Jon Eig2013-05-21T07:09:39-04:00Jon Eighttp://www.news.moviefone.com/author/index.php?author=jon-eigCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Jon EigGood old fashioned elbow grease.All Time Oscars: The 10 Best Actresses in a Leading Roletag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.28078002013-03-18T13:00:21-04:002013-05-18T05:12:01-04:00Jon Eighttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-eig/
When I sat down to compile my list of the all time greatest performances by an actress in a lead role, I went through all the steps I had gone through when putting together the other acting lists. When I got to my short list this fact hit me: Only three of my top 10 appeared in American films. I was raised on American film, and my previous lists have shown that bias. So what is it about American film that seems to deny lead actresses great parts? I mean, we created Blanche DuBois and The Women on stage, Lucy Ricardo and The Gilmore Girls on TV. But even allowing for all the omissions I will no doubt hear about, I can't find enough female counterparts in American film. I'll leave you to ponder that as I unveil the greatest performances by a leading actress (of all time!).
Bibi Andersson (Persona, 1966): It would be easy to fill this list with Ingmar Bergman actresses. Liv Ullmann, in the same movie, is astonishing. The homophonic Harriet Andersson could have multiple roles. I have already chosen Ingrid Thulin as a supporting actress. As Nurse Alma in this psychological suspense-turned-horror film, Andersson is stranded on an island with the mute and manipulative actress played by Ullmann, and must talk and talk constantly as she gradually loses her mind.
Louise Brooks (Pandora's Box, 1929): Brooks's career was going nowhere in the States when G.W. Pabst invited her to Germany to play Lulu, a young woman for whom sexuality was currency. Prior silent films had their share of vixens, but in terms of depth and complexity, Lulu was a whole new ball game. Soon, Marlene Dietrich would bring this type of character from Germany to the U.S. But it took an American actress working in Germany to pave the way.
Bette Davis (All About Eve, 1950): This is American through and through. Davis's unique look and voice made her difficult to slot. Her immense intensity on-screen overcame that. Margo Channing, the first lady of Broadway, is concerned about aging. Davis turns her into among the most compelling characters in American film, regardless of gender.
Renee Falconetti (The Passion of Joan of Arc, 1929): She was a popular comedienne on the French stage when Carl Theodor Dreyer cast her in one of the last great silent films. She never made another movie. Shot mostly in close-up, this is the most intense performance by an actress ever put on celluloid.
Katharine Hepburn (Bringing Up Baby, 1938): She could play comedy and drama equally well. This Howard Hawks's screwball revealed both sides. Screwball comedy is the lunatic cousin of film noir, riotously funny, but, when at its best, dangerous and imbalanced as well. Hepburn played this duality better than anyone.
Isabelle Huppert (The Piano Teacher, 2001): If you know Huppert and her director Michael Haneke from this year's Amour, this may come as a bit of a shock. For here they examine psycho-sexual games of domination and masochism alive in the artistic soul. Erika is sympathetic and hateful in equal measures and Huppert creates her so vividly that the extremes never seem unbelievable.
Marilyn Monroe (Some Like it Hot, 1959): Marilyn was an underrated comedienne during her life, but directors understood her talent. Billy Wilder put up with all of her famous insecurities on the set because he knew no other actress could come close to the sexual allure and sympathetic vulnerability in creating Sugar Kane.
Jeanne Moreau (Eve, 1962): Please don't read too much into the fact that the only two French actresses on the list are also the only two actresses who played women heavily involved in sexual domination. That's what a therapist is for. Moreau was about as versatile as they come. She made many fine movies, and truth be told, I don't really think this is one of them. But as a character, Eve is extraordinary, among the most crassly powerful women ever put on film.
Kinuyo Tanaka (Ugetsu monogatari, 1953): Actresses are often closely associated with a favorite director, and though she was married to a different one, Tanaka's films for Kenji Mizoguchi rival those of any actress/director pairing in film history. Not only is she heartbreakingly brilliant in Ugestsu, but she has a crucial role in the most poignant final scene ever filmed.
Jeong-hie Yun (Poetry, 2010): South Korean film has been a revelation of late. Hye-ja Kim, in 2009's Mother, could easily be on this list as well. The range Yun displays here, in a story that could have easily become maudlin, is remarkable. She suffers personal tragedy, overwhelming financial pressure, and sexual humiliation all while dealing with early-stage dementia. And still she seeks beauty in her life. The movie, in turn, reflects her beauty.
Meryl Streep: Not even the great Hepburn is her equal when it comes to range. She has been so good in so many things that it's easy to overlook her. She even got Seth MacFarlane to shut up at the Oscars. My problem has always been with her movies, not with her. Many of those Best Actress nominations were in movies that I would not pay to see a second time. That began to change in recent years. So, since this is an award for a performance, I am giving Ms. Streep a special award for the back-to-back tandem of Julie & Julia and Doubt. Together they show her comedy and her intensity, her astonishing ability to recreate a clichéd real-life chef with true humanity, and the craft which allows her to transform her face, voice, and posture into a nun mining the deepest depths of faith. I'd say she has a future.]]>From D.C. With Love: Oscars 2013tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27608992013-02-25T16:10:28-05:002013-04-27T05:12:01-04:00Jon Eighttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-eig/
I imagine there are people in red states (and I hope someone will explain to me how the Republican Party came to be associated with the color we previously reserved for Communists) who were not impressed by the first lady. I come from a blue state (and I hope someone will to me how the Democratic Party became associated with the color of the blood of aristocrats), and consequently was delighted. At the very least, it once and for all confirmed my long-held suspicion that Hollywood and Washington were somehow separated at birth.
Think about it. Two one-industry towns. You can't grab a burger without hearing about Johnny Depp's new masseuse in LA, or about Joe Biden's new hair stylist in D.C. Being at the top of the pyramid in either town qualifies you as one of the most powerful people in the world. And I am firmly convinced that no one impresses a Hollywood mogul more than a U.S. Congressman, just like no one impresses a president more than George Clooney. In the year of Argo, Lincoln, and Zero Dark Thirty, the connection between LA and D.C. seems stronger than ever.
So here's one brief comment about Argo. If you want to get your rotten tomatoes ready to throw, I am giving advance warning that I am about to say something mildly critical about it. I do not think it was the best movie of the year. I do not think that Ben Affleck was somehow denied his birthright by not being nominated for Best Director, (though, given the adoration Argo has received from virtually all quarters, I remain surprised that he wasn't nominated.) I think the movie falls in love a bit too much with the Hollywood section (arguably the most entertaining part of the story) at the expense of the six characters stuck in the house, so that by the third act, I care only about the mission, and not about the people. For me, that hurt the movie. Didn't ruin it. Didn't make it bad. But did disqualify it from my "best" list.
So what we have is a movie constructed to prove that when D.C. and LA team up, there's no problem that cannot be solved. The fact that the problem we overcame emanated from the Middle East, where a violent mob intent of harming Americans still may or may not exist, makes it all the more reassuring. I was entertained and I felt proud. What Tony Mendez and those Americans did was genuinely heroic. And the first lady was there to confirm it all. Problem is, I can think of five 2012 movies rather quickly that have stayed with me longer, and have had a more lasting impact on me. But when LA and D.C. team up and do it well, they can be pretty hard to resist.
While I have you, just a few other thoughts on the show itself:
I guess there are people who care about the red carpet. I just haven't met any of them. I like looking at beautiful women in expensive gowns. But the interviews are truly awful. So, no more red carpet interviews, unless they are conducted by Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog.
Broadway puts on live musical numbers. Hollywood makes movies. Please stick to that during the Oscars.
When did the orchestra get relegated to the kids' table? I know most musicians are pretty motley, but can't they at least be in the building?
Marvin Hamlisch is my boy, but why does he get Babs singing him a song? Don't the rest of the in memoriams feel slighted?
Loved the Jaws theme. I mean, really loved it. Best Oscar innovation in many years.
I remember when the Hersholt and the Lifetime Achievements got live tributes and made acceptance speeches. They were generally boring, but a bit more dignified than pointing at four guys in a box and saying "Them guys, they was important.
No opinion about MacFarlane. Hard job. Perfectly average. But I'll throw down with anyone dissing William Shatner. He was awesome. In fact, if there are any producers reading this, or anyone with a lot of ready cash, I have an idea for a remake of Bonnie and Clyde starring Capt. Kirk and Betty White. In a Bunuelian touch, the sex scenes would use two different actors as stand-ins. I'm thinking Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried, but I'm flexible. We might be able to get Bill Clinton for a cameo. Let's talk.]]>All-Time Oscars: The 10 Best Performances by a Leading Actortag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27165432013-02-20T12:17:57-05:002013-04-22T05:12:01-04:00Jon Eighttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-eig/ Humphrey Bogart (In a Lonely Place): We all know Bogart could be cool (Spade and Marlowe). We all know he could be weak and disturbed (Fred C. Dobbs and Captain Queeg). But as Dixon Steele in Nicholas Ray's underrated gem, he is both, and then some. Extra points for playing a violent screenwriter.
Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York): One day, and it may not be long, Mr. Day-Lewis may be considered the greatest actor in the history of film. He is certainly building the resume for it. As Bill "The Butcher" Cutting in Gangs of New York, he may be too good, because he blows his co-star/rival Leonardo DeCaprio out of the water, so that you can't possibly believe their final show-down would really last more than about 10 seconds. He is what holds together a hugely flawed, yet very entertaining movie.
Robert DeNiro (Taxi Driver/Raging Bull): Following in the method footsteps of Dean and Brando, DeNiro continued the evolution of American acting. These are the two powerhouse performances, but there are many others. Late in his career, he began doing comedy and revealed another aspect of his formidable skills.
Cary Grant (His Girl Friday): He never stopped doing comedy, though there was no kind of role he could not play. Howard Hawks had the idea to change the Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur play The Front Page into a battle of the sexes. He was smart enough to get Charles Lederer to write the supremely witty adaptation. And he was even smarter to get Grant to play Walter Burns, the fastest talking newspaper man the world has ever seen.
Dustin Hoffman (Tootsie): Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis were very successful playing two men in drag in Some Like It Hot. But they were clearly men in drag. Robin Williams was very funny as Mrs. Doubtfire, but he was also a wee bit scary. Hoffman nails both Michael Dorsey and Dorothy Michaels. And that's the non-sexual meaning of "nails."
Charles Laughton (The Private Life of Henry VIII): Laughton may have given more great performances than any actor in the history of film. His extravagant Henry never manages to stray too far over the top to make us lose interest and the comic highlights are glorious. Just watching him eat is a treat. Seeing him lose at cards to real-life wife/companion Elsa Lanchester... well, that is sublime.
Anthony Perkins (Pyscho): Though he had a long career with many worthwhile parts, it was hard to cast Perkins. He was too quirky and skinny and edgy to be a big-time leading man. But Norman Bates was supposed to be quirky and skinny and edgy, and Perkins made him into the most endearing villain we have ever seen. (This spot could just as easily have gone to Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, but Hopkins only wore a dead man's face as a mask while Perkins did the entire dead mother get-up.)
Takashi Shimura (Ikiru): Most Western audiences only know Akira Kurusawa from his samurai pictures. But he made contemporary Japanese dramas as well, and several are excellent. Shimura could play the hell out of a samurai (two years later, he was Shimada, the samurai leader in Seven Samurai). He could also play the hell out of a terminally ill government paper pusher who desperately wants to build a children's park before he dies. It is among the most poignant performances in film, and never once becomes cloying or sentimental.
Ralph Richardson (The Fallen Idol): While we are on the subject of potentially cloying sentiment, how's this for a premise: A young boy worships the family butler. When the butler comes under suspicion of murder, his primary concern becomes protecting the boy's psyche. The boy, fortunately, was quite good. And Richardson, as the butler, did exactly what Shimura accomplished as mentioned above. (This spot could just as easily have gone to Anthony Hopkins as James Stevens, butler supreme in Remains of the Day, but in the end, alliteration won out.)
Jean-Louis Trintignant (The Conformist): If you have seen Amour, go back and watch The Conformist and marvel at Trintignant's range and stamina. It is a role that at times seems almost static, yet has remarkable nuance in posture and expression. Clearly, the opportunist Clerici is the most intriguing petty fascist we have seen on film (at least until Anthony Hopkins plays one).
This year's actual Oscars are getting in the way this week, but that won't stop me from opining and pontificating on the all-time actresses next week.]]>All-Time Oscars: The Eight Best Screenplays and Cinematography Jobs of All Timetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26175712013-02-12T12:26:49-05:002013-04-14T05:12:01-04:00Jon Eighttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-eig/
I figure if the Academy can arbitrarily choose nine Best Picture nominees this year, I can set my numbers wherever I want. So here are the eight best screenplays, and eight best cinematography jobs (OF ALL TIME!).
Screenwriters (sorry Mamet, Pinter, Kaufman, Zaillian, Greene -- you were all on the short list but didn't make it.)
Woody Allen (Radio Days, 1987): Roughly a screenplay a year for 40 years after an apprenticeship on Your Show of Shows ought to result in some special work. Allen has written a number of great scripts, and this one shows all his skills with multiple characters, sentiment and comedy to full effect.
Paddy Chayefsky (The Hospital, 1971): Chayefsky went from ultra-realism in the '50s to operatic excess in '70s and ended up with two of the most prophetic and bitingly savage screenplays ever written. This one rates slightly higher than Network.
Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets (Sweet Smell of Success, 1957): "Cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river." That alone gets it on the list, but it has so much more. Brilliant portrait of the shape of media to come.
Robert Sherwood (The Best Years of Our Lives, 1946): It may be an adaptation, but Sherwood juggles multiple characters and story lines in the most poignant post-war story ever filmed.
Peter Stone (Charade, 1963): There is no better guilty pleasure in the history of film. Suspense, romance, comedy, and an awesome ending. What more do you want?
Preston Sturges (The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, 1944): The greatest American screenwriter. Wrote and directed eight films between 1940-1944 that ranged from good to outrageously brilliant. This is the choice because he got a heroine named Trudy Kockenlocker past the Production Code Administration.
Robert Towne (Chinatown, 1973): A textbook of dramatic structure and perhaps the greatest villain in American film.
Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler (Double Indemnity, 1944): Another adaptation. A twisting plot that used nihilism, flashback, the femme fatale, and brilliant dialogue to launch film noir.
Cinematography
John Alton (The Big Combo, 1955): Many of these choices will be from splashy, big-budget color films, but mention has to be made of the low-budget noir DPs. Alton works miracles with light and shadow in a dozen such movies.
Jack Cardiff (Black Narcissus, 1947): The other end of the spectrum. The pioneer of three strip Technicolor, Cardiff gave the Powell/Pressburger movies their look.
Karl Freund (The Last Laugh, 1924): The most evolved use of camera in silent film. Freund would come to America and direct some movies in the talkie era, but this silent for F.W. Murnau showed the world how expressive a camera could be.
Conrad Hall (The Road to Perdition, 2002): This movie did not necessarily have to be beautiful. But Hall made sure it was.
Sven Nykvist (Fanny and Alexander, 1982): Best known for his work with Ingmar Bergman, Nykvist shot films for many well-established directors. Some thirty years after their initial collaboration, he had his greatest triumph for Bergman.
Pierre Rousellot (A River Runs Through It, 1992): This movie HAD to be beautiful and Rousellot nailed it.
Vittorio Storaro (The Last Emperor, 1987): Shot The Last Emperor and Ishtar in the same year. At least they both looked great.
Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane, 1941): There may never have been a more fortuitous pairing than Orson Welles and Gregg Toland. Both were geniuses who loved to take chances. Toland's deep focus allowed Welles to express aspects of Kane's character in purely cinematic terms.
Next week, we get back to the actors.]]>All-Time Oscars: The Ten Best Supporting Actresses in Historytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25781542013-01-29T22:43:12-05:002013-03-31T05:12:01-04:00Jon Eighttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-eig/The Last Picture Show and Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight.
But enough looking back. It's time to talk about the ladies.
Well, actually, I'll be doing even more looking back today. Seven of my ten choices come from the golden age of Hollywood. All seven come from a 14-year-period between 1939 and 1953. Two others are from the '60s. I have one performance from the last 45 years, and I already know from past arguments that few people will agree with that choice.
Simply put, Hollywood has not done a very good job of creating great roles for women. Maybe that's why Beatrice Straight and Judi Dench have won Oscars for playing characters who were on screen for well under ten minutes. Back in the '40s, when film noir was at its peak, there were lots of strong roles for women, which is reflected in my list.
Joan Bennett (Scarlet Street, 1945): Bennett is the classic noir femme fatale in this Fritz Lang movie. She made two potent films with Lang and co-star Edward G. Robinson in 1945 (The Woman in the Window is the other).
Beulah Bondi (The Southerner, 1945): Probably best known as George Bailey's mother in It's a Wonderful Life, Biondi plays the definitive grumpy, but loveable frontier grandmother in one of Jean Renoir's best American movies.
Jean Brooks (The Seventh Victim, 1943): All horror fans have their favorite Val Lewton movie. This is not my favorite, but I can't think of any performance that captured any auteur's artistic sensibility better than Jean Brooks' longing for death as the mysterious Jacqueline Gibson. I went back and forth between Brooks and Ruth Gordon in Rosemary's Baby here. Very different performances, very similar movies.
Gloria Grahame (The Big Heat, 1953): Another Lang. Another noir. It does not get better in American film than Gloria Grahame playing a tough girl. Lee Marvin throws scalding coffee in her face. Later on, she returns the favor.
Margaret Hamilton (The Wizard of Oz, 1939): I probably don't have to debate this one. The witch by which all witches are judged. Scary and funny at the same time. Virtually every line a classic. And as my brother pointed out to me, she had to play two roles.
Catherine Keener (Lovely & Amazing, 2001): Apparently, a lot of audiences think this is simply a movie about whining women. I will continue to argue that Nicole Holofcener's best movie is as good a portrait of American women at the turn of the millennium as anyone has produced, and that Keener is the best actress we have today at giving depth and dimension to "regular" women.
Agnes Moorehead (The Magnificent Ambersons, 1942): Aunt Fanny's role is more pronounced in the second half of Orson Welles' adaptation of Booth Tarkington. And that's the part that RKO butchered in post-production. So we probably will never know just how great she was. But what we do have is the most poignant portrait of spinsterhood in American film.
Thelma Ritter (Pickup on South Street, 1953): Ritter was nominated for the Oscar six times and never won. She could wise-crack with the best of them, but here she reveals a sadness beneath that gruff exterior that remains with you long after you've left the theater.
Ingrid Thulin (Winter Light, 1963): This might be a leading role, so forgive me for sneaking it in here. Thulin's tortured schoolteacher Marta has a six minute close-up in addition to a number of other indelible moments in what is likely Ingmar Bergman's most austere film. That's saying something.
Ann-Margret (The Cincinnati Kid, 1965): Like Thulin, she is Swedish. That's where the similarity ends. Melba is introduced lounging in bed using a scissors to snip off pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in order to get them to fit. She captures the amoral sexuality implicit in that visual metaphor to a tee.
I'm sure I left lots of worthy contenders out. So let me know. Next week, I think we'll look at screenplays.]]>All-Time Oscars: The 10 Best Supporting Actors in Historytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25282452013-01-24T18:13:52-05:002013-03-26T05:12:01-04:00Jon Eighttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-eig/
I know it's fraught with disaster. That many will scoff at my selections. Laugh at my provincialism, or condemn my snobbery. It doesn't bother me. The fact that I have seen less than one percent of the film output of India and Nigeria (the two largest film producers in the world) does not deter me. The fact is, there have been a lot of mistakes made in the awarding of film honors over the years, and I'm going to take this chance to right some of those wrongs.
Today, I'll offer a set of nominees for Best Supporting Actor. In coming weeks, I'll do the same for Supporting Actress, Actor, Actress, Screenplay, Cinematography, Director, and Film. Anyone who cares to vote for any of my selections, or wants to nominate his own choice, can do so in the comments. I will read those comments, and then will announce winners around Oscar time, based either on those votes, or on some other set of criteria I haven't determined yet. It's not like I have the budget for Price Waterhouse (or whatever they are called these days) to certify anything.
So here are my 10 nominees for Best Supporting Actor (of all time!):
John Cazale (The Godfather, Pt II): Cazale made five movies before his early death. Brilliant in all five. All five were Best Picture Nominees. And making Fredo, the weakling of the Corleone family, such a towering figure, is his ultimate triumph.
Don Cheadle (Devil in a Blue Dress): Mouse is a killer. But I really think I'd like to hang out with him. Among the most underrated actors working today gets far too few roles like this.
Laird Cregar (I Wake Up Screaming): Not everything fits in this early nourish crime story. But Cregar's tortured Inspector Ed Cornell delves the psychological depths of noir at its best. Died even younger than Cazale.
Marcel Dalio (The Rules of the Game): Dalio appeared in well over 100 movies in both his native France and Hollywood, often in very small roles. But he was also in what many critics consider to be the greatest movie ever made by the greatest director of all time. As the Marquis de la Cheyniest, he is at the core of the ensemble story and is at the tragicomic heart of Jean Renior's masterpiece.
Ralph Fiennes (Schindler's List): What's the biggest flaw in Spielberg's epic? Not the flash of red. It's that Fiennes' Amon Goeth is so overwhelming a portrait of unchecked evil that he threatens to take the movie away from Oskar Schindler.
Thomas Mitchell (Stagecoach): This list is alphabetical, which means Walter Brennan isn't on it. Which leaves Thomas Mitchell as the greatest supporting actor in Hollywood history. There are at least half a dozen other roles he could be nominated for, but Doc Brown has always been a favorite of mine.
Armin Mueller-Stahl (Eastern Promises): This may be my most obscure choice and I admit it is tied largely to four words. When vicious Russian mob boss Semyon slowly turns to a naïve midwife and asks "There is a diary?" it is an extraordinarily chilling moment, setting up all of David Cronenberg's film.
George Sanders (All About Eve): George Sanders always gave the impression that he was far too good to be in movies. I suppose with other actors, that could come off as unpleasant. Sanders made it somehow charming.
Everett Sloane (Citizen Kane): There was not an age or an attitude that Everett Sloane could not play. He didn't need make-up or costume. It was all his voice and body. In a film of extraordinary performances, his Mr. Bernstein is a technical marvel.
Charles Vanel (Wages of Fear): Henri-Georges Clouzot's thriller required enormous intensity from all of its main actors, and Vanel's older con man Jo delivers intensity along with a range of other emotions rarely found in suspense stories.
Add your favorites if you care to and check back next week for Best Supporting Actresses.]]>You Say You Want a Revolution?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.24889292013-01-17T14:03:00-05:002013-03-19T05:12:01-04:00Jon Eighttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-eig/The Rite of Spring was the best know explosion of that year, causing riots when performed by the Ballet Russes. But other composers like Schoenberg and Webern were similarly redefining music at the time and meeting with both resistance and acclaim. The Armory Show in New York introduced modern painting to the American audience. D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers was helping reshape the content of literature for a modern age while Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons was reshaping its form. All in all, a pretty dynamic year.
My field of interest, film, can't boast of such revolutionary events. The form itself was only about 20 years old in 1913, so it would be hard to imagine a revolution. Still, there was a symbolic changing of the guard as early titan Georges Melies, who was primarily theatrically bound, was forced to retire and the cinematically-inspired D. W. Griffith left his constrictive home at Biograph to begin making his own features. Soon, he would spring The Birth of a Nation on the public. Maybe because film is such an expensive and collaborative undertaking, it would take a few more years for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) and Battleship Potemkin(1925) to complete the revolution.
Jump ahead 50 years. Rock music had been around for awhile, but the Beatles and the Stones released their first singles in 1963. MOMA staged its first pop-art exhibit (actually in December of 1962) and Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein became household names. The Feminine Mystique and The Bell Jar focused attention on the changing role of women in literature and in culture at large.
Depending on what continent you look at, film was either early or late to the 1960s party. In France, beginning in the late 1950s, la nouvelle vague threw down a huge challenge to the old way of doing things. But in the USA, film was late. Mark Harris's fascinating book Pictures at a Revolution describes the tumult in Hollywood in 1967 by examining the five best picture award nominees. Two were bastions of the old (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and Dr. Doolittle), while two others were signs of the future (The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde). The winner was a hybrid: In the Heat of the Night, which offered new content in a traditional form. Hollywood would enter a second golden age from the late '60s into the mid-'70s, when the filmic equivalent of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (namely, Jaws and Star Wars) would establish the blockbuster as Hollywood's fundamental product.
(Oh, and just as a footnote, if you do accept 1967 as "close enough" to 1963, consider that the Monterrey Pop Festival debuted, as did Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and The Velvet Underground. A few months after the Stones agreed to change suggestive lyrics for their performance on Ed Sullivan, the Doors defiantly refused to do the same, and thus the American public was subjected to hearing Jim Morrison tell a girl "we couldn't get much higher." The horror.)
So can we get something going in 2013? What are the ingredients of an artistic revolution? Usually there is anger, both with the culture at large as well as with traditionally accepted artistic modes. Both form and content typically come under attack. And there is often a theoretical spearhead or two. You could easily argue that pop music has been the most dynamic artistic medium since the 1960s. Punk, hip-hop, grunge, world. These have all challenged the predominant mode. And they have often been usurped by the mainstream rather quickly. (Is there a product that NWA songs cannot advertise?) The same can be said of the graphic novel's influence in literature. In film, there have been manifestos, trends like Dogme 95, Slow Cinema, and what we globally refer to as the Indie movement. But nothing seems to have taken the world by storm. Surely, with fiscal cliffs looming, recessions threatening and guns ablazing, there is enough anger out there to fuel a revolution. Surely, with recycled Resident Evils and bankruptcy-inducing John Carters out there, people are fed up with the standard operating procedure of mainstream film. I think we just need the visionary. It could come from anywhere on the globe and from any medium. Maybe it's already here just waiting to gain an audience. Unfortunately, as I scan the landscape, the only thing I see right now is Revolution -- Gangnam Style. In 2013, Gertrude Stein could legally marry Alice B. Toklas in a growing number of American states, but given the condition of our arts today, I kind of think she'd still look for somewhere else to live.]]>Obligatory Oscar Reactiontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.24496032013-01-10T17:28:33-05:002013-03-12T05:12:02-04:00Jon Eighttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-eig/
PICTURE: OK, there are ten of them, and that's almost certainly too many. How many of you picked Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close or Tree of Life in your Oscar pool last year? It's hard to get too worked up when you have this many nominees. I'm happy for Amour, and I suppose it's too much to ask for a second foreign language film to be recognized, but I would have loved to have seen Holy Motors get a nod. To me, it was much more fun than Les Miserables. And I personally preferred Cloud Atlas to a lot of the nominees, but I understand that it was not for everybody.
DIRECTOR: I get Tarantino and Affleck being snubbed. I don't get Bigelow at all. How is that possible? I was very happy for Michael Haneke and Benh Zeitlin, and I admire Ang Lee so much. But Bigelow has to be there. Drop Lee.
ACTOR: I have never really been a Hugh Jackman guy. Very talented, but has never blown me away. I'll take John Hawkes in The Sessions.
ACTRESS: Quvenzhane Wallis carries her film, so I'm happy her age wasn't held against her. I haven't seen Naomi Watts yet so I will refrain from passing judgment. The others look fine to me.
SUPPORTING ACTOR: This is where the rubber meets the road in Oscar debate. Some of the biggest snubs of all time come in this category. So, right off the bat: I don't think too many people would argue that Robert DeNiro is a better actor than Dwight Henry. But DeNiro's work in the critical darling Silver Linings Playbook is really nothing special, whereas Henry is a revelation in Beasts of the Southern Wild. And as much as I like Christoph Waltz, I'd be willing to replace him with Matthew McConaughey or Ezra Miller without batting an eye.
SUPPRTING ACTRESS: In recent years, as roles for women have improved, this has become the second most hotly contested category. Not this year. Amy Adams and Jacki Weaver are fine, but to me, these are negligible roles compared to their work in Junebug and Animal Kingdom, respectively. Problem is, I can't come up with other actresses who had an obviously bigger impact this year.
SCREENPLAY: There are two categories here and there is little to complain about amongst the adaptations. For Original Screenplay, this is usually where a small, clever movie can get recognized. Leos Carax's Holy Motors and Rian Johnson's Looper both fit that bill. It seems sacrilegious to ignore both Tarantino and Wes Anderson in this particular category, but I would have gone with Carax and Johnson.
Other thoughts? I have no opinion on Animated Short or Sound Effects Editing. Let those debates rage on elsewhere. I thought The Master and Skyfall were somewhat overrated, so I was happy to see they didn't score very big. I was happy for Searching for Sugar Man and not at all bothered by the Queen of Versailles omission. But I know people who loved that Versailles movie. That's why I wish this weren't obligatory. I still mourn friends I lost when I said that Shine was the most overrated movie of the '90s. So I won't call you an idiot if you really liked Paul Thomas Anderson's movie this year. The LA Film Critics Association would agree with you, but some of those guys can be pretty pretentious. But that doesn't mean you are pretentious. Just like it doesn't mean I'm pretentious for picking a French sci-fi movie. For whether or not you have a friend in Argentina, in the blogosphere, we can all be experts.]]>Lincoln and Django: The Way of the Guntag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.23937092013-01-01T20:03:36-05:002013-03-03T05:12:01-05:00Jon Eighttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-eig/Lincoln, or Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained? Movies, of course, often make for poor history. Guns and bribery backed up Lincoln's negotiations. And even though Django's wife swings that rifle into position pretty sharply as they ride away from the decimated Candie Land, I don't really like either's chances of making it out of Mississippi alive. Maybe someday, cultural historians will draw some conclusions from these two big-time movies competing for awards and box office at the end of 2012. In the light of the ongoing battle over the role of guns in our society, I suspect we are currently closer to Django than Lincoln.
I started out to write about gun control. Halfway through, I realized I know little about the issue. I should probably read more on it before I write on it. So instead, this is about Westerns. Django comes from a deep American tradition. Even though it is nominally based on the Italian form of that American tradition, the Italians like Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci (who directed the original Django in 1966), were just borrowers. The classic American Western is built on classic American ideas: That the individual, and not the collective, is the most important component of a society, and that violence, especially gun violence, is the most legitimate way to settle both societal and personal grievances. Anyone wishing to have a meaningful dialogue with those who support gun ownership in this country had better understand that fundamental ethos.
I have often told my students that a great paper could be written tracing the last century of American culture by examining seminal Western films. From Stagecoach (1939) to The Searchers (1956); from The Wild Bunch (1969) to Unforgiven (1993), each says something profound about the way we see ourselves. John Ford's Stagecoach was the first fully mature Western of the talking era, and its message is clear. The banker is evil, the bourgeois ineffectual. As the heroic couple (outlaw and prostitute) ride off at the end, they are said to be "free from the blessings of civilization," perhaps the most succinct statement of the Western philosophy.
Seventeen years later, as the seeds of the civil rights movement were being planted, Ford would make The Searchers, violent and vengeful to be sure, and very conscious of how residual racism has an uneasy place in modern society. When Sam Peckinpah made The Wild Bunch at the end of the '60s, America was in cultural turmoil. The good guys and bad guys were indistinguishable from each other and filmmakers' new-found adoration of graphic violence seemed to suggest that all of the old rules were out of fashion. Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven was about a once formidable gunfighter, now a picture of abject humiliation, who still has enough facility with his weaponry to slaughter anyone seeking to impose an unwelcome brand of civilization upon him. A message from America to the rest of the world?
We don't make as many Westerns today as we used to. Probably the two most successful ones in recent years have been James Mangold's 3:10 to Yuma (2007) and the Coen Brothers' True Grit (2010). Do either of these movies say anything profound about our culture? On one level, they say a great deal, though more in their form than in their content. Both recent movies are remakes. We live in an era of startling technological advancement and recycled artistic ideas.
But the more I think about True Grit, the more I suspect there is in fact something much more important going on in it. The 2010 version of True Grit does offer the same essential message that violence is necessary to right personal wrongs, but its overall attitude is different. Mattie Ross derives no pleasure from her revenge. Indeed, there is no honor whatsoever in the killing. The only honor comes in Rooster Cogburn's attempt to save Mattie's life. The life she leads after her revenge appears void of all joy. She followed the rules of the West and was nominally successful, but there appeared to be little if any spiritual profit in it. Just because we have always done things one way, that doesn't mean we can't evolve to a higher state. I wonder if that may be the clearest message a Western has ever relayed to us. I think Lincoln, who disavowed the old maxim the "might makes right" would have agreed.]]>The National Film Registry Scorecardtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.23328332012-12-20T09:05:53-05:002013-02-19T05:12:01-05:00Jon Eighttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-eig/National Film Registry. Since 1989, panels of experts have selected 25 films per year to add to this list. The net they cast is wide, covering all types of film, recognized for cultural, historical, or artistic significance. Of the 25 films selected this year, ten could be considered either documentary or experimental films. That leaves 15 narrative movies, mostly features, and mostly from the Hollywood system. There are several shorts as well, and several from outside the Hollywood mainstream. Let's rate how well the experts did with those 15:
No Brainers
Anatomy of a Murder: How was Otto Preminger's searing examination of the American justice system left off the list for so long?
Dirty Harry: Definitive representative of American film's newfound fascination with more graphic violence and profanity that emerged in the late '60s and early '70s. And a key film in the development of the iconic Clint.
A League of Their Own: One of the best female ensembles in American film.
The Matrix: Super cool. Even subtracting points for its convoluted sequels, this was groundbreaking.
Slacker: Definitive representation of ... whatever. Indie is cool.
A Christmas Story: Not my cup of tea, but I am not prepared to fight its legion of passionate fans, most of whom, in my experience, are not kids.
Sons of the Desert: Laurel and Hardy already have two movies on the list, but they are both shorts. They deserve at least one feature, and I would go with this one over Way Out West.
The Spook Who Sat by the Door: Along with Nothing But a Man and Killer of Sheep, this helps fill in a missing part of American film -- the independent Black Cinema. Spook, directed by the under-recognized Ivan Dixon, is a good film, and the story of its quick disappearance after its initial release is an instructive piece of cultural history.
Could Go Either Way
3:10 to Yuma: This is a good, old-fashioned Western. Good story. Professional on all accounts. But there are already at least 18 Westerns on the list, and if you count the hybrids (Gene Autry, Rin Tin Tin, Mel Brooks) there are even more. Six of them, all arguably more significant than Yuma, are, like Yuma, from the 1950s. It's the Hall of Fame argument. Yuma's good, but is it great? To me, no. Leave Yuma at the station.
Breakfast at Tiffany's: Big dilemma. Audrey Hepburn is a huge star, but she really did not make great movies. Holly Golightly may be her most famous role, but the movie, owing to its times, is a serious sanitization of Truman Capote's book, and though charming at times, is not all that close to being a great movie. I'd watch Charade fifty times before watching Tiffany's, and I'd argue Two For the Road is a better Hepburn film. Leave it off.
No, Please
Born Yesterday: Like Breakfast at Tiffany's, this is on the list for one reason: its lead actress. Judy Holliday is a marvel, but the movie is leaden and mostly unfunny. Due to an understandable love of Holliday, this has become one of the most overrated of American comedies.
Two Lane Blacktop: I know there are some people who consider the image of the sports car cruising America's vastness to be inspirational, and this to be a more honest movie than Easy Rider. But most of us consider it to be really, really slow. And boring. And opaque. On the other hand, if you are looking for a movie in which Dennis Wilson and James Taylor barely grunt, this would be your choice.
The Obscure
Okay, I haven't seen the other three, but I am familiar with all of them. Two of them, Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Wishing Ring, are from 1914, and both have good arguments for inclusion. But the final movie, Parable, has the best argument. This short, made in 1964, depicting Jesus as a carnival clown, was both praised and condemned by Christians. Generally, the condemnation came from leadership and praise came from the people. In the end, the praise won out. It calls attention to under-represented elements in American film -- namely independent, spiritually-based cinema. As with the aforementioned Killer of Sheep, this inclusion may well spur people to go seek out this kind of movie. And isn't that the whole point of such list?
That's 11 out of 15, or on my calculator, 73 percent. C+. Passing, but maybe we can do better in 2013.]]>The Plot Thins: Mythos in Moviestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.22535952012-12-10T12:54:37-05:002013-02-09T05:12:01-05:00Jon Eighttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-eig/
I've come to decide that Aristotle was a pretty smart guy and that plot, in both content and structure, matters quite a bit. I also have come to decide that we live in an age where plots have been greatly degraded. It's no secret that 21st century Hollywood values spectacle (to Aristotle, opsis) above plot, and pretty much anything else.
I was leafing through my Entertainment Weekly recently (yes, I read Entertainment Weekly. Get over it), and noticed that five of the 10 movies in the "Critical Mass" section had composite scores from critics of an A-. That's huge. Must be a great year for films. Then I started thinking about the movies themselves...
(Note: I am about to criticize some movies that a lot of people, some of them critics, really love. So let me say up front that I actually like all of these movies. They have a lot of good things in them and are mostly enjoyable. That's not exactly the point.)
Argo
Everyone loves Argo. It's exciting and feel-good and it shows an America that can combine espionage and entertainment to beat the evil in the world. And in Canada, we have a great Robin to our Batman (with nationalized medicine to boot). But -- as we approach a key moment toward the end (the end of Act II for you screenwriters), our hero, Tony Mendez is told to abort his mission and abandon the six Americans he is trying to rescue. Tony is not happy. He asked these people to trust him. He gave them his word. In order for this moment to work best, we (the audience) and Tony (the character) should have developed close rapport with the six stranded Americans. But due to plot structure decisions, those people have barely been on-screen. Neither we nor Tony really have any reason, beyond their emblematic situation, to care about them. The emphasis on the Hollywood adventures of John and Lester, which is highly entertaining, took up some of the time that we would normally have been bonding with the hostages.
Silver Linings Playbook
Two dynamic lead performances by two of the best relatively young actors we've got these days. Great characters. But -- the plot turns on such a ludicrous proposition -- that Pat Sr. and his gambling buddy would care at all about making a parlay bet on a football game and the outcome of a dance competition they didn't even know existed five minutes earlier -- that is hard to take seriously. I knew a writing teacher once who talked about "the props of your story" showing. The props hit you in the face here.
Skyfall
Skyfall is a better movie than Law Abiding Citizen. But -- I'm not sure that absolves the writers from lifting the second act of their plot from that 2009 film. The new Bond is intentionally derivative of old Bond, and that's kind of fun. But the opening recalls Bourne and the midpoint recalls Silence of the Lambs and the entire movie, as much fun as it is, doesn't rate high on the originality scale.
Life of Pi
I'm a very big Ang Lee fan. I think he's the closest thing we have to Jean Renoir working these days. Adapting Life of Pi was a monumental task and I really have nothing bad to say about the plotting of the challenging story. Sure, it took a little too long to actually get Pi and Richard Parker onto the lifeboat, but I'm giving that a pass.
Lincoln
Haven't seen it. Sorry. So I'll sub the B+ rating...
Flight
Like Silver Linings Playbook, Flight is an excellent character story acted by one of the best we've got. But -- the first act shows us a brilliant plane crash. The rest of the movie shows us the internal struggle and ultimate crash of the hero. First acts often serve as promises to an audience of what the movie will deliver. By loading so much action and incident into that first act and then not reaching that action level again, the movie doesn't deliver on that promise. I'm not usually a fan of non-linear structure, but this strikes me as the perfect candidate. Show a little bit of that crash in sequence, and then space out more and more of it via flashback throughout the rest of the story so that Whip Whitaker's heroism during the crash is finally juxtaposed with his collapse during his hearing.
OK -- accuse me of nitpicking is you want. Defend these plot choices. Or go after Aristotle's original ranking. Better yet, just tell me a really good story to shut me up.]]>Optional Oscars -- 1993tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.21845552012-11-26T11:28:01-05:002013-01-26T05:12:01-05:00Jon Eighttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-eig/This is the second entry in my periodic continuation of film critic Danny Peary's entertaining 'Alternate Oscars.' Today, we look at 1993.
Picture: Schindler's List essentially won Best Picture the day it was released. Nobody debated this. It was big and important and quite good. But I can't help but feel that the middle of the movie, which features Ralph Fiennes' astonishing portrayal of Amon Goeth, is the best thing in the film, almost to the point of overshadowing Liam Neeson's Schindler. So, though it may seem particularly sacrilegious, I'm going in a different direction.
My Choice: Groundhog Day.
1993 was a year of great prestigious pictures: The Piano, The Remains of the Day, In the Name of the Father, The Age of Innocence. The titles alone drape you in a cloak of educated snobbery. So why pick -- gasp -- trifling popular entertainment? Well, something needs to be said for the brand of movie that can play on cable three times per day for months on end and remain satisfying with every viewing. Critics and performers alike constantly argue that comedy is just as hard, if not harder, than drama, and yet it is rarely rewarded with a trophy. And it would be a mistake to write off Groundhog Day as trifling. The screenplay by Danny Rubin and Harold Ramis is exceptional. It manages the huge challenge of dramatizing repetitive action while staying funnier and more touching than the two nominated comedy screenplays that same year, Dave and Sleepless in Seattle. And the basic theme of one man struggling for self-improvement in order to win the love of a lady is the stuff of the most sublime romances. If you're still not convinced, consider this: Any movie that features Andie MacDowell and Chris Elliott in prominent roles and still invites repeated viewings has to be doing something right.
In the wake of all those prestigious pictures, smaller gems like Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused (the American Graffiti for the '70s), Searching for Bobby Fisher (the best chess movie ever, period), and the beguiling My Neighbor Totoro (one of the best children's movies ever made) get overlooked. None was as satisfying as Groundhog Day.
Actor: For the second consecutive year, the Academy gave its Actor award to an overblown, overwrought performance. In 1992, Al Pacino won for playing a feisty blind guy. In '93, Tom Hanks won for playing a sympathetic AIDS victim. Philadelphia was an important movie. Everyone knew it. But that doesn't make it great. The movie was unsure about whether Hanks' Andrew Beckett was a regular guy or a deified, opera-loving symbol of prejudice's victim. Meanwhile, the more meaningful and nuanced performance in the movie, that of Denzel Washington's converted lawyer, was overlooked.
My Choice: David Thewlis in Naked, and Anthony Hopkins in The Remains of the Day.
Ties have happened in the Oscars. Not often, but they have happened. So I'm using one here. I just can't choose between two titanic performances. They are very different roles. Thewlis is a bundle of energy, intellect, and dysfunction as Johnny in Mike Leigh's rambling narrative. For the rest of his career, he will be the world's best-known werewolf, Remus Lupin, of Harry Potter fame. But film fans should take a look at a role in which he actually offers up a werewolf howl while flirting with a newly met young lady. Virtually nothing happens in Leigh's movie. Most of it is given over to Johnny wandering London and having both physical and intellectual encounters with a series of lost souls. Johnny is by no means loveable. He's often a bastard. Yet Thewlis makes him irresistible. You have to watch him. The movie is so predicated upon the performance that it actually falls apart in the final quarter when Johnny, having been beaten up by thugs, is largely out of the film.
Hopkins' James Stevens is another matter. He is a serving man. His life is devoted to others. He remains stoic and still throughout. And yet, there is such passion, longing, and sadness seething just below the surface, that, like Johnny, he cannot be ignored. Hopkins is brilliant when playing over-the-top Hannibal Lecters, but this is the true measure of his greatness. He seems to do nothing, and he remains riveting.
I realize I may be succumbing to Anglophilia here, and Bill Murray deserves serious consideration for Groundhog Day. But at least I didn't throw Fiennes or Daniel Day-Lewis into the mix as well. (Don't worry, Day-Lewis' day is coming.)
Actress: Hard to argue with Holly Hunter. Not only did she triumph as the mute in Jane Campion's The Piano, she threw in a fun supporting turn as a secretary in The Firm. But if I allowed myself to pick two actors, then I feel like I can pick...
My Choice: The entire female cast of Short Cuts.
This was a who's who of dynamic young actresses in 1993. Granted, they were all young white actresses, and the lack of any ethnicity in Robert Altman's pastiche of life in L.A. is a detriment to the film as a whole. But his women run the gamut from rich to poor, meek to bold, innocent to worldly. And what names: Julianne Moore, Anne Archer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Lori Singer, Frances McDormand, Annie Ross, Lili Taylor, Lily Tomlin, the afore-dissed Andie MacDowell, and Madeleine Stowe. Ten remarkable characterizations. Some critics complained about how these women seemed to thrive on the brutish behavior of the men in their lives, and remarked on Altman's penchant for photographing so many of them naked. But it was L.A. after all. They all triumphed over the less savory elements of the film. If I have to pick one, I'll go with Stowe, but they were all riveting.
Let me know what you think. And keep an eye out for 1994, one of the best years in recent film history.]]>Modern Family: The Election Episodetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.20686292012-11-03T13:46:41-04:002013-01-03T05:12:02-05:00Jon Eighttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-eig/
Everyone around here uses his own criteria. Some use hard economic numbers. Some use the World Series winner. Me? I use television. More specifically, I use Modern Family.
Most people assume the "modern" in Modern Family results from the three types of families blended together in the show. There are the traditional Dunphys, the rich-older-man/hot-young-wife Pritchetts and the gay couple with the adopted ethnic daughter, just referred to as Cam and Mitch. The subject matter, particularly as it relates to Cam and Mitch, does feel rather modern, but it isn't especially revolutionary. In the thirty years since Tony Randall's Sidney Shore caused network execs intense heartburn by being kinda-sorta gay, the doors to that closet (at least on network television) have pretty much been broken open. In fact, it's the Dunphys that are the anomaly on popular networks television today. Family sitcoms once were the norm. They aren't anymore.
But I think the most "modern" thing about Modern Family is its structure. Modern Family is one of the rare successful television comedies that does not have a clear star (either an individual or couple). It is a true ensemble.
If you think that is not revolutionary, think again. The American narrative has been centered on the individual. Read Mark Twain. Watch John Wayne. Our myths are about the "man" (great or little) standing up to the forces that oppress him and triumphing. Sometimes the narrative centers on a couple. But it very rarely centers on a group. That's what they do in Europe. That's what they do in ... socialist societies.
American sitcoms are about Lucy or Archie, Cliff Huxtable or Liz Lemon. They may have had great supporting characters, but the leadership is always clear. Ralph Kramden did not share top billing with Ed Norton, just as Jerry Seinfeld didn't cede the top spot to Kramer. But on Modern Family, all six of the adult characters, and perhaps a few of the kids, are as equal as the characters in Gorky.
Modern Family didn't instigate this cultural shift all by itself. Friends was a hugely successful show in which six characters were roughly equal. And Friends seems to have been the progenitor of almost every new sitcom that gets trotted out in 2012. But to me, Modern Family has gone much further. Friends was initially conceived of as an ensemble with one character, Courteney Cox's Monica, at the center. (In much the same way that Bea Arthur's Dorothy was at the center of The Golden Girls). As Jennifer Aniston became a bigger and bigger star, her character Rachel became dominant. The others had plenty to do, but when most people think of Friends today, I suspect they think of the Rachel-Ross storyline first and foremost. Can you think of a dominant character or storyline on Modern Family?
And this, I contend, is big. Because this isn't the way we Americans have traditionally told our stories. This is what the Russians do. It's what the French do. It's the difference between Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game and Orson Welles' Citizen Kane. Renoir's story was about a group. Welles focused on the man.
And so to my prediction. I know from watching Fox News that President Obama intends to lead us on a path toward socialism based on a European model so anathema to our traditional values. But I know from watching ABC that we are as good as there already. Therefore, unless there's a miracle before election day and Tim Allen's good old-fashioned, hero-centric show Last Man Standing displaces Modern Family, I predict President Obama will be re-elected, and we will see a whole lot more ensemble television shows in our future.]]>Tyranny in 70 mm: Notes on The Mastertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.19268772012-09-30T15:28:46-04:002012-11-30T05:12:02-05:00Jon Eighttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-eig/Misery: "... it settled for the basic character setup rather than (being) a film about two tyrants, competing for authorship." Well, Paul Thomas Anderson knows something about tyrants and he knows a lot about authorship, and that becomes the basis for his newest film, The Master. Though much ballyhooed as an examination of L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, The Master has very little to say about, or add to, our understanding of Hubbard's particular brand of cultism. It is much more a study of two opposing forces. Despite its large cast and sprawling sets, its 70 mm oceans and deserts, this is really a two character drama; Persona in a crowd.
And like Bergman's ultimate battle of wills, The Master also presents a damaged soul and a caretaker, and like Persona, it ultimately seems to suggest that the damaged among us are never as helpless as they seem, while the caretakers' motives are never quite so pure. In the end, the two characters are much more alike than they are different.
One of the convenient things about Anderson's latest film is that it is open-ended to the point that it allows a viewer to draw multiple conclusions. I see de Quincey and Lévi-Strauss, but you can probably find whoever you want buried in there. Does this make for high art? Or does it make for its own brand of, dare I say, cultism? The best thing about The Master, to me, is that it draws very detailed portraits of its two main characters without labeling one as better or more noble, without totally condemning the tyrants who struggle. Without really defining either. His movie becomes a simulacrum for its subject, or perhaps it's the other way around.
The worst thing about The Master is the way it furthers Anderson's increasing disregard for anything that does not fit into his favorite theme of father/son tyrant study. There was a time, in Boogie Nights and Magnolia, when the director could explore the battles between Eddie Adams and Jack Horner or between Frank T.J. Mackey and Earl Partridge while still engaging his audience in dramatic and suspenseful narratives. Think of the wealth of characters in those movies. But can you honestly say that anyone beyond Daniel Plainview and Eli Sunday in There Will Be Blood is memorable? In The Master, every character not named Freddie or Lancaster exists merely to set up the tyrant battle. (Amy Adams does get one glorious moment as Lancaster's wife, and that almost seems to come from a different movie.)
For those looking for narrative, this movie is bound to disappoint. Ultimately, There Will Be Blood will stand taller because Daniel Plainview is among the greatest tyrants in American art. Lancaster Dodd, as interesting as he may be, doesn't really come close. But Freddie Quell does, and for those looking for meaning, I would suggest you forget the L. Ron Hubbard associations and look instead at this authentic American savage. Joaquin Phoenix, who has given very good performances before, is positively transcendent here. It is a performance of a career and character to take note of.
I realize as I finish that these thoughts might be as elliptical as the movie itself, so to sum up: The Master is a movie that elevates character and theme over plot. Freddie is the savage killer; Lancaster the modern thinker. Both are capable of nobility but are doomed by selfishness. Both are inquisitive, but are afraid of real answers. Both need the other. The tragedy is that neither will ever have what they need.]]>Optional Oscars -- 1992tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18403732012-08-29T18:19:50-04:002012-10-29T05:12:04-04:00Jon Eighttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-eig/Alternate Oscars looks at every Oscar awarded in the big three categories -- picture, actor, and actress -- from 1927-28 on and offers, when appropriate, a better choice. Peary's book stops with the 1991 Oscars, which leaves the last 20 years wide open. So buy Peary's book, and check back here periodically for my continuation, beginning today, with 1992.
PICTURE: Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven was a very solid winner for Best Picture in 1992. But, if we nitpick, Unforgiven is slow through the middle, and is prone to Eastwood's biggest failing as a director -- the exaggeration of good and evil in his characters.
MY CHOICE: Raise the Red Lantern
I know, China is the trendy kid in school now, with the strong economy and all the lithium batteries. Maybe I'm pandering here. But Zhang Yimou is one of the great directors of the last 25 years and this is among his most intense works. The institutional oppression of women is a favorite subject of his and the young and striking actress Gong Li was his favorite leading lady. Color and framing are exquisite and the acting of Gong, He Saifei and Cao Cuifen constitutes among the greatest ensemble of female performances in any film. The story of a young girl who marries into a rich household ruled by tradition could have reverted to soap opera. But as Jean Renoir did in La regle du jeu, Zhang avoids overt melodrama and crafts an exquisite character study that builds great narrative intensity by the third act. Not bad for a director who had just turned 30.
Nineteen ninety-two was a good year for young directors. Three American directors made striking debuts -- Alison Anders' Gas, Food, Lodging, Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs, and best of all, Carl Franklin's One False Move. But I am looking to China for my best picture of the year.
ACTOR: The winner, Al Pacino, had been nominated for Best Actor four times before 1992. But his performance in Scent of a Woman was caricaturish before it left the showroom floor. He was far better as Ricky Roma in Glengarry Glen Ross that same year.
MY CHOICE: Denzel Washington in Malcolm X
The general public first became aware of Washington as Dr. Phil Chandler on TV's St. Elsewhere in the middle of the '80s. He was smart, sexy, smoldering, and largely underwritten in a cast of oddball characters. Still, Washington showed enough star quality to make a few films during the show's run. A few years later, Spike Lee's Malcom X would vault him into elite status. The very long movie covers 40 years of Malcolm's life and shows multiple transformations from street hustler to militant Muslim to philosopher-statesman. Washington not only nails each phase, but he makes the transitions seem natural. It is a towering performance. Cyril Collard (Savage Nights) and Bill Paxton (One False Move) gave brave, nuanced performances in 1992. Washington, who would wait another decade to win his Best Actor, surpassed them all.
ACTRESS: Emma Thompson is among the most intelligent actress of the last 50 years, beautifully restrained with emotion seething just below a calm surface. Her award for Howard's End was well-deserved. But ...
MY CHOICE: Gong Li in Raise the Red Lantern
Gong's Songlian travels a great distance to become her husband's fourth wife. Once in her new home, she must negotiate the manipulations of older, more experienced women. But she is a quick study. She moves from petulance to restraint, from anger to a smile, like a girl trying to be tough in a terrifying new land. We see all of her, but never know exactly what she is thinking. The one time she loses total control and gets drunk, we see a wealth of stifled emotion spill out. This was the actresses third collaboration with director Zhang Yimou and later in 1992, she would star in Zhang's The Story of Qui Ju, another powerful depiction of a woman's hopeless struggle. Those two roles trump Thompson, as well as Kati Outinen whose The Match Factory Girl was officially released in the U.S. toward the end of 1992.
Let me know what you think -- 1993 should be a fun year to debate.]]>