Oscar Horrors: Bringing "The Birds" to Life

Oscar Horrors continues...

Here lies...The Birds, whose only Oscar nomination for Visual Effects were shot down by Cleopatra. The birds themselves are just resting, waiting to come back and haunt us all.

Amir here. Few horror films have had the long lasting effect of Hitchcock’s The Birds on my life. As a child – and I shamefully admit, well into my teenage years - I used to get scared really easily in the theatre. I’d turn all the lights in my house on after a horror film, just in case something was lurking in the dark. But I’d sleep on it and the morning after, I’d forget all about whatever it was that scared me: the serial killer, haunted toys or ghosts.

Thanks to Hitchcock's classic however, however, to this day I’m terrified of birds. I hate the way they strut around, looking at us with their soulless eyes. Some time in my childhood, it was The Birds that forever etched this frame in my memory.

Such is the power of cinema!

Like most Hitchcock films, The Birds doesn’t rely so much on the actual birds to scare us, but on the psychological horror that comes with the idea of the town’s takeover; the impending sense that at any minute another attack might start. But in those small bursts when we see the attacks, Hitchcock knocks it out of the park.

He used a combination of elements, from real birds on the set to archival footage, and from invisible nylon threads to yellow screen superimposition to achieve the effects that he wanted. The crew insisted on avoiding mechanical models for the most part and chose to use trained birds wherever possible. The result of the prolonged shooting period and the complex post-production is nearly impeccable. The birds look as alive and vicious as any animal I’ve seen on the screen.

Needless to say, almost fifty years later, some of these effects look a bit aged, but the impact they leave is still the same. The claustrophobic terror they inject in us is still as intense. And I’m sure there are other kids out there who think of Tippi Hedren’s helplessness in that attic every time they see a crow on the wire or a flock of gulls by the water.

Other Oscar Horrors...
Rosemary's Baby - Best Supporting Actress
The Swarm - Best Costume Design
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane -Best Actress in a Leading Role
The Birds - Best Effects, Special Visual Effects
The Fly -Best Makeup
Death Becomes Her -Best Effects, Visual Effects
The Exorcist -Best Actress in a Supporting Role 
Rosemary's Baby - Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium
Beetlejuice - Best Makeup
Carrie - Best Actress in a Leading Role
Bram Stoker's Dracula - Best Costume Design
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Best Actor in a Leading Role
King of the Zombies - Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture
Poltergeist - Best Effects, Visual Effects
Hellboy II: The Golden Army -Achievement in Makeup
The Silence of the Lambs -Best Director
The Tell-Tale Heart -Best Short Subject, Cartoons

Q&A: Blondes & Brunettes, Silents & Sequels

Each week in the Q & A column I choose a couple handfuls of reader questions to answer. I don't intentionally choose with themes in mind but this week's column, in the requested vacuum of Streep-less questions -- she'd been hogging the column -- tilted straight toward blonde icons and beloved brunettes.

Aaron: If "Girl with a Pearl Earring" and "Lost in Translation" had been released in different years, do you think Scarlett Johansson would be a two-time Academy Award nominee by now?

Fun question. I had to really ponder this. But my answer is no. Oscar fanatics love to debate "vote splitting" whenever someone has two meaty roles in the same category in a given year. The 2003 Oscar race was so weirdly splintered in Best Actress and the precursors just weren't showing herd mentality so right up until nomination morning it felt like virtually any combination of a shortlist that included frontrunners Theron and Keaton was possible. But Scarlett's Lost campaign had more problems than just The Girl With the Pearl Earring. Maybe Samantha Morton, in particular, would've been pushed aside for Scarlett had she only had one film. On the other hand, it was probably the combination of Scarlett's double-breakthrough that put her in the conversation to the degree that she was in it. But I don't believe that she'd have been a two time nominee regardless because the competition in 2004 felt so impenetrable; Moreno, Swank, Bening, Winslet and Staunton were always going to be the top five the following year. 

Scarlett on the Lost in Translation circuit: BAFTA, GLOBES, OSCAR

The most interesting thing about 2003 Best Actress, at least for Trivia Nerds, is how young it skewed historically. Even if you remove the novelty nomination for 13 year old Keisha Castle Hughes (Whale Rider) you might still have had a record breaking year since both Evan Rachel Wood (she was 16 during the Thirteen campaign) and Scarlett Johansson (who had just turned 20) could have also become Youngest Ever had they landed in the shortlist. Both were younger than Jennifer Lawrence from Winter's Bone even who is now the second youngest nominee ever in the category after Keisha. Don't you ♥ trivia!?

MrW: Do you intend to have seen one day all Oscar-winning performances (all four acting categories)? Are there any Oscar winning performances you're embarrassed to admit you haven't seen yet?

I would love to be able to someday claim this but I fear I'll die before that gargantuan task is completed. Naturally, I'm most worried about finishing the actress categories. The three movies I'm most embarrassed I haven't yet seen that sucked up plentiful acting attention / wins are My Left Foot, The Last Picture Show and, yes, The Godfather Part Two. I seriously have no idea why I keep putting the last one off. I even own it! 

Kent: Recently watched GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES for the first time. It was such a fun movie! Got me thinking about Marilyn Monroe and how the Academy shunned her so many times. She's so underrated as an actress. I loved her in BUS STOP and SOME LIKE IT HOT. Would you have rewarded her with nominations, even yet, a win?

True Story: I had this poster above of Marilyn Monroe from Bus Stop on my bedroom wall as a teenager -- yes the actressexuality started very early -- My mother saw it, shook her head  and sighed audibly. "Tell her to put some clothes on!" LOL. Different generations, you know.

Marilyn nominations, War of the Hepburns, and sequelitis after the jump.

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Steve McQueen's Oscar Loss and Workout Win

Each year come awards season we see hundreds of frozen grins and hear hundreds of ever so slight variations on that autopilot soundbyte "I'm just so honored to be  ______." But how do the losing stars and snubbees really feel? One of my favorite things about celebrity biographies is that they have to dig a little deeper when it comes to the discussion of The Oscars; you can't fill whole books with soundbytes.

I was recently flipping through the new biography "Steve McQueen" by Marc Eliot and came across this passage on the Oscars. McQueen thought his sole nomination (The Sand Pebbles, 1966) was long overdue and eagerly participated in press events. He bought himself a burgundy Ferrari to reward himself for the nomination.

Yet on Oscar night, Paul Scofield won Best Actor...

The audience erupted in applause, even though Scofield was one of the many who did not show up. His co-star Wendy Hiller, accepted for him. She stepped to the microphone and said, "There is something very special in being recognized in a country other than one's own!"

And for Steve, there was something very unspecial about not being recognized in his own. After the ceremonies, Neile told a reporter that she was happy her husband had lost. "If he'd won, he'd have been impossible to live with," she chirped. "Not because of a big head but because he'd be worrying how to top himself next. I prayed he wouldn't win."

Steve McQueen in "The Sand Pebbles"

Steve said nothing to anybody that night. Several years later he was still bitter about the loss of the only Oscar nomination he would ever receive and took a jab at Marlon Brando, who won an Oscar in 1973 for his role in The Godfather; who not only didn't show up but had warned the Academy he wouldn't accept the award if he won it... Not long after Steve told Hollywood columnist Sidney Skolsky, "Perhaps if I had announced that I wouldn't accept the Oscar, I might have won."

Following Oscar night, still having trouble finding his Sand Pebbles follow-up, he spent his nights drinking and womanizing and his days on an extended workout regimen.

pictorial evidence of his workout success after the jump...

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Top 100 "Characters" From 50 Years of Best Actressing

This past summer we polled you once or twice a month about the Best Actress characters that you think of the most often from the past 50 years of the cinema taking us all the way from 1961 through to this past spring's Oscars for the films of 2010! With the new fall season of The Film Experience kicking off and the Oscar films arriving, I thought we'd take one last look back at that polling.

It was quite fun for little OCD actressexual me to peruse and "sort" and all of that in excel. If you're OCD like me and want to know how I compiled the chart, which is listed in alphabetical order below and pictured in slide show format in chronological order, there's more information after the list. I'd love to say that we'd do 100 articles to celebrate (one for each of your fav' fictionalized ladies) but that would be an insane thing to promise. But we'll use the chart for inspirational somethings! Give these characters a big round of applause for all their years of entertaining service.

By all means if you haven't seen any of the 98 films represented, make it a viewing priority. 

Your 100 Most Memorable Best Actress "Characters"
50 Years | 100 Greats (1961-2010)  

List presented visually (chronologically) and in text form (alphabetically) after the jump. Plus: Statistics!

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Your Fav' Sixties & Seventies Ladies

During Summer 2011  -- winding down at last! -- we've been asking TFE readers to choose the most memorable Best Actress nominated film characters. Which film characters have you taken into your hearts and headspace most fully? Who is always popping into mind unbidden? Below are the latest voting results for August's polls covering the 1960s & 1970s (previous results: 1980s and 1991-2010). We used five year intervals for voting and asked readers to choose the 5 most memorable characters from each group of 25 Oscar nominees.

If you're looking for these polls to provide a "face" of an era it looks like Julie Andrews wins the early 60s -- she was thoroughly modern back then! -- and Faye Dunaway takes over from there for a long run at the top (1966-1980) [* indicates that it was an Oscar winning role.]

1961-1965

1. HOLLY GOLIGHTLY (Audrey Hepburn) Breakfast at Tiffany's
2. MARY POPPINS* (Julie Andrews) Mary Poppins
3. [tie] MARIA VON TRAPP (Julie Andrews) The Sound of Music and BABY JANE HUDSON (Bette Davis) Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
4. ANNIE SULLIVAN* (Anne Bancroft) The Miracle Worker

Runners Up: Though the top five were never in question, DEANIE LOOMIS from Splendor in the Grass, ALMA BROWN* from Hud (who also tied) and DIANA SCOTT*, the "sunshine girl" from Darling each had deep pockets of swoony admirers.  The remaining two top ten'ers, further back in voting were MARY TYRONE from Long Day's Journey Into Night, and CESIRA* from Two Women.

Observations: The Julie Andrews characters flip-flopped for the first week of voting until Mary took flight and left Maria behind on the hilltop. Baby Jane tried everything to kick Maria off the mountain: writing letters to daddy, rat dinners, actual kicking; a very tight race that was for third place and in the end they tied. Aside from Audrey's win, there was little consensus.

Geraldine Page finds "pure hard gold" in boytoy Paul Newman in Sweet Bird of Youth

I was disappointed at the lack of substantial votes for Natalie Wood's preggers single gal in Love With the Proper Stranger and Geraldine Page's bitch goddess superstar in Sweet Bird of Youth (though the latter almost cracked the top ten) but voting was all over the place in this round. 

Weakest Showing: No actresses suffered the "no votes" problem in this half decade grouping, but ALMA from Summer and Smoke, JANE FOSSETT from The L Shaped Room and MARGARET HAMMOND from This Sporting Life barely found any favor.

1966-1970

1. MRS ROBINSON (Anne Bancroft) The Graduate
2. MARTHA* (Elizabeth Taylor) Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf
3. BONNIE PARKER (Faye Dunaway) Bonnie & Clyde
4. FANNY BRICE* (Barbra Streisand) Funny Girl
5. [TIE] ELEANOR OF ACQUITAINE* (Katharine Hepburn) The Lion in Winter and MISS JEAN BRODIE* (Maggie Smith), The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

still in her prime.Runners Up: update. whoops. I misread the chart. Maggie Smith's Oscar winning haughty schoolmarm actually tied with Hepburn's Lion in Winter character in the last couple of days of voting. I had missed that! What a relief, Miss Jean Brodie, still being in her prime!] The remaining four players in the top ten are as follows: GLORIA BEATTY danced as fast as she could for 7th place for They Shoot Horses Don't They? Then with far fewer votes came, JENNIFER CAVALLERI from Love Story, SUSY HENDRIX from Wait Until Dark and CHRISTINA DRAYTON* from Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Observations: This was the closest the top spot has ever come to a tie with seductive Mrs. Robinson besting drunk Martha by just 2% of votes gathered. In other kindred spirit news, they're both fond of playing "get the guest".

This is also the closest your votes have ever aligned with the Academy's decisions as four of your top five actually winning the gold for their indelible creations and another top ten'er, too. The further back we go the more obvious it is which films are not readily available for home viewing and how much Oscar wins are worth for longevity. It's an easy way to draw people backwards to see old films. But about the availability of some films... I've said it many times but I'll have to keep saying it. Hollywood is a shameful place. It's an industry with gazillions of dollars in profits and far too few of those bucks get funnelled back into the art form to insure that films are preserved and/or available for the public. At the very least an Oscar nomination ought to mean that your film never disappears for good.

Weakest Showing: "Mary Wilson" from Happy Ending received 0% of the votes. The film is not available on DVD. Morgan!'s "Leonie Delt" and "Rosy Ryan" from Ryan's Daughter just barely escaped this fate.

1971-1975

1. SALLY BOWLES* (Liza Minnelli) Cabaret
2. NURSE RATCHED* (Louise Fletcher) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
3. EVELYN CROSS MULWRAY (Faye Dunaway) Chinatown
4. CHRIS MACNEIL (Ellen Burstyn) The Exorcist
5. ALICE HYATT* (Ellen Burstyn) Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Runners Up: the rest of the top ten in descending order were BREE DANIELS* Klute, MABEL LONGHETTI A Woman Under the Influence, and KATIE MOROSKY The Way We Were, CONSTANCE MILLER McCabe and Mrs Miller and ADELE The Story of Adele H.

Jane Fonda as "Bree" in KluteObservations: This five year period surprised me the most of all the polls in terms of how well various women fared. Ellen Burstyn is a national treasure but I wasn't expecting either of her roles to show up in the top five, let alone both of them! It seems to me that her past star would not shine as bright without that shocking resurrection that was Requiem for a Dream (2000). Let that be a lesson to all actresses. Don't give up when you've crossed the senior citizen mark. An acclaimed golden years performance can restore major luminosity to to your earlier shining successes. Speaking of which, Jane Fonda could use one final hurrah performance herself to remind people of what an irreplaceable actress she is. I was personally very disappointed to see her Klute performance outside the top five (It was a narrow miss but it shocked me. I'd rank it among the ten best actress performances of all time). But the #8 rank for Barbra's famous romantic heroine from The Way We Were was the biggest lower-than-expect shocker and at the very least it suggests that Carrie Bradshaw was definitely not voting on these polls. 

Weakest Showing: Marsha Mason's "Maggie Paul" from Cinderella Liberty received no votes with the little seen these days "Gitl" from Hester Street nearly meeting the same fate.

1976-1980

1. ANNIE HALL* (Diane Keaton) Annie Hall
2. CARRIE WHITE (Sissy Spacek) Carrie
3. DIANA CHRISTENSEN* (Faye Dunaway) Network
4. LORETTA LYNN* (Sissy Spacek) Coal Miner's Daughter
5. NORMA RAE WEBSTER* (Sally Field)

Runners Up: the rest of the top ten in descending order was composed of bad mommy BETH JARRETT from Ordinary People, Goldie Hawn's PRIVATE BENJAMIN, Bette Midler's MARY ROSE FOSTER from The Rose, delusional beige EVE from Interiors and "Yo, ADRIAN" from Rocky just barely knocked Gena Rowland's GLORIA and Ingrid Bergman's CHARLOTTE ANDERGAST of the ring to nab spot #10.

Observations:  I was surprised to see Mary Tyler Moore's legendary Bad Mommy performance in Ordinary People outside the top five but she was just one or two votes shy of making it a three way tie with the two biographical performances ahead of her. 

Marsha... no one is on the line!Weakest Showing: Marsha Mason's "Jenny Maclaine" in Chapter Two received no votes. I thought about voting for this character myself but there were too many other strong options. I used to just love that movie though I have only the dimmest recall of it now so I couldn't say "most memorable!". Mason was a very hot Oscar commodity for a few short years but none of her characters have done well in the polls indicating that her films have either not aged well for one reason or another or people just haven't seen them or, most likely, some combination of both. Is it time for some enterprising young director to take her on as a project: Marsha Mason revival!

This is a lot to process, I know. Any surprises, disappointments or observations you want to share? Have you been inspired to add any of these pictures to your rental queues?