From the turn-of-the-century Northwest to seedy 70’s NYC, from an 80’s morgue to 90’s Japan to the modern-day midwest, the oldest profession in the world is onscreen to stay. Here are five timeless performances that are worth the peep show.
Julie Christie is exhilarating in her Oscar-nominated turn as the smart and sexy Constance Miller, a no-nonsense businesswoman in the wild and wicked Northwest who just happens to be in the business of selling sex. In fact, it’s Warren Beatty’s dream chaser John McCabe who is the bimbo to Miller’s sly fox. Like a whore himself, he needs the professional madam’s charms and chops to make a living more than she needs him as a partner in their bordello/tavern venture. Sex-positive feminism at its finest.
It’s late August. Our brains have been fried by lust for Nastia LiukinOlympic spirit. We’re ten days away from the start of fall festival season/Oscar frenzy proper. For these reasons and probably loads more, we woke up this morning desperately in need of something to obsess over that would involve no brain power whatsoever.
And Thom Powers, in his infinite wisdom as documentary programmer for the Toronto International Film Festival, provided, by programming Paris, Not France, a documentary which purports to offer an exploration of “the businesswoman and the human being behind the public persona that is Paris Hilton…Modelled [sic] after the 1960s “it”-girl film Darling.” We’ve thus spent half the day digging up as much info on the film as we can find. Here’s what we know as of 2:04 PM, August 19, 2008:
Daniel Day-Lewis and Julie Christie continued their winning streaks over the weekend, each picking up the top individual prizes at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. The WGA had issued SAG a waver to allow them to produce a telecast with professional writers, which thus made it cool for stars to show up, which thus created the conditions for this photograph of Angelina Jolie in what appears to be a tie-dyed chiffon sack, thus giving credence to recent rumors that she may be carrying two new doses of Pitt spawn.
Of the many “specialty” films which expanded their theater count in hopes of capitalizing on Oscar nominations, only Atonement failed to see a bump in percentage this weekend, with The Savages gaining 2% even as it shed screens. But the real story of weekend in the indie box office realm––which Variety buries at the very bottom of their writeup––is that Cristian Mungiu’s Cannes-winning, Oscar-ignored drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days earned $48,176 across just 2 screens.
Ben Fritz gets off a nice joke about Sylvester Stallone being an “ancient warrior” in his mass-market box office writeup, but it must be little comfort to the team behind Rambo, which opened in second place behind something I had never heard of called Meet the Spartans. Cloverfield dropped almost 70% in its second weekend, which makes sense considering the film’s hype peaked six months ago.
Not that I should be worried about any speculation found in Entertainment Weekly, but I was annoyed this past weekend when I saw the magazine’s “Oscar Buzz-O-Meter”, which is only the latest place to find Amy Adams listed as a highly potential Oscar nominee for Enchanted. The piece notes that, “glowing reviews for her regal turn in Enchanted — and the $70 million it grossed in its first 12 days — could earn Adams her second Oscar nomination.”
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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Daniel Day-Lewis and Julie Christie continued their winning streaks over the weekend, each picking up the top individual prizes 
