skimpole

Paris, Texas

I think Jim Carrey not only gives a good performance as the Riddler in Batman Forever, but that is a better movie than Batman Returns. The latter has a better reputation because Tim Burton has a deservedly better reputation than Joel Schumacher. But Carrey's Riddler is surprisingly cool and effective, while Burton gets the whole idea of the Penguin wrong. The whole point of the original character was that this silly looking popinjay was actually a cunning, ruthless criminal. But Burton made it into a warped version of Edward Scissorhands (and the idea of having his minions be actual penguins, you know small flightless birds who are very awkward outside of water, is one of the silliest in the history of big budget movies.)

The Right Stuff Splash

Tess The Man With Two Brains

Does anyone know why "Goldfinger" didn't get a nomination for 1964? Or any of the songs from A Hard Day's Night?

Well since the awards were handed out in late February, the Congressional Intervention took place in March, I doubt the Schiavo case had that much influence.

I saw four movies last week. Bright Victory got Arthur Kennedy an oscar nomination in a classic oscarbait part. In this case, he loses his sight in the war and has to adapt to being blind. As such, it's a competent, tasteful story, and Kennedy gives a competent performance. Though the performance itself wouldn't make my top 5, or top 10 for 1951. The Post may be the best Spielberg film since A.I. While not as good as that movie, or even close to it, it's an entertaining movie. The civics lesson is done with a lighter touch than in Munich, Bridge of Spies or Lincoln. Meryl Streep actually gives an admirable performance, and while Tom Hanks' Ben Bradlee is no match for Jason Robards', it works well enough. And while doing the Pentagon Papers from the view of The Washington Post is an odd way of doing it, the result works fairly well. Latcho Drom is a documentary and also a musical that trace the Romani/Gypsy world from India to Europe. It's vibrant and filled with music, and deserves to be much better known. The Other Side of Hope may be one of the funniest comedies I've seen in some time, even though I tend to ignore Hollywood comedies. Here Kaurismaki's renowned deadpan humor is used in the story of a desperate, somewhat ingenuous Syrian immigrant who encounters a plump middle aged man who abruptly leaves his wife and decides to take over an underwhelming restaurant Imagine Chaplin's warmth and Keaton's poker face.

1. Carnival in Flanders, Jacques Feyder, France 2. Toni, Jean Renoir, France 3. Aerograd, Alexander Dovzhenko, USSR

Is there a reason why none of the songs from Purple Rain were nominated that year? Original Song can be so confusing. I often can't tell whether a song hasn't been nominated because it wasn't original enough, or because the Academy were squares.

Days of Heaven

One thing I dislike about the Oscars is that so much is about predicting who will win, rather than wondering who deserves to win. To take the example of Best Actor, why does Oldman deserve the award more than Day-Lewis, aside from the idea "that it's his turn" while Day-Lewis already has three?

Have you seen Wonderstruck, a different movie from Wonder?

"I love Eleanor Parker in Caged: she's so much more quotable than Davis or Swanson." ----No-one ever.

I don't. Even confining myself to Hollywood roles, Astaire for The Band Wagon, Stewart for The Naked Spur, Widmark for Pickup on South Street, Mason for Julius Caesar, Gable in Mogambo and Edmond O'Brien for The Bigamist all appear worthier.

Last week I saw five movies. Let's start with two of the biggest box office disappointments of 1977: The Exorcist II: the Heretic and Sorcerer. The first is probably the most loathed sequel of all time, and it's example A in the supposedly unmitigated disaster of Richard Burton's post Virginia Woolf career. Sorcerer has seen a bit of a revival in its critical fortunes in this decade, with an improved blue-ray. So let's take a look again without being shocked by the gallons of red ink. About the first, if you loved the original, the sequel is a garish disgrace. But what if you didn't like the original? Then director John Boorman's choices are more reasonable. Since everyone now knows demonic possession is real, there's no need to repeat the original's slow development, and a different strategy is in order. The result is, kind of weird, and not especially effective, but is worth a look. Burton isn't brilliant, but he's certainly competent. And the movie seems to suggest that he is the heretic of the title. His belief in the reality of evil almost makes him its victim and slave, which is certainly a better idea than the original's that the sexuality of teenage girls is demonic. I will agree that Louise Fletcher's role is just jaw-droppingly awful. Her oscar win the year earlier was clearly because viewers thought, not unreasonably, that One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was a better movie than Tommy, while more people saw her role than saw The Story of Adele H, Hester Street and Hedda put together. Forman clearly was excellent at using Fletcher's limited talents into a role where her limited range could appear as subtlety. Sorcerer is basically a retread of The Wages of Fear whose main advantage is that it has a lot more money and a quarter-century of special effects development to play with. But the big scene of trying to get the trucks over a ridiculously feeble washed out bridge, just adds danger to danger such that it ends up appearing less real. And Friedkin has skimped on character: Yves Montand and Charles Vanel were clearly unlikeable people in the original, but there was more to them. A comparison with the original scene by scene, shows Sorcerer's weaknesses. On the plus side there's some cool jungle cinematography. On the other hand, the sequence where Vanel's counterpart dies, the sudden death of two of the drivers, the death of the original "fourth" driver, none of these are improvements. Also the music score of Tangerine Dream has not dated well, and it muffs a crucial sound effect. Godzilla, the 2014 Hollywood blockbuster, get a better reception than Godzilla, the 1998 Hollywood blockbuster. But it isn't really a better movie. The clashes between Godzilla and the bad monsters is sluggishly and confusingly shot, and resembles Pacific Rim. The new movie does more to emphasize the human interest. Did you know that studly military men really like their hot babe wives and their adorable moppet children? If you didn't, then this movie will be a source of endless revelation! El Norte is the little independent movie that did. It got an oscar nomination for screenplay and it got respect for treating a serious subject. But a comparison with America America shows that the latter is a tougher film. Granted that the characters are brother and sister, and granted that many Catholics take premarital chastity very seriously. But you'd think two people in the early twenties would be a little more curious about the opposite sex. And granted again, working class African-American life in eighties Los Angeles is distinctly different from working class illegal Hispanic immigrant life in eighties Los Angeles. But the same year's My Brother's Wedding shows a richer, more complex tapestry of life. So the movie of the week is Phantom Thread. One sees the movie and becomes enraptured by its sheer craft, the care that the director devotes to every aspect of the movie. Soon one also becomes aware of the work and nuance that Daniel Day-Lewis and Lesley Manville put into their performances. It's not a movie for every taste: but it certainly a movie that shows its subject with realism and insight.

1. Les Miserables, Raymond Bernard, France 2. The Goddess, Yonggang Wu, China 3. Happiness, Aleksandr Medvedkin, Soviet Union 4. Maskerade, Willi Forst, Austria 5. Three Songs About Lenin, Dzigo Vertov, Soviet Union

From Killer of Sheep (1977) Henry G. Sanders, Kaycee Moore

Just out of curiosity, why would you prefer her to Kim Novak in Vertigo?

1. Zero for Conduct Jean Vigo, France 2. Dragnet Girl Yasujiro Ozu, Japan 3. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse Fritz Lang, Germany

Not a problem I would think this year for best actor, since I haven't read a critic who thinks Washington's performance was truly award worthy.

Phantom Thread: There will be sowing!

Well it's been more than eleven years since I posted this, and I think most of these movies stand up. Henry V, Richard III, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut and The Pianist could use a little more love, especially the first two. But on the whole...

I saw three movies this week. The Unsinkable Molly Brown does little to change my view that the 1964 Oscars were not very well thought out. Unmemorable score is matched to a banal plot: how long will it take Debbie Reynolds to realize that the approval of the nouveau riche of Denver matters less than true love. Well as it turns out, it takes the whole movie. It Comes at Night is a post-apocalyptic movie that's less interesting than the post-apocalyptic movie I saw last week. This one is about isolated people terrified by an unstoppable plague and each other. Competent on its own terms, its hopelessness is kind of irritating. The Secret of the Grain was the best movie I saw last week, as well as this month. It's a rich portrait of a (I believe Tunisian family) where the newly-unemployed patriarch tries to open a restaurant with his ex-wife as the cook. It has plenty of fairly well thought out and nuanced characters. As I am listening to an interminable and banal monster picture, it's striking how much tension the movie gets from a dish accidentally left behind in a car trunk where a son takes it to hide from a romantic paramour. Incidentally I also rewatched Heat. It's fantastic.

Somebody should check which nominees in the six major Oscar categories from 1927-1980 have never appeared on TCM. (Aside from the no longer extant The Patriot, of course.)

I have an Oscar trivia question, which I am asking because I genuinely do not know the answer. 1936 was the first year that the supporting acting categories were introduced, and the first year where there were 20 acting nominations in total. Leaving aside that year, does anyone know the year in which there were the most actors who had never been nominated before? Does anyone know the year when the least previously unnominated actors nominated?