skimpole

Interesting. I haven't seen most of the nominees, but I will say that the unmentioned The Assassin is a better movie than Mad Max.

I would consider roles that weren't actually nominated.

Darling, as I've mentioned before, strikes me as a very unimpressive movie. Of the best actress winners of the sixties, Smith is the only one I'd give the oscar to. Streisand comes close, and I'd nominate Taylor in Who's Afraid of Viriginia Woolf, but she wouldn't have a prayer against Persona. Even among the nominees for 1965, I'd prefer Julie Andrews.

Surely you mean 8:35 am Eastern time And, oh here's the Village Voice film Poll: http://www.villagevoice.com/filmpoll

I consider Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors and Red Desert to be 1964 films. The Brick and the Mirror is an Iranian movie about a cabbie who finds that a passenger has (deliberately) left a baby in his taxi.

James Mason in North by Northwest. And does anyone really dislike Claude Rains in The Adventures of Robin Hood? Also I keep forgetting what the motive of the murderer in Evil Under the Sun is, the perfect example of the solution being more interesting than the crime. So I'm not that upset with the murderer's actions. To say more would give away too much. Also Ray Bolger is clearly the most interesting character in Babes in Toyland, but that's incompetence on the part of the filmmakers. In versions of Ten Little Indians, I'm most sympathetic to the Blore character. Nor do I think are we supposed to dislike Norma Desmond. She's still a fine actress, while William Holden's character is a parasite who can't write a decent screenplay. Likewise, we're not supposed to share the protagonist's view of the "villain" in The Searchers, and we should be increasingly skeptical of the Corleone's view of its enemies in the first two Godfather movies.

Here's my top 10 for 1965: Help! The Flight of the Phoenix Charulata* Pierrot le Fou Le Bonheur Alphaville Chimes of Midnight Repulsion Doctor Zhivago The Brick and the Mirror

Clearly it was better for me to give than to receive. I got my nephew DVDs of The Day of the Jackal and All the President's Men. I got my niece a DVD of Invitation to the Dance, and my brother a DVD of Atlantic City, while I gave my sister a DVD of Two Days, One Night while both she and her husband got a copy of To The Wonder. Whether they will actually watch these DVDs is an open question. I actually asked for a copy of The Confession for Christmas, but clearly it was too awkward for them to get. So I got a lot of very generous gift certificates, which I used to get books.

It's hard to take this trolling seriously. I don't recall any female soldiers in Saving Private Ryan or The Thin Red Line. I only saw Flag of our Fathers once, and I'd be surprised if there were any female soldiers there.

...TCM shows the complete works of Straub/Huillet. I believe it's shown none of them. Also, I think of all the Godard films after Made in the USA it's only shown Tout va Bien. Nor has it shown any movies by Theo Angelopoulos or Raoul Ruiz.

And here's the Indiewire critics poll: http://www.indiewire.com/survey/indiewire-2015-year-end-critics-poll/best-film/ Personally I'm not enamored of this year, and was not that overly impressed with their #1 choice.

Nobody seems to have mentioned Fanny and Alexander, or The Shop Around the Corner.

I saw five movies this week. Peter the Great, Part One, is a 1937 Soviet film about the Russian monarch. It's actually based on a novel of his life by Alexei Tolstoy, a distant cousin of the more famous Leo, which happened to be according to some reports Stalin's favorite novel. Apparently the novel is slightly better than that, and so is the movie. The version I saw was based on an awful print, and it starts out poorly. And one can see the Stalinist elements when Peter bullies his nobles into following Western ways. It's certainly not formally or intellectually on the same level as Ivan the Terrible. But the lead performance is interesting, and there are some interesting battle scenes half way through the movie. Swing Shift starts off with Goldie Hawn being unrecognizable, then with the movie becoming more likeable as Hawn gets a war job and becoming her usual self. Her romance with Kurt Russell develops, but then Ed Harris returns and the movie loses what focus it has. The Forbidden Room is certainly the most interesting movie I saw this week. For once I appreciated Maddin's faux silent movie aesthetic, told in a series of interlocking weird stories that vaguely resemble A Manuscript Found in Saragossa. I saw part of Babes in Toyland when I was eight. Seeing the entire movie the problems with it become more apparent. While very colorful, and the battle of toys at the end does have seem genuine charm, there is a complete absence of genius. One problem is that Ray Bolger and Ed Wynn are patently more interesting than the leads, who are quite dull. Finally, there is A Walk among the Tombstones. I haven't actually seen Liam Neeson's vigilante movies before this, and I suspect that is a comparatively sober and competent example of it. The slightly unreal sadism of the villains becomes a problem the more one thinks about it, and there's a clumsiness with the added-on climax, supposedly much less depressing than the one in the original novel.

From Young Bess Henry VIII: Pray for my soul to release it from Purgatory Lord Edward: You have abolished Purgatory. Henry: Don't argue Ned.

Some presidents have appeared in movies: Sunrise at Campobello, Wilson, Lincoln, Thirteen Days, Nixon are the ones that immediately come to mind. I know there's been a movie where Andrew Johnson is the hero. And John Quincey Adams appears in Amistad after his presidency had ended. But what about the less obvious examples. What about Madison, Monroe, both Harrisons, Tyler, Polk, the four pre-Civil war presidents, as well as Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, McKinley, Taft, Harding and Coolidge?

I lived in a rather small town, and until I was 18, there were only two TV channels I could watch. This limited the kind of movies I could see on television. I remember staying up late on either New Years Day 1982 or the day before to rewatch Murder on the Orient Express which I had seen in prime time the year before. I remember that Hatari! followed it but it was too late for me to see it. And so I missed my first chance to watch a John Wayne movie. I also remember that year I had a chance to watch The Treasure of Sierra Madre on tv, but I didn't bother after the first twenty mintues.

This week I saw six movies: Morning for the Osone Family I'm afraid seemed less like the movie that showed the director's true feelings once freed from the restraints of the Showa Dictatorship, than a movie inclined to satisfy the new occupying power. Rich and Famous did not make that much of an impression on me. Having seen Candace Bergen for several years in "Murphy Brown," it's a bit surprising to see Jacqueline Bisset as the more sympathetic character. The movie did not get good reviews at the time or now in retrospect. Yet I feel like rereading the reviews since at least one admirer of Cukor finds hidden depths. The Crimson Kimono is full of interesting ideas, reminding us that Samuel Fuller was certainly the most intriguing of B-Movie directors. The performances strike me as a weakness: Pickup on South Street this isn't. The First Deadly Sin I watched for an interesting reason: the sequel to the original novel was serialized in the Sunday (actually Saturday) funnies around the time the movie came out. As such Frank Sinatra gives an interesting performance, even if the conclusion seems poorly thought out and crowd pleasing in a reactionary way. The Ceremony was the most interesting movie of the week, and certainly the better of the two Jacqueline Bisset movies that I saw. Stranger by the Lake is a thoughtful skilful thriller, with very explicit gay sex scenes. One can empathize with the basic concept: overwhelming sexual desire overriding basic common sense, though I suppose I would find the movie more effective if I found the central pair erotic, instead of unwise.

Well it certainly isn't Splash, much as I wish that it was. Sometimes, I feel like I'm in Cries and Whispers. Quite frankly, sometimes I wish I was in Paris, Texas or A woman under the Influence.

While clearly not a sociopath, Eric Blore in Top Hat is charmingly impertinent.

I disagree. Feature films have to start somewhere, but even if The Birth of a Nation is beyond the pale, that's still no excuse for choosing Wings over Sunrise, The Crowd and The Circus.

Premieres of Cries and Whispers and Watership Down and Death in Venice?! Now that's a good month. But I think somebody should check the Kurosawa tribute day, because I don't think the running times add up.

I thought Heavenly Creatures was going to be on. I can't say I like the change, but I'm sufficiently curious in Cukor to watch it.

I saw three films this week. Salt for Svanetia was clearly the best, with Kalatazov's trademark style in what is probably very questionable ethnography. This Changes Everything would probably have been better if Naomi Klein had reversed the ratio of audience self-congratulation to anti-capitalist activism. The Skeleton Twins was competent, but not particularly inspired. Although Bill Hader and Karen Wiig gave good performances, there wasn't anything especially touching or clever or profound.

The Birth of a Nation showed on TCM in 2006. It's not unreasonable to show it again.

Considering we had the Apu Trilogy earlier this week, I'd consider the stars of Pather Panchali Certainly Uma Das Gupta is my choice for the best actress of 1955.