Vintage '63

The Supporting Actress Smackdown 1963 Edition arrives on Monday so let's talk context since we haven't revisited as much of 1963 as we'd hoped to...

Great Big Box Office Hits: 1) Cleopatra 2) How the West Was Won 3) It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World 4) Tom Jones 4) Irma La Douce 6) Son of Flubber 7) The Birds 8) Dr No 9) The VIPs 10) McClintock!

Oscar's Best Pictures: Tom Jones (10 noms / 4 wins), Cleopatra (9 noms / 4 wins), How the West Was Won (8 noms / 3 wins), Lilies of the Field (5 noms / 1 win), America America (4 noms / 1 win) Our theory as to what was just outside the Best Picture shortlist plus more '63 goodies follow...

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On this day: Titanic sets sail, Newsies debuts, 3-D Begins...

On this day in history as it relates to showbiz...

1868 George Arliss, who won the Oscar for Disraeli (1929) born

1912 RMS Titanic set sail on this day from England on her first and last voyage. The rest is the subject of history, lore, and several plays and movies, most famously James Cameron's Oscar devouring Titanic (1997)

1925 The Great Gatsby is published. The classic novel failed at first but after F Scott Fitzgerald's death it became an indisputable classic, lateradapted to plays and movies and so on...

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Doc Corner: Nick Cave and The Beatles Show Mixed Musical Results

Thankfully for us, Nick Cave is not a musician who is easily distilled into a formula blueprint. He isn’t an artist who is easy to pigeonhole and that means anybody who attempts to make a film about him is forced to think outside of the box. Consider 20,000 Days on Earth in which Cave celebrated his 20,000^th day of living by driving around with friends like Kylie Minogue and Ray Winstone. That film, partly fictionalized, was only two years ago so if it feels somewhat excessive to have another Nick Cave documentary so soon then the circumstances around Cave’s life since then mean a lot has changed since his 20,000^th day on Earth that has dramatically altered him.

One More Time with Feeling is directed by Cave’s friend Andrew Dominik who Cave had worked with on The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Like that film, this is another wholly singular film, the pairing of the two proving to bear the most unique of fruits. Initial sequences suggest that this is going to be a slog of a documentary, the pairing of famous director not known for documentary filmmaking and a famous subject who many filmmakers might just feel the need to point a camera at and shoot and feel as if their work is done.

That is blessedly not the case.

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Box Office: John, Paul, Ringo, George... and Sully

What did you see at the movies this weekend? Or were you too busy bingewatching Emmy nominees before the ceremony tonight? Here's what was hottest at the box office. Other than Sully and the new Beatles Documentary Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years (which won the highest per screen average of the weekend on its 85 screens), "lukewarm" might be a better description for the new releases, none of which cracked 8 figures. Sorry Bridget! You've been gone too long.

TOP TEN
01 Sully $22 (cum. $70.5) Review
02 Blair Witch $9.6 NEW Review & Remembering Blair Witch (1999)
03 Bridget Jones's Baby $8.2 NEW Review
04 Snowden $8 NEW 
05 Don't Breathe $5.6 (cum. $75.3)
06 When the Bough Breaks $5.5 (cum $22.6)
07 Suicide Squad $4.7 (cum. $313.7) Review & Worst of Year
08 The Wild Life $2.6 (cum. $6.6)
09 Kubo and the Two Strings $2.5 (cum. $44.2) Review
10 Pete's Dragon $2 (cum $72.8)  Review

Next week Sully will surely be overthrown when Denzel and six other magnificents arrive in that shoot-em-up western.

Julie Harris, Costume Designer (RIP)

One of the oldest costume designers passed away this weekend. Julie Harris, not to be confused with the legendary stage and screen actress of the same name, died in London at the age of 94. Though she was well loved at the BAFTAs with five nominations and a win, she only had one brush with Oscar. But if you only get one shot, make it a zeitgeist moment.

And boy did she. She designed the mod classic, John Schlesginger's Darling (1965) which won her, Julie Christie, and the screenwriter golden statues 50 years ago, in a year otherwise Oscar-dominated by a certain other Julie in an Oscar winning musical. Harris had quite a streak in the 1960s. It didn't get much hipper then than designing for the original Bond girl (Ursula Andress in Casino Royale), Julie Christie (Darling!) and The Beatles themselves (A Hard Day's Night, Help!). About the Fab Four, Harris famous quipped

I must be one of the few people who can claim they have seen John, Paul, George and Ringo naked.

Other famous films included The Swiss Family Robinson (1960), The Chalk Garden (1964), Goodbye Mr Chips (1969), Rollerball (1975), The Slipper and the Rose (1976) and Dracula (1979). She retired from the cinema at the age of 60 with an unusual assignment - The Great Muppet Caper (1981). 

costume sketches for Alfred Hitchcock's FRENZYJulie Christie & Dirk Bogarde on location for DARLING

Have you ever seen Darling? We keep meaning to write about it for the blog but have never quite done so.