not when they're sung by extraterrestrials.

A happy birthday to Dianne Wiest today!

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

you can learn from:

Midnight in Paris (2011)

Zelda: You have a glazed look in your eye.
Stunned, stupefied, anesthetized, lobotomized...
Gil: I - I - I keep thinking that man at the piano...
believe it or not I recognize his face from some
old sheet music - what am I talking about here?
Zelda: I know if I put my mind to it I could be one
of the great writers of musical lyrics, not that I can
write melodies - and I try - and then I hear the songs
he writes and I realize I'll never write a great lyric
and that my talent really lies in drinking.

A happy 33 to this week's MNPP banner girl Alison Pill today! AP is such an underrated talent. I saw Three Tall Women on Broadway twice by a strange coincidence (I hardly ever see Broadway shows just once, but fortune favored me that month) and Pill more than held her own both times opposite Laurie Metcalf and Glenda Jackson, a feat of insane heights considering they are Laurie Metcalf and Glenda Jackson. Go Pill! Viva Pill! Happy Pill!

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Edward Scissorhands (1990)

PePeg: The light concealing cream goes on first.
Then you blend, and blend, and blend.
Blending is the secret.

A very happy 70th birthday to Dianne Wiest today!

What's your fave performance from this fab actress?

Mine is probably Hannah and Her Sisters,

but only slightly over Synecdoche New York

and only because it's a bigger meatier part.

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5 Off My Head: Big Best Faves

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The Oscars are this weekend and even though they're one of my least favorite things about the experience of being a psycho-obsessive movie-lover - they swallow up so much of the year's conversation on things I personally couldn't care less about (oh my god the statistics will be the death of me) when we could be talking about the actual art of the movies themselves - I still watch them like religion every year because 1) I love beautiful talented glamorous movie stars wearing outrageously expensive clothes, and 2) sometimes good shit slips through that a general audience would otherwise never hear of, like all of the Documentary & Foreign Film noms. 

Anyway in the spirit of psyching myself up and being positive (you know, eventually positive) here's a list of my five favorite picks that the Academy actually got right for Best Picture. You can see a list of all the winners right here. (To be less positive this was a shockingly easy list to assemble - there were entire decades I groaned at the winners from and skipped right on past.)

My 5 Favorite Best Picture Winners

All About Eve (1950)

The Apartment (1960)

Annie Hall (1977)

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Moonlight (2016)

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So what are your five favorites?

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NYFF Diaries: Day 17

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The 2017 New York Film Festival is nearing the finish line! It runs through Sunday and then that's that. Go see a thing! Two things! We've been keeping tabs here on what we've been watching at press screenings and public screenings and so forth, when we haven't been reviewing those movies properly over at The Film Experience that is. This morning we have got...

October 13th

Wonder Wheel (dir. Woody Allen)

Literally right before I started writing this up I was googling around trying to figure out if there was any information online about where Woody Allen was shooting his new movie in the city today, because I keep seeing pictures of Timothée Chalamet - who is acting in the movie - walking around the streets of New York for him, and I have maybe reached stalker territory. Anyway that has nothing to do with Wonder Wheel - I am maybe avoiding talking about Woody Allen himself on a day when all women are boycotting Twitter because of sexual assault? Yeah. But Kate Winslet is exciting.

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

 Joel: I can't see anything that I don't like about you.

Clementine: But you will! But you will. 

You know, you will think of things. 

And I'll get bored with you and feel trapped 

because that's what happens with me. 

 Joel: Okay. 

Clementine: Okay. 

Feeling my chest burst with love for Call Me By Your Name right now's got me thinking about all the great love stories of the new century and that's a real quick route to thinking about Eternal Sunshine - thankfully it's Kate Winslet's birthday today so we have even more of an excuse to bring it up! Happy birthday, Kate! And I don't care what any of those internet skeptics say - I'm excited to see you re-team with James Cameron on the new Avatar movies. Oh and the trailer for Woody Allen's Wonder Wheel- which I'm seeing next week at the New York Film Fest! - just arrived, check it out:

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6 Off My Head: Siri Says 1979

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After a bit of a break we're trying to get ourselves back on schedule... which will probably be blown to shreds in about a week when press screenings for the New York Film Fest begin. But for now let us pretend! And so we asked our phone to choose us a number between 1 and 100, as we do, and our phone today gave us the number 79. Which means we're listing our favorite Movies of 1979. I was two at the time and I don't believe my parents were taking me to the movie theater yet (and if they were they were assholes) but I've somehow managed in the time since to see a bunch of 1979 movies all the same. It's a fine year! So fine I refused to narrow this list down from six to the usual five, actually. So let's take a look...

My 6 Favorite Movies of 1979

Alien

(dir. Ridley Scott)

-- released on June 22nd 1979 -- 

The Muppet Movie

(dir. James Frawley)

-- released on June 22nd 1979 --  

All That Jazz

(dir. Bob Fosse)

-- released on December 20th 1979 --  

Being There

(dir. Hal Ashby)

-- released on December 20th 1979 --  

The Brood

(dir. David Cronenberg)

-- released on May 25th 1979 -- 

Manhattan
(dir. Woody Allen)
-- released on April 25th 1979 --

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Runners-up: Apocalypse Now (dir. Coppola), Kramer vs Kramer (dir. Robert Benton), The Warriors (dir. Walter Hill), Nosferatu (dir. Herzog), The Jerk (dir. Carl Reiner), The Amityville Horror (dir. Stuart Rosenberg), Mad Max (dir. George Miller), Phantasm (dir. Don Coscarelli)...

... When a Stranger Calls (dir. Fred Walton), My Brilliant Career (dir. Armstrong), The Marriage of Maria Braun (dir. Fassbinder), The Tourist Trap (dir. Schmoeller), The China Syndrome (dir. Bridges), Woyzeck (dir. Herzog), Zombi 2 (dir. Fulci)

Never seen: Breaking Away (dir. Peter Yates), Moonraker (dir. Lewis Gilbert), 1941 (dir. Spielberg), Norma Rae (dir. Martin Ritt), Stalker (dir. Tarkovsky), The Rose (dir. Mark Rydell), The Tin Drum (dir. Volker Schlondorff), Rock n' Roll High School (dir. Allan Arkush), Love at First Bite (dir. Stan Dragoti), Tess (dir. Polanski)

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What are you favorite movies of 1979?

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5 Off My Head: NYFF Selections

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The Main Slate line-up for this year's New York Film Festival was announced today and as usual it's an international phantasmagoria of cinematic somethings. Most thrilling, to little ol' me, is the confirmation of something most of us suspected - Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name is playing the fest! Maybe you've heard me mention that movie once or twice? At least now I know I'll be seeing the thing earlier than its Thanksgiving release date (the festival runs September 28th to October 15th), even if that's coming later than it has for most of my world-hopping festival chasing colleagues. (I'm really flattering myself, calling real movie critics colleagues, but hey, if I don't flatter myself...) 

Anyway you can peruse the entire line-up right here at this link, but I figured I'd highlight five titles that immediately pop out from the list. Oh and I'm going to ignore Call Me By Your Name (too obvious) as well as the Opening Night Film (Richard Linklater's Last Flag Flying) and the Centerpiece Film (Todd Haynes' Wonderstruck) and the Closing Night Film (Woody Allen's Wonder Wheel) for this because they'd eat up three of these spots right off the bat (I'll let you guess which of those four films I am not looking forward to) and there's plenty of love to spread below the line.

5 Movies From NYFF I'm Psyched To See

Lady Bird - This one is Greta Gerwig's directorial debut, so duh. It stars Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Lucas Hedges, and CMBYN's Elio himself Timothée Chalamet, who I guess will really be making the rounds over those couple of weeks. I love Saoirse and am excited to see how Gerwig uses her but I'm most excited to see Laurie Metcalf hopefully given a juicy film role, which come far too few between. 

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) - Looks like it'll be a girlfriend-boyfriend tag-team with Gerwig facing off with her plus-one Noah Baumbach and his new movie! In the wake of Frances Ha Baumbach's always going to be a yes, although I'm a little wary by this thing starring Adam Sandler. Don't get me wrong, Punch-drunk Love is probably my favorite Paul Thomas Anderson movie and everything, so I know Sandler is capable of greatness, but he's been especially foul over the past couple of years - can I even look at him now? The rest of the cast helps - Ben Stiller (of course) and Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson, oh yeah.

The Florida Project - This is Sean Baker's new film, following up on the glorious high of Tangerine two years ago. I'm sold on that alone. It's about a six-year-old little girl running wild around a motel on the outskirts of Disney World in Orlando, and it's also got a big role for Willem Dafoe (yay) as the motel's manager.

Madame Hyde - This is an "eccentric comedic thriller" starring Isabelle Huppert as "a timid and rather peculiar physics professor" who GETS HIT BY LIGHTNING and becomes a totally different person, "a newly powerful Mrs. Hyde with mysterious energy and uncontrollable powers." COME ON NOW.

Zama - The new movie from Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel, whose last movie, 2010's The Headless Woman, blew me away. I've been waiting a decade for this! The sad thing is I have gone a decade without sitting myself down to watch Martel's earlier films, The Holy Girl and La Ciénaga, about which i have also heard terrific things, so this finally kicks me in the tail to do that.

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Runners-up: Everything, for real, I want to see everything. But specifically there's Kiyoshi Kurosawa's spin on Invasion of the Body Snatchers called Before We Vanish. There's BPM (Beats Per Minute), the new movie from the director of the terrific Eastern Boys and is about ACT UP's work in the 80s; I heard huge raves about that at Cannes. There's Arnaud Desplechin's film Ismael’s Ghosts, which stars Mathieu Almaric, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Louis Garrel, and Marion Cotillard, wow. Similarly (amazing cast speaking) Mudbound from Dee Rees stars Carey Mulligan, Garrett Hedlund, Jonathan Banks, and Jason Clarke, among others. And then there's The Square, the new movie from Ruben Östlund (Force Majeure) which won the Palme d'Or.

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5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1971

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They call the 1970s the "Golden Age of Hollywood" and I guess Siri has been feeling like a Golden Girl lately because this is the third out of the past four editions of our Siri Game that the voice inside my telephone has given me a digit in the 70s when I've asked her for a digit between 1 & 100. Today she gave me "71" and so today we'll be hitting up The Movies of 1971. And speaking of the "Golden Age of Hollywood" there really truly were some astonishing movies that came out in 1971. (Including a certain movie that's got a remake coming out this very weekend!) My personal picks are a little off-center because I am a little off-center, but the runners-up really do represent a pretty astonishing bunch of movies themselves.

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1971

The Devils

(dir. Ken Russell)

-- released on July 16th 1971 --

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

(dir. Mel Stuart)

-- released on June 30th 1971 --

A Clockwork Orange

(dir. Stanley Kubrick)

-- released on December 19th 1971 --

The Abominable Dr. Phibes

(dir. Robert Feust)

-- released on May 18th 1971 --

Harold & Maude

(dir. Hal Ashby)

-- released on December 20th 1971 --

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Runners-up: The French Connection (dir. William Friedkin), McCabe and Mrs. Miller (dir. Robert Altman), The Last Picture Show (dir. Peter Bogdanovich), The Beguiled (dir. Donald Siegel), Play Misty For Me (dir. Clint Eastwood), Duel (dir. Steven Spielberg), Straw Dogs (dir. Sam Peckinpah), Bananas (dir. Woody Allen)...

... The Omega Man (dir. Boris Sagal), THX 1138 (dir. George Lucas), Let's Scare Jessica to Death (dir. John Hancock), A Bay of Blood (dir. Bava), The Andromeda Strain (dir. Wise), Beware of a Holy Whore (dir. Fassbinder), Whity (dir. Fassbinder), Wake in Fright (dir. Ted Kotcheff), The Boy Friend (dir. Ken Russell)

Never seen: Carnal Knowledge (dir. Mike Nichols), Vanishing Point (dir. Richard C. Sarafian), Sunday Bloody Sunday (dir. John Schlesinger), Death in Venice (dir. Luchino Visconti), What's the Matter With Helen? (dir. Curtis Harrington), Trafic (dir. Jacques Tati), Willard (dir. Daniel Mann)

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What are your favorite movies of 1971?

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