Cinematic Soldiers for Veteran's Day

Robert here. For many of us being a soldier is an experience we'll only get vicariously courtesy of the movies.  In honor of Veteran's Day, I thought I'd share some of my favorite portrayals of American soldiers.  They aren't always the most famous actors or the biggest roles, but they've made impressions.  If you've not seen any of the particular films listed and don't want to know who lives or dies, you may want to skip to the next entry.

General George S. Patton played by George C. Scott in Patton (1970)

Starting off with a big one.  Patton is such a towering figure in American History and Scott's Oscar winning portrayal gives us an understanding of the man who often found himself caught in a place between his own talents and the stern hand he felt was needed and the more careful policies of those he served.

Steven Pushkov played by John Savage in The Deer Hunter (1978)

As the sense of patriotism imbued by World War II films made way for the cynicism of the Vietnam era characters like Steven whose great sacrifice seemed to leave no echo or purpose became more and more common.  There's something unspoken and tragic about not only Savage's portrayal of a newlywed filled with a sense of duty only to have his life change forever, but the fact that his story is so common it doesn't even warrant more than a tertiary plot line.

Homer Parrish played by Harrold Russell in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

One of the many successes of The Best Years of Our Lives was its ability to illuminate the lasting scars of even what was considered the most just of wars.  Primary to this success was Russell's portrayal of Homer Parrish.  It's the type of performance that makes you feel every struggle and frustration of a man's life as you come to a greater understanding of someone other than yourself and feel thankful that the film will be around for posterity so that others may understand.

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BPFTOI: Driving Through the Best Years of Miss Daisy's Lives

"Best Pictures From the Outside In" is back. But, oh fiddle, because the series is so infrequent we have to keep explaining it. It's a joint production between Mike at Goatdog's Blog, Nick at Nick's Flick Picks and Nathaniel at The Film Experience. We began in 2008 pairing the most recent winner No Country For Old Men with the first winner Wings and we've been working our way inward ever since from both ends of the Oscar chronology. Get it? Got it? Good. We've now reached 1946 vs. 1989.

 These men have been through enough Daisy. Let Hoke take the wheel!

NATHANIEL: Just when you get used to things a certain way...

Nothing is more certain in life than change so it's something of a human mystery as to why we're always so surprised or discomforted by it. In the Oscar winners The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and Driving Miss Daisy (1989), we have four protagonists who are dealing with it from the comforts and, this is a fine point, new discomforts of their own homes. When I say "dealing with it" I sometimes mean not dealing with it all. It's a testament to this double feature that there's quite a lot of truth in the coping mechanisms presented, up to and including the coping mechanism of not coping. Sometimes we all just need a little time.

(Oscar sometimes needs a lot of time, which is why he likes to reward social issues movies like Daisy that take place in the rearview mirror.)

Since I mentioned four protagonists, allow me to introduce them. I'm referring to the three World War II veterans Al (Fredric March), Fred (Dana Andrews) and Homer (Harold Russell) who are returning to the homefront in The Best Years of Our Lives and the widowed Jewess (Jessica Tandy) of Driving Miss Daisy who is holed up in her estate when she's suddenly deemed unfit to drive. I stop at four because, Morgan Freeman's Lead Actor nomination aside, I can't buy Miss Daisy's chauffeur as anything like a fifth protagonist. Though he's quite literally driving, he's incongruously but a passenger.

Miss Daisy wants Hoke to drive at the speed of walking but I want the both of you to answer the following question like you've got a lead foot and somewhere else to be. (Let's just get it out of the way and drive on). How offensive (or not) did you find Hoke and/or the movie's complete lack of interest in his story and how much of that was mitigated by the entertainments of Grumpy Old Woman?

MIKE: It's not just uninterested in Hoke's story, it's uninterested in the entire story of the black freedom movement in the three decades after World War II. The only mention we get of anything approaching the Civil Rights Movement is a 1966 speech by Martin Luther King, more than an hour into the film. The only racist violence we hear about is the bombing of a Jewish synagogue. The only racist encounter we see occurs on a trip to Alabama --so I guess Atlanta in the 1960s was a little model of cooperation, as long as the help stayed in the kitchen and didn't grumble under their breaths too much. But there was a TV in that kitchen--surely SOMEONE saw SOMETHING going on that poked a teensy hole in the "slow and steady evens the races" model this film is pushing. And that ending--"You're my best friend, Hoke"--is one of the few times you'll ever see me moved to praise the recent Best Picture winner Crash, because I sort of think Crash knew how ridiculous it was when Sandra Bullock says the same thing to her beleaguered housekeeper. But here in Miss Daisyland, there's no such thing as self-examination. Meanwhile, out in the world, while the Academy was praising carefully crafted, Old Left films about gradual social change, Spike Lee was tossing garbage cans through windows trying to get people's attention. The Academy noticed, of course--the white dude in Do the Right Thing got a Supporting Actor nomination. This film, and this window into the Academy's soul, both make me sick.

 Hollywood Race Relations: Sincere or Ridiculous?

NICK: That's a tough act to follow, so my only option is to surprise even myself by at least playing devil's advocate for Driving Miss Daisy. Just to be clear, I don't think it's a good movie, and along with Field of Dreams and Dead Poets Society, it serves as proof that AMPAS somehow Rip Van Winkle'd its way through one of the stronger years for commercial film in the 1980s. (Then again, the directors and the actors and the writers and the nominators in almost every single category had better ideas than the high-fructose consensus that emerged in Best Picture, so maybe 1989 just proves the liabilities of how the Best Picture slate is determined.) Daisy's images are almost unrelievedly similar and boring. The editor often falls asleep. The score gets hilariously bombastic and misused after that pleasingly shuffle-along title melody. The biggest problem for me is that the script and the direction seem so damned tentative about pressing further into almost any of the story ideas or thematic issues it raises.

But I have to say, on that score, the script doesn't seem inclined to poke around Miss Daisy's backstory or the dilemmas of being Jewish in mid-century Atlanta any more than it wants to poke around Hoke's past or his private life. I don't think she's any more of a "protagonist" than he is, really. When the movie clicks at all - and it does for me, just a little bit, in its closing scenes - it's because I actually do think it hints at the thinness of the bond between these characters, who never know each other very fully even as they gradually feel warmer to each other or get more involved in each other's lives. Daisy's "You're my best friend" is, after all, uttered amid a bout of dementia, and Freeman doesn't imply that Hoke agrees here at all. The golden close-up on their clasped hands is a bit much. But almost immediately Daisy cuts to a very dark long-shot unlike almost anything else in the movie, which makes Daisy herself and this plaintive exchange both look awfully feeble and cold.

NATHANIEL: Well, when your only other option for Best Friendship is your obtuse son with the wandering suthehn accent and your silent housekeeper, isn't chatty Hoke a good option? At least he'll laugh at your jokes.

NICK:  That generous sense of humor helps this movie a lot. It's one of the hundred or so ways in which Freeman manages to bat back at the cloying and insulting potentials in this script and make Hoke (for me) an intriguing, legitimate character. In terms of what Mike pointed out, I do also appreciate that quick, earlier moment when he rebuked Daisy's idea that race relations were "totally changing" in the era of King.

MIKE:  I totally agree that there should be more to this discussion than just DMD's racial politics, but I keep getting dragged back--Hoke's sense of humor reminds me of the skit in the middle of Public Enemy's "Burn Hollywood Burn" about the casting director looking for a black actor willing to play a "controversial" character (a butler who chuckles under his breath). But you were saying.

NICK: I do agree it's demented to vote this Best Picture, and a particular slap in the face in the year of Do the Right Thing (or Crimes and Misdemeanors, or When Harry Met Sally..., or Roger & Me). But I think the movie finally shows at least some sobriety and tact about exactly what kind of relationship these two have. I don't think Daisy does a very good job even at being the basically safe movie it is, but I don't know that it's fair to ask it to be Do the Right Thing, either. I'm much more annoyed by movies of this era like Mississippi Burning, which styles itself as exactly the kind of bold, historically minded, race-focused protest picture you want Daisy to be and actually distorts the record and omits black perspectives even more than Daisy does.

 "Well, I'll be. We got 9 nominations and 4 Oscars! Do The Right Thing went 0 for 2"
That Hoke... such a kidder. Wait, that was a joke, right? That didn't actu ---oh god.

NATHANIEL: I'd actually love to excuse the Academy's love of this whole mini genre of minority struggle narratives coopted to tell stories of tolerant white people (see also the previous Best Picture's episode!) as dementia. At least then, they'd have an excuse. But it's a wider problem than just Oscar taste level. Critics, media and audiences tend to embrace these films in large numbers, too.

MIKE:  OK, off the topic of racial politics, there are some things I like about this film. That snappy little jingle that pops up in the score when it's not being bombastic is tops for me. I think I like Hoke, mostly because of the gravitas Freeman brings to the character, which keeps him from drowning in the script. The glowing cinematography got old, but there's some darkness that verges on the wildly experimental, given the film's overall conservativeness: that weird "oh my god look at all our reflections in the mirror" bit during Tandy's first "spell" seems like it's dropped in from a different film, but the long, dark shot at the end that Nick mentioned is a sobering way to close things. And I sort of like Dan Aykroyd, despite the wandering accent, for his genial longsufferingness. As for Jessica Tandy, I couldn't really separate her performance from the film: it seemed like one of those "oh no this old lady's gonna die soon" awards that happened a few times (some deserved, some not) in the 1980s.

NATHANIEL: You know how difficult it is for me to praise Jessica Tandy here (given the Oscar tragedy that played out... that unspeakable tragedy that I'm always speaking about) but I do think she does fairly good work with the innocuous material. Not Oscar nomination worthy good but good all the same. I like that you can see cracks growing in her "I'm not prejudice" mantra. She's not exactly self aware but she's not exactly not either and you can see that this annoys her more than it moves her towards actual change or self examination. That feels, to me, like a cool acknowledgement of the way people often process their own failings.

And this movie can take any tiny cold snap anyone can gift it with. The cinematography was so golden soft that I felt it was constantly trying to tuck me in for bed with a very warm blanket or roll me right up into a papoose so that I'd never have to feel anything uncomfortable or chilly ever again.

But I like the chill since it helps me appreciate the warmth.

War heroes in the round: The Airman, The Soldier and The Sailor return home.

Speaking of which, how about the versatile cinematography and shot composition in The Best Years of Our Lives? I swear to god... it was like entire miniature movies in every scene. Warmth and chill and other glorious complements everywhere I looked.

NICK:  Totally! The approach to lensing, shot structure, and editing in The Best Years of Our Lives is just so inspiring. I remember being not prepared at all when I first saw the movie, because I wasn't used to looking for technical virtuosity or intense formal variety in projects that look on the surface like unpretentious domestic soapers. This is the kind of movie that Hollywood so often shoots so boringly--relying entirely on actors to drive home all the emotional beats in the script, as though trying to convey feeling through focus, camera movement, lighting contrasts, or whatever would somehow undercut those emotions. Which is funny, because just within this series, William Wyler's own Mrs. Miniver seems like a good example (as, frankly, does Driving Miss Daisy) of exactly that sort of punch-pulling movie. Still within this series, though it's nothing like The Best Years of Our Lives, American Beauty was another example that if you explore middle-class domesticity with formal flair and visual invention, the ticket-buying populace really can get excited about it.

 William Wyler in the 1940s. Did any director ever have a decade this good?
6 Features | 2 Best Pic & Dir. Winners | 3 Best Pic & Dir. Nominees |
1940s Haul for Wyler Features: 47 nominations | 18 wins | 1 Honorary

I don't absolutely adore Best Years the way I did on first pass, but if you compare it to the chilly, self-conscious formalism of Wyler's Little Foxes in '41 or the unambitious warmth of Mrs. Miniver in '42, it's just amazing that he's able to rifle through his entire bag of technical gambits and still make the Derrys and the Stephensons and the Camerons and the Parrishes at least as dear to us as the Minivers were. More so, really.

MIKE:  I'm with you guys 100%, except the part where Nick doesn't absolutely adore Best Years like he did on first pass, because I think I love it even more this time around. It vaults into my handful of best Best Picture winners ever (which might seem like damning with faint praise). What jumped out to me most this time around was Gregg Toland's use of deep focus, which he had knocked out of the park a few years earlier in Citizen Kane. He uses it with such versatility here, and it's amazing how many different things it can do depending on the context of the scene. My two favorites were (1) the barroom scene where Harold Russell and Hoagy Carmichael were playing the piano in the foreground, Fredric March was nervously in the middle ground, turning from the piano to the far, far distant background where Dana Andrews is giving Teresa Wright the heave-ho via telephone. It's like there's a million miles between them! And (2) the wedding scene (which still makes me cry) with Andrews's face in the foreground, the happy couple in the middle, and an angelic-looking Wright in the background. Here, the focus pulls everyone together, emphasizing their closeness.

One filmmaking technique = Two entirely different feelings.

And I love your "unpretentious domestic soaper" line, Nick, because the film does feel episodic. You could "tune in" for a couple of scenes and then go do your laundry, then come back and watch a different section of the movie. Not many films feel like they can work as a whole or as bite-sized, but still self-contained, chunks. And even though it's following more than a half-dozen characters, it manages to make them more fully formed than Daisy did with three. (And the extended running time only partly explains that.) Who's your favorite? Mine is Dana Andrews's Fred, who uses Andrews's unique bruised masculinity better than any of his other performances.

NATHANIEL: Hear hear on Dana Andrews. His performance felt like a marvel of internal distress signals to me... which made his inappropriate romance with Teresa Wright so relatable; she was tuned to his frequency. Her erotic attachment to him is not as simple as "I can save him" but that element is definitely there. Fortunately, despite all the potential cliches this team is working with I feel like they just nail down the core truths of certain familiar tropes with such precision and force. One scene that really knocked me over with its expressiveness in both performance and direction -- all the filmmaking tools Nick mentioned -- was Dana's solo moment in the cockpit where he lets himself access the war memories he's been keeping at bay. I found it to be such a beautifully judged emotional climax but used as transition into the last sequences where the storylines thread back together for the wedding.

 This cockpit has seen heavy fire; this pilot is all burned out.

You know, I think today's audiences (and I'd include myself here) are missing out whenever they dismiss earlier entertainments as "simpler times". Just because the movies didn't have body counts, profanity or sex scenes, doesn't mean they weren't extremely adult in tone. In fact, it's tough for me to even imagine a modern war drama delving this deep into both interpersonal connections and abcesses. You mentioned the movie's episodic nature and maybe that's why it plays out with such modernity to me. I felt like I was watching a lost Emmy-winning series from HBO or AMC had either been around in 1946. There are just so many through lines and longform dramatic beats in the screenplay.

My least favorite of the film's three threads is Harold Russell's. It wasn't because his scenes weren't moving so much as they didn't transcend their romantic drama / war film templates as well as the other two stories did. Aside from Dana Andrews, my favorite star turn belonged to Myrna Loy. She works absolute magic in her wifely duties both to Fredric March and to the picture itself, keeping so many scenes grounded with pragmatism, patience and a lived-in resiliency. Loy gives you a real sense of both what her character was like as a wife before the war and how the war changed her even from the peaceful homefront. But despite her realistically portrayed wariness and annoyance at some of the life changes on the way, she's such a comforting grounded presence that you know her husband (and the larger movie) will be able to work through his post-traumatic stress issues and readjust as best he possibly can to civilian life.

NICK:  Agreed on Andrews: so great at charting implosive feelings, right before that became the sole province of neurotic Method tics. Agreed on Loy, whose taking-in-stride of her husband's embarrassing bender is played so simply, but is so modulated and complex. I like Wright slightly less than these two, but I like her for all the reasons Nathaniel cites. That none of these three got Oscar noms despite the juggernaut status of the film is too bad. I'm sure Andrews is too "quiet" for AMPAS tastes, and I wonder if the studio deferred to March's star power by putting all their push behind him. There could well have been category confusion about the women, but honestly. They nominated Jennifer Jones for playing a tempestuous Tex-Mex and Flora Robson for glowering in blackface. Blackface!

Fredric March is one of my favorite actors, and I have plenty of glowing things to say about him, too. I'll leave myself to one, since it overlaps with Wyler's staging idea: the famous moment when he returns home and each family member discovers his presence, one by one. Everyone's great in this scene, which uses depth of field so conspicuously you can feel the "staginess" despite the marvelous emotion that still pours out of this reunion. And I think March brilliantly accounts for some of the "staged" quality of the filmmaking into his psychological profile of the character. Al clearly likes the idea of a Heartwarming Reunion, and it's not as though he's at all insincere. But as poignant as the moment is, you see how quickly he realizes he's not ready for all this, and kind of wants to be left alone. Tearful embraces are great, but they don't tell the whole truth.

 We've got choreography! A beautifully "staged" family reunion.

I don't think all of Wyler's ideas work so perfectly or integrate themselves so well. If there's anything to be said against the movie for me, it's that you almost hear Wyler and his team figuring out what nifty lensing or staging conceit they want to try out now. It's like the directing version of Kael's notorious anti-Streep comment: click, click, click... And, way too many times, the "big idea" they bring to Harold Russell's scenes is, "Let's make the audience patiently watch while he does something in real time that you'd imagine a man with no hands could not do."

Still, the film is so obviously humane and, in ways that count, emotionally restrained enough that it never feels exploitative of Russell, or of anyone else. And I totally agree that the whole movie is a remarkably rangy, sobering, and novelistic experience. I second (or third?) every lovely thing you guys have said about it.

NATHANIEL: Novelistic is right which is why this movie could easily provoke a week's worth of conversation... but we have to draw the line somewhere.

Am I correct in assuming we all think the Homer (Harold Russell) third is the film's least effective? As someone who generally distrusts sentiment in movies (I often feel like it amounts to emotional pornography, all mechanics with manufactured emotions) I was surprised how well these scenes did work for me. And I think it's for the reasons you've stated. Yes, it's a little obvious but I admire that Wyler is willing to put us in an uncomfortable place as an audience on his way to more traditional movie warmth. More than once the audience awkwardly shares the wary emotional POV of Homer's fiance's parents. We're forced to gawk and even though our hearts are telling us this is an incompassionate place to be, you do have to wonder if you'd want that caretaker life for your daughter.

Just discussing this movie makes me want to dive back in right now. It totally earns its sentiment and that's a rare achievement.

MIKE:  Looking back over fifty years, Harold Russell’s story is the least effective, for the reasons Nick mentioned—the goal here was to have a heart-to-heart with American audiences who were going to have to get used to seeing that kind of thing, and to remind them of the sacrifices people made in the war. It’s certainly part of the overall message of the film, that war is not necessarily glorious, it messes people up both physically and emotionally, and it might make your husband/boyfriend/son seem like a stranger. But we don’t need that patient semi-lecture today; we’ve seen Platoon and Saving Private Ryan and countless other films that take that as a given. So Russell’s story is where the film seems too message-y (although I absolutely LOVE how Toland shoots his house), and it lacks the acting firepower of the other storylines, and it is too occupied with that “this is how you take off your pants if you don’t have hands” pseudo-documentary feel. But Russell’s story gave us those wonderful scenes in Hoagy Carmichael’s bar, which rank among my favorites in the movie. So there you go.

 You hardly recognize them. They hardly recognize themselves.

The absence of that “we have some tough things to tell you” attitude was what irked me the most about Driving Miss Daisy, which wanted it both ways—it’s a loving paean to a way of life that’s long since disappeared, but it’s also a (spineless) criticism of that way of life. Best Years shows us that you can demonstrate your love for small-town America while still taking it firmly to task for being bigoted, or unthinking, or unappreciative. To do it mostly without preaching is a little miracle.

Of course, next time around we’ll have preaching up to our armpits, as Elia Kazan and company grab us by the scruffs of our neck and teach us a lesson about anti-Semitism in Gentleman’s Agreement; it will
be paired with one of the weirdest Best Picture choices of all time, Rain Man, and I can only imagine how we’ll pine for the warmth and complexity of Best Years of Our Lives as we give each other those baffled but affectionate looks that Morgan Freeman kept giving Jessica Tandy. Oscars. There’s lots of them.

 Miss Daisy stubbornly insists on walking to the video store to rent Rain
Man and Gentleman's Agreement. She doesn't know from Netflix.

NATHANIEL: Readers, back to you. Chime in!

for a complete index of this series thus far, click here.

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Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Se7en (1995)

In this film-loving series we look at movies from all over the cinematic time line and in each genre pool to select a shot that particularly resonates with us, be it for aesthetic, thematic or for simply eye candy reasons.

This week we look back at David Fincher's breakthrough hit, Se7en (1995) which celebrates its 15th anniversary today. It happens to be my favorite serial killer picture ever, though I should note that its only real competition is Silence of the Lambs since this is an overstuffed genre with few actual classics.

Se7en's opening credits were an instant classic of the form and unfortunately so duplicated thereafter that the jarring edits, mental/visual derangements and perfect rock track probably feel like clichés to young viewers. But Se7en absolutely unnerved when it hit in 1995. My favorite shot comes about 80 minutes in when Detective Mills (Brad Pitt) and Detective Lt. Somerset (Morgan Freeman) finally discover John Doe's (Kevin Spacey) lair, the very place those opening credits would call home sweet sick home. After some creative corner-cutting search warrant business, begin to investigate its secrets.


Se7en, like all of David Fincher's work, is meticulously designed and this one in particular is just gorgeously shot. I consider it cinematographer Darius Khondji's best feature work and his omission from the Oscar line up that year was a real shame. That's not actually a split screen. Fincher and Khondji have made awesome use of the multi-room apartment set and smartly blocked the actors. For a brief moment before the detectives separate and cross cutting and horrible discoveries begin, we see them both searching different spaces simultaneously. There's multiple light sources and pockets of saturated color, Somerset's room has cool colors and Mills hallway is hot, rather like the personalities that make up this fractious partnership. But despite multiple lights, colors and faux split screen, the image is never muddied or chaotic, just darkly foreboding and dynamically alive both literally (the movement of the flashlight) and figuratively (what horrors lurk in these rooms?). In this shot, Mills and Somerset are almost shining their flashlights at each other, but as always they're seeing things differently.

Incidentally this is my favorite Brad Pitt performance outside of Fight Club. It's full of the kind of masculine anguish and wounded bird magnetism that's Leonardo DiCaprio's bread and butter these days. Brad went the extra mile... that broken left wing is his own.


6 More Deadly Sinners. That Makes Se7en

• Brown Okinawa... looks at how attached Detective Somerset is to his job.
• Serious Film... appreciates the craftsmanship and thinks Se7en lingers.
• El Fanatico... gets creative like John Doe's books. Check out all these shot groupings.
• Stale Popcorn... chooses seven deadly shots. Well, one is life-affirming.
• Sketchy Details... absolves the detectives of their sins.
• Plakatay... lives in the shadows.
  

 Other Films in This Series

• Angels in America (2003)
• X-Men (2000)
• Showgirls (1995)
• Bring It On (2000)
• Black Narcissus (1946)
• A Face in the Crowd (1957)
• Pandora's Box (1929)
• Requiem for a Dream (2000)

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The Master Is Dead! Long Live The Master

.

JA from MNPP here. In case you missed the news, it seems that Paul Thomas Anderson's next film The Master - which was to star Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the leader of a new Scientology-like religion in the 50s with Jeremy Renner as his disciple and Reese Witherspoon as his wife - has turned into a pillar of salt and gone poof. It's E-meter done gone and flat-lined. I'm sure it supposedly being a thinly-veiled critique of a religion intertwined with a large portion of the Hollywood establishment had nothing whatsoever to putting a pox on PTA's house, I am sure. Sure. Why not.

Anyway this is depressing news for those of us that worship upon the altar of Paul Thomas Anderson. I promised him my first born and all I get are empty promises! It's enough to make you not believe in a higher directing power after all. My faith in movie-making is shaken! I am having a crisis of cinematic conscience! To quote a well-known philosopher renowned for his wise words and his hammer pants, what we need to do is pray. But who does one aim this sort of prayer towards? Christian God is too busy editing all the boobs out of movies to get them down to PG-13. Muhammad doesn't show his face at the cinema. And unless you're willing to sing and dance it Bollywood-style Buddha doesn't take movie requests. Who is the god of movies? Is it Morgan Freeman too?

..Can you hear me, Morgan Freeman? It's me, JA.
.

In all seriousness, if this movie is indeed dead as a dead dormouse, what should PTA turn his attentions to next? Something to get the tweens with their sexting and such on-board could definitely raise his stock I think. Maybe a Love Story 2010 with Zac Efron and his girlfriend. I know, he could remake Boogie Nights and have Katherine Heigl play Amber Waves! It's genius. Fifty million dollar opening weekend in the bag!
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Actors and Actresses: Stats, Careers and Trivia

Now that we have our lucky twenty (no double dippers this year) in those twenty most coveted positions for movie actors, let's do a little rundown. We'll go factual and then opinionated.


most frequently honored: Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia) with 16 nominations and 2 wins. She's been nominated for 37% of her screen appearances.
least frequently honored: Captain Von Trapp himself, Christopher Plummer (The Last Station). This is his first nomination from 51 years on the silver screen.
widest stretch of honors: Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart) received the first of his five nominations way back in the 1971 race starring in Best Picture nominee The Last Picture Show, beating Streep to her first Oscar notice by seven years.

youngest: Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air), a Leo, is 24. She's also two and a half months younger than Carey Mulligan (An Education), a Gemini.
oldest: Plummer, a Sagittarius, turned 80 this past December.
most represented star sign: rowwwwr, we have five Leos (Woody, Sandra, Helen, Anna and Vera). I guess that's not surprising given Leo's show off nature.
least represented star signs: no Aquarius, Pisces or Aries nominees
shared birthdays: George Clooney (Up in the Air) and Gabourey 'Gabby' Sidibe (Precious) were both born on May 6th. Best Actress competitors Sandra Bullock and Dame Helen Mirren share July 26th.

tallest: Morgan Freeman (Invictus) is 6' 2½"
shortest: Kendrick is 5' 1½". Teeny-tiny!!!
highest paid?: Bullock and Clooney both command around $15 million a movie last I heard. Streep and Damon are obviously well compensated, too, though exact salaries are hard to come by. What's more they fluctuate from project to project and some stars take less for more of the gross, etcetera.
lowest paid: who knows though I'm willing to bet that someone got scale. Money isn't everything... especially when the role is plum.

number of birth countries: 5. USA (most of them), England (Mirren, Mulligan & Firth) Spain (Cruz), Canada (Plummer) and Austria (Waltz). [see also: Map of the Oscar World]
most likely to appear in a Best Picture Nominee: Meryl Streep has 5 to her credit (The Hours, Out of Africa, Kramer vs. Kramer, The Deer Hunter and Julia). Runners up: (tie) Morgan Freeman (Million Dollar Baby, Shawshank Redemption, Unforgiven and Driving Miss Daisy) and George Clooney (Up in the Air, Michael Clayton, Good Night and Good Luck and The Thin Red Line) have both been in 4.
number of collective offspring: 31. La Streep (4) Freeman (4) Waltz (4) Tucci (3) Bridges (3) Mo'Nique (3) Harrelson (3) Damon (2) Firth (2) Plummer (1) Farmiga (1) Gyllenhaal (1). Clooney, Bullock and Mirren didn't share their remarkable DNA with the world.
most famous of those offspring: "Honey Bunny" herself Amanda Plummer ...and up until this moment I never made the daddy connection. Runner up: rising actress Mamie Gummer, daughter of Meryl & Don.

And some opinions...

most deserving: Mo'Nique is just smashing... and I'm not talking about television sets.
least deserving: Stanley Tucci. He's been Oscar nomination worthy before and even this year (Julie & Julia) but not for this overlabored eeeeeeeeevil turn.
most likely to get a career boost with this nom: Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)
most deserving of the plentiful "it's about damn time" nominations that were going on this season: Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air)
most likely to return again in the next year or two: Meryl Streep. Duh!... although one wonders how many more chances she'll get. She's getting the lion's share of roles for women over 55... but there's not that many of those roles to begin with. You could also make a case for Matt Damon who is almost 40 now and Oscar likes his men with some years on them. And Carey Mulligan may well be the next Oscar Default Girl if her management makes the right moves. [George Clooney & Penélope Cruz are hot-hot-hot Oscar regulars right now but Oscar tends to love movie stars passionately for short blocks of time and then move on. Will we see them again soon or is this the end of the romance for awhile?]
least likely to return: Gabby Sidibe. That's not as much of a knock as it sounds. She's great in the film and I'm so pleased she got nominated. But approximately 67% of acting nominees are never recognized a second time and there aren't that many roles for big girls.

most likely to wear something crazy: Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart)
most likely to make best-dressed lists: Penélope Cruz (Nine)
most likely to wear black: Carey Mulligan (An Education)

Can't wait to see what Vera, Maggie, Carey, Penélope and Dame Helen wear!

Want to add to or sound off about the trivia?
You know what to do.

Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress

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Jennifer Jones and the Link Parade

Pop Hangover 'Morgan Freeman Does it All' (hee!)
Victim of the Time very fun, perceptive review of Me and Orson Welles
AV Club 19 worst films of the year
Jezebel talks to Manohla Dargis, diva film critic
Hollywood Reporter's Director Watch. I haven't had time to watch this yet (Lee Daniels, Kathryn Bigelow, Peter Jackson, Jane Campion, Quentin Tarantino and Jason Reitman appear) but I can't wait. Is it good?
Sergio Leone and the... on The Blind Side. An interesting piece but unfortunately it ends up zeroing in on attacking one review that's already on the attack.

Old Hollywood "Grace doesn't allow anecdotes to happen to her"
In Contention Guy interviews Jane Campion. Yay
The Film Doctor notes on The Princess and the Frog -- I'm so nervous to see this for many of the reasons mentioned
NY Times a profile on Nancy Meyers (It's Complicated), "the most powerful female writer-director-producer currently working"
Urlesque Cookie Monster cupcakes. I bet they're as delicious as they are cute
Movies Kick Ass won't board that Sin Nombre train, already crowded with critical adulation
Cinema Blend trouble right here in Sony City (Spider-Man 4... same as it ever was)

1919-2009
Mrs Jones... an indiscreet American wife

Jennifer Jones passed away today at the age of 90. The Song of Bernadette star was one of the oldest living Oscar winners. Thankfully deHavilland, Rainer, Rooney and Fontaine still walk the earth, representing the last magical remnants of 1930s Hollywood. Three of Jones's 1950s movies, including the Montgomery Clift romance Indiscretions of an American Wife, are available for instant watch on Netflix should you wish to say a bittersweet goodbye. The Auteurs Daily collects the write-ups.

Link Pit(t)

I'll be spending most of the weekend at the movies (I hope). Posting may be light unless I am unusually speedy in the digestion of these big movie meals... which would be a first. I wish there were four of me every December (one to enjoy the holidays, one to earn money, one to see all the movies I missed and all the movies Hollywood withheld simultaneously and one to write about all of that.) Herewith some links to keep you buzzy.

Ed Norton and Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden in Fight Club (1999)

Nerve "Class of 99" This is a neat angle: How did the breakout directors of 1999 fare in the cinematic decade that followed?
Indiewire Oscar's potential Live Action Short nominees
Final Girl Have you seen this series, inspired by my own (20:07). Fun for horror fans though most of it is lost on me, I'll admit. Still I have an affinity for stopping movies at odd places so I like to look at it anyway.
Low Resolution Sandra Bullock: Human Being of the Year

DListed Brad & Angie, sculpturally speaking
New Yorker David Denby's top ten list, with an Inglourious Basterds takedown preface. I love what he says about Up in the Air and you've heard me say virtually the same thing about The Last Station (only I called "without a trace of stiffness" 'unfussy' instead)
In Contention Morgan Freeman IS Nelson Mandela. My god, here we go aga...zzzzzz. When will people finally get tired of each new biopic performance being deemed 'not an impersonation but an incarnation'. Someone says it about someone every damn year.
popbytes "the color of crazy: Brittany Murphy"
A Socialite's Life the Nine premiere in London -- I keep missing pretty things because my schedule is merciless
Movie|Line How big will the numbers for It's Complicated be? Is there no stopping Meryl's box office muscle?

Invictus yay or nay? Maybe a bit of both.

I talked to a friend who'd seen Clint Eastwood's Invictus this week. He's much more of an Clint fan than I am (I know that describes 90% of the population) but he wasn't too impressed. He sees a mixed Oscar response coming... although a big hit. He calls it "super commercial" but thinks it's rather clunky with exposition and lots of “I just showed you, but in case you didn’t get it, now I’ll TELL you” moments. Morgan Freeman's star turn he describes as "oratory and noble" and also "pretty boring". Ouch.

"Let's keep on making pictures with Clint." "Shake on it!"

Despite his reservations about the quality of Invictus he still thinks it'll sneak in as a Best Pic nominee because there’s ten slots. He capped off our conversation with the following confession

I didn’t think it was very good, but maybe I cried a couple of times...don’t judge.

Hee. Hey, I'm never judging tears in a movie. I choked up once during My Sister's Keeper and I thought it stunk. My best friend cried buckets at Casper (1995) of all things. And we were at a drive in! We still tease him about it 14 years later... but in a loving way.

Do you have faith that Oscar will want Eastwood back in a big way this year after the muted awards response last year. Or are you doubtful? Either way there's always next year. The iconic actor/director is already filming his next project Hereafter scheduled for (YOU GUESSED IT!) a December 2010 release. Matt Damon stars in that one, too.
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For Your Consideration in All Categories, INVICTUS

Clint Eastwood is coming. Hide your Oscars!


I suppose you've already checked out the trailer for Invictus in beautiful Quicktime. Soon it will be embedded everywhere in crappier looking formats. The movie, based on this true story, is about Nelson Mandela's efforts to unite a divided South Africa through rugby. The trailer and synopsis suggest that it's a two-lead film as Morgan Freeman (as Mandela) and Matt Damon (looking athletic as Francois Pienaar) work together towards making this happen. Freeman is the mastermind, Damon acts as vessel. But since Invictus is another December Eastwood Oscar lob (oops, that's a tennis term. What do they say in football?) Matt Damon will obviously be demoted to supporting for the pursuit of Oscars.

I'm not quite buying the accents they conjure for Invictus but it is only a trailer and Freeman and Damon are both hugely talented fellows. It's hard to tell about actor's voices in 150 seconds of ittybitty clips anyway. When I first saw the Amelia trailer I was nearly sold on Swank's vocal work but stretched out to 120 minutes it made me ca-razy with its strenuous affectations.

Here are the beloved stars...


It's more and more obvious that there's more community and discussion revolving around movie trailers on the web than there is on actual movies themselves. This is one of the many reasons conversation seems to die on opening weekend. So trailer madness is fitting for any Oscar discussion, unfortunately, since you know that many of the ballots are cast through a complex combination of buzz factors, hype power, the power of suggestion (sometimes literal -- like the precursor awards), industry schmoozing, the general tone of reviews... and film clips! (Yes Virginia, not every AMPAS voter watches all of their screeners, dutifully.)

Check out this random tweet about the trailer.

I think this happens more and more with trailers. Instant love. I can't say I've never experienced that. I remember falling head over heels for Milk in its 2 minute form. I mean there was no movie in sight! It was just a commercial.

Movie trailers are like frozen Buzz Concentrate. Just add water eyeballs. But, that said, it is a bit horrifying that we decide whether we love movies in their larval stage now -- we don't even wait until we get to the theater to see what's emerged from the pupa. At least that how it feels lately, buzz and hype and expectations trumping actual experience.

So I shan't say anything qualitatively about the movie (haven't seen it and a trailer is still just a trailer) except that it looks right up Oscar's alley: inspirational with an overlay of "important!" Best Picture nominee fer sure. Plus, there's the Eastwood factor. Gran Torino aside, he is, to steal from this trailer, the 'master of the Academy's fate, the captain of their soul.'

[editors note: Speaking of Clint Eastwood. The next episode of Best Pictures From the Outside In is coming up next week! "Casablanca and Unforgiven"]


And Morgan Freeman isn't without his own faithful voting block in AMPAS either. With four Oscar nominations and one win, he's pretty far up the hierarchy of the Academy's favorites. Useless trivia alert! One more winning nomination and he's actually tied with Denzel Washington as their favorite black actor of all time.

But what about you? "This trailer made me ___________" -- complete the sentence in the comments.
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2009 Oscar Predictions, Best Picture & Director

Here's something that may surprise some of you. Learning over the last month that The Human Factor, Eastwood's once Untitled Nelson Mandela Picture, was not a biopic but a sports drama of sorts with biopic ready characters (Nelson Mandela and World Cup star Francois Pienaar) did not deter my prediction that Oscar will love it.

<-- poster concept art by Raats

The inspirational sports film is a regular staple of the multiplex. Most of them come and go with nary an Oscar blip. It's kind of the ugly stepchild within the family of stories Oscar really loves, the true story period piece. I expect this is because everyone thinks of these films as a formulaic paint-by-numbers subgenre that doesn't require artistry so much as predictable story beats, swelling music and one recognizable manly star (Quaid, Washington, McConaughey... take your pick). Every once in a while, though, this overly populated genre does attract Academy eyeballs (Chariots of Fire, Seabiscuit, Hoosiers) and if there's any pairing that comes with automatic prestige cred and appealing "important!" political background, it'd have to be Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman mixed with Nelson Mandela and South Africa.

It's guesswork. Maybe it'll be too light for the Academy.

Nothing is really screaming "sure thing" this year: Public Enemies is coming out in the summer and its digitally shot (an Oscar no-no), James Cameron's Avatar might be a thrilling and revolutionary behemoth but it's also sci-fi (definitely an Oscar no-no), Green Zone has the pull of both Damon and Paul Greengrass but it's also Iraq-concerned and so far that's been a turnoff for audiences/Oscar, Shutter Island might impress audiences but will it impress Oscar (I have some doubts), The Lovely Bones is based on a beloved novel but will Jackson pad the story too much, weighing it down?, Nine is the year's starriest picture but it's based on a superior film (I'm guessing. But it's a safe sort of guess, right, Federico Fellini being > than Rob Marshall... duh!) which could easily turn people against it. Nine's Oscar prospects... gah! Its strengths are its weaknesses are its strengths. The head spins.



Theoretically all this uncertainty should make the Oscar race more interesting in 2009. At least until December when we all be begin whining that it's entirely too predictable!

For my predictions, I'm going with four high profile pictures with a nice spread of release dates and studios, plus one small wonder people seem enthused about already, An Education. The 1960s London set story is based on a biographical essay by Lynn Barber. She seems amused by the changes they've made to her life. Many others seem amused by the whole film.

PICTURE PREDICTIONS

Also Posted: best director (I'm taking a big risk here) and the index of all predictions -- you can see how well I generally do with my predictions this far in advance on this overall chart. The plan is to wrap up with the remaining techs tomorrow. But now, EASTER celebrations with friends await! Must eat green blue eggs and ham. And a Chocolate Jesus. yum yum.

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2009 Oscar Predictions, The Actors

We've chatted about the women. Now it's time for the men.

I'll start with the big omission news. I know most every Oscar pundit is predicting Daniel Day-Lewis for Nine (the Musical) but I think they're all forgetting an important and peculiar truth: DDL does not get nominated for performances that center around his romantic relationships. Even when the Academy likes the film.

Consider...

• A Room With a View (1986) 8 noms/3 wins
  
• My Beautiful Laundrette (1986) 1 nomination.
  He wasn't a known commodity in 86 but his double dip was incredibly chameleonic. And in two movies that were raved far and wide and that Oscar voters liked.
• The Last of the Mohicans (1992) 1 nom/1 win.
  Certainly one of the most bizarre Oscar snubbings ever for an entire film. It was epic, beautiful, period, popular and moving. And it got one nomination... for sound?
  
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) 2 nominations
  
• The Age of Innocence (1993) 5 noms/ 1 win
  
• The Crucible (1996) 2 nominations
  

Oscar loves Day-Lewis when he's malevolently masculine (Gangs and There Will Be Blood) or when he's starring in biopics (Left Foot, In the Name of...). But when he's romancing the ladies? "No thanks!" says the average voter. Even when the romance is a "wow" (Mohicans) or when the movie manages an acting nomination (Crucible, Innocence) they still pass. I'm not seeing it. Here are my BEST ACTOR predictions.

I generally do well at Actor predictions this early, managing 2 or 3 of the 5. Yet Best Actor was hard to suss out beyond Morgan Freeman this year. He's the only person in any category you can probably ink in already. Revered actor playing famous recognizable role + Eastwood + bio elements (though thankfully it focuses on one time period) = they will go nuts.

Supporting Actor was far more difficult. And for the obvious reasons of 'what the hell?' who is playing who? will the films be any good? In other words, we know little. So here's my stab in the dark when it comes to the men who will be recognized for boosting the appeal of movies much bigger than their roles. I'm guessing on a double nomination for Matt Damon. Why not?

I'd really love to hear your opinions for Supporting Actor because I wouldn't be surprised at all to be 100% wrong for 2009. This tends to be my worst acting category for 'year in advance' predix. I score either 1 or 2 out of 5. I've never hit 3/5 this early like I have in the other categories.

Still, if I'm right about the general field (if not the big contenders) we're going to see a lot of first time nominees this year in the supporting actor category.
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