The Oscar Project Interlude #6: Best of the 1980s

by Chris Marshall:

Well, as I somewhat feared, the 1980s as a whole was one of my least favorite decades so far in The Oscar Project. It’s not that every movie was terrible, just that there was no film that was really great. Every other decade has had at least one: Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, All About Eve, The Apartment, half of the 1970s. But the 1980s didn’t provide a film approaching that caliber.

And yes, there were a couple I just didn’t like at all. I feel like I was able to find some redeeming quality in every movie I watched this decade, but Chariots of Fire having a cool soundtrack doesn’t make up for all of its other flaws. I don’t think the 80s was a particularly bad decade for film in general, but it was a bad decade for the Academy. I mean, why wasn’t Ghostbusters or Back to the Future winning Best Picture?

The Oscar Project #62: Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

by Chris Marshall:

I often complain about the tendency of actors playing Southerners to "over-Southern," but it really hasn't been that big of a problem so far during The Oscar Project. Driving Miss Daisy, on the other hand, runs with every possible opportunity to do it. I don't expect great acting out of Dan Aykroyd, but it's particularly off-putting when an actual Southerner, namely Morgan Freeman, does it.

That being said, Freeman did a superb acting job in spite of the minstrel show voice he adopted. As did Jessica Tandy, for that matter. I imagine that somebody less attuned to the nuances of a Southern accent would assume they were pitch-perfect in their roles.

Tandy, playing the role of an elderly Jewish woman in Atlanta in the mid-20th century, begins the film in her late 60s. She is widowed but still cares for herself, although she does have plenty of help from her black (her race is important) housekeeper. After having an accident while backing out of her driveway, her son (Dan Aykroyd) decides she needs a chauffeur. He hires a man named Hoke (Morgan Freeman) and tells him that no matter how difficult his mother is, he should carry on. She has no power to fire him, so there's no need for him to fear for his job. His goal is to make her accept him.

The Oscar Project #61: Rain Man (1988)

by Chris Marshall:

Rain Man is one of that handful of Best Picture winners I’ve seen multiple times, so there was a nice sense of familiarity when I watched it again. Like Forrest Gump, which I’ve seen probably more times than any of the others, it’s one of those that’s always on TV, so even if I haven’t seen it from start to finish more than once or twice, I’ve still seen all the scenes on several occasions.

I don’t think there’s anything particularly great about this movie, but it’s perfectly enjoyable. Tom Cruise hadn’t quite reached his peak yet, and Dustin Hoffman was already a well-established fixture in Hollywood. I think they work very well together here. Hoffman, of course, won Best Actor for his portrayal of the titular Rain Man, the autistic savant Raymond Babbitt, putting him in the elite group of actors who have won multiple Best Actor awards.

Cruise’s performance was effective, if not spectacular, and at least he made up for Valeria Golino’s terrible acting job as his girlfriend. Granted, I only know her from this and the Hot Shots! films, but I’m just completely unimpressed by her talents.

The Oscar Project #60: The Last Emperor (1987)

by Chris Marshall:

If nothing else, Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor is one of the finest looking Best Picture winners to date, even during the darker periods covered by the film. It spans the life of the last emperor of China, Pu Yi, who was unseated from power after the rise of Chiang Kai-Shek. Unlike many stories about great leaders, Pu Yi did not rise from nothing to a place of great power. Instead, he began with everything and ended with nothing except his pride and his memories.

Because Pu Yi became emperor at the age of 3, he is played by a number of different actors, but we spend the most time in his adulthood, where he was portrayed by John Lone. There is very little star power in this film, with Peter O’Toole being the only widely recognizable star. But it is well-acted, despite the lack of known names.

Becoming an emperor when you are three years old presents an interesting set of benefits and challenges. Most of the benefits belong to Pu Yi himself, who is spoiled on a level that is unimaginable in modern days. If he misbehaved, what could be done? He ruled China absolutely, and absolute fealty was required among his subjects, even when he was a toddler.

The Oscar Project #59: Platoon (1986)

by Chris Marshall:

Before Tom Berenger and Charlie Sheen became members of the Cleveland Indians in Major League, they fought together in Vietnam, and I think it’s safe to say their relationship was slightly more contentious in Platoon. Berenger, as the sinister Sgt. Barnes, is the platoon leader, while Sheen, playing the tastefully-named Chris, is a neophyte recent arrival to the war.

The film is mostly based on Chris’s experiences, particularly on his relationships with Barnes and Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe). In many ways, the main thematic element of the plot is similar to Oliver Stone’s next film, Wall Street. A character played by Charlie Sheen is forced to choose between the “good” father figure (Dafoe here, Martin Sheen in Wall Street) and the “bad” one (Berenger, Michael Douglas).

The Slovenian cultural critic Slavoj Zizek argues that the problem with Oliver Stone’s films is that the message he wants to deliver is obscured by the way he goes about it. Specifically, he argues that even though we are supposed to disagree with Berenger’s and Douglas’s tactics in the two films, that’s not what actually happens because the villains are the most dynamic, charismatic characters in the movies.

The Oscar Project #58: Out of Africa (1985)

by Chris Marshall:

It’s taken me a long, long time (like, three days!) to finish Out of Africa. This shouldn’t necessarily be seen as an indictment of its quality, but I did fall asleep four separate times while watching it. Rest assured, I went back and made sure I watched every moment of it, even if it did take several attempts.

At its most basic level, it’s not a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a perfectly acceptable piece of cinema, and it’s obviously the type of thing that the Academy loves. But it is so far outside of my interests that it became difficult to focus on it for too long. It didn’t help matters that I tended to try to watch it late at night.

The film is based on the novel by Isak Dinesen[1], whose real name is Karen Blixen, and recounts the events of her life in Kenya, which was at the time a British colony. Blixen is Danish, and at the beginning of the film she marries Bror, which is a silly name. They aren’t particularly in love with each other, but trifling things like that didn’t matter so much back then. They were good friends and liked each other well enough, so why not?

The Oscar Project #57: Amadeus (1984)

by Chris Marshall:

One of the first things I thought while watching Amadeus was that Mozart, portrayed by Tom Hulce, bore a striking resemblance to Fred Armisen. As much as I like Armisen, I felt like this was a bad sign right off the bat. Our hero (is he a hero?) turns out to be one of the most annoying characters in the Oscar Project to date.

Most of the problem stems from his laugh, which is an abomination. Few things bother me more than a bad laugh, and this film gives him oh so many opportunities to use it. And then there’s his stupid, stupid face. I hated him so bad.

This is a shame because outside of Mozart himself, there’s nothing very objectionable about Amadeus. I thought F. Murray Abraham was good as Salieri, and in fact, I started rooting for him to murder Mozart as soon as possible. I’m not exactly sure this was the director’s[1] intention.

Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter - an Abe-omination

First, a few things: I went into this movie in probably a bad mood, and I had read the book. I liked the book – it wasn’t great, but it was a cool concept and I thought the author, Seth Grahame-Smith, did a good job.

The book was written like Abe Lincoln really was a vampire. G-S tried to take existing journal entries and letters from Lincoln and add in vampire things and made it sound realistic. The vampires that existed in the novels were NOT adverse to silver, they COULD be seen in mirrors and they could harm each other. Aside from the whole moving really fast, being really strong, not totally loving sun and needing to drink human blood (and immortality), vampires are just like us. This a concept that he carried out well.

The Oscar Project #56: Terms of Endearment (1983)

by Chris Marshall:

I’m now halfway through watching the Oscar winners of the 1980s, and as I feared, I haven’t been very impressed by the quality of the movies. I was, however, quite pleased with Terms of Endearment. It’s a typical Oscar bait tearjerker, but at least it was well made.

Like Ordinary People, it could have easily fallen into that dreaded Lifetime movie category if not for the quality of its cast. Debra Winger was still a relative newcomer at the time, but this was Shirley MacLaine’s third appearance in a Best Picture winner[1]. Among the supporting cast, Jack Nicholson, who won Best Supporting Actor for this role, and Danny DeVito (!) were making their second Best Picture appearances.

The story is really quite expansive, though it never feels like it. I don’t know if it’s ever specifically said how much time passes, but it begins right before Debra Winger’s wedding and ends when her oldest kid appears to be in his tweens/early teens. Nevertheless, the plot moves fluidly, and it never feels like the movie is trying to do too much.

The Oscar Project #55: Gandhi (1982)

by Chris Marshall:

Gandhi is a film that brings me back to Oscar winners of old, in that they take an Indian man, a man who devoted the second half of his life entirely to securing India’s independence from the British Empire, and they cast an actor (Ben Kingsley) who is white and British. I’m sure there’s some kind of symbolism in that. I’m just not sure what it is.

That being said, Kingsley was fantastic as Gandhi. In the first part of the film, which takes place in South Africa, everything seemed a little off. Honestly, though, I think that has more to do with seeing Gandhi (who was an attorney, after all) wearing suits and other European clothing. I’m so accustomed to seeing him in his traditional Indian garb that it just seems wrong to see him wear anything else.

After Gandhi returns to India, by which point he has already overcome grave injustice toward his fellow Indians in South Africa, Ben Kingsley stops being Ben Kingsley and transforms entirely into Mohandas K. Gandhi. I don’t think anybody ever doubts his acting skills in general, but if they do, they need look no further than this film.

The Oscar Project #54: Chariots of Fire (1981)

by Chris Marshall:

For a few very brief moments, I started to believe I was going to enjoy Chariots of Fire. The opening scene is its most iconic, the often parodied sequence where you see guys running in slow motion while the famous theme song by Vangelis plays. If you’re not familiar with the original—and I didn’t know this is where that trope started either—you’ve likely seen similar sequences in films such as Mr. Mom. Everybody’s seen Mr. Mom, right?

Anyway, in case you’re not familiar with this film, and I think there’s a very high probability of that, it’s a true story about two British Olympic runners. Eric Liddell (played by Ian Charleson, who we’ll see again next year) is a devout Christian who devotes all of his achievements to advancing his religious beliefs, even going so far as refusing to run a heat that’s scheduled to be held on a Sunday. Harold Abrahams (played by Ben Cross) is Jewish, and he is attempting to use his fame to reduce anti-Semitic prejudices.

About the only person involved in this film that people might have heard of is Ian Holm. He’s Liddell’s trainer, but he’s better known for playing Bilbo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And I guess some people may know John Gielgud, who we will also see again next year.

The Oscar Project #53: Ordinary People (1980)

by Chris Marshall:

Ever since I watched it a couple of days ago, I’ve been trying to decide whether or not the title Ordinary People is ironic or meant in earnest. If it’s serious, then I think that Robert Redford (well, I guess the author of the novel would be more to blame) doesn’t have a very good idea of what ordinary people are like. The protagonists are wealthy, live in a giant house, had a maid at one point, and so on. But maybe they meant that these guys have problems just like ordinary people do.

Either way, these folks certainly do have problems. Plenty of them, as a matter of fact. Before the movie even starts, the elder son dies in a boating accident, a tragedy that serves as a catalyst for the most, if not all, of the events in the film. Oh, and the younger son (Timothy Hutton) attempted suicide and was placed in a mental hospital, which also took place prior to the evens in the movie.

So… yeah. If these are the problems we don’t see, then you can probably imagine that the situations we do aren’t exactly going to be a barrel of laughs.

The Oscar Project Interlude #5: Best of the 1970s

by Chris Marshall:

Well, my most anticipated decade is over, and it leads into one of the decades I’m least excited for. I still can’t believe I’ve made it this far without missing a single day along the way. Now that my thesis is completed, I’ve gotten back ahead of schedule, so there’s no reason for that to change any time soon.

So how about those 1970s, eh? They generally lived up to all the hype. If you’re the type of person who cares about lists, seven of the Best Picture winners from the 1970s appear on AFI’s updated list of the top 100 American movies of all time, making it the most represented decade[1]. Although I’m still a little bit iffy on Annie Hall, I believe the others undoubtedly deserve their spots.

The Oscar Project #52: Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

by Chris Marshall:

I mentioned in yesterday’s post that Kramer vs. Kramer far exceeded my expectations, but I’m afraid that’s understating it a bit, as I had very low expectations. Perhaps a more glowing endorsement would be to say that it is a very good film by any measure.

I should have known that a collaboration between Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep in their primes would be decent at worst, but sometimes I forget that the plot of a movie isn’t its defining element. I expected to be bored, and that wasn’t the case at all. Part of the problem was that it simply didn’t have the same reputation as the other winners in the 1970s, so I judged it unfairly based on the level of competition. Whatever excuse I could use, I was wrong.

This isn’t a movie about plot. It’s about characters. You could almost view Kramer vs. Kramer as the dramatic/tragic counterpart to Annie Hall, as they are both about the deterioration of a relationship. The difference is that in the former, a child is involved, which adds an extra level of complication to the whole deal.

I loved Prometheus...I just don't know if it's good

[Yar! There be spoilers ahead]There’s something about exploration science fiction (for lack of a better term) that really appeals to me. Some of my favorite sci-fi is just about people going out into the unknown and looking around and poking at things. There’s something that’s just so cool about that: some ragtag crew (with something to prove! And hidden agendas!) flying out into space and landing on an new planet or spaceship or whatever and throwing on the ol’ spacesuits and walking out there all slow and cautious and scanning everything. I love it.

I love that feeling of the unknown. It’s so crazy because even though you don’t know what you’re going to discover inside that crazy temple building, just discovering that it’s there has already completely changed the course of humanity. Just seeing the thing has reshaped the world, but everyone has to focus on what else is in there to find out what happens to them. It makes everything so tense-you know every weird picture or strange button they see is going to be important later and you’re trying to piece everything together just like they are.

The Oscar Project #51: The Deer Hunter (1978)

by Chris Marshall:

I’m glad last year’s winner was a comedy, because Michael Cimino forgot to put any jokes in The Deer Hunter. Rarely will you ever see a more depressing film, which is quite a statement, considering that this decade alone we have seen or will see a man lobotomized, a bitter custody battle, and several dozen murders.

Released just a few years after the end of the Vietnam War, this movie tells the story of three friends who enlist in the military and how that choice affects not only their own lives but the lives of everybody they know. It’s similar in many ways to The Best Years of Our Lives, except that it shows more than just the aftermath of the war. You see it all, from a wedding right before they ship out to the most horrible moments of their war experiences.

The Best Years of Our Lives is a better movie overall, but I think that seeing exactly what the guys in The Deer Hunter went through makes it easier to understand why they’re so irreparably damaged when it’s over. Even Mike (Robert De Niro), who escapes more or less unscathed physically, will never be the same.

The Oscar Project #50: Annie Hall (1977)

by Chris Marshall:

I went into this expecting to like Annie Hall. I really did. But while it had its moments, I wasn’t the biggest fan. I think that most of the problem is my aversion to Woody Allen himself. I’m willing to give him a chance—when my Director of the Week project starts, I’ll devote a week to him—but there’s just something about his on-screen persona that grates on me.

And I do think it’s just a persona. While there are undoubtedly similarities between Allen the human being and the characters he plays, here and elsewhere, I’ve heard that he’s not quite as crazy in real life. Then again, there was all that unpleasantness with his adopted daughter Soon-Yi, so there are still plenty of doubts about how nice of a guy he really is.

But I’m not in the business of criticizing a film based on the director/ac tor’s personal life[1]. There are plenty of examples of people who are infinitely more stupid in real life than their work is. My main problem with Annie Hall is that I just didn’t like any of the characters. I found both Alfie and Annie to be pretty annoying.

The Oscar Project #49: Rocky (1976)

by Chris Marshall:

For pretty much my entire life, I assumed that I had seen Rocky. It hardly seems possible that anybody could have not seen it. But as I watched it, I came to realize that so much of it appeared totally unfamiliar. So much so that, in my movie journal, I changed it from “yes” to “no” under my Seen Before? column.

I knew the final scene, of course. The fight with Apollo Creed I’ve seen many times before, but even though I knew exactly what would happen, it was still brilliantly done. Not brilliantly done on a boxing level, but on an emotional level, it was perfect.

For as great as this movie is, though, the actual boxing scenes are not very convincing. I can maybe believe that Rocky, who is a club fighter, after all, would completely eschew any attempts at defense. But Apollo Creed, who is supposedly the best boxer in the world? Inconceivable. His behavior outside the ring might have been based on Muhammad Ali, but inside the ring, he couldn’t be more different. If he learned how to block, maybe Ivan Drago wouldn’t have killed him a few years later.

The Oscar Project #48: One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

by Chris Marshall:

I’ve seen One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest on multiple occasions, perhaps more than any other Best Picture winner except Forrest Gump, but I had somehow forgotten how good—and how powerful—a film it is. Few other movies can elicit this kind of emotional response.

Personally, the primary emotion I feel while watching it is anger. Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) manages, in a decade full of films filled with pretty awful people, to be the most despicable of all. She represents the worst kind of authority figure; it’s as if her entire purpose is to make the patients’ lives as awful as possible.

Or at least that’s the way it seems to Randle P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson). I’m not entirely convinced that the rest of the patients feel so negatively toward her, despite the cold, unfeeling exterior she displays when talking to them. Of course, the key difference between McMurphy and the others is that the others are actually insane, or at least have real mental issues to deal with. He has taken malingering to the next level, though, feigning mental illness to get off his work farm, assuming that being institutionalized will be a much cushier gig than forced labor.

Hey! There's Good Soccer on Right Now!

I know you and I have our differences. I know you, like many (unfortunate) Americans, don’t like and don’t watch soccer. Ok. That’s fine. But you watch the U.S. in the World Cup right? That’s the one time you might okay maybe just give soccer a chance? At least it’s patriotic?

So, there’s a tournament going on right now. The European Cup. And while it doesn’t have the United States in it (who is busy drawing or getting beaten by soccer powerhouses like Guatemala and Canada), there is some really great soccer going on. Trust me.

The Oscar Project #47: The Godfather Part Two (1974)

by Chris Marshall:

Before I get into The Godfather Part Two, a caveat/boast: I passed my thesis defense today. What this means for the blog post is that I am writing it on a very strict deadline. It’s a shame, too, because it probably means the writing won’t be so good, and I really wanted to have something profound to say about this movie.

Ok, so maybe I never have anything profound to say about any movie, but this film is better than most, and it seems like it would lend itself to some kind of Great Writing. As magnificent as it was, though, I still have to argue that the original film was better. This is by no means a slight against the sequel, just an acknowledgment that The Godfather was one of the greatest movies ever made, and it’d be hard to top.

The Godfather Part Two is in some sense a continuation of The Godfather, in that it spends most of its time focusing on Michael’s ascent to absolute power over the family. In addition, though, there are multiple flashbacks to the life of young Vito Corleone, this time played by Robert De Niro. Some have described the stories of Vito and Michael as being parallel; there is some truth to this, but I would argue that their timelines are going in opposite directions.

The Oscar Project #46: The Sting (1973)

by Chris Marshall:

The Sting seems in many ways like a “forgotten” Best Picture winner, but maybe that’s all in my head. Ever since I memorized the Best Picture winners in order for reasons too boring to mention here, it tends to trip me up. All too often I think of it as “the movie that won between the Godfathers.”

It deserves a better reputation than that, of course, and I realize that for many people, it has one. I mean, it’s Rich Eisen’s favorite movie, and that has to be worth something. And it’s ranked #100 in the IMDB Top 250.

Ok, so maybe it is all in my head. Nevertheless, I do feel it’s talked about less than the surrounding winners. If you’re not familiar at all with the movie, it’s set in the 1930s, with Robert Redford and Paul Newman playing con men who are trying to pull off the scam of the century. I’ll say nothing more about the plot because watching everything unfold at the end was the great pleasure of the film, and I think it would lose a great deal if it was revealed.

The Oscar Project #45: The Godfather (1972)

by Chris Marshall:

“I believe in America.”

This line, spoken by Amerigo Bonasera in a prelude to his request to Vito Corleone, opens The Godfather, and in a way, it is a summation of the film’s theme. America has been good to the Corleones. They have gained power and riches, even if they have had to resort to, shall we say, underhanded means to obtain it.

But it is a time of transition for the family. Vito is getting old, and the burgeoning drug trade threatens to destroy the existing paradigm. Vito wants no part of it; it’s a dangerous, dirty business.  Unfortunately, that’s the way of the future. Sonny understands this, and it seems like Tom Hagen understands it, but the Don refuses. And his word is law.

I’m breaking one of my general rules in this post by referring to characters without any introduction or any actor names, but I believe that for most people, they need no introduction. Even Roger Ebert has said that, despite knowing Robert Duvall well in real life, his first reaction upon seeing him on screen in this film is “Hey, that’s Tom Hagen.”

The Oscar Project #44: The French Connection (1971)

by Chris Marshall:

I have an interesting relationship with The French Connection in that I’ve never seen it before, but I’ve written about it. More specifically, I’ve written about Pauline Kael’s review of it in The New Yorker. Kael strongly disliked the movie, claiming that it was “what we once feared mass entertainment might become: jolts for jocks.”

My opinion wasn’t as harsh, but she was right about at least one thing: it was one of a few films that came out around this time that had a common theme. This, Dirty Harry, and Walking Tall were all made in the early 1970s, and all concerned law enforcement officials that had to go against the wishes of higher-ups to catch the villains.

You can make up your own mind about why there were so many films of this variety coming out at the time, but some common explanations were that they were reactions against the Nixon administration, or the war in Vietnam, or in some cases, a reaction against the reactions against the two aforementioned topics. Kael also described Dirty Harry as “fascist,” and Walking Tall doesn’t exactly contain the most liberal themes in the world.

The Oscar Project #43: Patton (1970)

by Chris Marshall:

Among Oscar winners, anyway, war films have tended to be character studies, rather than broad action movies. That’s understandable; the people involved in the wars are typically more interesting (to me, at least) than who wins and loses particular battles. War often brings out the very best and very worst of people, so it can lead to some fascinating cinema.

Just think about the films that have won so far. Even the very first Best Picture winner, Wings, was a war movie that focused on two pilots (and their love triangle, also a favorite of the Academy). In more recent years, there’s been Lawrence of Arabia and The Bridge on the River Kwai, the latter of which was in some sense a war movie but was more interested in Colonel Nicholson’s devotion to being a leader of men than it was in any bigger picture.

And now we have Patton, a hybrid war movie/biopic that examines a small period in the military life of General George S. Patton, one of the most successful and controversial men in the history of the American military.

The Oscar Project Interlude #4: Best of the 1960s

by Chris Marshall:

Here we are, on the brink of the 1970s. I couldn’t be more excited. The musical-heavy 1960s weren’t as bad as I expected, but I’m still glad they’re over, if only so I can get into what promises to be the best decade of Oscar winners from top to bottom. There are individual winners in other decades that may match up, but no time period matches the overall quality of the 1970s.

The 60s were somewhat uneven, but in addition to the musicals, which I’ve talked about ad nauseum, there was also a glut of British-made films: Lawrence of Arabia, Tom Jones, and A Man for All Seasons. Between 1961 and 1968, In the Heat of the Night was the only American-made non-musical Best Picture winner. As opposed to the 1970s, which contains 10 American-made non-musical winners.

The Oscar Project #42: Midnight Cowboy (1969)

by Chris Marshall:

As hard as it is to believe, we are now halfway through The Oscar Project. 42 down, 42 to go. Midnight Cowboy is as good a film as any to be at the halfway point, if only because it is also the first post-Hays Code Best Picture winner. And man, they used their newfound freedom to go all out. The difference between this and previous winners is almost impossible to describe.

But that’s my job, so I’ll do the best I can. The film starts out with Joe Buck (Jon Voight), Fox’s A-team football and baseball announcer a Texan who’s dumb as a rock, packing his bag and moving to New York City, convinced he can make a living by dressing up like a cowboy and being a “hustler.”

As you might imagine, this plan is not as successful as Buck would have hoped. He’s soon broke, and he’s kicked out of the room he was staying in. As an added bonus, he can’t get into his room to get his stuff back until he can pay his back rent. With no money and no source of income, he finds himself out on the street, his only possession being his cowboy outfit.

The Oscar Project #41: Oliver! (1968)

by Chris Marshall:

Maybe I was just tired of all the musicals I’d seen, or maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood to watch it at the time, but Oliver! didn’t do anything for me. I can’t pinpoint exactly what it was I didn’t like, but I felt like I was suffering my way through it. Luckily that’s been rare so far, but it happens.

Perhaps it has something to do with my apathy toward Charles Dickens. I thought Great Expectations was wonderful, but that’s about the extent of my love for his work. Everything seems so bleak and hopeless, even when it’s not supposed to. I admit that this problem exists almost completely in my head, but there you have it.

But on the bright side, I could cross something else off my list. As with Hamlet, I had somehow gone my entire life without hearing/seeing/reading Oliver Twist, and while this film isn’t completely faithful to the original work, at least now I have the basic idea. Sure, I knew about Fagin, and the Artful Dodger, and “Please sir, may I have some more?” but that was it. I mean, I even thought he spent most of his time in the orphanage, but hey, he got out about five minutes into the movie!

The Oscar Project #40: In the Heat of the Night (1967)

by Chris Marshall:

I loved this movie. Let me just get that out there. But In the Heat of the Night is one of those cases, and there are a few, where a very good film did not deserve to win Best Picture, for reasons that have nothing to do with its own quality. It’s roughly analogous to the French Open today. Novak Djokovic played a great match and is one of the best players of all time, but his opponent, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, would have deserved the victory more. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

In the Heat of the Night is not one of the best movies of all time, but it is immensely enjoyable. It just came out in the wrong year. 1967 was one of the great years in the history of cinema, giving us The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, and Cool Hand Luke, among others.  Even Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?, with its oddly placed question mark, garnered acting nominations in every category.

That film, like In the Heat of the Night, co-starred Sidney Poitier, who was garnering serious respect for turning out one great performance after another and was just four years removed from winning Best Actor for Lilies of the Field, becoming the first black man to ever win the award. Poitier wasn’t nominated for either of his 1967 roles, but he did end up with perhaps the most memorable line[1] of the year: “They call me MISTER Tibbs.”

The Oscar Project #39: A Man for All Seasons (1966)

by Chris Marshall:

At the risk of inserting too much Real Life into this post, I feel compelled to mention that I’ve just finished writing a final for hierarchical linear modeling class, so if this is of a lower quality than usual, it’s because I’m having trouble switching over from multilevel statistical analysis mode to let’s write about movies mode.

So yeah, A Man for All Seasons! I hadn’t seen many of the winners from the 1960s before I started the project, but I was at least familiar with all of them, save for this and Tom Jones. I had a vague idea that it was based on a play, but that was really about it. Pauline Kael once wrote about how the first questions anybody asks upon hearing of a movie are “what’s about it” and “who’s in it,” and I didn’t have the answer to either of those.

Well, Orson Welles is in it, but don’t get your hopes up that he hangs around for very long. After that you get a brief appearance from Vanessa Redgrave as Anne Boleyn, and John Hurt appears in his very first film role. Oh, and Paul Scofield won Best Actor for his portrayal of Sir Thomas More.

The Oscar Project #38: The Sound of Music (1965)

by Chris Marshall:

As was the case with West Side Story, I watched The Sound of Music several years ago in a high school music class, so I didn’t exactly relish the idea of watching it again. It’s a good movie, but I don’t love it to the degree that many others do. Fortunately, I found that it was still enjoyable upon a second viewing.

It’s hard to imagine a movie star more likeable than Julie Andrews. At the time this movie was released, she was in the middle of a spectacular run. She won Best Actress for being Mary Poppins, won a Golden Globe for The Sound of Music, and was nominated for another Golden Globe for Thoroughly Modern Millie. Add the box office receipts for these films to her critical acclaim, and you have a pretty successful four year period.

If you’re the type of person to read The Oscar Project, you almost certainly know the plot already. Andrews, a nun, becomes governess for the Von Trapp family (she specializes in child rearing, apparently), falls in love with the man of the house, and then helps the family escape the Nazis. Oh, and everybody still knows all the musical numbers today, 47 years later.

The Oscar Project #37: My Fair Lady (1964)

by Chris Marshall:

I don’t know whether or not I agree with Roger Ebert’s assessment that My Fair Lady is one of the greatest of all musicals, but I will admit that it has a certain charm to it, a great deal of which is attributable to its lead actors. Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison may seem like an odd couple on the surface, but as it turns out, they have a great deal of chemistry.

Hepburn, as Eliza Doolittle, sells flowers on the streets and is from the lowest of the lower classes. Henry Higgins, or ‘Ennery ‘Iggins as Eliza calls him, is a linguist/phonologist/speech pathologist who believes that, in six months’ time, he can train anybody to speak “properly.” Higgins bets a fellow linguist, Pickering, that he will be successful.

Contrary to popular belief, though, or at least contrary to my belief, the speech lessons are not originally Higgins’s idea. Instead, Eliza seeks him out for lessons, believing that she will never be able to work in a flower shop unless she changes the way she speaks. She even offers to pay, although she can only afford to pay one shilling per lesson. Here is where the bet comes into play. Because Higgins won’t do it for such a low price, Pickering offers to pay for the lessons up front, on the condition that Higgins can “change” her in six months.

The Oscar Project #36: Tom Jones (1963)

by Chris Marshall:

What a strange movie. For a brief moment, I thought about letting those four words be the entirety of the post, but I’m too stubborn about the 500 word minimum. That being said, I want the record to show that that was the essence of my reaction after watching Tom Jones.

Much to my disappointment, it was not a movie about the Welsh-singer-turned-Las-Vegas-sensation Tom Jones, but rather an adaptation of Henry Fielding’s 1749 novel, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling. I checked out the novel’s Wikipedia page to see if I could find anything interesting about it, but it turns out the Wiki page is as long as the novel itself, so I’m just going to assume it’s a fairly faithful adaptation.

Then again, I’m not sure what the novelistic equivalent of a freeze frame is. I’m not sure they worked to achieve any greater purpose, but I will give credit to the director, Tony Richardson, for being stylistically innovative. Tom Jones is a like a different species from any of the previous Best Picture winners.