CinemaInternational

It seems that the trade papers are demanding that the Oscars nominate more people in directing and acting every year now......

Yeah. Hanks was offscreen for long sections of the film. It's really the story of a reporter whose life was turned around by meeting Rogers. Hanks probably has about 35 minutes screentime (maybe) to the reporter's 65 or 70.

Sidney Lumet isn't really on a roll with me currently. Family Business (1989) -- 6.5/10 2 Lumet films, 2 days, two misfires. Oy. However, this one as opposed to Q & A, is at least not an offensive viewing, and does have several pieces in place for a better film, but the writing/script stalls it in its tracks. If the first half of the film is meant to be a comedy, it doesn't really play that way. Most of the time it is inert. What keeps is going in the first half is the star power of Connery, Hoffman, and Broderick, combined with some brief but savvy character bits from Victoria Jackson, Rosana De Soto, and Marilyn Sokol. It's post the big heist in the second half, as the film becomes more dramatic, that it begins to go somewhere. The roles become a bit richer and two more supporting players, Janet Carroll and Deborah Rush appear with snap in their roles. Maybe one reason i am talking so much about the performances is really that is what this film boils down to. Without star power, there would not be much left, especially with this being a crime saga with a big plot hole toward the end. But star power helps to make this a passable afternoon viewing, if not the savory saga one might expect from the cast and director.

And here I must remark I loved both of those films and gave them perfect grades.....

Often, but I think earlier in the decade was the real turning point. It had to do with the controversy around the 2010 race for director. The Oscars were grilled for giving the Directing prize to The King's Speech (an intimate performance piece) over the flashiness of The Social Network, and some people have never forgiven them. After that happened, most intimate performance pieces have been mostly banished from the category, usually titling toward big epics, splashy stylistic devises, or violent spectacles.

I was saddened by that as well. That was one of three films this past year I gave a perfect 10 to (the others were very well represented: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Little Women), but unfortunately I kind of had an inkling it would turn out this way. The indie scene is on life support right now as the Academy swings back toward bigger scaled productions (A24, The Farewell's studio only picked up one nomination this morning: Cinematography for The Lighthouse.), and American-made films involving Asian themes have been treated horribly in the past (Come See the Paradise, Heaven and Earth, The Joy Luck Club, and Crazy Rich Asians couldn't even muster up a single nomination either). Awkwafina and Shunzhen Zhao would have made wonderful acting nominees this year.

I knew this morning that the Gerwig directing snub would be controversial. I wanted her to be nominated, but the Director branch goes for flashy now, and that wasn't an overly flashy film. My own takeaways from the nods: very few surpirses, but really not a bad set of nominations overall. I still think though that some people's pet films might have made it in if voting was open for a longer period of time.

Q & A (1990) -- 4/10. Sidney Lumet directed some wonderful films. Running on Empty, Network, Murder on the Orient Express, 12 Angry men, Serpico; all of them were extraordinary films. And he directed many fine ones too. That's what makes it painful to say that Q & A is an ugly example of too many times to the well. Just like Serpico and Prince of the City, the subject is police corruption, this time spread out to include institutional corruption. But while Q & A has a crusader character (played well if a bit sidelined by Timothy Hutton), the main character that people remember from this film is the closeted corrupt cop played by Nick Nolte. To cut straight to the point, Nolte's character is an absolute sadist who has a penchant for racial slurs and strangling drag queens after pretending that he is going to have relations with them. And Nolte so disappears into the part, that the audience is left with a super-disturbing force that knocks the whole film off balance. i guess you could say its an impressive performance, but it is so loathsome. Armand Assante was nominated for a Golden Globe for playing a gangster, but despite some force, even he is overshadowed by Hurricane Nolte; Luis Guzman has a good early supporting part;Lumet's daughter Jenny has a smaller but well handled supporting part as the love interest. The film itself is unrelenting in its ugliness and often becomes as bad as the sadism that it tries to condemn. The dialogue is liberally littered with disturbing slurs and the film's violence is sickening, and the film itself seems to go on forever. This unfortunately ranks as a major letdown for Lumet. It's still better than A Stranger Among Us, but that is faint praise indeed.

Another thought post, but when it comes to the world of TV series, what was the best time for them. Obviously the 50s are regarded as the Golden Age of TV, and the last few years of it have been praised immensely, but yet there are many other interesting periods of TV history, and I think it seems only fair to pick a period that you feel that TV was at its peak. Reminisce about favorite series too whie you are at it, or about how films used to dot the late night schedules or in the afternoons.

I liked Where Eagles Dare too. Anyway, length is all subjective, and my own sagas with lengthy films range from ones I found excellent (Fiddler on the Roof, Gone with the Wind, say), to the ones that forced their way through with enough snap to make them feel shorter than they actually were (JFK), to the ones that definitely need a trim. Jeanne Dielman would be one of those films. And then there are ones that felt too long for the type of film they were (Towering Inferno) or were numbing experiences that went on without any end (The Revenant). So it all comes down to taste.

The Academy Award nominations for 2019 are due in the morning, for this the 92nd year of the Academy's history. I for one have always looked forward to nominations every year, and have been determined to catch up with many past nominees and winners, even the ones that only featured in the smaller categories. So I have always had a love for them, especially the films nominated in the golden age, and in the later decades of the 60s through the 90s. But I also know that the Oscars are controversial. Of course, by this time, we have seen so many of them that TCM's 31 Days of Oscar begins to seem like old leftovers, buut that isn't even really the big controversy. Last weekend, there were some truly harsh words spoken about them in The New York Times, and in a way it seemed like a takedown of shared cinematic experiences, quote being: "The Oscars are irrelevant, empty, dispiriting, maddening and invariably wrong". Now I think we can all admit that we rarely fully agree with what in nominated, but are they really this, even at their peak in decades past? Or is it all grousing? The only real drawback I feel they have is that sometimes people avoid classics that weren't up for Oscars, but other than that, I think they have been a help, and do feel that without them, some really great films might never have been made. But how do you feel about them all; I'm not meaning in a political context or anything, but just in terms of films and performances, how do you feel about them?

Oh, absolutely. She was Oscar-worthy for that fun supporting part. Stole the whole film, and with that cast, it was no easy task.

That's one thing I definitely noticed in the TCM interview a few years ago. She is shy, and quite vulnerable in a way. But she is a survivor in other resprects. I respect her , and also I think that she was also very underrated as an actress.

It's one of my favorites. Its just such a warm, sensitive film, and I think it is director Paul Mazursky's best. Its a lovely film, and I'm probably one of the few who loves the fact that Art Carney won the Oscar for it.

It seems I was mistaken. When first announced last week, the Academy only spoke of a live stream on their website, but now GMA is reporting that they will air them. I was concerned about missing them.

I think I've seen 1978's Foul Play close to 100 times.

It seems that Kim Novak, who rarely does interviews aside from the TCM interview a few years back, is sitting down for an 8 minute interview this Sunday on CBS News's Sunday Morning program, which airs at 9 AM Eastern Time. Post air time, the interview can be accessed from CBS's website.

My my, Cats actually won an award! Except its not the type of award a film wants. A citation for being the campiest film of 2019.

Now I'm picturing Ed "kookie" Asner....

Yes indeed, eaten alive. Would have to be one of the nastiest Disney deaths of their villains but two (maybe six depending on how you feel) top it.... Spoilers. The Black Cauldron (1985)-- Horned king (voice by John Hurt) gets sucked toward the Cauldron and gets his flesh ripped off his bones and then his skeleton explodes Mulan (1998)-- Shan-Yu (voice by Miguel Ferrer) is hit by a giant firecracker in the stomach and literally explodes when it does. Tarzan (1999) -- Clayton (voiced by Brian Blessed) tries to kill Tarzan by chasing him up a tree. Clayton keeps cutting through vines but fails to cut the one around his own throat. He ends up tripping and hanging himself. The shadow of his lifeless corpse is seen. Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) Roate (voiced by James Garner) gets sliced on the arm by a crystal that turns him into a blue crystal creature with flaming orange mouth that can only make unearthly screams. He is then shattered into a million pieces by a propeller on a hot air balloon and thus explodes. The Princess and the Frog (2009) -- Dr Facillier (voice by Keith David), voodoo king, is dragged to the grave screaming by voodoo spirits after Princess Tiana breaks his amulet. The headstone of his grave shows his terrified face. Tangled (2010) Mother Gothetl, the witch (voice by Donna Murphy) rapidly starts aging after Rapunzel's hair is cut, trips, falls a hundred feet and by the time she hits the ground is only dust.

In the original theatrical release and on the VHS tape, in the closeup as Gaston falls, little images of skulls are superimposed in his eyes.

I only saw Hairspray... and that's his tamest.... But I did hear about Serial Mom, what with Kathleen Turner murdering people for wearing white after labor day and for not rewinding the rental copy tape of Annie (and killing that person while belting out The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow)

Warner Bros....

The Columbia low-Metacritc group

It sounds like the Oscar nominations will only be announced in an internet live stream this year, and not on Good morning America. This will be the first year since 2004 (the 2003 films) that I will not see the announcement live.