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NOT OT: The 2020 Best Picture Oscar Front Runner...is on TV Right Now

posted 3 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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I subscribe to various streaming services.

I opened the "Hulu" app the other night on my TV and there it was: "Nomadland" -- "EXCLUSIVE" on Hulu right now. That is to say, on TV right now.

This is the front-runner for the 2020 Best Picture Oscar, which is pretty funny since 2020 is almost two months ago. But the Academy extended the deadline for nominated pictures into late February(as I write this, it IS February)

It looks like a 2021 televised ceremony for 2020 movies is a "go" in April on American broadcast TV. As I've noted before, it seems that the Motion Picture Academy earns $75 million for the broadcast -- a big chunk of its operating budget -- so SOMETHING has to be put on the air.

I'll tell you how disconnected I am. I know that the Golden Globes for 2020 are also being held -- or may HAVE been held on TV already. I literally don't know and don't care if that broadcast has been done already. (The Golden Globes splits between movies and TV ..so TV shows can appropriately be honored there.)

Poor Steven Spielberg. Last year, BEFORE COVID-19 hit the scene, he adamantly came out AGAINST Netflix movies qualifying for Oscars, he didn't care if they got a few short theatrical showings in LA and NYC - "they are on TV; they should be awarded Emmies, not Oscars."

Then came COVID-19, and most theaters were closed and few good movies were released to what theaters remained -- and Spielberg's words no longer mattered. At least for 2020. Pretty much ALL of the 2020 Oscar nominees will have been seen almost EXCLUSIVELY on TV. The Trial of the Chicago 7(produced by Spielberg so -- what's his problem again?) Mank. Some other stuff.

But mainly...Nomadland. Its got that Oscar-credibility star, Frances McDormand, which is good. And personally, I find the subject matter interesting -- always a key thing for a great movie. (Modern day American nomads roaming the highways of the US in vans and mobile homes..."homeless on wheels, off the grid.")

Meanwhile: Martin Scorsese, who already took on Marvel movies as "not movies" a couple of years ago, has recently weighed in against streaming -- "movies have now become content." He's right, but The Irishman was a Netflix flick and his Leo/DeNiro Native American murders movie(yet unfilmed) will debut on Apple. I suppose the movie DIRECTOR in Marty is in the position of "going along to get along"(and to get the big budgets he needs) but the movie FAN in Marty knows this is wrong, that movies for their first hundred years were made to be seen in theater on the BIG screen.

Elsewhere I post about the late film critic Richard Corliss' memories of seeing Psycho "at the Avalon Theater on the South Jersey shore" in 1960 and you can tell that he carried around the memory of the theater where he saw Psycho as much as the memory of Psycho itself. That is a part of the movie-going experience that is just going right down the tubes in the age of "cable and streaming."

One of my greatest memories of seeing Psycho (of the many times I've seen Psycho) was to see it at a restored old Palace Theater in a downtown area. My research revealed that Psycho had played at that very same theater on first release in 1960 -- and I was now seeing Psycho at the same theater 0-- this was around 1994. Whereas most all of the OTHER palace theaters had long been torn down, with multiplexes everywhere -- THIS theater had been restored and conserved and THIS theater conjured up 1960 and a "night at the movies" in a cavernous theater with plush red curtains covering the movie screen, a "loge" and a balcony.

The downside: in 1994, this old theater was musty and dusty and smelled of decades of rancid buttered popcorn. But I could ignore all that and imagine what it would have been like to see Psycho(such a "small" movie) in such a gigantic , Palace-like environment. Hey, it was so plush they piped the movie soundtrack into the Men's Room -- I "took a bathroom break and could hear Sheriff Chambers asking "Who's that woman buried in Greenlawn Cemetary?" echoing among the stalls.

By the way, it looks like DVDs are going away too. And that is scary. The streaming services take movies away as much as they program them. Eventually will they control content to the point that you can't KEEP your favorite movies anymore ("YOu want to see Psycho again? Pony up 4 bucks on HBO Max.) I start to worry as some of my DVDs warp and don't play so good.

Anyway, Spielberg's right and Scorsese's right: first-run movies debuting on Netflix and Hulu and qualifying for Oscar nominations and wins...it just ain't right. Its TV. Its "content." Hell, its software. But for 2020 behind us..its the only way out. This WILL be the "asterisk year" for Oscar winners.

Of course, in recent years, a lot of the Oscar winning films were not being wildly seen , anyway. That prepared us for this.

CONT



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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Meanwhile, I note that Spielberg's remake of "West Side Story" was bumped from Xmas 2020 to Xmas 2021. I'm sure he is hoping that big audiences will be able to see this movie in big theaters. Maybe, maybe not. But this: Now Spieberg's West Side Story will be released a dead-on 60 years after the 1961 original which, I believe, won 11 Oscars.

Not this time.

PS. Can you imagine Psycho being only available the first time on STREAMING? No full house audiences screaming away after waiting in long lines and "not allowed in the theater after the movie begins."

Unimaginable!

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

@ecarle. So, did you like Nomadland? The director, Chloe Zhao's previous film The Rider was quite good ('small' but nicely observed about Native Americans working as modern cowboys & rodeo riders - their macho-ness, their horrifying injuries, their estrangement from America as a whole and as an idea, and so on). I think she got a Marvel film ("The Eternals") directing job out of The Rider's minor success and substantial acclaim but Covid has delayed that film's release so much that her susequent ('one for me') 'small' movie has ended up coming out first...albeit trailing clouds of Oscar buzz thanks to McDormand's presence.

As for the broader question of Covid's impact on movie exhibition... I'm afraid that this is starting to look like a truly shocking discontinuity and a flat out purging from the exhibition arena of all but the most deep-pocketed actors. Lots of independent movie houses in New Zealand that had somehow managed to hang on over the last few decades with the right mixture of blockbusters and smaller films are now closing: the stream of blockbusters that bring in young audiences has dried up for over a year now and the older audiences who were regulars at smaller films have been very slow to come back presumably because even in NZ which has the pandemic well under control habits have changed and it's just been safest for older people to stay home. Indeed lots of older people who'd never before Zoomed and Streamed a lot have *had* to figure all that stuff during the pandemic. And now that investment of energy in mastering new tech has led to real habit change: now it's much more reasonable to stream stuff than to go out.

It's sad when movie screens that have been running for fifty+ years and that made it through the advent of tv, video, dvds, the internet are finally being undone by a mixture of virus-driven temporary and permanent behavioral changes.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

@ecarle. So, did you like Nomadland?

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I haven't seen it yet. It just appeared(to me, at least) a couple of days ago and I was intrigued , given its "frontrunner status."

I might add that Hulu had -- and may still have -- "Parasite" as its exclusive property not too long after than movie came out. I saw Parasite at a theater that was pretty full, not too long before COVID hit, so it was intriguing to see it readily available on streaming so soon thereafter(COVID may have pushed it up.) So...Hulu is the "indie and foreign Oscar channel?" I dunno. But I will try to watch Nomadland soon.


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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago


What I DID watch in the last week, over on HBO Max, was the second "Warner Brothers straight to streaming same day theater release after Wonder Woman 1984. This was "The Little Things," a serial killer mystery drama that looks like Se7en , with touches of Zodiac(the opening scene) and even the feeling of Training Day -- star Denzel Washington here cruises the same streets of Los Angeles where he was such a great cop villain 20 years ago.

And for all of that...The Little Things is a poor movie, shockingly so and even accounting for Denzel's willingness to do "modern day programmers" too often.

So Warners is "two for two" in releasing sub-par movies to HBO Max that somehow devalue the product -- Wonder Woman in one case; Denzel in the second. What is going on here? Its almost like Warners knew well before COVID hit that its 2020 and 2021 slate of movies were not REAL movies. With what's left (including Suicide Squad and Matrix sequels, and "Kong vs. Godzilla"(or is it the other way around), one wonders when one of these HBO Max movies will feel like "the real deal." An irony: the Sopranos prequel(Saints of Newark) was bound for movie screens and now will premiere back on HBO ,where its parent show always was. (Well, in a few theaters, too.)

Note in passing: Two-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington is joined in "The Little Things" by recent Best Actor winner Rami Malik (he won for the Queen movie) and some-time ago Oscar winner Jared Leto. Malik plays a sympathetic cop; Leto plays a serial killer(or maybe not.) Malik in particular is in that place that some forbears have been: his Oscar win makes him kinda sorta "a star" ...but I suspect not for very long. See: F. Murray Abraham and Adrien Brody. It might not last. But at least he has that Oscar.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The (Nomadland) director, Chloe Zhao's previous film The Rider was quite good ('small' but nicely observed about Native Americans working as modern cowboys & rodeo riders - their macho-ness, their horrifying injuries, their estrangement from America as a whole and as an idea, and so on). I think she got a Marvel film ("The Eternals") directing job out of The Rider's minor success and substantial acclaim but Covid has delayed that film's release so much that her susequent ('one for me') 'small' movie has ended up coming out first.

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Nomadland coming out ahead of The Rider is mimicked with Rami Malik in "The Little Things" coming out BEFORE the movie he made before it -- playing the villain in the new James Bond movie("No Time to Die" I think) which has been delayed and delayed and delayed and delayed.

I've read that re-shoots are now necessary on the Bond movie to change the "gadgets" because the gadgets need to be "state of the art and of this moment." I'm reminded that movies often NEED to be released when they are still on timely topics, COVID is knocking various movies well past their "relevance date."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

..albeit trailing clouds of Oscar buzz thanks to McDormand's presence.

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McDormand has been a "class act" in movies ever since her Fargo win(and she remains married to a Coen brother all these decades later.) Its funny, her Fargo win and her "Three Billboards" win are decades apart, but they are of a piece, merging together over the decades to maintain the "McDormand reputation." And here comes Nomadland to keep that going.

I was watching the 2003 "geezer rom com" "Something's Gotta Give" the other night. Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson are the romantic leads, with Keanu Reeves in there as a romantic rival to Jack for Diane -- but there's Frances McDormand(in only a couple of scenes; its almost a cameo) as Keaton's sister and voila....suddenly this very lightweight movie is simply overcome with gravitas performers. Begs the question: why did McDormand take this weightless "sidekick" role? The money, I suppose...and to work with Jack and Diane(and Keanu.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

As for the broader question of Covid's impact on movie exhibition... I'm afraid that this is starting to look like a truly shocking discontinuity and a flat out purging from the exhibition arena of all but the most deep-pocketed actors.

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I fear that the "COVID closes movie theaters" topic will soon join other movie topics as a "hot issue done to death"(and I mean by me.)

I was watching some TV show in the past year or two where an annoying young movie nerd character was harping on and on about how "all the movies are now is sequels and remakes" and though this IS a very cogent point(SEE: the Warner Brothers/HBO Max 2021 slate), now it is simply accepted: "this is the current Hollywood business model, THEY know that they make sequels and remakes. Shut up."

Added to that bromide is the one I take up from time to time: how the Oscar movies in recent years have been movies that not many people actually SEE; movies that simply can't join The Sound of Music and The Godfather as Oscar worthy AND hits. Well: Hollywood knows that too. They make Oscar-bait to make Oscar-bait(as the late Robert Osborne of TCM said: "The Oscars are great. Otherwise, Hollywood wouldn't try to make Oscar movies."

But THAT bromide got "nuanced" a couple of years ago -- the year of "Roma" on Netflix, perhaps? -- "Oscar movies are being released to TV on streaming at the same time as to theaters." Spielberg weighed in on that last year -- THOSE movies, he rather desperately huffed, should NOT be eligible for Oscars. (Begged the question: so movies that ONLY play in theaters can be nominated?)

And now comes the COVID-driven "possible nail in the coffin" to movie theaters mattering at all. Thanks to COVID, streaming now has "the sequels and remakes" (HBO Max) AND the Oscar bait(Hulu with Nomadland) and...movie theaters just may not be that necessary anymore.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago


It's sad when movie screens that have been running for fifty+ years and that made it through the advent of tv, video, dvds, the internet are finally being undone by a mixture of virus-driven temporary and permanent behavioral changes.

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Just like its sad when a mother has to speak the words that condemn her own son. Hah. On topic.

"But seriously folks." This is sad, and it has the risk of being permanent.

Movie studios are being cast as the villains this way: for decades, studios needed movie theaters to exhibit their product. If the public accepts the product going "straight to streaming," it reduces cost-sharing to the studios (though from what I've seen, the streaming services are being pressed to deliver the kind of dollars to the studios and stars that movie theaters can.)

This was already happening long before COVID hit. The issue was: how long a window must there be BETWEEN movie theater exhibition and cable or streaming? But now, we are looking at "theaters and streaming, same day"(HBO Max) and maybe eventually "ONLY streaming, same day."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Whether people are reading it or not, I've elected to post for some time about my "personal history of the movies" because from this late-in-life vantage point, its rather fascinating to contemplate all the changes that have happened.

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For instance, the long two-hour lines in which I waited to see The Godfather and The Exorcist (and others waited in for Star Wars) are clearly a thing of the past. Movies are released to thousands of screens -- 10 screens in one mulit-plex -- and everybody can get in, the first week. (I waited for The Godfather and The Exorcist WEEKS into their runs.)

And the "full house screaming" that I heard when I saw Wait Until Dark, Jaws, and Psycho in revival? Seems to be gone, too. "We are a different species now" at horror movies, writes David Thomson. And I would agree. Its harder to make us scream(not so hard to make us jump, that's a different deal.)

Meanwhile: North by Northwest didn't get to broadcast TV (CBS) for 8 years after its 1959 release(it debuted in 1967); save one 1966 re-release, that movie had to "live on in memory" for YEARS without being available to see. Now a theatrical movie can be viewed on TV within months, weeks, days...the SAME DAY.

Some of what is being lost -- actually a LOT of what is being lost -- is that fun thing called "hullaballoo" -- promotion. I fell more prey to it in my youth, but studios sure used to know how to get you excited when a "big one" was coming. "The Birds is Coming!" the ads famously said. But they also said "PSYCHO is coming!"(with the slashed letters, I found that in a 1960 newspaper on microfiche.)

And I recall the print ad promotions for The Godfather and The Exorcist being very "mysterious." All you saw was the logo for the movie(the "puppet strings" for The Godfather; The man at the house with the light in the window for The Exorcist) and...you were left wondering what the movie was REALLY going to be like.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I suppose that there is still "hullabaloo" for modern movies. Its done on the internet, with sights for youth like "Aint It Cool News" and "Dark Horizons" and "Coming Soon" -- all of which are rather dead now because they got no exciting new movies to promote(COVID again.) The internet is also where new trailers are debuted and suddenly everybody can get excited at once -- and -- you don't have to go to the movie theater to see the trailer.

Flash memory: in 1972 when Frenzy came out, it had TV ads (one where Hitchcock bought neckties from Gavin Elster himself, Tom Helmore!) but it also had RADIO ads, between rock songs like "Tumbling Dice" and "Take It Easy". I recall hearing one while I was in a friend's VW bug , we were getting gas , I said "Wait a minute, that's Alfred Hitchcock talking!" -- the nostalgia to the "lost" Hitchcock of his 60's TV stardom and Psycho was palpable. Hitchcock said something pithy about "the Necktie Killer" and the radio spot ended with that powerful yell of Brenda Blaney's "My God! The tie!" and MAN , did I want to see that movie.

That's when AM radio was popular in cars. Just a little history for ya. "AM radio rock channel Hitchcock hullaballoo."

Anyway, the key questions are this: when COVID is finally and conclusively deemed "safe" and movie theaters are allowed to open freely -- (a) will the studios release all their "big ones" to the theaters and (2) will people fill the houses again?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

@ecarle...did you like Nomadland?

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I did. I gave it a look on Hulu. I'm waiting to see just what kind of "Oscar season" we will turn out to have had for 2020 (a sad one, for sure), and I guess this is a forerunner for Best Picture, and McDormand has great Best Actress chances(that would be three, which is Meryl Streep territory.)

There is a tradition in American film called "the road movie," and Nomadland is well within it. About Schmidt is on point here because the lead is widowed(there, a man played by Jack Nicholson; here a woman played by Frances McDormand), but the difference indeed is that Jack was well off and travelling in a fairly luxurious motorhome; Frances is borderline destitute and travelling in a pretty beat up van. Still, Nomadland proves you can have roughly the same experience with far less money.

Other road movies include:

Easy Rider
Vanishing Point
Scarecrow(with Gene Hackman and Al Pacino)
Five Easy Pieces
Two Lane Blacktop(with James Taylor)
Slither(with James Caan)
Sideways(though they pretty much stay in one area)
Lost in Translation

and....Psycho! Yep, the Janet Leigh part is rather a "studio version" of a road movie, but she certainly drives a long way and encounters some characters en route.

Some have compared this to..."Wild." I saw Wild but I can't recall -- doesn't the lead character there mainly HIKE away from civilization?

Many of those movies "up top" shared with Nomadland the use of real people and documentary like footage. I'd say to the extent that Nomadland goes to a different place, it is in the idea that this road trip is...forever. The lead character isn't "going home" when the trip is over -- the van IS home. As McDormand tells someone: "I'm not homeless...I'm just houseless."

Although that's not necessarily the way it turns out. No need for SPOILERS here.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

For what it is worth, I have a couple of criticisms of "Nomadland":

ONE: The "documentary" part -- as real Nomads tell their stories and we learn about exactly how this existence operates....is mixed in with a "fictional drama" for Frances to emote in, along with that very respectable and gentle actor David Strathairn(the only other recognizable "pro" in the cast). The documentary part is exemplary, but the fictional drama part is a bit too predictable and pat -- borderline trite -- and beneath the quality of the drama in Frances' other Oscar winners(Fargo and Three Billboards.) I get why, I think: "Nomadland" shouldn't be expected to support a densely plotted "movie story" -- the documentary part is meant to dominate.

TWO: Frances is very good in this, truly the "star" who makes the tale navigable, but in scenes in which she interacts with the "real poor people" with empathy and compassion, I couldn't help thinking "This woman has been married to a Coen Brother for decades; they have to be worth upwards of 50 million." It is the actor's craft to portray all classes of life, and Frances played middle to working class in Fargo and Three Billboards -- but HERE, sharing scenes with real people who aren't doing so well, well, it felt a little bit condescending to watch. And yet: how could Frances avoid this? She here uses her Hollywood power to illuminate the struggles of people well below her wealth, and that's a good thing.

Those two elements above held me back a bit from "going" with Nomadland, but overall, it is a moving and unique experience, and of course it centers one on the following idea: "Could I do this?"

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Cut to the chase: the movie asks "could I live in a van all the time?" and reminds us that crucial issues on a daily basis are: (1) Going to the bathroom(both ways) and (2) Getting a shower or bath.

The truth of the matter is -- you don't really need to shower or bathe every day. The movie suggests that RV parks and campgrounds have shower facilities.

As for matters of the restroom -- you're in the great outdoors, but the story focusses on the need to "take care of your own s'--t"(one character literally teaches the others HOW, using this very line) and the emphasis is on using a bucket and tending to disposal of the contents. Our Best Actress nominee indeed enacts such a scene. I don't remember Kate Hepburn doing that.

My take: if you had to take care of your own s--t on a daily basis, you would get used to it, and closer to your "essence." I guess.

There's a very good scene in which Frances -- as part of the temporary, short-term, itijerant work she seeks on the road -- works in a giant Amazon packing and mailing facility, and you are reminded how much of the American population depends on this level of dull, rote work for a living. (Frances' houselessness begins when the gypsum plant that her late husband and she worked in for years closed and closed the company town of Empire, Nevada with it.)

What's good about the Amazon scene(filmed with their permission and thus "positive" about the company) is that we are reminded that human beings will seek work and work...if there IS work. But alas, that job ends(it was Xmas seasonal; Amazon paid for Frances' van parking for that time) and Frances must find another....in another town, for there is no more work here.



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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

And eventually comes something I was waiting for: the van she drives for hundreds of miles ...breaks down. And money becomes a serious issue.

Nomadland invariably busies itself on how to survive in this "utopia"....showers? defecation? food? freezing temperatures? Money(an RV park quotes Frances a monthly rental of $375...you can't live ENTIRELY off the land.)

Social security benefits enter in to the story and we realize that a lot of these nomads are...older people, done with earning a big living and somehow not able to retire. (The nomad population that we see is rather white, as I recall, not sure what to make of that.)

But occasionally a "shock on the road" appears: young families with young children among the nomads. One lone teenage boy, all by himself. One gets the feeling that you shouldn't be a nomad when you are too young...it is a killing lifestyle better for finishing out one's life.

The "socio-political" aspects of Nomadland(in which everybody is pretty nice to everybody else; I liked that) yield to the cinematic poetry of vistas of American desert and mountains(and eventually redwood trees and coast)...it is a movie of stark beauty with a moving musical score..THAT's not documentary style. This is also a major plus of the movie.

Funny bit: in a near-empty, depressed and depressing desert town..Frances stands by a battered movie marquee: The Avengers. One realizes that the billion-dollar MCU sometimes visits very poor and desolate pockets of America.

Food for thought: This was filmed before COVID. One figures that these nomads would survive COVID well. They are outdoors and distanced most of the time.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

And I would like to single out David Straitharn. He's been around a long time, and in so many roles, he offers up a gentle, elegant dignity(he has a tremulous, sad voice.)

In "A League of the Their Own," the one about the female baseball team in WWII forties, Straitharn backed up Tom Hanks(in the flamboyant male role) as the other male lead: the quiet, self-effacing and respectful business manager for the team. In "LA Confidential," Straitharn played a very rich LA transportation mogul who ran classy prostitutes on the side -- but you LIKED him; when rough Russell Crowe interrogated him you felt SORRY for him.

On The Sopranos, Straitharn played a deceptively courtly man -- the school administrator who took the risk of bedding Mafia wife Carmela. She was separated from Tony at the time, but you still feared for the gentle Straitharn - until he insulted Carmella on very snobbish grounds and broke up with her. You always felt this poor deluded intellectual was on thin ice once he broke up with the Mob Boss wife. It was left hanging...would Carmela ever tell?

And a "personal favorite" in the legal thriller "The Firm," Straitharn played Tom Cruise's older brother -- gentle as usual , but in prison. One of Tom's "caper goals" is to get his brother out of prison, and you are rooting for that, all the way. Straitharn's "bust out" is suspenseful, and the prize he gets at the end(cute as a bug Holly Hunter) is worth a very big smile for both of them.

I mention all these David Strathairn roles because, as the other "name" in Nomadland, he comes trailing them into THIS story and...well...he keeps it fictional. in a good way.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Bottom line: I can see this winning Best Picture and I can see Frances McDormand joining Ms. Streep with three trophies. It is a good -- but not great -- movie, but a lot of Best Pictures recently have been that way.

And if it does win...I'm afraid its gonna require an asterisk.

PS. TCM has moved its 30 Days of Oscar promotion to April but again, all those great big classic Oscar winners on display continue to embarrass the rather small and little-scene crop of Oscar winner from the past decade.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

The "documentary" part -- as real Nomads tell their stories and we learn about exactly how this existence operates....is mixed in with a "fictional drama" for Frances to emote in, along with that very respectable and gentle actor David Strathairn(the only other recognizable "pro" in the cast). The documentary part is exemplary, but the fictional drama part is a bit too predictable and pat -- borderline trite
The documentary part left me a bit cold if only because our anchor throughout the movie, Fern (McDormand) is such a taciturn and peripatetic figure. She barely talks. She listens to others, but they don't have anything especially interesting to say or behave in any especially interesting let alone cinematic ways. Nobody's a mad Trumper or conspiracist or racist and no one's armed to the teeth - real life it seems to me would be more volatile and cursedly interesting than what we see represented in the documentary sections of Nomadland. I was bored by at least the first hour and when the fiction bit hit I was like 'Halleluljah!' with Fern's visit to her sister a turning point: some (mild!) conflict at last and finally Fern can change and a story starts to be told. Yay!!! But it's too late and suddenly there's only 20 minutes to go and things just peter out. I dare say that the film would have been improved a lot for me if Fern took the dog she's offered at one point or, shoot, (major script rewrite!) maybe her dead husband had a child from a previous relationship she never knew about; they gang up, fall out over drug and white nationalist problems, kid ends up dying frozen in a ditch. Good times at the movies! But it would *be* a movie.).

In sum, I don't think that Nomadland succeeds in either its documentary or fiction aspects. I think it's significantly less accomplished than Chloe Zhao's previous, small, realistic film about gritty life on the high plains, The Rider. Grump, grump, grump.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Thinking some more about why Nomadland did not move me: I think it's that it's really only one character deep. We never really connect with anyone but Fern. But then she's mostly a spectator for at least the first hour of the movie so we only in fact get half a characterization (and any change for her, such as it is, comes in a rush at the end). That's just too thin I'm afraid and no vague topicality and western landscape photography can really make up for that (Nomadland's more documentary side would have to be utterly spectacular for that to happen which it isn't close to being in my view). The best of the Oscar nominees I've seen - Minari & Trial of the Chicago 7 - aren't the most exciting pictures ever made, but there's a lot to be said for the basic virtues they exemplify including being at least 4 or 5 characters deep.

Ultimately, the truth so far for me about the films of 2020 is that *nothing* is genuinely great. Rather, I've seen a lot of movies (among them Minari and Nomadland and Another Round recently) that just are a notch or two down in quality from the best of recent years, they're 8/10 at best. They're lucky they'e not out in the same year as Parasite or Portrait of a Woman on Fire or The Favourite or The Death of Stalin. And so on.

There are still a few (sometimes 2019 but) released in 2020 films that I haven't seen yet that sound promising and that may well be destined to "take" the year regardless of what the Oscars have to say about anything: Martin Eden, Bacurau, Little Joe, First Cow, Small Axe (a series of films for streaming from 12 Years a Slave director Steve McQueen). Needless to say, all these possible saviors of the year have essentially zero profile in the world as I write this note. How we got from (when I was a kid) having some of the best movies of the year be must-see huge hits (e.g., Godfather, The Sting , Chinatown, Jaws, Network, Annie Hall, Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus) to this sorry state of affairs is another question.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Somewhat related to the question of how we got from, say, the 1975 Oscars (for 1974 films) to current Oscars dominated by films almost nobody has seen and for the most part very few people would want to see.... Criterion has just released their long-promised Blu-ray of The Parallax View (1974). It looks gorgeous and, as expected, comes packed with extras:
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film9/blu-ray_review_133/the_parallax_view_blu-ray.htm

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

How we got from (when I was a kid) having some of the best movies of the year be must-see huge hits (e.g., Godfather, The Sting , Chinatown, Jaws, Network, Annie Hall, Cuckoo's Nest, Amadeus) to this sorry state of affairs is another question.

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It is...one realizes as a survivor to this particular age (and gratefully so)...the history of the world.

We THOUGHT that "the movies" would continue on in that way , and it took decades to fall apart...but they are gone.

I was reading something that rather amused me the other day. Winston Churchill, in the 50's,, cautioning about the dangers of the hydrogen bomb. He noted that while the atomic bomb could be "manageable," the hydrogen bomb could not. And he basically said, "Doesn't matter to my generation, we are old and about to die off anyway...its up to the next generation to see if they can survive."

Which they did. And that's sort of how I feel about the movies now. I GOT my great life with movies....its up to the next generation to determine what they want to see from here on out. (I read a lot of the MCU, DCU debate and I am comfortable that that IS what this century is about so far...it DOES have meaning in a great many young lives. So be it.)

In certain ways for me, 2021 has already proved to be worse than 2020...more barren, more restrictive of my physical movement.

And I find myself staring -- open mouthed -- at the true paucity of content that is being given the "Oscar imprimatur" for a year in which Oscar doesn't matter at all.

Mank. Mank. MANK! Utterly worthless. A movie about a man who lies in bed doing nothing(writing a little bit), while pretty women take notes and humor him. A cast of little to no oomph (Arliss Howard has been a nobody for several decades now); some guy playing Orson Welles without BEING Orson Welles.

I had to laugh though...somewhere near the very end, I got to hear my favorite real-life Mank line, when he throws up at Hearst's castle: "Don't worry...the white wine came up with the fish."


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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Somewhat related to the question of how we got from, say, the 1975 Oscars (for 1974 films) to current Oscars dominated by films almost nobody has seen and for the most part very few people would want to see.... Criterion has just released their long-promised Blu-ray of The Parallax View (1974). It looks gorgeous and, as expected, comes packed with extras:
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film9/blu-ray_review_133/the_parallax_view_blu-ray.htm

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The Parallax View is certainly one of those key 1974 downers . Funny: Warren Beatty was already in his "I'm not really a movie star phase," and had been out of movies for three years when he brought this out in the summer of 1974 and -- to his anger -- found that his "pal" Nicholson's Chinatown was THE big downer classic of the summer, and that Beatty's movie simply didn't matter. Paramount gave Warren the bum's rush and put all of its promotion into Chinatown.

Truth be told, The Parallax View is a "thriller" with no thrills. Beatty discovers a conspiracy. Anybody who can help him prove it...dies. And at the end...Beatty dies. (SPOILER alert.) And is blamed for the "newest assassination."

This was a weightless movie in 1974...Alan Pakula had no real thriller chops. A "bomb at the airport" sequence was shot like a TV episode, not like a movie.

The ONE good thing in Parallax -- not directed by the somnamulent Pakula -- was a "training film" shown to Beatty to brainwash him into becoming an assassin. Quite a piece of film, with music to match.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I would like to note that, in 1974 and 1975, there was an effort afoot to tie all these bleak political thrillers into a Hitchcock source: North by Northwest. One by one, in studio promotional materials, we were told that The Conversation and The Parallax View and Three Days of the Condor and Marathon Man all had Hitchcock's own paranoid thriller as their root source. The Conversation actually played WITH North by Northwest at a flagship LA theater.

But....no. What we know now is that when he made NXNW, Hitchcock's goal was to stage a chase on Mount Rushmore. THAT's the fantasy; that's the legend and the classic....the 1974 elements(early) are all in service of "The Wizard of Oz" for adults." As with Psycho, Hitchcock only had one North by Northwest in him, and it has stood for 60 years even as the 1974 paranoid thrillers have faded.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Mank. Mank. MANK! Utterly worthless. A movie about a man who lies in bed doing nothing(writing a little bit), while pretty women take notes and humor him. A cast of little to no oomph (Arliss Howard has been a nobody for several decades now); some guy playing Orson Welles without BEING Orson Welles.

I had to laugh though...somewhere near the very end, I got to hear my favorite real-life Mank line, when he throws up at Hearst's castle: "Don't worry...the white wine came up with the fish."

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But seriously, folks...I was pretty shocked.

Evidently David Fincher hasn't made a major film since Gone Girl and to have put himself in service of THIS(even if his late father wrote it), feels as if he elected to fritter away a great reputation.

Oh, it got plenty of Oscar noms....but these are WORTHLESS Oscar noms. (The Golden Globes and Emmies and Grammies have all tanked; Oscar shall not do much better.)

One wonders: exactly WHY can't somebody yet make a movie about the making of a movie that is exciting as the movie itself? (Hitchcock, this.)

I have read that a Paramount movie will go into production about the making of The Godfather....maybe THAT one?

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

But seriously, folks...I was pretty shocked.

Me too! My original very negative report was here:
https://moviechat.org/tt0054215/Psycho/5fcbdaa002e4e20abe628d0f/In-the-US-Turner-Classic-Movies-Shows-Bernard-Herrmann-Movies-in-December?reply=5fce52355291e204b096125e

I stand by my original judgment that Sorkin's pretty basic Trial of the Chicago 7 is the better Netflix Oscar contender this year with a better script and better casting and performances, etc.. and that non-contending-because-it's-TV The Crown Season 4 (released on Netflix at around the same time) was *much* better across the board.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

One wonders: exactly WHY can't somebody yet make a movie about the making of a movie that is exciting as the movie itself?
The thing is that there have been a *bunch* of superior or better movies abut the making of movies, often featuring specific fictional movies being produced: just off the top of my head, Singin' In The Rain, The Bad and The Beautiful, Contempt, Day for Night, Day of The Locust, The Stuntman, Irma Vep, CQ, even The Other Side of the Wind quite recently. It's the step to making a very good, pretty historically faithful film about the making of a specific landmark film that's proved difficult. I think the making of Mary Poppins one (quite unfaithful as it happens!), Saving Mr Banks is easily the best effort along these lines. Shadow of the Vampire about Murnau (played by Malkovich) making Nosferatu (1922) was also pretty good but *very* historically unfaithful: the central joke is that Murnau's actor for the Dracula-ish Count Orlok, Max Shreck (played by Willem Dafoe) was an actual vampire. Some Jewish groups protested that this bit of the film's premise was anti-Semitic... but I confess that I thought Dafoe was a riot.

Anyhow, the relatively historically faithful 'making of a classic movie' movie is a tough nut to crack. It's hard (sometimes impossible) to get all the rights you need and it's hard to get all the budget you need for the very large cast coprising all the actors within the inner movie + all the movie-makers and all the obstable-people to the movie's making and so on. Not to mention all the complex locations and set-recreations you need. Finally, it just might be that a relatively historically faithful making of a movie isn't that cinematic. It can make a great book or magazine article or dvd extra documentary and still not scream out 'Make a movie of this'.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

The making of the Godfather script by one Andrew Farotte, who's never done much, has been around for 5+ years on the Hollywood Black List. I looked at it a few years ago and it had a cast of several hundreds - seemed super-expensive. I also remember that it had George Lucas as a character and there were a bunch of jokes and insinuations about him getting ideas for Star Wars from shooting the breeze with Coppola about the Godfather in early stages. It had a *ton* of bad language from Coppola and Evans and Peter Bart, all manner of actress-themed colorful hyperbole & obscenity in fact. That was amusing but guaranteed an R.

Anyhow, Barry Levinson is going to direct w/ Jake Gyllenhall as Evans and Oscar Isaacs as Coppola. It could be good but the degree of difficulty is enormous and the chances of losing vast sums of money are real.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Anyhow, Barry Levinson is going to direct w/ Jake Gyllenhall as Evans and Oscar Isaacs as Coppola. It could be good but the degree of difficulty is enormous and the chances of losing vast sums of money are real.

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Well...I'm interested.

A key seems to be that -- as opposed the the Hitchcock Psycho movie -- they CAN use material affiliated with The Godfather itself.

I "lived" through The Godfather and I will note (again) that the book was a pure "sex fest" that had a lot of teenage tongues wagging....the fact that a movie of gravitas and smarts emerged from THAT book remains a surprise achievement.

And this: Brando really proved himself in this. One reason I don't have much regard for Apocalypse Now out there in 1979 is that Brando showed up for THAT one overweight, unprepared, bored...he gave none of his stardom to Coppola there.

But something 'clicked" for Brando as The Godfather -- he truly gave a performance. He cared. It mattered(I'd say things were not all that removed from how Hitchcock the same year showed up with "game" in Frenzy.)

James Caan and Robert Duvall had worked with Coppola before, and just ended up lucky with their roles here. (Caan's stardom never REALLY locked in after The Godfather.)

Which left Pacino -- the biggest gamble of them all. Michael Corleone could have been Warren Beatty or Ryan O'Neal or Jack Nicholson or (perhaps most in play) Dustin Hoffman. But Coppola went for the Italian-American guy.

I do suppose that this new movie will have trouble "matching" Brando, Pacino, Caan, Duvall...Cazalle.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

One wonders: exactly WHY can't somebody yet make a movie about the making of a movie that is exciting as the movie itself?

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The thing is that there have been a *bunch* of superior or better movies abut the making of movies, often featuring specific fictional movies being produced: just off the top of my head, Singin' In The Rain, The Bad and The Beautiful, Contempt, Day for Night, Day of The Locust, The Stuntman, Irma Vep, CQ, even The Other Side of the Wind quite recently.

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Ah...the irony....all about movies that WERE NOT real.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

It's the step to making a very good, pretty historically faithful film about the making of a specific landmark film that's proved difficult. I think the making of Mary Poppins one (quite unfaithful as it happens!),

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Indeed...perhaps "faithful to the reality" is less important than "faithful to the idea of the creative process."

The movie barely touched on it, but I was always moved that Disney got Mary Poppins out in triumph(and an Oscar for Julie Andrews) in 1964...and then died, rather quickly from cancer, in 1966. It was as if he knew he had a particular legacy to protect, right at the end.

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Saving Mr Banks is easily the best effort along these lines. Shadow of the Vampire about Murnau (played by Malkovich) making Nosferatu (1922) was also pretty good but *very* historically unfaithful: the central joke is that Murnau's actor for the Dracula-ish Count Orlok, Max Shreck (played by Willem Dafoe) was an actual vampire. Some Jewish groups protested that this bit of the film's premise was anti-Semitic... but I confess that I thought Dafoe was a riot.

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I'll have to go looking for Shadow of the Vampire.

I guess with The Godfather as a "next source," movies about The Exorcist and perhaps Jaws would be of interest. Hard to see how a Star Wars movie could be made, though.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

I'll have to go looking for Shadow of the Vampire.
Be warned that SotV (2000) isn't a great film by any means (some of its pacing and technical editing and lighting decisions are questionable for example) but it is quite fun with some fun performances and does feel like a real movie in a lot of ways with a big (if somewhat impertinent) statement it's trying to make. [Irma Vep (1996) actually covered somewhat similar ground far more impressively.] Note that SotV got two Oscar noms: Makeup, and Supporting Actor for Dafoe. The director Elias Menhige slunk back to theater after his followup (and only other) film was a critical and commercial disaster.

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[–] jay440 (107) 3 years ago

Speaking of pretty shocking, see below:

Oscar nominations that CITIZEN KANE (9) and MANK (10) have in common:
Picture, Actor, Director, Cinematography, Art Direction, Sound, Score

Noms exclusive to MANK:
Supporting Actress, Costume Design, Makeup

Noms exclusive to KANE:
Screenplay (Winner), Editing

Kane's only win, Best Screenplay, is a category that Mank, a screenplay about screenwriting, didn't get a nomination in.

One of my favorite film books is about the making of Kane, with lots of production stills, special effect breakdowns (Kane is loaded with them),
shots from other films that influenced Kane, audio innovations, etc.

I would love a film about the making of this technically ground-breaking movie, and though I haven't seen it, it sounds like Mank is not it.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

I would love a film about the making of this technically ground-breaking movie, and though I haven't seen it, it sounds like Mank is not it.
Right, Mank barely touches on Kane's production, rather it's almost all about the (prehistory of the) writing of the first full draft of Kane's screenplay. The late '90s HBO film 'RKO 281' is probably the closest to what you're looking for. It's no great shakes in my view but it *is* flat-out more interesting than Mank since it covers the production of CK and the battle over its release.

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[–] jay440 (107) 3 years ago

My fantasy making-of film would include Gregg Toland's great deep focus photography for John Ford that he took to the limit in Kane, and a look at the work of the art director, Perry Ferguson I believe, who hung great sheets of black velvet all over the set that photographed like deep space.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Toland is a featured character in RKO 281 and there's a good scene of him doing pre-production work with Orson, e.g., watching lots of Ford movies with him and coaching novice Orson on what sorts of shots you need so that things will cut together, on what lens are used in different shots or for different effects, and so on (famously *Anthony Perkins* gave Mike Nichols a similar sort of technical tutorial over a weekend when Nichols first came out to Hollywood to make Virginia Wolff). But focal lengths are never mentioned and once production begins the basic vibe is Toland saying 'it can't be done' and Orson bulling through that opposition. Thus we get a scene where Orson takes out an axe to start chopping through the studio floor so the camera *can* shoot up from ground level. And we get a scene where Orson ignores Toland's advice and destroys a camera.

Overall, RKO 481 focuses more on Orson's collaboration with Mank (and giving him credit) than his collaboration with Toland. This is unfortunate because, of course, just as Osrson shared the writing credit with Mank, he put Toland's ciinematography credit on the same credits page as Orson's directorial credit. The real Welles knew very well how much he owed to Toland and let everyone know it.

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[–] jay440 (107) 3 years ago

From what I've read about Toland, the schoolmarmish "It can't be done" to rebellious upstart Welles is probably dramatic license, as Toland was always a tinkerer and constantly invented new ways to photograph films. I gather that they were thick as thieves during the production and egged on each other's creativity.

RKO 481 is on YouTube, a clean copy, and scrolling through the scenes, I was pleased to see that they rebuilt sets from Kane and we get to see them in glorious color, something that the making-of-Psycho film Hitchcock sorely lackerd, as has been discussed on these boards.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Speaking of pretty shocking, see below:

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Ah...a great comparison of eras! I daresay that 1941 was a more important year at the Oscars than...2021.

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Oscar nominations that CITIZEN KANE (9) and MANK (10) have in common:
Picture, Actor, Director, Cinematography, Art Direction, Sound, Score

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The former deserved all...the latter...none. I even found the b/w cinematography in Mank too boring for the subject matter. (As swanstep points out, Hearst' Castle is rendered as nothing.)

And I LIKE Gary Oldman...but not much , here.

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Noms exclusive to MANK:
Supporting Actress, Costume Design, Makeup

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I'm not sure there was a make-up Oscar in 1941.

Supporting actress? Which one? The one who played Marion Davies, I suppose...and gave off no "star vibe," even minor.

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Noms exclusive to KANE:
Screenplay (Winner), Editing

Kane's only win, Best Screenplay,

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I've found, through Oscar history, that the greatest films that DON'T win Best Picture often win Best Screenplay(two chances a year: Adapted and Original....though original is not very competitive.)

Kane....Chinatown....Pulp Fiction, Fargo, LA Confidential...

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is a category that Mank, a screenplay about screenwriting, didn't get a nomination in.

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It didn't deserve one. One of the great "movie stories" rendered into a tale about a man who never gets out of bed...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

One of my favorite film books is about the making of Kane, with lots of production stills, special effect breakdowns (Kane is loaded with them),
shots from other films that influenced Kane, audio innovations, etc.

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I recall that book, from the 70s when a LOT of good books came out about great movies. I don't have it, though. I think it came with a copy of Pauline Kael's essay "Raising Kane" which first sought to name Mank as the true creator(making the still alive at the time Orson Welles and his pal Peter Bogdanovich very angry.)

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I would love a film about the making of this technically ground-breaking movie, and though I haven't seen it, it sounds like Mank is not it.

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Well, opinions will differ. I thought it was a major "miss," and all these Oscar nominations (for a film barely screened in theaters) seem almost an insult to Oscar tradition. That said, the 2020 Oscars(in 2021) seem fordoomed to asterisk status. Maybe it was just as well not to have many really good movies out in 2020.

Hey, I actually found "Hitchcock"(about the making of Psycho) to be better than Mank...and I only liked about 1/3 of that one.

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[–] jay440 (107) 3 years ago

Hitchcock could do stuck in a wheelchair, stuck on a lifeboat, stuck at a murderous dinner party. Fincher should have been up to the challenge of stuck in bed.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Hitchcock could do stuck in a wheelchair, stuck on a lifeboat, stuck at a murderous dinner party. Fincher should have been up to the challenge of stuck in bed.

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Ha. Never thought of that and...absolutely.

I perhaps was in a bad mood -- and cooped up myself at home, a prisoner to streaming -- when I watched Mank. I reacted strongly against the WEAKNESS of his exhausted character lying there in bed. I blinked out at times. If I recall correctly -- "suddenly" -- in one scene, Mank hands over all the pages of his perfect Kane screenplay FROM his position in bed. Evidently he got it all dictated out, in a comatose state....

Someone else might find this all well and good.

The movie tries to get around the "stuck in bed" thing by tossing in flashbacks to earlier years and an ambulatory Mank...but those scenes seem too perfunctory and uninteresting on their own. Its when he's stuck in bed that he's writing Citizen Kane...the movie is most dull when it should be most interesting.

As a side-bar, the movie tries to make a lot out of the Gubernatorial bid(in California, in the 30s) of left-wing populist Upton Sinclair and how it failed due to Hearst-influenced politics. But even THAT is handled in too quick a manner to much matter to the story at hand: Kane.

PS. One wonders about Netflix in these COVID times. They've got a good recent mix of "streaming movies" on there -- The Irishman, Buster Scruggs(from the Coens), a couple more but...not much new or major has been produced or bought by Netflix recently beyond "The Trial of the Chicago 7" (great cast; too funny for the grim material) and...Mank.

Netflix gonna come up with any new "big" movies anytime soon?

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

It's when he's stuck in bed that he's writing Citizen Kane...the movie is most dull when it should be most interesting.
Relatedly, the movie seemed to me to completely flub its potentially most interesting relationship, between Mank and Marion Davies. Davies reads Mank's script and basically gives Mank a complete pass on it and even says she'd like to be still young enough to play herself (accepting the ID of Susan Alexander with her!) in the film when it gets made. Then we never see Davies again.

Now, really! I gather that Davies was a very nice, good-humored, ray-of-sunshine-type person. But she *must* have been hurt by what happened and felt specifically betrayed by her friend Mank (and guilty too because she was the one who brought him into Hearst's orbit). There's real dramatic potential here that Fincher's film just passes on. Put another way: there needed to be at least one more scene at the end, i.e., between Marion and and Mank.

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[–] jay440 (107) 3 years ago

My favorite scene from Amadeus is when Mozart, on his deathbed, dictates his last score to Salieri. It could be dramatically viable, but maybe not when stretched out over the entire length of a film.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

My favorite scene from Amadeus is when Mozart, on his deathbed, dictates his last score to Salieri. It could be dramatically viable, but maybe not when stretched out over the entire length of a film

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In my haste to condemn Mank for its "guy stuck in bed" motif, I did forget to note that scenes of characters stuck in beds are rife in movie history, and many of them are very good.

Especially deathbed scenes, which can range from dramatic (Amadeus) to tear-jerking(Terms of Endearment.)

On the "thriller side," in "Sorry, Wrong Number" you've got invalid Barbara Stanwyck trapped in her bed for the whole movie...and eventually murdered there at the end.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Truth be told, The Parallax View is a "thriller" with no thrills...Alan Pakula had no real thriller chops. A "bomb at the airport" sequence was shot like a TV episode, not like a movie.
I agree that Parallax's thriller mechanics are its weak point... and that that box-office-imperilling weakness does in fact point to a slightly wider problem with the film's believability. So, e.g., not only does it feel *cheap* and unexciting that the only coverage we get of the bomb-blast on the plane (*after* it's landed and Frady and everyone else has deplaned) is a shaking-the-camera shot of some Terminal interior, but also the movie never seems to acknowledge *what just happened*: a plane was just blown up at LAX, and that true disaster had only been averted because someone on the plane had anonymously alerted the crew about the bomb and been believed and the halfway-to-Denver plane had turned around and flown back to LA and offloaded passengers and crew just in time. Oh and a US Senator & his aids were on the plane. I'm sorry but *that* story would have been a national sensation for weeks, not some minor news footnote. Every passenger would have been scrutinized, you name it. Frady's Parallax alias, 'Richard Paley' would have come out. Orthodox thriller mechanics would have covered this and at the very least Frady would be seen to be aware that Parallax would now know that he's onto them, ruining their plots. More generally, Frady's a reporter and here he would be at the center of one of the biggest news stories of the year. And yet we never see him even *think* about trying to tell his wider story - "it was Parallax who did it!" - to the media (& FBI etc.) who'd be all over him. Indeed, after the explosion we never see Frady interact with his (soon-to-be-killed-by-P) editor to talk over his role in one of the biggest news stories of the year, and the thriller mechanics of how P knew to kill the editor are left completely mysterious (rather than as in a conventional thriller Frady would have an anguished clear sense of how his freelance heroism on the plane has ended up blowing his cover and costing his editor *his* life). Indeed as far as the movie is concerned we never see Frady learn that his editor is dead.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Because we're left to compute so much for ourselves, the film is genuinely mysterious. But insofar as we do compute things, to that extent the degree of jeopardy Frady knows he's putting himself in when he goes *back* to LA to try to thwart/participate in a full-blown Parallax operation goes through the roof. If your cover is blown then you're a dead man as a solo operator.And, really, why wouldn't Parallax just kill him at that point? Why go to such incredible lengths to work him into P's next operation as the next patsy? That's way too cute for a big heartless lethal corporation.

And, really, somewhat similar problems occur right at the beginning of the movie. Paula Prentiss's character tells Frady that she's scared to death because 6 people have died from the Space Needle event. But killing people is self-defeating behavior from Parallax. Paula Prentiss says she in fact didn't 'see anything' at the Space Needle - she's now lierally fearing being killed because other people like her are dying not because she 'knows anything'. That seems likely to be the case with the other people Parallax targeted, so wtf Parallax? Stop killing people and the story dies out. Wantonly killing people, however, ensures attention from authorities etc..

All these problems conceded, however, I do love The Parallax View. It's no thriller but it does conjure up a truly memorable kind of unease and alienated drift and paranoia. Its lack of thriller smarts in this way seems intentional, instead we're in the space of things like Blow-up or Zabriskie Point (and of earlier Antonioni films such as Red Desert and La Notte and L'Aventurra) where important events are happening *around* our main characters but the characters themselves don't really understand what's going on or even their own motivations. The upshot in such films is that something deep but unspoken about 'modern life' is being captured and diagnosed before our eyes. The characters are just in it, perhaps almost sleepwalking through it, and famously in Antonioni's films characters or story-lines often just drift away or disappear. Given this kind of lineage for TPV, the stars of the show are Gordon Willis's photography and Michael Small's score:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GExP6OfRqI4
Those contributions are the key building blocks of the mood and the diagnosis of the film.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I stand by my original judgment that Sorkin's pretty basic Trial of the Chicago 7 is the better Netflix Oscar contender this year with a better script and better casting and performances, etc..

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Chicago 7 could/should be my favorite of 2020 because I'm a self-amused slave to the "Sitcom 101A" insult humor of Aaron Sorkin. Its TOO easy, what he writes, but here he turned EVERYBODY into silver tongued comic geniuses. Which, in real life...they weren't. Especially ugly humorless Tom Hayden. (No less a 60's countercultural force than Tommy Smothers found Hayden insufferable.)

We reach this "easy" line for Sacha Baron Cohen's Abbie Hoffman:

"Dillinger was a gangster. Derringer is a gun. Dave Dellinger is a defendant here, and I'm not related to Judge Hoffman."

Note in passing: I think he knows this, but when the disguises are off, Sacha Baron Cohen is a very handsome, sexually charismatic actor -- true star quality, very tall, and he lords over Chicago 7 with it -- even as he is paired for a "Mutt and Jeff" routine with smallish Jeremy Strong doing Tommy Chong as Jerry Rubin. I'll note that Strong is a total a-hole character in Sorkin's "Molly's Game," a real male skunk rotter. To see him transformed into such a sweet character HERE was a revelation. It makes him harder to watch in Molly's Game(which I have done since seeing Chicago 7.)

You've got the fine Mark Rylance doing HIS one-liners as William Kunstler, and Michael Keaton continuing his new run as a "senior character star" as Ramsey Clark....its all fun to watch and listen to -- MUCH better than Mank ("a movie about a man in a bed") but...something's too pat about it, and I had a real problem with the overwrought ending, which seemed to backfire with piety after a movie of legal maneuvers.

Now more than ever as 2021 brings medical issues "back," I'm sticking with my daredevil visit to see the Psycho German print at a movie theater as rendering my favorite movie of 2020.


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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I agree that Parallax's thriller mechanics are its weak point... and that that box-office-imperilling weakness does in fact point to a slightly wider problem with the film's believability. So, e.g., not only does it feel *cheap* and unexciting that the only coverage we get of the bomb-blast on the plane (*after* it's landed and Frady and everyone else has deplaned) is a shaking-the-camera shot of some Terminal interior,

--

THAT's what I remember now -- just a "shaking the camera shot" of some Terminal interior.

One problem that some of us had with 70's movies is that a lot of them simply didn't "do the work" of basic filmmaking. That shaking camera was an insult. I remember sitting in the theater thinking, "well, these filmmakers aren't interested in making a movie, so I'm not interested in watching it much longer."

And Warren Beatty's commitment to the role seemed "less than." He did a surprisingly good fight scene up front in the movie(he was a big strapping guy who rarely showed off his size) and there was an ALMOST Hitchcockian bit with a release of deadly water from a dam (a weak echo of a similar scene with Nicholson in Chinatown the same summer) but...as the movie went on, you just didn't believe that Beatty was convincing anybody that he was a potential assassin.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

but also the movie never seems to acknowledge *what just happened*: a plane was just blown up at LAX, and that true disaster had only been averted because someone on the plane had anonymously alerted the crew about the bomb and been believed and the halfway-to-Denver plane had turned around and flown back to LA and offloaded passengers and crew just in time. Oh and a US Senator & his aids were on the plane. I'm sorry but *that* story would have been a national sensation for weeks,

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That's right. The whole thing was so perfunctory as to be ...unbelievable.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Indeed as far as the movie is concerned we never see Frady learn that his editor is dead.

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Yep. Here is something interesting in passing(to me):

The editor was played by a now-aged Hume Cronyn, who, we know, worked a few times for Hitchcock both as an actor and as a writer.

Well, YEARS after seeing Cronyn in The Parallax View, I got a book on Frenzy and in that book is a letter from Hume Cronyn to Hitchcock. Its a polite letter that says "I have not worked in nine months, Hitch, so if there is a role in Frenzy to consider for me, please do." Hitchcock wrote right back "There is no role that would fit your great talent, but if there were...you'd be at the top of the list." Such a kindly, rueful rejection.

So it took Hume Cronyn some more "hustle" and about another year, to get a good role in
The Parallax View.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

All these problems conceded, however, I do love The Parallax View.

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..and though my reaction to the film is "in the negatory" that does not mean that it isn't important in its own way, nor that the "paranoid thrillers" of the 70's were not important, either.

The Parallax View "caught" what had horrified us in America: assassination after assassination after assassination that changed the course of history and changed who ran the American government, as if "killing off Presidents and candidates" was simply the way things got run. THAT was the true horror of it: government just "picked up the pieces" and kept going. Murder swept under the rug.

----
It's no thriller but it does conjure up a truly memorable kind of unease and alienated drift and paranoia. Its lack of thriller smarts in this way seems intentional, instead we're in the space of things like Blow-up or Zabriskie Point (and of earlier Antonioni films such as Red Desert and La Notte and L'Aventurra) where important events are happening *around* our main characters but the characters themselves don't really understand what's going on or even their own motivations. The upshot in such films is that something deep but unspoken about 'modern life' is being captured and diagnosed before our eyes. The characters are just in it, perhaps almost sleepwalking through it, and famously in Antonioni's films characters or story-lines often just drift away or disappear. Given this kind of lineage for TPV, the stars of the show are Gordon Willis's photography and Michael Small's score:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GExP6OfRqI4
Those contributions are the key building blocks of the mood and the diagnosis of the film.

--

I will take all of those points. These were perhaps art films first, commercial thrillers second(if at all.)

In fact, now I've got a hankering to watch The Parallax View again.


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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Meanwhile: after rather striking out with The Parallax View as Oscar bait in 1974, Warren Beatty got real relevant again the next year in 1975 with Shampoo, a 1968-based mix of Nixonian politics, Hollywood lifestyles, and sex that got a lot of ink and box office. (And Lee Grant an Oscar.)

1975 opened with Shampoo for Beatty, and closed with Cuckoo's Nest for Nicholson(and an Oscar) but...the TWO of them in the same year came a cropper with the bizarre black comedy The Fortune...taking director Mike Nichols down with them.

Nothing could be counted on!

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

The Parallax View "caught" what had horrified us in America: assassination after assassination after assassination that changed the course of history and changed who ran the American government
I should add that one problem these days for TPV is that, in a clear sense, we're all living through what happens when conspiracist thinking takes over and becomes utterly mainstream. That is, now we're all aware of how *eager* millions of people are to believe in vast conspiracies on essentially no evidence (even at great cost to their own families and personal relationships). It's part of the basic playbook of modern politics to 'flood the zone with BS', create FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, & Doubt), and in general to exploit voters' vanity & irrationality & partisanship all of which are expressed in their willingness to think conspiratorially & believe exciting nonsense over prosaic facts.

In the '90s, I was an early fan of The X-files but had to stop watching it after a Season or two as it became more popular because I could feel that it was contributing to a rise in typically highly anti-government, paranoid conspiracist thinking. I don't live in the US anymore, but I imagine that if I did I might again be too worried about the rising tide of paranoid delusion being stoked in the country to enjoy TPV as much as I currently do. Worry that your neighbors aren't going to get vaccinated, might be likely to storm the Capitol or shoot up the local Synagogue, etc. has a way of focusing the mind, cold turkey fashion, strictly on reality to compensate.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I should add that one problem these days for TPV is that, in a clear sense, we're all living through what happens when conspiracist thinking takes over and becomes utterly mainstream.

---

Well, it was bound to happen and largely through this "Satanic machine" we are typing on right now. I try to keep my use of it to a discussion of movies and "that which gives me pleasure" but...the paranoia now runs deep.

Which is OK. Its really ONLY on the internet, it only peeps out in the real world so often.

We moved on from the assassinations to today's world: anybody can get killed by a mass shooter psycho at any time. Interesting how it only took a few decades to bring everybody into the terror but...again...the world we made.

I'll make this "positive" note about the assassinations: the system in the US ultimately corrected for them. JFK's murder led to the revelation of LBJ as a major war monger -- he was stopped and removed in 1968.

RFK's murder indirectly led to President Richard Nixon...and Watergate eventually took that presidency away from Nixon. The system reasserted itself with the end of the Draft and the infusion of mediocrities like Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and.....DISCO.

---

That is, now we're all aware of how *eager* millions of people are to believe in vast conspiracies on essentially no evidence (even at great cost to their own families and personal relationships). It's part of the basic playbook of modern politics to 'flood the zone with BS', create FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, & Doubt), and in general to exploit voters' vanity & irrationality & partisanship all of which are expressed in their willingness to think conspiratorially & believe exciting nonsense over prosaic facts.

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Always remember...there are millions more of us who ignore all of this. As we should.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I will add this, though:

Hitchcock's critical enemy Stanley Kauffman wrote of Psycho that "Hitchcock's intentions were no more profound than sending ma and pa home to beer and bed with a couple of shocks to remember."

At a "basic" level -- the two murders -- yes.

At a "profound" level -- NO. Psycho is a seminal work of TWO centuries now, because it posited not only that madness exists, but a special KIND of madness exists...a desire to kill, to destroy, to anhilate others, which we see every month these days.

I believe Dave Chapelle made this joke, though: the COVID pandemic did manage to keep a lot of the shooters home in 2020.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

A side thought on "The Parallax View":

As I go through my "lists" of movies I have liked over 6 decades or so, I'm sadly reminded that for me, personally...in a lot of years -- even in the GOOD years of the 70's, etc...there were a lot of disappointing movies.

Take 1972. Hitchcock's Frenzy that summer rather got an "overkill" effect of rave reviews through the summer; critics kept checking in to remind US that IT was so good.

Well, in the summer of 1972, drive-ins and the like were captured by such "meh" movies as Ben(about a rat), Shaft's Big Score, Hannie Caulder(Raquel Welch in a Western); Kansas City Bomber(Raquel Welch as a roller derby girl), Skyjacked(one of the most cheapjack of Chuck Heston disaster movies)...it was BAD. Even Clint Eastwood in Joe Kidd was a short, perfunctory Western.

So Frenzy ended up being "great" by default, in certain ways, by demonstrating qualities of script and style and authorial intent.

Came 1974, things were SOMEWHAT better, but not a lot better. I recall being very depressed by the opening rape and murder of Charles Bronson's nice wife and daughter in law in Death Wish(Chuck never catches THOSE attackers.) I recall how a not-bad Clint Eastwood caper movie(Thunderbolt and Lightfoot) ended on its own "downer" note(co-star Jeff Bridges is beaten and dies a slow death.)

And I recall finding The Parallax View to be a rather empty thriller with an almost-preordained sense of doom.

Three movies got all the hype as 1974 began: The Exorcist(still drawing long lines and crowds since Xmas); Chinatown(dutifully promoted within an inch of its life by producer/studio head Bob Evans and....The Towering Inferno, in which once it was known that Steve McQueen AND Paul Newman were finally going to work together(with some other big stars)...I spent all of '74 counting the days to Xmas and THAT movie.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The fall of 1974 had two really cheesy Universal disaster movies -- Airport 1975 and Earthquake -- before Steve and Paul showed up with the class act that was Towering Inferno(with MUCH better dialogue than had been in the cheesy Poseidon Adventure of two Christmases before.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Still...'74 had this "air" about it. Downers on the dramatic side. Disaster cheese on the movie movie side.

And a brutally fun little prison football movie that left audiences cheering -- The Longest Yard -- despite a downer ending for Burt Reynolds at the end.

My point here is that, in any given movie year, a lot of the films are disappointing from the get-go. Maybe the script is at fault. Maybe cheap production quality. But we showed up anyway..in 1974.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The thread gets narrower and narrower. (Physically, on my computer.)

Whaddya know. Parallax View is on Amazon Prime...free right now(they tend to switch back and forth on charging.)

So I watched it the whole way through. Overall, BETTER than I remembered it, and yet...perhaps trapped in its era(for better say some), it still rather sputtered out for me at the end.

For the most part, swanstep, your detailed notes above on TPV and my long ago memories pretty much all still apply to my viewing . Not much more to add.

But a few things:

I was surprised, given Prince of Darkness Willis as DP, how bright and sunny a lot of the movie is...in handsome Panavision wide screen. Seattle. At the LA Zoo. Montana(or was it Idaho...I STILL missed it.) Out at sea with William Daniels. Plenty of darkness too...but overall a "nightmare in the All-American sunshine" kind of movie.

The bomb on the airplane scene STILL ends pretty badly too me. We know that from about 1985 on, we would have seen that(empty) plane blow sky high in CGI. But it was 1974, and a "thriller" could still be made where we didn't SEE a lot of big action. (Same with the killer falling off the Space Needle at the beginning. Its a great haunting shot -- he just disappears -- but modernly you'd get the whole fall.

More interesting about the plane scene is that it is very LONG...intended, I think , as an homage to Hitchocck's "bomb story" about suspense versus surprise -- its suspense here...and yet, weirdly overlong and kind of listless. Beatty underplays it, too.

Indeed, Beatty seemed oddly listless throughout -- diffident? -- and I know he is capable of more.


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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Which brought back my biggest "memory I forgot": it was hard to believe that tall, strapping, perfectly handsome, perfectly coiffed(Long 70's Hair) Beatty as somebody who would be taken for an "isolated loner"..whether as gunman or as patsy. So I guess Parallax pegged him as "the hero"...and did something about it? They likely weren't attached or available, but I could see Hackman, Pacino, Nicholson or maybe Caan as better cast in the part.

I liked how we meet the final politician to get killed and....he feels a bit sleazy. He's old school -- Texan, tan, white haired...smoking?...and sort of phony to all he meets. TPV makes an interesting comment(I think): these dramatic "world changing" assassinations are often of people who are pretty smarmy -- but it is the change in the balance of power that is mortifying.

BTW, the politician meant for the bomb on the plane is...the one running AGAINST the Texan. Parallax would have killed either, or both! (The conspiracy is all over the place, the victims are , too.)

Oh, well, not to worry. They don't assassinate many politicians these days. They're protected. Its the rest of us who are subject to slaughter, today.

(Liked the movie a lot more this time!)

PS. Walter McGinn was even creepier than I remembered him.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

I have now got my Criterion Blu-ray of The Parallax View, and it's everything that it promised: picture and sound are terrific, and the extras including two interviews with Pakula and one with DP Willis are illuminating. They clarify that a lot of the film was made up after casting (characters complete remolded to fit favored actors strrengths) and during rehearsals, and again on location for action details. No writers participated because there was a WGA strike so Pakula, Beatty and Willis just bounced ideas off each other. In particular, no 'end of the film' was ever written. The base script/treatment ending of an assasination at a full rally (thousands of extras) but Pakula ditched that on location in favor of having the final assassination happen at the rehearsal. All the particulars of that scene were in turn worked out on location, which, e.g., just so happened to have golf-carts on hand to ferry chairs around! Joe Frady (Beatty) dying was made up on the spot.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I have now got my Criterion Blu-ray of The Parallax View, and it's everything that it promised: picture and sound are terrific, and the extras including two interviews with Pakula and one with DP Willis are illuminating

---

I appreciate your having brought "The Parallax View" into view here (OT -- a great device, yes?) and reminding me of its higher attributes. I must say that I've always counted The Parallax View as one of the most "downer" movies of the downer year of 1974 because it so relentlessly stacked the deck AGAINST Beatty to win and killed off all his allies with ease. The whole message of the movie seemed to be: "You can't win...and even this pretty boy superstar can't save us."

But that ignores certain aspects of the film that DO work.

I remember being surprised watching Warren Beatty -- indeed the "pretty boy" but otherwise a really BIG ex-football player -- commit wholeheartedly to a long barroom fight scene, crashing through walls and over tables, punching the villain out -- it was like: "Hey, Warren Beatty could be Clint Eastwood if he wanted to." And adjacent to that fight scene (deep in the -- Montana? -- woods), was a very Hitchcockian moment when a local sheriff revealed himself as a villain and set up a dam water release to drown Beatty(shades of Chinatown that same summer.)

But those scenes were early in the movie and from then on ...it meandered on into doomsday.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

In particular, no 'end of the film' was ever written.

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Not good. Paul Newman is among those on record saying: "the ending is the most important part of the movie."

And I'd say Hitchcock alone gave us at least ten of the greatest endings ever.

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The base script/treatment ending of an assasination at a full rally (thousands of extras) but Pakula ditched that on location in favor of having the final assassination happen at the rehearsal.

---

A very "empty" and listless sequence , even with an assassination involved. I wondered "where is everybody?" The golf cart idea was OK but "small."

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All the particulars of that scene were in turn worked out on location, which, e.g., just so happened to have golf-carts on hand to ferry chairs around!

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Aha.

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Joe Frady (Beatty) dying was made up on the spot.

--

That's a pretty important decision to make on the spot. I DO have to return for my not-so-great feelings about that movie. Though I guess we can blame the writers strike, these insights tell me(at least) WHY the movie seemed so perfunctory and one-note and (given the horrible topic involved) inconsequential. Beatty's also to blame -- he was on a tight availability schedule and his heart isn't really in this one.

The new book about Chinatown confirms that Beatty was furious when Paramount sent The Parallax View out just one week ahead of Chinatown -- he knew Chinatown would soon swamp his movie. I guess he knew why: Chinatown was a work of great preparation with a powerful ending. It made Beatty's work look lazy.

Kudos to the photography and the ominous Michael Small score though. Both were fine.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

I DO have to return for my not-so-great feelings about that movie. Though I guess we can blame the writers strike, these insights tell me(at least) WHY the movie seemed so perfunctory and one-note and (given the horrible topic involved) inconsequential. Beatty's also to blame -- he was on a tight availability schedule and his heart isn't really in this one.
Athough I feel much more positively about TPV than you do, ecarle, I and I think all deep fans of TPV agree that the production stories illuminate where the slightly ragged feel of parts of TPV come from. Pakula evidently had lots of interesting ideas (that Willis then had to figure out how to translate into sequences of shots) and Pakula was *excited* by having to come up with new pages every day and with being wide open to discovery and improvisation once the crew arrived at a multi-day location. On the one hand the film's got a freshness and unpredictable quality because of that, on the other hand it also gets a bunch of unnecessary loose ends and rough edges (e.g., the serious lack of quality control at the end of the airport scene). Willis notes that Pakula just wasn't interested in physical action, in getting fights etc. right and so Willis urged him to just cut the scenes (and go full art-film) but Pakula thought his quirkiness/sloppiness on some of these points worked as a kind of parody of Hollywood stereotypes of action. Willis correctly thought that these Pakula ideas wouldn't read that way to the audience and instead the setups they shot in bars etc. would just read as cheap-ness.

In sum, Willis seems to have seen clearly from the beginning that TPV was a film with massive strong points but also some weaknesses and unforced errors. Oh well, there just *is* such a thing as a film that is essential viewing but not perfect or even close to perfect. It's 75-80% of a brilliant film (that's how I'd score Saving Private Ryan and Fight Club and American Sniper for instance).

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Athough I feel much more positively about TPV than you do, ecarle, I and I think all deep fans of TPV agree that the production stories illuminate where the slightly ragged feel of parts of TPV come from.

--

Funny thing, swanstep: you know and I know that we have rarely agreed on "liking" the same movie. Its not Siskel/Ebert vitriol and I think usually we declare the dislike of another's "like" and leave it at that. Or you(in particular) patiently sidestep having to confront me at all if you don't like one of my "mainstream" picks. Plus: you know and have seen 100s more movies than me, so it really isn't a match.

That said, I DID see Parallax View on release, and a couple of times after, and that's the way I feel about it decades later. I could/should always go back to see what I've forgotten or what is better than I remembered.

This thought: I remember an interesting support actor in TPV named Walter McGinn...a rather "plain but ominous" looking guy who turned up the next year in "Three Days of the Condor"(yet another political thriller, but with romance and an all-star cast.) I recall that McGinn died a few years after TPV in a thoroughly banal and minor car crash on an LA hillside and when the death was announced, I flashed back to his good work in TPV and Condor.

Alan Pakula spent much of the 60s as the producer on director Robert Mulligan's films like To Kill a Mockingbird and Love with the Proper Stranger...but broke loose in the 70's to direct on his own. Good news: he made thrillers (Klute, TPV, and yes All the President's Men.) Bad news: he didn't much want to MAKE thrillers. He liked character studies(Klute) and art films(TPV) and dry journalistic drama(President's Men.) But above all, Pakula liked these movies shadowy and slow and eerie (always the same DP? Always Michael Small on music?)

In one of Willliam Goldman's books(and I know Goldman wasn't the ONLY person in the know in Hollywood; but he's the only one who wrote books about it for awhile), he writes about meeting Warren Beatty at a party after TPV, but before Goldman finished his "All the President's Men" script. Goldman asked Beatty for some tips about Pakula and Beatty "smiled an enigmatic smile" and said "make sure you've got it locked down before you start" -- meaning Pakula would want any and all ideas WHILE he made the movie...and drive one nuts.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I recall Pakula continuing to succeed as a director into the 80s
though he made ANOTHER non-thriller in "Still of the Night." But he also made Sophie's Choice and Streep won the Oscar for that.

Shades of Walter McGinn: Pakula, too, died young in an auto accident, of the type we would see in movies like Lethal Weapon 2 "for fun": the truck ahead of him accidentally unleashed some sort of steel object that pierced his windshield and impaled Pakula.

It was a thriller type death.

ps. I'll try to watch Parallax View again sometime. Its not streaming now...but I think it will come around. They always do..

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

This thought: I remember an interesting support actor in TPV named Walter McGinn...a rather "plain but ominous" looking guy who turned up the next year in "Three Days of the Condor"(yet another political thriller, but with romance and an all-star cast.
Pakula talks about casting McGinn in one of the Blu-ray extras: apparently the original set-in-New-York script called for his character to be a 6' 2" G-man or Special Forces type but Pakula really went his own way with casting, liked McGinn, and decided it was more sinister if all the representatives of Parallax we see look like accountants, physically unthreatening certainly compared to Beatty's jock-like frame, and somehow vaguely anonymous. This was one of Pakula's good ideas.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Pakula talks about casting McGinn in one of the Blu-ray extras: apparently the original set-in-New-York script called for his character to be a 6' 2" G-man or Special Forces type but Pakula really went his own way with casting, liked McGinn, and decided it was more sinister if all the representatives of Parallax we see look like accountants, physically unthreatening certainly compared to Beatty's jock-like frame, and somehow vaguely anonymous. This was one of Pakula's good ideas.

--

It worked for me...I REMEMBER Walter McGinn in that role, and he WAS that way. (Though I remember thinking as whenever "mousy men" front evil organizations -- he likely had some big bruisers backing him up, unseen but ready to pounce.)

Some stray thoughts on The Parallax View:

ONE: The opening posits an assassination (which does happen) in the restaurant at the top of the Seattle space needle. The assassin(a decoy) is chased by cops outside and onto the top of the Space Needle. Its a nifty reminder of Hitchcock's Statue of Liberty and Rushmore climaxes -- though much more aligned with Saboteur: the chase is played with no music, total silence...maybe a ship tooting in the distance ala Saboteur. Looks dangerous for ALL parties, too. But of course, only the assassin dies -- as I recall, as if maybe he volunteered himself to take "the big fall."

CONT

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

TWO: All movies are "relative" to one another. The Parallax View is a "better movie" than Hitchcock's Topaz(both are "political thrillers") it looks more professional, has a major star in it, "holds together." But Topaz is allowed certain latitude because it is a "late Hitchcock" and demonstrates some of his visual specifics and ideas, etc. If The Parallax View disappointed me, it was perhaps against the old gold standard of "North by Northwest" (to which TPV was compared in some reviews) and in immediate adjacency to Chinatown that year. Still, it engaged me; Beatty was a star and an interesting one -- he only seemed half interested in making movies(ala Brando) so when he showed up, WE were interested.

THREE: Paula Prentiss "launches" the thriller plot by desperately coming to Beatty and making claims of conspiracy, how witnesses are dying, how she's next. He gently mocks her and tries to calm her down but she is near hysteria. He tells her not to worry. CUT TO: Prentiss, dead on a mortuary slab("natural causes.") Beatty, enraged, will now follow the case.

This: Paula Prentiss with long hair and a deep smoky voice in the sixties was sexy (in a prim way) in Hawks' Man's Favorite Sport, and in a direct way(as a stripper often wearing not much clothing) in What's New Pussycat; I had a big crush on her. In TPV, her hair is cut short, her glamour is gone, the sexy voice is desperate. Its a two-scene role -- one alive, one dead -- and it REALLY gives this movie emotional punch.

FOUR: One of those "funky" scenes I really like: funnyman Kenneth Mars(in the year of Young Frankenstein, and from What's Up Doc) has a semi-serious scene where he and Beatty ride a children's train around the Los Angeles Zoo and exchange plot information(a very Hitchcock scene, actually.) These two big men on this little bitty train is welcome comic relief.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

I have just seen another one of the Oscar contenders, The Father w/ Anthony Hopkins & Olivia Coleman. It's pretty good! Nothing too exciting mind you, and it *is* small-feeling (the director adapted and directed the film from his own play) but within its limited parameters it's essentially a complete success. I think it's a real dark-horse to take out Best Picture since I've gotta believe that a bunch of Academy Voters are going to balk at the very flawed Nomadland and the much more classically well-scripted and directed and acted The Father is waiting for them if they need to jump. And The Father has the following virtues to which Acad Voters may be quite susceptible: (i) it's a real, universal tear-jerker (about an old guy suffering from dementia), (ii) it's a tidy, no obvious flaws, ~90 mins which older Acad voters will appreciate, (iii) its play-origins mean that TF works great on a small screen where most voters will encounter it (and it's got lots of nice editing and visuals so it doesn't court the 'It's stagey' backlash/criticism that play-sourced films sometimes face).

Update: Sound of Metal (2020) (on Amazon) was a bit meh in my view (star Riz Ahmed's junket interviews promoting the film interested me more than the movie itself). Not sure why SoM got so much more Oscar attention than other somewhat similarly-scaled indies like The Assistant, and Never Rarely Sometimes Always (both of which I preferred).
Update 2: Judas and the Black Messiah (2020). Good not great, well-acted telling of the story of Black Panther leader, Fred Hampton, his brutal murder by (conspiring) FBI & Police, and the black informant who did everything to make that death possible and even inevitable. In effect the story has at least two individual tragedies and a national tragedy (on-going) to get through in just two hours, and it ends up spread too thin (e.g., the movie's stuck with presenting Hampton as a scattershot and conflicted figure, both as a preacher of intense violence who must necessarily draw the attention of security services and as someone who sees past violence).

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I have just seen another one of the Oscar contenders, The Father w/ Anthony Hopkins & Olivia Coleman. It's pretty good! Nothing too exciting mind you, and it *is* small-feeling (the director adapted and directed the film from his own play) but within its limited parameters it's essentially a complete success.

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I"ve read about The Father and it seems to me that this would have been a perfectably respectable(if predictable) Oscar movie even back in non-COVID times when the Oscars were "operating at full speed."

From what I've read, its an "affliction movie" and offers an opportunity for an actor to enact such. Winners in recent years were Julianne Moore in some movie and I seem to recall Julie Christie in another and...I'm sure they are good and I think they won Oscars and The Father fits right in.

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How will the Oscar ceremony play? What kind of ratings? This is the "final angle" to the dearth of movies in 2020 and of theaters to see them in , and of people to go.

I'm reminded again that many peoples jobs DEPEND on an Oscar show taking place, and articles being written about the nominees, etc(they are paid to write them) So let's support those jobs. But it really seems a self-predicting failure this year.

Meanwhile, TCM has started its belated "31 Days of Oscar promotion" and it again(to my mind) embarrasses modern Oscar films. Ben-Hur, West Side Story, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Last night they ran "The Man Who Knew Too Much" 56 because it won Best Song.

Still, I have a memory for this board and I know that someone here whom I respect greatly wrote "People who disparage the Oscars are often people who never had a chance of winning one" so...I come not to disparage. Just to ruefully mourn...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

.I come not to disparage

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But here is someone who did:

Bill Maher is a stand-up comedian(once more than he is now) who hosts a politics show on HBO. I like to note that Maher's early efforts include the lead in a bad Indy Jones spoof called "Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death" and that he evidently wasn't a top tier comedian but...he found a niche, as so many others have, doing a show about politics -- which is pretty easy to do. Pick your side, insult the other side. Ratings (led from "the base") follow.

But Mr. Maher likes to opine on other topics and here he is on Oscars 2020:

BEGIN:

"The Oscars need to change their name to the Debbies...as in Debbie Downer. Because judging by this year's Best Picture nominees..you couldn't have a worse time if there was an active shooter in the theater.

..The 2021 Oscars, brought to you by razor blades, Kleenex and rope. And please welcome our host, the Sad Emoji.

We all had a rough year..a little escapism would be appreciated. What happened to show business? Did they all decide to quit cocaine at the same time? ..Academy nominations used to say What Great Movies We Make. Now they say, Look what good people we are."

END

I will note that this speech was probably written FOR Maher. And: Oscar movies used to be -- but are no more -- SOMETIMES made for "escapism." (Gigi -- yes; The Lost Weekend, not so much.) But today we got Marvel and DC and King Kong for all the escapism we could want these days.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

From what I've read, its an "affliction movie" and offers an opportunity for an actor to enact such. Winners in recent years were Julianne Moore in some movie and I seem to recall Julie Christie in another and...I'm sure they are good and I think they won Oscars and The Father fits right in.
The Julianne Moore movie was 'Still Alice' and was pretty bad whereas the Julie Christie film was 'Away From Her' which was very good, deseveredly got a screenplay nom as well, and so on. These and The Father are all specifically mental deterioration *and* end of life films, which is pretty much its own speciailist, double jeopardy, bonus round subdivision within affliction films! It's easy to take Maher-like potshots at these films but the best of them, like The Father and Away from Her, are thrilling cinema and socially valuable, empathy machines too. I'm all for them.

Anyhow, I don't think Maher's got his diagnosis right that 'the problem with the Oscar nominees this year is that they're all super-downers', their problem is that a lot of them are pretty average, not very ambitious films that neither critics nor fans *really loved*. My own favorite test: Is a given film something I'd use to teach people about film? is failed by all nominees but The Father.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The Julianne Moore movie was 'Still Alice' and was pretty bad whereas the Julie Christie film was 'Away From Her' which was very good, deseveredly got a screenplay nom as well, and so on.

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Good memory on the titles, swanstep and good point that "affliction" may be the genre...but the films, scripts, and acting can vary in quality.

And when you come to think of it -- if "affliction" is a genre(like Westerns or thrillers)...a lot of them can be made and Oscars won(My Left Foot, Rain Man, the one with Eddie Redmayne)

---

These and The Father are all specifically mental deterioration *and* end of life films, which is pretty much its own speciailist, double jeopardy, bonus round subdivision within affliction films!

---

Ha...but...that's the way it is.

--

It's easy to take Maher-like potshots at these films but the best of them, like The Father and Away from Her, are thrilling cinema and socially valuable, empathy machines too. I'm all for them.

---

Well most of Maher's potshots -- and other potshots at the Oscars of the 21st Century -- are pretty easy to take. This ceremony has evolved into this ceremony because movies themselves have evolved. And frankly, Ben-Hur or To Kill a Mockinbird might play too broad and simple today.

A few years ago, Robert Downey Jr. took a break from making his Iron Man zillions to do a movie called "The Judge." It was a courtroom drama; he played a lawyer, Billy Bob Thornton played opposing counsel, the lovely Marisa Tomeit played -- RDJ's ex I think, and Robert Duvall played RDJ's father -- "The Judge" who proved to be deteriorating physically after a lifetime as "the big man." I recall in particular Duvall's character losing control of his bowels in public.

Likely not a "Father" level experience, but similarly sad, and I remember it for Duvall's sad performance.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I suppose these are "empathy machines" for those who wish to go that way. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Look, "Terms of Endearment" is my favorite film of 1983, and its a "cancer movie" and frankly, I didn't even like several of the characters or their too-twee lines. And yet -- it got to me. Debra Winger dying young with three little kids got to me. And I loved Jack Nicholson always seeming to leave the movie ...and then coming back, time and again, to help. That pushed me to tears, too.

So this certainly doesn't push ALL affliction movies to a cynical place in my book. Still, had 1983 had ONLY "Terms of Endearment" type movies nominated...well, that wouldn't be good.

THIS JUST IN:

I'm reading articles that Steven Soderbergh is one of the Oscar show producers. Selected because: he directed "Contagion" 10 years ago...and it predicted the pandemic. THAT's interesting.

There will be some big stars on the show presenting -- Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford named so far. THAT's interesting.

But most interesting: Soderbergh says this Oscar ceremony "will unfold like a movie" and that, rather than being cut off by the orchestra, winners and nominees will be encouraged "to talk for a long time and tell a story."

A clever attempt will thus be made to get around BOTH the lack of quality nominees AND the nature of a COVID affected ceremony.

We shall see.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Final (quasi- = ties allowed) ranking for me of the Best Picture Oscar Nominees:
TF > ToC7 > PYW,Min > J&BM > N,Man,SOM

BTW, having seen J&BM finally I can confirm that it's *insane* that either Kaluuya (Hampton) or Stankeith (informer O'Neal) have Supporting Acting noms. They're both Leads with hours of screen time, multiple big speeches, you name it. Kaluuya's almost certainly going to win the category, he's great and no real supporting role could ever compete with his "Fred Hampton". Dude's going to have to be a little sheepish about accepting his award assuming he gets it. Delroy Lindo didn't get his richly deserved Supporting Nom for Da Five Bloods largely because of Kaluuya & Stankeith's category fraud. This needs to stop: count me in favor of (disjunctive) maximum screentime and lines limits beyond which you can not go and be considered Supporting. Minimum time and lines limits below which you cannot go and be considered a Lead too please. (Note that these min and max disjunctive limits don't have to coincide. Some roles, e.g., Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, could in principle be below the maximum size for Supporting and yet also above the minimum size for Lead. The limits would just block completely absurd cases like this year's supporting.)

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Hollywood Reporter has (very late) restarted their "Brutally Honest Ballots" series where an Academy Member anonymously discusses how he or she voted:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/oscars-2021-brutally-honest-ballot

The male producer says "This Oscars deserves an asterisk — because of the nature of the past year, with many movies moving off of their dates, it feels like a competition of the best Sundance movies." Correct. Nothing too outrageous about the rest of his decision-making either. Liked The Father and Judas and the Black Messiah and (Danish Film) Another Round but not enough to deny Nomadland the top prizes. His sniping against Trial of Chicago 7 (e.g., as TV-ish) had me thinking that I may have been a tad generous to that film. Looking back, I saw ToC7 around the same time as Nomadland and Mank both of which irritated me and did not entertain, which made me appreciate ToC7's conventionality & eagerness to please. If I were actually voting (and had all the time in the world!) I'd probably want to rewatch my top 5 films again *together* to sharpen those sorts of comparisons.

BTW, another Hollywood Reporter piece, a critics' discussion of Oscars 2021 as a whole, included the memorable sentence: 'Now, should we address the stale stank of Mank in the room?' When the film was first released on Netflix it was mostly warmly reviewed (including 5 or 6 consecutive, boosting stories in the NY Times, which I complained about ('Stop trying to make Mank happen NYT!')) and my own *very* negative initial response to Mank felt like an outlier. Not any more! Consensus is now *solidly* negative.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

There are still a few (sometimes 2019 but) released in 2020 films that I haven't seen yet that sound promising.... Martin Eden, Bacurau, Little Joe, First Cow, Small Axe
Have seen Bacurau now... The film's main assets are (i) its hazy, drifiting, slightly drug-aping quality for its first hour as we meet the various inhabitants of the titular isolated rural Brazilian town where *very odd* things are going on (over and above the town's already strange folk ways which make it hard to get a baseline reading of normality I must say), and (ii) the sudden turn to ultra-violence in the second hour as what's behind the earlier oddities is revealed. Hard to say much more without spoilers. I found the tone of the film hard to parse - it never quite becomes midnight-movie-ish 'fun' when it hits its second half (and I definitely felt myself wishing that someone with real comedy chops and inclinations such as Edgar Wright or Alex De la Iglesia (800 Bullets, Day of the Beast) would be in charge at that point) and on the other hand its slower, more anthropological, Herzog-ish first half is quite hard to understand (maybe if I had a deeper sense of Brazil's colonial and general political history I'd understand more?) and the various political points it seems to want to set up for later are frustratingly vague. In sum, Bacurau didn't work for me, and it felt more like an *idea* for a movie than a finished product. But I may have missed a lot, and I admit that I may be too hooked on cinematic polish of various sorts, too uncool to properly appreciate Bacurau. Check out if you're Midnight-movie inclined or otherwise cinematically adventurous I'd say, but keep expectations in check.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Nobody's a mad Trumper or conspiracist or racist and no one's armed to the teeth - real life it seems to me would be more volatile and cursedly interesting than what we see represented in the documentary sections of Nomadland.
This complaint of mine is supposedly answered by Nomadland's opening intertitle card talking about how Fern and her husband's original company town - Empire, Nevada - went under with the company back in 2011. I never interpreted the action that follows as taking place in 2011 as opposed to 'sometime after 2011'. Moreover it seemed to me that everything with Amazon and occasional (budget) smartphones looked mid-to-late 2010s, so I read the majority of the movie as set in 2015-2019. Hence my grumping about the lack of Trumpy/Maga/white nationalist dark side out on the road in N. But apparently there's none of that *because* of the supposedly earlier setting. I haven't thought much about N since I saw it months ago but a recent criticism of N at Slate maybe expresses better my scepticiam about the film than I did on my first viewing:
https://slate.com/culture/2021/04/nomadland-2021-oscars-best-picture-frontrunner-amazon.html

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Delroy Lindo didn't get his richly deserved Supporting Nom for Da Five Bloods largely because of Kaluuya & Stankeith's category fraud. This needs to stop: count me in favor of (disjunctive) maximum screentime and lines limits beyond which you can not go and be considered Supporting. Minimum time and lines limits below which you cannot go and be considered a Lead too please. (Note that these min and max disjunctive limits don't have to coincide. Some roles, e.g., Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, could in principle be below the maximum size for Supporting and yet also above the minimum size for Lead. The limits would just block completely absurd cases like this year's supporting.)

--

Hmm...I got a little shaky on the math there. But let's use Hopkins. The famous story there is that the studio wanted him to go for Supporting -- because of limited screen time -- but he said "No, advertise me for Best Actor"...and of course he won. But you're saying (under your plan) Hopkins had enough time for EITHER category without a cheat?

I say that Anthony Hopkins deserved Best Actor for Silence the same way that Marlon Brando deserved Best Actor for The Godfather. Whether their time was limited or not, they made the biggest ongoing impression in the movie -- and people were DOING impressions of them after -- Brando's mumbling godfather; Hopkins sucking sound after "chianti". (This is not foolproof: Hey , they did impression of Robert Shaw's Quint and he didn't get nominated. And Brando is the The Godfather in The Godfather, not Pacino to the end(with more screen time)...Brando made the history here.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

On topic on Oscars and screen time:

Janet Leigh ended up being the only actor in a Hitchcock film to get an Oscar nomination for acting from 1946(Claude Rains) to the end of Hitchcock's career. Psycho. Supporting.

Supporting? Well she's dead at 47 minutes (oh, 49.) She has "And Janet Leigh as Marion Crane" billing, and Vera Miles has second billing.

But...no...Leigh should have been a Best Actress nominee and winner. HER 47 minutes (49?) were unforgettable, went into history and were intensely well acted. She's in every scene of that first 47 minutes, sometimes with ONLY her on screen(especially alone in the car.) Totally iconic performance(people imitate the SHOWER SCENE on YouTube and TV and in movies all the time.)

Meanwhile how about Tony Perkins perf as Norman? (you know, the one he told the press "I think I'll be nominated" about -- oops; wasn't.)

Perkins has top billing in Psycho(something he had not had much before) and he's the lead...and he's certainly as famous as Hannibal the Cannibal.

But Perkins himself said "Have you ever noticed how little Norman is in the original?" I have not(and will not) take a stop watch to Psycho but its possible Perkins has LESS screen time than Leigh.

He enters at 30 minutes(I've read recently, "27" -- what's the difference?) He is not in any of the Fairvale scenes(Hardware store, Sheriff Chambers, psychiatrist.) He is doubled in the two murder scenes (but I suppose those count as Norman's screen time.)

Still...it didn't matter. Perkins went into history even higher than Leigh as Norman Bates -- those sequels. His work in the conversations(Marion, Arbogast, Sam and Lila), cleaning up Marion's murder and unforgettably in the cell at the end. Its enough screen time to have merited the nomination Perkins thought he would get, and the win.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

And this on Leigh: Leigh said that even after Marion is dead..."everybody is talking about her in the second half." She haunts the whole movie.

In a certain way, Brando haunts The Godfather after HIS death; and in The Untouchables, Sean Connery...well...that's another topic:

Leading man superstars (or stars) winning supporting actor Oscars.

Sean Connery.
Kevin Kline
George Clooney
Brad Pitt

Well...I suppose only Connery and Pitt(lesser) are true superstars winning those support Oscars. Kline and Clooney rather never hit the top and kinda slid down.

I'll note that while Connery does do "supporting work" in The Untouchables(to colorless Kevin Costner, at least in that one)....Pitt was the "co-lead" in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and the bigger hero at the end(though Leo arguably had the tougher role.) The studio campaign "split" was preagreed -- Leo for Best Actor, Brad for support, Brad wins.

I dunno swanstep. Folks always want the Oscars to change and, frankly, the Oscar board often takes the advice and does. But there are only four acting awards per year, and if screen time or superstar status can be manipulated...it likely will continue to be.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Hmm...I got a little shaky on the math there. But let's use Hopkins.
Ok, let's say Hopkins's Lecter has 16 mins screentime (set aside 'number of lines' rules for the sake of this argument).

I reckon a (generous) maximum screentime limit for Supporting would be something like 45 minutes. So Hopkins would be eligible for Supporting Oscar (whereas multi-hour screentime supporting noms like those for the Judas and the Black Messiah guys are blocked)

A generous minimum screentime limit for Lead might be something like 15 minutes. Given that Hopkins would also be eligible for Lead Oscar (whereas Judy Dench's 8 minutes in Shakespeare in Love is excluded from Lead - in fact of course some people thought her 8 minute should have been too little even for Supporting!).

So, under this rule, performances like Hopkins that have 15-45 mins of screentime would be both big enough for Lead awards and also small enough for Supporting awards. A background constraint provides that no role can be nominated (let alone win) in both categories.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

So, under this rule, performances like Hopkins that have 15-45 mins of screentime would be both big enough for Lead awards and also small enough for Supporting awards. A background constraint provides that no role can be nominated (let alone win) in both categories.

---OK....looks like Hopkins came in right under the wire under that rule. You and I are in agreement that he deserved his Best Actor.

Heck, Jodie Foster was great and deserved to win, too, but one REMEMBERS that movie as if Lecter is in it a lot more. Key: bringing him on at the very end for that great last scene( a reminder, yet again, that the ENDING is key to greatness in m ovies.)

Irony: evidently Hopkins is now up for Best Actor with a lot more screen time...but not a sure bet to win it. Still..he might. Its been 30 years since Silence!

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Another screen time Oscar beef:

Network. Thanks to Paddy Chayfesky's FUN Oscar bait script(a lot of funny and outrageous lines) there weren't enough Oscars to go around:

Peter Finch won Best Actor, so William Holden could not. And Finch was dead!

Meanwhile, almost a "clean sweep of the acting categories"

Actor: Network(Finch)
Actress: Network(Faye Dunaway)
Suppporting Actress: Network (Beatrice Straight)
Supporting Actor: Net--hey, wait a minute, NOT Ned Beatty!? He had the best speech in the movie outside of Finch.

But that's the way the cards bounce sometimes. The Oscar went to Jason Robards for a nicely done "boss" job in All the President's Men( a real man, Ben Bradlee.) But Ned Beatty's NOT MUCH SCREEN TIME speech was a lollapalooza of fire, brimstone, corporate madness, geopolitical deep think...and humor.

That Robards win, btw the way, reminds me that Supporting Actor/Actress is often used as a "consolation prize" for a movie that ain't gonna win Best Picture. Robards in All the President's Men. Kim Basinger in LA Confidential. Brad Pitt in OATIH.

Anyway, Ned Beatty was snubbed in a painful way. Beatrice Straight's screen time was less and her speech -- a mix of raw emotion AND overwritten speechifying -- wasn't as good as Beatty's. Still, I'm glad she was recognized(who was SHE?) and won.

But...damn...coulda been all four actors for Network!

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

I say that Anthony Hopkins deserved Best Actor for Silence
Agreed. It's truly *astonishing* the impact Hopkins makes in only 16 minutes of screentime. He has multiple great dialogue scenes (all of which are memorably shot), one great multi-part action/escape sequence, and he gets the final minute of the film including a Wilder-quality film-ending one-liner (not in the original book!) with which to haunt our dreams. Amazing.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

SPOILERS for SILENCE of the LAMBS

I say that Anthony Hopkins deserved Best Actor for Silence

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Agreed. It's truly *astonishing* the impact Hopkins makes in only 16 minutes of screentime.

---

Its rather like Anthony Perkins in his half-a-movie screen time in Psycho. Every scene COUNTS.

BTW, Anthony HOPKINS was called from the stage as Anthony PERKINS when he went to collect some award for Silence(not Oscar.) He said: "Shall I accept this in a shower curtain?"

---

He has multiple great dialogue scenes (all of which are memorably shot), one great multi-part action/escape sequence,

---

A great overall scene and I still remember my companion screaming out, "Oh, my god he's wearing HIS FACE!!"

--

and he gets the final minute of the film including a Wilder-quality film-ending one-liner (not in the original book!)

--

I forgot that.

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with which to haunt our dreams. Amazing.

--

Yes, its even better than "Mr. Rusk, you're not wearing your tie." I kid, I kid.

I will note that that line draws an example of "the audience seriously ROOTING for the bad guy." He's off "to have an old friend for dinner." Literally. We HATE that other guy -- he's a bureaucratic jerk who(this is key) put Jodie Foster's life in danger -- but really? We're going to ROOT for Hannibal to kill him and eat him? The times had changed. Still...yeah, I loved it.

And not only a great curtain line, but a great final SHOT of Lecter -- in white suit and hat disguise -- sashaying after his prey with a rather feline, all-too-leisurely gait...until he and his victim to be both disappear into a Caribbean crowd.

Great line. Great shot. Great scene.

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[–] jay440 (107) 3 years ago

Spielberg's West Side Story trailer will debut during the Oscars broadcast.

The original soundtrack was one of the only albums my parents owned that I loved to listen to. I believe Spielberg is keeping Bernstein's great score, but how relevant and current could this film be? Will it be just colorful dance numbers and teenybopper melodrama?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Spielberg's West Side Story trailer will debut during the Oscars broadcast.

--

That's interesting! As I recall, there was always a rule AGAINST showing commercials for upcoming movies during the Oscar show. Super Bowl, yes. Oscars, no.

But these are different times. And its Spielberg.

---

The original soundtrack was one of the only albums my parents owned that I loved to listen to. I believe Spielberg is keeping Bernstein's great score, but how relevant and current could this film be? Will it be just colorful dance numbers and teenybopper melodrama?

---

Well, the music is timeless. I think the keys here are realistically cast people this time, and indeed a more modern edge (to the killings?)

Will this be Van Sant's West Side Story? We shall see.

--

In other news....Hollywood keeps trying to make new "big" movies, I guess they are banking on theaters to come back and/or streaming.

A new "Indiana Jones" is going into production. This will be the first one NOT directed by Spielberg. Everybody's waiting to see how a 70-something(80 something?) Harrison Ford fits into it.

They've also cast that "Fleabag" actress and Mads Mikkelson(sp?) So..up to date. And ailing but agless John Williams is committed to score it.

Here's hoping for something other than disappointment. One wag said: if Ford is 80...set the movie in 1981 when the first one came out!

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

This discussion reminded me of how deserved the Oscar win for Adapted Screenplay for Silence of the Lambs was. The writer Ted Tally crushed it. Checking IMDb he's never done anything half as good again (Red Dragon, All The Pretty Horses, The Juror are his other main credits). Oh well, everything came together for Tally and so many others on Silence.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

This discussion reminded me of how deserved the Oscar win for Adapted Screenplay for Silence of the Lambs was. The writer Ted Tally crushed it. Checking IMDb he's never done anything half as good again (Red Dragon, All The Pretty Horses, The Juror are his other main credits).

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I was discussing on another board the other day(yes, ANOTHER board) how screenwriters ended up in treacherous waters in Hollywood. One or two big hits...or classic films....and then...no work. Or substandard screenplays. It must be at once great for the ego and hard for the ego, to have a couple of classic hits on your resume...but nothing else.

Joe "Psycho" Stefano is a big example. He wrote that when he was fairly young and then had to find work for four more decades. He did, but it looks like it was a struggle. Except: in 1964 and 1965, he was the boss and occasional writer on "The Outer Limits" TV show, a classic of sorts. Interesting: one of the writers for Outer Limits episodes was: Robert Towne, who would go on to write Chinatown.

Ernest "North by Northwest" Lehman is different. He lasted longer and made more money that Stefano, adapting West Side Story and The Sound of Music and getting rich. BUT I have just read in a book on Mike Nichols that when Lehman was assigned by Jack Warner to supervise Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf as a "writer-producer," Nichols later snidely said "Ernest Lehman was the writer-producer on that movie, but he didn't write or produce." Nichols saw Lehman as an "old Hollywood studio hack" who didn't fit in with the hip movie being made. Ouch.

Recall that Lehman went on to write-produce Hello Dolly and to actualy direct Portnoy's Complaint -- big bombs. Alfred Hitchcock himself noted that when he noted why he managed to land Lehman to write Family Plot.

--

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Oh well, everything came together for Tally and so many others on Silence.

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The great movies are like that. I suppose rather than "struggling" after such a hit, some of these folks live off the cash and royalties and never have to work again.

I recall that Anthony Hopkins had been working for years without ever really developing a "star persona." When he got Hannibal Lecter(after Nicholson, Hackman and Duvall said no)...that changed. Indeed after Lecter hit(and Hopkins made two more movies as the character)...Hopkins was sold for awhile as "another Sean Connery" in movies like The Mark of Zorro(I actually read this; the studios decided to prop Hopkins up as a father figure star in the Connery tradition.)

Meanwhile, Anthony PERKINS had been similarly struggling -- over a shorter period of time -- in a series of dull and mediocre late fifties films before Psycho changed everything. Sure it was a "sick" role and that hurt his career in some ways...but it left him famous and much-hired in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The male producer says "This Oscars deserves an asterisk —

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Well...I guess this "asterisk" thing is going to start gaining traction.

---

because of the nature of the past year, with many movies moving off of their dates, it feels like a competition of the best Sundance movies." Correct.

---

Someone somewhere noted that the 2019 Oscars actually had a lot of big hits and big stars in the running: Leo and Pitt in OAITH; all those greats in Scorsese's The Irishman; even the old-time craftsmanship of Ford vs Ferrari. So major movies WERE available in 2019. Plus the big winner Parasite -- which I saw with a full house in an old Palace theater turned art house. My research tells me that this theater had played Elmer Gantry(not Psycho) in 1960...and I saw On Her Majesty's Secret Service there in 1969 (I move around.)

Anyway, this year is the asterisk year. I think another problem is: if you are going to have an Oscar show with non-hits, they should appear in a year surrounded BY hits -- your Marvel movies, your Jurassic movies, something to suggest that a "real, total movie year just occurred." Not in 2020. And one of the Best Picture nominees was not released until 2021 because of new rules that allow nominations to movies released in January and February 2021 for the 2020 Oscars. THAT feels wrong.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

His sniping against Trial of Chicago 7 (e.g., as TV-ish) had me thinking that I may have been a tad generous to that film. Looking back, I saw ToC7 around the same time as Nomadland and Mank both of which irritated me and did not entertain, which made me appreciate ToC7's conventionality & eagerness to please. If I were actually voting (and had all the time in the world!) I'd probably want to rewatch my top 5 films again *together* to sharpen those sorts of comparisons

---
Chicago 7 had somewhat of an "all star cast"(male) mixed among the "prestige" Oscar winners like Eddie Redmayne and Mark Ryland (neither all that well known, both great) and bigger names like Sasha Baron Cohen and even Michael Keaton. It was pleasing to watch all these familiar faces grouped together, doing their thing.

The issue is Aaron Sorkin. I see him almost exactly like QT in that to get the good stuff(great dialogue, stars, in QT's case, action)...you gotta put up with the flawed stuff. With QT, that's his more sick and violent scenes. With Sorkin, its his inability to escape his TV series roots and his own shortcomings. HIs characters are always telling us about their fathers or their pedigree: "I may just be the son of a soda pop maker..." "I may just be the son of postal carrier..." "I may only have a high school degree..." And you THINK: "Oh, Sorkin's doing it again." He's limited.

Except when he's not. He's famous now for setting up great "argument scenes" that are as funny as they are stinging. I've given his movies my "favorite of the year" for Charlie Wilson's War, Moneyball, and Molly's Game and I watch them invariably with a mix of delight and...deflation("oh, he's doing that thing he does again.")

Sorkin "does that thing he does again" with Chicago 7, really favoring it as a comedy more than a drama and somehow not REALLY capturing the time. He also converts rather humorless people(from then) into likeable comedy stars, and they weren't that way.

CONT

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Sorkin's come a long way, though.

Before he was a TV series star(The West Wing), he got famous with the play and movie "A Few Good Men." I was watching that the other night and while it was clear that the one-liners and arguments were flying even back then (1992), the DRAMATIC part of the movie was pretty overdone and insipid. Sorkin got better.

This Oscar show should be interesting. I yield to you on the nominees here, swanstep...I just haven't seen them all. Folks will be watching to see if the ratings tank like for all the other awards shows this year.

To which I say: this demonstrates that "real people" were/are paying attention. At least one reason the awards shows all tanked for 2020 (so far) is that even true fans know: there really wasn't a movie year in 2020, or a TV year. WE know a pandemic stopped the entertainment world. THEY are trying to fake us out with a "business as usual" awards season.

Asterisk.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Interesting thoughts about Sorkin's ToC7 and more generally ecarle. Thanks. One thing that I have ended up appreciating about ToC7 is that, notwithstanding their all-too-Sorkiny dialogue, the actors are generally well-cast and the right ages. I was stunned after seeing Judas & the Black Messiah to find out that the real Fred Hampton was 21 at death and the real Bill O'Neal/Fbi Informer was 17 when he was tasked by the FBI with informing. Kaluuya and Stanfield are 32 and 29 and are seemingly written *as* that. They're *not*, and especially Stanfield's not, playing the confused, over-zealous late High School/Early college age kids that their real life counterparts absolutely were. In this respect, for all its strengths, Judas is absolutely more distorting of its basic truth than ToC7.

This shrewd takedown of Promising Young Woman (a film I had mixed feelings about) impressed me:
https://ayeshaasiddiqi.substack.com/p/id-like-this-to-stop-praise-for-a

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Interesting thoughts about Sorkin's ToC7 and more generally ecarle. Thanks.

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Thanks for reading. I've sort of "backed into" my regard for Sorkin. Its his dialogue at its best, that I love. Now it looks like some of his best scripts were "co-written"(like Moneyball) but you can kind of hear the comic rhythm that "says Sorkin."

On the downside: the poor guy sometimes repeats the same line in different movies:

The Social Network: "If you were the ones who invented the internet, you'd be the inventors of the internet!"

Charlie Wilson's War: "If Dave Smith had been appointed ambassador to Finland, he'd be the ambassador to Finland!"

Oops.

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One thing that I have ended up appreciating about ToC7 is that, notwithstanding their all-too-Sorkiny dialogue, the actors are generally well-cast and the right ages.

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Absolutely. Look, I loved Mark Rylance's dry, wry, deadpan turn as William Kunstler, and Jeremy Strong's hilarious and sweet Tommy Chong-voiced version of Jerry Rubin and indeed, Sasha's dominating handsome and comic presence as Abbie Hoffman. The guy who played Dave Dellenger has developed a real persona over the years, despite his bald potato-shaped presence(Good guy as McDormand's husband in Fargo; probable bad guy in Zodiac).

It is truly an all-star cast, well cast but --I dunno, something felt mismatched(my understanding is that the movie took all the usual docudrama liberties with what really happened.)

All that said, given how few nominated pictures I saw this year AND the fact that my "personal favorite" has to be entertaining(to me)...I suppose Chicago 7 IS my favorite of the year . (I have given the honor to Psycho, though -- with its extra footage, 60th anniversary, and I saw it at the theater in a COVID year.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

This shrewd takedown of Promising Young Woman (a film I had mixed feelings about) impressed me:
https://ayeshaasiddiqi.substack.com/p/id-like-this-to-stop-praise-

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Way back in February of 2020, I think -- before COVID closed the theaters -- I saw a great trailer for PYW and noted it as a "little movie" I would probably see in April when it came out.

Then everything closed down, and the movie disappeared. And then it came back in December with an Oscar bait campaign -- and a much less interesting trailer. What was up with THAT?

Its been available on streaming -- but at $20 a pop. I just can't bring myself to pay that when I'm already paying for streaming. So...I'm waiting for it later.

In the meantime, we shall see if it gets any Oscar love, and it surely sounds like its not the movie it was promoted to be....but I'll see it.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

OK, so The Oscars are here. I can't watch it live apart from the odd moment or two but I have noticed an alarming lack of actual film clips being shown, and all original song performances were punted to a pre-show...so this show is a lot of *chat*. Uh-oh. Regina King looked *gorgeous* opening the show. Art deco train station looked great. But if they're not going to show the movie goods this year and instead insist on 'telling us nominee stories' for hours and having super-long winner speeches then this Oscars (By Soderbergh!) is going to end up truly hated.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

The key joke about this Oscars is going to be that nobody much had seen a lot of these films so it was no time to start showing (bits of) them at the Awards show!

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Catching the end of the Oscars now.... Best Picture is being presented *before* the lead acting awards. Soderbergh has lost his mind. At least there were video clips for the Best Picture Nominees.

I've really disliked previous instances of the Oscars that have encouraged presenters to genuflect before each of the nominees (or gave each nominee a separate introducer/genuflector), and I didn't like it this time either. It just plays into the cynical image of Hollywood as big circle jerk of narcissists and nepotism.I gather that Joaquin Phoenix presenting Best Actor *refused* to do the genuflection/ego-stroking (possibly placing him on Soderbergh's shit-list) and just read the names of nominees unadorned. Good for him.

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[–] swanstep (2616) 3 years ago

Only somewhat relatedly... I just got around to seeing A Touch of Class (1973), a gap I've meant to fill ever since George Segal died. It is very ordinary, maybe even quite poor I'd say. It's probably the worst Segal movie I've seen (at least in his prime period), and it's also the worst Glenda Jackson movie I've seen from her prime. Both had many terrific roles but ATOC is hardly a credit to either, except that in Jackson's case it's the best she ever *looked*. The long bob haircut she has really softens her very angular features and she looks genuinely terrific throughout. I doubt if that makes up in retrospect for her (and the film's) most memorable line (delivered at the end of 24 hours of constant feuding followed by 5 minutes of venemous brawling and throwing things, climaxing with a furious Segal deciding to rape this woman/harpy into submission only to have his zipper jam): "My one chance to get raped, and you can't get your bloody trousers off." [ATOC thereby joins Little Big Man, High Plains Drifter, and other early '70s films in suggesting that rape might even have its positive side for a gal and that in any case it's a fit laughing matter. Amazing.]

Yet ATOC got *5* Oscar noms: Picture (back when there were always just 5 Picture noms), Orig. S-play, Actress, Song, Score. And Glenda Jackson *won* Best Actress. 1973 has it *all* over 2020 as a movie-year (starting with just films from the US, The Sting, The Exorcist, American Graffiti, Badlands, Scarecrow, Last Detail, Long Goodbye - nothing from 2020 can touch any of those) but all 8 best picture nominees for 2020 were much more interesting and, really, are in every way superior to ATOC. So 2020 wins one.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Only somewhat relatedly... I just got around to seeing A Touch of Class (1973), a gap I've meant to fill ever since George Segal died. It is very ordinary, maybe even quite poor I'd say.

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Yes, I'd agree. I saw it when it came out. The movie was tied to the "Brut" (Fabrege?) line of perfume/cologne. Cary Grant was on the Board of Fabrege and thumped the tub for this, saying "its the kind of movie I would have made when I was younger." I will admit that I saw George Segal in the 70's as a kind of "Jewish Cary Grant" -- very handsome, very good with deadpan comedy and exasperation.

But "A Touch of Class" was pretty bad, rather chintzy looking, and not at all in the class of a good Cary Grant romantic comedy. And hey -- Glenda Jackson just wasn't as pretty as George Segal was handsome then. (Jackson would be better matched few years later, Tracy-Hepburn style, with Walter Matthau.) I'm reminded that Hitchcock offered Glenda Jackson the rape-murder victim Brenda Blaney in Frenzy. I just can't see her in the role -- but she was a star, so Hitchcock tried.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

(delivered at the end of 24 hours of constant feuding followed by 5 minutes of venemous brawling and throwing things, climaxing with a furious Segal deciding to rape this woman/harpy into submission only to have his zipper jam):

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Also in 1973, in the better but perhaps too arty-neurotic "Blume In Love" (by arty-neurotic writer-director Paul Mazursky), Segal SUCCESSFULLY rapes his estranged wife. And gets her back. And -- maybe, I'm not sure -- impregnates her?

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"My one chance to get raped, and you can't get your bloody trousers off." [ATOC thereby joins Little Big Man, High Plains Drifter, and other early '70s films in suggesting that rape might even have its positive side for a gal and that in any case it's a fit laughing matter. Amazing.

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This remains a very weird period in Hollywood history to think back on. Indeed, not only did we have male-female rape staged a lot as the brutal thing it is, but we got scenes like that. I recall watching the over-the-top, too-much opening scene of High Plains Drifter(as Clint, his spurs a jangling, walks through a town with menace, is accosted by a pretty woman who insults him, and ends up raping her to her DELIGHT) as a young man and thinking "the hell is THIS?" It was the times. (But hey, the topic of rape fantasy for women is...out there?)

Frenzy, again:

Heavyset unattractive barmaid to lawyer customer: I 'ear he RAPES 'em first, right?(re: the Necktie Strangler.)
Lawyer: Well, I suppose its good to know that every cloud has a silver lining.

Er...I was speechless then; I'm speechless now. Of course, Hitchcock eventually shows one of the Necktie Strangler's rape murders and the lawyer's joke comes back to haunt and shame us.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Yet ATOC got *5* Oscar noms: Picture (back when there were always just 5 Picture noms), Orig. S-play, Actress, Song, Score. And Glenda Jackson *won* Best Actress. 1973 has it *all* over 2020 as a movie-year (starting with just films from the US, The Sting, The Exorcist, American Graffiti, Badlands, Scarecrow, Last Detail, Long Goodbye - nothing from 2020 can touch any of those) but all 8 best picture nominees for 2020 were much more interesting and, really, are in every way superior to ATOC. So 2020 wins one.

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OK. Let's give it one. Ha.

I recall some shock and anger back then about all those nominations for A Touch of Class in such a great year for movies. Its possible that Brut/Fabrege and Cary Grant promoted the hell out of it. You have it all over me on foreign films, swanstep, but the American product alone was incredible that year, start to finish. (That said, I loved Truffaut's "Day for Night" that year -- a movie about making movies that Truffaut had discussed plans for with Hitchcock in their book.)

There were mixed feelings in the press over Glenda Jackson winning over Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were. The feelings were that Streisand was "better"(in a more popular film) but that it was too early to give Streisand another Oscar. I can't recall the other Best Actress nominees -- Ellen Burstyn, probably for her understandable but irritating wall-to-wall hysteria in The Exorcist.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

A bit more on George Segal:

I recall seeing a lot of his movies, and sometimes I really liked them - and sometimes I didn't. At all. I didn't like A Touch of Class. I didn't like The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox -- a formula romantic Western that paired Segal with Goldie Hawn. I didn't like The Terminal Man, which posited Segal as a scientist turned psycho killer via science -- but boringly so.

I DID like Segal in Where's Poppa and The Owl and the Pussycat(moustacheoed, he's rather the same exasperated character in both), paired with Robert Redford in The Hot Rock; paired with Elliott Gould in Altman's California Split; paired with Jane Fonda(a better looks match than Glenda Jackson) in Fun With Dick and Jane(Segal gets billing OVER Oscar-winner Fonda) and definitely in the hated Maltese Falcon spoof sequel "The Black Bird." Segal's comic timing is all over that misbegotten film, saving it.

You can see a clip on YouTube of the American Film Institute salute to James Cagney(1973?) in which three male performers all sing "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy" to Cagney, all doing impressions of him. One is Frank Gorshin -- an impressionist by trade. One is Kirk Douglas...a bit too old and drawn in the face at that point. And one is George Segal -- as handsome as he'd ever been, with perfect long 70's hair and plenty of "spirit." Its why he got to be a star. But only for awhile.

Segal was a good "long haired male star" for the 70's. I recall when he started to cut his hair short(for Rollercoaster as I recall) I was disappointed. He started to stop looking like George Segal. Middle age and TV series would follow, fast.

Segal's stardom came in the 70's, but you can find him in the 60's in King Rat(I've never seen it, I hear it put him on the map); The Quiller Memorandum, No Way to Treat a Lady(a fine hero to Rod Steiger's psycho villain) and gettin' as Oscar nom for his one true classic: Virginia Woolf.

MORE:

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[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

CONT

And this: in 1978, George Segal appeared opposite Jacqueline Bisset in "Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?" The script was by Peter Stone, who wrote Charade, and I remember attending feeling that Segal and Bisset were not-half-bad stand-ins for Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. They were -- but the movie didn't do well, didn't MATTER. The time for another "Charade" was over in 1978 (though Robert Morley was fun in the movie.)

The problem for George Segal was he was good looking and funny but decidedly "second tier" as a seventies star. Nicholson and Pacino and DeNiro emerged as the "prestige actors" of the time, and guys like Robert Redford and Clint Eastwood (and for awhile, Burt Reynolds) were much bigger stars. Segal took roles that others didn't much want and by the early 80s it was over for him.

But I recall enjoying him THEN...how he looked and how he acted and some of his movies. It was enough. I remember George Segal the movie star, not the TV star.

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[–] Heisenberg (6313) 3 years ago

You don't own shit.
Having to pay again to see a movie? Imagine that before vhs, so for most of cinema lifespan, that's exactly what happened. How much has Disney made by reissuing its classics?
So what if they want to go back to that model?

Cinema is dead. Movies have always been content. Tvs now are as big at 3 meters as a cinema screen at 15 meters, so who cares? I won't miss all the assholes caughing on my neck.

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[–] trevorh321 (5495) 3 years ago

If recent history is any indication, every film nominated for an Oscar is a waste of time. This one looks especially bad.

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