One of the greatest filmmakers, Ingmar Bergman, died at age 89. While his last theatrical film, Fanny and Alexander was made in 1982, Bergman continued making films for Swedish television through 2005. One of his more recent television films, Saraband received wide theatrical distribution. Bergman’s influence was most notable on Woody Allen who both spoofed the master filmmaker, and made films about existential angst in a similar style. The two actors most associated with Bergman, Max Von Sydow and Liv Ullman became international film stars in their own right. Bergman was nominated for an Academy Award nine times, both as a writer and director. The following is my list of the best of Ingmar Bergman. If you are not familiar with any of his films, this list should be a good place to start. The films are all available on DVD.

1. Persona (1966). Two women alone on an island, a nurse and a mute actress. Bibi Andersson talks, while Liv Ullman stays silent. A film about identity as indicated by the title. My nomination for Bergman’s best film.

2. Wild Strawberries (1957). Former pioneer Swedish filmmaker Victor Sjostrom plays a professor looking back at his life. The film is less depressing than it sounds. Max Von Sydow has a brief part as a gas station attendant.

3. The Seventh Seal (1957). A knight in the Middle Ages plays chess with Death. That image has become indelible and influenced Roger Corman on The Masque of Red Death.

4. Fanny and Alexander (1982). The story of a young boy and girl in early 20th Century Sweden, bookmarked by two big Christmas gatherings. This was a mini-series in Sweden, with the full version available on DVD. A shorter three hour version played theatrically.

5. Smiles of a Summer Night (1955). Bergman never made a laugh out loud comedy, but this film should at least put a smile on your face. Woody Allen did his own version as A Midsummer’s Night’s Sex Comedy. The film was also the basis for the musical A Little Night Music.

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There seems to be a trend of more film directors trying their hand at staging opera. Among those who have done so include The Godfather’s Francis Ford Coppola and The Exorcist’s William Friedkin. Woody Allen is scheduled to direct the opera Gianni Schicchi by Puccini in September of 2008. Even David Cronenberg is reportedly working on transforming his version of The Fly into an opera. Now comes word that Oscar winning director Anthony Minghella will be directing a new, unnamed opera for New York City’s venerable Metropolitan Opera. Minghella is quoted as stating: I’d love to work with new music because I think that’s also the only way forward. The commissioning, the risk-taking, has to happen, and it will have an inbuilt failure quotient to it, but they should be glorious failures. And the audience should … allow people to come here and fail on this stage, and then opera will be able to regenerate itself.” Minghella is best known for his award winning film of The English Patient and The Talented Mr. Ripley.

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Katherine Hepburn is considered one of the greatest movie stars of all time. Nominated twelve times for the Best Actress Oscar, she won a record four times. Last Saturday marked the centennial of her birth, May 12, 1907. For those who may only know Kate Hepburn from the spot-on Oscar winning impersonation by Cate Blanchett in The Aviator, I make these recommendations of vintage films available on DVD.

5. Alice Adams (1935). Hepburn had already won her first Oscar for Morning Glory. This film by George Stevens about a small town girl with high society aspirations is better. Fred MacMurray is her would-be Prince Charming.

4. Sylvia Scarlett (1935) This was Hepburn’s first film with Cary Grant and a box-office bomb. Way ahead of its time, this gender-bending comedy has Hepburn pretending to be a boy for part of the story. The story of travelling actors was too sophisticated for film audiences seventy years ago. Contemporary viewers may marvel at what director George Cukor and his cast got away with.

3. Holiday (1938) Cary Grant is about to marry Miss Wrong (Doris Nolan) but finds her sister, Katherine Hepburn hiding in the attic with brother Lew Ayres. The three have a private Christmas party, and resolve to live life on their own terms. Another flop at the time of its release, Holiday has grown in stature over the years.

2. Bringing Up Baby (1938) Made during the time Hepburn was considered “box office poison”, Howard Hawks’ film is now considered one of the great screwball comedies. Hepburn and Grant get involved with a leopard named Baby, and dinosaur bones. Among the classic scenes is one of Grant, having lost his clothes, having to explain why he’s wearing a woman’s robe - “Because I just went gay all of a sudden!”

1. The Philadelphia Story (1940) Hepburn and Grant again, with James Stewart who won his Oscar in this comedy. Hepburn left Hollywood to appear on Broadway again, in the stage version of The Philadelphia Story. The play was a huge hit, and Hepburn owned the film rights. From this point, Hepburn’s star was firmly established. Her character’s name, Tracy Lord, was the inspiration for someone known for something other than her acting skills.

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Julie Christie has been getting attention, as well as early Oscar buzz for her role in Away from Her. For those unfamiliar with Christie’s earlier films, I recommend Billy Liar, the film that first brought her serious attention. Although she has a small part, Julie Christie portrays a young woman not to different from her offscreen life, living by her own rules for herself. The image of Christie walking down the street, swinging her purse, epitomized the new spirit emerging in England, just before The Beatles took over the world.

The film is about a young man who works for an undertaker, but has dreams of a more creative life. Billy frequently escapes into vivid fantasies. There is an inkling of creativity when a local band performs a song Billy wrote. The free spirited Liz, played by Christie, encourages Billy to leave northern England to try their luck in London. Based on a novel and play, director John Schlesinger’s film was a major hit in England, but did not do so well in the U.S. Fortunately, this did not prevent Schlesinger and Christie from making their next collaboration, Darling, a box office hit worldwide that propelled Christie to the top ranks of actresses and won her an Oscar.

The DVD has commentary by Christie, Schlesinger and Billy Liar star Tom Courtenay. Schlesinger reveals that Christie was not the first choice as Liz, and was cast after the film was shooting. Christie discusses how she never intended to be a film actresses, prefering the stage. The DVD also includes excerpts from a 1993 documentary on British films of the Sixties, featuring the Billy Liar stars, director and authors.

What makes Julie Christie different from many beautiful, blonde actresses is the sense of intelligence that she was always able to project. Ambivalent about stardom, Christie only took parts in films that interested her. This also explains why a listing of films starring Julie Christie is chock full of classics by some of the great filmmakers like Robert Altman, Richard Lester, Joseph Losey, Nicolas Roeg and Hal Ashby. Billy Liar stands as a showcase for introducing Julie Christie, one of the all-time great movie stars.

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I realized recently that for a generation of filmgoers, Jane Fonda is known as an eccentric old lady in her recent film roles. This is when she’s not remembered as Ted Turner’s ex-wife or someone from the Viet-Nam war era called “Hanoi Jane”. With Georgia Rule on the horizon, I’ve been seeing, or in some cases, re-seeing Fonda’s films from when she was one of the top stars in the Sixties and Seventies.

Cat Ballou is a comedy western that is still fun to watch. The film is dominated by Lee Marvin, who won an Oscar as the drunken gunfighter who’s hired by Fonda as part of her revenge for the murder of her father. Fonda basically plays it straight while Marvin and co-stars Michael Callan and Dwayne Hickman have all the fun. The film also features the unexpected, and winning, pairing of Stubby Kaye and Nat King Cole as two travelling musicians who provide commentary on the action.

While Jane Fonda is primarily remembered for her serious films that won her two Academy Awards and additional nominations, she could also do comedy. Along with Barefoot in the Park which was Fonda’s first film with a relatively unknown Robert Redford, Cat Ballou shows Fonda in a light mode. And even if you’re not a fan of Jane Fonda, if you’ve never seen Cat Ballou, it’s worth it just for the scene of Lee Marvin and his drunken horse.

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I first became somewhat familiar with Idi Amin through the documentary portrait by Barbet Schroeder. I was unaware of who this African dictator was, or why he was considered important. While there were aspects of Amin that could be considered comic, I hardly found him to be as charismatic as the filmic version personified by Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland.

Certainly Whitaker’s performance is powerful even on the small screen. I can only imagine that the Oscar-winning acting may have been overwhelming in theaters. The film ends with documentary footage of the real Amin which amplifies the gap between the real dictator and his screen counterpart. There is a coldness behind the eyes of the real Amin, a sense that he achieved his place through size and brute strength. As good as Whitaker is, he never fully hides his inner teddy-bear, his cuddly persona cushioned in his bulk.

Even though Whitaker is the star, the film is also about the fictionalized young doctor, Nicholas Garrigan, who becomes Amin’s personal physician. James McAvoy conveys the view of the outsider in Uganda - wide-eyed with amazement and then horror, seduced by personal and political promises of Amin. Garrigan is revealed from the beginning to be less honorable than he pretends himself to be, so the story of his rise and downfall almost parallels Amin’s. While not dwelling on it, director Kevin Macdonald does not shy away from brief shots of the physical horror done by Amin’s soldiers - point blank shootings and mutalations among the common procedures.

The screenplay for The Last King of Scotland was co-written by Peter Morgan, who also wrote The Queen. While the fact that the films won Oscars for their respective stars is quite a coincidence, what both films share is an examination of how people are changed by power, whether real or illusory. Garrigan is in this way somewhat similar to Tony Blair in The Queen, as two people who are essentially outsiders become enamoured of the heads of state, the people who personify their respective countries. Certainly The Last King of Scotland demonstrates the maxim, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

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Surprise surprise, the Academy has been bullying YouTube and forced it to remove clips from the 2007 Oscars. They’d rather you watch the frankly lame and advertisement preceded content they have on their own website.

For some reason the actual acceptance speeches aren’t featured there. Instead there’s a thing called the “thank you-cam” which consists of Oscar winners giving secondary speeches backstage to thank people they forget to thank on stage. So it’s basically the Oscar eqiuvelant of a bunch of crappy deleted scenes.

When will big corporations like Disney (which owns ABC, as well as owning the official Oscar website in conjunction with the Academy) realise that all the exposure they get via YouTube is good publicity, while crushing lawyerless YouTube users is bad publicity?

No one was making any money from people watching the now unavailable video of the Will Ferrell, Jack Black, John C. Reilly musical number, and the Oscar website isn’t offering the content either. So what do Viacom and the Academy gain from pulling it?

via Blogger’s Blog

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Yes, yes… Marty won a shiny statue. We’ve had a day to absorb that and do our little happy dance for one of Our Greatest Living Directorsâ„¢. Now remains the hard work of assessing the behemoth that was the rest of the ceremony.

And, man, did it feel more like a ceremony than ever – a Catholic mass, to be specific, something I know all too well. All the requisite parts were there: the obligatory standing and sitting at designated times, the long, boring speeches, the odd (some would even say pointless) rituals, somber-ish remembrances of the dead, and the complete and utter lack of surprise. This was, in spite of featuring “the most wide-open contests in recent memory” according to the so-called experts, one of the most predictable Academy Awards in a long, long time. Apart from Eddie Murphy, all of the favorites won, and even Eddie lost to the acknowledged favorite to beat Eddie. Yawn.

What we need is drama! You’d think that professional entertainers would know a thing or two about the subject, but clearly the details escape them when it comes to their awards shows. Why not transform the Oscars into an American Idol-type show where the audience in the theater votes for the winner via buttons on their armrests? Or let the (theoretically) billion people watching vote via text message? Hell, just let the winners duke it out, and whoever makes it to the stage first gets the prize. Anything but this!

But, alas, this will never happen, because Academy producers’ sphincters are far too tight, and this is serious business, not entertainment!

Other low-lights of the evening: Read on »

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I remember being really upset when Forrest Gump (a trite, manipulative film that did everything except kick a puppy to get you to cry) beat Pulp Fiction (which couldn’t have cared less if you cried or not) for the Best Picture Oscar of 1994. Who in their right mind couldn’t see that Pulp Fiction was going to be a landmark piece of film for the ages, and Forrest Gump was a special effect in search of a story? Well, duh, the Academy, that’s who.

Ever since then, I’ve vowed not to become emotionally invested in the self-congratulatory fellatio that is the Oscars. Because, as many have noted before, the Academy Awards have far more to do with politics than they do with actual artistic achievement. Not, obviously, politics in the sense that it’s usually used in the newspapers, but personal politics – the politics of being liked.

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Finally, Scorsese has an Oscar. He always trotted out the old line that he wasn’t too bothered either way, but damn he looked relieved to finally get one. I actually cheered when they announced his name for Best Director, as if the Oscars were a sporting event and I was supporting Team Marty.

In fact this was my favourite Oscars in a long time. Not just the Scorsese win, or Ellen DeGeneres stand up job of hosting, or even those surprisingly good shadow puppet people. Not even because Dreamgirls didn’t win Best Song, which made me very happy for some reason.

The best thing about the 79th Oscars was seeing Francis Ford Coppola onstage, looking alive, well and not mental. I’ve really been worried about the old fella in recent years and had sort of assumed he was finished as a filmmaker, but seeing him on stage doing his Three Stooges thing with Spielberg and Lucas was very reassuring (especially the way they crowded out Lucas and his wobbly chin).

Other highlights included:

Jack Nicholson’s shaved head, and possible (probable?) on-stage drunkenness. Was Diane Keaton holding him up at the end there?

Helen Mirren’s toast to the Queen, which was oddly touching. Wonder if she was watching…

Forest Whitaker’s emotional speech. Emotional but not indulgent, plus I loved the way he strode off at the end with his statue. Well done sir.

Scorsese getting teary eyed when Thelma Schoonmaker won for Best Editing.

Ellen giving Spielberg cinematography tips.

Ellen wrongly telling everyone that Penelope Cruz was Mexican, but then having the good grace to apologise.

Clint Eastwood. The man is so confident. He completely screwed up Ennio Morricone’s honorary Oscar presentation, but then waved off the debacle with “I should have worn my glasses.”

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We’re going to start up a new, hopefully regular, feature on Screenhead called The Debate, where we argue both sides of an argument. Today, it’s possible Best Picture winner Little Miss Sunshine.

Definitely a departure from heavy heavy Best Picture winners like Million Dollar Baby (2004) and Crash (2005) and definitely an amusing little film. But is it Oscar worthy?

Read on »

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In a story published by AP is an excerpted interview with famed composer Ennio Morricone, scheduled to receive an honorary Academy Award. The composer is quoted as saying that not receiving an Academy Award would put him in the company of great non-winners such as Stanley Kubrick. Morricone further stated, “I see the Oscar as a little bit of a fluke, even if those who win deserve it.”

The film scores Morricone was nominated for are Days of Heaven, The Mission, The Untouchables, Bugsy and Malena.

The Internet Move Database lists over 500 credits for the accomplished composer. My own favorite scores include The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, 1900, The Big Gundown and Battle of Algiers. Much of Morricone’s most inventive work was overlooked by the Academy, probably because it was in westerns and horror films.

Feel free to use the comments section to, er, chime in on your favorite Morricone music.

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In The Guardian’s review of Dreamgirls, Joe Queenan makes an interesting suggestion. Maybe the massive Best Picture Oscar snub dealt to the movie is actually a bit of tactical maneuvering on the Academy’s part. Think about this:

The Academy are understandably sick of the awards show immitators, stealing a little piece of the limelight in the Oscar run up, but they’re also a little concerned about the increasing importance of the Golden Globes. So, Quenan proposes…

… the Academy denied Dreamgirls a Best Picture nomination because it is determined to distinguish itself from the upstart Golden Globe awards, which recently named Dreamgirls the best film of the year. This continues last year’s trend, when the clever, manipulative but not especially memorable Crash won Best Picture even though everyone on the planet expected the Golden Globes choice, Brokeback Mountain, to win Best Picture because, unlike Crash, it was the Best Picture of the year. The Academy has apparently decided that if it merely rubberstamps the awards distributed a few months earlier by the Golden Globes, it will cease to have any reason to exist and people will stop watching the Oscars.

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Once upon a time it seemed that movies just needed one producer to get filmed. Back in the day, David O. Selznick would get his Oscar for producing Gone with the Wind and trot out the next year to pick up an award for Rebecca.

Nowadays it seems that a small army of producers is required to make even the smallest independent films. In the meantime, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided there were too many people crowding the podium to take credit for producing the Best Pictures. Last year, Bob Yari had to settle for a shout out when Crash won.

This year, a group of twenty producers decided Brad Gray, one of the four credited producers on The Departed could not go onstage if the film won. There is now a limit of three producers per film according to current Oscar rules. A Reuters report seems to indicate professional jealousy on the part of other producers due to Gray’s position not only as the producer of one Oscar nominated film, but also the CEO and chairman of Paramount, which has Babel up for the Best Picture Oscar as well.

If “The Departed” wins, only Graham King will be allowed to take the award while the other producers with on-screen credits, Gray, Martin Scorsese, and some guy named Brad Pitt will have to settle for applauding from their seats. In addition to being behind the scenes on two films up for Best Picture, Gray will get to watch Sherry Lansing, the production chief he replaced at Paramount, get the Thalberg Award for humanitarian
services.

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Oscar noms were finally announced today, and there were a few surprises. Dreamgirls - widely expected to have a chance of winning Best Picture - wasn’t even nominated. Which is fair enough because it’s a load of old rubbish.

Leo DiCaprio failed to get a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role in The Departed, which is also fair enough because good as he was, he wasn’t a supporting actor. Shame on Warner Bros. for trying to convince anyone otherwise.

A shame that United 93 wasn’t nominated for Best Picture. Paul Greengrass’s film was more deserving than Little Miss Sunshine which was pleasant enough but not exactly life-changing. Greengrass does get a nod in the Best Director category though.

Read on for all the major nominations, who and what should win, and what probably will.

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I’m currently living in Chiang Mai, Thailand where Hollywood films are shown dubbed or with subtitles. What makes this years race for Best Foreign Film interesting is that 1. There is a better selection of films, 2. Eight of the nine films have U.S. distribution, with Water available on DVD, 3. Three of the potential nominated films are by women, and 4. Two of the possible nominees are from directors who make movies that show up at your local multiplex. The films are officially entered by the country of origin:

Algeria — Indigènes (Days of Glory) — Rachid Bouchareb, director
Canada — Water — Deepa Mehta, director (Hindi language)
Denmark — Efter brylluppet (After the Wedding) — Susanne Bier, director
France — Fauteuils d’orchestre (Avenue Montaigne) — Danièle Thompson, director
Germany — Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) — Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, director
Mexico — El laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth) — Guillermo del Toro, director
Netherlands — Zwartboek (Black Book) — Paul Verhoeven, director
Spain — Volver (To Return) — Pedro Almodóvar, director
Switzerland — Vitus — Fredi M. Murer, director

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The promotional poster for the 79th Oscars has been revealed. There it is, to your left. Think you’ll agree it’s simple yet classy, featuring classic lines from films that have been nominated over the years.

I can see “Gentlemen! You can’t fight in here. This is the war room!” (Dr. Strangelove) near Oscar’s shins and “Greed is good” (Wall Street) over his right shoulder. Unfortunately the phrase “It’s hard out there for a pimp” from Hustle & Flow is nowhere to be found.

Sid Ganis, president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences explained the idea in a statement: “If a picture is worth a thousand words then each quote is worth at least 500.” No idea what he’s talking about, but still a great poster.

To get a closer look you have two options:

1) Put your face really close to the screen.

2) Click “read on” to see the image in full size.

Read on »

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