kate winslet Tagged Articles at Cinematical

After Cinematical's new "Movies I Will Never See" series elicited a strong variety of reactions – both positive and negative - from readers, it occurred to us that there's a huge, untapped reservoir of existing films that we have actually seen, and it would probably be at least as interesting, if not more so, to go back and see how well they held up in the years since their release. These may be acclaimed classics that audiences simply haven't revisited on a regular basis, or condemned failures that might deserve a second look; but setting a statute of limitations of five years or more old (meaning before '04), we're going back to see how good are the bad movies, and how bad are the good ones - in other words testing their shelf life.

With James Cameron's Avatar looming large on the horizon, and the "event movie" filmmaker lauding his latest as no less than a worthy successor to the Highest-Grossing Movie of All Time, it seemed appropriate to see if Titanic was not only worth the hype that surrounded its original release, but to indicate whether it promised enough true and lasting greatness to entice fanboys and casual filmgoers alike to trust in the director as he debuts his next effort.

When you hear the name Mildred Pierce, and you happen to know your classic cinema, you probably go right to one woman: she of the big eyebrows and shoulder pads...better known as Joan Crawford. Crawford won her one and only Oscar for her role in Michael Curtiz's crime classic, and now another Oscar winning actress has signed for a remake of the noir tale, but this time it's for the small screen. Variety is reporting that Kate Winslet has joined forces with director Todd Haynes to star in a remake of Pierce as a cable miniseries.

Mildred Pierce was the story of a woman determined take on the restaurant world and make a better life for her daughters, only to have her eldest turn on her, and after much slapping and running up and down the stairs, Mildred finally *resorts to murder. The original film was based on James Cain's novel, and Haynes will be writing his script from the original source material rather than the 1945 film. Which I would assume is because not only would a miniseries require a little more material than a feature film, but also because of the changes that were made to Cain's story to keep the film in line with the production code at the time.

After the jump; why a Mildred Pierce remake might not be so bad, and Sonic Youth's tribute to Crawford's 'Mother with a heart of lead'...

Like plenty of you out there, I sat down to watch Brüno over the weekend and was treated to one of the more graphic sex scenes I've had the pleasure of witnessing in a long time. But unlike most sex scenes, this one wasn't about turning on the crowd, it was about getting laughs. Now in Brüno's case, the comedic effect was a deliberate one, but it did get me thinking about sex scenes in films that have had the opposite of their intended effect. So that's why today I've put together a list of sex scenes in movies that aren't the least bit sexy.

Showgirls
Let's start off with the big dog, shall we? When it comes to ridiculous on-screen sex, it doesn't get much dumber than Showgirls. If you don't believe me, do a quick search for a list of the worst sex scenes and this Eszterhas/Verhoeven turkey is usually the hands down winner -- and rightfully so. When it comes to low points, there really is too much to choose from, but the highlights include Elizabeth Berkley flailing about like an electrocuted dolphin while her partner, Kyle MacLachlan, is busy making 'barf faces' (which I suppose were meant to be ecstasy). So watch the clip in it's entirety here and see if you can make it to the end without bursting into laughter.

After the jump: more laughably bad sex scenes...

Accountability has been the watchword in Hollywood lately, especially after all the mess that followed Slumdog Millionaire. But just sometimes, a nice story comes out of Tinseltown, so why not celebrate it?

The BBC reports that the big names behind Titanic, Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio, and James Cameron, have pulled together $30,000 to help Millvina Dean, a 97-year-old woman who just so happens to be the last living survivor of the Titanic disaster. The woman, who has been struggling with steep monthly bills at her nursing home, had begun to auction personal belongings and Titanic memorabilia to make ends meet. Now a fund has been set up for her, and the Titanic trio pitched in. Fund creator Don Mullan said: "I laid down the challenge to the Titanic actors and directors to support the Millvina Fund and I was delighted with the generosity they have shown in meeting that challenge."

Remember that whole "women and children" first thing? When the lifeboats had to be rationed? She was one of those children, saved along with her mother and sibling by her dad, who then perished when the ship sunk.

Now if only those who are accountable for people's hardships could be as generous...

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

Well, Kate Winslet, you finally won your Oscar. Congratulations! It has been a long hard road since your first nomination, what was it? Fourteen years ago, for Sense and Sensibility? Then, let's see, the other nominations came for Titanic (1997), Iris (2001), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Little Children (2006) and finally The Reader. In-between, there were lots of other attempts to get nominated, with performances in Kenneth Branagh's amazing four-hour Hamlet (1996), Philip Kaufman's fascinating Quills (2000), the awful anti-death-penalty message movie The Life of David Gale (2003), the turgid Finding Neverland (2004), and even a remake of a former Oscar-winner, All the King's Men (2006).

Some people thought you should have been nominated for last year's Revolutionary Road (181 screens), rather than The Reader. But can I be honest? I thought they were both bloody boring, both filled to the brim with prestige with no room for art or soul. (They are what Manny Farber once termed "parade floats" or "white elephants.") Because, let's face it, if you really want an Oscar -- and who can blame you for that? -- you have to make a certain type of film. We can fight and complain, but that's just the way it is.

My good pal Kevin over at Moviefone just sent over a link to a blog that's posting what they claim is a list of this year's Academy Award winners -- saying, "We don't know who leaked this, but thanks a bunch! Enjoy folks." Of course there's a very good chance it's a fake, but as Kevin noted in our AIM conversation: "I mean, it looks right... the fact that Best Supporting Actress is outta nowhere somehow lends it credibility." He's referring to Amy Adams, who this site says is the winner of the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.

But she's not the only surprise in the lot -- both screenplay awards seem a bit fishy, with Best Adapted going to The Reader and Original Screenplay going to In Bruges. Don't get me wrong, I think In Bruges is fantastic -- but will it win the Oscar? Doubt it. And what about The Curious Case of Benjamin Button winning Best Costume Design? As far as the big awards, they claim Slumdog Millionaire wins Best Picture and Best Director, while Mickey Rourke and Kate Winslet take top acting honors and Heath Ledger, of course, slides away with the Best Supporting Actor win. Those are all expected wins, though.

Check out their full list after the jump and let us know what you think. (Please note that in no way do we advise you to throw a bunch of money down on these picks. You'd be a giant moron if you did. Just sayin' ...)

Once you realize that Academy Awards and quality correlate only sporadically, the only reason to watch is the hope of seeing something surprising or controversial. People slagged last year's weird Pilobolus shadow-puppet interludes, but what the hell: at least it was something I hadn't seen before. Seeing as how a lot of the substantive results seem like even more of a foregone conclusion than usual this year, there's even less motivation to watch. So here are seven pleasant surprises I'll watch for on Sunday in the hopes of keeping entertained.

1. The ceremony comes in at three hours or less. It hasn't happened in the modern era; the shortest ceremony since 1996 happened in 2005 -- the year of Million Dollar Baby -- and it ran three hours and fourteen minutes. Last year's festivities took 3:21. Look, I'm generally skeptical of accusations that the Oscars are "self-indulgent": it's an awards show put on by the industry for the industry. Of course they're self-indulgent. They're also boring, which seems to me the more relevant accusation. Ratings have been steadily declining, with last year an all time low. Shorter and snappier please. That they've offended Peter Gabriel by asking him to trim his nominated song performance to 65 seconds for the show seems, I hate to say it, like a step in the right direction.

400 Screens, 400 Blows is a weekly column that takes an in-depth look at the films playing below the radar, beneath the top ten, and on 400 screens or less.

The "Best Actress" Oscar category is usually pretty dull, for two reasons. The main reason is that movies are often generated with men in mind, but the other reason is that, when women actually do get great roles, they're usually too challenging or obscure for Academy voters to bother with. Voters prefer to stick with the usual, heavily dramatic, preferably suffering women characters. And this year is no different. Thus Angelina Jolie gets nominated for losing a child, rather than Michelle Williams for losing a dog. It doesn't matter that almost anyone you ask probably likes Wendy & Lucy (13 screens) better than Changeling; it's the degree of suffering we're talking about here. (Not to mention that Jolie's performance is based on a true story -- actual, real-life suffering -- while Williams' is not.)

That said, there's one thing the Academy likes better than suffering, and that's giving "make up" awards to actors, filmmakers and artists that they've overlooked, which explains why so many great talents have won for their worst work. (Prime example? Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman. I need say no more.) It's almost as if this year's Best Actress category has been specifically arranged, handicapped for the benefit of Kate Winslet, so that the six-time nominee can finally take home her first statue, for one of her least relevant films (though not her worst; that would be Iris). Not only is she in there for a Nazi/Holocaust movie -- a genre that she herself made fun of in an episode of "Extras" -- but the Academy made sure that her competition was so far behind her that there's practically no other choice.

Vanity Fair is known for their ambitious (and sometimes controversial) photo spreads, and whenever one pops up online -- with the exception of those ultra funky Hitchcock recreations -- the name most likely associated with them is Annie Leibovitz. She's worked as the featured portrait photographer for VF since 1983, and some of her most buzzed-about photos include the very pregnant (and very naked) Demi Moore Vanity Fair cover, as well as the sexed-up Miley Cyrus photo that caused quite the stir last year. Some of the more geeky Leibovitz images can be found in her series of Disney photographs featuring celebs recreating classic scenes from our favorite Walt Disney movies (read more about that here and here).

This time around, Leibovitz's Something Just Clicked collection for Vanity Fair features 10 partnerships that helped generate more than four dozen Oscar nods this year. The image above, featuring Christopher Nolan and Heath Ledger (The Risktakers), is of course a composite, but it's one of my favorites -- especially the way they position both Nolan and Ledger, with the former quietly sneaking off to the corner away from the spotlight. Other partnerships photographed include Woody Allen and Penelope Cruz (The Odd Couple), Nicole Kidman and Baz Luhrmann (The Colonists), Gus Van Sant and Sean Penn (The Milk Men), Sam Mendes and Kate Winslet (The Partnership) and Darren Aronofsky and Mickey Rourke (The Ringers), among others. Check out a few of our favorites below, then swing over to Vanity Fair to see the rest.

The Critics Choice Awards, given out by the Broadcast Film Critics Association, have successfully picked the Best Picture Oscar winner seven out of the last ten years (they went for Saving Private Ryan instead of Shakespeare in Love; Sideways instead of Million Dollar Baby and Brokeback Mountain instead of Crash). So things are looking better and better for Slumdog Millionaire, which all but swept the awards last night, taking Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Young Actor, and Best Composer.

Heath Ledger won Best Supporting Actor, and The Dark Knight won "Best Action Movie," a nonsense new category invented for the sole purpose of giving The Dark Knight an award. Sean Penn won for Milk, surprising no one. Anne Hathaway for best actress (tying with Meryl Streep) and Kate Winslet for Best Supporting Actress were less foregone conclusions.

Mildly off-topic, John Adams won the award for best TV Movie; Generation Kill, which remains my favorite film of any sort in 2008, wasn't even nominated, which is absurd.

The full list of winners is after the jump.