Hit Me With Your Best Shot: 'Paris Is Burning'

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We're thrilled to participate once again in The Film Experience's long-running series Hit Me With Your Best Shot, in which the film blog masses choose their favorite shot from selected movies.

Cinemunch is still out of the country, but Nathaniel's pick for this round of HMWYBS left us with no choice but to participate. The timeless portrait of a sub-sub-culture Paris Is Burning reveals new layers with each viewing and continues to influence pop culture today (see RuPaul's Drag Race for the most obvious example).

By the end of the documentary's short running time, the concept of identity has been prodded, poked, and challenged, leaving us wondering who we are and what relevance that question even has to our lives. The movie also places firmly in Nathan's top five of all time. If you haven't seen this one, head over to Netflix to watch it now!

First Runner-Up

Vogueing on the piers. Pushed to the water's edge, the fringes of society. 

Best Shot

Venus Xtravaganza gets her chance to look us in the eye, her one shot at permanence in the midst of the setting sun and the winds carrying music out and away over the water.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: 'The Sound of Music'

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We're thrilled to participate once again in The Film Experience's long-running series Hit Me With Your Best Shot, in which the film blog masses choose their favorite shot from selected movies. 

I'm going to keep this short because the CineMunch team may or may not be out of the country. But away or not, we can't pass up the chance to weigh in on a movie musical that has enchanted generations of gay lads (and lads and lasses of all stripes) AND that made our top ten moments of this year's Oscars ceremony.

I associate The Sounds of Music with all things light and carefree. From songs on mountaintops to impromptu puppet shows to new play clothes fashioned from drapes, Maria always knew the way to a kid's heart.

And that's why this shot always stood out for me. As a child I missed the sense of dread in the first act, and I tuned out the adult characters' tiresome conversations.

Only here did I finally see that something in their world was very, very wrong.

Georg von Trapp's act of defiance tears the innocence of the film to shreds. This is no drape; it's a symbol he won't allow on his body.

A pity that just when everything came together for the children, their world was upended. But maybe Maria prepared them for that, too.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: 'Gone With the Wind' Part 2

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: 'Gone With the Wind' Part 2

This is our fourth entry in The Film Experience's long-running series Hit Me With Your Best Shot, in which the film blog masses choose their favorite shot from selected movies. 

With Part 1 of Gone With the Wind under our belts, it's time to talk Best Shot from the two-hour long second act.

Part 2 finds the Old South in ruins and the Yankees in control, but with Scarlett's help (and delusions), the action turns from a destitute plantation to an entrepreneurial enterprise to an all-out fantasy world (a la The Queen of Versailles) fortified with Rhett Butler's millions.

But mixed among these dramatic developments is some subtler imagery.

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: 'Gone With the Wind' Part 1

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: 'Gone With the Wind' Part 1

This is our third entry in The Film Experience's long-running series Hit Me With Your Best Shot, in which the film blog masses choose their favorite shot from selected movies. 

From the first frames of the 1939 epic Gone With the Wind, it's clear the action takes place in an alternate reality. It's a place where slaves are euphemistically billed as "House Servants," and delusions of grandeur run wild, with the Old South fetishized as a time when "the age of Chivalry took its last bow [...] the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave."

Let's call a spade a spade: Gone With the Wind is racist to its core.

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Conquering the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies Nominations List

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We're embarking on a new project here at CineMunch. With the realization that the third(!?) installment of the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films list is coming in less than three years*--and with it a few personal milestones of our own (the end of our 20sWHAT!?)--we've decided to buck up and take on the classic-movie challenge of all classic-movie challenges: watching all 400 nominated films from the AFI's 10th Anniversary list.

Call it Beach Body Insanity for the sedentary set.

We have our work cut out for us: 196 films as-yet-unseen by both of us, plus 64 more that only Nathan hasn't seen and 2 more (ha!) for Matt. All with a deadline of January 1, 2017. But we will persevere, because what is this life but an excuse to set arbitrary challenges for ourselves?

Of course this isn't entirely arbitrary. Yes, critics have perhaps rightly criticized the AFI's list for being too much of a popularity contest, and yes it's disappointing that every foreign film in the history of ever is by definition excluded. But we also know we have a long way to go in educating ourselves on movies from before our time (we tend to focus on what's here and what's now), and popularity contests have always helped reveal what makes a culture tick.

In any case, we encourage you to play along (stay tuned for the master list of films!), and we appreciate your words of encouragement, especially for the much-feared collection of Westerns (ugh) that await us.

First up is Gone With the Wind, a catch-up for Nathan, which we'll be watching for The Film Experience's brilliant series Hit Me With Your Best Shot. (We previously participated in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and L.A. Confidential.)

So there you have it. The declaration is public. The deadline set. Bring on the films.

*At least, everyone in the industry seems to agree that A) there will be another list and B) it will come out, like clockwork, in 2017. Let's hope that's the case.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: 'L.A. Confidential'

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: 'L.A. Confidential'

This is our second entry in The Film Experience's long-running series Hit Me With Your Best Shot, in which the film blog masses choose their favorite shot from selected movies. 

First, a confession. One of us had not seen this film prior to watching it for this series. You can safely bet his name starts with "N" and ends with "athan." So maybe it's no surprise the images that remain burned in our retinas after one viewing are the images designed by the filmmakers to do just that. The lingering shots. The shots that challenge the viewer to look away while also inviting her to look closer.

Second, a note of caution. If you, like one of us a few days ago, have yet to see this film, you should probably stop reading here. Seventeen-year-old spoilers ahead!

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'

We've been superfans of The Film Experience for years (thank you, Nathaniel, for introducing us to the term "actressexual"). So now that our own blog is up and running, we're thrilled to finally participate in the TFE series Hit Me With Your Best Shot, in which the film blog masses share their favorite shots from selected movies.

Conveniently for us, the first movie this time 'round is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (our defining film of the 2000s). So here and now, in the middle of our week-long celebration of its 10-year anniversary, let's give thanks for the visual richness that helps make Eternal Sunshine the surrealist/realist work of art that it is.

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