The Linkmaker

Vanity Fair looks at the Lincoln costumes of first time Oscar nominee Joanna Johnston from sketch to still
LetterBoxd are any of you trying this new cinephile site out? I am. 
A Blog Next Door film scores to write to? (Joe Reid was just talking about this habit in that Hours piece). I used to write to the score to Talk to Her but lately I've found music distracting.
MNPP "Who died worse: Fantine or Talia Al Ghul?"
Gold Derby's Tariq Khan thinks Emmanuelle Riva is going to win Best Actress. I wish I believed him!

Empire Lance Armstrong: The Movie?
Coming Soon Here's most uncharted territory for the movies: elderly gay romantic drama. Ira Sachs will follow up his critical hit Keep the Lights On with Love is Strange starring Alfred Molina and Michael Gambon as long time companions who decided to tie the knot. 
Tom Shone interviews Spielberg for The Sunday Times (subscription required for full article)

With every movie, some more than others, you have to make the audience your accomplice." 

Towleroad Ryan Gosling on his abs and pecs. LOL. Gosling does always give good quote. Speaking of...
Frisky ...remember this classic "Meet Ryan's Abs" infographic? (I can't find the full thing anymore)
i09 sci-fi authors have a sense of humor about the gender politics of genre book covers 
Hollywood Elsewhere Marilyn at the 1950 Oscars? This photo looks fake to me but I love it still. 

Finally... did you hear that those Django Unchained action figures are being pulled by the Weinstein Co over debates that they have commercialized and trivialized slavery. Oh god. People are so frustrating. If you accept that the movie is historical fantasy fiction, aren't the dolls also exempt from this kind of moral outrage? Or do the $35+ dolls somehow shamelessly commercialize it whilst the $150+ million grossing movies doesn't? At any rate, pulling the dolls is no biggie for the Weinstein Co since the first series is already sold out (and given how many characters were in that series, was there ever going to be a second series?) and selling for $760 to $7,000 online (asking prices). I get that purchasing a slave doll has more uncomfortable connotations than buying a ticket to a movie in which Quentin Tarantino plays with his live action dolls playing slaves but isn't it basically the same thing in the end: a commercial product which makes money off a communal desire to create fantasy corrective narratives about atrocities of the past?

Our Kind of Voting. Pt 1

I did my civic duty -- I amend, my civic pleasure at 7:40 AM this morning after about an hour of queueing. If you're from the US, get to it. VOTE. If you're not, well, this is a film site and film has no borders and no president... but it does have elections that everyone obsesses over.

So let's have fun with our other favorite kind of voting: Oscar voting.

Tell me who wins your vote in some of the most famously divisive, contentious, or just plain fabulous categories ever! Explain your choices in the comments.

1998 BEST ACTRESS
GWYNETH PALTROW (Shakespeare in Love) vs. CATE BLANCHETT (Elizabeth) vs. FERNANDA MONTENEGRO (Central Station) vs. MERYL STREEP (One True Thing) vs. EMILY WATSON (Hilary & Jackie)

Sunset Blvd is just out on Blu-Ray TODAY in a remastered edition with a ton of extras 1950 BEST ACTRESS
BETTE DAVIS vs. ANNE BAXTER (literally… in All About Eve) vs. GLORIA SWANSON (Sunset Blvd) vs. JUDY HOLLIDAY (Born Yesterday) vs. ELEANOR PARKER (Caged)

1993 SUPPORTING ACTOR
TOMMY LEE JONES (The Fugitive) vs. LEONARDO DICAPRIO (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape) vs. RALPH FIENNES (Schindler’s List) vs. JOHN MALKOVICH (In the Line of Fire) vs. PETE POSTLETHWAITE (In the Name of the Father)

1976 BEST PICTURE
ROCKY vs. ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN vs. BOUND FOR GLORY vs. NETWORK vs. TAXI DRIVER 

Who gets your vote now and did they always have your support in their races or have your allegiances shifted?

see also part 2

Oscar Horrors: An Irish Ghost Story

HERE LIES... Hilton Edwards' short film Return to Glennascaul, mauled by Disney's Bear Country.

Andreas here with another spooky Oscar Horrors case file! This time, it's a ghost story. And who doesn't love a good ghost story? (Other than the Academy, I suppose.) Return to Glennascaul (1953) retells a traditional urban legend, that of the "vanishing hitchhiker," but with so much flair and atmosphere that its overfamiliarity doesn't matter. The set-up is classic: it's late at night, on a winding road outside Dublin, and the narrator stops to pick up a stranded motorist. But aha, a twist: the narrator is in fact Orson Welles, on a break from Othello! What better addition to a ghost story than Orson, that master raconteur, he of the perfect radio voice?

Aother small twist: his passenger isn't a ghost, but instead has his own eerie story of two mysterious women and the old abandoned house he drove them to, a house called Glennascaul. All these framing devices, coupled with Orson Welles playing a wry version of himself, make the short feel like a "friend-of-a-friend" anecdote. Like something built up too plausibly not to be true. And hey, who knows what can or can't happen in the misty Irish countryside? The women themselves (one old, one young) seem harmless enough, if a little kooky, until Orson's new friend contacts the realtor trying to sell Glennascaul... and, of course, learns that they've both been dead for years. (If that's a spoiler, then you should really bone up on your campfire stories.

This is some subtle horror, certainly, but it grows in power as the climax hits—as the gentleman makes the titular return, only to discover a dusty, desolate house with no residents to speak of. Truly haunting. In addition to Orson's baritone, the film's carpeted by a sparse piano and harp score, and it's shot in chiaroscuro black and white; exactly the minimalism that the material calls for. Sometimes, as Return to Glennascaul teaches us, all you need to tell a chilling story is 20 minutes, a little music, and an old house. Oh, and Orson Welles.

It may not have won the Oscar (thanks, Disney) but it will send shivers up your spine.

Recent Oscar Horrors 
Jaws - Best Editing
Aliens - Visual FX
Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte - Supporting Actress

All Oscar Horrors

Oscar Horrors: "THEM!"

Oscar Horrors celebrates those rare Oscar nominated achievements in genre films. Here's Matt for today's creepy crawly entry...

HERE LIES... THEM!, flushed and crushed Under The Sea in the competition for the 1954 Oscar for Best Special Effects.

It isn't hard to imagine what this movie might look like if it were made today instead of at the pinnacle of the Hollywood nuclear horror era. The ants would probably look stunning. Every little hair would shine, glisten and twitch like the Orlacks in Beasts of the Southern Wild. A team of designers and artists would slave over every detail of their movement for months. They might even be scary. But, like so many of the great horror movies in history, the monster isn't what everyone's worried about.

Still, the special effects team on Them! earned an Oscar nomination for their exceptional craft, only losing to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The ants are the most obvious manifestation of special effects in the film. They were hand-built and operated by hidden crews. If you're lucky enough to have this movie on VHS, you can even catch a glimpse of an open-bodied ant just before the end. The ants are clunky, awkward, and often laughable, but that's not the point. Them! is one of the all-time great examples of a movie monster that frightens the audience through association. The movie is on par with The Fly, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and War of the Worlds as a cultural barometer. Even if the filmmakers weren't sitting around a table saying, "You know... this movie should be a metaphor for the national fear complex and nuclear danger," they were aware that the tenor of American society in the mid-50s produced enough material to frighten anyone. All you had to do was mention "nuclear" and hint at large-scale destruction.

But as far as the special effects go, Them! successfully uses many effects in addition to the ants. The movie has solid back-projection in many places, something we can never take for granted. The climactic battle is done with real cinematic panache. In fact, Gordon Douglas' direction is exactly what motivates the success of these effects. He moves quickly at points, but understands that it's scarier to watch the beast creep up on someone rather than play for pure shock value. The film was originally intended to be shot with several 3D sequences and in color.

A last-minute camera malfunction prevented them from doing this, but some scenes are still obviously meant to be done in three dimensions -- the most noticable being a flamethrower blowing straight into the camera.

Not only is Them! great, October-ready fun, it's a genuine, classic film -- one that spins a prevalent social fear into the structure of a Hollywood monster B-movie. 

previously on Oscar Horrors
American Werewolf in London -Best Makeup
Addams Family Values  -Best Art Direction
Season 1 Index

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "Singin' in the Rain"

I'm multi-tasking with this, the penultimate episode of Season 3 of Hit Me With Your Best Shot, the series wherein we choose the single best shot of pre-selected movies and discuss. Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen's masterpiece Singin' in the Rain (1952) is also a member of my personal canon (top ten to be exact) and we're using it to kick off our Gene Kelly Centennial Celebration. I'll be looking at a few more Kelly features next week, but we're starting with his greatest achievement. Weirdly the far inferior An American in Paris which directly preceded Singin' won Oscar's heart with ease and yet they ignored this one. 'I caaaannnnt stan' it').

"Monumental Pictures"... Yep. It sure stands tall among them!

Singin' in the Rain more than earns its reputation as 'the happiest movie ever made.'  I am reasonably certain that I could write about Singin' in the Rain every day for a year and still not run out of things to say. I'm already sad that this article will not include an ode to Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen SO deserved the Oscar and nabbed one of the film's two nominations. Only two!) or an examination of the largely unheralded  "All I Do is Dream of You" number which I love beyond all reason and would be the best number in most musicals but is just a little toss off here. 

All things considered, the film is lighter than air and swift on its feet both of which are jaw-dropping accomplishments since it's actually incredibly dense. Take the structure for a prime example: this movie about the history of movies (and, oh so casually, the DNA strands the medium borrows from the stage) starts with a premiere of a movie and then flashes back to previous (multiple) films before moving forward to become a movie about the making of new movie which too closely resembles the previous movie "if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all" which then gets rewritten as an entirely different movie with another movie embedded inside of it !!! After all of that, it ends with a poster of a movie that's yet to come... or is possibly the movie we've just watched. Whew. (It's got as many dream layers as Inception, Synecdoche New York or a David Lynch movie but way less fussiness about them.)

"and I'm ready for love ♪ " - usually my choice for "best shot" or at least the moment which I fall the hardest for Gene Kelly each time

Singin' in the Rain's killer combination of joyful buoyancy, masculine athleticism and artistic grace as it leaps from scene to scene are perfectly paralleled in the face, body, and talent of Gene Kelly himself. Kelly is one of my two all time favorite male movie stars, the other being Montgomery Clift. As I watched the movie for the umpteenth time today it suddenly occurred to me that the two of them are a perfect bipolar representation of my own very particular Gemini cinephilia; they're my beautiful big screen avatars of Joy and Despair.  

My "Best Shot" choice last night

I bring this up because, curiously, for the first time while watching Singin' in the Rain I felt a wave of sudden sadness hit me. I was grinning from ear to ear as "Good Morning" began (the only sane response knowing the bliss to come from the scene's inventive choreography, perfect tripled performance and fluid feeling) when suddenly my eyes welled up and stayed that way for the entire number. This had never happened to me before! As Cosmo, Kathy and Don collapsed on the couch in a big heap of giggling, I felt as simultaneously elated and exhausted as the characters were meant to and as the actors might have been after multiple takes (so few cuts, so much dancing!). But I was laughing through tears because they don't make 'em like this anymore.

BEST SHOT PARTICIPANTS

What a glorious feeling, they're blogging again...
The Family Berzurcher "It’s impossible to ignore the ecstasy of Singin’, but it takes movies very seriously."
Dial P For Popcorn "it makes me shiver... it makes me swoon"
Serious Film "continually reframing the dancers, moving them in and out of shadow" 
Antagony & Ecstasy "the lies movies tell are part of what makes them work as movies" 
Coco Hits NYC "a playfulness that is just magnetic"
Okinawa Assault "a sequence where gray and black dominate, is just as happy as the scenes with brighter colours in them."
Film Actually "the suggestion of sex is never this overt"
Being Norma Jeane "Cosmo and Lina are just beautiful in this movie. So funny, so brilliant." 
Sorta That Guy "It made me laugh, made me want to learn tap dancing, and most obviously made me fall in love with Kelly." 
Encore's World "Lina, unable to discern the difference between real life and fantasy" 
Pussy Goes Grrr  "Show biz is not sophisticated. In fact, it’s crude. It’s stupid. But per Singin’ in the Rain, it’s a glorious, outrageous, beautiful kind of stupidity"

And welcome these 'best shot' first timers!
Arf She Said "I love how the whole film opens up as Don's heart expands." 
Kelli Marshall "the one shot of Singin’ in the Rain that gets me every time"
Allison Tooey "looking utterly at ease despite flimsy support"
Lerblacompo "Don and Gene believed in their fantasies so much that it's impossible for us not to believe them, too." 

If you didn't participate, tell us about your favorite shot in the film!
Do your feelings line up with any of these joyful to read articles?

[P.S. Next week is the Season 3 finale of "best shot" as we watch "Dog Day Afternoon" together. Best Shot will return in 2013 for a fourth season! Every episode thus far]