The Screengrab : oscars

DVD Digest for April 7, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 14:00:00 GMT

This week, a recent Oscar winner finally gets the DVD treatment it deserves, and Warner digs deep into their vaults for a slew of new Blu-Ray titles.

This week’s selection of recent movies is headed by a handful of high-profile December releases, including Jim Carrey in Yes Man (Warner, also Blu-Ray), Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt (Disney, also Blu-Ray), the Adam Sandler family vehicle Bedtime Stories (Disney, also Blu-Ray), Keanu Reeves in the remake The Day the Earth Stood Still (Fox, also Blu-Ray), and the animated The Tale of Despereaux (Universal, also Blu-Ray). Also this week: Morris Chestnut and Taraji P. Henson in Not Easily Broken (Sony, also Blu-Ray), and the controversial British horror movie Donkey Punch (Magnolia).

Last year, many DVD fans expressed displeasure over the shabby treatment given to the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men, released in a bare-bones edition to capitalize on the movie’s recent Oscar success. This week, Disney hopes to remedy this with the release of a new “Collector’s Edition” in both standard DVD and Blu-Ray. This new upgrade boasts more than five hours of new features, including documentaries, and interviews with the filmmakers, cast and crew. Also this week: a 75th Anniversary Edition of Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra (Universal); Warner’s Pre-Code Hollywood Collection, which includes The Cheat, Merrily We Go to Hell, Hot Saturday, Torch Singer, Murder at the Vanities, and Search for Beauty; the TCM Spotlight: Doris Day Collection (Warner)- includes April in Paris, It’s a Great Feeling, Starlift, Tea for Two, and The Tunnel of Love; and the controversial-in-its-day La Grande Bouffe (E1 Entertainment).

The big Blu-Ray news this week is Warner’s release of nine (mostly dodgy, I must say) new titles in the format. The Warner Blu-Ray releases are: Peter Hyams’ 2010, Steven Seagal in Above the Law, Edward Norton in American History X, The Governator in Collateral Damage; the Rube Goldberg-esque thriller Final Destination; Denzel Washington standing up to the American health care system in John Q, an extended cut of Angelina Jolie in Taking Lives, and the 80s-set Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore rom-com The Wedding Singer. Also this week, a double feature of avian-themed Sony releases: Fly Away Home and Winged Migration.

Finally, the selection was pretty thin for plot synopses, so I wasn’t able to find a suitable Synopsis of the Week. The best I can do is a pretty unbeatable title: Britney Spears: The Return of An Angel. Doesn’t that sound like just about the cheesiest thing ever? Too bad the White Elephant Blogathon is over, because that could’ve made for a fun submission. Oh well- there’s always next year…

Reviews By Request: Tom Jones (1963, Tony Richardson)

Paul Clark — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Due to some difficulty I had in getting my hands on Tony Richardson’s Tom Jones, I was unable to post this review last week as promised. Sorry about that. As usual, to vote for the next Reviews By Request selection, see the poll at the end of this review.

In a survey of the Oscar winners for Best Picture, Tony Richardson’s 1963 film Tom Jones is one of the more intriguing titles. Sure, it’s an adaptation of the classic novel by Henry Fielding, but this is hardly the kind of reverent literary epic that usually gets the Academy to take notice. But beyond its bawdy comedy, it’s also a stylistic departure from the usual period pieces, with Richardson employing the techniques of the French New Wave to take the wind out of the wigs-and-horses period setting. On paper, Tom Jones is just the kind of movie that ought to be recognized more often by the Academy- a film that boldly tweaks cinematic convention in an attempt to entertain audiences in a unique way. But the trouble with judging a movie on paper is that sooner or later one must actually see it to get the whole story, and in the case of Tom Jones, the whole story is that it doesn’t live up to its potential.

I knew I was in for a long sit during the opening sequence, in which Richardson establishes the circumstances of Tom’s birth. Rather than portraying it in a more conventional way- say, through narration or montage- Richardson turns it into a silent movie, complete with intertitles. Now, I’m sure most of you would agree that this is an interesting and unexpected twist on the usual style of the genre. However, with the actors’ hyper-exaggerated mannerisms and John Addison’s manic harpsichord score, the scene comes off more cutesy than bold. By the time the opening titles have hit the screen, Richardson has already dug himself into a hole that he never manages to escape.

Richardson drops the silent-movie pastiche after the opening credits, thankfully, but he still has plenty of tricks up his sleeve- jump cuts, cheeky narration, and more. In one of the more glaringly out-of-place bits, there’s a scene in which the adult Tom (Albert Finney) evades a jealous husband in which Richardson speeds up the film like an old slapstick comedy (think the Keystone Kops). There’s also a handful of moments in which Finney breaks the fourth wall, as when he asks the audience for support when a female innkeeper accuses him of trying to weasel his way out of paying his bill. It takes an inspired film to pull off moments like these, and Tom Jones is not that movie.

It’s a shame, because Finney cuts a fine figure as Tom. At its heart, this is the story about a man who’s torn between his good nature and his base impulses, which lead him into trouble. Tom’s loyalty invites others to take advantage of him, and his dashing good looks bring him the kind of female attention he would be wise to avoid. Despite the film’s period trappings, Tom bears more than a passing resemblance to Arthur Seaton, Finney’s breakthrough role in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, who was unable to reconcile his desires to have fun with his need to do right by his single-mother girlfriend. With these two films, Finney announced to the world that he was a major actor, and he effortlessly holds his own here opposite an impressive cast, including Susannah York, Hugh Griffith, Edith Evans, Joyce Redman (with whom he shares the film’s most famous scene), and the great Joan Greenwood, who had one of the great voices in cinema.

One key directorial decision that I appreciated was Richardson’s unwillingness to lend the usual glamour to his period setting. Most historical and literary films tend to be showcases for the art directors and costume designers, who spare no expense in re-creating the trappings of period luxury. By contrast, Richardson’s portrayal of country gentility in the early 1700s is hardly luxurious. Meals consist of copious amounts of wine and freshly-killed meat eaten with the hands, and interiors are dusty and dark, lit only by a handful of candles. Practically the only form of entertainment was the hunt, which Richardson portrays as scores of dogs and men on horseback pursuing a stag- hardly very sporting. To accentuate the less charming aspects of this world, Richardson and cinematographer Walter Lassally shoot the film in anemic-looking tones and with a mostly handheld camera. When it comes to epic splendor, Gone With the Wind this isn’t.

Richardson’s de-glamorization of his period setting is such a refreshing change of pace from what one normally expects from a movie of this kind that it seems a shame that he feels the need to goose it with his arsenal of New Wave tricks. Unlike most Oscar-winning films, which seem to have little on their minds besides taking home rafts filled with awards, Tom Jones is rather more ambitious- in the end, too ambitious to be successful. In the end, the film must be labeled a noble failure, and although one can’t help but admire Richardson’s desire to step outside the well-trod path for literary adaptations, that doesn’t mean I look forward to seeing Tom Jones again anytime in the near future.

Now that Oscar season is over, we can get back to some more diverse and, uh, interesting choices for Reviews By Request. As promised, we’ll kick off things with a poll devoted to reader requests. So, which of these will it be? A seventies SF thriller from the director of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three? A documentary about two children who were switched at birth? An infamous horror film about evil children? A thriller starring Alain Delon? Or will it be the long-shelved seventies exploitation title that was immortalized by Patton Oswalt? It’s your call, folks:

Which should I review for my next Reviews By Request? | BuzzDash polls

As usual, the comments section is open, particularly for those who would like to suggest future titles for consideration. See you in two weeks!

Thursday Poll for March 5, 2009

Paul Clark — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 15:00:00 GMT

I realize you’re probably Oscar-ed out by now, and believe me, I understand completely. Yet some of you had enough residual Oscar-season love to bestow on the more obvious changes to this year’s telecast. Of all the new wrinkles to the ages-old format, your favorite this year was the family-unfriendly but undeniably hilarious montage of comedies featuring James Franco and Seth Rogen. This bit was chosen by 54% of you, and I’ve got to say that I was a fan of it as well, giggling about certain gags days afterwards. I mean, what’s not to love about Franco staple-gunning a dollar bill to Rogen’s face Necrobutcher-style, the pair cutting up at The Reader, or the random inclusion of Janusz Kaminski in the action? As a friend of mine said, if Werner Herzog ever gets a late-night talk show- and he really should- Janusz Kaminski needs to be his right-hand guy. Amen, bud.

Oh, the rest of the results. Hugh Jackman’s hosting and the abbreviated running time for the show (done by midnight, folks!) each brought in 8% of the vote, while the new format for acting awards got no votes at all. The runner-up in the voting was our old favorite “Other”, with 31%, although only one of you had the courtesy to say what his “other” vote was actually for. But since that person chose the lovely and talented Anne Hathaway being pulled into the opening number- and more than holding her own in the singing department- it’s hard to stay annoyed.

This week, you may have noticed that we’ve been on a bit of a Watchmen kick (it’s not over either, with my not-exactly-dissenting review scheduled to post later today). But on the brink of the film’s opening weekend, we ask you about your thoughts on the movie. How do you feel about the movie that’s been hyped as the year’s first blockbuster?

Which best describes how you feel about the WATCHMEN movie? | BuzzDash polls

As always, the comments section is open. See you next week!

Thursday Poll for February 26, 2009

Paul Clark — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:00:00 GMT

So how about those Oscars, folks? If you’re like me- and if you are indeed like me, then sorry about the pale complexion and crippling inferiority complex- you were let down by the massive amounts of love thrown at Slumdog Millionaire by the Academy rank-and-file. I mean, Best Sound- really? Over the likes of WALL*E, which was largely dependent on its sound to tell the story? In the Academy’s defense, I too might be inclined to love A.R. Rahman’s Slumdog score if I’d never seen a Bollywood movie. But anyway… while Slumdog’s dominance of Oscar night may have been a disappointment for some, it certainly wasn’t a surprise to most people. Consider that 73% of you folks predicted the film to take home the big award, compared to 18% for Milk, 9% for Benjamin Button, and no votes for anything else. Even more of a foregone conclusion in your eyes was Danny Boyle’s direction of Slumdog, which brought in a whopping 91% of the vote, with the only other voter being Gus Van Sant, who despite being nominated for the wrong movie (Paranoid Park is miles better than Milk, I’d say), was nonetheless more deserving of the Oscar this year. But to misquote last year’s Oscar winner, we simply couldn’t stop what was coming.

As for the rest of the show, I know many of you are let down about Mickey Rourke not taking home best actor, to say nothing of the missed opportunity to behold a Werner Herzog Oscar speech. But hey, it wasn’t all bad, right? Jackman had a few good moments as host, even if he generally stayed out of the way of the proceedings. And while most of the winners seemed pre-ordained, there were some interesting changes to this year’s ceremony to keep us diverted. Some were more into the new method for awarding the acting Oscars than others- while some enjoyed seeing the nominees’ reactions to being praised by their esteemed peers, others saw the awards-show equivalent of the Elders’ Tribunal from Superman. Below, I’ve listed three of the more obvious changes to the Oscar telecast, along with an audience-pleasing montage that offered some reprieve from the usual self-importance of the form. So, which was your favorite Oscars moment?

Which was your favorite Oscar-night moment? | BuzzDash polls

Feel free to use the comments section below, especially if you should vote for “other.” See you next week for what promises to be the first in a long line of non-Oscar-related Thursday polls.

Reviews By Request, Oscar-Nominated Edition: Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942, Michael Curtiz)

Paul Clark — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:00:00 GMT

As usual, I’ll be polling you folks to determine the subject for the second of two Oscar-themed Reviews By Request columns, which will run in two weeks. To vote, see the poll at the end of this review.

It’s practically become a running joke that biopics are catnip to Oscar voters. It’s not difficult to see the reasons why- the historical setting gives affords technicians plenty of chances to show off, while audiences enjoy seeing the lives of their heroes brought to life through movie magic. Most of all, playing historical figures often gives actors an opportunity to show facets of their talent that aren’t normally on display. Nowhere is this more apparent than in biographies of musicians or other live performances, in which actors get the chance to not only portray real-life characters but also perform their work- in character, anyway. And of all the acclaimed showbiz biopic performances out there, few are more beloved than James Cagney’s Oscar-winning turn as George M. Cohan in Michael Curtiz’s Yankee Doodle Dandy.

As showbiz biopics go, Yankee Doodle Dandy has a pretty standard trajectory. We follow Cohan from his birth through his early days on the road, performing in vaudeville shows with his parents and sister as “The Four Cohans.” By the time he’s a teenager, young George has become good enough that he gets cocky; and despite his undeniable talent he’s been largely blackballed from the business by the time he’s hit adulthood. It’s only by composing his own material- combined with a lot of luck- that George makes a name for himself on Broadway, eventually becoming its biggest star. And all the while, he sticks by his family (including his dad, played by Walter Huston), and in turn his loving wife Mary (Joan Leslie) sticks by him.

And yet, compared to most movies of this sort, Yankee Doodle Dandy has almost no interest in the darker undercurrents of its protagonist. There’s a very good reason for this- made in the early years of World War II, the filmmakers wanted to tell the rousing story of a homefront hero, a patriot who served his country not with a gun but with songs like the World War I anthem “Over There.” This comes through clearest in the movie’s (supposedly apocryphal) framing device, in which Cohan is called to the White House late one night so that FDR can personally present him with the Congressional Gold Medal. And while this makes the film pretty hopeless as biography- as Cohan himself allegedly quipped after the premiere, “It was a good movie. Who was it about?”- it’s rousing entertainment all the same. In light of the tendency of many contemporary biopics to air out their protagonists’ dirty laundry, the film’s refusal to do so is perhaps its most refreshing aspect. Yankee Doodle Dandy is content to let its hero be a hero.

But the film would be nothing without Cagney’s infectious performance. Like many moviegoers of the time, I mostly knew Cagney through his hard-boiled gangster roles, combined his great late-period turns in films like Billy Wilder’s awesome One, Two, Three. But while I always knew he was an energetic actor, I wasn’t prepared for the high spirits he would bring to the role of George M. Cohan. The role had been turned down by the likes of Fred Astaire, and while Cagney wasn’t the dancer Astaire was (or the singer, for that matter- Cagney probably speak-sings half his lyrics), he throws himself so completely into the role that it scarcely matters. Cagney’s irrepressible desire to entertain is matched only by his inventiveness, as in the scene in which he first meets his eventual wife while covered in old-age makeup. It’s an irresistible performance, and one I dare say the Academy would’ve been hard-pressed to overlook even if it wasn’t based on a real person.

Yankee Doodle Dandy isn’t a movie about the life of George M. Cohan so much as it is about the myth of George M. Cohan. Consequently, it scarcely matters that Cohan was actually born on July 3rd, that the movie’s “Mary” was actually his second wife, or that the circumstances under which he received his Congressional Gold Medal were somewhat different than they are in the film. What matters is that, like its hero, it’s filled to the brim with an unabashed flag-waving spirit, and anchored with Cagney’s timeless, inspired performance. Yankee Doodle Dandy is cornball to be sure, but it’s the kind of movie that gives cornball a grand old name.

For the second Oscar-themed Reviews By Request column, I’m asking you to choose from five Best Picture-winning films I’ve never seen. So, which will it be?

Which should I review for my next Reviews By Request? | BuzzDash polls

As always, the comments section is open. See you in two weeks!

Thursday Poll for January 15, 2009

Paul Clark — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:00:00 GMT

With the Oscar ceremony little more than a month away and nominations being announced next week, I used last week’s Thursday Poll to ask you about your tastes in Oscar hosts. And you responded rather decisively that when it comes to recent Oscar emcees, your preference was for Jon Stewart, erstwhile host of The Daily Show and star of such cinematic gems as Death to Smoochy, Big Daddy and Playing By Heart, who brought in 57% of the votes. By some not-all-that-odd coincidence, Stewart also shared the screen with your second-favorite recent host, Steve Martin (24%), in Stewart’s big-screen debut, 1994’s Mixed Nuts (yeah, we’ve expelled it from our memory banks too). In third place was one-timer Ellen DeGeneres, with former Oscar mainstay Billy Crystal and the hugely divisive Chris Rock in a dead heat for last. How will Hugh Jackman compare? Well, he couldn’t be any worse than Rock, could he?

This week, on the tail of Clint Eastwood’s latest directing effort Gran Torino, we look at the iconic actor/director’s most celebrated films. A perennial Oscar favorite, Eastwood’s films have been nominated for Best Picture four times to date, winning twice. Which Eastwood-directed Best Picture nominee is your favorite?

Which is your favorite? | BuzzDash polls

As always, the comments section is open. See you next week!

Claude Berri, 1934-2009

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:45:00 GMT

The French filmmaker Claude Berri passed away this week at age 74. One of the most esteemed figures in the national cinema of the 1980s, Berri was a total package as a filmmaker: he was a highly celebrated director, who won an Oscar and was nominated for a dozen Cesar awards, though he won none; he was an actor of no small talent; he was a skillful screenwriter; and even in the days when his best days as a director were behind him, he served as a producer for a number of influential and important films.

Berri was born to a Jewish family in Paris, and his entire family was immersed in the film industry. His sister, Arlette Langmann, is a notable French screenwriter and film editor; his brother-in-laws are director Jean-Pierre Rassam and producer Paul Rassam; and two of his sons (Julien Rassam and Thomas Langmann) and one of his nephews (Dmitri Rassam) are actors. Best known for his films Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, he won his Academy Award for the short film Le Poulet when he was 32 years old. As a producer, he worked on a range of projects, from Roman Polanski's Tess to Abdel-Latif Kechiche's The Secret of the Grain.

In addition to his extensive resume as a filmmaker, Berri served as a judge at the Cannes Film Festival, oversaw several animated films, and nurtured the careers of a number of actors, including Gerard Depardieu and Emannuelle Beart. After his death from a stroke caused by a degenerative neurological condition on Monday, French president Nicolas Sarkozy eulogized him as "the most legendary figure of French cinema".

Video of the Day: "Dark Knight", Schmark Knight

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 15:45:00 GMT

While everyone sits around whingeing about whether or not the late Heath Ledger is going to win an Oscar for his portrayal of the Joker in Christopher Nolan's made-more-cheddar-than-Kraft The Dark Knight, we're all about honoring the past here at the Screengrab. And what better way to honor the past than to show the audition test that got Adam West and a classy young fella named Burton Gervis their gigs as Batman and Robin?

Just imagine if the runners-up, Lyle Waggoner and Peter Deyell, would have gotten the job! Uh...never mind.

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: Dec. 27, 2008-Jan. 9, 2009

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Hey, Screengrabbers! It’s me, the Screengrab’s 2008 Person of the Year, here to pass the torch to 2009. But before we do that, let’s take one more look at back at the year that was, in case you missed it while you were on vacation or seeing The Spirit for the fifth time. The end of the year is a time of lists, and we sure had them here: Top Ten lists from Phil Nugent, Andrew Osborne (Parts One and Two), Scott Von Doviak (Parts One and Two and Top 10 Unwatchables), Leonard Pierce (Parts One and Two) and Paul Clark (Parts One and Two and Honorable Mentions). We also compiled the consensus Screengrab Top 10 Movies of 2008, as well as the Top Ten Screengrab Top Tens (Parts One and Two). To get really meta on you, we even had the 2008 Highlight Reel: The Top Twelve Screengrab Posts of the Year.

Whew. Enough with 2008 already. I’m already hard at work on my campaign to repeat as 2009 Screengrab Person of the Year, but until then, here are some notable posts from the year just begun:

Screengrab Predicts the Oscars (Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five and Six)

Forgotten Films: Groove

Reviews by Request: Poultrygeist and Sukiyaki Western Django

A Better Travis Bickle for a Better New Year

Screengrab Review:Just Another Love Story

Unwatchable #57: Phat Girlz

2009 Movie Poster Preview

Screengrab 2009 Preview: Andrew Osborne’s Picks

The Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon: "Joyeux Noel"

Leonard Pierce — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 18:45:00 GMT

It's easy to forget, while we're all enjoying the largesse of the holidays, exchanging gifts and eating rich food and enjoying the company of our friends and loved ones, that there's not one, but two wars in which our country is deeply embroiled. I had forgotten myself until I got to the airport on December 20th to visit my old home town, and saw how many military personnel were in the airport ready to do the same. There were so many of them, and all so young: most of them were just exiting basic training, and spending one last holiday with their families before they got their deployment orders and shipped off to Iraq or Afghanistan, where they will risk their lives daily in service of a conflict whose purpose becomes murkier with every passing day. It reminded me of the penultimate film I'd watched for the Screengrab 12 Days of Christmas Marathon: Joyeux Noel.

The background of Christian Carion's 2005 film is an odd but inspiring bit of World War I history: on Christmas Eve of 1914, German soldiers celebrated the holiday by placing little candles and miniature Christmas trees along the edges of the trenches in which they'd toiled and died since the war began. A few began singing Christmas carols in their native language. More or less spontaneously, they were joined by regiments of Scotsmen and Frenchmen, who at first sang along or favored the enemy with their own carols, and later made the brave -- or foolhardy -- gesture of actually leaving the trenches to meet their opposite numbers in No Man's Land. Precious rations and luxury items were exchanged as gifts; stories were told and songs were sung by those who shared a language.

For over a week, the unsanctioned -- yet completely successful -- truce remained in place. The Allies and the Central Powers played soccer together, exchanged photographs of their loved ones back home, and helped each other bury their dead, who had lain rotting in the free-fire zone. No shots were fired and no one was killed during that period, as ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances accomplished a peace that even the Pope had been unable to achieve. It would seem nonsensical -- and Carion's highly emotional film a manipulative piece of overly idealistic sentiment -- if it hadn't really happened, and been widely reported by witnesses in their letters home. For one brief period, the common humanity of these armed men, most of whom had no idea what they were fighting for, overcame the loathing of their commanding officers.

And it's the reaction of those commanders that provides Joyeux Noel with its grim gut-punch. As predicted by the film's memorable opening, where a choir of innocent, angelic-looking babes sing beautiful hymns pleading God for the utter destruction of their enemies, and as echoed in a chilling scene where a chaplain, delivering a speech to a group of new Scots recruits brought in to replace those who would not fight after their convivial encounter with the enemy, claims that the annihilation of the Germans is forgivable in God's eyes because the Germans are not beloved by Him, the leaders on all sides order a swift and merciless punishment for the high crime of refusing to kill one's fellow human being. The British generals vow that no such truce will ever be allowed again, and rotating shifts of soldiers are instituted in order to ensure that no one becomes too cozy with the fellows across the trench.

Joyeux Noel isn't a perfect film. The characters are often caricatures, and it lets its rank sentimentality pile up to bothersome levels at times. But it's a beautifully made film, with some tip-top acting from a largely unknown cast, and it gathers a massive power simply from the truth of its existence. As we find ourselves losing more of our children, our loved ones, our friends to a war that, like World War I, didn't need to start and should never have been allowed to continue, it's devoutly to be wished that both sides of these struggles are trying to find that common thread of humanity that led to a near-miracle in 1914. Even for those -- like myself -- who aren't of a religious bent, there's a powerful message here, as the official voices of God urge bloodshed and destruction, while the base sinners out in the field find themselves feeling the universal peace and brotherhood taught by Jesus Christ.

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS RATING: A tragic nine ladies dancing, the same way that Diane Kruger's Danish opera singer performs for the troops before seeing the true horror -- and the true humanity -- behind the war. Joyeux Noel (which was nominated for Best Foreign Film at the Oscars, the BAFTA Awards, and the Golden Globes) will surely bring a tear to your eye, and lead you to reconsider what it really means to support the troops.

The Screengrab's 12 Days of Christmas Marathon: The Dead

Mr. Blackwell, 1922-2008

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Richard Blackwell -- known to the world simply as Mr. Blackwell -- has died at the age of 86. Born Richard Selzer in Brooklyn, he took advantage of the endless possibilities for re-invention offered by the entertainment industry and became an icon in that time-honored way: finding a job that needed doing, and becoming the person who did it. Catty, witty, sensitive, and often brutal, he single-handedly invented the role of celebrity fashion critic and honed it to perfection decades before the internet and cable TV's endless Hollywood navel-gazing made it a common pursuit.

After a minor and unsuccessful stint as an actor on Broadway (where he briefly played, of all things, the leader of the Dead End Kids, a part made famous by Huntz Hall), he began working as a fashion designer. He later claimed to have pioneered the concept of designer jeans, but while his New York shop developed a small but loyal clientele, it wasn't until 1960 that he made a name for himself not by the praise he recieved for his own designs, but by complaining about what he saw as a trend towards absurd, overblown and unflattering fashions on the starlets of the day. Within a decade, he'd established himself as the country's foremost fashion critic, particularly when it came to the gowns sported by starlets at awards shows. His annual "Worst Dressed List" became, for some, an event to be anticipated as hotly as the Oscars or the Emmys.

Though Mr. Blackwell's pun-filled, sarcastic assessments were usually aimed at the people wearing hideous fashions, he was quick to recognize that it wasn't really their fault. Being a fan of Hollywood high fashion, and often on friendly terms with some of the celebrities he skewered, he was of two minds about his reputation as the bitchiest man in showbiz, and was insistent that he never meant to attack people -- only their clothes. "The job of fashion designers is to dress and enhance women, to make their beauty more evident," he told reporters early in his career. "Maybe I should have named the ten worst designers instead of blaming the women who wear their clothes." Had he done so, though, he might not have become famous for his acid comments, nor might he have become a gay icon in an era that had precious few of them. In the 21st century, the overwhelming force of media saturation has given us hundreds of witless wannabes who will crack none-too-wise about other peoples' fashion choices, but Mr. Blackwell will always be the first, and, informed by his own background and his genuine appreciation of the people he mocked, he will likely always be the best.

Related Posts:

Rudy Ray Moore, 1927-2008

Edie Adams, 1927-2008

Nick Nolte Does His Own Stunts

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:15:00 GMT

It's not easy being Nick Nolte. His last Oscar nomination was ten years ago, his recent roles are less memorable than his recent mug shots, and his role in Ang Lee's version of The Hulk was the cherry of incoherence on the top of its incomprehensibility frosting. On top of everything else, his house in Malibu just burned down.

Then again, maybe it ain't so bad. After all, the guy has appeared in a handful of beloved films; he just became a father at the ripe old age of 66; and, in one of the most stunning displays of celebrity unflappabilty since a BB-wielding assassin went after Werner Herzog, he actually broke a window and leapt to safety during the fire. Not bad for a guy pushing seventy!

Despite having caused no structural damage, the fire is said to have caused over a million and a half dollars in damage (what was he keeping in his living room, anyway?). Which Nolte can easily recoup with his next picture, if he keeps up the action-hero bit.

Related Posts:

Trailer Review: The Incredible Hulk

Let's Get Wierd With Werner Herzog And David Lynch

Take Five: Bad Cops

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 20:15:00 GMT

Neil LaBute's new movie, Lakeview Terrace, opens this Friday. Critical opinion is still split, but critical opinion will have its say soon enough about whether the director is returning to the promising form he showed in In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors, or whether he's just cranking out a cheap thriller because he wants to buy a new boat. Lakeview Terrace finds Samuel L. Jackson, Hollywood's default angry black man, in the role of a mean-tempered, menacing L.A. cop who takes offense to an interracial couple (played by Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington) who move in next door to him. The idea of crooked cops has always been an appealing one to people who write thrillers; the idea of the very people charged with protecting the innocent being the ones who might hurt them has powerful appeal, and plenty of filmmakers -- Alfred Hitchcock comes immediately to mind -- have put their ambivalent feelings about the police front and center in their movies. By the same token, however, due to the strict content restrictions of post-Code Hollywood, it was a taboo subject for decades; with very few exceptions, a crooked or evil cop was one of the very few things it was absolutely verboten to show on screen. When the code era passed, almost as if to make up for lost time, dozens of scriptwriters and directors began to explore the idea of the cop who betrayed the ideals he was sworn to uphold, and the bad cop genre was born. Here's five of the best.

THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950)

John Huston's masterful ensemble picture about a daring, carefully calculated jewel theft gone awry is one of the greatest noir films ever made, with an incredible cast (headed by Sterling Hayden as the iron-willed thug Dix Handley and Sam Jaffe as the brilliant crook Doc Riedenschneider) and a taut, fatalistic atmosphere that keeps you glued to the screen. But it's also a fine example of how movies had to creep around the concept of the bad cop at the height of the Hays Code: although it's made clear that Barry Kelley's Lt. Ditrich is on the make, and that his accepting bribes from hoods helps crime flourish, the idea of a crooked policeman being so plainly presented ran afoul of the Code. So a scene was filmed in which his incorruptible chief set him on the straight an narrow, and the end coda assures the viewer that such crooked cops are an aberration that will always be found out and punished, rather than the norm.

THE GODFATHER (1972)

The Hays Code had been more or less dead in the water for a dozen years by the time Francis Ford Copolla started filming his epic American gangster movie, and those dozen years had seen a lot of wearing away of the notion of the policemen as a friendly, helpful, vigilant and unimpeachable protector of the innocent. But a few taboos still remained on screen, and The Godfather did its not insubstantial bit to overcome them. In the course of the Corleone family's conflict with the slimy drug dealer Virgil Solozzo, Tom Hagen warns that "The Turk" cannot be gotten to because he enjoys the protection of New York police captain McCluskey (played by Sterling Hayden, acting the flip side of his Asphalt Jungle character) -- and that it is simply not done to kill a cop. When young Michael Corleone, who had previously been the victim of McCluskey's bullying, argues "Where does it say you can't kill a cop?", and points out that Hayden is a dirty cop on the make with his fingers in the drug racket, he's not just talking to the family -- he's talking to the audience.

MANIAC COP (1988)

William Lustig's bizarre little thriller, combining traditional police thriller elements with a sadistic slice of slasher-era horror, was the last movie you'd expect to start a franchise. But so it did, and in the the process launched the career of the hulking, iron-jawed Robert Z'dar. The sequels are generally not worth watching, but the original Maniac Cop -- in which a serial killer dressed as an NYPD patrol officer starts preying on innocent victims -- it a remarkably tight and rather exciting (if extremely lurid) piece of cinema that more than justifies its cult reputation. As a director, Lustig doesn't waste time or film, and the movie carries on at a deadly, involving clip; it's abetted by tons of fine performances from respectable character actors like Sheree North, Bruce Campbell, and original That Guy!/friend of the Screengrab Tom Atkins.

BAD LIEUTENANT (1992)

Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant was, at the time of its release, what it still is today: an atom bomb of bad-cop movies. Harvey Keitel, at the peak of his "I must appear naked in every movie I make" phase, plays a nameless New York police detective who is far and away the worst portrayal of a policeman in cinematic history: a brutal, violent drunk, a drug addict, a crook, a thief, a gambling addict, and a whoremonger. But this isn't just shock cinema: Keitel's Lieutenant is not just the worst big-screen cop imaginable, he's also, in many ways, the most complex. Ferrara throws Keitel into a deep, dark hole because he wants to show him the way out of it. Bad Lieutenant is a terrific film, which is why the as-yet-unconfirmed rumors that Werner Herzog is going to remake it with Nicolas Cage in the title role are so bewildering.

TRAINING DAY (2001)

Antoine Fuqua's nasty 2001 Los Angeles gang story hasn't held up spectacularly well in the years since it was made. Co-star Ethan Hawke seems out of place; the plot doesn't hold up particularly strongly, the tone wanders all over the place, and though it's quite well made, it's never spectacular. What does hold up, however, is Denzel Washington's electrifying performance as Alonzo, a narcotics officer so deep on the take that he barely recognizes -- or cares -- what side he's on. In the annals of crooked cop movies, it stands alongside Harvey Keitel's Bad Lieutenant, and skillfully illustrates the way that a bad man can justify his evil by thinking that he's doing good. The role earned Washington his second acting Oscar and his first Best Actor; though he'd deserved it for Malcolm X, this was no mere compensatory gesture, but a well-earned recognition of a stunning performance.

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Anita Page, 1910-2008

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:45:00 GMT

One of the last living links to the silent film era, and one of that period's brightest stars, passed away in her Los Angeles home earlier this week at the age of 98. In addition to being one of the silent era's most beautiful and popular stars, Anita Page was also one of its most fascinating stories, both for her meteoric rise to the top and her abrupt -- and self-driven -- decision to quit the business.

Born in Flushing in 1910, she left Queens to make it big in pictures when she was still a high school student, landing her first role (as an extra) at age 15. Her big break came in 1928, when she co-starred with Joan Crawford in Our Dancing Daughters. Although her character died at the end of the picture, audiences immediately took to her saucy grin, easy blonde good looks, and petite frame, and the movie -- as well as two sequel-cum-remakes, Our Modern Maidens and Our Blushing Brides (also starring Crawford) -- made her a huge star. She became one of the biggest stars of the era, daily receiving hundreds of fan letters, including multiple proposals of marriage -- at least according to Page herself -- from Benito Mussolini.

Her fame only increased, and she got the chance to appear with some of the era's hugest stars (including Lon Chaney, Buster Keaton, Clark Gable, and Ramon Navarro). While many silent film stars faced a difficult transition to the sound era, Anita Page thrived; her first speaking (and singing) role was in 1929's The Broadway Melody, which became the first talkie to win an Oscar and gave her a signature hit song in "You Were Meant for Me". (The song's composer, Nacio Herb Brown, later became Page's husband.) In 1933, her contract with MGM expired, and, at the peak of her success, she became embroiled with the studio over a pay raise. When MGM wouldn't budge, Page simply walked away from show business; with the exception of a few joke appearances in low-budget horror movies in the late 1990s, she would never appear in another film, by her own choice. She was twenty-three years old.

Take Five: Labor Day

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:30:00 GMT

Usually, the Screengrab's Take Five feature is inspired by some new release coming out the day we go to press. However, sometimes, if the raft of new releases in relatively uninspiring or inappropriate, we go with a different sort of them, and since today is the start of Labor Day weekend, what better time to salute organized labor? After all, some of us are union men ourselves (hey, the National Writer's Union is too a real union! We're part of the United Auto Workers for some reason!); and what with the writer's strike earlier this year that brought the movie business to a near-halt, and the possibility of an actor's strike later in the year coming along to finish what the writer's strike started, America hasn't been this aware of what organized labor is up to in years! Unfortunately, unless Vin Diesel's mercenary Thoorop in Babylon A.D. happens to be a dues-paying member of the International Brotherhood of Hired Killers & Machinegun Operators, there's no new released this holiday weekend that are even remotely about unions or the labor struggle. But that doesn't mean we can't dip back into our video vaults and come up with five fine flicks about working-class struggle for your Labor Day enjoyment. (And, as a special treat before you go back to work on Tuesday, take a few hours to watch Barbara Kopple's masterful Harlan County U.S.A., referenced in last week's Take Five.) Happy Labor Day, readers!

MATEWAN (1987)

Possibly John Sayles' finest film, Matewan depicts -- with the heart of a union man and the eye of an artist -- the brutal struggle to unionize among the West Virginia coal miners of the 1920s, one of the bloodiest periods in the history of organized labor. Based on the Matewan Massacre of 1920 and featuring breathtaking cinematography by Haskell Wexler, Matewan' s powerful story is bouyed by wall-to-wall terrific performances by Chris Cooper, David Strathairn, James Earl Jones, and a young Will Oldham, in his pre-rock star days. Essential.

NORMA RAE (1979)

Martin Ritt's feel-good hit about a scrappy female textile worker who takes on the burden of being the point woman for unionizing the clothing mill in the deep South that employs her hasn't held up particularly well -- it's got a handful of good performances (and won star Sally Field an Oscar), but at times it comes across as a bit hokey. But it still stands as a testament to one of the last flashes of union glory in the U.S. before Ronald Reagan's Republicans started their unrelenting war against organized labor in America. Worth watching as a document of its day.

ROGER & ME (1989)

Sure, nowadays, it's pretty easy even for liberals to make fun of Michael Moore. His insistence on making himself part of his stories has gotten out of hand, and in many ways, he's become the caricature lefty the right has always accused him of being. But in 1989, when he launched his quixotic quest to have just a few words with General Motors CEO Roger Smith and ask him to look at the massive devastation wrought by his moving manufacturing jobs out of Flint, MI to avoid union costs, he seemed like a true breath of fresh air and a voice for the voiceless.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH (1940)

It's almost impossible now to overestimate the impact of John Steinbeck's finest novel and the stirring masterpiece of a film that John Ford made of it. With the sting of the Depression fresh in the minds of millions of viewers -- and with labor conflicts so intense that big agricultural interests in California sought to have the movie banned, just as they removed copies of the book from California libraries -- the gorgeous, moving film was no stolid classic then, but an urgent cry for justice and decency at a time when the country was in its direst of straits.

AMERICAN DREAM (1990)

By the time Barbara Kopple finished her disturbing, heartbreaking documentary about a strike by meat packers at the Austin, MN Hormel plant, Reaganism's determination to crush unions wherever they could be found had already made its tragic story about the slow, tangled dismantling and destruction of a labor negotiating unit a familiar one all over the country. A far more ambiguous work than her Harlan County U.S.A., American Dream nonetheless shows the unremitting sadness of the direction our country took when it allowed ideologues to launch an assault on the hard-won gains of the working class.

It's Hard Out Here For a Singer/Songwriter

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:15:00 GMT

Where goeth Scarlett Johansson and Zooey Deschanel, so goeth Terrence Howard. Or so it would appear, as the Oscar-nominated star of Hustle & Flow prepares to release Shine Through It, his debut album on Columbia Records. And while it would seem unlikely that Johansson would record an album of Tom Waits covers, or that Deschanel would make a record that was actually worth listening to, so too would it seem improbable that the star whose rise to fame is inextricably linked with Three 6 Mafia would make an album of subtle, sensitive singer-songwriter tunes. And yet here we are.

In a profile in today's New York Times, Howard, whose screen reputation is largely built on playing street-smart hustlers, namechecks an unlikely set of performers as influential in the making of Shine Through It, including Paul Simon, Don McLean, and, yes, Barry Manilow. While he waxes rhapsodic about these artists, and explains why he didn't perform "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" at the Oscars (problems with the language, says he), Howard makes it clear that he's no fan of rap music, and that while his peers listened to funk, he existed on the deeper level of artists like Harry Chapin and Dan Fogelberg. "I grew up in the projects, but Rick James wasn't my buddy," he sniffs. "I was more sensitive than that."

Indeed, if Howard is a tad fuzzy about who, exactly, the audience is for Shine Through It, he makes no bones about who the audience isn't: black people. "My own people, black people, they've become accustomed to this hip-hop sound," he says. "If it doesn't have a driving beat, I don't know if they'll hear it right away. I think I have to go to a different crowd." NPR, here he comes!

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That Guy!: Bob Hoskins

Leonard Pierce — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:45:00 GMT

It's been a long time since we've seen a new entry for That Guy!, the Screengrab's sporadic celebration of B-listers, character actors, and the working famous. So who better to mark our return than one of the most enjoyable contemporary character actors? Robert William Hoskins, the short, broad Cockney from Bury St. Edmonds, is one of England's most beloved actors -- quite unusual given that he's never had an acting lesson and his first role came purely by accident. At the time, Hoskins was seeking a career as a writer, and supported himself, like most failed artists, by working odd jobs -- in this case, as a warehouse worker. Showing up drunk and a theater to collect a friend who was auditioning for the lead, he was clowning around in the audience and, mistaken for one of the hopefuls by the casting director, he acquitted himself marvelously in the audition and got the part. It cost him a friend, but it launched one of the richest careers in modern British cinema. At 5'6", stout, and with an unmistakable working-class accent and demeanor, Hoskins is rarely the best-looking man in the room, even when he's alone; but he's parlayed his unusual appearance and forceful personality into some electrifying roles. At first known for his ability to play intense and sometimes brutal criminals and assorted villains, he later convinced his agents that he was more diverse than his resume indicated and soon showed an exceptional gift for comedy as well, both verbal and physical. His big break came in 1980, when, after a number of high-profile television appearances, he netted the lead role in The Long Good Friday (about which see below); it proved to be a turning point in his career, and he's worked steadily ever since, rarely in a lead role but always worth watching (well, maybe with the exception of Super Mario Brothers). With both blockbuster films and small independent movies to his credit, Hoskins has proven his diversity, and even now, at age 65, he gets offers that men half his age would envy. Curiously, he has played a number of political leaders from the 1940s and 1950s in his storied career: Churchhill, Mussolini, Krushchev, and Soviet secret police killer Lavrent Beria. Of this phenomenon, Hoskins has said, with typical self-deprecation, "Most dictators were short, fat, middle-aged and hairless. Besides Danny DeVito, there's only me to play them."

Where to see Bob Hoskins at his best:

THE LONG GOOD FRIDAY (1980)

Hoskins' breakout film role came in this gripping, suspenseful gangster movie, which he earned by a stellar performance in Dennis Potter's fantastic television mini-series Pennies from Heaven. Playing Harold Shand, a short-tempered and violent British gangster, Hoskins is endlessly fascinating to watch: his character, used to being in complete control, is a textbook case of slow, angry boil as his world begins to completely unravel on what should be the occasion of his greatest triumph. Watching Shand fall to pieces as he thrashes about helplessly, trying to find out who is out to destroy him and why, is one the greatest treats the gangster genre has to offer.

MONA LISA (1986)

Once again returning to the well of British gangster films, Bob Hoskins chose wisely in taking the role of George, a down-on-his-luck ex-convict who, shunned by his former colleagues, can only secure employment as the driver for a high-priced call girl. In a role rife with sexual tension, danger, and class conflict, Hoskins shines as the shy but confident George, whose initial disdain for Cathy Tyson's Simone grows into respect and finally affection. Considering that he shared the screen with some genuinely great actors -- including Robbie Coltrane, The Wire's Clarke Peters, and Michael Caine as a sinister mob boss -- it's even more impressive how good Hoskins is in this; he secured an Oscar nomination as well as a BAFTA nod for the performance.

WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? (1988)

In the role that ensured he'd have success in the United States as well as his native England, Hoskins got a chance to stick to the rough-edged hard men he was accustomed to playing while still having ample opportunities to show off his gift for physical comedy. In this Bob Zemeckis blockbuster (profiled recently in our look at the greatest animated features of all time), he plays Eddie Valiant, a hardboiled noir detective in a 1940s version of Los Angeles where cartoons are as alive as anyone else -- though Valiant wishes otherwise when he's called upon to defend the notorious Roger Rabbit, who's been framed for murder. His Golden Globe-nominated performance is still a delight to see; it's the rare actor who doesn't come across as a complete tool acting opposite a drawing, which is why we can always forgive him for Super Mario Brothers.

OST: "South Park - Bigger, Longer and Uncut"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Most critics expected, when the anarchic, devotedly vulgar Comedy Central cartoon hit the big screen, that it would be pretty funny and remarkably foul-mouthed. They were right on both counts, but what few people expected is that it would also be unexpectedly profound (or, well, as profound as a movie featuring Satan and Saddam Hussein as feuding gay lovers could be), with a message about censorship that was more practical than self-righteous, and that its parodic sensibilities would be so remarkable spot-on. In fact, given the direction that the series took -- becoming increasingly more dogmatic and quite a bit more obvious in its political point-making -- it's easy to see the 1999 film as the pinnacle of the South Park experience, where everyone involved really hit their stride.

This is especially true with the movie's exceptionally enjoyable soundtrack. Rather than going for a more contemporary feel, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, in conjunction with Hollywood music vet Marc Shaiman -- decided to go whole hog with a big-screen musical parody, tossing everything from Disneyesque ballads of longing to amped-up schoolyard jingles that play like something out of a Busby Berkeley musical to battle hymns juiced with triumphal orchestral swells to big-screen Oscar bait weepers made of 100% processed cheese. The remarkable thing about them was how perfectly the parodies worked: so well, in fact, that the obnoxious bigot's anthem "Blame Canada" actually got itself nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song, leaving the show's producers with the difficult question of how to stage a musical number featuring language that wasn't allowed to be heard on television. (They came up with the elegant solution of having Robin Williams sing the live version of "Blame Canada" during the Oscar ceremony, and he's capable of draining the funny out of anything, so nobody complained.) The songs on the soundtrack are pitch-perfect parodies; if you strip away the relentlessly filthy language and the subversive bits of the lyrics, there's almost nothing whatever to set them apart from the cheeseball Elton John melodies in a first-tier animated Disney "modern" classic. It's the pouring on of tons of formal sincerity -- and then the total upending with gobs and gobs of adolescent toilet irony -- that makes the whole soundtrack work so remarkably well.

(One caveat: the praise we heap on the South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut soundtrack applies only to the original songs featured in the main story of the movie. The "bonus tracks" on the album, mostly rap and metal reworkings of songs in the film, are largely reprehensible, bottom-drawer, 100% filler. There's some fun to be had with a Violent Femmes cover of "I Can Change", and it's amusing for exactly one listen to hear Rush's Geddy Lee sing "O Canada", but other than that, everything after track 12 can be safely deleted from your hard drive.)

BEST TRACKS: The wildly jolly, almost Vaudevillian show tune that is "Uncle Fucka" -- a horribly profane ditty sung by the Canadian cartoon duo Terrance & Phillip that goes several light-years beyond gratuitous -- gets things rolling early on. Eric Cartman's rendition of a song previously rendered on the small screen as an extemporaraneous schoolyard taunt, "Kyle's Mom is a Big Fat Bitch", is served up with all the gusto of a Broadway show-stopper, complete with novelty international choruses. "Eyes of a Child" is such a thick, fragrant slice of bogus emotional cheesiness, it's easy to see Michael McDonald crooning it on a lite-rock FM station in your dentist's office, which makes it all the more amazing that they actually got Michael McDonald to sing it here; and if nothing else, "I Can Change" is the only time in cinematic history in which we see former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein crooning a jaunty ditty in order to seduce the Prince of Darkness into going to bed with him. So far, at least.

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OST: "There Will Be Blood"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 20 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

The recent direction in which Radiohead has turned causes much split opinion, as might be expected from one of the biggest bands in the world. Some feel that the more avant-garde turn their music has taken is a sign of growth, development, and change for the better, a step away from the simple but distinctive pop craftsmanship that marked their early days and towards an entirely new sensibility, more attuned to the voice of modern minimalist composers than to the pop or even indie-rock tradition. Others think it's been a disaster, a pretentious and overwrought plunge into the alienatingly highbrow at the cost of the band's credibility, relatability and listenability. Whatever one's opinion (and I'm certainly in the former camp), a lot of tears have been shed over the fate of the band's guitarist, Jonny Greenwood. Though he's been vocally supportive of Radiohead's direction and has adapted his playing admirably well to the demands of the more stripped-down, electronic-influenced work, many have wondered -- especially given the sound of lead singer Thom Yorke's solo work -- if he was fully behind the shift in tone. But after the release of the stunning soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood, no one should worry, least of all Greenwood himself. It's a masterful album, perfectly suited to the material onscreen, that shows how fully possessed he is by moody minimalism and dissonant, striking tones.

There were legitimate worries when Greenwood was announced as the composer to the score to There Will Be Blood. A number of people, myself included, questioned the prominent role assigned to Aimee Mann's music in Magnolia; boosters found it fitting, a natural extension of the movie's story. Others found it extremely inclusive, smacking of the cart driving the horse. It turns out they have nothing to worry about: Greenwood's score in There Will Be Blood is as subtle and insinuating as Mann's songs in Magnolia were obvious and intrusive. From the first squalling, snakeline chords the the last smothering cluster of strings, it's a tightly controlled, sinister, and utterly appropriate score, a musical realization of the struggles and excesses in Daniel Plainview's soul. While the movie itself is epic, the score is minute and precise, coming from a stripped-down version of a full orchestra and delivering a terrible sense of struggle from its very first notes. At times, Greenwood almost seems to be fighting a horrible battle to make the dissonant blasts and squalling notes force meaning and emotion from the barren landscapes of the film's oil-town settings: there is pain and effort in this music as real and as clear as Plainview's horribly willful efforts to drag himself out of a hole in the ground with a wooden leg. Some notes sound relentlessly, again and again, with a furious insistence worthy of Ligeti; other notes creep loosely around the edges of perception, bringing the entire thing an almost ambient quality like Brian Eno's instrumental efforts. It's an astonishing piece of work on every level, instantly marking Greenwood as a force to be reckoned with as a film composer. (Unfortunately, the presence of a slight three-minute quote from his own "Popcorn Superhet Receiver", an avant-garde piece influenced by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, disqualified the widely praised score from Oscar contention.)

BEST TRACKS: the stirring, magnificent (and ironically claustrophobic) "Open Spaces", which opens the album; the angry, jerking, ,almost psychotic "Eat Him By His Own Light"; and the lonely, dismal, haunting "Daniel Plainview" are standouts here, but give the entire album a listen, all the way through, divorced from the context of the film: it's a testament to how well it's done that, as perfectly as it works onscreen, it holds up amazingly well on its own.

Take Five: Arizona

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 16 May 2008 21:15:00 GMT

How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer gets its limited-release debut this Friday, after two years of lingering on the festival circuit without a distributor. Although some critics have praised its good-natured look at sexuality and overall sunny demeanor, it's likely that the real reason Georgina Riedel's feature-length debut is finally seeing the light of day is the newfound TV stardom of its lead actress, America Ferrara. Still, the reason I want to see it is simple: it's set in Arizona. I was born and raised in Phoenix, at a time when everyone from there was from somewhere else, and while I don't really miss the place, I still have that hokey boosterism that makes me raise an eyebrow whenever I hear a movie or television show is set there or filming there. During the early days of Hollywood, the movie business was obsessed with the 48th state -- largely because it had only recently become a state. It was the last of the frontier, the final remnant of the proud plains and deserts of the New West, and while the vast majority of the western shoot-'em-ups set in Arizona were really made on a back lot five blocks from La Cienega Boulevard, there's still plenty of movies out there claiming Arizonan provenance. As the state has morphed into Southern California's bedroom annex, with all the strip malls and chain stores that implies, there's continued to be a few standout films that use the Grand Canyon State as their setting; here's five of them.

IN OLD ARIZONA (1929)

The filming of this early classic western didn't get within 300 miles of Arizona, but like a lot of early cowboy pictures, it's set there. In Old Arizona has a lot of the corny qualities that modern audiences associate with this era of filmmaking, but it's worth seeing -- and historically significant -- for a number of reasons. The first full-length talkie ever released by 20th Century Fox, it was also the first talking picture to be filmed outdoors. Director Raoul Walsh was set to play the lead himself, but a car accident robbed him of the chance, and cost him an eye, leading to the eyepatch that became his tradmark in later years; his replacement was Warner Baxter, who won only the second Best Actor Oscar in history for his performance as the Cisco Kid. Finally, the movie has a memorable twist ending that sets it apart -- courtesy of the original story, by O. Henry.

3:10 TO YUMA (1957)

We'd love to include the remake here, but it was filmed entirely in New Mexico, Arizona's glory-hogging next door neighbor. But the original is just as good in many ways; it's based on the same wildly popular pulp novella (by a young Elmore Leonard!) that spawned the reboot 50 years later, and the overall look, feel, and plot are the same. There's also a handful of swell performances, especially by leads Van Heflin and Glenn Ford, both playing against type. Often compared to its superior contemporary High Noon, 3:10 to Yuma simply isn't in that class, but it's still a tight, claustrophobic little western thriller, worth seeing until it sort of falls apart at the end. It's also about all the big-screen fame that Yuma, AZ -- a dodgy little town on the California border, best known for its ungodly temperatures in the summer -- would ever get.

PSYCHO (1960)

Very little of Alfred Hitchcock's slasher masterpiece was actually filmed in Phoenix, Arizona -- mostly just a few establishing shots and street scenes. But for some moviegoers, seeing the name of the town at the tail end of the movie's memorable opening credits would be their first recognizable experience of Arizona even existing outside of old-time westerns, and their first clue that the state capitol was actually a bustling modern city, not a frontier outpost constantly besieged by bands of Apache. (Even in the '70s, when I was growing up, people from out of state would ask me if living in Phoenix was like growing up in a Western.) The action shifts pretty early on to California, the home of the Bates Motel, but really, I just included it on this list to test my theory that no matter what 'best movie featuring _____' theme you come up with, you can fit Psycho into it.

REAL LIFE (1979)

Albert Brooks' first full-length film as a director is absolutely fantastic. It establishes his winning comedic persona as a shallow, self-centered Hollywood phony; it satirizes reality television a good twenty years before anyone else was doing it; it features one of Charles Grodin's finest big-screen performances, and a hilarious relief role for That Guy! J.A. Preston; and it's probably the funniest and most successful film that Brooks ever did. But for me, there was an extra kick: it was set, and partially filmed, in my hometown of Phoenix, and it's the very first time I can consciously remember seeing places in a movie that I'd actually been to in real life. When I first saw, at age 10, local newscaster Carlos Jurado removed from my living room TV and being featured on the silver screen, I gained an understanding of the power of movies I'd never really had before.

RAISING ARIZONA (1987)

Although the entirety of the Coen Brothers' first comic masterpiece was filmed in various locations around central Arizona, you wouldn't know it from the script. The place names are gibberish, the filming locations don't synch up with the places mentioned on screen, and the entire movie seems set less in any recognizable version of the Grand Canyon State than it is in some kind of rural fantasia that's half Wild West and half Appalachian hillbilly country. Roger Ebert actually got really bent out of shape about this, giving the film a disapproving review because of the ridiculous quasi-southern accents everyone sported and the nebulous redneck paradise it seemed to be set in, but Rog was really missing the point. I still lived in Arizona when this came out, and everyone I knew there loved it; it's not like we were expecting social realism out of the thing. The Coens are perfectly capable of verisimilitude when they want to be (see Fargo and The Big Lebowski for examples); here, Arizona was just a hook on which to hang the film's lunatic comedic sensibilities, with no more need for accuracy than Freedonia in Duck Soup.

Take Five: Sweet Revenge

Leonard Pierce — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:00:00 GMT

Responding to criticism that a review of his had unfairly given information about the ending of a thriller, the late film critic Gene Siskel is said to have replied: "Here is the ending of every thriller ever made -- the bad guy dies." So when, in this week's Take Five, we talk about revenge thrillers, we're not talking about movies where some power-tool-wielding misogynist more or less accidentally gets it in the neck after two hours of tormenting co-eds and/or mapless vacationers. We're talking about movies like Xavier Gens' Frontiers, opening in limited and highly disgusting release this Friday; movies where evildoers show up at the doorstep of innocents only to have the tables turned upon them fairly early on; movies where, for at least a third of their running time, the bad guys aren't in control, and the thrills come from wondering how far those who have been wronged will go to get even. While the revenge flick has a pretty shoddy history, and while Frontiers doesn't look like it's going to bring much more than grosser-than-usual levels of violence and some hamhanded political commentary to the mix, not every movie in the tables-get-turned genre is an exploitative dud. The concept may have reached its nadir with flicks like I Spit On Your Grave, but that doesn't mean you can't savor a pretty tasty dish served cold from time to time.

KEY LARGO (1948)

One of Hollywood's first, and finest, attempts at subverting the conventions of the innocent-people-beseiged-by-evil chestnut was this powerful, terrifically acted quasi-noir. When exiled gangster Johnny Rocco holes up in a Florida resort to wait out a storm, after which he looks to make a triumphant comeback, he doesn't count on two things: the presence of embittered but hard-as-iron vet Frank McCloud (played with icily ironic contempt by Humphrey Bogart) and his own terror at a coming hurricane. As the movie progresses, Edward G. Robinson turns from utterly unflappable master manipulator (as in his famously cruel scene with alcoholic gun moll Claire Trevor) to cowering paranoiac, and the desperate sense of terror is ratcheted up to unbearable levels by director John Huston, at the peak of his powers.

THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT (1972)

Wes Craven announced his arrival as a forced to be reckoned with in the world of horror with this, his feature film debut. Too cheap, too raw and too frankly disturbing to entirely escape the exploitation-flick label, this direly unnerving story about a gang of hoodlums who opportunistically murder a pair of teenage girls only to find themselves, a short time later, staying at the home of the father of one of their victims, has far more going on emotionally, dramatically and philosophically than you might expect. But even if it were just cheap horror, it would be one of the most effective cheap horror films of its era. Powerful, creepy, and almost unbearably tense. Bizarrely, Last House on the Left is based on Ingmar Bergman's masterful medieval drama of 1960, The Virgin Spring!

THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960)

Tellingly, this would be the last of a fertile period in the legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman's career where he explored his characters' relationship with God. He'd never make another movie like it, and though it netted him an Oscar for Best Foreign Film, its shockingly open depiction of rape and revenge caused waves of controversy at the time of his release. Bergman's favorite actor, Max Von Sydow, gives one of the best performances of his career as the father of a young girl who is attacked and killed by bandits who, through empty fate or inexplicable divine intervention, arrive in his home looking for charity. They find only a bloody end. Bizarrely, The Virgin Spring is based on Wes Craven's groundbreaking revenge-horror film of 1972, The Last House on the Left, through reverse time warp technology!

STRAW DOGS (1971)

Perhaps no revenge thriller in the history of cinema has been more controversial than Sam Peckinpah's brutal meditation on masculinity and cowardice. Easily as vicious and manipulative as the worst grindhouse exploitation flick, it dresses up its blackly beating heart in such undeniable artistry that it leaves even people who have seen it and assessed it time and time again not knowing exactly how to react to it. The film features Dustin Hoffman, in an emotionally exhausting performance, as a mild-mannered professor whose good nature is taken for granted once too often by local bullies; it caused incredibly extreme reactions on its release (with Pauline Kael writing one of the most memorable reviews of her long career in startled reaction to it) and continues to do so even now, nearly forty years down the road.

CAPE FEAR (1962/1991)

This effective psychological thriller, based on a terse little novel by John D. MacDonald, has been made twice -- once in a taut quasi-noir version in the early '60s by J. Lee Thompson, and once in a much darker and more provocative way by Martin Scorsese. The particular twist of both versions of Cape Fear is who, exactly, thinks revenge needs to be taken: the protagonist, Sam Bowden, thinks he needs to take revenge against Max Cady, a vicious criminal who's gunning for his family. Cady, on the other hand, thinks he's the hero of the movie -- he's the one looking for revenge against Bowden, who failed to properly defend him in court years before and doomed him to years of harsh imprisonment. The first is too little seen by modern eyes, and the second is wrongly reviled; both are worth a good look for their tense ambiguity.

No, But I've Read the Movie: THE MALTESE FALCON

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:15:00 GMT

The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep are often considered the two greatest acheivements of detective noir prior to the post-war era. It's by no means incidental to their reputation that both starred the pitch-perfect Humphrey Bogart, nor that in both films, he portrayed a classic private eye created by one of the standout pulp witers of the previous decade. Though both have been rescued from dime-novel oblivion by later critics who were able to pick out their substantial literary talents from the low-level hackwork that comprised much of 1930s pulp, Raymond Chandler's reputation has outstripped Dashiell Hammett's, and rightfully so; Hammett was an outstanding technician and a keen drawer of character, but he lacked Chandler's transcendent style, his keen psychological insight, and his stunning sense of place and time. Still, he shared with Philip Marlowe's creator a love of language, and he was by far Chandler's superior in terms of complex, inventive plot, which made his books natural fodder for movie adaptations.

In his finest book, The Maltese Falcon, he combined this exquisite sensibility for clockwork plots with some of his most sinister and intriguing characters (the pathological lying femme fatale Brigid O'Shaughnessy, the effete and manipulative thief Joel Cairo and the gregarious but sinister crime boss Kaspar Gutman), who he sent off in search of cinema's most memorable MacGuffin. Against them all he set the coolest, most calculating private eye in all of literature: the immortal Sam Spade. Much like its spiritual twin, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, despite a number of divergences from its source, achieves near-perfection and serves as an unforgettable 1941 movie adaptation that makes you appreciate the finer qualities of the novel all the more.

WHAT IT HAD: John Huston, one of the greatest directors of his era and the man who is far more responsible than either Humphrey Bogart or Dashiell Hammett for the film's success. Huston adapted the screenplay himself, stripping the story to its most raw elements, losing as little as possible while streamlining for the screen and keeping Hammett's understated, cooly cruel dialogue intact. An amazing cast with not a flat performance in the bunch -- aside from Bogart's iconic performance, Mary Astor gives the role of a lifetime as Brigid, Elisha Cook Jr. plays nicely against type as the furious gunsel Wilmer, Peter Lorre's Joel Cairo is endlessly entertaining, and Sydney Greenstreet's Kaspar Gutman is simply one of the best screen villains of all time.

WHAT IT LACKED: Very little. Thanks to Huston's top-notch direction and wonderful sense of timing, the parts of the novel which are left out are hard to miss, and the dialogue is so well-translated to the screen that you don't too much lament the loss of Hammett's fine style (as when he describes Spade, early on, as "rather pleasantly like a blond Satan"). Bits of exposition are left behind to no great loss, as well. Perhaps the major difference between book and movie can be chalked up to the Hays Code: censors of the day wouldn't allow Joel Cairo to be portrayed on film as he is in the book as obviously homosexual, and the book is far more violent than the film -- scenes where Gutman tortures his own daughter and is himself ultimately murdered by the betrayed henchman Wilmer Cook are deleted.

DID IT SUCCEED?: Both the book and the film are nearly perfect examples of their kind. Ironically, at the time the movie -- a huge critical success, then and now -- was made, the author of the the novel, Dashiell Hammett, was not taken very seriously. At the time, almost all pulp writers were considered low-rent hacks cranking out peurile entertainment for the masses. The movie, however -- which featured a screenplay by John Huston that mirrored the plot and dialogue of the novel almost exactly -- was hugely praised by critics both highbrow and popular. In fact, Huston received an Oscar nomination for the screenplay, while Hammett would wait some 30 years (a decade after his death) to receive a serious reappraisal by literary critics.

Indie Box-Office Roundup: Weekend of February 22-24, 2008

Paul Clark — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 15:00:00 GMT

One of the pleasures of doing the weekly Indie Box-Office Roundup is that there are more surprises to be had with this top ten than with the top-grossing films overall. For example, I never thought I'd live to type the following six words: "Jacques Rivette, domestic box-office champ." Naturally, we're talking per-screen average rather than overall gross, but still — wow. Rivette's latest film, The Duchess of Langeais (IFC Films), took in a per-screen average of $11,126 on two screens over the past weekend. What makes this weekend's haul even more of a surprise is that Rivette's last film, L'Histoire de Marie et Julien was snubbed altogether by American distributors as being "too uncommercial." As a long-standing Rivette fan, I'm happy to see that others are responding as positively to his new work as I did. I don't expect it to stay on top, but I'll enjoy its reign while it lasts.

Coming in a strong second was Sunday night's Best Foreign-Language Film winner, Stefan Ruzowitzky's The Counterfeiters (Sony Pictures Classics). In its first weekend in American theatres, the film brought in an average of $10,939 per screen on eight screens. Expect the film's totals to soar next weekend, as Oscar-watchers turn out to see what all the fuss is about.

Sitting at #3 and #4 were last week's top two, The Band's Visit (Sony Pictures Classics) and In Bruges (Focus Features), followed by the weekend's top documentary, A Man Named Pearl (Shadow Distribution). Also worth mentioning is 9th-place film La Traviata (Emerging Pictures), a limited-engagement performance of Verdi's opera. It's hard to gauge how the opera's attendance compares to the other titles in this week's top ten, since although many cities are showing the movie fewer times than their other titles, tickets generally sell for upwards of $20.

Next weekend should see a bump for the Oscar-winners still in release, not just The Counterfeiters but also Best Documentary Feature winner Taxi to the Dark Side, and to a certain extent No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood.

Top 10, Weekend of February 22-24:
1. The Duchess Of Langeais [IFC Films] ($11,126 per screen)
2. The Counterfeiters [Sony Pictures Classics] ($10,939)
3. The Band's Visit [Sony Pictures Classics] ($4,908)
4. In Bruges [Focus Features] ($4,530)
5. A Man Named Pearl [Shadow Distribution] ($3,308)
6. Still Life [New Yorker] ($2,933)
7. Undoing [Indican Pictures] ($2,897)
8. George A. Romero's Diary Of The Dead [Third Rail Releasing] ($2,540)
9. La Traviata [Emerging Pictures] ($2,503)
10. The Year My Parents Went On Vacation [City Lights Pictures Releasing] ($2,485)

Source: IndieWire.

Top Five Oscar Moments

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:15:00 GMT

First, I must extend heartiest congratulations on behalf of the Screengrab to our colleague Paul Clark, who absolutely smoked the rest of us in the Oscar pool. Next year I’m giving my ballot to my dog (who didn’t much care for the bee montage, by the way).

Secondly, who agrees with me that the Oscars are ten times more enjoyable here in the DVR age? The ceremony clocked in at about an hour and fifteen minutes for me, after zapping through the commercials, Enchanted musical numbers and acceptance speeches in languages I couldn’t understand. The purists may frown on my methods, but I know the Academy Awards well enough by now to take matters into my own hands. Herewith, the top five moments:

1. Although technically not part of the Oscar ceremony itself, the nine hours of red carpet nonsense preceding the telecast is always good for at least one squirm-inducing, soul-shriveling moment, and who better than former actor and current crazy person Gary Busey to deliver it? And it’s always fun to see Ryan Seacrest’s smug façade dissolve into sheer terror. After watching this clip, picture Ben Affleck fuming at the Spago after-party, telling a sympathetic Seth Rogen how he’s gonna kick Busey’s ass.

2. Jon Stewart’s monologue wasn’t a nonstop rollicking roller coaster of laughter, but it got the job done. Sure, it’s a little disappointing that the writer’s strike ended and we weren’t able to see the full 12-minute version of the “waking up from a dream” montage, but two magic words make it all worthwhile. And those words are, of course, Gaydolf Titler.

3. Tilda Swinton’s win for Best Supporting Actress was my first clue that I wouldn’t be taking home the new Cadillac in the Screengrab pool, but it did provide one of the night’s best acceptance speeches. It’s not just any respected British actress who can work both her agent’s buttocks and George Clooney’s bat-nipples into her speech.

4. If you aren’t happy for Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, then…well, you probably wrote the songs from Enchanted. Hansard’s heartfelt exhortation “Make art! Make art!” sounded like the most subversive words ever spoken on the Oscar stage, and Stewart’s intervention to allow Irglova to make her speech after the orchestra rudely played her off was a clear victory for the good guys.

5. Most of us probably never thought we’d see the day that Joel and Ethan Coen would be anointed Hollywood royalty, but they took the honors with typical deadpan good humor. We still want to see Henry Kissinger: Man on the Go.

Gary Busey Attempts To Make Out With Jennifer Garner In Public

Peter Smith — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 20:05:00 GMT

Because we here at the Screengrab respect the inestimable refinement of our readership, we normally wouldn't stoop to lowbrow material like this (cough). But the above is the kind of headline we film writers dream of, and we'll be damned if we're going to let it get by. Hit the jump for what's possibly the most awkward red-carpet moment of the year. (Special props to the cameramen for catching Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill gawking in the background.)

Oscars Suck

Peter Smith — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:15:00 GMT

At least that's the word from the people. According to Nielsen (Media Research, not Leslie), last night's telecast may have been the lowest-rated Oscar broadcast ever. Preliminary estimates suggest this year's show was watched by 21% fewer people than last year's, and 14% than 2003's, the current booby-prize holder. It's possible that a large percentage of potential viewers were just stuck on an immobile Amtrak train for two-and-a-half hours, like me, and thereby unable to watch. But it seems unlikely. Too bad for the Academy, but at least this will give Jon Stewart something to be wry and self-deprecating about for another few Daily Shows.

Paul Clark (Kinda) Liveblogs the Oscars

Paul Clark — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 21:30:00 GMT

Well, it's that time of year again, and unlike last year, I'll actually be posting here as the night goes on. While it's difficult to me to actually "live-blog" because my computer faces away from the television, I'll try to post something over every commercial break. Let's see how this goes. Hopefully I'll at least be more coherent than Harry Knowles usually is, but you never know.

4:30 PM- Just for the record, here's my complete list of predictions, so I won't be able to weasel my way out of them later and declare my predictive powers to be any more awesome than they actually are:

Best Picture: No Country for Old Men
Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis
Best Actress: Marion Cotillard
Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem
Best Supporting Actress: Tilda Swinton
Best Director: Joel and Ethan Coen
Best Original Screenplay: Juno
Best Adapted Screenplay: No Country for Old Men
Best Animated Feature: Ratatouille
Best Art Direction: There Will Be Blood (winner: Sweeney Todd)
Best Cinematography: There Will Be Blood
Best Costume Design: Atonement (winner: Elizabeth)
Best Documentary Feature: No End in Sight (winner: Taxi to the Dark Side)
Best Documentary Short Subject: Sari's Mother (winner: Freeheld)
Best Editing: The Bourne Ultimatum
Best Foreign Language Film: The Counterfeiters
Best Makeup: La Vie en Rose
Best Original Score: Atonement
Best Original Song: "Falling Slowly," Once
Best Animated Short: Peter and the Wolf
Best Live-Action Short: Tanghi Argentini (winner: The Mozart of Pickpockets)
Best Sound Editing: The Bourne Ultimatum
Best Sound Mixing: No Country for Old Men (winner: The Bourne Ultimatum)
Best Visual Effects: Transformers (winner: Golden Compass)

How will I fare? Stay tuned...

Preshow- Oh, great. Regis is hosting. Better than Joan and Melissa at least.

8:05- Cotillard is so hot. Just wanted to get that out there.

8:06- Host lady to Travolta: "You're not wearing a dress in honor of HAIRSPRAY." Come on, he's not Trey Parker.

8:08- Bardem: "seeking money AND revenge?" All right, did you SEE the movie?

8:10- How many times is Regis going to say "what's wrong with these people?"

8:13- Wow, Mickey Rooney's still alive, and more Yoda-like than ever.

8:13- JUNO: "the little movie that could." Way to go, Fox Searchlight marketing team.

8:23- Uh-oh, there's Hilary Swank. Nobody tell Nathaniel, OK? "People say you can play any kind of role." OK, WHAT? It's Hilary Swank, not Meryl Streep.

8:27- Remember this for next year, ABC- fewer random stars, more Bill Conti.

8:29- XAVIER Bardem? Come on, Regis, you've had time to practice your pronunciations.

8:30- FYI, I'll be boldfacing all the predictions I get right, in case you're keeping score at home.

8:33- Maybe they should hire Arnold to transport the Oscars every year. Would've saved them a big headache back in 2000.

8:34- Jack's next to Javier Bardem. Mothers, lock up your daughters...

8:36- "Oscar-nominated psychopathic killer movies." Wow, a Dorothy Hamill reference. You definitely don't get this from Whoopi.

8:38- NORBIT- "too often the Academy ignores movies that aren't good." OK, Oscar director, where's the Rick Baker cutaway shot? That's just sloppy, buds.

8:40- A stripper named Olympia Dukakis- forget Chigurh and Plainview, that's the most disturbing image we'll get tonight.

8:42- Spike Lee likes the black President joke. You're doing well, Jon.

8:44- Costume Design- I miss the models they had last year. Much better than the diagrams. Gah... ELIZABETH? Lots of costumes, but to what end? At least she kept it short.

8:51- Some of those production numbers are frightening, but none so much as accompanying the montage with Celine Dion. Classy wrap-up with Chaplin though.

8:53- Carell/Hathaway- must we really play the GET SMART theme? Hathaway's pretty smoking though. And Carell's clueless schtick still works. Yes... first correct prediction of the night. Go RATATOUILLE. Fun story too- Brad Bird is so cool.

8:57- Cutting from Heigl to Keri Russell? Is this a pregnancy-movie-themed edit? Yeesh. Also, settle down Heigl. But hey, LA VIE EN ROSE won. Go me. At least it wasn't frickin' NORBIT.

9:01- First song nominee- "Happy Working Song", quite possibly the first Oscar-nominated song with the lyric about scrubbing a toilet. Adams is a charmer, but did we really need to nominate 5 songs this year? 3 ENCHANTED songs seems like a lot of padding in my opinion. At least there's no production number behind her.

9:09- Stop trying so hard to be funny, Rock Dwayne. Yikes... THE GOLDEN COMPASS? Granted, it's the least terrible of the five movies, but the effects weren't all that stellar, except of course for the polar bear ripping the other polar bear's jaw off. That was awesome.

9:12- That's two bum predictions in a row for me. SWEENEY TODD sort of deserves it too though, so I won't complain.

9:14- Yes, Cate's awesome. But why not mention her cameo in HOT FUZZ?

9:17- Much as I love Casey Affleck's performance, this is the wrong category for him... Bardem- what other scene would they have picked? Hoffman, likewise... wow, that's a lot of applause for Holbrook. Could an upset happen? Nope, guess not. Also, I'm guessing Wilkinson will have an Oscar within the next decade. Nice quick speech, Bardem. Too bad most native English-speaking winners can't keep it that brief.

9:24- At least wasting our time with fake montages is more entertaining than wasting our time with real montages. Also, Pee Wee!

9:26- Holy crap, who's responsible for such prosaic and literal-minded lyrics? The little girl's good though, even if she does sound like she's auditioning for Teenage Idol. Still, this better not beat "Falling Slowly".

9:30- Sweet, it's Owen Wilson. He could use some more practice reading the TelePrompter though. Ick... THE MOZART OF PICKPOCKETS won. Probably the least of the nominees, at least in my estimation.

9:32- Wait, BEE MOVIE? Couldn't they afford RATATOUILLE? The bees montage was pretty amusing though. Go MADAME TUTLI-PUTLI! OK, PETER AND THE WOLF wins. I predicted this, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about it.

9:36- Alan Arkin rules. Nice little speech there- don't know if he wrote it, but he made it his own. Hope you were watching folks, you've just watched Ruby Dee's entire performance in AMERICAN GANGSTER. And wow, it must've been tough to find a non-foulmouthed scene for Amy Ryan. Yesssssssss... Tilda wins. Righteous. She's so cool. Much better speeches this year all around, I'd say.

9:45- "The always fantastic Jessica Alba." Unless she's trying to act, that is. At least she's only presenting the Sci-Tech awards, fitting since I'm not entirely convinced she's not a special effects creation herself.

9:47- Brolin, you were robbed bud. At least you got a Muriel Award this year. Pretty obviously, it goes to the Coens. We'll be seeing plenty of them tonight, methinks. "We've only adapted Homer and Cormac McCarthy." Nice.

9:50- Hey, there's Sid Ganis. Time to get myself a drink. Wait, MICHAEL BAY's in the Academy? That explains so much.

9:53- This was a pretty fun production number in the movie, but it's really not that great a song. Chenoweth actually sounds quite a bit like Amy Adams, although she's a more polished singer to be sure. All these dancers look kind of dumb outside the context of the movie, I gotta say.

10:02- Angelina Jolie baby jokes never get old. Right? RIGHT???

10:03- Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill- awesome. Way to liven up the Sound Editing category. I'm calling BOURNE for this one, but who knows? Damn, I got it. How about that? And see, these are the people who should be getting flustered, not the professional actors.

10:06- Oh sweet, "Halle" and "Dame Judi" are doing the Sound Mixing category too. I'm guessing this'll be NO COUNTRY, although maybe Kevin O'Connell might get finally get his for TRANSFORMERS. Nope, this one's BOURNE too. Cool, I guess. And nice shirt, buddy.

10:10- Wait, Best Actress already? Go Carice Van Houten! Oh, never mind. Whitaker's gotten much better at public speaking since last year. Look at Cate cringe- she knows how terrible the movie is. But it's not like she'd say no. Christie, always classy. And you know what would be awesome? If they could use a Cotillard clip where we hear her real voice for more than a second. Wow, Cate was pretty happy about Cotillard winning. And since I predicted her, so am I. I mean, just look at her up there- she's glowing. Only question is whether an American can take home Best Actor, since otherwise the foreign actors are sweeping.

10:19- This commercial lead-in was brought to you by Wii.

10:20- Farrell presents "Falling Slowly." Because, you see, he's Irish, and the movie's Irish, so why not? Sounds good though. Also, nice music shop motif in the background with the guitars and all. At least there aren't any slow-motion dancers. But why the orchestra?

10:24- Come on Jack, try a little harder to sell what's been written for you. You're an actor, right?

10:26- Best Picture montage- yikes, some of these HURT. I won't even say which ones, you know the ones you hate.

10:29- Best Editing. I bet BOURNE, but I'm hoping for NO COUNTRY, just to see what'll happen. Alas, Roderick Jaynes' Oscar will have to wait.

10:32- Nice jab at IMDb, Jon. And holy NECKLACE, Nicole! Cool montage for Robert Boyle- pretty impressive filmography, I gotta say, and looking darn good for 98. I hadn't even heard who had gotten the honorary award, but now that I know I must say they've made a fine choice.

10:43- Holy crap, I forgot Andrzej Wajda's new film was up for Best Foreign-Language Film. And of course the WWII movie wins. Yeesh, that was easy.

10:47- Oh Jesus, THIS song? Boooooooooo-ring. Didn't they have a "Blame Canada"-style spoof song they could've nominated? It would've livened things up, that's for sure. And they say this guy's name is John McLaughlin? I was sort of hoping it'd be the dude from The McLaughlin Group instead of yet another sensitive, blandly hunky singer. If this song beats "Falling Slowly" I'm throwing my shoes at my television. So if the liveblogging stops abruptly, you'll know why.

10:50- This is one of your favorite categories, Travolta? Funny, it's one of my least favorites, since they usually pick sentimental junk. Naturally, I will except "It's Hard Out Here For a Pimp." WHEW, thank GOD. I was afraid I'd have to use my next Screengrab paycheck to replace my TV.

10:57- A propos of absolutely nothing- I like Stewart well enough, but am I the only one who'd welcome an Oscar ceremony hosted by "Halle" and "Dame Judi"?

10:58- Wow, Stewart just invited Marketa Irglova back to finish her speech. Extremely classy of him. I sort of take back what I just said about Halle and Dame Judi.

11:00- OK Cameron, have you seen SUNRISE? Doesn't sound like it. Almost all these cinematography nominations are awesome- THERE WILL BE BLOOD takes it. Sorry Deakins. And way to recognize everybody else.

11:03- "Two time Academy Award nominee Hilary Swank"- somewhere, Annette Bening cringes.

11:07- Why can't they put the necrology in chronological order by the dates they passed away? By saving the "biggest name" for last, it's like they're making a value judgment on whose death is most notable. For example, I like Heath Ledger, but how is career more worthy of remembrance than Ousmane Sembene? Just a thought.

11:10- This category sucks without THERE WILL BE BLOOD. Predicting ATONEMENT, rooting for RATATOUILLE. And ATONEMENT it is. Wow, I'm actually doing pretty darn well tonight.

11:13- See, we can't bring the soldiers home, or they'd have to come up with a different gimmicky Oscar presentation. The winner is... FREEHELD, about homosexual soldiers. Had I known that I would've predicted that instead of going with the cutest-sounding name.

11:17- I've only seen two of these- SICKO and NO END IN SIGHT. NO END IN SIGHT is the better of the two, but LAKE OF FIRE blows them both away. So does THE KING OF KONG, for that matter. Of course, can you imagine the documentary branch honoring a movie about video games? Well, looks like I'm wrong here too- TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE takes the award.

11:25- Harrison Ford walks onstage to Indiana Jones theme- too obvious? WAKE UP, HARRISON! Wait, think he's drunk? Please MICHAEL CLAYTON... Please MICHAEL CLAYTON... nope, JUNO. Well, that's a point for me in the Oscar contest anyway. Grumble grumble... also, that tattoo is super-classy. I bet Tom Hanks has one just like it.

11:32- Helen Mirren just said "cojones"- she's awesome. Awesome pick for the Day-Lewis clip- powerful and bravura but not the "milkshake" bit everyone knows by heart. Who's that with Viggo? And of course Day-Lewis wins. What else is there to say but "DRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINAGE"!!!!!!!!! "The handsomest bludgeon in town"- well put, man. I wonder what he'll be doing next?

11:44- What if the Coens DIDN'T win??? Guess we'll never find out. Whew... I could listen to the Coen brothers talk all day. Some part of me wants to see "Henry Kissinger: Man on the Go" included on the NO COUNTRY DVD.

11:46- Should be NO COUNTRY. Would be awesome if it was THERE WILL BE BLOOD as well, but I doubt it. As I suspected... NO COUNTRY it is. Now we get more of the Coens onstage, which is fine by me. And hey, it's not even midnight yet! Rudin: "with the opportunity for making movies comes the responsibility of making them good." Someone please relay this message to Joel Schumacher.

Well, everything turned out more or less as expected- a solid Oscar ceremony for a year when the very possibility of a ceremony was long in doubt. Good job keeping it moving along, while still finding time to bring back Marketa Irglova, a truly gracious move by Stewart and probably the highlight of the night for me.

No big surprises, but also no bad surprises, and I'll take that. Looks like I got 17 out of 24 categories right. Hope you did as well or better, unless of course you're in the same Oscar pool I'm in this year.

Hope you've enjoyed reading. Sorry I wasn't funnier. Good night.

In Other Blogs: Oscar Special

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 20:30:00 GMT

The hot topic this week is the 80th Annual Academy Awards, which will mercifully be over sometime early Monday morning. Until then, there’s still a few items of interest in the blogosphere:

The full coverage over at Cinematical includes not only the staff predictions, but those of Filipino cruise ship bartenders and Jose the Cabbie, as well as a look at the all-important Borgnine Factor: “It's hard to get a statistical breakdown of the Academy's membership, but over the years I've formed a mental picture of the Academy's average member. He's male; he's been in show business for decades, usually as an actor; he's wealthy enough to be "liberal"; he's white…In short, Ernest Borgnine. So, when I try to handicap Oscar picks, I ask: WWEBD?”

IFC Film News clues us in on five Oscar nominees who never existed, one of whom is nominated this year. Roderick Jaynes is “one of the most respected film editors in the business, if one of the most elusive. In addition to penning introductions to the published versions of the Coens' screenplays for Barton Fink, Miller's Crossing and The Man Who Wasn't There, Jaynes was celebrated as one of Entertainment Weekly's 50 Smartest People in Hollywood last year and had been previously nominated for an Oscar for Fargo in 1997.”

Film Threat can always be relied on to focus on what’s really important. Screw the Oscars – who’s going to win the Razzies? A hint – put your money on Nicolas Cage for Worst actor. “He's not an actor anymore, he's morphed into a plague of cinema. All leather and twitches, this Cage fellow.”

Finally, if you’re going to be stuck at a desk somewhere unable to watch on Sunday night and just want to keep current, our friends over at GreenCine will be live-blogging the event. At least you won’t have to worry about what to wear.

What’s in an Edit?

John Constantine — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:07:00 GMT

Sure, we’re obsessed with movies, but not all of us are well-versed in the delicate art of actually making one. While we’ve all cultivated our opinions on what makes for good acting or directing, how many movie lovers understand what makes for great editing? Slate has an excellent video up today with editor Mark Helfrich examining this year’s Academy Award Best Editing nominees. Helfrich explains in digestible layman terms what’s so special about the way No Country for Old Men, The Bourne Ultimatum, There Will Be Blood, Into the Wild, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly are cut together. It’s particularly interesting to hear that Into the Wild’s editing shaped the movie far beyond what the script called for, owing all of its non-linear presentation to Jay Cassidy’s work in the editing room. Check it out below.

Indie Box-Office Roundup: Weekend of February 15-17, 2008

Paul Clark — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:17:00 GMT

Continuing its strong appeal to arthouse audiences, Eran Kolirin's The Band's Visit has moved up to #1 atop this week's Indie Box-Office Roundup. The Israeli comedy, released in the US by Sony Pictures Classics, managed an impressive per-screen average of $11,267, up from $9,642 last week. At a time when the big Hollywood releases are opening big and falling fast, it's good to see a movie that really catches on with audiences like this. A movie like The Band's Visit may never pull in Cloverfield grosses, but in its limited release it should have more staying power than most would-be blockbusters.

Also maintaining a strong showing over President's Day Weekend was last week's chart-topper, Focus Features' In Bruges, now at #2 with a $10,420 per-screen average in its second week of release. Martin McDonough's film is still expanding its release, so expect the averages to dip somewhat in the following weeks.

The weekend's top premiere was George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead, the inaugural release from Weinstein Company offshoot Third Rail Releasing. Romero's film, his fifth Dead movie to date, garnered a solid $6,549 per screen, and will expand to 10 more markets for the weekend of February 29.

Rounding out the top 5 were Cao Hamburger's The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (City Lights) and the self-distributed David and Layla. Also of note was Magnolia's program of 2007 Oscar-nominated Short Films, which finished #9 on the list. However, I find their figures more than a bit dubious, considering I had to pay separate admissions for the Animated and Live-Action programs.

Finally, Juno-watch! The movie that Roger Ebert called "his true love" finished just outside the top 10 this week, raking in $2,993 per screen, finishing ahead of last week's top wide-ish release, There Will Be Blood. Next week could see a bump in a number of current limited releases, depending on how the Oscars pan out. So hopefully we'll get a nice surge for PT Anderson, not so much for Diablo Cody and Ivan Reitman's kid.

Top 10, Weekend of February 15-17:
1. The Band's Visit [Sony Pictures Classics] ($11,267 per screen)
2. In Bruges [Focus Features] ($10,420 per screen)
3. George A. Romero's Diary Of The Dead [Third Rail Releasing] ($6,549 per screen)
4. The Year My Parents Went On Vacation [City Lights Pictures Releasing] ($5,430 per screen)
5. David & Layla [David & Layla, LLC] ($5,007 per screen)
6. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days [IFC First Take] ($4,808 per screen)
7. How To Cook Your Life [Roadside Attractions] ($3,704 per screen)
8. The Business of Being Born [International Film Circuit] ($3,608 per screen)
9. 2007 Academy Award Nominated Short Films [Magnolia Pictures] ($3,605 per screen)
10. Caramel [Roadside Attractions] ($3,360 per screen)

Source: IndieWire.