Friday, August 03, 2012
Edward Copeland's Top 100 of 2012 (100-81)
By Edward Copeland
With the release of the latest Sight & Sound poll, conducted every 10 years to determine the all-time best films, The House Next Door blog of Slant Magazine invited some of us not lucky enough to contribute to the S&S list to submit our own Top 10s to The House, which posted mine today. Sight & Sound magazine, a publication of the British Film Institute, began its survey in 1952, using only critics. Its 2002 list boasted its largest sample yet, receiving ballots from 145 film critics, writers and scholars as well as 108 directors. The results can be found here, though a note claims the page isn't actively maintained, though it appears complete to me. Since I planned to revise my personal Top 10, posted as part of my Top 100 in 2007, I figured I owed it to my entire Top 100 to redo my entire list. As before, my rule is simple: A film must be at least 10 years old to appear on my list. Therefore, movies released between 1998 and 2002 might appear on this list whereas they couldn't on the 2007 version. The most difficult part of assembling these lists always involves determining rankings. It's an arbitrary process and once you get past the Top 10 or 20, not only do the placements seem rather meaningless but inclusion and exclusions of films begin to weigh on you. In fact, selecting No. 1 remains easy but if I could, I'd have tied Numbers 2 through 20 or so at No. 2. A lot of great films didn't make this 100 through no fault of their own, falling victim to my whim at the moment I made the decision of what made the cut and where it went. In parentheses after a director's name, you'll find a film's 2007 rank or, if it's new to the list, you'll see NR for not ranked or NE for not eligible. I also should note that this does not mean the return of this blog. I had committed to taking part in The House's feature prior to pulling the plug and completed most of this before signing off.
100 NOSFERATU: PHANTOM DER NACHT directed by Werner Herzog (NR)
Part of the arbitrary nature of this list (and from the very first all-time 10-best list I compiled in high school) was to try to make sure I represented my favorite directors while still allowing for those films that might be a more singular achievement. (For example, my first high school list had to be sure to include a Woody Allen, a Huston, a Hitchcock, a Wilder, a Truffaut, an Altman.) The more great cinema you see, the harder it becomes to justify that since lots of directors deserve recognition and many films might be a filmmaker's strongest work. As I've caught up with a lot of Werner Herzog's work over the years, I felt he'd earned inclusion. I was torn between choosing Nosferatu or Aguirre: The Wrath of God to represent him, but opted for the vampire tale because Herzog's "reversioning" of Murnau's silent classic manages to be both a masterpiece of atmospherics and the best version of the Dracula tale put on screen.
99 TALK TO HER directed by Pedro Almodóvar (NE)
Pedro Almodóvar’s career evolution has taken an arc that I imagine few could have anticipated. I know I certainly didn’t back in the 1980s, when his films mainly consisted of camp, color and sexual obsession. Around the time of 1997’s Live Flesh, the Spanish filmmaker’s style took an abrupt change, filtering genres through his unique perspective to exhilarating results that continue through last year’s The Skin I Live In. The greatest of this run of seven features happens to be the most recent film to make this new Top 100 list. Telling the story of two men caring for women they love, both of whom happen to be comatose, Almodóvar’s Oscar-winning screenplay manages to balance humor, pathos and even outlandish touches you’d never expect to make one helluva movie and the writer-director’s best film so far.
98 NIGHT AND THE CITY directed by Jules Dassin (NR)
Littered along the highways of film history lie multiple tales of adversity breeding triumphs of cinema. As director Jules Dassin faced a possible subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee, presumably followed by blacklisting, at the end of the 1940s, producer Darryl Zanuck gave him an exit strategy. Dassin flew to London to hurriedly begin filming an adaptation of the novel Night and the City, which he’d never read, and as a result produced one of the greatest noirs of all time. Not only did he make the movie on the fly, Zanuck even stuck him with creating a role for Gene Tierney, nearly suicidal after a bad love affair. The novel’s author, Gerald Kersh, hated the movie about hustler Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) scheming to bring Greco-Roman wrestling to London while ducking all sorts of colorful characters played by wonderful actors such as Francis L. Sullivan, Googie Withers, Herbert Lom, Hugh Marlowe and Mike Mazurki. Of course, Kersh’s gripe was understandable — the film bore no resemblance whatsoever to his novel other than the title. However, that didn’t prevent it from being a damn fine film.
97 LONE STAR directed by John Sayles (92)
It takes a lot to fool me and, in retrospect, I should have seen the final twist coming, but I didn't because Sayles crafted in his best film a compelling story in which the plot turn was unexpected and the movie’s story didn't hinge on it. Even if the secret never had been revealed, this portrait of skeletons from the past and their influence on the lives of people in the present still would resonate. Sayles assembles a helluva ensemble including Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Peña, Matthew McConaughey, Kris Kristofferson, Joe Morton and, in one great single scene, Frances McDormand, to name but a few. Sayles has made some good films since Lone Star, but none come close to equaling the artistry, vitality and humanity of this one. I await another great one from him.
96 NORTH BY NORTHWEST directed by Alfred Hitchcock (81)
Set piece after set piece, Hitchcock puts Cary Grant through the paces and pulls the viewer along to his most purely entertaining offering. Grant never loses his cool as he's hunted by everyone, James Mason makes a suave bad guy and Martin Landau a perfectly sinister hired thug. With cameos by four former U.S. presidents. There's not much else to say about it: It's not an exercise in style or filled with layers and depth, it's just damn fun. In fact, it’s as much a comedy as a thriller.
95 THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER directed by Charles Laughton (87)
There's something to be said for quitting while you're ahead and Charles Laughton, one of the finest screen actors ever, certainly did with the only film he ever directed. The film's influences seem more prevalent than people who have actually seen this disturbing thriller with the great Robert Mitchum as the creepy preacher with love on one hand and hate on the other and the legendary Lillian Gish as the equivalent of the old woman who lived in a shoe, assuming the old woman was well armed.
94 RASHOMON directed by Akira Kurosawa (NR)
In describing the film that put Kurosawa on the world’s radar as a major filmmaker, I’m going to let Robert Altman speak for me. This quote comes from his introduction to the Criterion Collection edition of the movie. "Rashomon is the most interesting, for me, of Kurosawa's films.…The main thing here is that when one sees a film you see the characters on screen.…You see very specific things — you see a tree, you see a sword — so one takes that as truth, but in this film, you take it as truth and then you find out it's not necessarily true and you see these various versions of the episode that has taken place that these people are talking about. You're never told which is true and which isn't true which leads you to the proper conclusion that it's all true and none of it's true. It becomes a poem and it cracks this visual thing that we have in our minds that if we see it, it must be a fact. In reading, in radio — where you don't have these specific visuals — your mind is making them up. What my mind makes up and what your mind makes up…is never the same."
93 RAGING BULL directed by Martin Scorsese (NR)
For years, my standard response when asked about Raging Bull was that it was a film easier to admire than love. Each time that I’d see the movie again though, that point-of-view became less satisfactory because, as any great film should, the film kept rising higher in my esteem. In the film's opening moments, when Robert De Niro plays the older, fat Jake preparing for his lounge act in 1964 before it cuts to the ripped fighter in 1941, even though I consciously know both versions of La Motta were played by the same actor and that De Niro was that actor, the performance so entrances that I actually ask, "Who is this guy and why hasn't he made more movies?" To gaze at the way he sculpted his body into the shape of a believable middleweight boxer, sweat glistening in Michael Chapman's gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, truly makes an impressive achievement. Acting isn't the proper word for what De Niro does here. He doesn't portray Jake La Motta, he becomes Jake La Motta, or at least the screen version, and leaves all vestiges of Robert De Niro somewhere else. Even when De Niro turns in good or great work in other roles, they never come as close to complete immersion as his La Motta does.
92 RIFIFI directed by Jules Dassin (NR)
"Out of the worst crime novels I have ever read, Jules Dassin has made the best crime film I've ever seen," François Truffaut wrote about Rififi in his book The Films in My Life. I haven't read the Auguste Le Breton novel, but I don't doubt Truffaut's word. Dassin structures the film like a solid three-act play. Act I: Planning the heist. Act II: Carrying it out. Act III: The aftermath. Dassin fine-tunes each of the film's element to the point that Rififi practically runs as a machine all its own. The various characters behave more as chess pieces to be moved around as the story's game requires than as representatives of people. One single sequence though makes Rififi a landmark both in films and particularly heist movies: the robbery itself. Dassin films this in a 32-minute long silent sequence. No one speaks. Keeping everything as quiet as possible becomes the thieves' No. 1 priority. It's absolutely riveting. You'll be holding your breath as if you were involved in the crime yourself.
91 RIO BRAVO directed by Howard Hawks (79)
Howard Hawks appears for the first time on the list with a Western starring John Wayne that turned out to be so much fun they remade it (more or less) seven years later as El Dorado. I’ll stick with the original where the Duke’s allies include a great Dean Martin as a soused deputy sheriff, young Ricky Nelson and the always wily Walter Brennan. Wayne even gets to romance Angie Dickinson. No deep themes hidden here, though it's more layered than your typical Western. Still, that doesn't mean you can't kick up your spurs and enjoy.
90 KING KONG directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (76)
The first time was the charm. One of the few insightful comments I heard on the 2007 AFI special was when Martin Scorsese said that in many ways he finds the primitive stop-motion effects of the original King Kong more impressive than later CGI versions. He's absolutely right. The 1933 version also offers more thrills and emotions (and in half the time) than Peter Jackson's technically superior but dramatically inferior and unnecessary remake. Let’s not even discuss the 1976 version.
89 L.A. CONFIDENTIAL directed by Curtis Hanson (90)
When L.A. Confidential debuted on this list in its first year of eligibility in 2007, I wrote, “Of the films of fairly recent vintage, this is one that grows stronger each time I see it, earning comparisons to the great Chinatown…Well acted (even if Kim Basinger's Oscar was beyond generous), well written and well directed, I believe L.A. Confidential’s reputation will only grow greater as the years go on — yet it lost the Oscar (and a spot on the AFI list) to the insipid Titanic.” When I re-watched the film recently, my prediction proved to be spot-on as it only deepens as an experience and an entertainment as time passes. It still boggles my mind that with Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey and James Cromwell (just to name four) delivering impeccable work that only Basinger landed a nomination, but losing best picture and director to James Cameron and Titanic remains the bigger crime.
88 AFTER HOURS directed by Martin Scorsese (88)
Simply put: The tensest comedy ever made and perhaps Scorsese's most underrated film. Griffin Dunne plays the perfect beleaguered straight man enveloped by a universe of misfits and oddballs in lower Manhattan when all he wanted to do was get laid. It’s hard to imagine that this movie nearly became a Tim Burton project, but thanks to the many setbacks Scorsese endured attempting to make The Last Temptation of Christ, the film ended up being his — and recharged his batteries as well. While Scorsese has made great films since, I’d love to see him step back sometime and make another indie feature like After Hours on the fly just to see what happens. Joseph Minion wrote an excellent script and this represents one case where I think the changed ending actually proves superior to the originally intended one. By the way, whatever happened to Joseph Minion?
87 BACK TO THE FUTURE directed by Robert Zemeckis (86)
Watchability often gets undervalued when rating a film's worth, but I never tire of sitting through this thrill ride. One aspect that has impressed me since I first saw it as a teen back in 1985 (and I went two nights in a row, dragging my parents to it on the second) was its attention to detail such as Marty arriving in 1955 and mowing down a pine tree on the farm of the deranged man trying to “breed pines.” Then, when he returns to 1985, Twin Pines Mall now bears the sign Lone Pine Mall. It’s just a quiet sight gag in the background without any overt attempt to call attention to the joke. You either catch it or you don’t. I always admire films that respect audiences like that, especially when they happen to be this much fun. With equal touches of satire, suspense and genuine emotion, Back to the Future elicits pure joy. No matter how many times I see it, the final sequence where they prepare to send Marty back to 1985 holds me in rapt attention as I wonder if this time might be the time he doesn't actually make it.
86 MASH directed by Robert Altman (77)
A comedy about the Vietnam War that's full of blood and set in Korea, just as a matter of subterfuge. The film that put Altman on the map and inspired one of TV's best comedies (until it got too full of itself), MASH still holds up with its brilliant ensemble and wicked wit. I still wish the TV show had kept that theme song with its lyrics. Through early morning fog I see/visions of the things to be/the pains that are withheld for me/I realize and I can see.../That suicide is painless/It brings on many changes/and I can take or leave it if I please.
85 PRIZZI'S HONOR directed by John Huston (85)
Back in 1985, before Goodfellas and The Sopranos really mixed mob stories with jet black comedy, the great director John Huston, in his second-to-last film, brought to the screen an adaptation of Richard Condon's Mafia satire Prizzi's Honor, complete with great performances and some of the most memorable lines ever collected in a single film. Huston may have been in the twilight of his days, but his filmmaking prowess was as strong as ever. Jack Nicholson disappeared into the role of Charley Partanna more than he had any role in recent memory. Kathleen Turner matched well with Nicholson as Charley's love whose work outside the house causes problems. William Hickey gave an eccentric and indelible portrait of the aging don. Finally, John's daughter Anjelica made up for a misfire of an acting debut decades earlier with her brilliant performance as the scheming Maerose and took home one of the most deserved supporting actress Oscars ever given.
84 RAISE THE RED LANTERN directed by Zhang Yimou (84)
Before Zhang Yimou started being obsessed with spectacle and martial arts, film after film, he produced some of the greatest personal stories in the history of movies, especially when his muse was the great and beautiful Gong Li. This film was their first truly flawless effort as Gong plays the young bride of a powerful lord who already has multiple wives and who encourages the sometimes brutal competition between the women.
83 THE PLAYER directed by Robert Altman (82)
"The film actually is like a snail — it kind of turns in on itself and becomes itself," Altman describes his film in an interview on its DVD. One of the many "comebacks" of Robert Altman's career, this brilliant Hollywood satire holds up viewing after viewing because it's so much more than merely a satire. Thanks to Tim Robbins' superb performance as the sympathetic heel of a Hollywood executive and the cynical yet deeper emotional punch of Michael Tolkin's script, Altman wows from the opening eight-minute take to one of the greatest final punchlines in movie history. However, the more times you see it, the more you discover to see. While some specific references have aged, the movie's relevance remains — now more than ever.
82 SCHINDLER'S LIST directed by Steven Spielberg (78)
Schindler’s List marked an important moment in Spielberg’s development as a filmmaker: Peter Pan finally grew up. It’s a harrowing, well-made movie that everyone should see. At the same time, I can foresee a time when it slips off this list entirely. It isn’t the fault of the film — I find it nearly flawless. However, if someone placed a gun to my head and ordered me to choose to watch either Schindler’s or one of Spielberg’s best post-1993 films such as Catch Me If You Can or Minority Report, I’d opt for one of the latter two. Are they better films than Schindler’s List? I can’t say that. However, the epic holocaust tale isn’t a film you find yourself wanting to pop a bowl of popcorn and watching on a whim. As I said earlier, for me at least, rewatchability remains an important factor. I’ve seen Schindler’s List three times but I haven’t reached the point where I want to go through that wrenching experience again.
81 WILD STRAWBERRIES directed by Ingmar Bergman (NR)
Bergman once said that by the time he was done making Wild Strawberries, the film really belonged more to Victor Sjöström, who played Borg, the renowned professor and lauded physician about to receive an honorary degree. The film marked Sjöström 's return from semi-retirement, but he already was a legend as the first true Swedish acting-directing star. Borg decides to drive his old Packard to the event instead of flying to meet his son. The journey becomes more than just a road trip for the professor, but a metaphysical trek through his past as he questions what led him to this moment. As the car winds closer to the ceremony, Borg's inner journey does as well as he comes to realize that for all his scientific training, the only thing he can't analyze is himself. "The day's clear reality dissolves into even clearer remnants of memory," he says. Wild Strawberries represents Bergman growing into his powers as a filmmaker and while it may concern a 78-year-old man examining his life, the subject proves as timeless for people of any age as the film itself.
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With the release of the latest Sight & Sound poll, conducted every 10 years to determine the all-time best films, The House Next Door blog of Slant Magazine invited some of us not lucky enough to contribute to the S&S list to submit our own Top 10s to The House, which posted mine today. Sight & Sound magazine, a publication of the British Film Institute, began its survey in 1952, using only critics. Its 2002 list boasted its largest sample yet, receiving ballots from 145 film critics, writers and scholars as well as 108 directors. The results can be found here, though a note claims the page isn't actively maintained, though it appears complete to me. Since I planned to revise my personal Top 10, posted as part of my Top 100 in 2007, I figured I owed it to my entire Top 100 to redo my entire list. As before, my rule is simple: A film must be at least 10 years old to appear on my list. Therefore, movies released between 1998 and 2002 might appear on this list whereas they couldn't on the 2007 version. The most difficult part of assembling these lists always involves determining rankings. It's an arbitrary process and once you get past the Top 10 or 20, not only do the placements seem rather meaningless but inclusion and exclusions of films begin to weigh on you. In fact, selecting No. 1 remains easy but if I could, I'd have tied Numbers 2 through 20 or so at No. 2. A lot of great films didn't make this 100 through no fault of their own, falling victim to my whim at the moment I made the decision of what made the cut and where it went. In parentheses after a director's name, you'll find a film's 2007 rank or, if it's new to the list, you'll see NR for not ranked or NE for not eligible. I also should note that this does not mean the return of this blog. I had committed to taking part in The House's feature prior to pulling the plug and completed most of this before signing off.
Part of the arbitrary nature of this list (and from the very first all-time 10-best list I compiled in high school) was to try to make sure I represented my favorite directors while still allowing for those films that might be a more singular achievement. (For example, my first high school list had to be sure to include a Woody Allen, a Huston, a Hitchcock, a Wilder, a Truffaut, an Altman.) The more great cinema you see, the harder it becomes to justify that since lots of directors deserve recognition and many films might be a filmmaker's strongest work. As I've caught up with a lot of Werner Herzog's work over the years, I felt he'd earned inclusion. I was torn between choosing Nosferatu or Aguirre: The Wrath of God to represent him, but opted for the vampire tale because Herzog's "reversioning" of Murnau's silent classic manages to be both a masterpiece of atmospherics and the best version of the Dracula tale put on screen.
Pedro Almodóvar’s career evolution has taken an arc that I imagine few could have anticipated. I know I certainly didn’t back in the 1980s, when his films mainly consisted of camp, color and sexual obsession. Around the time of 1997’s Live Flesh, the Spanish filmmaker’s style took an abrupt change, filtering genres through his unique perspective to exhilarating results that continue through last year’s The Skin I Live In. The greatest of this run of seven features happens to be the most recent film to make this new Top 100 list. Telling the story of two men caring for women they love, both of whom happen to be comatose, Almodóvar’s Oscar-winning screenplay manages to balance humor, pathos and even outlandish touches you’d never expect to make one helluva movie and the writer-director’s best film so far.
Littered along the highways of film history lie multiple tales of adversity breeding triumphs of cinema. As director Jules Dassin faced a possible subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee, presumably followed by blacklisting, at the end of the 1940s, producer Darryl Zanuck gave him an exit strategy. Dassin flew to London to hurriedly begin filming an adaptation of the novel Night and the City, which he’d never read, and as a result produced one of the greatest noirs of all time. Not only did he make the movie on the fly, Zanuck even stuck him with creating a role for Gene Tierney, nearly suicidal after a bad love affair. The novel’s author, Gerald Kersh, hated the movie about hustler Harry Fabian (Richard Widmark) scheming to bring Greco-Roman wrestling to London while ducking all sorts of colorful characters played by wonderful actors such as Francis L. Sullivan, Googie Withers, Herbert Lom, Hugh Marlowe and Mike Mazurki. Of course, Kersh’s gripe was understandable — the film bore no resemblance whatsoever to his novel other than the title. However, that didn’t prevent it from being a damn fine film.
It takes a lot to fool me and, in retrospect, I should have seen the final twist coming, but I didn't because Sayles crafted in his best film a compelling story in which the plot turn was unexpected and the movie’s story didn't hinge on it. Even if the secret never had been revealed, this portrait of skeletons from the past and their influence on the lives of people in the present still would resonate. Sayles assembles a helluva ensemble including Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Peña, Matthew McConaughey, Kris Kristofferson, Joe Morton and, in one great single scene, Frances McDormand, to name but a few. Sayles has made some good films since Lone Star, but none come close to equaling the artistry, vitality and humanity of this one. I await another great one from him.
Set piece after set piece, Hitchcock puts Cary Grant through the paces and pulls the viewer along to his most purely entertaining offering. Grant never loses his cool as he's hunted by everyone, James Mason makes a suave bad guy and Martin Landau a perfectly sinister hired thug. With cameos by four former U.S. presidents. There's not much else to say about it: It's not an exercise in style or filled with layers and depth, it's just damn fun. In fact, it’s as much a comedy as a thriller.
There's something to be said for quitting while you're ahead and Charles Laughton, one of the finest screen actors ever, certainly did with the only film he ever directed. The film's influences seem more prevalent than people who have actually seen this disturbing thriller with the great Robert Mitchum as the creepy preacher with love on one hand and hate on the other and the legendary Lillian Gish as the equivalent of the old woman who lived in a shoe, assuming the old woman was well armed.
In describing the film that put Kurosawa on the world’s radar as a major filmmaker, I’m going to let Robert Altman speak for me. This quote comes from his introduction to the Criterion Collection edition of the movie. "Rashomon is the most interesting, for me, of Kurosawa's films.…The main thing here is that when one sees a film you see the characters on screen.…You see very specific things — you see a tree, you see a sword — so one takes that as truth, but in this film, you take it as truth and then you find out it's not necessarily true and you see these various versions of the episode that has taken place that these people are talking about. You're never told which is true and which isn't true which leads you to the proper conclusion that it's all true and none of it's true. It becomes a poem and it cracks this visual thing that we have in our minds that if we see it, it must be a fact. In reading, in radio — where you don't have these specific visuals — your mind is making them up. What my mind makes up and what your mind makes up…is never the same."
For years, my standard response when asked about Raging Bull was that it was a film easier to admire than love. Each time that I’d see the movie again though, that point-of-view became less satisfactory because, as any great film should, the film kept rising higher in my esteem. In the film's opening moments, when Robert De Niro plays the older, fat Jake preparing for his lounge act in 1964 before it cuts to the ripped fighter in 1941, even though I consciously know both versions of La Motta were played by the same actor and that De Niro was that actor, the performance so entrances that I actually ask, "Who is this guy and why hasn't he made more movies?" To gaze at the way he sculpted his body into the shape of a believable middleweight boxer, sweat glistening in Michael Chapman's gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, truly makes an impressive achievement. Acting isn't the proper word for what De Niro does here. He doesn't portray Jake La Motta, he becomes Jake La Motta, or at least the screen version, and leaves all vestiges of Robert De Niro somewhere else. Even when De Niro turns in good or great work in other roles, they never come as close to complete immersion as his La Motta does.
"Out of the worst crime novels I have ever read, Jules Dassin has made the best crime film I've ever seen," François Truffaut wrote about Rififi in his book The Films in My Life. I haven't read the Auguste Le Breton novel, but I don't doubt Truffaut's word. Dassin structures the film like a solid three-act play. Act I: Planning the heist. Act II: Carrying it out. Act III: The aftermath. Dassin fine-tunes each of the film's element to the point that Rififi practically runs as a machine all its own. The various characters behave more as chess pieces to be moved around as the story's game requires than as representatives of people. One single sequence though makes Rififi a landmark both in films and particularly heist movies: the robbery itself. Dassin films this in a 32-minute long silent sequence. No one speaks. Keeping everything as quiet as possible becomes the thieves' No. 1 priority. It's absolutely riveting. You'll be holding your breath as if you were involved in the crime yourself.
Howard Hawks appears for the first time on the list with a Western starring John Wayne that turned out to be so much fun they remade it (more or less) seven years later as El Dorado. I’ll stick with the original where the Duke’s allies include a great Dean Martin as a soused deputy sheriff, young Ricky Nelson and the always wily Walter Brennan. Wayne even gets to romance Angie Dickinson. No deep themes hidden here, though it's more layered than your typical Western. Still, that doesn't mean you can't kick up your spurs and enjoy.
The first time was the charm. One of the few insightful comments I heard on the 2007 AFI special was when Martin Scorsese said that in many ways he finds the primitive stop-motion effects of the original King Kong more impressive than later CGI versions. He's absolutely right. The 1933 version also offers more thrills and emotions (and in half the time) than Peter Jackson's technically superior but dramatically inferior and unnecessary remake. Let’s not even discuss the 1976 version.
When L.A. Confidential debuted on this list in its first year of eligibility in 2007, I wrote, “Of the films of fairly recent vintage, this is one that grows stronger each time I see it, earning comparisons to the great Chinatown…Well acted (even if Kim Basinger's Oscar was beyond generous), well written and well directed, I believe L.A. Confidential’s reputation will only grow greater as the years go on — yet it lost the Oscar (and a spot on the AFI list) to the insipid Titanic.” When I re-watched the film recently, my prediction proved to be spot-on as it only deepens as an experience and an entertainment as time passes. It still boggles my mind that with Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey and James Cromwell (just to name four) delivering impeccable work that only Basinger landed a nomination, but losing best picture and director to James Cameron and Titanic remains the bigger crime.
Simply put: The tensest comedy ever made and perhaps Scorsese's most underrated film. Griffin Dunne plays the perfect beleaguered straight man enveloped by a universe of misfits and oddballs in lower Manhattan when all he wanted to do was get laid. It’s hard to imagine that this movie nearly became a Tim Burton project, but thanks to the many setbacks Scorsese endured attempting to make The Last Temptation of Christ, the film ended up being his — and recharged his batteries as well. While Scorsese has made great films since, I’d love to see him step back sometime and make another indie feature like After Hours on the fly just to see what happens. Joseph Minion wrote an excellent script and this represents one case where I think the changed ending actually proves superior to the originally intended one. By the way, whatever happened to Joseph Minion?
Watchability often gets undervalued when rating a film's worth, but I never tire of sitting through this thrill ride. One aspect that has impressed me since I first saw it as a teen back in 1985 (and I went two nights in a row, dragging my parents to it on the second) was its attention to detail such as Marty arriving in 1955 and mowing down a pine tree on the farm of the deranged man trying to “breed pines.” Then, when he returns to 1985, Twin Pines Mall now bears the sign Lone Pine Mall. It’s just a quiet sight gag in the background without any overt attempt to call attention to the joke. You either catch it or you don’t. I always admire films that respect audiences like that, especially when they happen to be this much fun. With equal touches of satire, suspense and genuine emotion, Back to the Future elicits pure joy. No matter how many times I see it, the final sequence where they prepare to send Marty back to 1985 holds me in rapt attention as I wonder if this time might be the time he doesn't actually make it.
A comedy about the Vietnam War that's full of blood and set in Korea, just as a matter of subterfuge. The film that put Altman on the map and inspired one of TV's best comedies (until it got too full of itself), MASH still holds up with its brilliant ensemble and wicked wit. I still wish the TV show had kept that theme song with its lyrics. Through early morning fog I see/visions of the things to be/the pains that are withheld for me/I realize and I can see.../That suicide is painless/It brings on many changes/and I can take or leave it if I please.
Back in 1985, before Goodfellas and The Sopranos really mixed mob stories with jet black comedy, the great director John Huston, in his second-to-last film, brought to the screen an adaptation of Richard Condon's Mafia satire Prizzi's Honor, complete with great performances and some of the most memorable lines ever collected in a single film. Huston may have been in the twilight of his days, but his filmmaking prowess was as strong as ever. Jack Nicholson disappeared into the role of Charley Partanna more than he had any role in recent memory. Kathleen Turner matched well with Nicholson as Charley's love whose work outside the house causes problems. William Hickey gave an eccentric and indelible portrait of the aging don. Finally, John's daughter Anjelica made up for a misfire of an acting debut decades earlier with her brilliant performance as the scheming Maerose and took home one of the most deserved supporting actress Oscars ever given.
Before Zhang Yimou started being obsessed with spectacle and martial arts, film after film, he produced some of the greatest personal stories in the history of movies, especially when his muse was the great and beautiful Gong Li. This film was their first truly flawless effort as Gong plays the young bride of a powerful lord who already has multiple wives and who encourages the sometimes brutal competition between the women.
"The film actually is like a snail — it kind of turns in on itself and becomes itself," Altman describes his film in an interview on its DVD. One of the many "comebacks" of Robert Altman's career, this brilliant Hollywood satire holds up viewing after viewing because it's so much more than merely a satire. Thanks to Tim Robbins' superb performance as the sympathetic heel of a Hollywood executive and the cynical yet deeper emotional punch of Michael Tolkin's script, Altman wows from the opening eight-minute take to one of the greatest final punchlines in movie history. However, the more times you see it, the more you discover to see. While some specific references have aged, the movie's relevance remains — now more than ever.
Schindler’s List marked an important moment in Spielberg’s development as a filmmaker: Peter Pan finally grew up. It’s a harrowing, well-made movie that everyone should see. At the same time, I can foresee a time when it slips off this list entirely. It isn’t the fault of the film — I find it nearly flawless. However, if someone placed a gun to my head and ordered me to choose to watch either Schindler’s or one of Spielberg’s best post-1993 films such as Catch Me If You Can or Minority Report, I’d opt for one of the latter two. Are they better films than Schindler’s List? I can’t say that. However, the epic holocaust tale isn’t a film you find yourself wanting to pop a bowl of popcorn and watching on a whim. As I said earlier, for me at least, rewatchability remains an important factor. I’ve seen Schindler’s List three times but I haven’t reached the point where I want to go through that wrenching experience again.
Bergman once said that by the time he was done making Wild Strawberries, the film really belonged more to Victor Sjöström, who played Borg, the renowned professor and lauded physician about to receive an honorary degree. The film marked Sjöström 's return from semi-retirement, but he already was a legend as the first true Swedish acting-directing star. Borg decides to drive his old Packard to the event instead of flying to meet his son. The journey becomes more than just a road trip for the professor, but a metaphysical trek through his past as he questions what led him to this moment. As the car winds closer to the ceremony, Borg's inner journey does as well as he comes to realize that for all his scientific training, the only thing he can't analyze is himself. "The day's clear reality dissolves into even clearer remnants of memory," he says. Wild Strawberries represents Bergman growing into his powers as a filmmaker and while it may concern a 78-year-old man examining his life, the subject proves as timeless for people of any age as the film itself.
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Labels: Almodóvar, Altman, D. Zanuck, Dassin, Hawks, Herzog, Hitchcock, Huston, Ingmar Bergman, Kurosawa, Laughton, Lists, Murnau, Sayles, Scorsese, Spielberg, Tim Burton, Truffaut, Zemeckis, Zhang Yimou
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Tuesday, May 22, 2012
House No. 177: Everybody Dies
By Edward Copeland
When I first heard that House would end this season, I immediately told a friend that the only way the show could end would be with the prickly but brilliant doctor with a limp dying. I said, "He's been shot, practically killed himself several times attempting to solve a medical puzzle, committed himself to a mental hospital and been sent to jail — what else could they do but actually kill him?" Turns out I was right — sort of. I can't say that the finale overwhelmed me or that it falls onto the list with the worst series finales of all time. Except for its closing moments between Hugh Laurie and Robert Sean Leonard's Wilson, "Everyone Dies" played to me the same way most of the episodes in the past three seasons did — as if the show's creative team was stuck in idle and just spinning their wheels. My criticisms of Monday night's ending does contain several specifics, which I'll get to after the jump. In a post to come later, I'll talk about the series in general and an attempt to pick 10 favorite episodes of all time. Though I continue tinkering with that list, I can tell you I have decided that of the eight seasons, looking back at when all the best episodes were, the choice for best season hardly was a contest. That prize belongs to the second season.
The rumors circulated for a while that some former cast members such as Jennifer Morrison (Cameron) and Kal Penn (Kutner) would be making appearances and I saw a YouTube video with footage of the wrap party where Amber Tamblyn (that med student whose name I can't remember) mentioned that she'd pop up briefly in the last episode.
It seemed obvious to me that if they planned to resurrect Kutner that Amber (Anne Dudek) would not be far behind and she wasn't. (Hooray!) I don't know if the writers considered it, but if they planned for faces of his past to confront House as the building burned, why not try to get R. Lee Ermey back as the man who raised him and left him with so many psychological scars? More importantly, though I've read the stories that Lisa Edelstein's departure from House wasn't exactly a happy one, but the lack of Lisa Cuddy, either in House's imagination or at his "funeral" just rang false. I could imagine given the way the character left that Cuddy would not bother with the funeral, but you can't convince me that Amber, Kutner, Cameron and ex-girlfriend Stacy (Sela Ward) visit his smoke-inhalation induced reverie but Cuddy got turned away at the rope line by a bouncer. By the way, what in the hell has Sela Ward done to her face? Why do performers insist on damaging their most important
asset this way? Have plastic surgery techniques grown worse over the years instead of better? Just for a light moment, they ought to have tossed in a moment of Taub (Peter Jacobson) looking horrified when he meets Stacy for the first time given that's what he used to do for a living. It's terrible — Ward's facial muscles looked as if they were frozen. I could cite lots of other examples — scary Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton's new look that makes her cheeks and lips look as if they modeled them on a fish and all the lost, possibly great performances we could have from Faye Dunaway, who know resembles Jack Nicholson as The Joker in Tim Burton's Batman when he wears the flesh makeup. Pardon the digression. Cuddy's absence made for the biggest flaw. It was great to see many of the other past regulars or prominent guest stars, especially Andre Braugher's brief moments as Dr. Nolan. The resemblance to the Scrubs finale might have been too similar (the real finale, not that lame-ass med school half-season), but how about some of the patients he saved at the funeral or the ones he didn't haunting him? I wouldn't have hated seeing Michael Weston return as Lucas. Even when House's former personal P.I. dated Cuddy, he and Greg continued to get along in a civil manner and before that, his character really was the only other male character besides Wilson to forge some kind of bond with House. He never acted like the sort to let resentment simmer for long stretches of time, so I imagine Lucas got over Cuddy dumping him for House long ago and it's highly doubtful they reconciled since we last saw her. Again though, that goes back to a loose thread that deserved to be tied in some way, even if didn't take the form of an appearance by Edelstein.
"Everybody Dies" lacked — until its very final moments — the key asset that attracted me to House in the first place: Its humor. (Though I give them points for waiting eight years before making a Dead Poets Society reference.) At least the final medical case involving guest patient James LeGros (looking physically more like the LeGros I'm familiar with than his beer-bellied Wally Burgan in HBO's Mildred Pierce miniseries) actually tied into the plot. House might have insisted on only taking "interesting" patients, but that part of the show stopped being interesting to me and most viewers I know a long time ago. I also had a couple of nitpicky things. Chase (Jesse Spencer) quits two weeks ago and now that House is "dead," he comes back and gets his job? Honestly, maybe I'm alone on this, but hasn't Taub demonstrated better diagnostic skills? I also find it funny that such a huge deal keeps being made about House driving his car into a living room and then breaking parole by causing a ceiling to collapse. Foreman (Omar Epps) refuses to commit perjury for him to get House off the hook about accidental ceiling collapse, but he's complicit in covering up the murder of Dibala (James Earl Jones), the dictator of an unnamed African country and just appointed the doctor who killed Dibala on purpose to head House's department. They call House a dangerous jerk? Also, while it's nice to see that Cameron already found a new guy and gave birth, I can't be the only one who wants to know if she defrosted dead husband No. 1's sperm to spawn or if the tot belongs to the man.
On the other hand, while we assume that House and Wilson's honeymoon will be short, could the show end any other way? In many ways, House wasn't simply Sherlock Holmes recast as a doctor, it focused on living in and with pain. You could summarize the show's thesis with almost any of the classic jokes that Woody Allen's Alvy Singer delivers in Annie Hall. The final season of House even included an episode titled "We Need the Eggs." You could take any of them: "And such small portions." That's why the idea of House considering suicide just rang false. He might after Wilson lost his battle with cancer, but not before. His attitude echoes Alvy (coincidentally, the name of his hyper buddy from his time at the mental hospital, but spelled with an "ie" instead of a "y," played by Lin-Manuel Miranda). Life is "full of loneliness, and misery, and suffering, and unhappiness, and it's all over much too quickly." Actually, the closest Annie Hall line I believe has to be when Alvy says, "I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable." Now though, for at least five months, James Wilson and the late Gregory House ride off in the sunset together. That one woman in their apartment building "mistakenly" thought they were gay. Not counting why Wilson and Amber split up, something must keep breaking up Wilson's relationships — and some preceded Wilson meeting House. If the motorcycles break down and they end up on a bus as Wilson nears the end, I will have a hard time picturing him as Ratso Rizzo to House's Joe Buck though.
Laurie alone kept me hanging on to the end of House because I loved the character he created. Sadly, I believe he soon will join an exclusive club. Members include Ian McShane's Al Swearengen on Deadwood, Jeffrey Tambor as Hank Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show, Jason Alexander as George Costanza on Seinfeld, John Goodman as Dan Conner on Roseanne and Jackie Gleason as Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, to name a few of the actors who created some of the greatest characters in television history, none of whom ever received an Emmy Award. Hugh Laurie certainly belongs in this group because Dr. Gregory House was one of a kind. Still to come, saluting the series as a whole and unveiling that list.
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Labels: Awards, Braugher, Deadwood, Dunaway, HBO, House, J.E. Jones, John Goodman, Larry Sanders, Nicholson, Seinfeld, Tambor, Tim Burton, TV Recap, Woody
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Monday, December 05, 2011
Like seeing your dreams in the middle of the day
By Edward Copeland
Throughout my years of reviewing, when the time came to write about the latest Martin Scorsese picture, I always felt compelled to try to craft the best piece my capabilities allowed. With Hugo marking the first time the director has used the advancements in 3D technology, I not only owed Hugo the best prose I could muster, but it required seeing Hugo the way Scorsese intended. However, because of the physical limitations that have burdened me since 2008, trips to a movie theater have become a daunting task that requires literal heavy lifting by others and a substantial expenditure of energy on my part to accomplish such a journey, even with my good friend Adderall's help. Because of the logistics involved to get me out of my bed and my home, I usually only get out for doctors' appointments and unplanned trips to the emergency room. However, when Martin Scorsese releases a new film to theaters in 3D, I had to do my damnedest to get there physically. I had to wait to see Shine a Light and Shutter Island on DVD. Hugo happens to be the first film I've seen in a movie theater in more than a year (and only my fourth since 2009) as well as my first in "real D" 3D ever. If Marty's name weren't attached, I wouldn't have made the effort, not just for any 3D movie. This creates perhaps the oddest start to a review of a Scorsese movie I've written, but when your life undergoes as massive a change as mine has in the past three years, it feels appropriate to begin my Hugo review by focusing first on what it took to get me to the movie in the first place.
As frequent readers of this blog know, I am bedridden. I won't repeat the details of what put me here, but you can read this if you don't know. To get out of bed requires at least two people setting me up on a sling and attaching it to our electric lift. For a trip that isn't to a doctor, some additional steps have to be taken. For those journeys, I can go in my usual hospital gown attire. To visit a more public place such as a movie theater, I first have to be helped to put on a semblance of clothing, which isn't the easiest task in the world when your legs don't move and you have to work the pants and shirt around a suprapubic catheter and its attached collection bag. When that's out of the way and I'm centered on the sling and its straps are attached to the hooks of the lift, one person uses the lift to raise me off the bed while the other stands behind my wheelchair to guide me in and make sure I'm tight against the back and won't slide out during transport. We strap belts around my chest and legs to help me maneuver the chair from my bedroom through the house, into the garage and up the ramp of our specially equipped van where I perform a 180 degree turn in a limited space. Then four tethered hooks and a seat belt are attached to me. Assuming all of this has gone OK — and sometimes it takes quite a bit of trial and error to make certain that I'm centered on the sling and that I'm firmly against the back of the wheelchair. Then we can ride. For trips to doctors, we receive the help of the local ambulance service that provides free "lift assist" support, sending one of their paramedic units to help my aging father get me up. Unfortunately, this service only applies to medical-related jaunts. So, unless I lied, we couldn't have them come out and help get me up so I could go see Hugo.
Three mornings a week, I have caregivers who help to give me baths, etc., from 8 a.m. to noon. According to the national website for Hugo, the theater closest to me would have its first 3D showing on the Monday after it opened at 10:15 a.m. So I decided to make my first plan be that my caregiver would come an hour later than usual and I'd eat breakfast before he got here. He'd help get me dressed and get me up and into the chair and go see Hugo with us and we'd take the bath afterward. Unfortunately, the website was incorrect and when I checked the actual theater's showtime, they weren't having a 3D showing of Hugo until 2:30 in the afternoon, which wouldn't work because of other commitments the caregiver had in the afternoon not to mention how much that would cost me in overtime. With Monday blown, I started looking at the other theaters showing Hugo in the city. The earliest 3D showtime for Hugo in the city was 11:30 a.m. at a different theater. Wednesday couldn't work for the caregiver because his son had a doctor's appointment during the time the movie would be playing. Finally, I hit upon a plan: Thankfully, the caregiver's Thursday was free so he came just to help me get dressed, out of the bed and into the wheelchair and to accompany us to the theater for Hugo.
I had been to this theater many times, but not since I'd been forced to use a wheelchair (which occurred prior to my bedridden status) so I didn't realize how piss-poor their seating arrangements for wheelchairs were. Because of my nearly constant leg pain, when I did go to the movies in the chair, to make things as comfortable as possible, I tilt-raise the chair and recline the back so the footrests can be folded to extend my legs out straight. At the other two theaters in the city I'd usually frequent, it was never a problem as handicapped seating would have recessed openings adjacent to them allowing plenty of room for this to take place. At this theater, the space between the ground level rows of seating and the start of the stadium seating is very narrow and I barely had enough room to do much of the recline or lifting of legs without smacking into either the railing behind me or the seats in front of me. I arranged myself the best I could and anxiously awaited Hugo's start.
Of course, first I had to endure the trailers, which in the non-3D portion previewed a film set for the January dumping ground co-starring Queen Latifah and Dolly Parton called Joyful Noise. The trailer even includes a joke about Parton's plastic surgery, which they really had to include since her mouth now resembles Jack Nicholson's Joker in Tim Burton's Batman when he puts the flesh makeup over his disfigured visage. They then told us to put on our glasses for the 3D previews. All the animated films designed and made in the process such as The Lorax, The Adventures of Tintin and The Pirates: Band of Misfits looked impressive. However, the previews of re-releases of Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace and James Cameron's Titanic, both retrofitted to appear to be in 3D, looked like shit. Both should carry the tag line: Think They Stunk in Two Dimensions? Wait Until You Catch a Whiff in Three! Finally, it was time for Hugo.
I can't underestimate how excited I get when I'm about to see a new Martin Scorsese picture unfurl in a movie theater. I used to feel that way when I'd see the white-on-black titles of a Woody Allen film before he hit his slump and started repeating himself in the '90s. With the exceptions of Shine a Light and Shutter Island, I've seen every Scorsese feature in a theater starting with The King of Comedy. That includes After Hours, The Color of Money, The Last Temptation of Christ (which required driving to another state and standing in a line in the rain since no Oklahoma theater would show it), "Life Lessons" from New York Stories, Goodfellas, Cape Fear, The Age of Innocence (which I also drove out of state to see, but only because I was impatient), Casino (which I saw on a New York junket where I briefly spoke to Scorsese), Kundun, Bringing Out the Dead, Gangs of New York, The Aviator and The Departed. I even saw A Personal Journey Through American Movies With Martin Scorsese when it was shown in a New York theater and was able to see The Last Waltz in a 20th anniversary theatrical re-release. Now, Hugo joins that list. That's 17 films. I may have seen more films in a theater directed by Scorsese than by any other director if it weren't for Woody Allen's prolific nature and my earlier start with Steven Spielberg (beginning with Jaws), though Hugo puts Scorsese ahead of Spielberg by one. When I worshipped Woody, I stuck with him well into his doldrums. My first Allen in a theater remains my choice for his best, The Purple Rose of Cairo, and I saw them all that way through Curse of the Jade Scorpion. After that, I didn't have to see them and then it required too much work to see them. I've only seen one Allen in a theater since — Whatever Works — and that had as much to do with Larry David as with Woody. Still, that adds up to 20 films in a theater. It's been Spielberg's later years when I've been skipping out on theatrical showings (even when I could have attended).
Hugo starts with an awe-inspiring image that serves well as an introduction to live-action 3D for a skeptic who has felt, based on what he has read and heard, that 3D was little more than a gimmick to pump up movie ticket prices. With the exception of a couple of IMAX shorts in its early days, the last (and only) 3D movie I had ever watched in a theater was 1983's hokey-as-hell Jaws 3-D, back when the glasses were those cheap cardboard spectacle with plastic lenses of red and blue (or cyan if you want to get technical). In Hugo, we open on an FX shot that evokes an overhead shot of the entirety of a snowy Paris in the latter half of the 1920s, gliding past familiar landmarks until we arrive at its central train station and one of its huge clocks, only instead of the Arabic numeral 4, a boy's face peers out at us. The shot reminds me of young Henry Hill looking out his window at the gangsters' arrival at Tuddy's cab stand in Goodfellas. What Hugo shows us only gets more enthralling from there.
We learn that the 12-year-old boy is Hugo Cabret (played by the engaging Asa Butterworth, whose penetrating blue eyes might carry him far), who lives inside the walls of that Paris train station, winding all those clocks to make sure they keep running on time. It is a job that he inherited by default when his father (played by Jude Law in flashbacks) dies and his only living relative, Uncle Claude (Ray Winstone), takes him in. Uncle Claude is a drunken lout whose job is winding the train station's clocks so — at the cost of Hugo's education — the uncle jerks Hugo out of school and makes him his apprentice at the train station, learning his job and living there as well. Soon, Uncle Claude vanishes and Hugo takes it upon himself to perform his uncle's duties. Since he's doing the job unofficially, Hugo must filch whatever he can for sustenance as well as parts to finish repairing the automaton that his father found languishing at the museum where he worked and brought home to restore. Hugo has continued working on the unusual piece, convinced that if he fixes it, he will find a message left behind by his much-missed father. Hugo creates his own universe within the train station, though he must be careful to escape the notice of the Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), whose main joy in life appears to be apprehending unattended children and shipping them off to orphanages. Separate from the use of 3D, once the movie takes us inside Hugo's world of the train station, the film proves to be a true triumph of production design that I imagine dazzles just as much in the 2D version. Dante Ferretti (Oscar winner for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and The Aviator) serves as production designer, the eighth time he's worked with Scorsese, and the sets for Hugo prove so elaborate that the credits list 10 art directors who assisted Ferretti. Francesca Lo Schiavo performed the role of set decorator, her 18th collaboration with Ferretti (she won her two Oscars for the same two films he did) and her fifth with Scorsese. Together, all the crafts people, their meticulous work filmed through the lens of master cinematographer Robert Richardson (Oscar winner for JFK and The Aviator and whose credits also include Inglourious Basterds, The Doors, City of Hope and Eight Men Out), create a visual feast that's a wonder to behold and would make a remarkable moviegoing experience even if it lacked sound, appropriate given its underlying subject matter.
Hugo has been adapted by John Logan from the unusual children's book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. The book, which Selznick (a first cousin, twice removed of the famous producer David O. Selznick) wrote and illustrated, is historical fiction that runs more than 500 pages long of which nearly half of those pages contain illustrations. Published in 2007, the book Selznick describes as "not exactly a novel, not quite a picture book, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things" won the 2008 Caldecott Medal, the first for a "novel" since the prize goes to picture books. No wonder it attracted Scorsese.
In the train station, one of the main places where Hugo finds parts to swipe for his automaton is the toy shop, run by a very grumpy man (Ben Kingsley, always good, but giving another memorable performance in a career full of diverse roles). Believing he's dozing, Hugo reaches up to pinch some parts when the man grabs him and harangues him for being the thief who has been stealing from
him. He demands that the boy empty his pockets and Hugo complies on the right side containing all the pilfered pieces, but avoids his left pocket until the toy shop owner insists. Hugo reluctantly removes his father's notebook, which elicits a strange reaction from the man, who demands to know if Hugo made the drawings in it. A desperate Hugo begs the man to let him have the notebook back since he didn't steal it, but the toy shop's owner refuses, forcing Hugo to run along before he calls the Station Inspector. Later in the day, Hugo makes a new acquaintance — Isabelle (the ever-versatile Chloë Grace Moretz), who turns out to live with the toy shop owner, whom she calls Papa Georges, and his wife, Mama Jeanne (Helen McCrory). Hugo tells her about his notebook and how important it is to him, but refuses to say why. He waits for Isabelle's Papa Georges to close for the day and then starts to follow him, again pleading for the return of the notebook. The bitter man tells Hugo he plans to go home and burn it. Isabelle, who is listening nearby, promises Hugo that she'll keep watch over it so nothing happens. The next day, he returns to the toy shop. Georges says he expected to see Hugo again and hands him a cloth full of ashes, sending the boy fleeing in tears. Isabelle overhears the exchange and tells Hugo not to cry, but she again wants to know what's in the notebook because Papa Georges and Mama Jeanne talked and argued about it all night and Papa Georges cried as well, but he didn't burn it. He just did that to try to get Hugo to stop bothering him.Since Hugo opened prior to Thanksgiving and was being discussed in detail long before that, it's doubtful that many readers interested in the film don't already know the basics of the story and this isn't the type of movie where one needs to worry about spoilers. (If there exists in the world a person outraged that a Hugo review ruins the movie's revelation that Papa Georges is actually filmmaking pioneer Georges Méliès, I want to meet that person to find out how they knew who Méliès is but hadn't heard or read about Hugo's plot yet.) Martin Scorsese does have an unfortunate tendency to be pigeonholed as a filmmaker, when he may be the most eclectic great director we have working today — and he's been that way for a long time. In a way, you could say he resembles the Howard Hawks of his generation, working in practically every genre yet leaving his distinctive stamp on all his works. Granted, Scorsese possesses more
sophistication than Hawks — in terms of both visual style and subject matter. Hawks also didn't run back and forth between fiction and documentaries the way Scorsese does. Hugo, while it's perfectly suitable for kids to see, really works best for a special kind of kid — the type of kid Scorsese was or that I was or many of my friends were — budding film buffs. Hugo, at its core, isn't really the story of two kids trying to solve a mystery as they do in many tales that enchant young people, though that's there. It's not merely the story of an orphaned boy living alone inside a place that seems magical to him but who's pursued by a pseudo-villain, though that element exists in Hugo as well, primarily in the form of Sacha Baron Cohen's Station Inspector stalking the corridors with his Doberman. It isn't even the story of how a boy teaches a bitter old man to love life again, but that common children's story not only exists in Hugo, the main strand builds from it to accomplish what Scorsese really aims to do: pen a cinematic love letter to movies. Because of all the great directors working today, it's doubtful that any filmmaker loves movies more than Scorsese does — and it isn't just making movies that he loves. He loves watching them, helping to preserve them and just sitting around enthusiastically talking about them. Hugo, in its own way, allows him to accomplish all those film-related gerunds at once and address them to a new audience. I bet in the back of his mind somewhere, he hopes that someone born in 1999 or so sees Hugo and the experience births a new serious film fan, one who goes home and asks his or her parents about seeing a silent movie, wanting to start at the beginning of film history. If we had a title of filmmaking laureate as we do poet laureate, would there be any other American worth nominating? He's our country's film professor. They often pose the question to people about any career they might have, "Would you still do this if you didn't get paid?" I think we know what Marty's answer would be, but how would someone like a Michael Bay answer?With Hugo, Scorsese begins the film moving at a pace equal to the excitement of a kid on Christmas morning. Hugo starts leisurely with that overhead shot of Paris, but it picks up speed as it enters the train station and takes off like the famous Copacabana tracking shot in Goodfellas on crystal meth, zooming through those wide corridors packed with people, following Hugo through the innards of the station, sending him up and down ladders and traversing halls lined with pipes exhaling steam. Much of Hugo zips along at this pace when in the station, but Scorsese knows when to slow things down as well. In the production design, I'm sure they purposely built
the set's features to evoke silent films such as the many large mechanisms that run the station's clocks that look straight out of Chaplin's Modern Times and the clocks that reminded me of Harold Lloyd's Safety Last from the beginning, long before Hugo takes Isabelle to see Lloyd's movie and Hugo ends up hanging from a minute hand for real when fleeing the Station Inspector. By this time in his directing career (21 feature films since 1967, not counting his short films, documentaries, music videos, commercials and TV work), Scorsese has employed every filmmaking technique there is except for the 3D he's using for the first time here. It also seems to me that he utilizes more shots from high and low angles in Hugo than he usually does for a single movie. The big question comes down to how he handles the 3D, which puts me in an awkward position since I have nothing to compare it against except those coming attraction trailers. For me at least, I thought it was used very well for the first half-hour or so and isolated moments after that. After about 30 minutes though, I found the 3D to be somewhat exhausting and it wore out its novelty with me. When Hugo reaches its emotional climax, with Méliès embracing his legacy and parts of his films and A Trip to the Moon restored in its entirety, I found the 3D to be a distraction. Having seen that Georges Méliès film, I know it wasn't in 3D, so why was the moon coming toward me? I imagine that entire sequence affects the viewer more emotionally in the 2D prints.
Fortunately, the eventual 3D fatigue didn't sour me on the film itself which I enjoyed overall, thanks not only to Scorsese's still-visible mastery and his right-hand woman, film editor Thelma Schoonmaker and all the other behind-the-scenes talent. Most importantly, Hugo succeeds on the strength of its cast (though why everyone in Paris has a British accent I have no idea). Since the movie rests primarily on the shoulders of young Asa Butterfield, if his casting had been off, they'd been sunk, but he does quite well, holding his own with performers of all different levels of experience. His Hugo and Chloë Grace Moretz's Isabelle make a good team of young amateur detectives and friends who each compensate for something the other lacks. Isabelle's book smarts help their research (and con their way out of a run-in with the Station Inspector) while Hugo introduces Isabelle to the wonders of the movies, which Papa Georges refuses to let her see. Until that point, Isabelle has been the adventurer, but Hugo sneaks her into the theater to see the movie free. "We could get in trouble," she warns Hugo. "That's how you know it's an adventure," Hugo tells her. Moretz truly has proved herself an amazing young actress, putting on a British accent here, playing the young vampire last year in Let Me In and as Joseph Gordon-Levitt's wise-beyond-her-years younger sister in (500) Days of Summer.
Also turning in fine, brief appearances are the previously mentioned Jude Law, Ray Winstone and Helen McCrory as well as Richard Griffiths, Frances de la Tour, Emily Mortimer and Christopher Lee playing various inhabitants of the train station. Sacha Baron Cohen provides ample comic relief as the Station Inspector who suffered a wound in World War I that requires a mechanical hinge on one of his legs so that it comes off as sort of an homage to Kenneth Mars' Inspector Kemp in Young Frankenstein. One of Cohen's funniest scenes involves Madame Emilie (De la Tour) trying to get him to show her his best smile so he can talk to Lisette (Mortimer), the girl who sells flowers that he's developed a crush on but is too shy to approach. One other performance worth noting is Michael Stuhlbarg as Rene Tabard, the film professor who wrote a book about Méliès and restores his legacy. I don't know if Scorsese met Stuhlbarg on the set of Boardwalk Empire, which he executive produces and Stuhlbarg gives one of the series' best performances as Arnold Rothstein, or if he saw him first in a completely different role as Larry Gopnik in the Coens' A Serious Man, but Stuhlbarg's chameleon-like ability astonishes.
The credit for what ultimately makes Hugo work as well as it does belongs to Ben Kingsley as Georges Méliès. Kingsley has been excellent for a long time in many roles since he first captured our attention in 1982's Gandhi, showing he's equally adept in all genres and time periods in the years since. His work in Hugo may be his best since his incomparable turn in Sexy Beast, though the two parts couldn't be more different. There is neither flash nor fire in his Méliès, but you see the loss lurking beneath the man's surface as well as the joy in flashbacks to his filmmaking days. Kingsley's acting stands out better in 3D than all the other effects in Hugo combined.
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Labels: 10s, Boardwalk Empire, Books, Cameron, Chaplin, Coens, Fiction, Gordon-Levitt, Hawks, Kingsley, Larry David, Nicholson, Scorsese, Selznick, Spielberg, Star Wars, Tim Burton, Woody
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Thursday, July 28, 2011
Curiouser and Curiouser
By Damian Arlyn
Alice in Wonderland is Disney's most bizarre animated feature. In choosing to adapt the British fantasy novels Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Disney jettisoned his usual strong narrative backbone and compelling characters for a series of absurd, drug-induced comic vignettes populated with characters of varying degrees of insanity. The resulting product is indeed lively, colorful and humorous at times but it is also dark, disturbing and ultimately emotionally un-involving. It also, in the eyes of many literary critics, distorts its beloved source material beyond all recognition. For these reasons, Alice in Wonderland was a critical and financial disappointment when it premiered in theaters on July 28, 1951. So why are we still talking about it 60 years later? Why, in spite of these shortcomings, is Alice in Wonderland considered by many to be, if not quite on the same level as Snow White or Pinocchio, a Disney classic today? My guess is because children love it and they are ultimately the audience for whom Disney made the film.
Walt had long wanted to make a feature based on the Alice stories penned by the British author, mathematician and logician Charles Dodgson (a.k.a. Lewis Carroll). He had considered it at one time as his debut animated feature and had returned to it many times over the years as a possible combo live-action/animation movie (much like what would eventually be seen in those now famous sequences from Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks). However, it wasn't until 1946 that work actually began on the project that would eventually become Alice in Wonderland and in the end Disney wisely decided to make it completely animated. In many respects, animation was the perfect medium for the fantastic tale of a proper British girl who falls down a rabbit hole and ends up in a land of nonsense and madness. Nowadays, of course, it is far easier to depict such a world with CGI (and indeed Tim Burton recently fashioned a lavish, whimsical and obscenely successful semi-sequel, with his friend Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, doing just that) but in 1951, this was the closest one could get to seeing such fanciful images come to life on a screen.
It probably seems redundant to compliment a Disney film on the quality of its animation (like complimenting Muhammad Ali on his boxing ability), but the animation on display in Alice in Wonderland is indeed superb and should be acknowledged. Disney animators have always had a knack for drawing engaging, believable characters and here they have outdone themselves creating beings who were not only soft, cute and often cuddly, but also odd, grotesque and sometimes downright scary. For example, while the Queen of Hearts never comes off as more than an ill-tempered bully, that memorable feline known as the Cheshire Cat so delights in his lunacy that he has actually been compared by some to Hannibal Lecter. Furthermore, as Alice makes her way through the strange, alien world that she has (literally) stumbled upon, we are treated to some stunning visuals all around her. Perhaps because the animators and background artists were usually rendering relatively realistic environments in films such as Bambi, this time they had far more room to let their imaginations run wild.
Music has always been a strong element in Disney films and this one in particular is also very music-heavy. Some songs feature lyrics taken from Carroll's text (such as "The Walrus and the Carpenter" and "Twas Brilig") but many are original tunes written specifically for the movie. None of them are as iconic as "When You Wish Upon a Star" or even as supremely catchy as something like "Bippity Boppity-Boo" but a few are memorable enough to warrant humming afterward (including "The Un-birthday song" and "Painting the Roses Red"). The voice acting, provided by a cast of Disney regulars, is uniformly good. Ed Wynn as the Mad Hatter, Sterling Holloway as the Cheshire Cat and Verna Felton as the Queen are particular standouts.
Despite of all its technical achievements, Alice in Wonderland ultimately fails to resonate. The lack of an actual plot on which to hang the series of outrageous episodes, gives the film an aimless, meandering feeling. Also, Alice is one of the more annoying Disney protagonists (the actress voicing the character, Kathryn Beaumont, does a decent enough job but her talents were put to much better use as Wendy Darling in Disney's Peter Pan released two years later). From the beginning she seems like an arrogant, spoiled child who has no
real arc nor comes to any kind of self-realization (other than that she wants to get home). Disney himself even admitted that she wasn't very likable. However, in spite of (or perhaps because of) these flaws, Alice in Wonderland still is a beloved entry in Disney's canon of animated features. I remember watching it all the time as a youngster and, though not understanding everything that was going on, enjoying it nonetheless. Though I still have affection for it, I had to grow up to realize how mediocre it is compared to Disney's usual fare. The anarchic tenor, "stream-of-consciousness" transitions between the set pieces and wacky slapstick-oriented antics are exactly the sort of things that appeal to a youngster who is no older than seven. A child won't be bothered by the lack of story, depth in character or logical coherence to the events occurring on screen. They're not going to care a fig for Carroll's satirical symbolism or his wonderful use of the English language that Disney virtually ignored. They'll simply follow Alice on her trek through this bizarre world that feels a lot like a dream (which, in fact, it turns out to be in the end) laughing at the sheer silliness of it all and then when it's over, move on to the next thing. It is, in some respects, the perfect "children's animated film" and in that regard at least, Disney succeeded in what he set out to do.
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Labels: 50s, Animation, Depp, Disney, Hannibal Lecter, Movie Tributes, Tim Burton
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Monday, July 25, 2011
G.D. Spradlin (1920-2011)
G.D. Spradlin, the man who began his adult life as an Oklahoma oil man before switching careers in his 40s to become an actor, has died at age 90.
Among Spradlin's most notable film roles were as the corrupt senator in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part II and Reverend Lemon, the minister who helped finance an Ed Wood movie in Tim Burton's Ed Wood.
He got his start in the 1960s with guest shots on many television series, especially Westerns. Throughout his career, he often was cast on TV and in film as politicians (Rich Man, Poor Man; Houston: The Legend of Texas; Robert Kennedy & His Times; The Long Kiss Goodnight) or military men (Gomer Pyle; Tora, Tora, Tora; Judgment: The Court-Martial of William Calley; MacArthur; Apocalypse Now; The Lords of Discipline; War and Remembrance).
He even worked with Antonioni on Zabriskie Point as well as films such as Monte Walsh, North Dallas Forty and The War of the Roses. His final role was as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee in the 1999 Watergate spoof Dick.
To read The L.A. Times obit, click here.
RIP Mr. Spradlin.
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Labels: Antonioni, Coppola, Obituary, Tim Burton
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Thursday, June 30, 2011
You Can Even Eat the Dishes
By Damian Arlyn
There's a moment in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory when the character of Willy Wonka emerges for the first time from his factory to the enthusiastic applause of a crowd gathered to see him. The noise gradually dies down and becomes silent as they realize he is limping along on a cane. Children are unable to hide their disappointment. Grown-ups look confused and concerned. Suddenly, only a few steps from his front gate, Wonka's cane gets stuck in some cobblestones. He freezes, starts to fall forward, does a somersault and victoriously leaps to his feet with a smile. Children's faces light up. The crowd erupts into even more enthusiastic applause. It was all a joke. A delightful bit of showmanship from a master trickster. This introduction, as the story goes, was Gene Wilder's idea. When approached for the role, Wilder stipulated he would only do it if he could make his entrance in just such a manner. When asked why by the director, Wilder replied, "Because from that moment on, whenever I do anything nobody will know whether I'm lying or telling the truth." That kind of profound understanding Wilder brought to the character is just one among many examples of why Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory works just as beautifully now as it did when it premiered 40 years ago today.
The tale of Willy Wonka began as a book entitled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, penned by Roald Dahl and published in 1964. It told the highly fanciful tale of a poor boy taken on a tour through a magical wonderland by an eccentric confectioner. The book was a hit and in 1970 producer Dave Wolper was looking for a movie idea to serve as a promotional tie-in for a new line of candy bars the Quaker Oats Company was hoping to manufacture. Dahl’s fantastical fable of sugary goodness seemed a perfect fit. It was the first of his stories to be adapted for film and Dahl himself was hired to write the screenplay. Massive changes, however, were made to his script by David Seltzer and this caused Dahl to be severely dissatisfied with the final product and consequently disown it (a phenomenon that was to occur time and again with cinematic adaptations of his works). In a delicious bit of irony, however, the candy bar that Quaker Oats produced turned out to be faulty and so had to be withdrawn from shelves.
To helm the project, Mel Stuart (a director known mostly for TV movies and documentaries) was chosen. It seems an odd choice for a theatrical fantasy film for families (particularly given that his visual style is rather bland), but he acquits himself adequately through his numerous astute filmmaking decisions, his first being to make Willy Wonka a musical. The songs written by the award-winning team of Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley are all (with the exception of the mother's "Cheer Up, Charlie" which was always a fast-forward song for me as a kid) melodic and memorable.
Who among us doesn't know "Pure Imagination," the "Oompa-Loompah" song or "The Candy Man" (made immortal by Sammy Davis Jr.) by heart? To this day, I think Grandpa Joe's energetic rendition of "I've Got a Golden Ticket" as he dances around the room in his pajamas has to be one of the purest expressions of sheer joy I've ever seen in cinema. Stuart also decided to shoot the film in Germany to save on costs. Wisely, however, the country is never identified by name in the film and it adds to the fantastic other-worldly quality of the story.
In casting the film, Stuart had to find not just one or two but five young actors to play the lucky children who find the Golden Tickets. All five are quite good but a couple standouts are Peter Ostrum (in his one and only film appearance) who manages to be believably innocent and selfless without coming off as disgustingly saccharine in his performance as Charlie. The other is Julie Dan Cole as Veruca Salt, the brattiest kid of the bunch…and that's saying something. Cole totally commits to the supreme selfishness of her character and even gets her own song to sing ("I want It Now"). She's the kind of devil-spawn that every parent is afraid their own offspring will turn out to be. The inimitable Jack Albertson plays Grandpa Joe, Charlie's surrogate father figure, with equal amounts of love for Charlie and disdain for the injustices of the world.
Finally, there's Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. Although Dahl presumably wanted Spike Mulligan or Ron Moody to play the part, Stuart once again demonstrated a keen grasp of the material by approaching Wilder, a brilliant comic actor who thoroughly understood the complexities and ambiguities of the character. His Willy Wonka is unpredictable (as demonstrated by his introduction) but lovable, strange but predominately non-threatening, bizarre but surprisingly witty (quoting such varied writers as Shakespeare, Wilde and Keats). Wilder brings a childlike enthusiasm and exuberance to the role and it is arguably his most iconic performance (and he's certainly given us several to choose from).
For the most part, Willy Wonka charmed critics when it was released, but audiences were not quite as won over by it and tended to stay away (the film only grossed $4 million on a $3 million budget). Eventually, however, it developed a cult following on home video and television broadcasts. How well does it hold up today? Well, obviously there are elements which are extremely dated (the psychedelic boat ride down the tunnel is a like a bad 70's acid trip), but like Wizard Of Oz or Mary Poppins, there is an element of imagination at work in the film (something sadly lacking in most contemporary movies) that makes it utterly charming and helps give it a timeless quality. Today it is remembered with much fondness and affection by many families. Personally, I love the film and when I revisit it every couple years I am surprised at how moved I am by it at various points in story. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory may not be a great film, but it is the product of an era when wonder and fancy could still be found in big screen movies, when cinematic fairy tales could be told earnestly (without cynicism or self-consciousness) and when things like story, character and genuine emotion were more important than budget or special effects.
A comparison with the more "faithful" 2006 adaptation by Tim Burton demonstrates this very thing. The remake is not without its charms (including some stunning visuals and a charming performance from Freddie Highmore), but it serves as yet another reminder that newer is not necessarily better. Among the many miscalculations was
Johnny Depp’s decision to play Wonka as an excessively bizarre weirdo stuck in a state of arrested development. With echoes of pop sensation and eccentric man-child (not to mention accused child molester) Michael Jackson, Depp's Wonka was creepy and off-putting. Wilder's Wonka could indeed be dark, mysterious, enigmatic and even outright scary sometimes, but he was never creepy. His character, like the film he inhabited, ultimately had a warmth and a generosity at heart whereas Depp's Wonka, also much like the film itself, had a coldness at the center, a sense of detachment that makes its hard to be engaged by what we are watching even while we are being amazed by what we are seeing. I suspect that the 1971 version of the story will still retain its appeal long after the motion picture landscape has been become overrun with ugly, calculated and expendable pieces of cinematic junk (a fate of which I'm skeptical Burton's version will share).In essence, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory may not have been revolutionary, but it was definitely non-pollutionary.
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Labels: 70s, Depp, Documentary, Movie Tributes, Musicals, Remakes, Television, Tim Burton
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Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Centennial Tributes: Bernard Herrmann Part II
By Edward Copeland
So I had to divide this tribute to Bernard Herrmann in two parts. If somehow you started here and want to backtrack, click here. We pick up still in 1956 and I wanted to use two clips from Hitchcock's 1956 The Man Who Knew Too Much, but YouTube has removed both since I wrote this and I could find no good substitute.
A Hatful of Rain (1957) directed by Fred Zinnemann; Scene: Turning Johnny in
Have Gun — Will Travel was one of the most popular TV Westerns of its time starring Richard Boone as Paladin, a West Point grad turned gunfighter after the Civil War. It ran from 1957-1963. It managed to have two themes: the instrumental one that Herrmann wrote for its opening credits and a song "The Ballad of Paladin" that played over the closing credits. We, of course, are only interested in Herrmann's contribution.
1958 brings us back to Vertigo, whose opening credit sequence I used as the opening to Part I simply because I felt it was one of if not his greatest. Thankfully, it is not one of the movies. Unfortunately, another clip I planned to use from it from YouTube also disappeared that I wanted to include to show how his score worked within the context of the Hitchcock masterpiece, but most did not so I got to use one to top Part II and another for after this graf. There are so many choices because frankly I don't believe Vertigo would be as great as it is without Herrmann's contribution. I could have selected the opening rooftop chase, the first time Scottie sees Madeleine at Scotty's restaurant with those beautiful, vivid reds (which I took up top), the museum scene, or many others. I had settled on the scene where Scottie tails Madeleine and saves her after she jumps into the bay but that disappeared, so I went with the museum
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) directed by Nathan Juran; Piece: Skeleton fight
North by Northwest (1959) directed by Hitchcock; Piece: Title sequence
On Oct. 2, 1959, one of the most iconic television series of all times premiered on CBS: Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone. Bernard Herrmann wrote the show's theme, though not the famous one when you're familiar with and you could mimic right now. His intro music was only used for the first season, though he scored many individual episodes.
Here we have an interesting comparison of a Bernard Herrmann score that later is evoked in another composer's score either as homage or something else. You be the judge. First, listen to part of Herrmann's score for director Henry Levin's 1959 film Journey to the Center of the Earth. Then, listen to its echoes present in Danny Elfman's main title music for Tim Burton's 1989 Batman. Next in 1960, Herrmann and Hitch teamed again for the memorable Psycho. If I had my preference, I'd embed a clip of the Saul Bass title sequence with the score, but it's been disabled, so you'll have to click to hear it. However, I was able to embed the shower scene.
Tender Is the Night (1962) directed by Henry King; Pieces: 3 tracks
Here is one of the more interesting comparisons. First, we have Herrmann's original main theme for J. Lee Thompson's 1962 Cape Fear (but unfortunately not actual footage from the movie) and then we have Elmer Bernstein's adaptation of Herrmann's score for Martin Scorsese's 1991 remake of the film — complete with Saul Bass title sequence.
Marnie (1964) directed by Hitchcock; Piece: Prelude
Fahrenheit 411 (1966) directed by Francois Truffaut; Piece: Prelude
The Virginian TV series Episode: "The Reckoning (9/13/67); Piece: Title credits
What's next is something special. First, we have sequences from Truffaut's 1968 film The Bride Wore Black without dialogue, only Herrmann's score. After that, we have Herrmann himself discussing his work on the score of the film against scenes from it.
Director Roy Boulting made a thriller in 1968 called Twisted Nerve for which Herrmann composed a frightening, whistle for the film's killer to use. It has taken on a popularity greater than the film itself. So here are three takes on it. First, we have the whistle as it is emanates from Hywel Bennett as the killer in the movie. Second, we have how Herrmann incorporated the whistle into the movie's score. Lastly, we have Quentin Tarantino's homage to it in a scene in Kill Bill Vol. 1.
In 1974, Herrmann scored the schlocky horror film It's Alive, but I could find no samples of his work from that film. On Dec. 24, 1975, Bernard Herrmann died of a heart attack at the age of 64, but he left two scores behind, both of which received his final two Oscar nominations in 1976: Brian De Palma's Obsession and one of his greatest, Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver. Both nominations lost to Jerry Goldsmith's score for The Omen.
First, from Obsession
Of course, it's nearly impossible to keep a clip from a Scorsese film up for long, but we've got the masterful Taxi Driver score, if not the images that go with them.
Ironic in a way, that Bernard Herrmann's film scoring career began with the ultimately lonely Charles Foster Kane and ended with the God's lonely man Travis Bickle. What range. What talent. Imagine if he had lived longer.
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Labels: De Niro, De Palma, Doris Day, Herrmann, Hitchcock, J. Stewart, Music, Oscars, Scorsese, Tarantino, Television, Tim Burton, Walsh
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