"The Ghost Writer" Haunts Europe. Can it Win American Oscar Nods?

The European Film Awards were held yesterday in Estonia's capital Tallin (next year the ceremony will be in Malta). Roman Polanski and Ewan McGregor both appeared via the wonders of the internet (you may have heard Polanski doesn't travel much) to accept for The Ghost Writer. The mystery thriller about a politician under fire and the two sorry writers who attempt to ghost his memoirs is filled with twists. It opened way back in March 2010 but it's apparently not done surprising us. Against the odds, it's been resurfacing in the awards conversation... and not just here. It took home a record-breaking 6 prizes, only losing "people's choice".

The previous EFA record holders, according to Screen Daily, were Spain's Talk to Her (2002) and Germany's Goodbye Lenin (2003) both of which, we foreign film Oscar obsessed must note, notoriously missed out on Oscar's Foreign Film category in their years (albeit for different reasons).

The European Film Awards aren't an Oscar precursor in the traditional way of thinking about these things but could we see The Ghost Writer with a stray Oscar nod or three come January's end? And if so, which? (Adapted Screenplay? Score? Art Direction? *gulp* Pic or Director?) Discuss.

The Euro Winners

• Picture The Ghost Writer
• People's Choice Jaco van Dormael's Mr Nobody 
• Co-Production Award  Zeynep Özbatur Atakan
• Achievement in World Cinema Gabriel Yared (Juliette Binoche was the surprise presenter of this award to The English Patient composer)
• Lifetime Achievement Bruno Ganz
• Discovery Lebanon
• Director Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer
• Actor Ewan McGregor, The Ghost Writer
• Actress Sylvie Testud, Lourdes
• Animated Feature Sylvain Chomet's The Illusionist
• Documentary Feature Patricio Guzmán's Nostalgia for the Light
• Screenwriter & Roman Polanski, The Ghost Writer
• Cinematography Giora Bejach, Lebanon
• Editor Luc Barnier & Marion Monnier, Carlos
• Composer Alexandre Desplat, The Ghost Writer
• Production Designer Albrecht Konrad, The Ghost Writer

I'm sure there will be many claims that this a "political" message given Polanski's legal troubles with the US which have been in the news again a lot this year. And though politics can truly never be extricated from any awards show (even preferring decidedly apolitical movies is in its own way, a political stance) at least some of The Ghost Writer's past and future honors out to be attributed to the fact that it's a fine movie.

Who can The Ghost trust? No one.

I shall update this post if I can find good photos since the evening held appearances from France's Binoche (love) and Denmark's Nikolaj Lie Kaas (also love) among other international film notables.

Related Articles EFA Nominations & "Best in Show: Olivia Williams"

Olivia Williams, The Ghost Actress

I was late to the party on The Ghost Writer but as with any good film, the party is still raging once you get there. It's already one of my favorites of 2010. But back in March I should have been out there championing it as a clever, well executed thriller (if that's the genre you'd like to define it as).  I think it was Pierce Brosnan who kept me away. Since when does he make good movies? And since when is he good in them?

Brosnan is in deep doo-doo in The Ghost Writer. Cattrall and Williams are
out-of-focus behind him. Which is just how both their characters like it, thank you.

Finally, it was you (yes you!) that convinced me to see it. It was praised enough in comment threads to make me think I'd missed out... particularly in regards to Olivia Williams. She's an actress I'd never thought much about until the past few years and now, it's getting kind of hard to deny her her due.

I wrote up her terrific work in my "Best in Show" column for Tribeca Film. She really is something (in general and here in particular). She's such a sticky actress; she haunts.

"God of Carnage" The Movie

News this heavy with starry wattage and awarded source material spreads quickly. I'm sure you've heard this morning that Kate Winslet & Matt Dillon will square off with Jodie Foster & Christopher Waltz as the combative couples of Yasmine Reza's hilarious and occasionally disturbing four-hander, God of Carnage. Make that Roman Polanski's God of Carnage, since he's bound to make adjustments in the adaptation. I fear that they'll add characters and scenes and lose the play's intense get-me-outta-here vibe... all in the name of "opening it up" as a movie. But perhaps I worry for nothing. Polanski has shown skill at non-literal claustrophic material in the past. In the play two sets of parents meet up cordially to discuss a school fight between their children and the way it breaks down, everyone basically breaks down. The play is entirely set in the living room of one of the couples and takes place in real time.

James Gandolfini, Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden and Jeff Daniels
in Broadway's God of Carnage (2009)

Polanski is a reliable auteur and all four actors are strong but I still have to worry. It's my nature. I'm hoping that everyone involved understands first and foremost that it's a comedy. This type of material could easily fall apart if it loses its satiric edge and embraces the dramatic too willfully. If it does, people will just be like "ugh. these people are so immature. I hate them!" and you know how the public reacts to characters they don't like.

Pray for Jodie to pull this off!

The most intriguing casting choice has to be Jodie Foster, who I assume is taking on the Tony-winning Marcia Gay Harden role. I would haved loved to have seen Harden get this shot on the big screen but they rarely let people transfer... even Oscar winning people who aren't bankable. Anyway, Foster knows from claustrophic environs (Panic Room, Flight Plan, Silence of the Lambs) but she hasn't spent much time honing her comic gifts and this character is, at least in my experience of the play, the fulcrum point. She's full of abundant pretense and holier-than-thou speechifying and she'd be utterly detestable and annoying if she weren't also so funny and so endearingly a complete emotional wreck. It's just a killer role.

I'm glad the two time Oscar winner will be truly challenging herself for the first time in well over a decade but if you rest you rust and I hope she's up to the challenge.
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Link a Virgin

<-- Boy Culture Madonna in Interview, interviewed by auteur Gus Van Sant. They even discuss movies and Milk? Can't wait to read the whole thing
Vanity Fair Oscar winning moms and their offspring. Photo Gallery
/Film Does Disney have eyes on stage musicals based on Romy & Michelle, Coyote Ugly, Shakespeare in Love and more?
MNPP even horror buffs are hating this Human Centipede movie
Deadline Hollywood Roman Polanski breaks his silence. This is the whole statement. I find this whole tawdry decades old story so sad but the public reaction even more disturbing. Whether or not one thinks Polanski should come to the US and be sentenced it is very clear reading the comments on virtually any site/blog discussing this that for a huge swath of people nothing short of a death sentence would ever satiate them
NY Post Johnny Depp heroics. "straighten up your life"
30 Ninjas meaty interview with Jake Gyllenhaal on both Prince of Persia and Duncan Jones's Source Code
Movie Insider Green Lantern production imagery?
E.T. Steven Spielberg has chosen War Horse as his next film. That means he'll have two pictures coming out for 2011 (TinTin is also on the way). Isn't it strange how Spielberg always seems to be either completely absent or doubling up? Other two picture years: 1989, 1993 (what a year that was!), 1997 and 2002

"You notice things if you pay attention."

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JA from MNPP here. Yesterday Nat finished his delightful run-down of his favorite films of the previous decade, and his write-up of his #6 film,Wong Kar-Wai's masterpiece In the Mood For Love, reminded me how desperate I've been to watch the film again now that I've upgraded to a bigger HD'ier TV.

So last night I did. I wrote up some extended thoughts on the film over at my blog, but here's something else the experience brought up in my head: the process of re-watching films in these new technological formats.

Ever since getting the new TV for Christmas I've scarcely watched any new films (keeping my Faves of '09 list at bay, unfortunately), instead preferring to barrel through old favorites that I've appreciated especially for their visual splendors. This is a good thing to be sure - my appetite for film is one of forward momentum, always trying to see as many new films as I can, so I don't look back nearly often enough. It's been a treat.

Living here in New York I get to see screenings sometimes of old films that I've only ever seen on a small screen before and you notice so many things you'd missed before. Seeing Rosemary's Baby, my favorite film of all time, in a proper theater was a revelation - I'd seen that movie a million times but there were so many small details suddenly vying for my attention (the one that pops to mind are the posters hanging in Rosemary and Guy's apartment for "Luther" and "Nobody Loves an Albatross," the two plays Guy had starred in that Rosemary name-checks a couple of times in the film).

And this new HD experience has felt akin to that. The image is so crisp, and so big! I don't think I'm ever going to leave my house again, is what I'm saying. This is where I close the door, turn my Netflix account up as far as it goes, and forget the world outdoors.

Anyone else been spending their days marveling at this wondrous point in home theater technology unto which we have arrived? This extends beyond great cinema - I spent half an hour hypnotized by a PBS special on hummingbirds the night before last - I thought the hummingbirds were gonna hit me in the face. It was awesome!
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This Is Not a Link Round Up

I feel like I haven't perused the internets in ages. Ages and ages. Still couldn't get to it today. I hate my life lately...

Fin de Cinema lists the 48 films shortlisted for the European Film Awards only 6 or so of which line up with the Oscar submissions for foreign language film for 2009. That's partially because the time window is different (Slumdog Millionaire and The Reader are somehow eligible) and also due to different rules. The nifty thing about their lineups -- which can't be replicated at the Oscars -- is the ability to recognize a great year one particular country is having. For instance, this year at the European Film Awards they're considering 4 German films: Everyone Else (pictured left), The White Ribbon (the Cannes winner), Jerichow, and Der Baader Meinhof Complex. The EFAs are sort of like the Oscars if you think of Europe as one country... which more people are probably starting to. Or if you think of the USA as a continent composed of many very different smaller countries ... which more people are probably starting to.

The Critical Condition has been doing this thing called the "best picture expansion project". A lot of blogs were doing similar things -- with Oscar expanding their list, let's pretend they did it long ago -- which is why I never jumped in. But that doesn't mean I don't find them fun to read. These are not 'what if's so much as what 'shoulda been's. This one is on 1989. A year near and dear to my heart on account of La Pfeiffer and her Fabulous Baker Boys.

And I highly suggest you read this chain of posts... Kim Morgan of Sunset Gun is a terrific writer and really loves Roman Polanski's touched woman classic Repulsion which sets off rather angry how-dare-she responses from people including Amanda Marcotte who takes great offense from it. Which sets off this impassioned defense piece by Eric Kuehrsten, whose writing I love and who has actually guest blogged here a couple of times.

This is so much more fun / fascinating / provocative than the typical web hissy fits that have almost zero depth and are usually only interesting in the way they display the thin skin and thick egos of the critics involved.

Polanski's Arrest

Have you heard about Roman Polanski's arrest in Switzerland? The news confused me as I tend to view Switzerland (generically / ignorantly) as a place of wealthy neutrality. I also tend to view the auteur's ongoing US legal problems through three lenses:

• art (we need him making movies, please)
  
• the documentary Wanted and Desired (so eye-opening about his circus-like trial)
  
• that interview with his grown victim Samantha Geimer around the time of The Pianist's release (she didn't seem to be harboring much -- any actually -- in the way of vengeful 'lock-him-up' sentiment).

Such a touchy subject.

The following tweets -- some from film blogger types like final girl and lucas mcnelly -- are neat summary illustrations of how quickly/differently people respond to anything Polanski, The Art/The Man related.

How are you feeling out there?

[Semi tangent: I'll admit I'm feeling exactly like Lucas... manly because this week I became obsessed with the idea that there's only a couple of handfuls of directors left who seem to understand how to use a freaking camera (slighly OT: Nathaniel has been very angry lately at the tyranny of closeups and ping pong over-the-shoulder filming of all dialogue scenes even from supposed "masters". There are many ways to position a camera. It doesn't have to be a close-up every time an actor has a line of dialogue! Sometimes you need to see the room, sometimes the actor who's being spoken too, sometimes where the actors are standing in relation to each other, etcetera. Switch it up, people. For god's cinema's sake.]

Tues Top Ten: Pregnancies

In honor of Penélope Cruz's recently announced pregnancy and the DVD release of Lindsay Lohan's latest Labor Pains (don't everybody rush out to snatch it up at once. I promise you they'll have enough copies) in which she fakes a pregnancy to keep a job, I thought a top ten list celebrating the miracle of childbirth -- or future childbirth rather -- was called for.

But first a bit more about Ms. Lohan. Rich at fourfour collected the Labor Pain lines that were more applicable to Lindsay the celebrity than the character she happens to be playing.



...not that Lindsay plays characters these days. The Actress wrapped things up with Mean Girls, only The Celebrity lives on.
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Ten Best Pregnant Movie Characters

10 Juno in Juno (2007)
The general three act journey of zeitgeist movies goes like so... Act I: instant hype, audience love and acclaim births a new pop culture babe; Act II: media overkill curdles that hype, attempts to beat holdout audience members into submission spurring rebellions. Backlash turns pop culture darling into punching bag; Act III: Everything settles down until the darling/punching bag is just a movie again, neither the greatest nor the worst ever made. Are we in act three yet with Juno? I hope so because for all the swipes at its forced quirk and too widely adopted quotables, it's a good movie and Juno the character as written, and especially as performed by Ellen Page, should be appreciated as a pretty swell(ing) movie character, hamburger phones be damned.

But how do you think her baby turned out?

09 Demi Moore in...
Vanity Fair Magazine: The Movie. Don't even argue that that wasn't her best role.

08 Holly in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
That's a spoiler if you haven't seen Woody Allen's Oscar nominated classic. I love that Holly begins the movie as a bundle of cocaine snorting sister-dependent directionless neurosis and ends the movie aglow with the promise of new life and yet you never think to worry that she'll be a terrible mother. You're too in love with Holly to be anything but happy for her. Credit Dianne Wiest who is one of the most endearing actresses that the cinema has ever known.


07 Sarah Connor in The Terminator (1984)
If you give birth to the future savior of mankind you deserve a place on the list. I chose Sarah over Mary from any Jesus movie or Kee from Children of Men because I don't think they would have survived a robot apocalypse (too demure and too shell shocked, respectively). More on The Terminator and Sarah Connor herself.

06 Dawn Lagarto aka 'Bloody Mama' in Series 7: The Contenders (2001)
It's strange to me that Daniel Minahan's Series 7 never got its due as a prescient satire of the barbaric leanings of reality television and celebrity culture's fame fixation. In the movie, random citizens are selected to star in a show wherein they have to kill the other contestants before they're killed themselves. The final girl (or boy) is the winner. Did the black comedy arrive a year or two too early? Is it not quite as sharp as I remember it being? Either way, Brooke Smith's reluctant but efficient pregnant murderess still lingers in the memory with her big belly, flop sweat and bloody hands.

Is Brooke Smith cursed? Whenever you think her career is going to take off either the film doesn't (Series 7) or she's overshadowed by brilliant co-stars even though she's totally working it too (Vanya on 42nd Street and Silence of the Lambs) or she gets written out of the picture series (Grey's Anatomy, Weeds). If anyone in Hollywood had actually seen Series 7 maybe they wouldn't be so quick to write her off as a contender. Given the right opportunities, she's killer.

05 Ashley in Junebug (2005)
Cuter than a meercat. [Related post: Amy Adams interview]

04 Ruth in Citizen Ruth (1996)
If you've never seen Alexander Payne's satire of America's eternal war between the pro-choice and pro-life forces, you should. The ever brilliant Laura Dern (in one of the best performances of 1996) plays the druggy dimwitted and frequently pregnant Ruth and both sides of the abortion divide seek to co opt her for their cause. It's worth seeing for Dern's amoral comedy alone but the political satire has real bite, too. Here I'll help you. Rent it from Netflix or Blockbuster.

[Related post: Signatures: Laura Dern]

03 Marge Gunderson in Fargo (1996)
Frances McDormand's Oscar win for her seven months pregnant police chief is one of the greatest atypical Oscar moments of all time. A memorably comedic portrayal of a truly original character wins? There is a god. That's as hopeful as Marge's innate goodness, which provides the wintry brutality of Fargo's comedy with its sole warmth.

And for what? For a little bit of money. There's more to life than a little money, you know. Don'cha know that?

And here ya are, and it's a beautiful day. Well, I just don't understand it.

Marge is a great cop. You know she's going to be an awesome mom in just "two more months. two more months."

02 Trudy Kockenlocker in The Miracle at Morgan's Creek (1944)
This Preston Sturges comedy about a girl who gets knocked up on a one night stand with the troops should be mandatory viewing in film schools. It's not that it's the greatest comedy of all time or anything that hyperbolic. It's that it does two things superbly that Hollywood has forgotten how to do well at all. First, briskly paced comedic storytelling and second, an endearing good time gal lead who doesn't feel like she's been assembled from pull down menus in a screenwriting program. Betty Hutton is a total dream as Trudy: funny, sexy, radiant and supremely silly. She's just wondrously fruity. And her loins are unexpectedly fruitful, too.

01 Rosemary in Rosemary's Baby (1968)
Roman Polanski's enduring chiller is among my personal holy trinity of horror: the father mother (Psycho), the son (Rosemary's Baby), and the unholy ghost (Carrie). Most horror movies play with our loudly admitted phobias: fear of the dark, monsters, death. Rosemary's Baby plays a more masterful game, exposing primal fears about things we're not supposed to admit we're scared of. Fears such as pregnancy, childbirth, unknowable offspring and the dread of identities subsumed by our children's. Mia Farrow's brilliant star turn channels these anxieties which are especially pronounced in new mothers, whether or not they've been knocked up by the devil.

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Here's the part where you horrify me by telling me who I've forgotten...

Losing It In Style

Adam of Club Silencio here going off the deep end. This week saw the release of Roman Polanski's Repulsion on glorious Criterion DVD and Blu-ray. As per usual we're given a beautiful print of the film with a scattering of insightful extras. And the film itself has lost none of its power; a razor-sharp story of a manicurist whose foundation is cracking alongside her confining London flat. The film has become such an essential horror film throughout the years that it becomes quite simple to see echoes of a pert and psychotic Catherine Deneuve in the many films that have adopted Repulsion's structure and style -- usually in an attempt to peruse the psyches of their damaged protagonists. It begs the questions: do male directors somehow break the misogynist critique by having these women undone by dastardly, dirty men? And do blondes really have more fun?

Repulsion (1965)
dir: Roman Polanski

The final eerie frame lingers on a photo of Carol (Catherine Deneuve) as a child staring ambiguously into space, or possibly in the direction of her father. Repulsion never makes explicit whether Carol was a victim of sexual abuse and yet we're constantly faced with Carol's... repulsion... toward men. Their voices, their touch, their smell -- Carol's infinitely more at ease with the beheaded rabbit that's decaying in her living room. Even her apartment building takes part in a full on assault on her physical body. If these walls could talk... they'd say something smutty and grab your breasts. Carol's mind becomes a crumbling facade; a soft-spoken and elegant blonde woman is destroyed by some abstract primal fear. The question "why" really doesn't matter to Polanski, but much of the film's unnerving pleasure comes in the speculation of what could turn this lost little girl into an adult woman losing it with a straight-razor.

Images (1972)

dir: Robert Altman

Altman's film knowingly owes Polanski a great dept as we fall into the dark recesses of Cathryn's (Susannah York) broken mind. A children's author and her dull, hobbyist husband venture to their fantastical country home where we experience Cathryn's triple assault by her lovers (both living and dead), and witness doppelgangers of Cathryn at varying stages of her life... possibly. Her madness accelerates, but much like Repulsion, we're never sure where nightmare and reality meet, or if we've been behind Cathryn's corrupted gaze all along.

The Stendhal Syndrome (1996)
dir: Dario Argento

Undercover at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, inspector Anna Manni (Asia Argento) experiences the Stendhal Syndrome (a psychological fatigue caused by great works of art) and quite literally falls into the arms of the sadistic serial rapist she was trying to capture. Much like Repulsion, Argento places the narrative directly in sync with Anna's dissolving mental state. Unlike Carol however, Anna's initial response to her sexual revulsion at the hands of maniacal men has her adopting her very own masculine side in order to inflict harm on the men closest to her -- also she simplifies by just using a razor blade. Eventually Anna dons a blonde wig in an attempt to regain her femininity, but it becomes more evident that it's just a simpler disguise for her continual descent into madness.

Inland Empire (2006)
dir: David Lynch

Lynch's film unravels similarly with doppelgangers and ambiguously fractured mental states. Actress Nikki Grace's (Laura Dern) latest role has her transforming into a woman spurned by manipulative men, and transforming into another woman entirely. Susan Blue (Laura Dern), a prostitute worn by the streets and an abusive carny boyfriend, is confined to her dank apartment where we see her madness manifest in the form of strobe-lit screams and a theatre showing Nikki/Susan's life as it's happening -- to which Susan herself can only describe as a "mind f**k." Typical of Lynch, all of this is best left to the audience that is now left with their minds in comparable disarray.

All I can conclude is that this would make a wonderful movie marathon for anyone (man-hater or otherwise) holed up inside their apartment for questionable lengths of time. Ultimately these fine films are a reminder of the very fragile, unknowable state of the human mind. And a solid reminder to get out more.

A Little Love For Françoise Dorléac

JA from MNPP here. There are enough holes in the sweep of my cinematic knowledge that it doesn't so much resemble Swiss Cheese as it does what Swiss Cheese would resemble if pinned to a dartboard for weeks and then hung up in a shooting gallery and riddled with bullets and then fed through a paper shredder. (Because that's what one does with one's supply of figurative cheese, dontcha know?) Anyway I keep on keeping on, trying to play this undying game of movie catch-up, round and round we go. So when I share the following bit with you, I want you to keep this in mind: I very well could be the last person to have acquired this information on all of Planet Earth. So my own naive sense of discovery might seem... quaint. Just let me have my simple pleasures, I beg of you!

Last evening, I filled in one more gap in Roman Polanski's oeuvre that I've been trying to fill in: his 1966 flick Cul-de-sac. It's not readily available on DVD so it took some finagling. Anyway, Cul-de-sac sits in between Repulsion and The Fearless Vampire Killers in his out-put, and I have to say it's a stellar little seemingly-forgotten flick. Polanski's eye is per usual top notch, and there's just enough off-kilter weirdness to keep the proceedings, while superficially grim, really very funny.


The first thing I took notice of, though, was the female lead. She seemed familiar, but... not. I looked up her name and she's Françoise Dorléac... whom I'd never heard of. I investigated further (bless you, IMDb and Wikipedia) and found out she was Catherine Deneuve's older sister, and she was killed at the age of 25 in a car accident... the details are actually rather terrifying, so I must share:

"Francoise Dorléac was killed when she lost control of the rented Renault 10 she was driving and hit a sign post ten kilometers from Nice at the end of the Esterel-Côte d'Azur motorway. The car flipped over, and burst into flames. She had been en route to Nice airport and was afraid of missing her flight. Dorléac was seen struggling to get out of the car, but was unable to open the door. Police later identified her body only from the fragment of a cheque book, a diary and her driving license."

Horrible. She'd been in 21 films in just 7 years, including Polanski's Cul-de-sac, Truffaut's La peau douce, and Jacques Demy's The Girls of Rochefort, which she co-starred in with her sister. Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of my favorite movies ever, so Rochefort is a film I've been meaning to see for years... as Dorléac was very good in Cul-de-sac, I've got even more fire in me to catch her other work now.


Anyone a fan of her work? She was physically gorgeous to be sure, but also possessed something very real and human that translated wonderfully onto the screen. She fit the Polanski mold - later filled by Sharon Tate, Nastassja Kinski, Emmanuelle Seigner... so on - perfectly. It's a shame she seems to be rather forgotten.
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Tuesday Top Ten: The Queens of Screams

Tuesday Top Ten: For the listmaker in me JA and the listlover in you you

JA from MNPP here, guest-blogging the Top 10 for this week.

The way I reckon it, I don't want to step on any toes while guesting here, so I want to choose a topic that Nathaniel would never do on his lonesome. But I also want to choose a subject that'll tickle y'all's fancy at the same time. And it's gotta be something I know something about (which narrows the field down considerably). So taking into account The Film Experience's general love for the actresses (hence Nat's delightful term "actressexuality"), and my own love for horror movies, and (bless his scaredy-cat lil' heart) Nat's aversion to the same... well, a list was born unto us this day!

To the Year One, y'all. Tis a list of what I have deemed The Top 10 Leading Ladies of Horror. Basically... these are my 10 favorite female horror movie performances. I went for just leading ladies here, which kept stellar supporting characters (Hiya, Minnie Castavet!) from stealing the spotlight (again). I tried to cover all the bases - we've got the victimized types of course - where would horror be without 'em? - but also our tough chicks, and then there's those loveable crazies too. So without further...

10) Heather Donahue in The Blair Witch Project - “I am so sorry! Because it was my fault.“ – It’s easy to hate on Heather… she brings it on herself, really. Like so many of the characters in this most recent wave of first-person horror (think Cloverfield) that picked up from Blair’s 10-year old success, Heather was labeled annoying and self-centered and well won’t you just put the camera down, lady?


But horror would be nothing without its determination to show us the lesser sides of ourselves – people making terrible decisions and being punished so we the viewers don’t have to is par for the course. Hell, sometimes it's the whole course. And Heather, in her justifiably famous snot-faced soliloquy, turns the camera in on that side of ourselves that we’d like to think we wouldn’t be in that situation but 9 times out of 10 will, most assuredly, be. And if one of the most vital parts of what I consider to be a great horror performance is the ability to truthfully convey real fear – an uncensored, wide-eyed terror – Donahue earns her spot on this list for that alone.

9) Linda Blair (and Mercedes McCambridge... and Ellen Burstyn) in The Exorcist - "Keep away. The sow is mine." – It just doesn’t feel right leaving off credit to McCambridge, the woman who gave voice to little Regan McNeil’s demonic possession. So I had to include her name. That said, as horrific as the second-half of this film is (where credit must be paid not only to McCambridge but the make-up and effects people as well) I find the medical examination scenes of the first half nearly as terrifying as the later blasphemies, and all we have there is tiny Regan thrown into the midst of a bunch of loud machinery, so obviously Blair is doing some heavy lifting on her own. And then I find I must add on Ellen Burstyn’s fine performance as Regan’s helpless mother who can only look on… all said, it’s difficult for me to choose just one aspect to praise here; they’re all inextricably linked. The mother, the daughter, and the unholy spirit, as it were.

8) Kathy Bates in Misery - “God I love you.” – Yes, the film spins Annie Wilkes off into a bit of a hysterical caricature in those final ten minutes or so. But before she becomes an unkillable madwoman, Bates' performance is one of the simultaneously funniest and saddest portrayals of deranged loneliness ever put on-screen. Because I’ll be damned if she doesn’t just know that the writer named Paul Sheldon’s literal fall into her lap wasn’t a gift sent from cockadoodied wherever, and she’s gonna make it bitchin' worthwhile. Why shouldn’t the fans have their say, anyway? I’m not going to be the one to argue that point and make her feel all oogy.

7) Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween - “It was the boogeyman, wasn't it?” – She set the archetype in stone. The Final Girl. Sally may’ve screamed louder (and longer... and earlier), and Nancy might’ve built exploding light-bulb booby-traps, but nobody personified exactly what the Slasher genre needed better - the female yin to the male killer's wang - than JLC's Laurie Strode. Almost too smart for her own good – she felt it coming, annoyed everybody, but still couldn’t stop it all the same – there’s myriad reasons Curtis is, to my mind, still the greatest straightforward Final Girl, but none moreso than the first half-an-hour or so as we watch Laurie spot the boogeyman behind the bushes or in the backyard, and see her preparedness despite herself click defiantly into place.


6) Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs - “Some kind of screaming, like a child's voice.” - Sweet Clarice Starling, just trying to bury the sounds of those lambs to the slaughter. Little girls, they go next, off to the dressmakers... somewhere in America there is a pit in a basement with a Senator's daughter all holed up. Loose skin. Come and get it, Precious.

5) Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley - “Get away from her, you bitch!“ – Of the first two Alien flicks, I only really consider Ridley Scott’s original film to be a horror film. But Weaver’s Ripley doesn’t emerge as the main player until the very end. She’s most obviously the main character of James Cameron’s Aliens, but that’s an action movie with monsters. So how do I justify placing her on a list? By just mushing the entire quadrilogy’s worth of her performances together. Yes, I’m cheating. But this list just seemed wrong without her. Where maybe too many of the women on this list are of the victimized sort - immediately previous company excluded, of course - I needed to include a woman who rocks off an acid-spewing alien’s face with a gun larger than my entire torso to even things out. And then, like a full half of this list, she's Mother, too. And if there's one thing this list proves - and this list, too! - nothing is scarier than mommy-hood.

4) Shelley Duvall in The Shining - “We're all going to have a real good time.” – Always overshadowed by Jack Nicholson’s Jack Nicholson-sized performance, Duvall’s Wendy Torrence is and always will be my favorite part of Kubrick’s coolly malignant flick. Duvall was always channeling her gawky physiognomy to great effect with her characters, whether it was her hysterical Olive Oyl stroll or just the way she held a cigarette in 3 Women… but nowhere to my mind was she more brilliant than here. Has anyone ever held a knife or an axe more awkwardly? And watch the way her occasional outbursts of positive energy – always so sadly forced - quickly slide back into a slumped-over shell of a woman, beaten down both literally and figuratively, and then the eventual, probably Kubrick-inflicted real-seeming terror that courses across her bug-eyed face… it’s a vanity-free, often humiliating role, which Duvall upends and owns with her every silent scream.

3) Ellen Burstyn in Requiem For a Dream - “I like thinking about the red dress…” – Like the invisible arm of Death itself that kills so many teenagers – and so imaginatively! - in the Final Destination flicks, the horror of Requiem is of a different breed - it’s the mental demons inside these characters that tear them to shreds. But make no mistake – this is a horror film, and one of the most horrifying ever made. And nowhere does that horror manifest itself more cruelly than in the guise of a lonely Coney Island widow that can’t let go of a dream long dead. Burstyn’s physical deterioration as she’s swallowed whole by her addictions is haunting enough – the final shots of the film rend my heart every time – but Burstyn makes it clear from the start that Sarah Goldfarb has one foot over the precipice just looking for anything that might offer her even the briefest of smiles.


2) Sissy Spacek in Carrie - “It was bad, Mama. They laughed at me.” – The most spellbinding moments in DePalma’s 1976 classic for me are the ones where we see Carrie White begin to come out of her shell – the way her inherent good-nature peeks around that shy smile… a flurry of compliments from Billy the cute boy asking her to the prom and from her teacher who means so well… all of which lead to that spinning-out-of-control on the dance-floor moment. And then falls the crown. And we all know what horror lay beneath that heavy load. Carrie White is horribly human… until she’s not human at all anymore. And then she’s back again… but it is too late. After all, sin never dies... and Spacek makes us understand every step of the way, with a most terrible accuracy, what has gone so very wrong.


1) Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby - “This is no dream! This is really happening!” – Is it simply the paranoia of a young lady with too much time on her hands, or is there something sinister going on with that too-friendly old couple next door? Is her husband distracted with work, turned off by her constant sickness, or has he perhaps made a Faustian trade-off with the soul of little Andy-or-Jenny? In the book, Rosemary Woodhouse is described as a large-hipped Midwestern girl, built for breeding, but in one of the very few deviations from page to screen, Polanski cast Farrow (once Tuesday Weld backed out) and the character clicked into perfection. Because the story is about watching the span of pregnancy as if in the nightmarish reflection of a fun-house mirror, it’s vital that Rosemary look like someone devoured by that giant belly, and tiny little Mia in her yellow sun-dresses with the face of a ghoul poking out fit the bill, and then some. But even beyond the physical perfection of the casting, Farrow nails every note of paranoia, and as we watch her flail about under the arms of all those she’s trusted as they drug her into unconsciousness, we truly know what helplessness is.


Well that was fun/painful. And if you want to see who just missed the cut, you can head over to MNPP where I spit out Ten More Lovely Ladies (Wah-ah-ah!) that are also worth their weight in carnage.
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Sundance Reviews @ Zoom-In

Ah, the magic of screeners.

I haven't been to the Sundance Film Festival since 1998 (gulp) when I lived in Utah (double gulp) but I'll be contributing a few reviews to Zoom-In's extensive coverage. My favorite of the the few I was able to see is the documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired but, then again, I am partial to Hollywood-specific subject matter. Three of my reviews are now up for the documentaries Secrecy (on goverment control), Anvil! The Story of Anvil (a heavy metal documentary. It was time warp disorienting for me -- the most exposure I've had to headbanging since the 1980s) and the aforementioned Roman Polanski doc.

Keep an eye out for a couple more this week.
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Blogosphere Multiplex: Kim Morgan, Sunset Gun

It was high time to have another writer-to-writer chat. There are days in which Kim Morgan wants to be Tuesday Weld. There are days in which I want to be Kim Morgan. Her fine movie prose can be found at Sunset Gun and at MSN's Movie Filter and you may have even seen her on your television sitting in for Roger Ebert once on Ebert & Roeper. Chase any of the links in this article to some of her pieces. We're jumping right in since Kim has a lot to say about cinephilia, actress worship, classic films --I know my rental queue is already reordered after speaking to her....

10+ Questions with Kim Morgan of Sunset Gun

Nathaniel: How often do you go to the movies and/or watch at home?

Kim: If I'm out of a shut-in spell, I go to the movies about once a week. If there's a great film series going on or screenings I have to attend, more. As for in home viewing...I think (of late anyway, I've been watching movies like crazy) I average three movies a day, sometimes four. If I get anything that says "Film Noir Box Set" or "Women in Peril" I'm in trouble. And I always re-watch a movie I’ve seen a million times before I go to sleep. I go through phases. I used to watch Marnie constantly. And All the President's Men. And then I went through this They Shoot Horses, Don't They? obsession. Baby Doll was another. I'd wake up with Karl Malden screaming "Baby Dooolll" in a continual brain loop. I think that's slightly healthier than Gig Young's depressing, mocking "Yowza, yowza, yowza."

Nathaniel: I can't fall asleep if a movie is on myself (i need pitch black and silence... so fussy) but i envy you. ... well, not the Gig Young or Karl Malden hauntings.

Kim: I recently spent time in the desert and became reacquainted with darkness, silence and deep sleep so I really should change my habits. But then I live right off Hollywood Blvd. so it's never exactly quiet.

Nathaniel: Do you dream about movies too?

Kim: Unless the movie is bleeding into my sleep, I don't think I've ever had a dream about a specific movie. But since I always take a movie to bed, I'm not so sure. Maybe I'm never getting proper REM sleep. I have had two dreams about Gene Hackman though, those were good dreams. I wish John Garfield would find his way into my slumber.


Nathaniel: When and how did you first discover your cinephilia?

Kim: In terms of cinephelia, probably when I was seven-years-old and saw High Sierra on TV. I had to see every Humphrey Bogart movie after that. I also kept a journal listing actors, directors and movies (old and current) I liked. Oh god, and when I saw Rebel Without
a Cause at a revival showing, not only was I knocked out by seeing all those colors and angles and chicken races on the big screen but I had to find that red jacket James Dean wore. I wore that red coat all through middle school. I wish I still had that jacket.

Nathaniel: I think a lot of movie obsessives wait patiently (or im) for movies that remind them of those initial heady all enveloping thrills. Any recent movies or movie objects trip your switch in this way?

Kim: Whenever I see a movie I love on the big screen for the first time, it’s incredibly thrilling. Like when I saw Baby Face at UCLA a few years back or Cisco Pike at the American Cinemateque or nearly everything at the Noir Fest (The Crimson Kimono and Pickup on South
Street writ large? Watching close-ups the way Samuel Fuller intended? Richard Widmark and Jean Peters’ faces when Widmark’s lifting that microfilm from her purse? Chills). When I first saw Vertigo in re-release – I was in a state of total bliss. I wanted to pull a Mia Farrow Purple Rose of Cairo and step into the screen (though I don’t know if I’d want Jimmy Stewart following me outside and telling me how to do my hair. Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I’d want Jimmy Stewart following me around and dressing me in crisp grey suits).

As per current films, I was nutty over I Heart Huckabees (if that counts as current). I went to that movie over and over and over again. It wasn’t just that it was brilliant, or that it merged some of my favorite things in the world: perfectly timed screwball comedy, existential philosophy and Lily Tomlin, but it was gorgeously filmed and scored in this bittersweet, off kilter way that got me in all these mysterious places. Zodiac, Bug and The Darjeeling Limited were also on that level. And I want that train car in Darjeeling. I’ve taken two cross country train trips this year in a sleeper car but to have a car that detailed and that beautiful, well, is it even possible? What other movie items have I recently coveted? More from Darjeeling, I want Adrien Brody’s sunglasses. I want the Dodge Charger from Death Proof. And I want any dinner Samuel Jackson cooks for Christina Ricci in Black Snake Moan.

Nathaniel: Hallelujah and amen. Listening to you I felt like I was in a revival tent just then. I believe! ...in the cinema.

Any thoughts on why it's such a challenge to get the industry or the public or even young film fans more interested in the classics? Why do you suppose film culture is so narrowly focused on the now?

Kim: Actually, I think it’s a pretty good time for classic film lovers. There’s some lovely restored pictures being released, things we’ve never seen on DVD (like Barbara Stanwyck and Ralph Meeker in the great John Sturges picture Jeopardy), there’s lots of film discussion, especially online, and obviously Hollywood, usually to their folly, looks to classics for re-makes. Like Michael Bay’s ridiculous idea to re-make The Birds. Ugh. Why is Naomi Watts agreeing to do that? But you are right -- living in Los Angeles, I’m amazed by how many people working in the film industry have either no interest or very little knowledge about older, classic cinema. There are exceptions of course, and there are those with a base knowledge, but it’s really depressing. I’ve met a few film majors turned “filmmakers” who’ve seen nearly nothing. They think watching Garden State is the kind of inspiration they need to make their first movie over say, I don’t know…the early work of Polanski (which every aspiring filmmaker should watch, in my opinion).


And kids, well, I don’t know what to do about kids these days. All the teenagers who went to Saw IV – go see Saw, but in addition to that, I really wish they’d watch Eyes Without A Face. Just observe how truly horrifying and weirdly poetic it is when you watch a face being ripped off (and in French). That might pique their interest. That, and anything with a young Ann-Margret. Ann-Margret in The Swinger? Or Kitten With a Whip? What kid could resist that? And it might lead them to Carnal Knowledge. And if Lindsay Lohan can watch all of Ann-Margret’s oeuvre (with all of her shit to deal with), I think other young ones can follow suit. Maybe then Fox will finally release The Pleasure Seekers on DVD.

Nathaniel: Good for you for avoiding my negativity. My brain got stuck there once I realized how many Montgomery Clift performances were getting hard to find.

Kim: Wait, you're right about that. There's so many movies not on DVD it's sickening.

Nathaniel: Popcorn or Candy?

Kim: I'll stay positive and say popcorn. Popcorn without a question.

Nathaniel: On Sunset Gun you seem to have no aversion to lists. I'm not going to torture you with something huge like a top ten that would make a big article on your on blog. But humor us a little. Name your favorite film, director, actor, and actress ... or if you're feeling really generous two for each (one classic, one modern)

Kim: Oh, you are trying to torture me here. I don't know if I can answer that! Hmm…well I just re-watched Bring Me the Head Of Alfredo Garcia, so at this very moment it would be Sam Peckinpah and Isela Vega, but then she’s made all the more powerful with wily Warren Oates at her side. (I have an enormous crush on Warren Oates which I’ve talked about frequently, probably too much.)

<-- Kim with Tuesday Weld... I couldn't resist

Also, have you ever heard the story about Peckinpah wanting to direct the adaptation of Joan Didion's great LA novel Play It As It Lays? It eventually starred Tuesday Weld (whom I worship) and was helmed by Frank Perry and turned out to be an intriguing picture that's now very hard to see, but imagine Peckinpah dancing with Didion. Maybe that would have been absolutely perfect, I'm not sure.

But anyway...back on track here, favorite director and actress. That's immediately making me think of all the great directors of women like Sirk or Cukor or Fassbinder or Robert Aldrich for Autumn Leaves alone, an incredibly sensitive look at female loneliness. I'm currently working on an essay discussing Sam Fuller as one of cinema's great, unsung directors of the female animal, from Thelma Ritter and Jean Peters in Pickup on South Street (Ritter is stunning in that picture and I love the part because it could have just as easily been played by a man); to Constance Towers in The Naked Kiss (how many films open with a bald sexy woman beating the crap out of some guy? And then that woman becomes the heroine? And in 1964?); to the extraordinarily adult, complicated and touching way he shows Victoria Shaw fall in love with James Shigeta in The Crimson Kimono. And then there’s Stanwyck in 40 Guns, where she’s this ass-kicking, whip wielding force of freaking nature.

Did I answer the question?


Nathaniel: You probably answered it in the only way you could have. A horrible Sophie's Choice question for cinephiles.

Of today's current directors or stars who do you think is doing the most interesting work --stuff we might still be talking about in years to come? Or, if you'd care to conjecture... who do you believe could really kick it up a notch if someone gives them the right opportunity.

Kim: With actors, for me at this moment, it’s all about Josh Brolin. He’s got this rugged 1970’s thing going on – great/weird looking (my favorite type), but quirky as hell and essentially a leading man character actor. He was hammy and hilarious in Planet Terror, and then soulful and subtle (while still being funny) in No Country for Old Men, so far the best picture of the year. He reminds me of a young Nick Nolte with a little Charles Bronson and not surprisingly, his father thrown in. But he’s all his own and was at times, brilliant in the four movies he appeared in. He was finally given a chance this year and took it up quite a few notches. The guy is needed in cinema – he’s a man!

And then of course there’s Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Paul Rudd – there’s a lot of great people out there. In terms of directors there’s the obvious The Coen’s, who made a masterpiece this year (why, they haven’t received an Oscar for anything other than the screenplay to Fargo further shows how stupid the Academy is), Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson – I think the term classic is used too soon for movies these days though. I might sound like a bitter, chain-smoking, 90-year-old motion picture actress but, it used to take some time for a picture to become a classic. I was just reading something that called The Polar Express a classic. Um, no. I think it’s interesting to speculate which pictures might become later classics – like all of the movies in Shane Black’s oeuvre (as both writer and director) – The Last Boy Scout, The Long Kiss Goodnight and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.

Who else? I love the direction Gus Van San has taken – call me an aesthetic whore but I get chills just looking at the colors in Elephant or the way he follows the back of Michael Pitt’s head in Last Days. And unlike the detractors who think it’s so much arty, Bela Tarr posturing, the pictures really move me (especially Elephant). And I actually liked Gerry – I love a movie in which the sound of crunching rocks sends viewers states of apoplectic hysteria. I also think Gaspar Noe is savagely brilliant – both I Stand Alone and Irreversible – I wish he’d make other movie. God, I’m practically hyperventilating here. I didn’t even discuss The Rock, as in Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson – I love him. He’s someone who, if given the right part could be absolutely brilliant. Seriously.

Nathaniel: I share the Brolin enthusiasm. At least as far as 2007 is concerned. I met him recently and I'm being totally presumptious here assuming this but I got the impression that he was pretty giddy about the work he's done this year. And justifiably so I should add.

If you ran Hollywood, name three things you'd immediately do.

Kim: Oh God, there's more than three things. But off the top of my head I would, come to an agreement with the writers. Lower ticket prices. And...require that all working in the business watch at least two classic movies a month -- and read a classic piece of literature. Except Beowulf.

Nathaniel: Hee. OK, last question.

They make a movie of your life. Who stars. directs. What's it called. Rating. Tagline? GO!

Kim: Jesus! No, not Jesus, the movie (exclamation point), Jesus Christ this is a tough one. Err…for some reason I immediately thought of Angel Dusted starring Jean Stapleton, but that’s not quite right. Then there’s the other PCP movie where Helen Hunt jumps out of window, Desperate Lives – PCP movies have great titles. OK, uh…I’m going to have to go with the old Susan Hayward drunk movie for title alone, Smash Up: The Story of a Woman with the tagline from that other harrowing Hayward booze-fest, I'll Cry Tomorrow: “Filmed on location; inside a woman’s soul.” It’s my movie so Warren Oates and Lee Van Cleef have to appear. Roman Polanski directs. I want this to be good, so Tuesday Weld stars, of course. I guess I better start drinking...

Nathaniel: Thanks again Kim for your illuminatingly thorough and movie drunk answers. Just the way we like 'em.

Readers, I hope you'll check out Sunset Gun if you aren't already a fan. And add some of these well-loved movies to your rental queue. I know I'm delinquent in getting around to 40 Guns and Pickup on South Street and especially Tuesday Weld's early filmography.