skimpole
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Posts posted by skimpole
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I managed to see seven movies last week. Hell or High Water was distinctly hurt by my having rewatched The Last Picture Show about six hours earlier. Where the later movie shows what it would actually be like to live in Texas, the former present Texas pastiche (does everyone have to wear ten gallon hats?). Since Jeff Bridges stars in both, the performance in the latter doesn't rebound to his credit either. And the result is morally convenient, to say the least. Grass is a mildly interesting silent documentary about Central Asian nomads. Suicide Squad deserves all the contempt it has received. The disaster the squad is fighting is actually caused by its existence, the movie exhibits a brutal and callous attitude, and only Margot Robbie's character actually has a personality (and that isn't full developed), Landscape Suicide is an odd experimental movie which deals with several reflections on murderers living in the Mid-West. Whirlpool of Fate is an interesting silent movie about the adventures of a young woman which shows more spirit and less sentiment than its American counterparts. The first time director is a promising young man named Jean Renoir. Love with the Proper Stranger asks the question whether it is a good idea to marry a stranger who got you pregnant if he looks like Steve McQueen. Not surprisingly, the answer is as sentimental and dishonest as this suggests. Wood is very pretty, but her family is a stage caricature. Horse Money is a very demanding film about the story of an immigrant from Cape Verde and his life in Portugal. It's not an easy film to watch.
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Actor
Malcolm McDowell, A Clockwork Orange
Dirk Bogarde, Death in Venice
Jean-Pierre Leaud, Out 1: Noli me Tangere, Two English Girls
Warren Beatty, McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Paul Scofield, King Lear
Runner-ups: Gene Hackman (The French Connection), Michael Caine (Get Carter), Woody Allen (Bananas), Donald Sutherland (Klute), Gene Wilder (Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory), Timothy Bottoms (The Last Picture Show), Benoit Ferreux (Murmur of the Heart), David Gulpilil (Walkabout), Walter Matthau (A New Leaf), Sean Connery (The Anderson Tapes), Bud Cort (Harold and Maude), Kenzo Kawarasaski (The Ceremony), Jon Finch (Macbeth), George C. Scott (The Hospital), Dennis Weaver (Duel), Alan Bates (The Go-Between), Dustin Hoffman (Straw Dogs), Topol (Fiddler on the Roof)
Actress
Juliet Berto, Out 1: Noli me Tangere
Jane Fonda, Klute
Julie Christie, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Go-Between
Jenny Agutter, Walkabout
Twiggy, The Boy FriendRunner-ups: Elaine May (A New Leaf), Ruth Gordon (Harold and Maude), Akiko Koyama (The Ceremony), Kika Markham (Two English Girls), Stacey Tendeter (Two English Girls), Goldie Hawn ($), Glenda Jackson (Sunday, Bloody Sunday),Supporting Actor:
Michael Lonsdale, Out 1: Noli me Tangere
Tom Baker, Nicholas and Alexandra
Jeff Bridges, The Last Picture Show
Roy Scheider, The French Connection
Fernando Rey, The French Connection
Runner-ups: Ben Johnson (The Last Picture Show), Jason Robards (Johnny Got his Gun), Warren Oates (Two-Lane Blacktop), Jack MacGowran (King Lear), Ian Hogg (King Lear), Hugh Millais (McCabe and Mrs. Miller), Anthony Sharp (A Clockwork Orange), Luc Roeg (Walkabout)
Supporting Actress
Lea Massari, Murmur of the Heart
Cybil Shepherd, The Last Picture Show
Ellen Burstyn, The Last Picture Show
Bulle Ogier, Out 1: Noli me Tangere
Vivian Pickles, Harold and Maude
Runner-ups: Eileen Brennan (The Last Picture Show), Bernadine Laflont (Out 1: Noli me Tangere), Cloris Leachman (The Last Picture Show), Margaret Leighton (The Go-Between), Nobuko Otowa (The Ceremony), Silvano Mangano (Death in Venice), Miriam Karlin (A Clockwork Orange), Diana Rigg (The Hospital), Sally Bryant (The Boy Friend),
Not seen: Kotch, Mary, Queen of Scots, Sometimes a Great Notion, Who is Harry Kellerman and why is he saying these Terrible Things about me?------There are 15 movies that have been nominated for all four acting oscars. The first was My Man Godfrey, the latest was Silver Linings Playbook. None of the 15 won all four awards. (The closest was probably A Streetcar Named Desire.) The last time I had a movie nominated for all four awards was The Misfits ten years earlier.
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1967
- Two for the Road
- Weekend
- Playtime
- The Young Girls of Rochefort
- Le Samourai
- Marketa Lazarova
- The Red and the White
- La Collectionneuse
- Mouchette
- 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her
Runner ups: Bonnie and Clyde, Belle de Jour, Branded to Kill, War and Peace, Oedipus Rex
1968
- Yellow Submarine
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
- Once upon a time in the West
- Oliver!
- Rosemary’s Baby
- The Battle of Algiers *
- The Colour of Pomegranates*
- The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach
- If…
- Valley of the Bees
Runner-ups: Death by Hanging. The Adventures of Goopy and Bagha, Je t'aime, Je t'aime, Shame, The Producers, Stolen Kisses, Le'Enfance Nue, The Hour of the Wolf
1969
- Andrei Rublev *
- The Red Tent
- Z
- Army of Shadows
- Walden/Diaries, Notes and Sketches
- The Milky Way
- A touch of Zen
- The Wild Bunch
- Kes
- Ice
Runner-ups: The Damned, Midnight Cowboy, Boy
1970
- The Confession
- Tora! Tora! Tora!
- The Conformist
- Le Petit Theatre de Jean Renoir
- Five Easy Pieces
- The Red Circle
- Deep End
- The Wild Child
- Little Big Man
- The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
Runner-ups: The Ballad of Cable Hogue, Woodstock, Tristana, Days and Nights of the Forest, Wanda, Zabriskie Point
1971
- The Sorrow and the Pity *
- Death in Venice
- McCabe and Mrs. Miller
- Bananas
- Two English Girls
- King Lear
- The Last Picture Show
- A Clockwork Orange
- Murmur of the Heart
- Walkabout
Runner-ups: Land of Silence and Darkness, Duel, Get Carter, Out 1: Noli me Tangere, The Go-Between, The Ceremony, The Boy Friend, A New Leaf, Klute, Four Nights of a Dreamer
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This is certainly the most romantic scene in Blue Velvet, though given the nature of the movie, that should be taken with a grain of salt:
This scene from Solaris is one of the most romantic:
Though the expression on their faces shows trouble to come, which does follow shortly afterwards:
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I would think that Vivien Leigh's two oscar winning performances are sufficiently different that one should consider her.
One thing is that once actresses achieve a certain type of fame, they become typecast. One reason that Streep appears so versatile is that after Sophie's Choice is that she became almost a default choice, especially over the last quarter-century as other actresses of her generation were ignored. Katherine Hepburn tended not to play stupid people. People weren't that interested in seeing Ginger Rogers in dramas. One could go on.
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Paulette Godard? Judy Garland?
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What about examples of true love in movies that don't actually involve sex?
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Any movies with anomalous years we should be aware of?
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Comparing the Academy Award Winners with the poll sixties version
Supporting Actress
Jones, defeated 3-1, six way tie for 2nd
Moreno, winner 3-1
Duke, no votes
Rutherford, no votes
Kedrova, winner 4-3
Winters, defeated 4-1. five way tie for 2nd
Dennis, winner 5-1
Parson, winner 3-2
Gordon, winner 6-1
Hawn, no votes
Supporting Actor
Ustinov (1), winner 6-1
Chakiris, no votes
Begley, no votes
Douglas, defeated 2-1 seven way tie for second
Ustinov (2), no votes
Balsam, no votes
Matthau, winner 2-1
Kennedy, no votes
Albertson, no votes
Young, no votes
Actress
Taylor (1), no votes
Loren, defeated 2-1, three way tie for fourth
Bancroft, winner 3-2-2
Neal, winner 2-1
Andrews, defeated 3-1, six way tie for second
Christie, defeated 2-1, five way tie for third
Taylor (2), winner 5-1
Hepburn (1), no votes
Hepburn (2), winner 3-1
Streisand, defeated 3-1 six way tie for second
Smith, defeated 3-2
Actor
Lancaster, defeated 4-2-1 three way tie for third
Schell, winner 3-2
Peck, defeated 4-2, two way tie for second
Poitier, no votes
Harrison, defeated 3-2
Marvin, winner 3-2
Scofield, defeated 4-1. four way tie for second
Steiger, defeated 3-2-1, four way tie for third
Robertson, no votes
Wayne, no votes
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Sutherland will be on my 1975 list for supporting actor, for what I think is his greatest performance of all:
I like Donald Sutherland as an actor, and he actually does win an award for Best Actor. You probably won't guess the movie. But often, Sutherland just can't make the top five for some reason. I've never seen The Day of the Locust. It has a good reputation because it gets 3.5 stars in Maltin's guide. But while Hoffman and Voight are great in Midnight Cowboy, I didn't like Darling or Sunday Bloody Sunday either.
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Is Natalya Bondarchuk lead or supporting in Solaris? It takes some time before the viewer actually meets her.
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I saw six movies last week. The Limits of Control is certainly one of Jim Jarmusch's more underrated movies. I found it effortlessly cool, consistently well sustained and quite enjoyable. Denial is about the Lipstadt/Irving trial. I didn't like David Hare's script for The Hours or for The Reader, and I didn't like the script that he wrote for this movie. Part of the problem is that the story isn't really about Lipstadt. The real story is a how an apologist for Hitler managed to get a reputation as a serious expert about Nazi Germany for more than three decades. That Rachel Weisz is understandably upset is understandable from an audience identification viewpoint, but the reason Irving chose to sue her for libel was because he thought she was weak, and not as well-versed in the minutia of the second world war. The Pumpkin Eater is an Academy award nominee from 1964, which leads to the cinephile's least favorite question, what's wrong with this example of kitchen sink realism/British "new wave." (Incidentally, and not helpfully, one of Hare's favorite underrated movies.) The subject matter is supposed to be more mature, but Bancroft is just mostly miserable. There is a horribly crude scene when Mason confronts Bancroft about Finch's adulteries. But one problem with the movie is that it doesn't explain the central character. Finch is a selfish womanizer, despite the pain it causes Bancroft. But he is also a wonderful father. That in itself need nor be surprising. One can be a bad husband and a good father. The problem is that he is the children's stepfather. Why would he love his wife's children more than his wife? I suspect the movie was too satisfied to be dealing with such "mature" material as adultery, abortion, "excessive" childbearing to really think through the question. The Marseillaise is a fine movie, and one wonders why this Renoir movie from 1938 is not better known. It shows all his strengths, fluid camera work and fine character study, along with humorous anecdotes. In this case the movie deals with the second French Revolution, in this case of 1792, that overthrew the monarchy. Rather fittingly this is seen from the picture of the people: political leaders are not seen except for a haughty Marie Antoinette and a muddled Louis XVI, who thinks toothbrushing and potatoes may be good ideas. I have now seen four David Lean/Noel Coward collaborations, and Blithe Spirit does nothing to change my view that Brief Encounter is the keeper. Amusing, but not particularly so. The Avengers: the Age of Ultron is hardly a necessary movie, but it's an enjoyable one. Joss Wheedon does show genuine skill and construction, even if Tony Stark and Captain America do much of the character heavy lifting. (A Hulk/Black Widow romance seems perfunctory.)
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Actor
Yves Montand, The Confession
George C. Scott, Patton
Jack Nicholson, Five Easy Pieces
Jean-Louis Trintignat, The Conformist
Alain Delon, The Red Circle
Runner-ups: Francois Truffaut (The Wild Child), Dustin Hoffman (Little Big Man), Robert Mitchum (Ryan's Daughter), Fernando Rey (Tristana), Jason Robards (The Ballad of Cable Hogue), Donald Sutherland (MASH), Jean-Pierre Leaud (Bed and Board), Soumitra Chatterjee (Days and Nights in the Forest), Robert Stephens (The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes), Jean Yanne (The Butcher), John Moulder Brown (Deep End), Jean-Pierre Cargol (The Wild Child), James Fox (Performance), Tony Lo Bianco (The Honeymoon Killers), Elliott Gould (MASH), Jean-Claude Brially (Claire's Knee), John Cassavetes (Husbands),
Actress
Catherine Denueve, Tristana
Barbara Loden, Wanda
Jane Asher, Deep End
Claude Jade, Bed and Board
Dominique Sanda, The Garden of the Finzi-ContinisRunner-ups: Stephane Audran (The Butcher), Glenda Jackson (Women in Love), Shirley Stoler (The Honeymoon Killers), Jenny Agutter (The Railway Children), Aurora Comu (Claire's Knee), Ailda Valli (The Spider's Stratagem), Daria Halprin (Zabriskie Point)Supporting Actor:
Mick Jagger, Performance
Peter Falk, Husbands
Gabriele Ferzetti, The Confession
Yves Montand, The Red Circle
Fernand Sardou, The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir
Runner-ups: Chief Dan George (Little Big Man), Ben Gazarra (Husbands), Gian Maria Volonte (The Red Circle), Michel Vitold (The Confession), Subhendu Chatterjee (Days and Nights in the Forest), Leo McKern (Ryan's Daughter), Rabi Ghosh (Days and Nights in the Forest), Colin Blakely (The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes), Robert Duvall (MASH), Rene Auberjonois (MASH), Karl Malden (Patton), Richard Mulligan (Little Big Man), Wesley Addy (Tora! Tora! Tora!), Takahira Tamuro (Tora! Tora! Tora!), Martin Balsam (Tora! Tora! Tora!)
Supporting Actress
Karen Black, Five Easy Pieces
Dominique Sanda, The Conformist
Simone Signoret, The Confession
Sharmila Tagore, Days and Nights in the Forest
Genevieve Page, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes
Runner-ups: Sally Kellerman (MASH), Maureen Stapleton (Airport), Stefania Sandrelli (The Conformist), Kaberi Bose (Days and Nights in the Forest), Susan Anspach (Five Easy Pieces), Jeanne Moreau (The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir), Faye Dunaway (Little Big Man), Sally Thomsett (The Railway Children), Eleanor Bron (Women in Love)
Not seen: The Great White Hope, Diary of a Mad Housewife, Lovers and Other Strangers, The Landlord--------After four previous nominations Catherine Deneuve wins an award!
--------Two actors get nominations in two separate categories!
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I have Lea Massari as supporting in Murmur of the Heart. It's really her son's story and her role in secondary. Any thoughts?
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Sometime around the mid-1970s I was chatting with an English theater manager about Peter O'Toole. His opinion was that the grueling conditions and the tremendous demands placed on O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia had to some extent burned him out as an actor, but that was unimportant, given the accomplishment of that one performance. Of course, some of O'Toole's lesser performances might be career peaks for some other actors, but I believe the theater manager had a point.
Perhaps. But part of being a great actor or actress is being with great directors. Just for a start, how many great Tippi Hedren performances can you think of that aren't in Hitchcock movies? Certainly the other seven directors O'Toole worked with in oscar nominated movies: Peter Glenville, Anthony Harvey, Herbert Ross, Peter Medak, Richard Rush, Richard Benjamin and Roger Mitchell, were no great shakes. Even if you don't like David Lean, he's patently superior to them.
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And here's Liv Ullmann in Persona, which I couldn't post earlier:
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Here's my choices. For some reason, 1966 is particularly important.
Supporting Actress
Anne Wiazemsky, Au Hasard Baltazar
Supporting Actor
Leo McKern, A Man for All Seasons
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Actress
Liv Ullmann, Persona
Actor,
Paul Scofield, A Man for All Seasons
Oh wait, no he isn't. Much as I admire him and the movie, there's actually another actor. This guy:
Oh yes, there's also a best juvenile performance. It's often said that in the sixties movies matured. And while it's true that American became more interested in more mature foreign films, there certainly seems to be a shortage of truly great movies with important child actors. Unlike other decades, there doesn't seem to be an award winner in the bunch. However, here is Nikolay Burlyaev in Ivan's Childhood:
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I want to ask about when in the movies you can see the characters really are in love with each other, and the act that proves it. Now of course, I know that "consummating" is usually a euphemism for when the characters first have sex. And of course, in classic Hollywood characters don't have sex on screen, or if they do it has to be deniable.
And further of course, there's a difference between sex and love. To take two obvious examples in Vertigo it is heavily implied that once Scotty Ferguson has transformed Judy Barton into the Madeline Elster of his dreams, they have sex. But far from consummating their love, Ferguson has only consummated his self-delusion, since, spoilers (but seriously?) their relationship collapses in truly spectacular fashion.
Later in Badlands, Sissy Spacek's first sexual encounter with Martin Sheen is actually disappointing. But later in the movie near the end, we see the sublimely romantic moment of the two dancing in the dark in the headlights of their car.
So this post asks two questions. (1) What scenes in movies show that the romantic pair are truly in love with each other? (2) Are there sex scenes which show the pairs' love (as opposed to desire) for each other?
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I'm a bit disconcerted at the emphasis on violent, destructive acts of heroism. There are more subtle kinds: like the climax of Nostalghia.
The protagonist must carry a lighted candle across the length of a drained pool without it going it out. If he does, he will save the world (which in 1983 is threatened with nuclear destruction).
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Did anyone see Wings of the Navy today, which has de Havilland choosing between two brothers played by less interesting actors. How did the loser take it? Did he just accept it?
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ALIENS: Lieutenant Gorman and Private Vasquez blowing themselves up with a grenade in order to give Ripley, Newt, and Corporal Bishop the chance to escape the monsters that are pursuing them.
No offense to the two, since they weren't in a position to choose their own death. But both had been severely wounded and they were about to be killed by the aliens.
Clearly Lawrence of Arabia is one of the movie's most profound meditations on heroism. Lawrence thinks that by sheer will he can become the perfect ally to the Arabs, and thereby the perfect solider of his empire. And as his travels through the desert, he has no shortage of physical courage. But will isn't enough and it can't be.
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Why is The Honeymoon Killers considered a 1969 movie and not a 1970 one?
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Is Trintignat the only lead for The Conformist? If not, which actress is lead and which is supporting?
It's been some time since I've seen The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Is Genevieve Page lead or supporting?
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I saw five movies last week. In Time has an interesting conceit: in the future everyone is 25. People are paid in time to live at this age. If not, they die. The conceit is not well developed: one might think a business would not be in its interest to have much of its population on the verge of death because of its usurious practices. And the hero-kidnapping-the-daughter-of-a
rich-tycoon-and-she falls-in-love-with-him-anyway doesn't really work. The Blind Owl is an interesting adaptation of a famous Turkish novel which I haven't read. Perhaps if I had it would be easier to understand this merger of cinephilia and Orientalist attraction. Jamaica Inn does deserve its reputation as one of Hitchcock's least interesting films. Nor is it one of the better of Charles Laughton's performances. Executive Action is sort of a low budget JFK, without its style or its narrative punch. We know who the villains are from the beginning. Nor is it clear why they would think replacing Kennedy with Johnson would be an improvement, or that they would care enough about Vietnam to kill Kennedy for withdrawing (something he probably wasn't planning to do in November 1963). I should point out that I did see the original The Man Who Knew Too Much two decades ago. On rewatching it this week the Albert Hall scene is good, the rest of the film is less successful. (You would think the ruthless assassins would play the child hostage card earlier than they do.) Trainwreck is certainly more interesting and thoughtful than most romantic comedies. One is pleasantly surprised by the kind of detail that is provided. But the parts played by Schumer and Hader (as well as a very biting Tilda Swinton) add up more than the whole. The film lacks a certain energy in the last third, as the inevitable break-up and the inevitable reunion seems a little too convenient.
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Lead or Supporting Role?
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Having rewatched The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, I would say Rey is the closest to a lead actor, Audran might be considered a lead actress, and all the other actors are clearly supporting. Any thoughts?