Beauty vs Beast: Grassy Knoll Ethics
Monday, December 5, 2016 at 3:58PM Jason from MNPP here with an under-the-weather edition of "Beauty vs Beast" - apologies if I am brief and lacking some spark today, I'm staring at my computer screen from the business end of a box of kleenex and with one too many sudafed capsules dotting my system. I bring up my sickness not to be (entirely) self-indulgent but to explain why I didn't make it out to see Jackie this weekend as I'd planned - every cough feels like a cinematic betrayal right now.
So until me and Natalie can rendezvous with our matching pink pillboxes I will ask you today to look backwards at the previous biggest Kennedy assassination movie on the books, Oliver Stone's JFK. I don't remember the Oscar race that year but I'm kind of surprised Costner wasn't nominated for the film - maybe they'd had their fill with Dances With Wolves the year before? Tommy Lee Jones was nominated for the movie though, for the poodle-mopped conspiracy sissy at the center of the mystery, and so I ask you...
PREVIOUSLY We're on an Almodovar kick thanks to the retrospective at MoMA right now so last week we climbed into bed and slipped our hands into the sex ropes for Antonio Banderas in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! - he took 56% of the vote over Victoria Abril's 44. Said thefilmjunkie:
"If I were voting with my head I'd probably go for Marina, but my vote for Ricky was guided by more, um, prurient interests. I have no shame. I regret nothing."
Reader Comments (4)
Jinx! I just rewatched this yesterday as it's expiring at the end of the month on Amazon Prime. I thought this movie was revoluntionary when I was 17, but it seems overlong and a bit ridiculous now. This might be Tommy Lee's best performance as it's so against type, but Clay Shaw is such an awful person that I had to vote for Jim Garrison.
I always thought Tommy Lee Jones was the worst part of this fascinating and beguiling film. Too fabulous-crazy and not enough paranoid-crazy.
I had to vote Jim Garrison too. It was close...but the "just can't find it" line swayed me in his direction (and made me laugh)!
Jason, I don't think the Academy had had their film of Costner, I think it was simply more the case that Best Actor that year was very competitive and there was simply no room ultimately for Kevin.
Didn't see Almodovar's showdown... Banderas robbed Oscar Nom #1. He should have won it, for "The Skin I live In", and probably would have been nom'd too for "Evita" and "Philadelphia", had he been campaigned better (and in the latter case, had not 90% of his scenes been cut).