Chaplin for £3.20

I was reading The Guardian today and spotted this article on a guy who bought a random film reel on ebay for £3.20 which turned out to be an unseen short film by Charlie Chaplin. Surely something to put on the IMDB trivia page, when it eventually gets one.

I guess one of the most famous stories is of Carl Theodor Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc turning up at a mental institution in Norway in the eighties -- I shudder to think that that particular classic could have disappeared. It does make you think though; how many lost or unseen classics are out there somewhere? Arts heritage has definitely gotten better of late but damage has been done. Let's hope there are more spectacular finds to be had.

Men of the Thirties: 1938

The Nominees Were:

Charles Boyer in Algiers
James Cagney in Angels With Dirty Faces
Robert Donat in The Citadel
Leslie Howard in Pygmalion
Spencer Tracy in Boys Town

And the Winner Was:

Spencer Tracy in Boys Town

(Spoiler Alert!)
I find this the most baffling decision of the decade. James Cagney's NYFCC-winning performance is far more interesting than any of his competitors, and he does everything asked of a Hollywood leading man i.e. have tough, masculine presence, a soft(ish) interior, and die a hero. The only missing link was the lack of a Best Picture nomination for Angels with Dirty Faces, which has its faults but is far more competent than some of the nominees (I'm looking at you, Capra and Taurog). I imagine this is the kind of decision that saw Katharine Hepburn win in 1967 and '81 and could have seen Jack Nicholson's touching but hardly worthy Warren Schmidt tie Kate's four-win record seven years ago. Cagney and Donat may have been close but both end up cigarless.

My Ratings (in order of preference):-

**** James Cagney in Angels with Dirty Faces

Akin to a bout of German expressionism James Cagney's Caligari eyes are fierce, and the strutting, plucky way that Cagney conducts himself indicates a man who means business. Angels with Dirty Faces is a deceptively light title for what becomes a rather heavy film, but it's an apt way to depict Rocky Sullivan and his band of criminal kids. Charming, cocky tearaways in a similar sense to Fagin's pickpockets in Oliver! Cagney plays his role as a semi-willing mentor (willing in the sense that it elevates his own prestige) with extravagant, streetwise fervour, beying everyone in sight to challenge his gangland superiority. Rocky doesn't have that much actual power, but you wouldn't know it.

*** Leslie Howard in Pygmalion

It's nigh-on impossible to match the overt chauvinism of Rex Harrison in pretty much everything, and Howard as Professor Henry Higgins comes across as a much less relevant part of the film. He knows that Eliza Dolittle is the showpiece of the production and gives way to her in a similar vein as he did Bette Davis in Of Human Bondage. He bounces off her well and their mini-battles are as uproariously funny here as they are in the Best Picture-winning musical adaptation.

*** Robert Donat in The Citadel

I feel sorry for Donat, who proves -- as he did in '35 -- that he is such a likeable and charming screen presence. The Citadel has promise but ends up marooning him when the ideas dissipate, and in the final act of this film Donat is utterly helpless and ineffective. Prior to that he illustrates his character's ethical dilemna readily, somewhat disguising the insipid attempts to generate drama. He carefully develops the changing perspective of Dr. Andrew towards his profession and I had actually grown attached to the character by the time the wheels started falling off.

*** Charles Boyer in Algiers

I like Algiers much more than any of the films nominated in this category, but certainly not for its acting. The tone of the film lunges violently but Boyer stays pretty much the same, and the role requires similar things of him as the previous year's Conquest. A gangster in a much different sense to Cagney he's an elusive, no-nonsense figurehead that crumbles into a songster at the sight of Hedy Lamarr (who can blame him, huh?). But Boyer captures the tragedy of a man trapped in a district, top dog in a prison, bound by limitations, much more successfully than he ever captured Napoleon's ambition.

* Spencer Tracy in Boys Town

Tracy sidles around as a mentor figure who, unlike Cagney's Rocky, has no flaws to speak of. Father Flanagan is at the head of Boys Town's admirable but lightweight advertisement for juvenile reform, and has to sort out the restlessness of Mickey Rooney et al. He does this through the occasional lecture, which Tracy can dole out in his sleep, and he is thoroughly incapable of contributing any grit or bite to the character. A bitter disappointment.

The Snubbed

***** Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby (& Holiday)

Not one but two classic star turns they spurned. Grant's best comes when he reacts to the ever-increasing mania going on all around him, (i.e. in Arsenic and Old Lace, possibly the finest comedic performance there's ever been). In BUB his behaviour and rationality fades in sync with this ever-maddening environment, his character eventually reduced from skepticism to acceptance in what is a rousing reversal. After all, would a man really fall in love with a girl who ransacked his wedding, lumbered him with a leopard, and single-handedly dismantled his relationship?

*** Henry Fonda in Jezebel

Another man Bette Davis swallows and spits out, but this time she doesn't have the guy quite where she wants him. Henry Fonda wouldn't say boo to a goose in many of his films and his cowardice reaches a height when he reacts to Davis's famous brazen red-dress humiliation with the trepidation of a square society Duke. Fonda is totally right for the part -- cute, investable, self-important -- but when the going gets tough the tough get going (thank you, Billy Ocean) and even though you could maybe fall in love with this guy his predictability is ultimately sad. Davis is stellar and the film ain't so much about him, but he does everything you'd ask of the character.

** Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood

This is silly fun: Flynn is such a poser, and uses his bravado to craft Robin Hood into a dastardly commodity. The film is really all a technicolour confection, strewn with velvet and laden with pretty faces. Flynn is the prettiest though, and his snarls, smirks, and come-to-bed eyes are the intoxicating essence of a hero. It works perfectly for the film, but it's limited, and that's all he has to offer.

The Missing Point

'night Mother (1986)
Directed by Tom Moore
Starring: Anne Bancroft, Sissy Spacek
Grade: C -

Nine years after Anne Bancroft could still get away with wearing a cocktail dress in Herbert Ross's The Turning Point she was into pernickety old woman territory in 'night Mother, a film adapted by Marsha Norman from her own Pullitzer Prize-winning play. Sissy Spacek completes the casting coup as Thelma's (Bancroft's) daughter Jessie, who casually informs her mother before their evening cocoa that she intends to shoot herself in the head before the night is out.

Norman wrings out the blackly comic mundanity of Jessie's approach to suicide (and existence in general) for a good half-hour before things get that heavy. Her meticulous preparation -- bags of clothes labelled with who she wants to donate them to, instructions on which pills her mother should take and when, a decade's worth of birthday presents -- detailed to generate irksome discomfort in Thelma and cynicism in the audience. Is death really as clinical a matter? 'night Mother doesn't come to any real conclusions about death (perhaps with the exception of the not-so-groundbreaking observation that it's inevitable) and is content to parade a checklist of issues that lack much depth or interest. In an attempt by her mother to assuage her daughter's morbid stance Jessie's mariage and son are discussed, but don't anchor our understanding of her and are hastily presented as outlets for empathy. If a woman's sole reason to stay alive is on the off-chance that she might get back with her ex-husband, I'd be tempted to load the gun myself.

Bancroft and Spacek go through the rigmarole of shifting their exchange from room-to-room in what are some very well-constructed scenes. Jessie manages to get through a day's worth of errands while soaking up her mother's flummoxed remonstrations and pleas, and it prevents the film's emotional turbulence from feeling as laboured as it might have. Anne Bancroft represents but a sliver of the film's faults but her often misguided histrionics do little to disguise 'night Mother's heavy reliance upon conservational quips and periodically shifting topics. Spacek fares better, her eyes at their hollowest best, generating poignancy against the odds and seeming completely synchronised with the dominant idea of Jessie as a fallen woman, graceful in defeat.

When watching 'Night Mother one is surely reminded of Ingmar Bergman's powerful Autumn Sonata, a film that creates such a rich historical overview of a troubled mother-daughter relationship through the same conversation-heavy style. Norman's script has theories but lacks real density and is disappointingly unequivocal in its discussion of mortality.

How Quickly A Year Goes By...

Live Blogging Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor: Part III

Final Ratings:-

Olly - 9/10

Lucie - 8/10

Danyl - 7/10

Joe - 6/10

Stacey - 6/10

Miss Frank - 6/10

Rikki - 6/10

Jamie - 6/10

John & Edward - 5/10

Rachel - 5/10

Lloyd - 5/10

9.58pm: Simon is right. She didn't look comfortable. She comes up with this absurdly cartoonish outburst that seems exaggerated to get votes. But whatever. They've all sang and it was a bit disappointing really. The two best, Olly and Lucie, sang first.

9.55pm: There's talk of her forgetting the words. Frankly, you've got a better chance of going through if you forget the words. She's singing a song that isn't originally Beyonce's, "At Last". Lovely pink eye shadow. She started well but is getting shaky. She may have forgot the words. At least she looked confused. It didn't blow me away. 6/10.

9.52pm: Stacey is the kind of person you'd see going into the Big Brother house. Incredibly talkative. Incredibly thick. Interminably annoying. But last week she showed a different edge to her voice that I liked. But we're going from Coldplay to Beyonce...

9.45pm: Joe Calzaghe is out of Strictly. Danni calls Jamie's version "soft", which is exactly what it wasn't. Simon calls it "fantastic" and has raved about all three of his acts this week. I get the impression that The X Factor judges have such pre-conceived, rehearsed comments for them all regardless. After a final set of advertisements Stacey will close the show with the second Beyonce song of the evening, and I'm already betting they say it was the best performance of the night.

9.42pm: Here's Jamie singing Christina Aguilera. Eh? I hope it's not "Fighter", that song annoys me. Oh, it's "Hurt". Great song. This is Jamie's attempt to be "versatile". Frankly, I don't completely buy his edgy rock vibe in the first place. His voice sounds rather harsh and the rougher edge to the song does not work. The vocals aren't all that. 6/10.

9.38pm: Ricky gets OK reviews but Simon says the song was too big for him. Agreed. Although we got that "you're not connecting" line again. Not entirely sure what that means. Sounds like a bit of a cop-out for "I'm not sure". Meanwhile, the Strictly results are in and the bottom two are Joe & Kristina and Zoe & James. Surprised about the latter but they'll be fine here. Joe is way worse and it's time he went.

9.36pm: He's singing R.E.S.P.E.C.T. Not sure this is a good idea. He has the right tone for it but it's a big, big song and he's a wee thing. Bad arrangement again Cheryl. 6/10.

9.33pm: After an eight-minute break here's Rikki Loney, whose Mum believes one day she'll see his name up in lights. How cute. I liked this guy but he disappointed me last week. He's singing Aretha.

9.24pm: They're even wearing the Britney behind-the-ear mics. Their vocal is bad, and the backing is even louder than in Britney's concerts. Oh my god, they even did the talking part of the song. Hysterical! Way too karaoke though. Camp but laughable in all the wrong ways. 5/10.

9.22pm: Here come John and Edward to heighten the quality. Sarcasm? Just a bit. They're singing "Oops I Did It Again" by Britney Spears. Are they asking to be ridiculed?

9.19pm: Danni was on the fence. Simon says that Cheryl isn't managing him properly. She admits that it was a bad song choice. She's in tears. Lloyd goes up to hug her. Argh! Cheap vote-getting. Booooo!

9.16pm: Lloyd is up on X Factor singing "Bleeding Love" in some kind of softer arrangement. He's not strong enough vocally, and certainly isn't very interesting. Very puzzling song choice. Four words: out. of. his. depth. 5/10.

9.10pm: Chris gets 23, and oh my god, Laila and Anton got 22. What went wrong there?!

9.08pm: Danyl gets praise, which I think was necessary after last week's debacle. Simon is way too keen to big up Danyl. He's playing a dangerous game cause nobody likes a frontrunner. Over on BBC Chris Hollins is being gleeful and hilarious doing the jive. Very, very fun but far from accomplished. 6/10.

9.06pm: Danyl is next. He's talented, but he gets on my wick. I'd get the impression he'd murder his own mother for a break though. He wants that beanstalk badly. The smoke machine is out in force for his ballad (I don't recognise the song), and he's typically stellar vocally. Sadly, he shaved this week. Not exciting. 7/10.

9.04pm: Phil got a bit of a hard time, considering. Len tells him to "polish his balls", which is a tad risque. I love all the innuendo's on Strictly. It's a much warmer, cosier, tongue-in-cheek show than X Factor. Phil gets 27.

9.00pm: Phil is as chilled as usual. Very easy to watch, although the hold looks a little awkward. They're dancing to "Mad About the Boy", which is cute. I'm only on the second vodka, since I can only pick up the glass when I get the chance. I liked Phil. 7/10.

8.57pm: I feel like I've abandoned Strictly. The rents don't watch it, see. Phil and Katya are up next. Sue Barker and Matt Dawson are discussiing Phil's bum. Like they do. I'm more concerned about the fact they look like a pair of stone boulders. He's dancing the waltz so let's hope he's a little looser and fluid than a rock.

8.54pm: And that song is "Where do Broken Hearts Go?". Thankfully, he has less make-up on than last week. It's a bit cabaret. The song is by a woman so it suits the tone of his voice. Alright, but very dull. 6/10.

8.52pm: Laila and Anton are up on Strictly. Joe's turn on X Factor. He's besotted with Whitney Houston, and he's singing one of her songs.

8.46pm: ITV have enlisted Wally Pfister to shoot Rachel's performance of Beyonce's "If I Were a Boy", a song I like in spite of its often shambolic lyrics. She's average vocally but it's an empty setup, and she's wearing denim of all things. A mess. 5/10. I missed Natalie.

8.43pm: Joe got 21 but isn't bottom, which means Craig got lower. Eek! Natalie and Vincent are dancing the Viennese Waltz next. Meanwhile, Rachel is saying how surprised she was that she was in the bottom two last week. I wasn't in the slightest.

8.40pm: Joe is dancing the jive and is truly awful. He has absoloutely no rhythm to speak of. He can't do much with his hips either. Dreadful. 2/10.

8.37pm: I missed Craig's score because Simon was trashing Miss Frank over on ITV. Harsh but it really wasn't good. They should be singing much more urban, edgy stuff than that. Joe Calzaghe is next on Strictly so I'm not expecting much. Another ad break during X Factor already. Dear me...

8.34pm: Craig looked decidedly less nervous, but still wasn't great. 5/10. That could be it for him. Miss Frank are singing a diva song and understandably don't come across as much of a "group". They mentioned Stephen Gately in the clip, too. I think this was a mistake. 6/10.

8.29pm: Ricky gets a 10 from Alesha! And 36 overall. Olly gets raves from the judges but that really isn't saying much. Pleasantly surprised by how much I liked him as I haven't in the competition thus far. It's skin watch on the Beeb with Craig Kelly's nerves taking another test. It looks like he may have been spray-tanned this week. Meanwhile on X Factor Miss Frank, who I love are up next!

8.26pm: Ricky is great. I'll be surprised if he doesn't win. 9/10. Olly is singing "Just a Fool", which is very old-fashioned but he's giving it a lot of character. I really love him doing this kind of stuff! Wow, he just strutted his hips rather sexily. Totally knocked this one out of the PARK. 9/10.

8.24pm: Zoe gets 30. Hmm..Ricky number two is next. Over on X Factor Olly is getting ready to sing a song by a diva. Should be interesting. I've just thought if Danyl is going to sing a love song without changing the words this week. It'd probably ensure he stays in another week. Cynic? Me? Never ;-)

8.22pm: Alesha needs to make her input more interesting. In the second week she was ace. This is looking like 30+, which would again be generous. Loving James's chest hair.

8.20pm: Because every clip on X Factor takes forever this is actually working out quite well. Zoe and James are dancing the jive. Zoe looks like Michelle Pfeiffer in Hairspray. James looks hunky as usual. It's got bounce and jip but I'm not that interested. 6/10

8.17pm: Jo and Brendan get 23. Cheryl criticises Lucie, saying there's something "not connecting" with her performance. Ridiculous. I love Girls Aloud but Cole has very limited talent and absoloutely no credentials for judging singing hopefuls.

8.15pm: She's singing that song that LMC remixed a couple of years back. She's moving around the stage, looks great, and has a lovely tone to her voice. Coping very well with the choreography. I'm really impressed! 8/10

8.12pm: Jo is actually alright. 6/10. Whitney is coaching Lucie, who goes first and will therefore probably be a disadvantage. People are fickle and forget you.... unless you get criticised. She's singing one of Whitney's songs which may get Simon on his high horse about her not being able to live up to the original again. We'll see.

8.10pm: Things are hotting up. Louis isn't there! I'm disappointed. But on the bright side, it's diva's night! The Cheryl versus Danni fashion war is another victory for the "older" woman. Less is more, Cheryl. Over on Strictly it's hairspray watch with Jo Wood, who's dancing the waltz with Brendan. Amy Winehouse wants her to win don't you know?

8.06pm: Meanwhile over on ITV the exploit artists are out in force for the start of The X Factor. Will Louis be there? Will Lloyd sing in tune? I can hardly contain my excitement. Ali's getting a battering over on BBC. She wasn't that bad guys.

8.04pm: They're dancing to Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" and he just sat on some woman's lap. Is that allowed? Ali definitely has good rhythm (is that how you spell rhythm?) but she looks a little out of her depth. They're not covering much of the floor either. But I'm having fun. Maybe that's the vodka? 7/10.

8.00pm: Jade receives a score of 35, which is fairly huge. Way overboard, if you ask me. Here are the sex fiends, Ali and Brian. Brian's lips are very red. They're dancing the jive, which I'm sure they've practiced quite often.

7.58pm: The judges are heaping praise to the extent where she's almost crying with pride. I'm not sure I'd go that far. I love Bruno, he's so romantic. Craig was predictably more critical but liked it. I'm sensing high scores.

7.56pm: They're dancing to James Brown's "It's a Man's World". And it probably still is. Jade's frame is very consistent, if a little too stiff to call excellent. It was glamorous. 7/10.

7.50pm: Craig mentioned the socks. Bruce danced. Bruno has jam in his doughnut. I wonder if it's sweet.... (note to self: behave!). Ricky gets 25, but I reckon he'll be fine. He's a likeable guy. Up next are Ian and Jade, who is wearing what can only be described as a french maid outfit. They're dancing the Viennese Waltz, which may explain why she looks like something that should be on top of a cake.

7.47pm: His trousers are way too short for him. How embarassing... It looks a bit like theyre drunk in a park somewhere. All I can focus on is his orange socks. Erin looks younger than usual, although I still think she's worryingly skinny. I didn't love it. 5/10

7.45pm: "You don't get anything for a pair...", absoloutely love it! Erin and Ricky number one are up first. Ricky mentions his bad knee. He's doing the jive so that knee might come in handy. My expectations for this are less than lofty.

7.42pm: Fashion watch: What on earth is Jade Johnson wearing? Hairspray watch: Cloudy with a chance of frizz. Sex watch: Ali and Brian are so doing IT!

7.38pm: I totally picked the wrong night to do this. The show has finally started! I love what Tess is wearing tonight. Gorgeous shade of blue! Already Amy Winehouse has been mentioned. Her appearance last week was a little odd, although I thought the young girl was dynamite.

7.31pm: It's looking like there's been drama in Brazil. Talk of cancelling qualifying?! Move over motor cars, I wanna see the sequins!

7.27pm: Oh for gods sake BBC, get your act together! They're showing another live performance now.... and it's, wait for it....... Primal Scream. Hmm, well for a lack of other people to judge I'll start here. There is a terrible collection of haircuts, suspect singing, but the music is good. 7/10?

7.25pm: Current beverage of choice: Vodka/Slimline Red Bull. It's gonna be one of those nights. Totally looking forward to Bruce trying to rush Bruno.

7.23pm: So the Grand Prix coverage is running over and they've decided to stick a live performance of 'Warwick Avenue' from Duffy on to fill the gap. This is totally my favourite song of hers.

7.19pm: Tonight's questions: Just what shade of pale will Craig Kelly's face be tonight? Will Louis show up? How many X Factor contestants will mention the death of Stephen Gately? (I'm guessing eight.) And will Jo Wood get the dreaded can of hairspray out? Surely it's time...

7.15pm: The night has started promisingly with Joanna's cheese coaster fetching a hefty £820. And that's just 'Flog It!'. I'm not sure the coaster was worth seeing in high definition though. They really should have put the Grand Prix coverage on instead.

Pre-Precursor Oscar Predictions

As things start hotting up on the festival/awards circuit (just 47 days until the National Board of Review announce their 2009 picks) I've decided to make some Oscar predictions. Here they are:-

Green = very likely, Amber = probably, Red = Maybe

BEST PICTURE

An Education
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Invictus
The Lovely Bones
Nine
Precious
Up
Up in the Air

I wasn't wowed by the Avatar trailer but Cameron has such an amazing pedigree that I don't think it can possibly be a bad film. Maybe the lowered expectation will help it become a hit. Up in the Air and Precious seem the strongest at the moment after their smashing reception at Toronto, and An Education is exactly the kind of film Oscar likes. The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, and Up are all early releases that made an impact. The Lovely Bones and Nine, while I'm not convinced they'll be that great, are the kind of films that get nominated for being released in December.

BEST DIRECTOR

Kathryn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker
Lee Daniels – Precious
Clint Eastwood – Invictus
Rob Marshall – Nine
Jason Reitman – Up in the Air

Up in the Air seems very strong so I'd expect Reitman to get a second nomination. From there, they love Clint, and the last time Rob Marshall did a musical he nearly got the Oscar. Bigelow has raves and her film is showy visually, and I'm thinking Precious is strong enough to get Daniels into this five, even though it likely won't be remembered for him.

BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Michelle Monaghan – Trucker
Carey Mulligan – An Education
Gabourey Sidibe – Precious
Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia
Hilary Swank – Amelia

Carey Mulligan already looks on track to join the list of nobody-to-somebody starlets that Oscar have occasionally gone for. Streep is a given, and Sidibe looks strong. From there it could be a few, so I went for the baitiest: Michelle Monaghan's indie misery and Swank's juicy biopic. I don't think Michelle Pfeiffer should be nominated, but she's bound to get that Globe comedy nomination, and in 2000 that worked for Juliette Binoche against some much harder-hitting alternatives.

BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

George Clooney – Up in the Air
Robert Downey Jnr. – Sherlock Holmes
Colin Firth – A Single Man
Morgan Freeman – Invictus
Hal Holbrook - That Evening Sun

Clooney has another big film and Colin Firth has the reviews of a lifetime. Holbrook and Freeman are veterans with baity roles. Maybe then we need some fun? Robert Downey Jnr. managed a nomination last year for a bit-of-fluff film, so why not as Sherlock Holmes, a very established literary character with notable eccentricities?

BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Marion Cotillard - Nine
Judi Dench – Nine
Anna Kendrick – Up in the Air
Mo’Nique – Precious
Julianne Moore – A Single Man

A bit of a lottery this one beyond Mo'Nique and Moore's buzzed performances. They love Judi Dench beyond measure and she looks like fun in Nine, and Cotillard in the same film may benefit from her turn in Public Enemies earlier in the year, as well as her status as an Oscar-winner. That's assuming she doesn't go lead.

BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Matt Damon - Invictus
Alfred Molina – An Education
Kodi Smit-McPhee – The Road
Stanley Tucci – The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds

If Christoph Waltz doesn't get nominated there's something very wrong. Molina and Tucci still have big buzz. Damon in Invictus is a bit of a lottery but he's looking less and less likely to get in for his terrific Informant performance so this may have to do. I expect Kodi Smit-McPhee will get all the Young Actor critic awards and might grab a nomination from SAG, who like to reward the kids.

A Crime Against Music Has Been Committed

Third Time's a Charm

Yes, I've been reeled in again. Very predictable. For the third year in a row I'll be live-blogging Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor, even though there's a sizeable overlap. Expect frantic bitching.

Here are the first two installments, in case you missed them:

2007 Live Blog

2008 Live Blog

Anything Does Not Equal Everything

Pour elle (Anything For Her) (2008)
Directed by Fred Cavayé
Starring: Vincent Lindon, Diane Kruger
Grade: F

What Quentin Tarantino did so well with Kill Bill was to outline its basic premise (that simple but wonderfully effective title) and then build upon it, his sleeve stacked with stylish, hybrid aces that dazzled, added meat and scope. French thriller Anything For Her may as well be titled "Free Lisa", and there are no bones about what's at stake and what will go down -- a mere ten minutes in Julien sees his innocent wife carted off to jail and soon vows to break her out -- but that's where Anything For Her begins and really ends.

Most maddening is the film's rigidly basic structure, from the flatlining routine narrative to the lack of any notable supporting characters to the abstinent approach towards character development. Just moments after Lisa's murder conviction appears a flashback of the absurd circumstantial manner by which she is wrongly mistaken of the crime, obliterating any sense of mystery about the event or doubt about the motivations of either spouse. For a film about righting the course of justice there is hardly any exploration of guilt whatsoever, the possibility of landing the pair of them in prison and leaving their son essentially parentless (a very legitimate concern, if you ask me) discussed for all of five seconds. For all of the faults in Neil Jordan's erratic depiction of justice, The Brave One, it at least addressed this issue and encouraged us to read into its character's moral dilemna. The unconditional justification of Julien's actions is admittedly more akin to Tarantino's bride than Jordan's radio host, but Anything For Her is like cutting from the first scene of Volume 1 to the last scene of Volume 2, without the sparkling dialogue.

As for the escape plan Julien formulates it by covering the living room wall with the kind of diagrams and intricacies you'd see at a police station, investigative, thought-out. I honestly couldn't tell you how he managed to cover so much of the wall (maybe he doodled on half of it?) as there is precious little complexity to how he goes about cutting her loose. Only two brief scenes take place in the prison, the bulk of the escape action within a hospital that for all we know could be five, ten, fifty miles from the place. Thankfully the sequence allows for a brief sojourn into the kind of pace and tension you'd expect from a thriller, and is very well constructed. Any tension, however, is killed when a final frustrating act of fate tips the scales of justice to an emphatic clatter. C'est la vie.

Director Fred Cavayé was inexplicably Cesar-nominated for this film, less puzzlingly in the 'First Film' category. It's not terrible visually, but doesn't succeed in any cinematic area that I can think of, unable to flesh out an already limited number of souls, and absent of the kind of stylistic ambition necessary for a production based upon such a simple framework.

Personal Canon: 88. Nieco z Alenky (Alice) (1988)

Directed by Jan Svankmajer
Starring: Kristýna Kohoutová

I hadn't researched Jan Svankmajer's Alice before I sat down to watch it as part of my Animated Film module, assuming rightly that it was based on the story of Alice in Wonderland and wrongly that it was going to be somewhat colourful. The pallid nature of the film, which mixes a child actor and mostly genuine locations with stop-motion characters, adds to the eery drained atmosphere of a world that's very far removed from the Wonderland I'd been accustomed to.

As the visually creative Tim Burton seeks to re-jig the story this coming Spring even he will have a job to match the creepy exploits of Svankmajer, who extracts all of the sinister elements of Lewis Caroll's characters, including an intimidating and very anti-social white rabbit, a clockwork Mad Hatter and March Hare, and an axe-wielding Queen of Hearts. As a character Alice is impetuous and cold, and the deadpan repetition of her delivery of "said the white rabbit", accompanied by a close-up of the girl's mouth, gives the impression that this girl is entranced, inhuman even.

Above all, Alice is a victory for interpretation and originality. Svankmajer isn't subverting Alice into an anti-fairy tale so much as interpreting the more intense, enigmatic areas of the story to reveal the darkness in Caroll's work. The physical transformations Alice must endure in order to adapt to Wonderland's cavernous character, and how the people she meet encourage intolerance and disorder.

Venice Reviews: Choi voi (Adrift)

Choi voi (Adrift)
Directed by Chuyên Bui Thac
Starring: Do Thi Hai Yen, Nguyen Duy Khoa, Linh Dan Pham, Johnny Nguyen
Grade: B+

The promotional material for Adrift features two naked women underneath a sheet, and all the information I'd heard about it prior to the Venice viewing was that it was distinctly 'sexual'. This turned out to be misleading, and the inaccuracy of my expectations became divided between cynicism and guilt. Is it wrong to accentuate areas of a film in order to sell it? Is it wrong to assume that a film with a poster featuring naked women necessarily means overt lesbian sexuality?

In the end, this dilemna is summarised well by the film's married couple, who each think they're getting something different from the other. Separated by five years (the woman is 24, the man is 19) they are married by arrangement, but it soon becomes clear that the man is still entrenched in adolescence and only really interested in being "looked after", and the woman is craving affection and unable to get it. This is the cue for sexual exploration, and Adrift is essentially the story of how each partner reacts to the deadening state of their non-event marriage.

Having already divulged that their main problem is age and maturity, Adrift takes a rather roundabout route in detailing its characters' decisions to pursue the most natural course of action that you'd have wagered on anyway. Refreshingly, the film is written with such an understanding of male and female sexuality, rather like Kubrick's final hurrah (and my favourite of His films) Eyes Wide Shut, in that it recognises that attraction and infidelity emerge from assurance -- advice itself matters far less than the person giving the advice. Dangerous Liaisons-style, the wife (Do Thi Hai Yen) is manipulated into a sexual relationship with a womaniser by his own on/off flame (Linh Dan Pham in an astoundingly effective performance), who in turn harbours feelings for the torn wife.

Every time the film seems to make an easy assessment about a character it forces us to challenge that assessment, and manages to create a network of genuine, interesting people that 'fail' through being too true to themselves. Adrift has a rather cavalier, if far from revelatory message that upset is the natural product of looking after one's own needs (whether that be sexual gratification, security, forbidden love) and emerges as a solemn, resigned meditation on arranged marriage. It's a beautifully-made tragedy, and the biggest critique of promise rings and age-gap relationships you're likely to see this year.

Men of the Thirties: 1937

The Nominees Were...


Charles Boyer - Conquest
Fredric March - A Star is Born
Robert Montgomery - Night Must Fall
Paul Muni - The Life of Emile Zola
Spencer Tracy - Captains Courageous

And the Winner Was...

Spencer Tracy - Captains Courageous

Had Paul Muni not got his Oscar for playing Louis Pasteur in 1936, he probably would have got it for playing Emile Zola in '37. As it stands, the Oscar went to the only other character of the five without any real flaws, the Portugese fisherman played by Spencer Tracy in Captains Courageous. Boyer and Montgomery had juicy roles as Napoleon and a potential killer respectively, but didn't have BP nominees to back it up. March's role is sympathetic so he may have been in with a chance, but it isn't difficult to surmise why Tracy managed to get this win, given his nomination the year before.


My Ratings (in order of preference):-

*** Charles Boyer in Conquest

Conquest sounds like an epic tale of conflict but so isn't, and seems only concerned with the silly soap opera of the French emperor's complicated love life. Boyer more than anyone else is aware of the film's silliness, and plays Napoleon like a big kid in a man's body, sure of what he wants (at least in the short-term) but clueless about how to go about things. Unsurprisingly then he flourishes when the tone of the film is lighter, super fun when wooing and flirting with Garbo and successful at conveying Napoleon's lack of emotional intelligence. A particular scene in which Garbo teaches him to dance is a highlight. It's a shame that Boyer can't really follow this through into the bouts of melodrama, and doesn't give any variation to his superior "Why don't you see things the way I do?" glare that became a staple into the peak of his career.

*** Fredric March in A Star is Born

March set the ball rolling for pretenders James Mason and Kris Kristofferson as the overshadowed husband of Janet Gaynor's movie sensation Vicki Lester. I actually don't like the role of Norman Maine: it's underwritten, fairly simple, rather dull in truth. Disappointment creeps into March's reactions to every phone call and correspondence being for his wife and not him, and as his career dies a death March charts Norman's decreasing self-worth fairly competently. But A Star is Born has always been about the leading lady.

** Spencer Tracy in Captains Courageous

Spencer's trained modesty gets another outing in this little fable, and it's a lovely change to see Tracy play somebody like fisherman Manuel, more exotic and less culturally cardboard. While Tracy himself gives an occasionally moving account of a grouch who has his emotions deepened (using his eyes to great effect) he doesn't convey enough of the core industriousness of Manuel. It's lucky he has an incredibly talented co-lead to work with, and the rapport between the two is convincing enough to carry off the earthy versus pompous sparring.

** Paul Muni in The Life of Emile Zola

And here we are again - Paul Muni's fourth nomination in five years. Sadly this is incredibly similar to his winning turn the year before, and the film too is equally as unconcerned with tapping into its principal figure. One could have crafted the film from scouring the archives for all of half an hour. Muni does a semi-reprisal, but looks less like a goat and more like a shaggy dog, shaking his head in a "What is the world coming to?" kind of fashion. He fares better (if only because he gets some tasty monologues to sink his teeth into) and is able to impart the struggle of an academic within a 'practical' society.

Unseen Nominees:-

Robert Montgomery in Night Must Fall

The Snubbed

***** Cary Grant in The Awful Truth

The wonderful thing about Grant as a comedy actor is that he can play both the unstable hapless victim (Bringing Up Baby, Arsenic and Old Lace) and the sly, scheming charmer, seen in His Girl Friday and most wonderfully Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth. He knows what's expected of him in giving the relationship backstory and ensuring that the audience know that this pairing has a future. Grant revels in his love/hate relationship with Dunne, and sells every wisecrack with brisk, perfect timing and unrivalled charisma.

**** Freddie Bartholomew in Captains Courageous

As a pompous, uppity schoolkid Bartholomew seems like he's just been plucked out of a private school. God knows where they plucked him from but whoever made that call did well, since his performance is the perfect buffer for the film's ideas about class structure and self-sufficiency. Bartholomew gives Freddie exactly the right level of arrogance, and even at his most testing you can see that the boy is not massively fazed by having to do things for himself as much as inconvenienced by not being completely aware of his setup. He has several line deliveries that are laugh-out-loud funny, and is very patient with his simple arc, becoming emotionally effective in the final act.

A Double Actress Profile, Or: How Diane Was De-throned, For All of Ninety Minutes

There was a moment yesterday, while I was watching John Cassavetes' Opening Night (a film about a famous Broadway Actress who undergoes heavy emotional turmoil after the death of one of her fans), where Gena Rowlands' performance moves from excellent to extraordinary. The role is certainly very showy, but Cassavetes is so keen to make us step back from this woman, align us with her peers and bosses, wonder what on earth she's going to say and do next, and his complete confidence in Rowlands' ability to make this woman as enthralling, confused, and necessary of your attention is thoroughly rewarded. To his credit he doesn't give her any real streams of sympathy to pursue, and Opening Night's production-inside-a-production setup, while a tad gimmicky, offers up Rowlands to such intense scrutiny that it's incredible how much she manages to confound meagre judgement, and collate her character's inconsistencies into a rich, whole, and fascinating portrayal.

Rowland's performance won her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Leading Actress in a drama, which she lost to Jane Fonda. The recipient of the equivalent comedy prize, Diane Keaton, went on to win the Oscar for Annie Hall. I hold Keaton's performance in incredibly high regard, and was so enamoured with Rowlands that I found it difficult to judge the two. So, a third viewing of Annie Hall was called for, and an opportunity to judge Diane and Gena's comparative worth fairly.

Annie Hall is a film I've loved for a long time. I love how Allen reduces love, ridicules heartbreak, but can't help sentimentalising both. And how romance and relationships are ultimately shown as expansive, promising, and worthwhile, even though the characters don't end the film in a blaze of glory.

Diane Keaton's trademark goofy nature is evident most in the early scenes of Annie and Alvy's relationship, but that is not how we first see her. Keaton's first scene is getting out of a taxi, complaining to Alvie that she missed her therapy session, and frustrated that he won't walk into a screening of Liv Ullman's Face To Face two minutes late. The element of Keaton's performance I find most interesting is how she makes Annie seem so eager to promote the idea of herself as fleety and free-loving in the early stages. How she flirts by making her ticks so outlandish and yet totally adorable to Alvy, and how she eventually becomes so resentful of her decision to become an 'appealing' romantic option. It's refreshing to see a romance occur between two people that are so ego-centric and often selfishly undevoted to each other, and in the same way as Rowlands it is Keaton's job to confound ours (and Alvy's) expectations of the dynamic of their relationship and how it unfolds.

Film Verdict: Annie Hall: A+ Opening Night: A-
Actress Verdict: Keaton wins by a whisker or two.

Hottest Track: Julian Casablancas - 11th Dimension

Away We Go: An Advertisement

Away We Go
Directed by Sam Mendes
Starring: Maya Rudolph, John Krasinski, Allison Janney, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jeff Daniels
Grade: C -

CALLING ALL SOON TO BE PARENTS

Are you worried about having to take responsibility? Are you struggling to decide where the best place to bring up your kid is?

Look no further than the "Away We Go" tour.

We'll show you all the sights. Provide you with a couple of narrow-minded 'extreme' examples of parenthood. Make you think we're leaving you to your own devices while we clearly have an opinion of what "good" and "bad" parenting is. Scatter some retro prints and designs around to accentuate your bewilderment.

Take you to Phoenix, Arizona and show you a mother who derides her kids and throws herself at every man that isn't her husband. Whisk you off to Wisconsin to meet a woman that's so "liberal-minded" she doesn't believe in strollers. (IMAGINE a world where people didn't feel the need for strollers. Where would our children sit for crying out loud? What awful re-percussions would occur in the baby accessory market?). You'll reject these people for being laughable stereotypes and have learned very little other than you need to praise your child and buy it a stroller.

Before we resume the tour we'll conjure up a member of your family. Get them to discuss with you the benefits of having a stable childhood, make you confront that childhood, make you cry in the process. And just so you don't forget we'll get you to climb into a bathtub while this discussion takes place. Implant it in your memory so that it plays a significant role in your thought-process once the tour is over.

In Miami it's time to be grateful you're in a loving relationship. Meet a man that's been deserted, deemed a *gasp* single parent. See his misery. See his pain. Thank god you're not like him. Go to Montreal, Canada and meet the perfect family. This family is so perfect they sing The Sound of Music, god damn it! They live to smile. But here's the catch: this family isn't traditional. It's flawed. These parents can't conceive for long enough. You'll find this out during an absurd, drunken pole dance and wake up thankful that you're fertile.

*The tour will then expect you to have a clearer head about parenthood. It will expect you to believe that home is what you make it. It will expect you to remember your conversation with the designated family member in the bathtub and implement this into your approximation of 'home'. It hopes that you have an epiphany and rest on a solution that in some way ties in with your journey. It expects too much.

*Entry into the institution of marriage is not compulsory but if you refuse this option we strongly suggest that you buy a house with a white picket fence.

[Anti] Christ! What a Poster!

Just saw this via InContention and well, what can one say? I likely won't ever be able to get myself into the kind of mode to discuss the merits of Lars Von Trier's Antichrist, which is perhaps the most provocative film I've ever seen, and I'm not sure I'll be able to brave another screening of it for a while yet. This poster, however, highlights much of what I liked about the film visually; it's earthy, ornate, solemn and completely over-the-top. Love it.

Venice Reviews: White Material

White Material
Directed by Claire Denis
Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Nicholas Duvauchelle, Isaach De Bankolé
Grade: B -

M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" is seemingly doing the rounds on film soundtracks, gracing the back cover of Pineapple Express and Slumdog Millionaire since it first bowed on her 2007 album Kala. In actuality, it doesn't really fit those films, and would be much better suited to something like White Material, which is set amidst civil war in French-speaking Africa and contains a lot of themes in M.I.A's song, such as greed, possession, and social constraint.

As Maria, a white coffee farmer living with her husband and son, Isabelle Huppert is expectantly stellar as a woman who defies warnings from the military and protestations from her family to preserve her life in what is increasingly becoming a war zone. As countless locals desert the area as if it were a sinking ship, Maria refuses to leave, but as with Beau Travail Denis's characters (particularly Maria) lack sufficient backstory, and though Huppert gets as much out of the woman as she can, the reason for her stubbornness and resistance to change is something relatively unexplored. This is also true of the family dynamic, which is a disinteresting and shady area of the narrative.

Throughout, White Material offers sparse, thoughtful perspectives of conflict and freedom, and whether either or both is a necessity. It struck me yesterday, while watching Andrea Arnold's problematic Fish Tank, how comparatively well Denis manages to convey different ideological views of liberty. The visual richness of colour that engulfs the characters, and the polarised extremes of proximity that render them either trapped or staring into unending desolation, are a very rewarding element of White Material. So too the moody score, and collection of Reggae songs which help to create an Eastern vibe to the film and extend its sense of scope.

Particularly towards the beginning the film is edited very briskly, cutting between community warfare and Maria on board a bus. Despite only a couple of references back to the bus, in the later stages it eventually becomes clear that the journey is the most present event in the film, and the prelude to the conclusion of events. This probably serves as the biggest problem of White Material, in that you're never really sure where you're at with it. The decisions with regard to the narrative structure, and the escalation of Maria's son's mental state, feel sudden and done for effect, and Denis seems generally unsure of how to tell the story, however competent she is at addressing the themes.

Fly On The Wall

The Collector (1965)

Directed by William Wyler

Starring: Terrence Stamp, Samantha Eggar

Grade: B

Does it matter if a victim is a powerless woman in a shower, a frantic, headless teenager, or simply Neve Campbell? I found William Wyler's The Collector a difficult film to like because of its victim, rather than the mentally unhinged kidnapper who places her in a position of vulnerability. Terrence Stamp's kidnapping of Miranda Grey, an arty bit-of-stuff student livened by Samantha Eggar, begins with the meagre pedestrianism of the film's Kent Countryside setting. Bad things can't possibly happen from inherently "good" intentions? Stamp, as the suggestively harmless Freddie Clegg, is head-over-heels for Miranda, his abduction of her treated little more than a natural piece of foreplay. As she wakes up from her chloroform-enduced stupor her actions are understandably inconsistent, but one feels that the initial exchange between Miranda and Freddie is a little stagy and stilted. Debate occurs. The tea and biscuits come out. But should we expect anything of a filmic victim? Is rationality too unforseeable? After all, nobody knows how they would react to this predicament, should it occur.

What is for sure is that as characters they exhibit directly opposing ideologies, of which we are constantly reminded. The Collector menacingly draws attention to their differing demeanors and viewpoints, the uptight stingy loner heaping all of the tension into the court of Miranda, who must defend everything that she is about. The Collector's chief mistake is making us too aware of what each of the characters is about, or at least trying to demonstrate this through silly, lazy means. Miranda's favourite book, The Catcher in the Rye, is dissected by Freddie in truly philestine fashion, and their essential differences are brought to the forefront in disappointingly plain terms: this man is all about himself, this woman is eager to explore. It's not to say that The Collector doesn't benefit from politics but the extent to which the two are at war with each other feels primarily mechanical and extracts from some of the unsettling confrontation. Terrence Stamp's dark, studious eyes contribute much more to his character than the narrative devices that accompany them. Particularly blatant is his coveted collection of dead butterflies (hence the film's title) which horrifies Miranda to the extent to which she later interrogates him about whether he intends to "collect" her. The reaction is rather terrifying, and does elevate the tension somewhat, but forms part of my main qualm with The Collector's tendency to demonstrate the sinister through rationale and mediation.

And yet, Wyler eeks so much out of a dull, stagnant setting, emphasising the power relations with menacing angles, boxing Eggar into dark corners and charting her fall from grace with monstrous precision. One gets the impression that Wyler extracts a lot from Eggar herself, and is at his most Hitchcockian in that Freddie in part feels like an authorial vessel, or at least a part-'victim'/faux-'villain' in the piece. Eggar, who conveys the defiance and panic of a fleety woman to whom 'repression' would undoubtedly exist in much more complex ways in the outside world, feels trained in the more explosive scenes, but in confronting Miranda's exasperation at the starvation of culture and concentrated banality of her new setting, she is at worst empathetic and at best a paladin.

I once met a psychologist who'd interviewed Fred West. Wyler's attempts to delve into the motivation behind abduction and obsession is rather like an evaluation of someone similarly beyond rationale. The Collector is a hell of a brave film for confronting the relatively unrelatable with what is, essentially, a battle of logic. It's a technique that's bound to deter people from fully committing to this film's ideas about obsession and practicality (I doubt Wyler would want that anyway) but deserves attention for portraying both Freddie and Miranda in a way that transcends traditional ideas about criminals and victims, and still managing to make its final point so utterly lucid.

Like To Tell You 'Bout My Baby

In a Lonely Place (1950)

Directed by Nicholas Ray

Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Martha Stewart, Frank Lovejoy

Grade: B+

Joan Fontaine's Best Actress vehicle, Suspicion, bowed nine years before Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place, a film that articulates much the same feeling in its leading lady. Gloria Grahame is Laurel, that wary female protagonist, who after meeting and falling for screenwriter Dix (Bogart) gives him a false alibi when suspected of the murder of hat-check girl Mildred Atkinson. As she gets to know him more, however, she begins to see underlying darker aspects to his character that makes murder seem well within his capabilities.

In a Lonely Place is mainly a succcess because of its honest development of a very impulsively formed relationship between two people who wrongly believe what they're going to get from each other. In their first meeting a rather daring Dix proposes that Laurel accompany him to his house, on the false pretense of reading a script to him. This is foreplay at its finest for the fifties; she 'reluctantly' agrees to the exchange knowing his intentions and then proceeds to bow out early, delaying the inevitable climax of attraction. In this way Laurel shows her esteem and sexual power, and as the two eventually form a relationship Grahame charts the incremental abandonment of an initially self-effacing figure in favour of her true desire to take control of her man with the kind of stringent, wildfire sexuality that makes Rita Hayworth's flirting with Glenn Ford in Gilda seem comparatively tame. When it becomes clear that Dix cannot be controlled, and could even threaten her in a physical sense, Grahame retreats into the old damsel routine with such convincing nuance that you could almost feel sorry for her complete lack of faith in a man she thought she had sussed.

I had heard from many people that this was one of Bogart's best performances. It's a very different turn from the "on his game" nature of The Big Sleep and Key Largo as he doesn't have the sustained self-assurance and bravado of Marlowe et al. To see Bogey as mentally weak is strange to say the least, yet (and this is not largely down to him) the question of whether this man is a killer is a lingering but rather limp one. The anti-climactic nature of In a Lonely Place is by far its weakest element, but like the standard modern biopic there are often gems to be found elsewhere. Rather like Walk the Line the reason to see this is not for the character study but for the central relationship, and the Humphrey/Gloria partnership is one of those steamy pairings that leaves you itching to discover if their rocky romance can have a tender resolution. Rent it and see.

Venice Reviews: Io Sono L'Amore (I Am Love)

Io Sono L'Amore (I Am Love)
Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Edoardo Gabbriellini, Flavio Parenti
Grade: C

Tilda Swinton speaks Italian.
Tilda Swinton speaks Russian.

Tilda Swinton has sex.
Tilda Swinton makes soup.
Tilda Swinton laughs.
Tilda Swinton cries.

Tilda Swinton is lust.
Tilda Swinton is sorrow.
Tilda Swinton is grief.
Tilda Swinton is love.

Io Sono L'Amore = stunned murmurs
Io Sono L'Amore = mild applause
Io Sono L'Amore = mild boos

Io Sono L'Amore n'est pas L'Amore
I Am Love = C

Venice Reviews: The Informant!

The Informant!
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Starring: Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Melanie Lynskey
Grade: C+

Matt Damon's unsightly moustache is the only ugly thing about his performance in The Informant!, a film in which he's required to deceive for nigh-on all of the 109-minute running time. As Marc Whitacre, an executive of a corn manufacturing company, he seeks to expose the illegal price-fixing of his bosses by working with the FBI, but also has his own interests at heart.

It's difficult to believe that The Informant! has turned out far from how Soderbergh envisioned it. A livened, jazzy score accompanies a ferocious onslaught of office politics and satirical jibes at the corrupt corporate world. There's teasing fun to be had here. And still, the monotony of the film's succession of deceit is neither conquered nor enhanced by the playful, obtrusive accompinament (way too much 007 going on in there) and The Informant! is eventually found out for not being modest enough with its style (Brass: yes, Flair: no). Ocean's Eleven, with its slick breed of stars and effortlessly fresh vibe, had the character network and meandering interplay to justify its self-importance. The Informant!'s similarly single-minded approach has the kind of faux-plumage that screams 'mutton dressed as lamb'.

The prime steak in the piece comes in the form of Damon, who I doubted could play someone as funny and manipulative as Whitacre, but grows into the role majestically. Full of bravado he rattles off responses to interrogation with fervent, stern, desperate sincerity, and as we are privvy to his motivations for much of the film the minute cracks he displays in his character are smirk-enducingly accurate, and often hysterical to watch.

The comparisons to Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley aren't difficult to detect. While Tom Ripley was a figure to study, be wary of, admire, feel sorry for, Mark Whitacre is a much softer anti-hero -- eminently rootable a liar, but someone we mostly laugh at rather than with. The Informant! works better in the latter half, when Whitacre becomes more of an individual than representative of a cut-throat breed, and it's largely down to Damon.

Bound For Film Overload

I'm flying to Venice this afternoon for the film festival. I don't know what to make of Venice, having only really seen it in films like Summertime, Don't Look Now, and the bleak Death in Venice. All three are very different films and yet come to the conclusion that the city is a bit of a maze or puzzle.

The only films that I know I will see (at this point) are:

Sunday:

Up -- Pixar!!
Io Sono L'Amore (I Am Love) -- Tilda Swinton!!
White Material -- Isabelle Huppert!!

Monday:

36 Vues Du Pic Saint Loup
The Informant

Friday:

Mr. Nobody


There will be more, and I hope to keep a diary, or at least have a couple of updates about what I've seen and my opinion. That's all for now. Stay tuned!

Hottest Track: The Nextmen feat. Miss Dynamite - Lions Den

Venice, Venice, Venice

The lineup for this year's Venice Film Festival (the 66th of its kind) was announced yesterday. It runs from September 2-12, and I'll be attending this year (yay!). All the headlines were for Michael Moore, whose new documentary about the world's economic meltdown, Capitalism: A Love Story will premiere there, and Werner Herzog's "remake" of Bad Lieutenant starring Nicholas Cage will also be shown. An even juicier element is that Abel Ferrara, Lieutenant's original director, who upon hearing of Herzog's version stated that he hoped everyone connected with the film would be "blown up", is bringing his own film Napoli, Napoli, Napoli to the festival.

On a personal note the most appetising of the in-competition films is probably Tom Ford (former creative director of Gucci) debuting with the story of a grieving gay man, played by Colin Firth and co-starring none other than Julianne Moore! John Hillcoat's long-awaited The Road will also be premiering, and films from favourites such as Steven Soderbergh, Jacques Rivette, Claire Denis, Patrice Cherau, and Todd Solondz will feature. George Clooney and Ewan McGregor may be there in support of Clooney's Goodnight and Good Luck co-writer Grant Heslov, who directs the pair in the political comedy The Men Who Stare At Goats, which I assume is pushing for some buzz and a release in time for awards season.

Here is the full lineup:-

Venezia 66
International competition of feature films, presented as world premieres.

36 VUES DU PIC SAINT LOUP - JACQUES RIVETTE
France, 84'
Jane Birkin, Sergio Castellitto, André Marcon, Jacques Bonnaffé


AHASIN WETEI (BETWEEN TWO WORLDS) - VIMUKHTI JAYASUNDARA
Sri Lanka, 80'
Thusitha Laknath, Kaushalya Fernando, Huang Lu


BAARÌA - GIUSEPPE TORNATORE
Italy, 150'
Francesco Scianna, Margareth Madè, Raoul Bova, Enrico Lo Verso, Michele Placido, Vincenzo Salemme, Monica Bellucci, Laura Chiatti


BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS - WERNER HERZOG
USA, 121'
Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes, Val Kilmer, Michael Shannon


CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY - MICHAEL MOORE
USA, 120'
(documentary)


EL MOSAFER (THE TRAVELLER) - AHMED MAHER
Egypt, 125'
Omar Sharif, Cyrine AbdelNour, Khaled El Nabawy


IL GRANDE SOGNO - MICHELE PLACIDO
Italy, 101'
Riccardo Scamarcio, Jasmine Trinca, Luca Argentero, Laura Morante, Silvio Orlando


LA DOPPIA ORA - GIUSEPPE CAPOTONDI
Italy, 95'
Ksenia Rappoport, Filippo Timi, Giorgio Colangeli

LEI WANGZI (PRINCE OF TEARS) - YONFAN
China - Taiwan, Hong Kong, 120'
Chih-Wei Fan, Terri Kwan, Joseph Chang, Kenneth Tsang


LEVANON (LEBANON) - SAMUEL MAOZ
Israel, 92'
Yoav Donat, Itay Tiran, Oshri Cohen


LIFE DURING WARTIME - TODD SOLONDZ
USA, 92'
Ciarán Hinds, Emma Hinz, Charlotte Rampling


LO SPAZIO BIANCO - FRANCESCA COMENCINI
Italy, 96'
Margherita Buy, Guido Caprino, Salvatore Cantalupo


LOURDES - JESSICA HAUSNER
Austria, 99'
Sylvie Testud, Léa Seydoux, Bruno Todeschini


MR. NOBODY - JACO VAN DORMAEL
France,
Jared Leto, Diane Kruger, Sarah Polley


PERSÉCUTION - PATRICE CHÉREAU
France, 100'
Romain Duris, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jean Hugues Anglade, Alex Descas


THE ROAD - JOHN HILLCOAT
USA, 112'
Charlize Theron, Viggo Mortensen, Guy Pearce, Robert Duvall


A SINGLE MAN - TOM FORD
USA, 99'
Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, Matthew Goode

SOUL KITCHEN - FATIH AKIN
Germany, 99'
Adam Bousdoukos, Moritz Bleibtreu, Birol Uenel


SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD - GEORGE ROMERO
USA, 90'
Alan Van Sprang, Kenneth Walsh, Devon Bostick, Kathleen Munroe


TETSUO THE BULLET MAN - SHINYA TSUKAMOTO
Japan, 80'
Eric Bossick, Akiko Monou, Shinya Tsukamoto


WHITE MATERIAL - CLAIRE DENIS
France, 100'
Isabelle Huppert, Nicolas Duvauchelle, Isaach De Bankolé


YI NGOI (ACCIDENT) - POU-SOI CHEANG
China - Hong Kong, 89'
Louis Koo, Richie Jen, Michelle Ye


ZANAN-E BEDUN-E MARDAN (WOMEN WITHOUT MEN) - SHIRIN NESHAT
Germany, 95'
Pegah Feridon, Shabnam Tolouei, Orsi Tóth, Arita Shahrzad

Out of Competition
Important works by directors already established in past editions of the Festival.



ANNI LUCE - FRANCESCO MASELLI
Italy, 91'
Roberto Herlitzka, Ennio Fantastichini, Valentina Carnelutti, Arnoldo Foà, Lucia Poli


BROOKLYN’S FINEST - ANTOINE FUQUA
USA, 140'
Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke, Wesley Snipes, Ellen Barkin


CHENGDU, WO AI NI (CHENGDU, I LOVE YOU) - FRUIT CHAN, CUI JIAN
China, 78'
Tao Guo, Anya Wu, Weiei Tan


DELHI-6 - MEHRA RAKEYSH OMPRAKASH
India, 110'
Om Puri, Waheeda Rehman, Abhishek Bachchan, Sonam Kapoor, Rishi Kapoor


DEV D - ANURAG KASHYAP
India, 144'
Abhay Deol, Mahie Gill, Kalki Koechlin


EHKY YA SCHAHRAZAD (SCHEHERAZADE, TELL ME A STORY) - YOUSRY NASRALLAH
Egypt, 135'
Mona Zakki, Mahmoud Hemeda, Hassan El Raddad, Sawsan Badr


GULAAL - ANURAG KASHYAP
India, 140'
K K Menon, Aditya Srivastav, Piyush Mishra, Mahi Gill


THE HOLE - JOE DANTE
USA, 98'
Chris Massoglia, Haley Bennett, Natham Gamble, Teri Polo, Bruce Dern


THE INFORMANT! - STEVEN SODERBERGH
USA, 108'
Matt Damon, Melanie Lynskey, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale


L’ORO DI CUBA - GIULIANO MONTALDO
Italy, 74'
(Documentary)


THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS - GRANT HESLOV
USA, 90'
George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey


NAPOLI NAPOLI NAPOLI - ABEL FERRARA
Italy, 102'
Luca Lionello, Ernesto Mahieux, Shanyn Leigh, Giuseppe Lanzetta


PROVE PER UNA TRAGEDIA SICILIANA - ROMAN PASKA, JOHN TURTURRO
Italy, 77'
(Documentary)


REC 2 - JAUME BALAGUERÓ, PACO PLAZA
Spain, 85'
Manuela Velasco, Jonathan Mellor, Andreas Ros Mire, Ariel Casas, Pablo Rosso


SOUTH OF THE BORDER - OLIVER STONE
USA, 102'
(Documentary)


TOY STORY 3-D - JOHN LASSETER
USA, 80'
(Animation)


TOY STORY 2 3-D - JOHN LASSETER, LEE UNKRICH, ASH BRANNON
USA, 94'
(Animation)


VALHALLA RISING - NICOLAS WINDING REFN
Denmark, 90'
Mads Mikkelsen, Alexander Morton, Stewart Porter


YONA YONA PENGUIN - RINTARO
Japan, 87'
(Animation)

Orizzonte
The new trends in world cinema.



1428 - HAIBIN DU
China, 115'
(documentary)


AADMI KI AURAT AUR ANYA KAHANIYA (THE MAN’S WOMAN AND OTHER STORIES) - AMIT DUTTA
India, 78'
Ashok Kumar, Nitin Goel, Shubham Vardhan, Pushpendra Singh


ARMANDO TESTA - POVERO MA MODERNO - PAPPI CORSICATO
Italy, 50'
(documentary)


BLOKADNJE DNEVNIKI (READING BOOK OF BLOCKADE) - ALEKSANDER SOKUROV
Russia, 96'
(documentary)


CHOI VOI (ADRIFT) - THAC CHUYEN BUI
Vietnam, 110'
Yen Hai, Pham Linh-Dan, Khoa Dui


THE DEATH OF PENTHEUS - PHILIP HAAS
USA, 18'

DESERTO ROSA - LUIGI GHIRRI - ELISABETTA SGARBI
Italy, 70'
(documentary)

DOHAWA (BURIED SECRETS) - RAJA AMARI
Tunisia, 91'
Hafsia Herzi, Soundess Belhassen, Wassila Dari

DOU NIU (COW) - HU GUAN
China, 105'
Huang Bo, Yan Ni


ENGKWENTRO - PEPE DIOKNO
Philippines, 60'
Felix Roco, Zyrus Desamparado, Daniel Medrana


FACES OF SEOUL – GINA KIM
USA, 93'

FRANCESCA - BOBBY PAUNESCU
Romania, 96'
Monica Birladeanu, Doru Boguta, Teo Corban

HUGO EN AFRIQUE - STEFANO KNUCHEL
Switzerland, 91'
(documentary)


IL COLORE DELLE PAROLE - MARCO SIMON PUCCIONI
Italy, 70'
(documentary)


INSOLAÇÃO - DANIELA THOMAS, FELIPE HIRSCH
Brazil, 100'
Paulo José, Simone Spoladore, Leonardo Medeiros


IO SONO L'AMORE (I AM LOVE) - LUCA GUADAGNINO
Italy, 120'
Tilda Swinton, Edoardo Gabbriellini, Alba Rohrwacher, Pippo Delbono


KOROTKOYE ZAMYKANIYE (CRUSH) - PETR BUSLOV, ALEXEI GERMAN JR., BORIS KHLEBNIKOV, KIRILL SEREBRENNIKOV, IVAN VRYPAYEV
Russia, 95'
Yuriy Chursin, Ivan Dobronravov, Alexei Filimonov, Karolina Grushka, Karim Pakachakov

LA BOHÈME - WERNER HERZOG
Great Britain, 4'

LA DANSE - LE BALLET DE L'OPÉRA DE PARIS - FREDERICK WISEMAN
USA, 159'
(documentary)

MUDANZA - PERE PORTABELLA

Spain, 20'

THE ONE ALL ALONE - FRANK SCHEFFER
Netherlands, 89'
(documentary)


PARAISO (PARADISE) - HECTOR GALVEZ
Peru, 87'
Yiliana Chong


PEPPERMINTA - PIPILOTTI RIST
Switzerland, 80'

REPO CHICK - ALEX COX
USA, 90'
Jaclyn Jonet, Miguel Sandoval, Chloe Webb, Karen Black, Rosanna Arquette


TOTÒ - PETER SCHREINER
Austria, 128'
(documentary)


TOUXI (JUDGE) - JIE LIU
China, 100'
Dahong Ni, Ting Mei, Dao Qi

TRIS DI DONNE & ABITI NUZIALI - VINCENZO TERRACCIANO
Italy, 138'
Martina Gedeck, Sergio Castellitto, Flavio Parenti


VIA DELLA CROCE - SERENA NONO
Italy, 60'
(documentary)


VIAJO PORQUE PRECISO, VOLTO PORQUE TE AMO (I TRAVEL BECAUSE I HAVE TO, I COME BACK BECAUSE I LOVE YOU) - MARCELO GOMES, KARIM AÏNOUZ
Brazil, 75'
(documentary)


VILLALOBOS - ROMUALD KARMAKAR
Germany, 110'
(documentary)


WAHED-SEFR (ONE-ZERO) - KAMLA ABOU ZEKRI
Egypt, 105'
Elham Shahin, Nelly Karim, Ahmed El Fishawy


WOMEN CENGJING DE WUCHANZHE (ONCE UPON A TIME PROLETARIAN: 12 TALES OF A COUNTRY) - XIAOLU GUO
China, 76'
(documentary)


ZARTE PARASITEN (TENDER PARASITES) - CHRISTIAN BECKER, OLIVER SCHWABE
Germany, 87'
Robert Stadlober, Sylvester Groth, Maja Schöne

Hottest Track: Erik Hassle - Hurtful

Hottest Track: Blake Lewis - Sad Song

Men of the Thirties: 1936

And the Nominees Were:

Gary Cooper - Mr. Deeds Goes To Town
Walter Huston - Dodsworth
Paul Muni - The Story of Louis Pasteur
William Powell - My Man Godfrey
Spencer Tracy - San Francisco

And the Winner Was:

Paul Muni - The Story of Louis Pasteur

In this case the result reflects two tried-and-tested ways of winning an Oscar: a) play a famous, real-life person, and b) be nominated enough times to gain "overdue" status. Paul Muni had done both by the time the 1936 awards rolled around and was up against three first-time nominees and a comedic, Best Picture nominee-less William Powell. Plain sailing.

My Ratings (in order of preference):-

**** Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes To Town

The first of a string of nominations for Cooper, Mr. Deeds is a true display of his penchant for extracting empathy from an audience. His humanism reaches heights in High Noon, where his aging lawman has considerably more wisdom than Deeds, but by my reckoning the younger Cooper is just as valuable. Though the character is a bit too well-rounded and aware of the vicious circle he's dragged into, Cooper never lets you under the skin of Longfellow. He doesn't pin him down as a lucky simpleton, and doesn't really change a great deal from start to finish. It's clever then that he makes Deeds representative of anybody with political power, guilty of taking it for granted and duly pounced upon by the inevitable group that simply don't believe in you. It's a brilliant performance because it counters the spin that Capra's satirising by showing us that there is no saviour, and that the working class everyman is likely to suffer the same fate of the politician with the privileged pedigree.

**** Walter Huston in Dodsworth

Loud, brash, honest, dependable -- they're admittedly not the most exciting adjectives, and so it might not be difficult to surmise why Ruth Chatterton's Fran leaves these characteristics behind for a cosmopolitan life in Europe. Her husband Sam is played with admittedly little variety by Huston, but he manages to capture the perplexity of this retired, business-minded, commonsensical veteran at his wife's actions. Why has she done this? Why has she done this now? Why doesn't she want to be a mother anymore? Why doesn't she want to be a grandmother? Where has this come from? The revelation that he doesn't know his wife half as much as he thought he did comes as a bit of a body blow, and Huston gives the wounded husband a frantic yet assured, grumbly, uncompromising demeanor. The hurt is there but it's beyond this guy to go to pieces, just clean up the damage and move on.

**** William Powell in My Man Godfrey

William Powell is a sly dog. The topsy-turvy politics of My Man Godfrey complicate his performance greatly, introducing Godfrey as a poor man and revealing him as a rich man masquerading as a poor man. To Powell's credit he succeeds at being both, although a repeat viewing might be called for to detect if this plot device is evident in his actions in the film's early stages. He sure seems regal throughout the screwball comedy, maddeningly unwavering when observing the chaos around him, and quietly resentful of the wealthy way of life.

** Paul Muni in The Story of Louis Pasteur

The Story of Louis Pasteur is just that, a story, well thought-out with regard to historical overview and plot points, and completely non-threatening as a vehicle. And if the five nominees are judged by how well they know their own film and character's limitations Muni would be up there. But 'reliable' does not excel in my eyes, and Paul Muni's animated, head-scratching robotic dog impersonation grows tiresome quickly. Madness is notoriously synonomous with genius but the madcrack mannerisms of Muni's Pasteur (nodding interminably, itchy-chin syndrome, raised eyebrows) only serve as an admission that this film has nothing to offer but EVENTS and ACTIONS, and doesn't even attempt to delve into Pasteur the man.

* Spencer Tracy in San Francisco

I was hoping to enjoy this film and performance, particularly as in the next couple of profiles I'll be pretty much ripping Spencer Tracy to pieces, but this nomination is one of the most bizarre I have ever come across. Tracy features in about six scenes (probably about fifteen minutes screen-time in all) and in only one of these scenes does he raise his voice. My only guess as to why this happened is that there must have been some kind of media/studio talk of Tracy as the next big thing, because nothing in the film demonstrates any kind of chops, sadly.

The Snubbed

**** Leslie Howard in The Petrified Forest

Howard was snubbed again in 1936, for his screen reprisal of a broadway play. His character in the film, Alan Squier, is the most pseudo-intellectual depressing person. But if you ever wanted to hear someone be intellectual Leslie's your man, and he absoloutely nails the conflicts of a man desperate to matter.

*** Clark Gable in San Francisco

We're back to devilish Clark, and believe me he's fiendish in this one. I read on IMDB trivia that in the more emotional scenes he wouldn't let W.S. Van Dyke film his face. It's probably a wise move for his performance, and the film was already a goner by that point anyway. Much better than Tracy.

Nuns, of the Lusty Variety

Prolific Oscar nominee Meryl Streep, who turned sixty last month, was the last woman to be nominated for portraying a nun. Along with Amy Adams she's the latest in a long line of women to wear the habit, to name but a few: Ingrid Bergman in The Bells of St. Mary's, Susan Sarandon's victorious turn in Dead Man Walking, and possibly most famously Whoopi Goldberg as showgirl-turned-saint Sister Mary Clarence in the Sister Act series. Deborah Kerr famously played two on-screen nuns, first in Black Narcissus (1947) and secondly opposite Robert Mitchum in Heaven Knows, Mr Allison (1957)(for the latter she received an Oscar nomination and both performances earned her the top prize from the New York Film Critics).

Despite both roles requiring Deborah to express an introspective grapple with the constraints of each nun's commitment to God the two roles require much different work from her. John Huston's Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison initially bothered me rather a lot; Mitchum as a WWII navy Corporal gets washed up on a desert island (presumably somewhere near Japan) where he meets the sole inhabitant, Kerr's Sister Angela. She appears indifferent towards his arrival, perplexed even, yet the following weeks see them engage in what is some heavily intense interaction for people who have just met each other, allbeit in what becomes a quest for survival against Japanese attack. Questions are begged: What was Sister Angela doing before his arrival? Making cups of green tea and playing Patience? How has the solitude affected her? How does she react to no longer being alone?

This is another African Queen, breezy and bright, treading lightly over old ground in the culture clash/missionary propaganda/opposites attract fun of its predecessor, but it is rather maddening that Huston's film seems so unconcerned with its characters adaptation into a wild unknown. Instead we're treated to a kind of moral compromise (one that takes way too long), whereby Allison learns to think carefully and have faith and Angela is encouraged to let loose and pay more attention to what's going on around her. Kerr demonstrates the naivety of Angela with silly Irish broad that articulates either her worrisome distress -- "Ohhhh, Mister Aaaaaalison" -- or the kind of uptight matronly banter she's stripped of by the time the closing credits roll.

The film's killer scene occurs fairly late on, and is the closest thing that Heaven Knows gets to displaying the primal nakedness of the characters' desires and frustrations. Responding to Mitchum's drunken petulance over a draughts game, which is blatantly leading to darker and more sinister advances, Kerr's hesitant mustering of the line "You don't want to play draughts?" is both blackly hilarious and scarily resilient. Despite previously denying any feeling for Allison her desperation to preserve his integrity in her mind is rather astounding, and Kerr completely nails this part of Angela, and in the process helps to make Heaven Knows a much more fluid, natural and worthwhile exercise.

Aside from this scene, Kerr is given an altogether fluffier arc than she was in Black Narcissus (a decade earlier) where Sister Clodagh, and her feelings for the local totty Mr. Dean, are decidedly less lucid. Clodagh (a much more impersonal and mysterious moniker as it is) sums up the relative inpenatrability of the woman herself, who uses her habit as more of a hiding place, a reserved place of judgement. Given a quest to set up a nunnery up in the cloudy peaks of the Himalayas, Clodagh's Mother Superior voices her concerns over whether the young nun is emotionally secure and selfless enough to succeed.

Black Narcissus is gorgeous; eery, mythical, alien, and its estrangement from civilisation re-enforces the idea of this place as independent of 'life', free of context, suspended in time. It is Clodagh's job to stay grounded and remind her nuns that they are still under God's watchful eye, even though she too is becoming more enamoured with the place and less reliant upon religion. Her main focus is upon reforming the "ill" Sister Ruth, who it has presumed has been questioning her commitment to the cause before the journey through the mountains. Told to "spare her some of your own importance... if you can" by the Mother Superior (yes, the film is rather bitchy) you can see Kerr trying to maintain the immovable composure and morality in a way of regressing to a default state of mind. But as familiarity and rigid practice make Clodagh an unpopular figure in the mountains (particularly among a certain man) she has to rethink her methods.

Kerr never really explodes emotively but depicts the bubbling pot through irksome discomfort, and confirms without ever admitting so that she isn't enough of an evolved person to cope with her own desire for freedom, never mind the wandering outlook of her cloaked clan. This reaches a messy head with the elemental Sister Ruth (played fiercely and brilliantly by Kathleen Byron), who seeks to make Clodagh pay for her loosening affections for Mr. Dean, whom she also has an eye for. Ruth is treated as a mental basket case but ends up being the most valuable and emotionally in-touch member of the film, angry of attempts to suppress her, clear in her love for Dean, aware of her leader's hypocrisy and fatefully jealous of it. Kerr is more wise to this than one might first think, and as Narcissus reaches a bitter climax she understands Clodagh's relief at exiting the situation with her authority intact, however compromised her moral position has become.

Heaven Knows Mr. Allison - B-

Deborah Kerr - ***

Black Narcissus - B+

Deborah Kerr - ****

Men of the Thirties: 1935

The Nominees Were:

Clark Gable - Mutiny on the Bounty
Charles Laughton - Mutiny on the Bounty
Victor McLaglen - The Informer
Paul Muni - Black Fury
Franchot Tone - Mutiny on the Bounty

And the Winner Was:

Victor McLaglen - The Informer

The Mutiny on the Bounty guys fairly obviously split votes here, since none of them really stand out as the obvious pick. Paul Muni's write-in nomination for Black Fury meant that he had a lot of fans but was battling against a massive resurgence for John Ford's film. The Informer was a financial failure but virtually everybody with any influence in LA was raving about it. Victor McLaglen's win is partly a product of this and surely because his role is much more of a one-man show than the others.

My Ratings (in order of preference):-

**** Franchot Tone in Mutiny on the Bounty

While caught at the centre of a struggle between a tyrannical Captain and his increasingly concerned first mate, Tone's eager midshipman features a lot less than he ought to and is often left in the shade in favour of the more obvious 'characters' of the piece. Nevertheless, his presence is a valuable one, and as the most grounded character within a very fervently political environment, the honest, loyal remonstrations against mutiny feel integral to the film's ideas about what 'serving' your country really means. Tone charts the arc of his surefire, adaptable Byam in moving from a position of anti-idealism to a much more sceptical outlook on institutional hierarchy, and learns his lesson the hard way.

*** Charles Laughton in Mutiny on the Bounty

Laughton's silliness reached its peak with royalty in 1933 and, while Captain Bligh aboard the Bounty would never purport to be anything other than a stern nobleman, his monstrous actions are a flimsy way of setting up the ethical dilemnas that plague the film's second half. Parts of Laughton's Bligh are successful: he's predictable, emotionally-disposable, only harmful through position, and kind of reminded me of Captain Manwairing in Dad's Army (i.e. laughably hypocritical). Is this enough? Mutiny is let down a tad by its own narrow-minded views about villainry and Laughton does nothing to suggest that Bligh is battling with ethics himself, or indeed considering anything outside of his power-trip duty. In the end he plays up to Lloyd's emphasis on accessibility, the easier option but possibly also a wise one.

*** Victor McLaglen in The Informer

The protestations of innocence by Victor McLaglen's guilty Gypo are far too easily-read for a higher rating here, and honestly the film is less about his character than an examination of culture and community politics. The gentle giant is not quite on the level of Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile, whose character required him to be meek and little else. McLaglen has to process the guilt of Gypo and does so with the kind of bumbling brashness that makes The Informer seem all the more harsher and imposing. Detrimentally, this makes him stick out like a sore thumb and takes away some of the ambiguity that might have richened the production had a patient, introspective Actor took this role on.

** Clark Gable in Mutiny on the Bounty

There's not much wisdom to be seen in Clark Gable, and the plucky humanitarianism of Fletcher Christian strikes up a much different, wholesome Clark to the one that we're accustomed to. It's difficult to believe that Christian's sudden and rather drastic overhaul of the Bounty was borne out of pure empathy, and one considers that the first mate may be impatient in aspiration, deluded even. Gable doesn't really allude to any unknown motivation, and his fatal flaw is toning down his renowned dastardly charisma in favour of a more dull, reluctant 'hero'. Certainly acceptable as an unwilling moral crusader yet strangely vapid when interacting with Laughton, his best work emerging in the quiet moments with Tone.

Nominees Unseen:

Paul Muni - Black Fury

The Snubbed

**** Robert Donat in The 39 Steps

It's incredibly impressive that guys are still using the techniques of Donat as Richard Hannay, one of the original innocents on the run. The 39 Steps is one of Hitchcock's most watchable films and like The Lady Vanishes seems anti-try hard, easy to follow and digest, charming in the most ballsy, unexpected ways. Its caper style often put me off a little but Donat is inspired in these moments, bang-on tonally, effortlessly funny, the perfect 'wrong man'. And yet as a hero he is thoroughly dynamic, sexy in spontanaeity, and one of Hitch's most appealing screen protagonists he alternates from being a 'man's man' and a 'ladies man' with such ease that it's hardly surprising he was a big box-office draw in this period.

Hottest Track: The Maccabees - Can You Give It?

Michael Jackson [1958-2009] R.I.P.

Men of the Thirties: 1934

1934


The Nominees Were:

Clark Gable - It Happened One Night
Frank Morgan - The Affairs of Cellini
William Powell - The Thin Man


And the Winner Was:

Clark Gable - It Happened One Night

Clark Gable rode the It Happened One Night lovefest to a victory in his very first nomination, and considering he was just 34 and in a distinctly comedic role Gable is a fairly atypical Leading Actor winner. William Powell and Frank Morgan look like fillers in comparison, since Cellini didn't make much of a splash and The Thin Man was well-liked but hardly represented at the ceremony a great deal. Leslie Howard somehow wasn't nominated despite giving two of my favourite performances by an Actor in the entire decade.

My Ratings (in order of preference):-

**** Clark Gable in It Happened One Night

Many of Gable's performances require him to make a bad first impression, and the remainder of the running time involves him charming the pants off us for a re-evaluation. It's no more effective than in It Happened One Night, where his cheeky, sleazy smile reels in Claudette Colbert's willing runaway and sets up what is a killer partnership. His rogue-ish "qualities" of ambivalence and effortless self-sufficiency are pushed to the limit in Capra's frenetic comedy, but Gable seems to bask and enjoy the fun and games of what was labelled "the first screwball". Most of the film feels so gloriously impulsive because of the electricity between the leads, and as a man estranged (intentionally or not) from social etiquette and token quibbles, Gable's attitude is perfect for the role and the film.

*** William Powell in The Thin Man

The film is more a victory for the script than anything else, and one might argue that The Thin Man could have done with lighter and more able actors. Still, Powell as a detective of a maddeningly messy but occasionally hilarious mystery generally succeeds in giving the farce the energy and dryness that's dismissive in tone but rarely encourages us to think outside of the madness. Like Gable, his chemistry with the film's leading lady, Myrna Loy, also elevates the piece, and ensures that The Thin Man, while not always coherent, really gives you a fun-filled time.

Nominees Unseen:

Frank Morgan - The Affairs of Cellini

The Snubbed

**** Leslie Howard in The Scarlet Pimpernel

As the Georgian caped crusader Leslie Howard treats his role exactly how it should be treated, emphasising the fun and flair of his socialite and man of the people. He fiendishly reverts from the tailor-obsessed Lord Percy Blakeney, whom he passes off as a vain, brainless toff, to a man at the head of a network of resistants to the French revolt. Although the film does not chart Percy's transformation into the Pimpernel (a la Batman Begins etc.) Howard gives him the err of someone so immersed in his own culture and yet, on some level, resentful of it. The nasally, pompous voice he puts on is a gratuitous caricature and certainly a knowing, satirical representation of an ambivalent England, and is one of the funniest creations I've seen in a long while.

**** Leslie Howard in Of Human Bondage

Of Human Bondage writer Somerset Maugham must surely have been seeking closure when he penned the unflinching depiction of a very one-sided relationship. While Bette Davis gets all of the juicy lines and showy outbursts, and gives it all of the gusto you'd expect, as a cruel and tactless receiver of love she meets her match in Leslie Howard's persistent, affectionate, sorry Philip. Though very choppily made, to the extent where the film feels more of a montage of their relationship than a chronicle or study, Howard nails the physical hangups of Philip (he has a club foot) and reacts to every lie, scold, and shun with the pain of a mortal wound, and through his defeat somehow manages to extricate a lifetime of self-conscious discomfort.

Men of the Thirties: 1932-33

1932-33

The Nominees Were...

Leslie Howard - Berkeley Square
Charles Laughton - The Private Life of Henry VIII
Paul Muni - I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang

The Winner Was...

Charles Laughton - The Private Life of Henry VIII

My Ratings (in order of preference):-

**** Paul Muni in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)

As an unwilling rebel against a questionable and heavily-criticised judicial system, Paul Muni is a near-revelation in Mervyn LeRoy's I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. Muni gives his wronged man the kind of naive, grounded appeal that heroes always need; that instinctive, direct way of looking at the world, and a degree of intolerance for people and situations that complicate that notion. He convincingly dissects his new situation, initially making James a petulant passenger in the chain gang before a sturdy realisation that to conquer it he must take charge. Fugitive is not as scathing as one would think: James' entry into jail is the primary force in his eventual achievements outside of it, and while the film ploughs on with such capable finesse and ease of storytelling Muni seems to be the perfect central element to its poltiical motivations, a product of his own victimisation.

*** Charles Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933)

Surely there isn't a more definitive screen version of Henry VIII than this 1933 tour-de-force? As well as looking remarkably like the man himself Laughton chews on drumsticks and spits orders with the self-righteous bravura of a man consumed by inherent, ingrained arrogance, and raucously chomps at the bit when surveying the womenfolk too. My problems with the film stem from its rushed desire to pack every juicy bit of history into ninety very stagy minutes, and Laughton himself doesn't really help in this regard. His mannered approach occasionally feels cartoonish, and his effective moments usually come in the form of comedy. A good performance but nothing exceptional.

* Leslie Howard in Berkeley Square (1933)

The toe-in-the-water exploration of the absurd Berkeley Square requires Leslie Howard to be: a) besotted with the idea of his own ancestry, b) besotted with a member of his own ancestry, and c) infuriated with both a and b. Infuriation is something Leslie Howard can only demonstrate with the snarl of a terrier puppy, and even the stuffiness of the film's setting and subject cannot make his efforts feel beyond first base. I am generally a Leslie fan but he feels as if he's acting in a glass box here, understandably unsure of his film's bizarre intentions but fatally unable to eek out any belief for his character's fascinations or sympathy for the predicament he gets himself into.

The Snubbed

*** Warner Baxter in 42nd Street (1933)

The academy don't really like men in musicals. William Powell in The Great Ziegfeld (not exactly a "musical" but about musical theatre) similarly found himself on the wrong side of a snub, and that was for a film about HIM. 42nd Street is also more concerned with women and theatricality than the man who must hold it all together, Warner Baxter. Baxter isn't wonderful but he does draw attention to the frantic, fragile nature of showbusiness and the line between success and failure, and responds to each mini-disaster with the level of comic resignation that takes envy and shoves it down your throat.

** Nils Asther in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)

This beastly pet-figure of reluctant lust for heroine Barbara Stanwyck would later be modestly improved upon by Yul Brynner in Walter Lang's The King and I. Asther's stoney stern glare (as if he were telling off a small child), and satisfyingly smug closed-grin seem to be the faces of choice, and as such he loops them throughout The Bitter Tea, making his General Yen somebody fundamentally formidable, but never really expanding upon the barbarism that tarnishes his acceptability. A late scene shows promise but in general he's one of the main reasons why the film doesn't work.

Continuing the Old Theme...

I'm clearly in classic mode. Updating of the website has been very slow over the last few months, but I've managed to create pages for all years between 1937 and 1942, so if you're interested whether I think How Green Was My Valley should really have beaten Citizen Kane, you can now see. Hopefully, write-ups will ensue for some of these films, and I'm planning to integrate some awards into the pages -- although this will probably just be winners for now since the amount of films from these years is hardly substantial.

Men of the Thirties: 1931-32

1931-32

The Nominees Were:

Wallace Beery - The Champ
Alfred Lunt - The Guardsman
Fredric March - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

And the Winner Winners was were...

Wallace Beery - The Champ
Fredric March - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

In an extraordinary year, the majority of the Leading Actor nominees actually won, with Beery and March sharing the accolade. Fredric March is the true winner, since he got just one vote more than Wallace's Champ, but the then-rules stipulated that if a competitor was within a certain number the contest would be deemed a tie. After frantically searching for a spare statuette for Beery, he too got a speech, and Alfred Lunt remained the only bridesmaid of the trio.

**** Fredric March in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

Rouben Mamoulian's Jekyll and Hyde would undoubtedly be a multiple winner had the make-up category been introduced sooner. March's transformation between Professor and monster is a cosmetic feat for the time and surely contributive to the effect and popularity of his performance. The manneristic qualities of March, however, are perhaps more striking and integral to his double-persona; the arrogant delight that transcends from the welcome danger and escape of the Doctor to the aggressive primordial revelling of his creation. And the rather obvious switch-up from physical refinement to ape-ish predictability serves him well as it feels particularly parallel to the literary tone of the film. March seems very aware of Robert Louis Stevenson's orginal narrative and the storytelling style of director Mamoulian, and is dynamic without ever taking over the film, becoming an example of the fine line between genius and madness and the increasingly powerless victim of his own dark desires.

Nominees Unseen:

Wallace Beery - The Champ (1931)
Alfred Lunt - The Guardsman (1931)

The Snubbed

**** Robert Williams in Platinum Blonde (1931)

I'm somewhat surprised that Frank Capra's Platinum Blonde did not receive a single nomination, since it certainly feels to me in the same level of quality and similar in theme to his other thirties films. A story of culture and class clashes and the questionable morals of the newspaper business, Platinum Blonde provides a great deal for leading man Robert Williams to eschew over (two women and his diminishing masculinity for a start) and he gladly channels this into a charismatic character that has perhaps been entrenched in his work for too long.

Williams handles his arc well, reluctant at every step, and while the film treats his decline into a position under the thumb of the insistent Jean Harlow a little too swiftly and severely, he helps us to understand the man's belief in his own infallability as inherently working class and independent. He underplays his concessions and diminishes their effect with redundant sarcastic protests and faux-'Jack the lad' charm, and ably expresses the cultural naivety with which his newspaperman approaches his first relationship with a socially-superior woman.

*** Paul Muni in Scarface (1932)

If you've seen Muni's nominated performances, most of which feature after this, it's difficult to believe that they actually rate as comparatively restrained. In Scarface he twists his face with sour putrid, and undoubtedly performs the part of Tony Ferino with a 'MORE is more' attitude, making every aggressive outburst feel like some kind of seizure. It would be fair to say that, to an extent, it works: Muni gives us smugness, possessiveness, and paranoia with the flagrant generosity of a man that knows he's there for show, menacingly apt when you consider the dangerous reputation of his volatile gangster. But there's always such a nagging methodology to Muni that extends to other performances (allbeit in a banal, less valuable context) that makes Tony appear too outrospectively emotive, treating every situation too dramatically, to the point where I don't trust that he fully considers Tony's desire to hold onto his untouchable status.

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Men of the Thirties: 1930-31

1930-31

The Nominees were...

Lionel Barrymore - A Free Soul
Jackie Cooper - Skippy
Richard Dix - Cimarron
Fredric March - The Royal Family of Broadway
Adolphe Menjou - The Front Page

And the Winner was...

Lionel Barrymore - A Free Soul

Lionel Barrymore's nomination as director of Madame X in the previous 1929-30 ceremony may just have swung the vote in a diverse year for Leading male nominees. There's also the fact that he is very flawed in the film (an alcoholic and bad father) whereas the others, while hardly whiter-than-whiter, are certainly less sympathetic in their actions. Eight year-old Jackie Cooper remains the youngest person to receive a nomination in a Leading Role.

My ratings and assessments (in order of preference):-

*** Adolphe Menjou in The Front Page (1931)

Menjou features in barely a handful of scenes in The Front Page's opening hour, but the constant reference to his character in this time and the importance of his Walter Burns in the final act, probably amounts to a leading role. As a newspaper tycoon he represents the film's harshest depiction of the ruthless world of journalism, manipulating the unfolding drama over a murder suspect with political and financial motivation. He does this with all the dignity of an orchestral conductor, cooly cutting people dead with one-liners and approaching the sheriff and all who challenge him as if they were barely worthy of his time. Menjou is largely successful at responding to the energy of the film's true leading man, Pat O'Brien, and thoughtfully underplays his character's crafty processing and frequent dismay with furrowed brows and pursed lips. A criticism is that he is perhaps a little too reserved, and certainly appears to be less attuned to this satirical brand of comedy than many of the other cast members, but no matter, his performance is a sly, shrewd, knowing one that crucially ensures that we never doubt who's truly running the show.

** Richard Dix in Cimarron (1931)

Richard Dix probably felt like the cat that got the cream when he landed the lead role in Best Picture-winner Cimarron, but retrospectively the task of wrestling with this turgid, muddled script is a thankless one. Dix charges Cimarron through a fairly promising first half at the core of a culture we're beginning to understand, and while the film feels as if its moving towards something his curiously-named Yancey Cravat is the self-righteous hero that descendants like Giant managed to muster up. A rousing speech at a church meeting shows what Dix is capable of, clawing at the town's hooligans and effectively hanging them out to dry with an almost arrogant lack of fear. Ironically this display of leadership is Cimarron's final feat, promptly consigning Dix to a five-year period of solitude which is over in the blink of an eye. His return to the town only serves to confuse matters though, and it really is downhill from there for all concerned. I couldn't tell you anything more about his character from then onwards: a fault for which Dix really can't be blamed.

** Lionel Barrymore in A Free Soul (1931)

The raucous mannerisms that serve Lionel Barrymore are manifested into drunken flailing and desperate pleas in A Free Soul, a film that is a bit like an accident waiting to happen. Asking Norma Shearer to act modestly is a questionable move in itself, and only contributes to the guffaw when AFS turns into a theatrical courtroom face/off at the close and sees the two stars compete for just who can shout the loudest and swoosh the most dramatically. Prior to the film's needless escalation into cheap melodrama it had been a competent family drama (allbeit low on actual themes) in which Barrymore's alcoholic lawyer isn't mind-blowing, but manages to get across the man's passion for family, work, and alcohol. When that idea is knocked on its head the mayhem ensues and we're into histrionics the likes of which even Liz Taylor and Richard Burton never reached. The essence of their courtroom exchange is down to the poor script but both Shearer and Barrymore's treatment of it is ACTING 101, and all but kills any sense of poignancy left in A Free Soul.

Nominees Unseen:

Jackie Cooper in Skippy (1931)

Fredric March in The Royal Family of Broadway (1930)

Men of the Thirties Month: Commencement

And so it begins.

I've been racing through the Academy Awards' first embracees with the lightning fury of a bushfire in Skippy and with the determined desire for escape of Victor McLaglen in The Informer. But before I launch into annual rundowns of each respective year, I just wanna make one small point about George Arliss, and his fellow nominees in the 1929-30 awards. Although technically these awards consider films in the first half of 1930, Disraeli was released in 1929, and so I don't count his win as a thirties victory -- if you get me. Therefore I'll be starting with the 1930-31 line-up.

Here are the nomination totals for the Actors of the Thirties (* denotes win) :-

4 Nominations (and leader of the pack)

Paul Muni*

3 Nominations

Clark Gable*
Fredric March*
Spencer Tracy**

2 Nominations

Charles Boyer
Robert Donat*
Leslie Howard
Charles Laughton*
William Powell

1 Nomination

Lionel Barrymore*
Wallace Beery*
James Cagney
Gary Cooper
Jackie Cooper
Richard Dix
Walter Huston
Alfred Lunt
Adolphe Menjou
Robert Montgomery
Frank Morgan
Victor McLaglen*
Laurence Olivier
Mickey Rooney
James Stewart
Franchot Tone

Extra Stats and Trivia

The average age of the Leading Actor winner is just under 40 years old.

Youngest - Gable (34 years and 26 Days)
Oldest - Barrymore (52 years and 196 days)

Only two of the Leading Actor winners (Laughton as Henry VIII and Muni as Louis Pasteur) are starring in actual biopics -- so we can't blame the current obsession on Academy Award founders. Having said that, five of the other eight winners are literary characters. Originality didn't exactly reap reward in this period either.

*SPOILER ALERT*
Seven of the ten winners have death scenes.

Paul Muni's nomination for Black Fury in 1935 was a write-in, like Bette Davis' Of Human Bondage turn the year before. Both were revealed as second-place finishers to Victor McLaglen and Claudette Colbert respectively. The 'write-in' nomination was eventually abolished though, and the rules subsequently changed to ensure that the Academy would get it right the first time around. Whether they did or not is a matter of opinion.

The correlation between the Picture and Actor categories is nothing new: of the ten winners, only Lionel Barrymore and Fredric March were not in a Best Picture nominee. However, Clark Gable is the only winner to see his film win the big prize. He's also the only winner to see a co-star get an Oscar.

Of the 25 men nominated for Leading Actor in the 1930's, five went on to win the award in later decades (Cagney, Cooper, March, Olivier, Stewart) although Walter Huston did win for Supporting in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). Fredric March is the only Actor to win in both the thirties and forties.

None of the ten Actor winners won the New York Film Critics Circle award, the then biggest precursor for the Oscar. And only one of the guys managed to get noticed elsewhere for their performance, although I'd certainly question Paul Muni's 1936 Volpi Cup from Venice.

Upcoming: 1930-31 Profile

The Men of June

Since I frequently go on about Actresses on this blog, and truthfully tend to lean towards them when choosing my "high priority" rentals, I've been trying to redeem my neglect of the men of cinema. I made a conscious decision a few weeks ago to catch up on the Leading Actor nominees of the 1930's, which range from tyrannical monarchs to alcoholic lawyers to double-persona scientists.

This testerone-heavy experiment has therefore led me to proclaim June as the "Men of the Thirties" month on this blog, in which I'll throw some stats out and analyse the nominated performances that I did manage to catch. As per usual, the eventual winners of the prize are often bewildering but I'll save the bitching until later on.

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