MOFA: My Own Film Awards for Best Picture

Best Films Year by Year
(* = Academy Award, only 29 of 80 matched)

1928: Sunrise (F.W. Murnau)
1929: Broadway Melody (Harry Beaumont)*
1930: All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone)*
1931: Little Caesar (Mervyn Leroy)
1932: Trouble in Paradise (Lubitsch)
1933: Duck Soup (McCarey)
1934: The Thin Man (W.S. Van Dyke)
1935: The Informer (John Ford)
1936: My Man Godfrey (Gregory La Cava)
1937: Captains Courageous (Fleming)
1938: You Can’t Take It With You (Capra)*
1939: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Capra)
1940: The Philadelphia Story (Cukor)
1941: The Maltese Falcon (Huston)
1942: Mrs. Miniver (Wyler)*
1943: Casablanca (Curtiz)* (Note: released end of 42, Miniver was also a 42 release, so I kept the years the same as the Academy)
1944: Double Indemnity (Wilder)
1945: Lost Weekend (Wilder)*
1946: The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler)*
1947: Out of the Past (Tourneur)
1948: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (Huston)
1949: Adam’s Rib (Cukor)
1950: All About Eve (Jos. Mankiewicz)*
1951: A Streetcar Named Desire (Kazan)
1952: Singin’ in the Rain (Donen)
1953: Shane (Stevens)
1954: On the Waterfront (Kazan)*
1955: Mister Roberts (Ford)
1956: The King and I (Lang)
1957: The Seven Samurai (Kurosawa) Japan
1958: Auntie Mame (DaCosta)
1959: Ben-Hur (Wyler)*
1960: The Apartment (Wilder)*
1961: West Side Story (Wise & Robbins)*
1962: Lawrence of Arabia (Lean)*
1963: Hud (Ritt)
1964: Tie: My Fair Lady (Cukor)*; Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)
1965: Doctor Zhivago (Lean)
1966: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Nichols)
1967: Oliver! (Reed)*
1968: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick)
1969: Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger)*
1970: The Conformist (Berlolucci) Italy
1971: A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick)
1972: The Godfather (Coppola)*
1973: Paper Moon (Bogdanovich)
1974: The Godfather II (Coppola)*
1975: The Man Who Would Be King (Huston)
1976: Network (Lumet)*
1977: Annie Hall (Allen)*
1978: The Deer Hunter (Cimino)*
1979: Apocalypse Now! (Coppola)
1980: Raging Bull (Scorsese)
1981: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg)
1982: Gandhi (Attenborough)*
1983: Heat and Dust (Ivory)
1984: Once Upon a Time in America (Leone)
1985: A Room With a View (Ivory)
1986: Hannah and Her Sisters (Allen)
1987: Raising Arizona (Coen Brothers)
1988: Cinema Paradiso (Tournatore) Italy
1989: Tie: Field of Dreams (Robinson); Parenthood (Howard)
1990: Dances with Wolves (Costner)*
1991: The Silence of the Lambs (J. Demme)*
1992: The Player (Altman)
1993: Schindler’s List (Spielberg)*
1994: The Shawshank Redemption (Darabont)
1995: Babe (Noonan)
1996: Kolya (Sverak) Czech Republic
1997: As Good As It Gets (Brooks)
1998: Shakespeare in Love (Madden)*
1999: October Sky (Johnston)
2000: Traffic (Soderbergh)
2001: A Beautiful Mind (Howard)*
2002: Tie: Chicago (Marshall)*; Hero (Yimou, China)
2003: Lords of the Rings: Return of the King (Jackson)*
2004: Finding Neverland (Forster)
2005: V for Vendetta (McTeigue)
2006: Tie: The Departed (Scorsese)*; The Lives of Others (von Donnersmarck) Germany (Listed as 2007 release)
2007: No Country for Old Men (Coen Brothers)*
2008: Wall-E – tentative, haven’t seen many

Directors with Multiple Winners
3 each: William Wyler, John Huston, George Cukor, Billy Wilder, Stanley Kubrick, Frances Ford Coppola
2 each: Capra, Ford, Lean, Kazan, Coen Brothers, Spielberg, Scorsese, Ivory, Ron Howard, Woody Allen

Foreign Language Winners
57-Seven Samurai (Japan), 70-The Conformist (Italy), 88-Cinema Paradiso (Italy), 96-Kolya (Czech Rep.), 02-Hero (China), 06-The Lives of Others (Germany)

Note: Best Picture was the only oscar that Traffic lost, winning 4 of 5, losing picture to Gladiator. Winged Migration belongs somewhere, released in 2000 or 2001, was years in the making.

World's Best Children's Films

Live Action / or Mixed

• A Christmas Story
  
• A Boy Ten Feet Tall
  
• The Bad News Bears
  
• Babe
  
• Black Stallion, The
  
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (animated/live mix)
  
• The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T
  
• Mary Poppins (animated/live action mix)
  
• My Dog Skip
  
• Peter Pan (2002, animated/live action mix)

Animated

• 101 Dalmations (animated)
  
• Beauty and the Beast (animated)
  
• Cars (computer animated)
  
• Finding Nemo (computer animated)
  
• Hoppity Goes to Town (animated)
  
• Lady and the Tramp (animated)
  
• Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (animated)
  
• Silly Symphonies (Walt Disney's, animated)
  
• Toy Story 1 (computer animated)
• The Triplets of Belleville (animated)
  
• Wall-E (computer animated)*
  
• Wallace and Gromit: 3 Amazing Adventures (clay-mation)

Snow White was the first full-length animated feature film in 1938.

Wallace and Gromit are Nick Park's Oscar winning short films (Wallace is his dad, Gromit the dog is himself). He's also responsible for Chicken Run, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and Flushed Away, full-length animation films. He won Oscars for the shorts Creature Comforts, The Wrong Trousers (incredible), A Close Shave and the full-length Were-Rabbit.

A Boy Ten Feel Tall features a terrific supporting performance by Edward G. Robinson in his last film. It's hard to believe he never received an Oscar® nomination; this would have been a good chance to right that wrong.

The Triplets of Belleville, though animated, is really going to be understood and enjoyed more by adults; it's 'old school' animation, hand-drawn frame by frame, and even parodies old b&w cartoons in the beginning. It won many awards for animated film, and had the bad timing of being released the same year as Oscar®-winner Finding Nemo.

Babe, Beauty, Nemo, and Poppins were all nominated for Best Picture. Babe is my favorite children's film and favorite animal film; let's also throw in favorite Australian film!

Turkish Cinema: 3 Monkeys

Are you on look out for the 2009 Oscar nominees? While the excitement about the competing films builds, I wanted to offer you a sneak peek at Three Monkeys – the official submission to the Best Foreign Film category from Turkey. You can watch the trailer here.

As a movie enthusiast, we thought you might be interested in this expressionist drama that takes place in less traveled Istanbul neighborhoods, but has a universal theme. The plot involves a family that chooses not to see, hear or talk about the truth to overcome hardships and to stay together. The camera focuses on four main characters, a couple, their son and the husband's boss as they play deaf, blind and dumb to weighty problems.

Three Monkeys' director, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, and his cast have already received international acclaim for their work, winning awards at 2008 Cannes (Best Director), Haifa (Best Film) and Asia Pacific (Best Director) film festivals.

Three Monkeys will be released in the US in February 2009. Here are some initial responses from the audiences on IMDB.com.

You can take a look at photos and behind the scenes shots from the film here.

All the best,
Asli Atasoy
Zeyno FILM on behalf of Zeynep Ozbatur Atakan, producer of Three Monkeys

NOTE: I recently saw Three Monkeys and Climates, both from director Ceylan, enjoyed them both.. they were beautifully shot films, with many memorable images.. they move slowly, like Bergman films, yet reveal much about their characters. [Jose]

World's Best Westerns

• The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez
  
• The Big Country *
  
• Broken Trail (mini-series)
  
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
  
• The Claim
  
• Dances With Wolves
  
• The Grey Fox
  
• Into the West (mini-series)
  
• Heartland
  
• Hidalgo
  
• High Noon
  
• Jeremiah Johnson
  
• Lonesome Dove (mini-series)
  
• McCabe and Mrs. Miller
  
• Open Range
  
• Shane
  
• She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
  
• Silverado
  
• The Three Burials of Malquiades Estrada
  
• Tom Horn
  
• The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
  
• Unforgiven
  

Runners-Up: Fistful of Dollars, The Good the Bad and the Ugly (wah wah wah...), The High Country*, The Long Riders, The Magnificent Seven, The Man from Snowy River, The Missouri Breaks*, Once Upon a Time in the West*, One-Eyed Jacks*, The Proposition*, Ride the Pink Horse*, The Searchers, The Shooter, Comanche Moon (mini-series)

I included the mini-series here because they were classic westerns and should not be missed. Interesting how many were directed by actors: Dances and Range (both by Costner), Three Burials (Tommy Lee Jones), Unforgiven (Eastwood). Was there ever a villain as bad or as great as Jack Palance in Shane? You kinda had to pull for a guy that well-dressed, especially when Alan Ladd looked like an urban cowboy! Hidalgo, though not technically a western, was about men racing horses cross-country, close enough for me!

[update: 9.18.09]

New Family Guy DVD out now...

Hey, there's a new Family Guy DVD out, Vol. 6... if you haven't seen this hilarious animated show from Seth McFarlane, you should - it's the next best thing to the Simpson's on TV... In fact, check out ALL the volumes from the beginning.

Here's a blurb about the new set from my buddy John at M80:
A pop culture phenomenon the collection features the show’s 100th episode and a total of 12 edgy episodes from Seasons Five and Six. Catch the Griffin clan’s ridiculously hilarious antics such as Stewie’s not-so-successful attempt to kill Lois, Brian’s discovery that he is a father and patriarch Peter’s frequent visits to the Drunken Clam.

Family Guy videos & images: http://m80im.com/newsroom/tag/family-guy/

YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/foxabulous

Highly recommended! ... the Jman

Venice Film Festival - Best Films

Golden Lion (Best Film) Winners at the Venice Film Festival (1946-2008)*:

1946 Best Film The Southerner Country: U.S. Director: Jean Renoir
1947 Best Film Siréna Country: Czechoslovakia
1948 Best Film Hamlet Country: U.K. Director: Laurence Olivier
1949 Best Film Manon Country: France Director: Henri-Georges Clouzot
1950 Best Film Let Justice Be Done Country: France Director: André Cayatte
1951 Best Film Rashômon Country: Japan Director: Akira Kurosawa
1952 Best Film Forbidden Games Country: France Director: René Clément
1954 Best Film Romeo and Juliet Country: Italy/U.K. Director: Renato Castellani
1955 Best Film Ordet Country: Denmark Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
1957 Best Film Aparajito Country: India Director: Satyajit Ray
1958 Best Film Rikisha-Man Country: Japan Director: Hiroshi Inagaki
1959 Best Film The Great War Country: Italy Director: Mario Monicelli
1959 Best Film General della Rovere Country: Italy Director: Roberto Rossellini
1960 Best Film The Crossing of the Rhine Country: Italy Director: André Cayatte
1961 Best Film Last Year at Marienbad Country: France Director: Alain Resnais
1962 Best Film My Name Is Ivan Country: U.S.S.R. Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
1962 Best Film Family Diary Country: France/Italy Director: Valerio Zurlini
1963 Best Film Hands Over the City Country: Italy/France Director: Francesco
Rosi
1964 Best Film The Red Desert Country: Italy Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
1965 Best Film Sandra of a Thousand Delights Country: Italy Director: Luchino
Visconti
1966 Best Film The Battle of Algiers Country: Algeria Director: Gillo Pontecorvo
1967 Best Film Belle de Jour Country: France Director: Luis Buñuel
1968 Best Film Artist in the Circus Dome: Clueless Country: West Germany Director:
Alexander Kluge
1980 Best Film Atlantic City Country: U.S. Director: Louis Malle
1980 Best Film Gloria Country: U.S. Director: John Cassavetes
1981 Best Film Marianne and Juliane Country: West Germany Director: Margarethe
von Trotta
1982 Best Film The State of Things Country: West Germany Director: Wim
Wenders
1983 Best Film First Name: Carmen Country: France Director: Jean-Luc Godard
1984 Best Film A Year of the Quiet Sun Country: Poland Director: Krzysztof
Zanussi
1985 Best Film Vagabond Country: France Director: Agnès Varda
1986 Best Film The Green Ray (Summer) Country: France Director: Eric Rohmer
1987 Best Film Au Revoir les Enfants Country: France Director: Louis Malle
1988 Best Film Legend of the Holy Drinker Country: Italy Director: Ermanno Olmi
1989 Best Film City of Sadness Country: Taiwan Director: Hsiao-Hsien Hou
1990 Best Film Rosencrantz Guildenstern Are Dead Country: U.K. Director: Tom
Stoppard
1991 Best Film Close to Eden Country: France/U.S.S.R. Director: Nikita Mikhalkov
1992 Best Film The Story of Qiu Ju Country: China Director: Zhang Yimou
1993 Best Film Short Cuts Country: U.S. Director: Robert Altman
1993 Best Film Three Colors: Blue Country: France Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
1994 Best Film Before the Rain Country: Macedonia Director: Milcho Manchevski
1994 Best Film Vive L'Amour Country: Taiwan Director: Ming-liang Tsai
1995 Best Film Cyclo Country: Vietnam Director: Tran Anh Hung
1996 Best Film Michael Collins Country: U.K. Director: Neil Jordan
1997 Best Film Fireworks Country: Japan Director: Takeshi Kitano
1998 Best Film The Way We Laughed Country: Italy Director: Gianni Amelio
1999 Best Film Not One Less Country: China Director: Yimou Zhang
2000 Best Film The Circle Country: Iran Director: Jafar Panahi
2001 Best Film Monsoon Wedding Country: India Director: Mira Nair
2002 Best Film The Magdalene Sisters Country: U.K. Director: Peter Mullan
2003 Best Film The Return Country: Russia Director: Andrei Zvyagintsev
2004 Best Film Vera Drake Country: U.K. Director: Mike Leigh
2005 Best Film Brokeback Mountain Country: U.S. Director: Ang Lee
2006 Best Film Still Life Country China Director: Jia Zhangke
2007 Best Film Lust, Passion Country Taiwan Director: Ang Lee
2008 Best Film The Wrestler Country U.S. Director: Darren Anorofsky

*I think I started with 1946 because they were using the festival and its "Mussolini Award" for propaganda, so I responded to that with my own censorship and began with the post-Mussolini reign.

Wild at Heart: Lynch in Limbo

Written for LAMB, the Nicholas Cage blog-fest

Dir: David Lynch, 1990
(Nicholas Cage, Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe, Crispin Glover, J.E. Freeman, Diane Ladd, Calvin Lockhart, Isabella Rossellini, Harry Dean Stanton, Grace Zabriskie, Sherilyn Fenn, Pruitt Taylor Vince)

Ironically, the film starts in Cape Fear, "somewhere on the coast of South Carolina". Mother from hell Diane Ladd (Dern’s real mother) gets her boyfriend to go after Cage with a knife, who beats him to death, picks him up to throw him and the guys legs are still walking. "Hey, let’s do another take, his brains are hanging out already; second that.. it’s lunchtime". Laura Dern (totally hot eye candy here) plays "Lula", Cage "Sailor", but he likes to call Lula "Peanut", as in "rockin good news, Peanut!". Well, it ain’t rockin till Sailor does some time for excessive self-defense.

When he gets out, Lula greets him with his snakeskin jacket. "This here jacket represents my individuality and my belief in personal freedom". They take off together, and we get to hear repartee like this:
Lula: "One of these days that ole sun is gonna come up and burn a hole clean through the planet like an electrical x-ray."
Sailor: "That’ll never happen, not in our lifetime… by then they’ll be driving buicks to the moon."
Unfortunately, Cage delivers most of his lines like a stoned Elvis, he seems unusually uninvolved with this part, unlike some others where he seems perhaps too involved (National Treasure).

The mother gets boyfriend Harry Dean Stanton to go after them first, then she hires a hit man as well to go take out Sailor and bring her daughter back. Only this hit man, Santos, hates Stanton as well and figures getting to kill him is icing.

Much of the story is told in flashback, which disrupts the continuity, especially since we’re constantly flashing to the same background scene, the manslaughter one. In between those, we get to see languid conversations while they smoke, gratuitous shots of Dern topless, Cage’s Elvis impersonation at a live punk club no less, singing "Please Love Me", complete with fake crowd screaming (why this odd effect I wonder?).

Sailor tells Lula, "The way your head works is God’s own private mystery."
Lula says, "You remind me of my daddy. Mama told me he liked skinny girls whose breasts stood up and said hello." She also tells him how her dad poured kerosene all over himself and set himself on fire. Yep, typical David Lynch comedy, and typical bedroom bantor.

The film becomes a road film, as the couple heads to New Orleans, but it has more style than pace or story. For a crime film it kinda oozes along, but it’s Dern that does most of the oozing, not Cage, he just kind of acts like he’s just hanging out. Lynch throws in some assorted freaks and "trailer trash", as usual, but he doesn’t seem to really know how to use them.

Wild has some "Blue Velvet" touches, but this time instead of Rossellini singing, it’s a huge blues singer in New Orleans in a blue sequined dress with red hair. Then we get more hot love talk:
Lula: "Sailor, you got me hotter’n Georgia asphault"
Sailor: "Ok, but go easy on me baby, tomorrow we got a lot of driving to do."

There’s a mysterious car wreck scene in the desert that Lula and Sailor come across, with several bodies, with Sherilyn Fenn running around with a severe head wound, and dies in front of them. I think at this point I was wondering if this was a comedy, or just David Lynch. Several times this film wavers between the light-hearted (wild punk dancing beside the highway) and supreme darkness, almost as if he couldn’t decide himself how serious this. In this regard, Lynch failed to capture the essense of the Barry Gilford novel, which was definitely lighter than this film.

Eventually the road trip ends in hell on earth: Greater Tuna, Texas. There we run into an assortment of trash at a motor court, headed by Willem Dafoe, with the ugliest teeth outside of Austin Powers. We also are introduced to a unibrowed Isabella Rossellini, almost hard to recognize in her blonde wig, but the unibrow gave it away. Several times in the film we are almost introduced to the song "Blue Velvet", which of course Isabella sang in that film, but each time Lynch changes at the last instant and we never get the velvet. The characters, especially Laura Dern, are also referencing Oz quite often, but we never get that either, all we get is Greater Tuna.

We are shown a more botched bank robbery than the Coen Bros put into Raising Arizona even, a guard’s hand gets shot off ("they sew it back on, it’ll work almost good as new") and before he can retrieve it a dog is carrying it away (OK, one funny image in the whole film!); Dafoe meets with the wrong end of his shotgun, and Sailor is being held to the ground by law enforcement. Aw, shucks… boys, "treat me right", it’s off to the can again. The epilogue is five years later when Lula, with little Sailor Jr. in tow, picks him up at the railroad "yard". Guess Lynch couldn’t find a real depot. A "real nuclear family unit", from hell or Greater Tuna, or now South Carolina, wherever trash is allowed outside.

Lynch got lost somewhere on Route 66, and ended up in limbo, and we ended up there with him. Not a comedy, not a drama either, just a road film with Nicholas Cage sleep-walk.. er, sleep-driving through a nightmarish landscape we are forced to share with him. Unfortunately we don’t also get to share a naked Laura Dern, but at least Lynch got her naked onscreen as much as he could, otherwise this film would be very hard to look at.

As Lula said, "This whole world is wild at heart, and weird on top." Wisdom for the ages, you bet…

World's Best Musical and Concert Films

• A Coal Miner's Daughter
  
• A Hard Days Night
  
• All that Jazz
  
• An American in Paris
  
• Amadeus
  
• Black Orpheus (France/Portugal)
  
• Bride and Prejudice (India)
  
• Carmen (Spain, flamenco version)
  
• Chicago
  
• How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
  
• The King and I
  
• The Music Man
  
• My Fair Lady
  
• Singing in the Rain
  
• Strictly Ballroom
  
• West Side Story
  
  

Concert Films

• The Cranberries: Live
• Dead Can Dance: Toward the Within
  
• Jimi Hendrix (documentary)
  
• The Last Waltz
  
• Led Zeppelin (2 dvd, live history)
  
• Peter Gabriel: Secret World Live
  
• Pat Metheny: Speaking of Now: Live (easily the world's best guitarist!)
• Police: Synchronicity Concert
  
• Stop Making Sense
  
• The TAMI Show
  
• Woodstock (documentary)
  

Runners-up: Cabaret, Dames, Damn Yankees, The Gay Divorcee, Golddiggers of 1933, Swing Time, Oliver!

[Updated after seeing West Side and Music Man in widescreen! It makes ALL the difference, seeing the director's intended view.. they oughtta outlaw fullscreen in Hollywood]

Most musicals are vastly overrated, some are downright unwatchable (anyone get through Tommy or Superstar without brain damage?). In Oklahoma they resorted to spelling out the state's name, now that's a lack of lyrical ingenuity. Sad that Marni Nixon sang in My Fair Lady, The King and I, and West Side Story and got NO billing credit at all!

The best classic Broadway style musical for me is My Fair Lady. Incredible lyrics, so good that Rex Harrison didn't even have to be able to sing to win an Oscar and a Tony. Based on George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, it had a solid artistic foundation to begin with. Of course, the ripoff in the movie is that Julie Andrews, who made the stage role what it was, was passed over for Audrey Hepburn (Marnie Nixon had to dub her singing), everyone's box office darling; Andrews won the Oscar that year anyway for Mary Poppins. Listen to the original cast recording on CD to hear the difference with Andrews!

Dames (34), not a great film, but is a great example of the insanity of early Busby Berkley; he's responsible for the musical numbers, original choreography, and inventiveness: neon violins played by dancers in the dark, all forming one giant violin; dancers forming a giant eyeball and a singer rising from the iris ("I Only Have Eyes for You"); floor cams sliding throught the spread legs of 100 grinning dancers; naked dancers bathing silhouetted behind shower curtains; the giant Carmen Miranda fruit hat - Busby was tripping 40 yrs before anyone else, and everyone else pales in comparison!
Amadeus is of course, the play about the life and music of Mozart, not a classic musical but still full of music (maybe "too many notes", inside joke). Best Picture Oscars went to Amadeus, Chicago, and My Fair Lady.

This Carmen, of the 18 or so, is Carlos Suare's flamenco version, where a dance troup is rehearsing for a flamenco performance of Bizet's Carmen and two dancers lives begin to mirror the story. This is easily the best dance film ever made.

Bollywood's Bride and Prejudice is a total trip - who else could have thought of a musical comedy of Austen's Pride and Prejudice? The gigantic dance number with the women teasing the men is worth the price of admission alone (but lose the ballads); throw in world-class beauty Aishayra Rai and you're in nirvana!

TAMI (for Teenage Awards for Music International) was an early concert film (from 66?) that had James Brown, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, many others, and kind of set the precedent for modern concert films.

World's Best Crime Films

The worlds best crime and mystery films
Films in gold won Best Picture Oscars®

• Atlantic City
  
• Chinatown
  
• Chungking Express (China)
  
• City of God (Brazil)
  
• The Conversation
  
• The Departed
  
• Diva (France)
  
• Double Indemnity (bw)
  
• Gangs of New York
  
• The Godfather
  
• The Godfather, Pt. II
  
• Goodfellas
  
• The Grifters
  
• Heavenly Creatures
  
• House of Games
  
• La Femme Nikita (France)
  
• The Lives of Others (Germany)
  
• The Maltese Falcon (bw)
  
• Memento
  
• Night of the Hunter (bw)
  
• Once Upon a Time in America (long version)
  
• Out of the Past (bw)
  
• The Player
  
• Pulp Fiction
  
• Run, Lola, Run (Germany)
  
• The Silence of the Lambs
  
• Sleuth
  
• Sunset Boulevard (bw)
  
• Taxi Driver
  
• Traffic
  
• The Usual Suspects
  
• Witness
  

Runners-Up: American History X, Body Heat, Fargo, Gorky Park, Klute, The Last Seduction, Little Caesar, Mystic River, The Spanish Prisoner, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Topkapi, The Yakuza

Let's see, four entries from Scorsese and three from Coppola, also Sergio Leone - wonder why Italians make great crime movies? Night of the Hunter is the only film directed by actor Charles Laughton, with Robert Mitchum as a villainous preacher so bad that he had both "Love" and "Hate" tattooed on his fingers. The Conversation and The Lives of Others both cover the subject of electronic eavesdropping, and Lives won both a US and a British Academy Award for Foreign Language film.

Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity is given credit for inventing film noir in 1944, and was the first of Wilder's b&w masterpieces, which include Lost Weekend, The Apartment, Some Like it Hot, The Fortune Cookie, One Two Three.

Movies about Movies: The Player

This is part of the Goat Dog "Movies about movies blogathon", check it out at: Goat Dog Blogathon

The Player is my favorite Robert Altman film, even surpassing the superb western McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

Tim Robbins portrays a film producer looking for that "next major project", who, through an anonymous blackmailer, become involved in a mystery, and his character degenerates into one who may actually stop at nothing to protect his ego and his wallet, and perhaps find love as well; with the always delectable Greta Scacchi in his sights, who could blame him? The mystery begins when he gets the first in a series of threatening postcards, presumably from a writer that Robbins shined on rather than listen to him pitch his script.

As the postcards continue, the plot becomes a twisty puzzle, involving blackmail, murder, infidelity, paranoia, guilt - all the games that make Hollywood tick, inside and outside of the films themselves. The film within the film is going to be "a different kind of Hollywood blockbuster, one without stars", as the writers proudly proclaim, and eventually includes both Oscar winners and a perfect parody of Hollywood film endings.

The Player is not only peppered with movie references, it begins with an extremely long tracking shot where various studio people discuss everything from classic films to potential projects to the longest tracking shots in film history. An important plot element involves mistaken identity, a favorite Hitchcock device. The circular references don't stop there: the guest list of cameo acting appearances includes something on the magnitude of 16 Oscar winners; the dvd actually includes a special feature allowing the viewer to click any celebrity and bring up that person's scene in the film, even if they're just in the background or walking by.

The fact that we may not ultimately care about the fate of these characters is a perfect mirror for an industry that doesn't care about the fate of the characters (or the audience) either, just the amount of revenue that the project may eventually attract. The only really sympathetic character drawn by Altman is perhaps Cynthia Stevenson, in probably her best performance, playing Tim Robbins' studio subordinate and girlfriend, who is apparently more attracted by his power than his less-than-winning personality or commitment.

The Player is a perfect modern complement to Sunset Boulevard, as each presents the cynical and parasitic side of Hollywood and its shallow, self-centered denizens. This had to be the most fun Altman had making any movie, sticking the satirical dagger into his own industry, and it's certainly a treat for film fans as we are left to solve the mystery along with the main character. We are all made players in this particular game of Altman's.

Other classic films about films include Sunset Boulevard, The Bad and the Beautiful, Singin' in the Rain, The French Lieutenant's Woman, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Day for Night (a French pastry), Fellini's "8 1/2" and the best film about a play, best picture winner All About Eve. Special mention must be made of my favorite Italian film: Cinema Paradiso is a wonderful tribute to the effect of movies on ordinary lives.

Double Indemnity and the Birth of Film Noir

Double Indemnity (1944) was Billy Wilder's first serious film, and is given credit for the birth of film noir, literally "night film", which describes a visual style and mood of a type of dramatic film, usually crime, that's much more gritty and realistic than most films prior to this era. Film noir was mostly shot at night or in dark interiors; there's lots of use of shadows, dimly lit edges, light from Venetian blinds (which simulates bars across characters), backlit smoke (Indemnity uses both cigars and cigarettes, Out of the Past is a tribute to cigarettes, each star is always smoking onscreen, especially when it gets tense).

Film noir got its origins in 30's detective stories, often called pulp fiction, gritty stories with sex, violence and seedy characters. Even the heros were often common people with street wisdom, often with a tough upbringing.

Soldiers returning from World War 2 and a cinematic audience that had survived the Great Depression demanded more adult films in theme, subject, and style. Wilder was impressed by author John Kain's pulp novella of "Double Indemnity", the same author of The Postman Always Rings Twice, but it was considered unfilmable due the the Hayes Code (of censorship). The script went through years of re-writes and applications before being allowed to be filmed in 1944. The Hayes Code first suppressed sex in films, then violence, later socialism, and was used to pass judgment on over 28,000 works of art! Apparently no freedom of the arts exists, just more minor ones that don't affect as many people, such as the press (who reads?)

Wilder then had a difficult time casting the lead parts, two murdering adulterers. He wanted Barbara Stanwyck all along, but eventually had to challenge her to get her to take the image-shattering role, "are you an actress or a mouse?" After several refusals by actors, including George Raft, who had a knack for turning down breakthrough parts like Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, he convinced Fred McMurray to break his screen image of light romantic comedies to attempt something serious. His first scene with Stanwick, when he meets her at her home in a towel, uses his comedic skills along with some terrific dialogue.

Wilder also convinced leading actor Edward G. Robinson to take a non-starring character role, meaty enough for at least two important speeches that Robinson absolutely nailed. Crime novelist Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep, The Long Goodbye) was brought in for his realistic dialogue, plenty evident here especially the opening scenes between Stanwyck and McMurray, but he, an introvert, and Wilder, an extrovert, didn't get along at all and never worked together again. Ironically,they were nominated for an Oscar together for their screenplay. Wilder later used Chandler as his model for his Oscar-winning Best Picture The Lost Weekend.

Double Indemnity was nominated for these 7 Oscars (but won none):

BEST MOTION PICTURE - Paramount (Going My Way won!)
DIRECTING - Billy Wilder
ACTRESS - Barbara Stanwyck
CINEMATOGRAPHY (Black and White) - John Seitz
WRITING (Screenplay) - Billy Wilder, Raymond Chandler
MUSIC (Music Score of a Drama or Comedy) - Miklos Rozsa
SOUND RECORDING - Paramount Studio Sound Dept, Loren L. Ryder, Sound Director

Other classic film noir: Out of the Past, The Night of the Hunter, Panic in the Streets, D.O.A., The Postman Always Rings Twice, The Big Sleep, The Maltese Falcon, The Third Man.
Modern Noir: Wait Until Dark, Diva (France), Chinatown, Shoot the Piano Player (France), House of Games, Taxi Driver, Blood Simple, Body Heat, The Silence of the Lambs. The style is also clearly evident in parts of other classic films such as In the Heat of the Night, The Godfather, Batman, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Hustler, and The Departed.

Thanks to Beth G for suggesting Double Indemnity

Great Directors: Billy Wilder

Billy Wilder started as a screen writer for Ernst Lubisch and others, then began directing with The Front Page, later re-filmed as His Girl Friday. He made his stylistic breakthrough in his third film with the crime classic, Double Indemnity in 1944, which "invented" film noir and garnered 7 Oscar nominations. Wilder then began to direct a plethora of film classics, including:

Dramas:

• The Apartment (bw, Best Picture winner, 5/10 Oscars)
  
• Ace in the Hole (bw, 1 nom)
  
• Lost Weekend (bw, Best Picture, 4/7 Oscars)
  
• The Spirit of St. Louis (bw, 1 nom)
  
• Stalag 17 (bw, 1/3 Oscars, Willam Holden, best actor)
  
• Sunset Boulevard (bw, Pic nominee, 3 Oscars, 11 noms)
  
• Witness for the Prosecution (bw, BPic nominee, 6 noms)
  
  Comedies:
  
• The Fortune Cookie (bw, 1/4 Oscars)
  
• The Front Page (bw, 3 Oscar noms)
  
• Irma la Douce
  
• One Two Three (bw)
  
• Sabrina
  
• The Seven Year Itch
  
• Some Like It Hot (bw, 6 Oscar noms)
  

Wilder was nominated for 21 Oscars, 12 in writing, 8 in directing, and won six. He won for directing Lost Weekend and The Apartment (and got another for Apt for Best Picture), and won for writing Lost Weekend, Sunset Boulevard, and The Apartment. He personally picked up three for The Apartment.

It could easily be argued that Billy Wilder is the greatest American film director.

The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight (2008)
Movie Information

Genre:
Action | Adventure

Main Cast:
Christian Bale
Michael Caine
Heath Ledger
Aaron Eckhart
Gary Oldman
Maggie Gyllenhaal
Morgan Freeman

Director:
Christopher Nolan


About the movie:
The Dark Knight, which is part of Christopher Nolan's Batman film series is follow-up to the action-hit Batman Begins (2005). Christian Bale reprises the role of the caped crusader - Batman.

The film focuses on Batman's fight against a new villain, a psychopathic criminal named Joker (Heath Ledger), who is the mastermind of numerous organized crimes in Gotham City.

With the help of Lt. Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) and District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Batman sets out to eliminate and dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the city streets. Their partnership proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a reign of chaos unleashed by a rising criminal mastermind known to the terrified citizens of Gotham as the Joker.


Movie Trivia:

• The Dark Knight is the first Batman movie without "Batman" in the title.

• Matt Damon was the first choice of Christopher Nolan to play the role of Harvey Dent but he turned it down.

• Other actors that were considered to have a part in the film are Jake Gyllenhaal, Hugh Jackman, John Lucas and Ryan Phillippe.

Great Film: Zhang Yimou's Hero

Hero (2002) is a Chinese epic from director Zhang Yimou. Actor Jet Li said the screenplay (by Li Feng, Zhang Yimou, and Wang Bin) was the best he had ever read and left him in tears. They often call this Jet Li's Hero to distinguish it from an earlier U.S. film (also worth watching but nothing great) starring Andy Garcia and Dustin Hoffman. Along with Li, the film also stars the most popular actress in the world, Ziyi Zhang, shown in the still shots above from Hero.

The visually stunning style of Hero is the ultimate for an action-adventure film, going even one level higher than Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It's no wonder that Quentin Tarantino wanted to get his name on this one as "Q.T. Presents....", like he had anything to do with creating this masterpiece! He did the same thing to the terrific crime film in two parts, Chungking Express, which inspired Pulp Fiction.

The story is a story within the story, as a warrior relates his tale to the king of Qi'in (which became China), of how he killed three assassins from neighboring kingdoms who were plotting to kill him.

Bose found the film so incredible that it used a famous sword master sequence in a tv ad for a new tv surround sound system; they claim to have a hidden camera on a family who is appropriately 'jaw-dropped' by the film and sound.

Hero is full of memorable scenes and sequences, I won't describe any, they have to be experienced at least twice. Watch it once with subtitles, then again without any distractions to the visual poetry because this is the cinamatic art at its highest level.

Other great visual action films: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (China, Ang Lee); Spiderman; The Matrix; House of Flying Daggers (China, Z.Yimou); The Seven Samurai (Japan); The Empire Strikes Back; The Replacement Killers; Diva (France); Aliens; The Road Warrior; Run, Lola, Run (Germany).

Zhang Yimou and the Olympics Opening Ceremony

Did everyone hear that awesome Chinese director Zhang Yimou (see Hero above) is in charge of the opening ceremony at the upcoming Olympics? They're starting at 8:08 pm on 8/8, because 8 is a lucky number in China! Curious, this is the US "delayed broadcast time", so it's not starting at that time over there...

They say "expect big fireworks" since China invented fireworks... with Yimou in charge, can we also expect martial arts (Hero), mountain peasants (The Road Home), and Ziyi Zhang (Hero, Road Home, Crouching Tiger), lots of RED (Raise the Red Lantern)?

Stay tuned, it should be a blast, lol...

UPDATE (after the opening): WELL, THEY BLEW ME AWAY TOTALLY! He did include martial arts, mountain peasants, lots of all colors, mucho fireworks, and the incredible drummers.. not to mention people running all over the globe, the giant LED field screen, the panorama above the stadium featuring waterfalls, waves, birds, clouds, the giant scroll for the torch lighter to float (run) on... UNBELIEVABLE! So much better than anything WE could come up with, or could even afford. ("As if!")

Best opening ceremony ever, they can retire the trophy! - Bob Costas

[If you missed it, buy the DVD later!]

Recently Viewed Films, July

A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan, 1957, bw) 5* (top rating)
This is an overlooked masterpiece, simply jaw-dropping. It's about the misuse of television to influence the masses, to buy cheesy products, to vote for cheesy politicians, even to think the way of the charismatic "everyman" star, terrifically played by Andy Griffith in a rare dramatic performance. Patricia Neal turns in perhaps her best performance, and there's a young Walter Matthau (excellent), and a very young Lee Remick (eye-popping candy as a baton twirling teen). This film was way ahead of its time, and Kazan was unfairly shunned by Oscar and critics alike after the HUAC hearings.

To Live (Zhang Yimou, China, 1994) 4.5*
This is yet another undeniably classic Yimou epic, winner of the Grand Prize at Cannes in 1995, and Best Actor for Ge You (he's awesome). This film spans about 40 years in the life of one family, from before the Maoist revolution up to the 80's. Gong Li is also superb as You's wife (her best performance to me), and all the supporting cast is perfect. This is filled with unforgettable scenes, some with thousands of extras. An American film this good would have won 6-8 Oscars.

Goodnight Mister Tom (Jack Gold, Masterpiece Theater, 1999) 5*
This television film is John Thaw's (Insp. Morse) finest achievement, a true work of art. One of the biggest hearted films I've seen, you'll shed tears of joy. A truly inspired work, it's a disarmingly simple story of an elderly village resident (a widower) being forced to take charge of a London child evacuee during WW2. One of the highest rated films at Netflix from viewers (4.2, anything above 4 is extremely rare). From the novel by Michelle Magorian, this is truly a film that everyone should see, a rare gift to mankind.

Touching the Void (Kevin MacDonald, British, 2003) 3.5*
Winner of a British academy award for Best British Film, a re-enacted pseudo-documentary of a mountaineering accident. Gripping and tense, hard to watch, and a nearly unbelievable story. The first half moves better than the last, my only criticism. Gorgeous Peruvian Andes scenery; not for the weak-hearted.

Forbidden Games (Rene Clement, France, 1954, BW) 3.5*
This anti-war film has an amazing performance by 5-8 yr old Brigitte Fossey (it began with a short film, was later expanded into full-length after Jacques Tati convinced Clement it was worthy). There are some disturbing images in the beginning, then the film settles into a pastoral story about childhood innocence in a rural setting. Not really the masterpiece some claim, but still worth watching. The excellent Criterion dvd includes alternate beginning/endings, as well as interviews with Clement, and two with Brigitte Fossey, one recent, one as a teenager, and she's beautiful at any age.

Oscar Loves Hookers

In 95, Susan Sarandon became the 1st actress to win an Oscar playing a nun (Dead Man Walking). That same year, Mira Sorvino (Mighty Aphrodite) became the 8th to win one for playing a prostitute! (By the way, Woody Allen now has 21 Oscar nominations, 3 wins, and is responsible for at least 4 awards for actresses: Diane Keaton and Diane Wiest, with 2, added to Sorvino)

The others: Anne Baxter (46), Claire Trevor (48), Donna Reed (53), Jo Van Fleet (55), Dorothy Malone (56), Elizabeth Taylor and Shirley Jones (60), Jane Fonda (71)...

hmmm..... guess which more people can identify with (?) - lol...

2008 Emmy Nominations

Here's all the nominations for the 60th Emmy Awards (for Television), coming to ABC on Saturday, Sept 13th at 8 p.m.:
http://cdn.emmys.tv/awards/2008pte/60thpte_noms.php#top

I'll have to admit that some of my favorites got nominations, though not in all the categories they deserved: Pushing Daisies, Flight of the Conchords, Weeds, Dexter, Damages (a surprising number, all earned). Also James Spader yet again for Boston Legal. Currently my favorite drama is Dexter, favorite comedy is either Weeds or Pushing Daisies. Not sure how Damages can top the first season, perhaps it should've been a mini-series with a conclusion. I'm not sure what Boston Legal is... it's such a self-parody, I'd guess comedy.

I was also very excited that Kristen Chenoweth got a supporting actress comedy nod for Pushing Daisies (she plays the dimunitive Olive Snook, former jockey, now in love with lead actor nominee Lee Pace). She's terrific and also a great musical actress, performing a song at the Oscars last year - truly a star in the making!

Flight of the Conchords is a brilliant parody of the music video business, and actually got TWO song nominations.

I was also surprised by the total number of nominations for Tin Man on the SF Channel, a good miniseries, derived from Wizard of Oz, but not really so awesome as to get its 8-10 nominations. Damages deserved all of its acclaim, but Weeds and Pushing Daisies should have been in the Best Comedy category, also Flight of the Conchords (truly hilarious and original stuff).

That's just my opinion, I could be wrong! Aren't our opinions all we really have?

Watch and enjoy, but as always: No Wagering! -- the Jman

World's Best Drama Films

Films in gold won Best Picture

• 12 Angry Men (bw)
  
• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (bw)
  
• All About Eve (bw)
  
• Amadeus
  
• The Apartment
  
• Broadcast News
  
• Citizen Kane (bw)
  
• Dominick and Eugene (drama)
  
• Elmer Gantry (drama, bw)
  
• Empire Falls (mini-series)
  
• Fearless (Peter Weir's)
  
• Good Will Hunting
  
• Housekeeping
  
• Hud (bw)
  
• The Hustler (bw)
  
• The Last Picture Show (bw)
  
• Little Foxes (bw)
  
• The Magnificent Ambersons (bw)
  
• Midnight Cowboy
  
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (bw)
  
• Munich
  
• Network
  
• Nicholas Nickleby (8 hr)
  
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
  
• On the Waterfront
  
• Seven Days in May
  
• The Shawshank Redemption
  
• Stars Fell on Henrietta
  
• The Sweet Hereafter
  
• The Sweet Smell of Success (bw)
  
• Terms of Endearment
  
• To Kill a Mockingbird (bw)
  
• Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (bw)
  

Foreign Language Drama

• Babel (Mexico)
  
• The Conformist (Italy)
  
• El Norte (Mexico)
  
• The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Italy, bw)
  
• The Grand Illusion (France, bw)
  
• Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring (France)
  
• Kolya (Czech)
  
• L'America (Italy)
  
• La Dolce Vita (Italy)
  
• The Motorcycle Diaries (US, in Spanish)
  
• The Return of Martin Guerre (France)
  
• To Live (China)

Docu-dramas, based on true stories

• A Beautiful Mind
  
• Alexander Nevsky (Russia)
  
• All the President's Men
  
• Citizen X
  
• Dead Man Walking
  
• Downfall (Germany)
  
• Drugstore Cowboy
  
• Elizabeth
  
• Finding Neverland
  
• Gandhi
  
• Hope and Glory
  
• In Cold Blood
  
• The Last Emperor
  
• The Madness of King George
  
• Mongol (Russia)
  
• The Motorcycle Diaries
  
• The Name of the Rose
  
• Norma Rae
  
• October Sky
  
• Reds
  
• Reilly, Ace of Spies (mini-series)
  
• Searching for Bobby Fisher
  
• Songcatcher
  
• Sybil
  
• Tucker: A Man and His Dream
  
• The World's Fastest Indian
  

Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring are two halves of the same novel, released simultaneously; theater goers could see the movie back-to-back as a double feature, or come back another day for the second part. This is an all-time classic, not to be missed.

Nicholas Nickleby (played by Roger Rees) was a film version of the 8-hr London play; it was performed four nights a week in 2-hr segments; on Saturday it was performed in 2-four hour segments with a one hour lunch break. This is easily the best Dickens novel on film. I believe it was only 60 actors who played 250 roles.

Milos Foreman directed both Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Bernardo Bertolucci directed both The Conformist and The Last Emperor.

Iron Man

Iron Man (2008)
Movie Information

Genre:
Action | Adventure

Main Cast:
Robert Downey Jr.
Gwyneth Paltrow
Jeff Bridges
Terrence Howard

Director:
Jon Favreau

About the movie:
Iron Man is an action-adventure movie based on the Marvel Comics character of the same name. Robert Downey Jr. played the lead role as Tony Stark - a billionaire industrialist who designs and manufactures weapons and becomes the technologically advanced superhero, Iron Man.

Tony Stark lived a good life having the everything man has dreamt of - money, fortune and gorgeous women. But during a business trip to Afganistan to demonstrate Stark Industries' new weapon, his convoy was attacked and captured by a terrorist group. As he awakened, Stark discovers an electromagnet attached to his chest, powered by a car battery and designed to keep the shrapnel from piercing his heart and killing him. He was tortured by the group and forced to build a Jericho missile for them - which is his most powerful weapon. With the help of a captor named Yinsen (Shaun Toub), they created a special iron suit instead that can withstand almost anything shot at it and it is loaded with an arsenal of weapons to destroy the terrorist camp and its inhabitants. With this amazing weapon he had built, suddenly his destiny shifts into something he didn't expected it to be.

Movie Trivia:

• Nicolas Cage and Tom Cruise were interested in playing Iron Man.


• Quentin Tarantino, Joss Whedon, and Nick Cassavetes were approached to direct the film.


• Robert Downey Jr. spent five days a week in weight and martial arts training to get into shape as a preparation for his role as Iron Man.


• It's the first film released in 2008 to pass the $300 million mark at the domestic box office.

AFI Ten Top 10's Results

[Of course they were gonna miss some things, but no Dances with Wolves in either epic or western (which somehow included the lame Cat Ballou)? A double western stiff for Costner, with Open Range not in there either. No Aliens or Poltergeist or Spielberg's Close Encounters, Minority Report or War of the Worlds in science fiction, with slots wasted on Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Day the Earth Stood Still? Another best picture that was snubbed was Million Dollar Baby in sports (and Chariots of Fire), which had National Velvet in above Seabiscuit, Black Stallion, Hidalgo and Phar Lap, all much better horse racing films. Somehow they missed Double Indemnity in Mystery Suspense…. But that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong…. The Jman]

Worst Best Picture Snubs (among many): Silence of the Lambs, The Departed, Dances With Wolves, Million Dollar Baby, Chariots of Fire, The Last Emperor, Patton, The Bridge On the River Kwai, Out of Africa, My Fair Lady (romantic comedy!)

Animation (pretty good choices but Nemo belongs in the top 5, and where is Hoppity Goes to Town, and Cars?)
1. Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs 2. Pinocchio 3. Bambi 4. The Lion King 5. Fantasia 6. Toy Story 7. Beauty and the Beast 8. Shrek 9. Cinderella 10. Finding Nemo

Fantasy (good 10 but move Oz down to about 8 and Kong to 10, and Harvey is a one joke movie, give me Babe instead and in the top 5, and maybe Batman or Spiderman here, each better than Kong or Thief)
1. Wizard of Oz 2. Lord of the Rings 3. It’s a Wonderful Life 4. King Kong 5. Miracle on 34th St. 6. Field of Dreams 7. Harvey 8. Groundhog Day 9. Thief of Baghdad 10. Big

Science Fiction (where’s Aliens and Close Encounters? Minority Report? Dr. Strangelove?)
1. 2001-A Space Odyssey 2. Star Wars IV-A New Hope (Empire Strikes Back is far better) 3. E.T. (the only Spielberg here?) 4. A Clockwork Orange (read the book!) 5. The Day the Earth Stood Still 6. Blade Runner 7. Alien 8. Terminator 2-Judgment Day 9. Invasion of the Body Snatchers 10. Back to the Future

Sports (missing Million Dollar Baby is a travesty; should also have Hoop Dreams, a three hour documentary that was 5 yrs in the making. Rocky is way overrated (maybe the most ever), even Golden Boy was better, and especially Cinderella Man, a true story and film by Ron Howard)
1. Raging Bull 2. Rocky 3. Pride of the Yankees (great choice, coulda been #1) 4. Hoosiers 5. Bull Durham 6. The Hustler 7. Caddyshack 8. Breaking Away (!) 9. National Velvet (ouch; I prefer Seabiscuit, Black Stallion, Hidalgo) 10. Jerry McGuire (yuck)

Westerns (I always liked She Wore a Yellow Ribbon better than the Searchers or any other Ford western, 5 and 9 are boring, and Open Range is a new top 5 of mine, but where the heck is Dances with Wolves? Ballou is a farce...on both levels, so is Butch Cassidy)
1. The Searchers 2. High Noon 3. Shane 4. Unforgiven 5. Red River 6. The Wild Bunch 7. Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid 8. McCabe and Mrs. Miller 9. Stagecoach 10. Cat Ballou

Mystery-Suspense (pretty good choices, but Out of the Past is an all-time top 3 missing here; Blue Velvet is a stretch over Double Indemnity, unbelievably snubbed; also missing is best picture winner Silence of the Lambs)
1. Vertigo 2. Chinatown 3. Rear Window 4. Laura 5. The Third Man 6. The Maltese Falcon 7. North by Northwest 8. Blue Velvet 9. Dial M for Murder 10. The Usual Suspects

Romantic Comedy (are you kidding with Chaplin? Hannah and Her Sisters is as good as Annie Hall, and Woody's Alice and Manhattan were as good as half of these, and where is The Graduate, or Parenthood? Harry Met Sally and Adam’s Rib were good surprises, each better than 1, 3, or 4. 8-10 are just average)
1. City Lights 2. Annie Hall 3. It Happened One Night 4. Roman Holiday 5. The Philadelphia Story 6. When Harry Met Sally 7. Adam’s Rib 8. Moonstruck 9. Harold and Maude 10. Sleepless in Seattle (avg, I prefer You've Got Mail)

Gangster (pretty good but missing Once Upon a Time in America, as good as the top 3 here; best pic The Departed was snubbed)
1. Godfather 2. Goodfellas 3. Godfather II 4. White Heat 5. Bonnie & Clyde 6. Scarface, The Shame of a Nation (31) 7. Pulp Fiction 8. Public Enemy 9. Little Caesar 10. Scarface (remake, boring...)

Courtroom Drama (ok but gimme Caine Mutiny over Few Good Men, and get rid of Kramer altogether for Runaway Jury; and In Cold Blood doesn’t belong here, not a courtroom movie any more than is Goodfellas)
1. To Kill a Mockingbird 2. 12 Angry Men 3. Kramer vs Kramer 4. The Verdict 5. A Few Good Men 6. Witness for the Prosecution 7. Anatomy of a Murder 8. In Cold Blood 9. A Cry in the Dark 10. Judgment at Nuremberg

Epic (great #1, and kudos for Reds, but missing Bridge On the River Kwai and Patton; take off 6, 7 and 10, and drop Ben-Hur to about 9-10; add in Dances with Wolves here also or even Doctor Zhivago or the Russian War and Peace by Sergei Bondarchuk, or The Last Emperor)
1. Lawrence of Arabia 2. Ben-Hur 3. Schindler’s List 4. Gone with the Wind 5. Spartacus 6. Titanic 7. All Quiet on the Western Front 8. Saving Private Ryan 9. Reds 10. The Ten Commandments

PS - Of all the great Billy Wilder films only Witness for the Prosecution got a mention; Sunset Boulevard should have been in mystery-suspense. Voters are always idiots, you normally get the "lowest common denominator" - that's what makes the picks of 2001, Mockingbird, and Lawrence so surprising.

My Ten top 10's for the AFI special...

I can’t really predict what the AFI will choose for their 10 top 10’s, but these are the choices I would make, alphabetical by genre.

Animation – 101 Dalmatians, Beauty and the Beast, Cars, The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Fantasia, Finding Nemo, Hoppity Goes to Town, The Mask, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Toy Story (Too bad Nick Park’s short films collected as The Amazing Adventures of Wallace and Gromit aren’t eligible, they all deservedly won Oscars. Jason and the Argonauts, belongs here too but was a mix of live-action and animation; Ray Harryhausen was a true artist. Mary Poppins should be here also another live-animation mix.)

Courtroom Drama – 12 Angry Men, Adam’s Rib, Anatomy of a Murder, Breaker Morant, The Caine Mutiny, Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremberg, Runaway Jury, To Kill a Mockingbird, Witness for the Prosecution (Is Agatha Christie's Witness going to be considered a mystery instead? if so, put The Rainmaker here. Definitely not Kramer vs Kramer or A Few Good Men, they'll probably include both due to popularity, and Adam's Rib was really a comedy anyway, but you gotta put it somewhere.)

Epic – The Bridge On the River Kwai, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Gandhi, The Gangs of New York, Gladiator, Hero (the Chinese one with Jet Li), The Last Emperor, Lawrence of Arabia, Patton, The Seven Samurai (If Seven Samurai is elibigle, that would replace Ben-Hur, which was pretty boring other than the ship battle and the chariot race. Sergi Bondarchuk's 7-hr Russian "War and Peace" should be here too, but was also, like the book, way too long and had a Hollywood ending; but it did have 250,000 Red Army extras and cost 100 million in the early 70's; that's like a trillion now, right? Which was really a better film: Doctor Zhivago or Reds?) I've got SIX best pictures listed...

Fantasy – 5000 Fingers of Doctor T, Babe, Batman, Dr. Strangelove, Field of Dreams, Ghostbusters, It’s a Wonderful Life, Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy, Raiders of the Lost Ark (Will they consider a trilogy as one or three separate films? To me, if it’s one story then it’s one long film. With Pirates, I liked Dead Man’s Chest the most, and Return of the King from the Rings trilogy)

Gangster – The Big Sleep, Bonnie and Clyde, The Departed, The Godfather, The Godfather II, Goodfellas, Once Upon a Time in America, Pulp Fiction, The Replacement Killers, Witness (didn't know where to put this; if not eligible, then The Yakuza. Little Caesar belong here as well: "You can still dish it out but you just can't take it anymore!")

Mystery – The Conversation, Double Indemnity, The Maltese Falcon, Memento, The Name of the Rose, Out of the Past, Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, The Sixth Sense, Sleuth (Is Maltese Falcon really a gangster film, and is Silence a mystery, or suspense, where you know the criminal beforehand?)

Romantic Comedy – A Room With a View, Annie Hall, The Graduate, Groundhog Day, Hannah and Her Sisters, My Fair Lady, Parenthood, Raising Arizona, Shakespeare in Love, When Harry Met Sally (Are both A Room with a View and Much Ado About Nothing ineligible since they’re both British? They definitely belong here. If Room or Shakespeare are ineligible, I would add Beautiful Girls to this genre, maybe even Singin' in the Rain: "I ain't people, I am a shining star in the firmament".)

Science Fiction – 2001: A Space Odyssey, Aliens, Back to the Future, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Contact, The Empire Strikes Back, E.T., The Matrix, Star Wars Trilogy, Terminator 2 (The Road Warrior belongs here but is it really science fiction, or action/adventure? A better film than half of these! If they break up the Star Wars trilogy, I liked The Empire Strikes Back the best)

Sports – Breaking Away, Cinderella Man, Friday Night Lights, Glory Road, Hoop Dreams, Million Dollar Baby, The Natural, Pride of the Yankees, Raging Bull, Seabiscuit remake. (They’ll have Rocky here but I hated its contrived and predictable story, I kept pulling for him to get pummeled right out of boxing; even the original Bad News Bears was a better sports film. Also, Requiem for a Heavyweight belongs here but wasn’t that a TV movie? Even Golden Boy, bw w William Holden, was a better boxing film)

Western – Dances with Wolves, The Grey Fox, High Noon, Hud, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Open Range, Shane, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Unforgiven (Hud is a modern western, doesn’t that count? The Searchers is overrated and racist, I prefer “Yellow Ribbon” of all the John Ford westerns. Lonesome Dove was a tv "mini-series", as was The Broken Trail, but both belong here, and both starred Robert Duvall, as did Open Range; as he put it "my western trilogy".)

Author’s Notes: I’m not certain that their list is limited to American films, and if not I would definitely place Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring (French, one novel in two parts) in epic, City of God (Brazil) in gangster, and Diva (French) in mystery.

I’m also not sure if they will consider Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon a U.S. or Chinese film, nor if they would consider Dr. Strangelove a fantasy, but this is such a great film that it belongs somewhere; technically it’s a comedy, but not “romantic”, same with Airplane! and M*A*S*H.

Is Field of Dreams a Fantasy or a Sports film? I’ve often had this argument with people, it’s a parable about the spiritual realm, and uses baseball for a metaphor, but is not about a sport. I’m also certain that the AFI will include some films I think are highly overrated like Gone With the Wind and Rocky

The American Film Institute Top 10 Special, June 17th

Don't miss the upcoming special from the non-profit American Film Institute, its Emmy-award winning "AFI's 100 Years..." television series. This year they've altered the format; instead of 100 films related to a single genre, this time they will feature AFI'S 10 TOP 10 – the top ten films in ten different genres: animation, fantasy, science fiction, gangster, western, sports, romantic comedy, courtroom drama, mystery and epic films. (What: no musicals? no war films? regular comedy that isn't "romantic"? Romances that aren't comedies?)

The show will air Tuesday, June 17 (8:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS.

Each of the 10 film genres will feature a different host (we’ll give you a heads up in the next couple of weeks of who they are) and the films in each list will be the definitive best as selected by over 1,500 leaders in the film community.

You are unable to vote, however you can still check out the AFI lists, download the ballot for this year’s show on the AFI website (registration required, FYI):
AFI 100 Years List and predict who you think the winners will be.

No Country for Atonement of Michael Clayton in the Wild

I finally got to see all the major films nominated for Oscars and other awards this year. It was actually quite an impressive batch of films. These were my favorite:

1. No Country for Old Men - always loved the Coen Brothers, this was probably their most eloquent and poetic film, yet remaining enigmatic and unique throughout. I still enjoyed Raising Arizona most of theirs, but No Country is a more classic artistic success, both giving tribute to film noir without just copying the style and taking it to perhaps a new level in expression, much the same as Pulp Fiction did to the dime novel style of crime fiction.
   
   
2. Atonement - this had the best epic feel of classic movies, bringing to mind David Lean and classic Victorian novels and perhaps even Brideshead Revisited, the epic TV series. This was also the best story of any of the award films. Vanessa Redgrave gave an Oscar worthy performance in five minutes. The long tracking scene of the main character arriving at Dunkirk, that follows him along the beach and past a bandstand, carousel, finally to the deck of a cantina overlooking the entire scene, is one of the most memorable in recent films. It calls to mind scenes from Lawrence of Arabia, Bridge Over the River Kwai, The Longest Day and other epic war films. The green dress designed for Kiera Knightly is simply the most seductive dress in all of film history.
   
   
3. In the Wild - this true story of a non-conformist Georgia youth searching for himself and wisdom in the solitude of nature is a terrific near-mythic parable of individuality in primal nature. Director Sean Penn raises it to an almost religious exerience. Not to be missed.
   
   
4. Michael Clayton - I liked this story a lot, and the Oscar-winning performance of Tilda Swinton. I can't say much without giving away something, but an excellent legal drama with good plot twists.
   
   
5. The Bourne Ultimatum - Enjoyed all the Bourne films, this one is perhaps the most exciting, won a couple of Oscars for sound. Make sure you've seen the first two however, as the story of Matt Damon's title character is a progressive one (connected to memory loss) including those of all the peripheral characters as well.
   
   
6. Pirates 3: At World's End - I've enjoyed all three Pirates of the Caribbean films (Dead Man's Chest the most), I can see how they appeal to both children and adults, with specials effects that dwarf Indiana Jones, and totally preposterous events, such as the swordfight inside the rolling water wheel in Dead Man's Chest. Everything about these is actually quite perfect, and are the first pirate movies to ever make a profit, believe it or not. Not sure about the Best Acting nomination for Depp in the first however, not among his best performances of Finding Neverland, The Libertine, and Sweeney Todd.
   
   
7. Elizabeth: The Golden Age - simply ethereal costumes, which deservedly won an Oscar. This story was not as lyrical or mythical as the first, however, not as interesting, just didn't grab and hold you like the first.
   

Just a word about other recent films: Thank You for Smoking, from last year, was also nearly flawless, a very underrated film, and a comedy that made an important statement, or several. The Departed, though very good, wasn't Scorcese's best recent movie: Gangs of New York was a major achievement, as epic a movie about U.S. history as you'll ever see, and Daniel-Day Lewis' performance of Bill the Butcher is one of the all-time great movie villains, totally unforgettable, who won every award that year except the Oscar (go figure).

World's Best Action and Adventure

Action and / or adventure films
Films in gold won Best Picture Oscars®

• The Adventures of Robin Hood
  
• Around the World in 80 Days (original)
  
• Batman
  
• Ben-Hur (10 Oscars)
  
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (China)
  
• El Mariachi (Mexico)
  
• The French Connection
  
• The Game
  
• Gladiator
  
• Hero (Jet Li's, China)
  
• La Femme Nikita (France)
  
• The Man Who Would Be King
  
• Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy
  
• The Raiders of the Lost Ark
  
• The Replacement Killers
  
• The Right Stuff
  
• The Road Warrior
  
• Run, Lola, Run (German)
  
• The Seven Samurai (Japan, bw)
  
• Spiderman
  
• The Stunt Man
  
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day
  
• V For Vendetta
  

We now have to include "Jet Li's" with the Chinese film Hero due to a U.S. one with the same name. This one involved two directors and had an incredible sequence used by BOSE for a tv surround sound system ad. Jet said it was the greatest script he had ever read.

The Seven Samurai was the basis for the Western The Magnificent Seven, and for the space film Battle Beyond the Stars.

People laughed at me when I saw Gladiator at the theater and told them it would get at least five Oscar nominations if people saw it.

V For Vendetta is by the Washowski Brothers, who gave us the Matrix Trilogy. This revolutionary tome is even better, see if you recognize the voice behind the mask!

World's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy

The worlds best fantasy and science fiction films

• 2001: A Space Odyssey
  
• A Clockwork Orange
  
• Aliens
  
• Back to the Future
  
• Big Fish
  
• Blade Runner
  
• Brazil
  
• Cocoon
  
• Contact
  
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind
  
• Dune (SF-channel mini-series)
  
• E.T.
  
• The Empire Strikes Back
  
• Field of Dreams
  
• Frequency
  
• Gattica
  
• Gormenghast (SF-channel mini-series)
  
• The Incredible Time Travels of Henry Osgood (TV)
  
• Lord of the Rings Trilogy
  
• The Matrix
  
• Minority Report
  
• Poltergeist
  
• Pleasantville
  
• The Prestige
  
• The Prisoner (mini-series)
  
• The Sixth Sense
  
• Time Bandits
  
• The Time Machine (remake)
  
• The 12 Monkeys
  
• WALL-E (animated)
  

Runners-Up: 2010, A Boy and His Dog, The Abyss, Outland, Silent Running, Star Wars, Return of the Jedi, The Wrath of Khan, Vanilla Sky, 2046 (Japan), Gulliver's Travels (mini-series)

The Prisoner was actor Patrick McGoohan's tv sequel to his first show, Secret Agent Man, and still has a large cult following due to its originality and statements about brainwashing, freedom, individuality, non-conformity, and government repression. It was planned as a 16-part complete series with an ending, first time ever on television, and British of course.

A Clockwork Orange was good, and the first and maybe only film rated X for violence (tame by today's standards), but the book was phenomenol, one of the best ever, Burgess wrote it to exorcise demons from a real life home invasion by a gang. The entire book was in Alex's vernacular, and later editions had a necessary glossary of the invented slang. "Hey, Billy Boy, come and get one in the yarbles, if you have any yarbles that is, ya eunuch jelly thou."

Big Fish is my favorite Tim Burton film, a beautiful fantasy of tall tales. Where to you put Poltergeist, is it horror or science fiction? Same with Aliens.

Rambo (2008)

Rambo (2008)
Movie Information

Genre:
Action | War

Main Cast:
Sylvester Stallone
Julie Benz
Matthew Marsden

Director:
Sylvester Stallone

About the movie:
Rambo (2008) is the fourth installment of the popular franchise of the same title starring Sylvester Stallone as Vietnam War veteran John Rambo.


After twenty years since the last film of the famous action movie series, Vietnam war veteran John Rambo has retreated to northern Thailand, and become a boatman at Salween River in Myanmar. He accompanied a group of mercenaries for a resue mission to help the people of a damaged village. The mission goes well until the Burmese army attacks the village, killing innocent villagers and some members of missionaries. When the missionaries fail to come back after ten days, their pastor comes to Rambo, tells him what has transpired, and asks for his assistance in guiding hired mercenaries to the village to rescue other survivors who had been kidnapped by the Burmese. Despite the fact that he already sworn off all forms of violence, he had no choice but to help the kidnapped mercenaries from the enemies...he knows what he must do and this is his most dangerous mission to date.

"Rambo is the king of mindless action movies and its viciousness has set a new high point for action movies. All the action films that have come before it are an embarrassment in comparison to Rambo’s excess." -MovieCynics