Academy Awards 2012: My Final Predictions

After much careful deliberation, here are my final predictions for tonight:

1. Picture: The Artist
2. Actor: Jean Dujardin (The Artist)
3. Actress: Meryl Streep (The Iron Lady)
4. Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer (Beginners)
5. Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer (The Help)
6. Director: Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist)
7. Foreign Film: A Separation
8. Adapted Screenplay: The Descendants
9. Original Screenplay: Midnight in Paris
10. Animated Feature Film: Rango
11. Art Direction: Hugo
12. Cinematography: The Tree of Life
13. Sound Mixing: Hugo
14. Sound Editing: War Horse
15. Score: The Artist
16. Song: “Man or Muppet” (The Muppets)
17. Costume Design: The Artist
18. Documentary Feature: Undefeated
19. Documentary Short: Saving Face
20. Editing: The Artist
21. Makeup: The Iron Lady
22. Animated Short: The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
23. Live Action Short: The Shore
24. Visual Effects: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Indelible Film Images: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) – dirs. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger

Starring: Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr, Anton Walbrook

1999: Part 1

Analyze This. Directed by Harold Ramis. I’ve become a much bigger fan of Robert De Niro in the past year. Seeing New York, New York (though it’s uneven), Awakenings, Backdraft, Marvin’s Room and this film helped me see more of De Niro’s ability to connect to his characters. De Niro plays Paul Vitti, an anxiety-ridden mobster who seeks the help of Dr. Ben Sobel (Billy Crystal), which of course results in a bunch of very funny scenarios. De Niro and Crystal have great comedic chemistry; the screenplay by Peter Tolan, director Ramis and Kenneth Lonergan (to me, a surprising credit) is full of memorable lines. There are also some nice supporting performances from Joe Viterelli (as De Niro’s sidekick Jelly), Kyle Sabihy as Crystal’s teenage son and Chazz Palminteri as another gangster. One negative point would be that Lisa Kudrow doesn’t make much of an impression (or at least not a terrific one) as Crystal’s bride-to-be. Still, Analyze This is a lively comedy with more than enough zingers to go around.

Galaxy Quest. Directed by Dean Parisot. If you’re looking for a sci-fi action comedy that people of all ages can watch, look no further. Galaxy Quest, which is also the title of a “Star Trek”-type show from the 80s, takes that fictitious show’s group of has-been actors (played by Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell and Daryl Mitchell) into real outer space when aliens see the show and assume that it’s an actual document of how human beings live. The actors are forced to summon all possible courage in order to save their new alien friends (including Enrico Colantoni and Missi Pyle). At age 49, Weaver looks absolutely gorgeous; Rickman, who spends the entire movie wearing a silly headpiece that looks like some kind of brain, is uproarious; Rockwell, however, is the real scene-stealer. He has many of the film’s best lines and gives even the smallest gesture a ton of genuine hilarity.

Notting Hill. Directed by Roger Michell. I don’t care what anyone says: I think Hugh Grant is great. No, he’s not Gary Oldman or Daniel Day-Lewis, but Grant is a charming and adorable leading man. Like the earlier triumph Four Weddings and a Funeral, which was also penned by Richard Curtis, Notting Hill is a wonderful romantic comedy. For me, the best part is how much I like Julia Roberts as the love interest; I didn’t think she was particularly great in Mystic Pizza, Hook or America’s Sweethearts. In Notting Hill, however, Roberts has a truly well-written role, allowing her to express her humorous and dramatic sides rather well. The supporting actors are excellent, with Rhys Ifans in an especially wacky, BAFTA-nominated role as Grant’s flatmate, Spike. Tim McInnerny, Hugh Bonneville, Gina McKee and Emma Chambers and also have nice moments, along with a brief appearance by Emily Mortimer.

A Slipping-Down Life. Directed by Toni Kalem. I’d like to start out by saying that I read the original novel, written by Anne Tyler and published in 1970, a few months ago and was impressed. While the film adaptation is not perfect, it captures the book’s uniquely unnerving qualities. Lili Taylor, whom I consider the single most underrated and underutilized actress in the business, is a great fit for the role of Evie Decker. Similarly, the choice to use Guy Pearce as Drumstrings Casey is an inspired bit of casting; at that point, Pearce was best known in the US for his roles in L.A. Confidential and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, neither of which makes him look like a candidate for playing a small-town rocker with a slow North Carolina drawl. Both actors play their parts with an admirable ease that comes from real understanding. The rest of the cast is good too, with particularly plum roles for a still-up-and-coming John Hawkes, a young Sara Rue and veteran character actors Irma P. Hall, Veronica Cartwright and Tom Bower. If nothing else, check out the film for its soundtrack featuring Pearce’s fine vocals.

10 Things I Hate About You. Directed by Gil Junger. I have a complicated history with this film. I first saw it not long after Heath Ledger died. I realized that the only film of his I’d seen was The Patriot, so I sought out this teen comedy based on The Taming of the Shrew. I was glad to find that it’s a sweet, amusing movie, filled with plenty of great late 90s music. Ledger is well-matched by a headstrong Julia Stiles in what is probably one of her best performances. The cast also includes young talent in the form of Joseph Gordon-Levitt (still in his “3rd Rock from the Sun” days), Larisa Oleynik, David Krumholtz, Andrew Keegan and Susan May Pratt, besides character actress Allison Janney. Although it still feels painful to revisit the filmography of Heath Ledger since his death affected me quite strongly, this film is a bright, upbeat testament to his youth and likability. Plus, his rendition of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” is lovely.

Indelible Film Images: Days of Heaven

Days of Heaven (1978) – dir. Terrence Malick

I was thinking of Days of Heaven yesterday because it was the birthday of Brooke Adams, who starred in the film. Among its many beautiful aspects, the Academy Award-winning cinematography by Néstor Almendros (with help from Haskell Wexler) is truly extraordinary when viewed on the big screen.

Some Forgotten Literary History

I dearly love the CUNY (City University of New York) library system. The catalog, along with Interlibrary Loan, which allows me to borrow books from all over the country and even around the world, has given me access to some really fascinating authors. I am always on the lookout for a story that might make for an interesting film adaptation. The last novel I read was Chocolates for Breakfast by Pamela Moore. The world at large seems to have forgotten Moore; Chocolates, her first novel, was a tremendous bestseller in 1956. Unlike another scandalous novel from the same year, Peyton Place, Chocolates for Breakfast was not made into a movie. (Edit: In a 1958 article in the Los Angeles Times, Jill St. John thought that a film was going to be made; presumably she would play Courtney.) It’s understandable, of course, given the themes in Chocolates, which would have been much more difficult to Hollywood-ize. But whereas Peyton Place went on to spawn a sequel novel, two films and a hit TV show, the career of Pamela Moore was effective over after the publication of that one novel. She was just unable to match that success. To create a further sad parallel between her life and the life of Peyton Place author Grace Metalious, both died in 1964, only eight years after achieving notoriety.

Why, then, read Chocolates for Breakfast? It’s been out of print possibly for decades and probably considered an odd relic. It’s certainly not as well-written as Peyton Place, although that novel supposedly only became readable after heavy editing by other people. Even the first lines of each novel are similar, observing the weather in the areas where the main characters reside. I think what drew me to Chocolates and compelled me to read it – although the lurid plot would keep your interest anyway – was my knowledge of what the author’s life was like. If I were to make a related film, it would probably be about Pamela Moore herself, not an adaptation of the novel.

There are other authors who have been unfairly forgotten. From my school, Hunter College, I borrowed Sara Vogan’s 1987 short story collection Scenes from the Homefront, published a mere four years before her death. Considering the fact that she passed away only 21 years ago, Vogan appears to have been largely forgotten by all but the most devoted literary fans. (Three out of her four of her books are out of print.) How can an author like Vogan simply be “forgotten”? Her oeuvre was certainly reviewed and discussed by critics when she was alive, particularly in the New York Times, for whom she wrote a number of book reviews in the 80s. I suppose the true mark of Vogan’s status is that she does not have a Wikipedia page (if I ever figure out how, I’ll make it). I couldn’t even find a photo of her until I bought a paperback copy of her novel Blueprints (1990).

There are also those unlucky writers whose lives are cut short and whose chances at success subsequently disappear. Amanda Davis published one short story collection, Circling the Drain (1999), and was taking part in a publicity tour for the newly-published novel Wonder When You’ll Miss Me when she died in a plane crash in 2003. Davis was only 32; her parents also died in the accident. (They were survived by a son and another daughter.) I borrowed the novel from either Borough of Manhattan Community College or York College – I can’t recall which offhand – and found it quite good. Davis had some fans in the literary world but died before she could make a bigger impact. Perhaps she will achieve greater fame after one of her stories is turned into a film, à la Nathanael West.

Still more writers languish in the depths. Once-notable names have been pushed aside to make way for the continuously growing output of writers who outlived them. I think Tom McHale‘s death (he committed suicide at age 40 in 1982) is especially sad because so many people felt he showed exceptional promise. On the back of his 1971 novel Farragan’s Retreat – which, by the way, was nominated for the National Book Award – there is a beautiful though eerily prophetic quote from Life reviewer Webster Schott that says, “Tom McHale has so much going for him it’s scary…. [He] writes as if born to the craft. He imagines and schemes like a beery poet. He sees, pokes, probes. He tells fabulous jokes. McHale’s capacity to trigger emotion ranges from laughter to compassion to cold horror. His style is as straight as a declarative sentence, but his novel luxuriates in complexity. Realism, bathos, mystery. Tom McHale is not another new writer. He is himself…. Stay healthy, Tom McHale. Sleep warm. Write more. And don’t give any of this a second thought.”

1926: Part 1

Exit Smiling. Directed by Sam Taylor. Beatrice Lillie, who is probably best known as Mrs. Meers in the Julie Andrews musical Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), proved herself to be an extremely adept young actress in this, her only silent film. Watching this film made me think once more about all the reasons why I disliked the new hit “silent film” The Artist, not the least of which is because of its complete lack of subtlety and pathos. As great as Lillie’s comic moments are, what I was even more impressed by were the alternating bits of sweetness and sadness. Her affection for Jack Pickford’s character – he’s another favorite of mine, by the way – is genuine. Besides her obvious acting ability, Lillie was also quite good-looking, resembling a more interesting version of a more popular Canadian film actress at the time, Norma Shearer (whom I’ve never been crazy about).

Flesh and the Devil. Directed by Clarence Brown. This, Greta Garbo’s third American film to be released, is a highly-charged drama brimming with eroticism. Garbo clearly worked very well with her leading man, John Gilbert, who was the bigger star at the time. Co-starring is fellow Swedish import Lars Hanson, another favorite of mine. The film’s depiction of the friendship between Gilbert and Hanson has been read into as having gay subtext; I don’t know if that’s true to the characters in the original novel (The Undying Past by Hermann Sudermann), but it certainly creates an intriguing discussion. Rounding out the leads is Barbara Kent, who lived an extraordinarily long life and passed away in October 2011 at the age of 103. Clarence Brown, who also worked with Garbo in A Woman of Affairs (1928), Anna Christie (1930), Romance (1930), Inspiration (1931) and Conquest (1937), directs Flesh with skill. The exquisite cinematography by William H. Daniels (Garbo’s preferred cameraman) lends sultry, Expressionist-influenced shadowing to the proceedings.

For Heaven’s Sake. Directed by Sam Taylor. This is one of Lloyd’s best silents. It’s a charming romantic comedy about an uptown (millionaire) playboy falling in love with a downtown girl who works in a mission. The girl in question is played by co-starring Jobyna Ralston, who was also the girl in the Lloyd films Why Worry? (1923), Girl Shy (1924), Hot Water (1924), The Freshman (1925) and The Kid Brother (1927). Noah Young, another Lloyd regular, appears as a character called “the roughneck.” If I recall correctly, Young starts out being a slightly antagonistic figure but eventually sees the error of his ways and becomes pals with Lloyd. The film clocks in at a brief 58 minutes but is filled with Lloyd’s usual great humor and sweet moments of romance. If you’re a fan of Leonard Maltin’s film reviews and/or hold his opinion in high regard, I believe he gave For Heaven’s Sake a perfect four stars.

The General. Directed by Clyde Bruckman and Buster Keaton. Famously regarded as one of Keaton’s enduring masterpieces, The General has secured its place in film history: it was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1989 – the first year of its existence – alongside classics like Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. Based on actual events discussed in an 1863 book by William Pittenger, this comedy set during the Civil War was co-directed and co-written by Keaton. His physical presence, which is always a crucial component of his humor, is showcased in Keaton’s daring attempts to retrieve The General, a locomotive stolen by Union spies. The leading lady, Marion Mack, did not have much of a career (she only made a handful of films), but provided a charming companion for Keaton. Also, as is often the case in Keaton’s films, his father, Joe, makes an appearance; this time he’s a Union general.

The Scarlet Letter. Directed by Victor Sjöström. This adaptation of the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel makes the story – which I found extremely boring when I tried to read it for my 12th grade English class – much more alluring. There is real, palpable lust in this version; I shudder to think what the 1995 version with Gary Oldman (good actor) and Demi Moore (bad actor) is like. The cinematography by Hendrik Sartov, an unsung talent of the silent era, lights Lillian Gish and Lars Hanson beautifully. Director Sjöström, whose name was often Americanized as “Victor Seastrom,” was a Swedish director whose Hollywood oeuvre also included He Who Gets Slapped (1924) with Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer and John Gilbert; the famously lost The Divine Woman (1928) with Garbo and Hanson; the classic The Wind (1928), again starring Gish and Hanson; also A Lady to Love (1930), an adaptation of the Sidney Howard play They Knew What They Wanted, starring Vilma Bánky and Edward G. Robinson. Sjöström is perhaps most famous for starring in the Ingmar Bergman drama Wild Strawberries (1957), which I have long wanted to see.