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Sep 4, 2024 | 
thecontending.com | David Phillips
On Saturday, Richard Gere turned 75. Once a week, here at the Contending we will celebrate the birthdays of filmmakers, and actors (film and TV) by creating a top 7 list of their best work. Why 7? Because it’s a pretty number, and everyone does 10. We are doing 7. There are some minor (but not hard and fast rules):Filmmakers can be directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, composers, etc.
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Sep 2, 2024 | 
thecontending.com | David Phillips
We are just two days from the Venice premiere of Director Todd Phillips’ sequel to his stunningly successful Joker from 2019 (which now feels like a millennium ago). Joker is easily one of the more polarizing movies in recent years.
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Aug 28, 2024 | 
thecontending.com | David Phillips
Today David Fincher turns 62. Once a week, here at the Contending we will celebrate the birthdays of filmmakers, and actors (film and TV) by creating a top 7 list of their best work. Why 7? Because it’s a pretty number, and everyone does 10. We are doing 7. There are some minor (but not hard and fast rules):Filmmakers can be directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, composers, etc.
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Aug 27, 2024 | 
thecontending.com | David Phillips
In recent years, Kate Winslet has found more critical success on television than in film. Her new movie Lee, about the famous (and even notorious) WWII Photojournalist Lee Miller aims to change that. Lee opens on 9/27. Co-stars include Alexander Skarsgard, Marion Cotillard, Andy Samberg, and Andrea Riseborough. Here’s a first look:VIDEO
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Aug 25, 2024 | 
thecontending.com | David Phillips
Is it a mockumentary if it isn’t mocking anything? This is the question I started to ask myself while trying to classify Director Robert Kolodny’s unconventional biopic (and feature film debut) of the great (perhaps the greatest) featherweight boxer Guglielmo Papaleo, better known as Willie Pep. Most of the time when a film or show is shot as a faux documentary, it’s typically a comedy like The Office, or, on occasion, a horror/sci-fi film like District 9.
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Aug 25, 2024 | 
thecontending.com | David Phillips
No matter how one may feel about superhero movies based on comics made for children, there can be no dismissal of what Marvel Studios and the MCU accomplished. For a decade Marvel got scores of moviegoers to invest in every film they produced. The studio boldly connected every film to a central story that played out whether you were watching an Avengers movie, or the kinda/sorta stand-alone films about Iron Man, Captain America, or even the mostly silly Thor films.
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Aug 23, 2024 | 
thecontending.com | David Phillips
When American Graffiti was released in August of 1973, it was virtually impossible to imagine how a film about a group of teens spending their last night together after graduation in 1962 in Modesto, California could have become such a sensation. While in retrospect, the film sports a remarkable cast (Harrison Ford, Richard Dreyfuss, Cindy Williams, and Mackenzie Phillips), all pre-stardom.
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Aug 19, 2024 | 
awardsdaily.com | David Phillips
The first thing that occurs to you when you sit across from Thomas Goodman-Hill is how little in common he has with his Baby Reindeer character Darrien. He’s not dark, gloomy, or disturbing in the slightest. In fact, he’s immensely cheerful and quick to smile. Actors are magicians, man. How could anyone argue otherwise after watching Goodman-Hill play a well-to-do television producer who grooms a desperate young comic, only to drug him and take advantage of him while he’s unconscious?
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Aug 19, 2024 | 
awardsdaily.com | David Phillips
Producers Michele Smith and Sophia Dilley first worked together on the terrific Billie Holiday documentary Billie in 2019. A film that was oddly overlooked despite how deep it went into Holiday’s remarkable and ultimately tragic story. Thankfully, the same fate did not befall their new Emmy nominated documentary series STAX: Soulsville, USA. In covering the history of the record label that birthed such greats as Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Rufus and Carla Thomas, Booker T.
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Aug 18, 2024 | 
awardsdaily.com | David Phillips
My first contact with the impossibly handsome iconic French actor Alain Delon, was of all things an Italian film–Rocco and his Brothers from 1960, directed by the great Luchino Visconti. I was having a terrible bout with insomnia, so I cued up the Criterion Channel to look for something I knew of but had not seen. Being a boxing aficionado and a Visconti fan, Rocco and his Brothers jumped right out at me.
