How I Came to Write Musicals

IT'S A SPECIAL GUEST STAR DAY!

We are thrilled to turn The Film Experience over today to Tom Mizer, one half of the songwriting team Mizer & Moore (The Marvelous Mrs Maisel). In addition to his many career accomplishments, he happens to be a longtime TFE reader! Please give him a warm welcome - Nathaniel R.

by Tom Mizer

It’s a little disturbing to discover that the best way to introduce myself to you, good readers, is by having you meet 10 year-old me. During a lockdown cleaning binge, I found a stack of “scrapbooks” I made as a kid out of construction paper and newspaper clippings. The extreme Tom-ness of who I was and who I’d become is all there. I mean, look at just this one page.

First, note the slipshod but intense workmanship. I have not a crafty bone in my body and clearly needed to avoid the visual arts...

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Interview: Nadine Labaki on directing children in her riveting Oscar contender "Capernaum"

by Nathaniel R

Nadine Labaki is three-for-three. Lebanon's most prominent filmmaker has seen all three of her films premiere at Cannes to considerable acclaim and go on to represent her country as Oscar submissions. The first two Caramel (2007) and Where Do We Go Now? (2011) became international arthouse hits. Her newest feature Capernaum, distributed by Sony Pictures Classics, recently began its platform release in the US and will hopefully see the same warm reception. It's her best shot yet at an Oscar nomination, having made the finals in foreign film. Her Cannes jury prize winner looks at the refugee crisis in Lebanon by focusing on one Syrian boy named Zain (played by Zain Al Rafeea) who is trying to survive on his own. It's a visceral must-see and should elevate Labaki's already healthy reputation as a world class director.

To my surprise, she isn't sure what she's doing next, admitting that this one has been particularly hard to let go of...

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Podcast: Joy & Star Wars: The Force Awakens

In this week's podcast Nathaniel and Nick return happily to that galaxy far far away and go off consensus to enjoy the Jennifer Lawrence hit Joy. (Plus miscellania but you'll have to listen to see how Carol and Batman v Superman show up since you know how we do...)

43 minutes 
00:01 Written on the Wind (1956)
03:00 David O. Russell's Joy feat. Isabelle Rossellini, Virginia Madsen, Robert De Niro and Elisabeth Röhm
12:00 Loving Star Wars: The Force Awakens and sexy Oscar Isaac.
27:00 Childhood fascinations with the original trilogy and minor quibbles with the new/old plot and the First Order. 
36:15 Nasty Baby & Mississippi Grind (2015)
40:10 The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989)

Further Reading for Context:
Nick's Oscar Isaac Theory & Ordinary People Tweet
David Ehrlich's A24 Article

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. 

a gif of poe biting his lip while talking to finn pic.twitter.com/GGm4mm5oze

— Nicole (@hughmhd) December 22, 2015

Star Wars and Joy

"Room" and The Case for Jacob Tremblay

Kieran, here with a second look at SAG nominee Jacob Tremblay's work in Room.

My antennae were attuned for several things this past weekend while watching Lenny Abrahamson’s Room for the second time. I’ll say up front that searching for the power of Brie Larson’s accomplished, already heralded performance as Ma was not one of them. That was received on first watch and, frankly hadn’t faded from memory even a little. A rewatch only confirmed the potent emotionality of Larson’s work and it’s fortunate that work this exemplary is being so universally recognized as such—that isn’t always the case. Among other things, I was watching for Jacob Tremblay’s performance as Jack, Ma’s doting and mystified son.

Full disclosure: I often find praise heaped upon juvenile performances incredulous. Like many, I found myself fighting tears (and losing that fight) several times throughout my first viewing, most often during Tremblay’s scenes. The grimness of the initial scenario and the bond between Ma and Jack on the script level had my suspicions raised. Was Tremblay’s performance itself eliciting the emotional response or is it solely because of what’s already built in to the architecture of the piece?

This was my question going into Room for the second time. [More...]

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Robert Loggia (1930-2015) ...and 80s Oscar Movies.

Tough guy Italian American actor Robert Loggia, arguably best known for supporting roles in gangster classics, has passed away at age 85. He had been suffering from Alzheimers. Condolences to his family and his fans.

The enduring character actor's career began on the Broadway stage in the 1950s but he quickly began mixing it up on television where he starred in a few short lived TV shows and made numerous guest appearances over the past five decades (!). His first big screen role (uncredited) was as "Frankie Peppo" in the Paul Newman classic Somebody Up There Likes Me but his film career didn't hit its peak until the 1980s with a string of hits including An Officer and a Gentleman, Scarface, Prizzi's Honor, and the comedy Big with Tom Hanks.

Though the earliest Oscar ceremony memory I have is Shirley Maclaine winning (1983), the first Oscar race I actively followed was in 1985, the year Robert Loggia was nominated for the courtroom thriller Jagged Edge. Now in the paleozoic pre-internet era "actively following" the race was much different. It required 1) going to movies that adults thought were great and 2) reading a few articles in weekly and monthly magazines about who might be nominated. That's it! [More...]

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