tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80148740206740802132024-03-22T11:43:15.523-07:00OscargasmsAllenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.comBlogger389125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-26100900023777780722019-09-15T14:15:00.004-07:002019-09-15T14:17:08.706-07:00The Statuesque - Now Live!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's been a long a time coming, but I'm happy to say that <a href="https://www.thestatuesque.net/">The Statuesque</a> is FINALLY live!<br />
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Just how long a time? Roughly a year or so. I knew I wanted to evolve what I was doing on Oscargasms, and that opened the door for a new name which holistically encompasses Awards Season mania. And then, as I thought about it some more, I decided it was time to move away from Blogger for a more design-friendly alternative.<br />
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Reviews/retrospectives of two Best Actress performances that I hold near and dear to my heart kick it all off: <a href="https://www.thestatuesque.net/blog/review-rene-zellweger-in-chicago">Renée Zellweger in <i>Chicago</i></a> and <a href="https://www.thestatuesque.net/blog/review-marion-cotillard-in-la-vie-en-rose">Marion Cotillard in <i>La Vie en Rose</i></a>. The remainder of 1953's Best Actor and Best Actress lineups have been watched and reviewed and will be publishing very soon. I'm thrilled to be jumpstarting this new chapter, and I hope you'll check it out!Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-38141344605669488032019-05-21T23:55:00.001-07:002019-09-17T14:23:23.846-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><b>Statuesque </b>(adjective): like or suggesting a statue, as in massive or majestic dignity, grace, or beauty.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><i><b>Related words</b>: beautiful, graceful, grand, imposing, majestic, regal, among others.</i></span></div>
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Six years ago today, I launched <b>Oscargasms</b> with the Herculean goal of watching and reviewing each and every performance nominated for the Best Actress and Best Actor Oscar. I was a college student then, one with ample free time, considerable flexibility, and a guilelessness that's very much evident in my early writing. </div>
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We're now near the end of the decade. I've entered my late Twenties. I've watched and reviewed my way through 25 Academy Awards ceremonies. I've still got a long way to go, and I don't intend on stopping.</div>
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Oscargasms has been the portal to which I've funneled my incessant love of film and art, and I'm lucky that it has attracted any eyes at all. I'm in an interesting point in my life now - I've started anew in a brand new city. I want this portal to reflect the person I am today. And if I've learned anything these past few months, it's that change, as uncomfortable and bittersweet as it may be, is truly needed in order to infuse one's day-to-day - and one's sense of purpose - with more joie de vivre. </div>
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And so with that, I present: <b>The Statuesque</b>. I'm having a lot of fun developing the new blog right now - with plenty of work left to go. It's my hope that everything you've ever enjoyed about Oscargasms will be bigger and better via The Statuesque - I'm excited to be sharing it later this summer!</div>
Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-30355769471285634132019-05-08T10:35:00.000-07:002019-05-30T11:51:26.632-07:00Updates<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The last few months have been a whirlwind. Now that the dust has settled (albeit slightly), I'm ready to fill you in!<br />
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<b>Update #1: </b>After 4.5 years in San Francisco, I finally made the move to Los Angeles last week. Herein lies my cornball moment: I've always loved LA, and living here has been a lifelong dream. "Why LA?" many a friend have asked in recent weeks. It's simple, really. When one spends the entirety of his life fawning over film, Oscars and movie stars through rose-tinted glasses...it's only natural that one would want to be close to the city that's emblematic of it all. So here I am! And I'm excited for what's to come, whatever that may be. </div>
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<b>Update #2: </b>I've been sitting on this for quite some time now, and here it is: <i><b>I'll be launching a new blog very soon</b></i>. I'll still be pushing forward with Oscar-nominated performance reviews, kicking off the Speech Series, and the like, but it'll be all be housed under a new name. There's a lot that still needs to be done, so 1953 is paused for the time being. Once I carve out the time I need to sort everything out, I'll be back guns ablazing. Oscargasms has been an important creative outlet for me for the past six years, but I do want to ensure that such an outlet also reflects the individual I've morphed into in that time. So think of this new blog as an elevation of what you're already familiar here. </div>
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More to come. I hope you'll join me on this new adventure!</div>
Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-68358670217151318052019-04-13T22:50:00.000-07:002019-04-13T23:14:42.241-07:00Review: Richard Burton in The Robe<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/movies/29kehr.html">writing</a> about its 2009 Blu-ray release, The New York Times' Dave Kehr referred to <i>The Robe</i> as Richard Burton's "<i>first important American film.</i>" That's fundamentally true: for this is a picture that symbolizes a call-to-action from an industry at a paradigm shift - as the first production ever released in CinemaScope, the film was a reminder to the public that the limits of television were finite, that entertainment of epic enormity could only be made possible via Hollywood filmmaking. The top-grossing film of 1953, <i>The Robe</i> is important solely due to the business virtues it represents. As a film, it's stodgy and forgettable at best.<br />
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My first thought in reading that line from Kehr was: "but what about <i>My Cousin Rachel</i>?!" After all, <i>Rachel</i> was Burton's first U.S. film, and the one that put him on the map - it secured him the Golden Globe for the now defunct New Star of the Year prize, as well as a fraudulent placement in the Supporting Actor category at the Oscars. Burton was even heavily favored to take home the Oscar for <i>Rachel</i> before he was upset by Anthony Quinn in Viva Zapata!, and while his Philip Ashley couldn't be any further away from a supporting character, how nice it'd have been if he had won - for his is sterling, intensely romantic work, one of the very few highlights to be had from a field of dreadfully banal male performances that year.<br />
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So sure, depending on who you ask, <i>My Cousin Rachel </i>might not be considered an "important" film, but Burton's performance there makes for a much more important inception than that of his work in <i>The Robe</i>.<br />
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<i>The Robe</i> exists as a quandary: the very nature of its narrative and its agenda means that it'll resonate with a certain population of viewers on a deeper capacity than with others. As a non-religious viewer myself, I acknowledge that my own opinions of this film and its lead performance may be afflicted with a partisanship I cannot fully withhold. That being said: preconceived misgivings aside,<i> The Robe</i> is quite watchable, and Burton is as committed to the role as one could possibly be with such material.<br />
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If the title of Sam Kashner's <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Furious-Love-Elizabeth-Richard-Marriage/dp/B006CDDMQ8">Furious Love</a> is any indicator of the type of man Richard Burton might've been behind-the-scenes, then it ought not come as a surprise that there's a vehemence bubbling underneath Burton that reads as genuine and registers magnetically. He loves Olivia de Havilland fervently in <i>Rachel</i>, and that same reckless abandon appears here (albeit in a much more condensed, much less scathing form) in his scenes with Jean Simmons. As Marcellus descends into semi-madness after Jesus Christ's crucification, there's an audacity from Burton that ought to be appreciated, even if the material puts the actor at risk of coming off as absurd.<br />
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The man can only do so much. The sight of him waxing poetic about and writhing in torment at the touch of a sacred garment strikes as comical, no matter how hard I try to remain partial. Watch the him and the film's supporting characters preach about Jesus and Christianity long enough and one begins to feel as though the picture is literal propaganda. It's a strange viewing experience, for the material seems masturbatory in the way it pats itself on the back for overcoming the plight of being "othered," yet in tandem, the picture's messaging is so niche that it functions as an unabashed "other" in and of itself.<br />
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Ironically enough, it should be noted that Burton <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=yBP39oBztlcC&pg=PA252&dq=I+wish+I+could+believe+in+a+God+of+some+kind+but+I+simply+cannot+richard+burton&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjl2LKR7c7hAhUSoZ4KHSq4D_cQ6AEIKjAA#v=onepage&q=I%20wish%20I%20could%20believe%20in%20a%20God%20of%20some%20kind%20but%20I%20simply%20cannot&f=false">once wrote</a> in his diaries, "<i>I wish I could believe in a God of some kind but I simply cannot.</i>" This lends credence to his final scene in <i>The Robe</i>, wherein Marcellus opts to be put to death rather than renounce his Christianity: what ought to have been a powerful scene is instead a smidge underwhelming. Burton doesn't pack as strong a punch here - there's a phoned-in intensity that sparks in his voice accompanied with an unusual blankness that sits on his face - and one wonders if it's because he simply does not believe in the lines to which he must speak. That is, in a nutshell, how I feel about <i>The Robe</i>.<br />
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Burton's performance is simply fine. Watch <i>The Robe</i> out of curiosity by way of Burton, the Oscars, or for the special place it holds in film history. But also: watch <i>My Cousin Rachel</i>, which, in my eyes, is Burton's first important American film <i>performance</i>.<br />
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<br />Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-85753595923802076472019-02-02T22:20:00.000-08:002019-02-04T10:14:26.885-08:001953: 26th Academy Awards<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">And the Nominees Were... </span></b></div>
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<li><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>MARLON BRANDO</b>, Julius Caesar</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><b>RICHARD BURTON</b>, The Robe</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><b>MONTGOMERY CLIFT</b>, From Here to Eternity</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><b>WILLIAM HOLDEN</b>, Stalag 17</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><b>BURT LANCASTER</b>, From Here to Eternity</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><b>LESLIE CARON</b>, Lili </span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><b>AVA GARDNER</b>, Mogambo</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><b>AUDREY HEPBURN,</b> Roman Holiday</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><b>DEBORAH KERR</b>, From Here to Eternity</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>MAGGIE MCNAMARA</b>, The Moon is Blue</span></li>
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And we're at it again with 1953! At first blush, this is an interesting bundling of films. We've got <i>From Here to Eternity</i> and <i>Stalag 17</i>, which fulfill Oscar's quota for war-themed pictures. We've got a remake of <i>Red Dust</i>, to which we'll be treated to the sight of a 52 year old Clark Gable reprising the role he played at age 31. Rome has a superfluous presence this year, providing for the backdrops for biblical epic <i>The Robe</i> and Shakespearian adaptation <i>Julius Caesar</i>, while also playing an obvious role in the picture that launched Audrey Hepburn into superstardom. Further, we've got a romantic comedy that scandalized audiences with its "<i>light attitude towards seduction, illicit sex, chastity, and virginity.</i>" And finally, we've got <i>Lili</i>, a...romantic puppet musical?<br />
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Sight unseen, I'm most excited for <i>From Here to Eternity </i>(if only because it represents Montgomery Clift's final lead actor nomination) and <i>The Moon is Blue </i>(if only because I want to see how poorly its controversy has aged). It'll also be nice to revisit <i>Roman Holiday </i>- I've got myself some sentiment on the film and Hepburn from when I first watched it as a kid, so I'm interested to see how this may change.<br />
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As always, let me know who your favorites are and who you think I'll like the most!Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-20717712825062200472019-01-27T15:45:00.001-08:002019-01-27T23:52:31.850-08:00Best Actor has a biopic problem <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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For months, Bradley Cooper had been pegged as a frontrunner for the Best Actor prize for his performance in <i>A Star is Born</i>. And why not?<br />
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Any of us who closely follow film awards — particularly those related to acting — know that they aren’t won simply on the basis of merit. For better or for worse, the annual rat race for these little gold statuettes can be equated to a cocktail with various ingredients, which include:<br />
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<li>The amount of active campaigning one does throughout what is essentially a six month circuit, </li>
<li>Whether or not the film and/or performance is any good, and</li>
<li>One's personal narrative: an overarching, supplementary account that may compel voters to think, "this person <i>deserves</i> it" </li>
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Take, for example, Meryl Streep’s win for <i>The Iron Lady</i> — having been served twelve consecutive losses over the course of nearly thirty years, Streep's narrative was tied to this idea that it was <i>simply time</i> for the woman (a living legend, mind you) to be rewarded a third Oscar, if only so that it would materialistically confirm her status as the Best Actress of our Time.<br />
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Consider also, how the term "<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-mcconaissance">McConaissance</a>" became apart of our vernacular throughout Matthew McConaughey's campaign in 2014. Having experienced a career lull that produced the likes of <i>Fool's Gold</i> and <i>Ghosts of Girlfriends Past</i>, he'd rally with a significant run of acclaimed (if not artistically challenging and out-of-the-box) performances and films that included <i>The Lincoln Lawyer, Bernie, Killer Joe, The Paperboy, Mud, Magic Mike, Dallas Buyers Club, The Wolf of Wall Street</i> and <i>True Detective</i>. As the saying goes, everyone loves a good comeback story.<br />
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And what of Sandra Bullock, who, prior to 2009, was not exactly an actress one would consider as <i>Oscar-friendly</i>? The crux of how Bullock was propelled from Best Actress nonfactor-to-dark-horse-to-frontrunner-to-winner is tied to <i>The Blind Side</i>'s surprising box-office success (and, osmotically, that summer's box-office success of <i>The Proposal</i>). Never mind that <i>The Blind Side </i>was a tepidly reviewed film and, for all intents and purposes, had no business being named the "best" of any film award category in 2009 — money talks, and considering <i>The Blind Side</i>'s $200 million domestic gross marked the first time a film was marketed with a sole actress' name atop the title, Bullock was instantly positioned as a <a href="https://ew.com/article/2010/01/05/sandra-bullock-blind-side-shepop/">revered</a>, underrated industry veteran with a strong track record of turning out moneymaking hits. Naturally, she needed to be rewarded.<br />
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So, back to Bradley Cooper. His narrative this year appeared as strong as any other. <i>A Star is Born</i> was Cooper's <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/movies/bradley-cooper-a-star-is-born.html">labor of love</a>; in addition to starring in the film, he was also its director, its co-producer and its co-screenwriter. The man learned how to play the guitar and the piano, and went to a vocal coach in order to achieve the voice that we see in the film. He committed, methodically, to the concept of being a professional musician, storming the stages of Coachella and Glastonbury to sing live for the picture. In short, Cooper did the absolute most in bringing <i>A Star is Born </i>to life, and critics and audiences took notice. The film received rave reviews, became a meme-inducing phenomenon, and has generated over $400 million in box office receipts worldwide to date. Cooper's narrative is squarely tied to the overwhelming success of <i>A Star is Born</i>, impactful for its artistic genesis and its business triumphs.<br />
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And yet, here we are. Save for a directing win via the National Board of Review, Cooper has very little hardware to show for this far into awards season. A perplexing move to place <i>A Star is Born </i>into the Drama category at the Golden Globes garnered it no major wins outside of Best Song, with Cooper losing the Best Actor prize to Rami Malek in the equally-musical-yet-apparently-not-musical-enough-to-be-in-the-musical/comedy-category <i>Bohemian Rhapsody</i>. At the Critics Choice Awards, Cooper would lose Best Actor to Christian Bale in <i>Vice</i>. And on the morning of the announcement of the 91st Academy Award nominations, Cooper was served a surprise snub in the Best Director category, where he was heavily expected to appear. Just like that, A Frontrunner Is (seemingly) Dead. </div>
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As RuPaul once said in the Snatch Game episode of All Stars 2: “<i>well that don’t make no kind of sense</i>.” And yet, these wins for Malek and Bale ought not have come as any sort of surprise. It’s a tide turn that aligns with a broader issue that has plagued the Best Actor category like a virus across all the mainstream awards bodies (Oscar, BAFTA, SAG, Globes) for just about a decade now, that being: awards bodies love it when actors play real people, and, as is oft the case, they tend to reward male actors who play real people. </div>
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It’s an issue that has baffled and frustrated me for years, with seemingly no end in sight — why is it that accolades for male acting tend to sway toward biopics and "real-life" portrayals? Take a look at the male nominees since 2010:</div>
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And, for equal measure, a look at the female nominees:<br />
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It’s not my intention to generalize a performance as unworthy simply because they're real-life portrayals, and by no means do I believe that biopics/real-life portrayals are undeserving of prizes — Meryl Streep in <i>The Post</i>, Natalie Portman in <i>Jackie</i> and Leonardo DiCaprio in <i>The Revenant</i> are a few recent highlights that really resonated with me upon initial review. However, the ubiquity of "real-life" characters in the annual race for Oscars is a persistent irritant worth talking about, and it seems as though the appeal of flashy transformations into "real people" are too often favored, as if by reflex, over fictional characters in the Best Actor category. Just as the Academy is often criticized for nominating Streep by default for whatever film she has out during any given year, and just as how Ricky Gervais and Kate Winslet once joked that holocaust films guarantee you an Oscar, "real-life" characters in biopics — supplemented by prosthetics and makeup — are a nearly surefire albeit tired tactic for an actor to receive awards recognition.<br />
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Male performances that are rich, unique and provocative are routinely ignored by the Academy in favor of such biographical transformations. To this day, I'm still pissed about Jake Gyllenhaal's snub for <i>Nightcrawler</i> — despite the fact that he did quite a transformative number on himself for the film, he was edged out in the final hour for Steve Carell in <i>Foxcatcher</i> and/or Cooper in <i>American Sniper</i>. I still can’t reconcile how Daniel Day-Lewis seamlessly bulldozed his way through nearly every Best Actor prize his year for <i>Lincoln</i>, when you’ve got Joaquin Phoenix’s intense, fiery work in <i>The Master</i> right in the wings, largely praised and largely ignored for accolades (never mind that in the buildup to the Oscar nominations that year, Phoenix's placement in the category was far from a lock — pundits had predicted John Hawkes to get in for his polio-stricken, real-life portrayal of Mark O'Brien in <i>The Sessions</i>). And while I thought that 2013’s Best Actor lineup was among the best of this decade — I can’t help but feel as though there was a lazy collective admiration for McConaughey's performance in <i>Dallas Buyers Club.</i> I'm due for some rewatches myself, but at the time, I thought DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort in <i>The Wolf of Wall Street</i> and Ejiofor's Solomon Northup in <i>12 Years a Slave</i> surprised more than McConaughey's AIDS-stricken Ron Woodroof. </div>
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I worry that the writing is on the wall for Cooper. The science of narratives, how certain narratives stick and how it's all collectively determined that one individual "deserves" an Oscar over another is too senseless for me to wrap my head around. It's interesting, because in a lot of ways, Cooper's narrative does bear remnants of the aforementioned narratives of Streep, McConaughey and Bullock. <i>A Star is Born</i>, and its mammoth soundtrack, certainly has more monetary command than <i>The Blind Side</i>. Cooper, like McConaughey, has spent the better half of this past decade building out an impressive filmography of his own, doing his best to extinguish the reputation attained from films such as <i>The Hangover</i> franchise<i>, The A-Team</i>, <i>All About Steve </i>and <i>The Wedding Crashers</i>, in favor of more serious fare (<i>Limitless, Silver Linings Playbook</i>, <i>American Hustle</i>, <i>American Sniper</i>). And, with four acting nominations under his belt, you might argue that it's a bit more his "time" for a Best Actor Oscar as opposed to Malek (1 nomination) or Bale (4 nominations and 1 Supporting Actor win). The only avenue to which Cooper does not align is obviously in Jackson Maine being a fictional character.<br />
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One might argue that alcoholism is also an excessive trope often seen in Oscar nominated/winning performances (Jackson Maine himself is but an apple on the alcoholic-country-singer tree that includes Jeff Bridge's Bad Blake and Robert Duvall's Mac Sledge), and this is quite true. But I was very impressed by Cooper's soulful romanticism, and how it seeped through every pore of every frame he was in. I had a conversation with a friend of mine the other week after watching <i>Bohemian Rhapsody</i>; I mentioned that I preferred Cooper to Malek, to which my friend said that she thought Cooper was just "good" in <i>A Star is Born</i>, but when she saw Malek in <i>Rhapsody </i>she thought, "<i>man</i>, what a performance."<br />
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A general statement obviously, and I didn't pry for a more thorough analysis on her end, but one wonders if people get too easily lost in the flamboyance and conspicuousness of gimmicks such as Malek's gigantic teeth and Live Aid mimicry in <i>Bohemian Rhapsody</i>, or Bale's impossible-to-ignore body dysmorphia in <i>Vice</i>. I won't deny that Bale's uncanny resemblance to Cheney is dumbfounding, and seeing Malek in the throes of Queen's discography is pure, electrifying fun. Could it be that the general romanticism as seen in Jackson Maine is undervalued — seen as less impressive, less challenging — when lacking that obvious "transformation" for one to benchmark against a real life figure? Or, could it be that enough voters really, truly didn't care for Cooper altogether? I suppose it should be noted, since we are talking about narratives, that <i>Bohemian Rhapsody</i> too has brought in an ass-ton of money (over $800 million worldwide to date) while <i>Vice</i>'s criticism of Republican politics and policy is transparently applicable to the times we currently live in.<br />
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The fact of the matter is, you see enough of these TRANSFORMATIVE! types of performances stronghold Best Actor (<i>Lincoln</i>, <i>Dallas Buyers Club</i>, <i>The Theory of Everything</i>, <i>Darkest Hour</i>, <i>Foxcatcher, Trumbo, Steve Jobs, The Danish Girl, Ray, Capote, Invictus, Frost/Nixon, </i>etc.), that at best, you begin to get bored with the category, while at worst, you start to question the integrity of the category altogether. It's obvious these films are made with gold trophies in mind, but do they continue to get made because awards bodies continue to perpetuate the theory? I'm willing to bet money that there were not swaths of people clutching their pearls for the arrival of another Winston Churchill picture, but <i>Darkest Hour</i> came anyway, and the rest was Best Actor history.<br />
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My earliest recollections of "transformations" as ammunition for acting prizes go back to Nicole Kidman in <i>The Hours </i>and Charlize Theron in <i>Monster. </i>Interestingly enough, the Academy rewarded several of its Best Actress winners for such performances throughout the aughts, more so than the men (though note that it was still prevalent in the Best Actor category):<br />
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That has changed since 2010. We've seen a shift toward fictional stories winning the top prize on the actress front. This trend could maintain or revert in the 2020s, but in an age where there's a constant barrage of big-budget superhero movies and franchises that spawn sequels, prequels and reboots, I will always root for quality, original storytelling. The Best Actor category is, to its own detriment, way too enamored with <i>The Iron Lady</i>s of the world — it would never see a <i>Black Swan-</i>esque fictional tale pick up traction (the closest would have been Michael Keaton in <i>Birdman</i>, but we all know how that went), and rarely does it see comedic, lighter wins a la <i>Silver Linings Playbook </i>or <i>La La Land </i>(though Jean Dujardin's win for <i>The Artist</i> rebukes this — emphasis on rarely!).<br />
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And, unlike the Best Actress category, Best Actor is inexplicably biased towards older men. Some of my favorite performances in contention in years past — Gyllenhaal in <i>Nightcrawler</i> or <i>Nocturnal Animals</i>, Jacob Tremblay in <i>Room</i>, Ryan Gosling in <i>Blue Valentine</i>, Michael Fassbender in <i>Shame </i>all received nominations from awards bodies that weren't AMPAS. Performances that leaned a bit more towards the romantic, such as Gosling, Jean-Louis Trintignant in <i>Amour</i>, or Joel Edgerton in <i>Loving</i>, were not shortlisted for Oscars, though their female counterparts were. It's no surprise that Best Actress has produced some of the most inspired nominations since 2010, between foreign performances (<i>Amour, Two Days, One Night, Elle, Roma</i>) and Quvenzhané Wallis' nod in <i>Beasts of the Southern Wild </i>— while Best Actor has very little to show in the same vein.<br />
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Best Actor has a quality issue. It always has — watching the male performances nominated in the 1930s and 1940s is enough for one to reject the category altogether. For whatever reason, Oscar's idea of an "excellent" male performance is largely formulaic in makeup and archaic in substance. We don't always like 'em passionate, sensitive, flawed or problematic, but we really do like 'em when they're heroic figures, even more so when they're real people suffering from visually or vocally conspicuous conditions such as speech impediments, AIDS, or ALS. It's a shame, because men are just as capable of producing daring, galvanizing performances as much as women — the issue is that such performances simply do not get nominated.<br />
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By the end of tonight, we'll know for sure if Cooper stands a chance at recouping a comeback for Best Actor at the SAG Awards. I await a miracle, but I've accepted that it may very well be a battle between Freddie Mercury and Dick Cheney on February 24.<br />
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Closing out the decade, it looks like 2019 will provide us with <i>The Irishman </i>(Frank Sheeran/Jimmy Hoffa)<i>, Rocketman </i>(Elton John), <i>A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood</i> (Fred Rogers) and <i>Ford vs. Ferrari </i>(Ken Miles/Carroll Shelby) for prospective Best Actor contenders. Interestingly enough, Cooper has a Leonard Bernstein <span id="goog_195812241"></span><a href="https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/periods-genres/film-tv/bradley-cooper-leonard-bernstein-biopic/">biopic</a><span id="goog_195812242"></span> in the pipeline — should he lose out for <i>A Star is Born</i>, Bernstein could very well be his ticket to Oscar gold.</div>
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Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-3229640168330013122019-01-22T10:15:00.000-08:002019-01-25T18:11:00.871-08:00Nominations 2018: Postmortem<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's a celebration! As is typically the case with Nominations Day, we were treated to some surprises this morning - some films lost momentum, some performances were snubbed, and some wishful thinking proved to be exactly that. In any case, you can find a few top-level thoughts on my end after the jump. And feel free to chime in with your own thoughts!<br />
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<b>Team BlacKkKlansman</b>: While <i>The Favourite </i>and <i>Roma </i>lead the pack in nominations, I was surprised to see <i>BlacKkKlansman </i>among the few films to secure nominations in all the key categories widely considered as essential for the Best Picture prize (Director, Acting, Screenplay, Film Editing). <i>BlacKkKlansman</i> is easily my favorite of the year (though <i>The Favourite</i> is also a very close runner-up), and I was afraid it might have been forgotten behind the phenomenon that is <i>A Star is Born </i>as well as all the momentum secured by <i>Roma </i>and <i>Green Book</i>.<br />
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My one nit would be that I'm not that passionate about Adam Driver's work in the film, and it's obtuse that Driver would be one to represent <i>BlacKkKlansman</i> in the acting department over John David Washington (Globe and SAG nominated) or the terrifying Jasper Pääkkönen (my MVP who was not nominated anywhere, and isn't even in consideration for <i>BlacKkKlansman'</i>s SAG ensemble nomination), but it is what it is - the science of awards bodies' preferences and groupthink function in perplexing ways. In any case, I'm excited to see Spike Lee get his first nomination for directing. While Alfonso Cuaron is favored to take the directing prize for <i>Roma</i>, wouldn't it be miraculous if <i>BlacKkKlansman</i> managed to pull out a Picture win nearly thirty years after the Academy's egregious snubbing of <i>Do the Right Thing, </i>especially considering <i>Driving Miss Daisy 2</i> is also in contention this year? Excuse the corny pun, but <u>do the right thing</u> AMPAS - I believe in you.<br />
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<b>Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira</b>: Two things happened when de Tavira's name was announced. Initially, I was overcome with shock and glee, as I absolutely loved her performance in <i>Roma</i> but hadn't even considered a nomination as being within the realm of possibility. Then, I cursed myself because that most likely meant that Aparicio would be in on the Best Actress front as well, and I had naively <a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2019/01/final-predictions-2018.html#more">noted</a> that I didn't think Aparicio would garner enough support.<br />
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Aparicio's name too was announced, and what inspired choices they both are. de Tavira's nomination comes one year after we were treated to Lesley Manville's surprise nod in the supporting actress category, while Aparicio follows nearly a decade's worth of refreshing, come-from-behind nominations in the Best Actress field - a la Emmanuelle Riva, Marion Cotillard, Charlotte Rampling and Isabelle Huppert. AMPAS has really stretched its imagination this decade on the Best Actress front, and I'm so proud to see it. The Best Actor category, on the other hand...<br />
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<b>Best Actor and its Continued "Real Person" Complex</b>: Once again, we're treated to a Best Actor field that largely consists of performances from Actors portraying real-life individuals. I had bitched about this <a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2018/01/nominations-2017-postmortem.html">last year</a>, even suggesting that Christian Bale would be in the mix this year for <i>Vice</i>, and look!<br />
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I had hoped that Ethan Hawke would slip into this category for <i>First Reformed</i>, given all the critics prizes he had secured, and because I wanted to see a fictional character edge out a real-life portrayal for once. Alas, it looks as though Dafoe got in over Hawke for his Vincent van Gogh in <i>At Eternity's Gate</i>. <br />
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I've not seen <i>At Eternity's Gate</i>, so I seek not to criticize the merits of Dafoe's nomination, but I do wish that the Academy would make some more imaginative selections in this otherwise consistently stale category. One year ago, if you'd have told me that the Academy / industry as a whole would largely reject <i>First Man</i> (sidebar: I may be very excited about de Tavira but I do ache for Claire Foy), I'd be stunned. Though to snub one biopic/real-life portrayal only to turn to a bevy of other biopics/real-life portrayals is a superabundance I'd like to see less of. I also find it limiting and queer that this concept of "Best Actor" seems to largely equate to biopics, "real" characters, and the prosthetics that typically fall in between. I've a lot of feelings on this - more to come soon.<br />
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<b>For what it's worth</b>:<br />
<ul style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: "open sans"; line-height: 1.4; margin: 0.5em 0px; padding: 0px 2.5em;">
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2014/01/final-predictions-2013.html" style="color: #888888;">2013</a>: 7 wrong across 6 categories (4 across fields of five)</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2015/01/final-predictions-2014.html" style="color: #888888;">2014</a>: 9 wrong across 6 categories (6 across fields of five)</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2016/01/final-predictions-2015-post-nominations.html" style="color: #888888;">2015</a>: 8 wrong across 6 categories (7 across fields of five)</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2017/01/final-predictions-2016.html" style="color: #888888;">2016</a>: 7 wrong across 6 categories (5 across fields of five)</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2018/01/final-predictions-2017.html">2017</a>: 7 wrong across 6 categories (5 across fields of five)</li>
<li style="margin: 0px 0px 0.25em; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2019/01/final-predictions-2018.html">2018</a>: 6 wrong across 6 categories (My best yet!)</li>
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Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-70422842305446198552019-01-21T18:25:00.000-08:002019-01-27T21:10:10.791-08:00Final Predictions: 2018<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The day is nearly upon us! The nominations for the 91st Academy Awards will be announced bright and early tomorrow morning, and as per usual, I've thrown out my predictions for the top six categories after the jump.<br />
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Nomination day comes as the Academy tries to persevere through one of the more trying years in recent AMPAS history. In just six months, our boy Oscar has dealt with PR controversies ranging from the Best Popular Film debacle, the Kevin Hart hosting fiasco, in addition to SAG-AFTRA accusing the Academy of preventing actors from presenting on other award shows.<br />
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The road ahead almost certainly seems opportune for more criticism: will the ceremony's host-less format go swimmingly? Will this year's broadcast be the fifth consecutive year of declining ratings? Will they embrace <i>Green Book</i> and <i>Bohemian Rhapsody</i>, thereby opening themselves up to the fury of Film Twitter?<br />
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We'll find out soon enough. I for one am always thrilled about nomination day, often times more so than the actual ceremony itself, as it typically presents a handful of big surprises in the major categories. So let's see what awaits us, and, as always, I'll be whipping up a post-mortem tomorrow.<br />
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<b>Best Picture</b><br />
<i>Black Panther</i><br />
<i>BlacKkKlansman</i><br />
<i>Bohemian Rhapsody</i><br />
<i>The Favourite</i><br />
<i>Green Book</i><br />
<i>Roma</i><br />
<i>A Star is Born</i><br />
<i>Vice</i><br />
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<b>Best Director</b><br />
<strike>Bradley Cooper, </strike><i><strike>A Star is Born</strike><span style="color: red;"> + Adam McKay, Vice</span></i><br />
Alfonso Cuaron, <i>Roma</i><br />
<strike>Peter Farrelly, </strike><strike style="font-style: italic;">Green Book</strike><i> </i><span style="color: red;"><i>+ Pawel Pawlikowski, Cold War</i></span><br />
Yorgos Lanthimos, <i>The Favourite</i><br />
Spike Lee, <i>BlacKkKlansman</i><br />
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<b>Best Actor</b><br />
Christian Bale, <i>Vice</i><br />
Bradley Cooper, <i>A Star is Born</i><br />
<strike>Ethan Hawke, </strike><i><strike>First Reformed</strike> <span style="color: red;">+ Willem Dafoe, At Eternity's Gate</span></i><br />
Rami Malek, <i>Bohemian Rhapsody</i><br />
Viggo Mortensen, <i>Green Book</i><br />
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<b>Quick thought: </b>Even as he has missed out on nominations from the Globes, SAG and BAFTA, and even as I'm not entirely sure of his chances on getting in tomorrow morning, I'm going to stick with Ethan Hawke for the last spot by virtue of his strong showing with critics prizes.<br />
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<b>Best Actress</b><br />
Glenn Close, <i>The Wife</i><br />
Olivia Colman, <i>The Favourite</i><br />
<strike>Viola Davis, </strike><i><strike>Widows</strike><span style="color: red;"> + Yalitza Aparicio, Roma</span></i><br />
Lady Gaga, <i>A Star is Born</i><br />
Melissa McCarthy, <i>Can You Ever Forgive Me?</i><br />
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<b>Quick thought: </b>I'm going to go with Davis over the Emily Blunt in <i>Mary Poppins Returns</i> and Yalitza Aparcio in <i>Roma</i>, primarily because I feel like the more diversified voting bloc within the Academy love, respect, and will push for Davis. I don't know that Blunt's work in <i>Mary Poppins Returns</i> would inspire enough number one votes in their preferential voting system; I don't think (but would be pleasantly surprised if) Aparcio had enough support here. However, my heart wants Kidman in <i>Destroyer</i>.<br />
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<b>Best Supporting Actor</b><br />
Mahershala Ali, <i>Green Book</i><br />
<strike>Timothée Chalamet, </strike><i><strike>Beautiful Boy</strike> <span style="color: red;">+ Sam Rockwell, Vice</span></i><br />
Adam Driver, <i>BlacKkKlansman</i><br />
Sam Elliott, <i>A Star is Born</i><br />
Richard E. Grant, <i>Can You Ever Forgive Me?</i><br />
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<b>Quick Thought</b>: None to be had. Least favorite category. The fact that it's seemingly swaying towards Ali over the likes of Elliott and Grant is...unfortunate<br />
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<b>Best Supporting Actress</b><br />
Amy Adams, <i>Vice</i><br />
Regina King, <i>If Beale Street Could Talk</i><br />
<strike>Margot Robbie, </strike><i><strike>Mary Queen of Scots</strike> <span style="color: red;">Marina de Tavira, Roma</span></i><br />
Emma Stone, <i>The Favourite</i><br />
Rachel Weisz, <i>The Favourite</i><br />
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<b>Quick Thought: </b>I'll go with Robbie purely on the basis of her SAG/BAFTA one-two punch, but I know that the film isn't exactly making the biggest splash. Blunt could very well (and fraudulently so) get in for <i>A Quiet Place</i>. My heart is pushing for Claire Foy in <i>First Man</i>.<br />
<br />Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-87307481571569136722019-01-17T11:00:00.003-08:002019-01-17T11:00:31.750-08:00The Verdict: Best Actress 1952<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">5. Susan Hayward, <i>With a Song in My Heart</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">4. Bette Davis, <i>The Star</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">3. Julie Harris, <i>The Member of the Wedding</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">2. Joan Crawford, <i>Sudden Fear</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>1. Shirley Booth, <i>Come Back, Little Sheba</i></b></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">IN CONCLUSION</span></b></div>
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Shirley Booth takes the top spot as my personal win for 1952! This marks a record fourth consecutive year to which I've aligned with Oscar's decision, and the ninth time we've aligned overall. (For what it's worth, there's hardly a discrepancy between the women and the men - with Cooper, I've aligned with Oscar for a total of eight times). </div>
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Some may find Booth's performance to be grating, but I'm a sucker for a character that endears and invokes pity. Much like Judy Holliday's work in <i>Born Yesterday</i>, this is a performance that commits in its affectedness, to the point where it stays with you as a benchmark. What little I've sampled of Joanne Woodward as Lola simply has not roused any sort of inspiration out of me, and I think this attests to Booth's command of the part. </div>
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Crawford comes in second -- and while I still feel that her two stellar scenes in <i>Sudden Fear </i>are the most potent examples of acting amongst this bunch, but what lies between the rest of that performance does not balance out against Booth's consistency. Harris was a tough conclusion to make -- ultimately, I respect the sheer bravado she brings to <i>The Member of the Wedding</i>, but the performance as a whole trips too viscerally between "staunchly committed" and "crazy" for me to rank it any higher.</div>
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"Crazy" can also describe Davis - a higher-brow cinephile might rank her last, but I'm going with Hayward as my least favorite simply because she's so horridly unchallenging in <i>With a Song in My Heart</i>. Overall, this particular batch of contenders weren't nearly as bad as I was led to believe!</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">OMISSIONS & OVERSIGHTS</span></b></div>
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My hunch for sixth place goes to the Golden Globe-nominated <b>Olivia de Havilland</b> in <i>My Cousin Rachel</i>. This is sight-unseen guesswork (I have it on my list to watch this in the coming week), but given that 1) she was a favorite of Oscar's the decade prior, 2) she was starring in a prestige Daphne du Maurier adaptation and 3) Richard Burton had received a nomination for the film, I imagine de Havilland was very much in consideration. This would inevitably be de Havilland's last real shot at an Oscar nomination - she'd relocate to Paris not long after and begin her transition away from the silver screen. One wonders how things would have netted out had she maintained some of that momentum from the 1940's - perhaps she'd have locked in a few more accolades and nominations a la Bette Davis? </div>
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Otherwise, I imagine <b>Maureen O'Hara</b> was also in the running for her work in <i>The Quiet Man</i>. Former winners <b>Katharine Hepburn </b>and <b>Ginger Rogers</b>, who both lost to Hayward at the Globes for Actress in a Comedy/Musical, likely picked up votes for <i>Pat and Mike</i> and <i>Monkey Business</i>. Had it not been for <i>With a Song in My Heart</i>, Hayward herself might've also gotten in for her devoted-wife-esque role in top-grosser <i>The Snows of Kilimanjaro</i>. And I'm sure <b>Debbie Reynolds</b> got some attention for her part in <i>Singin' in the Rain</i>. While they didn't have a shot at a nomination, I plan on giving <b>Ingrid Bergman</b> in <b>Europa '51 </b>and <b>Simone Signoret </b>in <b>Casque d'Or </b>a watch. </div>
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Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-3359950414760099232019-01-03T02:55:00.000-08:002019-01-03T03:53:17.980-08:00The Verdict: Best Actor 1952<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">5. Alec Guinness, <i>The Lavender Hill Mob</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">4. José Ferrer, <i>Moulin Rouge</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">3. Kirk Douglas, <i>The Bad and the Beautiful</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">2. Marlon Brando, <i>Viva Zapata!</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>1. Gary Cooper, <i>High Noon</i></b></span><br />
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">IN CONCLUSION</span></b></div>
1952's Best Actor lineup stank. It took me the better half of 2018 to get the year wrapped up (Jesus Christ), and I'll attribute no less than 90 percent of that to my brazen laziness. However, there is a fraction to which I'll blame the men: most of these films were an total bore to watch, and quite a few of the men produced performances so uninspiring (Ferrer, Guinness, and the previously reviewed Richardson) that it only perpetuated my lack of motivation to write. As poor as the films were on the Best Actress front, I'd argue that the performances there are dynamic enough to at least prompt a compelling stance out of you. I even had an existential episode where I entertained the thought of putting Best Actor coverage to a close altogether - for indifference is worse than hate, and it can be a chore to piece together an opinion on something you simply don't give a shit about.<br />
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But: I'm too much of an obsessive completist to quit Best Actor altogether, and, in thinking about the trying 1940s, I'm reminded of some of the pleasant surprises that I stumbled upon: Michael Redgrave in <i>Mourning Becomes Electra</i>, Richard Todd in <i>The Hasty Heart</i>, Robert Montgomery in <i>Here Comes Mr. Jordan</i>, to name a few. And while I certainly don't hold high hopes for some of 1953's offerings (<i>The Robe</i> and <i>Julius Caesar</i>), there're several male performances in the coming years that pique my interest. Here's to hoping that the coming years will have, at a bare minimum, some consistent semblances of ambition and gumption from the men.<br />
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So with that aside, let's talk shop: I had expected that Guinness would make me laugh in <i>The Lavender Hill Mob, </i>that Douglas would wow me in <i>The Bad and the Beautiful</i>, and that Brando would summon his divine Method powers to somehow floor me in spite of his brownface act in <i>Viva Zapata!</i>. As it would turn out, Guinness was disappointing, Douglas was just okay in a poorly structured film that stifled any chance of a potent characterization, and Brando came off as a misfit in an insipid-as-all-hell, dusty biopic. Ferrer and <i>Moulin Rouge</i> were about as underwhelming as I expected both to be. Thus, Gary Cooper, the man I never expected in a million years to crown as a personal preference for Best Actor, comes on through to snatch the top spot. When it boils down to Brando versus Cooper, it helped significantly that I adored <i>High Noon</i>, and felt that Cooper was a greater fit to the film than Brando was to <i>Viva Zapata! </i>(I also really hated <i>Viva Zapata!</i>).<br />
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If this result proves anything, it's that expectation does not align with reality, and there's something to be said about the excitement that comes with being unexpectedly surprised by a film and performance that you were sleeping on.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>OMISSIONS & OVERSIGHTS</b></span></div>
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Who might've been the gentleman placing sixth in the votes? With the National Board of Review and the New York Film Critics Circle both going for <b>Ralph Richardson</b> in <i>The Sound Barrier</i>, one might look to him. As both <i>The Sound Barrier </i>and <i>The Lavender Hill Mob</i> are highly British films, my imagination suspects that more British voters backed Guinness, thereby displacing Richardson of a top-five slot (I theorize that both <i>Barrier </i>and <i>Lavender</i> did not make a splash in the U.S., but that <i>Lavender</i> was the bigger crowd pleaser in the U.K.). If not Richardson, I think <b>John Wayne</b> in <i>The</i> <i>Quiet Man</i> had to have been sixth or seventh as well, given his film's overall nomination tally.<br />
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These two aside, <b>Gene Kelly</b> (or the Golden Globe-nominated <b>Donald O'Connor</b>?) could have snatched up some votes for <i>Singin' in the Rain</i>, though the film's mere two nominations suggests they were long shots. <i>Hans Christian Anderson</i> - a film I've never heard of - was the eighth top grossing picture of 1952, received six (!) Oscar nominations, as well as a Golden Globe nomination for star <b>Danny Kaye</b>...it reads as one of those grotesquely fluffy and sentimental biopics that the Academy went crazy for back in the day, so I imagine Kaye got close as well. The same could be said of <b>Clifton Webb</b> in <i>Stars and Stripes Forever</i>, which 100 percent would have secured Webb a nomination had it been released in the forties. Beyond these, perhaps <b>Laurence Olivier</b> in <i>Carrie </i>could have been an option. I've heard good things about <b>Charlie Chaplin</b> in <i>Limelight</i>, though the likelihood of him getting seems slim-to-none.Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-15043555532417684812018-12-30T23:30:00.000-08:002019-01-02T00:59:22.662-08:00Shirley Booth, Come Back, Little Sheba<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Won</b>: Academy Award - Best Actress <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; text-align: left;">•</span> New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actress<br />
Golden Globe Award - Best Actress in a Drama <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; text-align: left;">•</span> Cannes Film Festival - Best Actress</td></tr>
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1952's slate of Best Actress contenders has gained a bad rap. I had read insinuations that the year is particularly poor on the actressing front, and yet, based on what I've seen so far, I'd conclude that it's largely an imperfect lineup with performances and films that hit a murky gray: be that Susan Hayward's questionably saintlike performance in a run-of-the-mill biopic, Joan Crawford's emoting in a sensationalized B-movie, Bette Davis' wild hysterics in a <i>Sunset-Boulevard</i>-on-bath-salts camp picture, or Julie Harris' pubescent hysterics in a stagey stage-to-film adaptation, this is not a field of contenders that strikes wide-range appeal to the modern masses. That being said, I don't think either are awful, though they do challenge you to conclude otherwise.<br />
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This also rings true for Shirley Booth, the victor of this pack: she and her performance in <i>Come Back, Little Sheba</i> are easily more forgotten and receive significantly less share of voice than the likes of fellow winners Judy Holliday, Vivien Leigh, Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly. This is in spite of the fact that Booth was a juggernaut during her respective year, picking up nearly every major Best Actress prize available (it should be noted that no other actor that decade, male or female, received prizes from Cannes, the National Board of Review, the New York Film Critics Circle, the Globes and the Academy for a sole performance).<br />
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Similar to Harris in <i>The Member of the Wedding</i>, Booth also played Lola Delaney on stage before bringing her to life on celluloid. Both <i>Wedding </i>and <i>Sheba</i> debuted within a month of each other in 1950, with Booth nabbing the Tony Award later that year (and, with her Academy Award victory, she'd become the first-ever actress to win both prizes for the same role). But whereas Harris may seem as though she's acting for the very last row in the balcony when the camera is not intimately closed up against her face, Booth carries herself in a less jarring manner.<br />
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That said, Lola is far from a subtle character - carrying on 1952's theme of flamboyance amongst its nominated actresses, Booth is still quite affected and bolstered with mannerisms - see how Lola wobbles ever-so-slightly whenever she walks or runs, how she sways a bit when she's standing upright, or how she cranes her neck and back whenever she speaks to another character. Listen as she aggressively chatters away from scene-to-scene with her nasally accent. There's a gaudiness to Lola that'd be befitting when housed in a supporting role and served out in small dosages - Lola is, of course, not a supporting role, and the persistence to which Booth operates might register to some as being excessive.<br />
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So on face value alone, you either have a decent tolerance for Booth and Lola or you don't. I find myself within the former group.<br />
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My parents are old enough to be my grandparents (my older brother is in his forties, for reference). As such, I've been acquainted with a fair share of adults much older than I throughout the course of my life. Booth is strikingly close to home in her characterization of Lola: I've known people around her age (or older) express how they no longer care to tend to their appearance. I've seen them chatter on and on and on and on as though their lives somehow depended on it. I've experienced firsthand how "meaning well" can still be causation for annoyance, and how one can be blissfully unaware throughout it all. I've heard tales of past regrets. I've witnessed and heard of couples staying together purely on the virtue of values despite their years of unhappiness. I've seen and heard of how loneliness can afflict one's life as they grow older. Booth's performance, as exasperating as it may register, is emblematic of all of this. Whether or not that that was her exact intent as she developed Lola I cannot confirm. But I can't help but feel a profound sense of sincerity and truth in her performance. Every time I became annoyed with Lola, it felt personal. Every time I watched her desperately try to connect with another individual, it struck as real.<br />
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It helps that Booth crafts a flawed yet undeniably wholesome character. There's a naivety to Lola that was highly endearing for me - she'll plaster on a smile and run after someone, latching on to them with an unwavering faithfulness and inquisitiveness as though she were Sheba the dog herself. There're undertones that suggest Lola to be a woman-child, (she and Doc nickname each other "Baby" and "Daddy," and there're hints of Lola's highly strict upbringing) and it seems as though she never really grew up; that lends credence to the viewer's affinity toward her, and paves the way for a final act that is built to force compassion out of you toward Booth. It's the last half hour of the film that likely secured Booth her Oscar, and I found it to be terribly heartbreaking.<br />
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It should be noted that Booth's second husband, William H. Baker Jr., died in 1951. She never remarried, and she hadn't any children from her marriages. How close Baker's death was to the filming of <i>Come Back, Little Sheba,</i> I could not conclude - but I can't help but feel as though the gut-wrenching sadness that Booth projects towards Lancaster in that last act of <i>Sheba, </i>and her delivery of "<i>You're all I got, Doc...you're all I ever had,</i>" was coming from a real place of heart ache. I could watch these scenes over and over again, and each time I'll be struck by Booth's honest-to-God authenticity and kindness.<br />
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For those who dislike this performance due to its affected nature - I can't agree. To me, this is a highly poignant performance from an underrated actress. It's a success story of a theater actress bridging a gap between Broadway and Hollywood, and reaping up all the riches. It's a performance that lives as a cocktail of traits from my aunts, uncles, dad and mom. This is a performance that deserves more recognition from the general public than it has, a sweet and tender little highlight delivered on a divisive (but admirable) year.<br />
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<br />Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-41399611331604041302018-12-24T23:50:00.000-08:002018-12-24T23:57:41.866-08:00Julie Harris, The Member of the Wedding<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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You're four minutes in to <i>The Member of the Wedding </i>before Brandon deWilde's John Henry proclaims aloud, "<i>Frankie's crazy!</i>" It's a flippant line, executed quickly and in a humorous, charming manner, and yet it also serves as a forewarning for what's to come for the next hour and a half: Frankie Addams, played by a fiercely dedicated Julie Harris, is batshit insane, and you the viewer are in for a helluva ride.<br />
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Harris was hovering around her mid-twenties when she brought the twelve year old character of Frankie to life for the big screen. With her slender figure and a neutral face that reads more as juvenescent than it does womanly, her age does not deter from the physicality of the character and the performance.<br />
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What is a deterrent is the character herself: Frankie Addams is a young girl in the throes of preteen puberty, navigating a brand new world of mental muck which includes crippling insecurity, a yearning for acceptance and, presumably, turbulent hormones running amok. As such, she is prone to selfishness and berserk emotional outbursts, which in and of itself already makes for a rather trying viewing experience.<br />
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It's been a struggle reconciling my own feelings towards Harris' performance and my own chaotic preteen years. From a viewer's standpoint, I hate Frankie. I think she's a sociopath. Just to give you a taste: over the course of the film's first half hour, we are witness to Frankie wishing she were dead, threatening to shoot some neighborhood girls with her father's pistol in a fit of rage (after attacking one of them), chasing John Henry with a fly swatter in a separate fit of rage, crying on two separate occasions and nearly moved to tears on a third, throwing some shit, and threatening Ethel Waters' Berenice with a knife (in addition to wishing aloud that Berenice's tongue was pulled from her mouth). Tweens are pretty awful, but this one's a royal pain-in-the-ass - and Frankie simply did not induce any sympathy from this particular viewer.<br />
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However, on a personal retrospective level, I think my twelve year old self (and perhaps your twelve year old self) would've been able to relate to Frankie. Wild adolescence is tough terrain, and on this register, Harris delivers a highly physical, wholly committed performance that's excessive on bravado. She is masterful with the lyricism of her lines, and she restlessly fires on all cylinders in tackling Frankie's oscillating temperaments (often times swaying between playful, belligerent and vulnerable in a matter of minutes). That being said, Frankie is a horribly disagreeable character. And Harris' go-for-broke approach, while admirable for its sheer stamina, tries one's patience a bit too much for my liking. The irony is that Harris' adroitness with the role comes off as <i>too </i>commanding, in turn spiking Frankie with an adult-like hard-edge that amplifies the unlikable qualities of the character.<br />
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In order to make this inherently difficult character more digestible, I'd wager that the role requires an intrinsic innocence and naiveté from the actor, both of which Harris lacks. Glimpses of a fifteen year-old Anna Paquin's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvQsmsB-cqA">take</a> on Frankie Addams indicate a much greener actress than the one in this profile, and I'd have liked to have felt a balance between Harris' fire and Paquin's unworldliness. Interestingly enough, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0T_H5Kw8YE&feature=youtu.be&t=230">this snippet</a> of a forty three year old Harris in a 1968 episode of <i>Run for your Life </i>show histrionics that align quite similarly with what we see in <i>The Member of the Wedding</i> - in a way validating to me that Harris' barbs are much too sharp, she herself much too intelligent and mature an actor to feasibly bridge the gap between chaotic adolescence and a wide-eyed protagonist to whom you can fully root for.<br />
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Don't get me wrong, Harris totally excels when she's not shrieking at the top of her lungs. When she's tender, she's very much so: close-ups of that freckly face show so much anguish and longing - advanced acting that I imagine few actresses aged twelve to fifteen could handle effectively. In the film's last act, which has Frankie traipsing around town at night, Harris channels some profound innocence and purity.<br />
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This was an utterly divisive performance for me to assess. It's manic and frustrating yet kind of brilliant. I'll probably find more to say about it if I were to revisit it again after a prolonged period of time, but for now...<br />
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<br />Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-38808711239234408572018-12-03T00:10:00.002-08:002018-12-03T00:10:36.952-08:00Joan Crawford, Sudden Fear<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The other week, I had a dream in which I was terrorized by Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford. I remember little about the dream outside of the fact that Faye/Joan was incensed about something and screaming at me about it - her face terrifying, flush with fury.<br />
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It goes without saying that the symbolism of "angry Joan Crawford," made possible by <i>Mommie Dearest</i>, has ingratiated itself into, and endured as a component of, Crawford's legacy. Crawford's bitter rivalry with Bette Davis stands as another component of this legacy, recently publicized and manifested by Ryan Murphy's <i>Feud: Bette & Joan</i>. It's safe to say that these properties have helped immortalize Crawford to the collective wisdom as a dramatic public figure, her prowess as a skilled dramatic actress known more so to cinephiles and actressphiles such as myself (and perhaps you, dear reader).<br />
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I myself am guilty of forgetting about Crawford's talents as an actress, even though I really ought to <a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2015/11/joan-crawford-mildred-pierce.html">know better</a> <a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2016/02/joan-crawford-possessed.html">by now</a>. <i>Sudden Fear</i>, Crawford's last Academy Award-nominated performance, is a palpable reminder that there's much more to the actress beyond the feuds, the grandeur, the tempestuousness, the pettiness.<br />
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What's striking about <i>Sudden Fear</i> is that, despite the film's title, it functions as a heavily romantic film for the first forty minutes. We're greeted with swelling opening credits. Crawford, playing a famous playwright named Myra Hudson, has a new play about to debut called "Halfway to Heaven". <i>Sudden Fear'</i>s first verses of dialogue belong to Jack Palance, who is tasked to perform a grotesquely sappy monologue written by Myra:<br />
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"...<i>You are all the women in my life. You are the sister I never had. The mother I've almost forgotten. The wife I have always dreamed of. There isn't a relationship you can name which exists between a man and a woman of which I wouldn't say: let it be you. Oh let it be you</i>."</blockquote>
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Apparently, Palance's Lester doesn't do the monologue justice. Myra denies him the male lead in her play because she doesn't think he embodies her idea of a "<i>romantic leading man,"</i> though that's somehow completely contradicted when she eventually crosses paths with him on a train ride from New York to San Francisco - she falls in love with him and they embark on a whirlwind romance, as characters of old Hollywood movies tend to do.<br />
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Take into account that the aforementioned monologue is written from the perspective of a lonely woman - she lives by herself in a massive San Francisco mansion, and, while not expressly referenced, it's quite clear that Myra is a woman of a certain age, and has entered the earliest stages of spinsterhood. This not only provides dimension to the seemingly hasty speed in which she falls for Lester, but also imbues a key moment in the first act - after catching him packed up and ready to leave town, she gazes at him, pitiful, broken, and tells him, "<i>without you I have nothing</i>" - it's such a fragile moment, made all the more possible by an innate grace and elegance that's trademark Crawford.<br />
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But the brilliance of Crawford's performance in <i>Sudden Fear </i>lies in her near-silence during moments of intense drama. A six minute sequence in which Myra reacts to a recording that reveals her husband to be a greedy, would-be killer after her fortune is a remarkable, complicated display of heartbreak segueing into horror. My favorite scene out of the entire picture is when Myra has concocted a plan to kill Lester in Irene's apartment, and she catches her own reflection in the mirror, gun in hand. What follows is some devastating acting from Crawford, who swiftly steers through shock, shame and disbelief - an emblem of raw emotion splattered across a glamorous veneer. The two scenes may as well have been pulled from a silent picture, and together they act as a powerful showcase for an actress who is completely attuned to optimally presenting herself in front of a camera.<br />
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With all the histrionics and campy bitchiness associated with <i>Mommie Dearest </i>and <i>Feud: Bette & Joan</i>, you forget that Crawford is an extraordinarily graceful screen presence, more than capable of channeling tenderness and fragility when it's required of her. She'd be mortified over the fact that her legacy is moreso tied to the dramas of her personal life versus the filmography and respect she fought so hard for. If anything else, I leave <i>Sudden Fear</i> with a reinvigorated reminder of the woman's craft, and of all the special Crawford performances I've seen throughout the years (her work in <i>The Women</i> stands as one of my all-time favorite supporting performances). I hope that this review points others toward that direction as well.<br />
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<br />Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-78070834051420563652018-10-27T16:30:00.000-07:002018-10-27T16:30:06.267-07:00Bette Davis, The Star<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The challenge in digesting a performance like Bette Davis' in <i>The Star</i> lies in the fact that it inherently conflicts with two dimensions of who I am as an individual. A moviegoer with a more modernist, art house-leaning eye might view Davis' performance as a relic of its time, one riddled with such grossly melodramatic narrative devices that it veers into farcical parody. A more lax moviegoer (dare I say, of the homosexual variety) might see Davis' performance as a fun, campy joyride - the film a befitting vehicle for an inherently dramatic diva to <a href="https://tenor.com/view/erika-jayne-gays-everything-gif-7527265">showcase</a> all the qualities to which her fandom admires her for.<br />
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One can't fully appreciate a Bette Davis film if one does not bear a certain threshold for high drama. Sometimes, Davis straddles this threshold with <a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2017/05/bette-davis-all-about-eve.html">expert balance</a>, creating performances that subsist beautifully with her larger-than-life persona. Other times, Davis comes in with so much <a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2015/06/bette-davis-mr-skeffington.html">audaciousness</a> that she ricochets far beyond this threshold, blurring the line between what is good and what is bad. Her work in <i>The Star</i> most certainly falls into the latter bucket. The film itself is a poorly written bastard child to <i>All About Eve</i> and <i>Sunset Boulevard</i>, complete with a narrative which layers on so many gimmicks that the end result is something of a fever dream, one as joyously campy as it is an opportune breeding ground for Davis to run amok with her more exaggerated thesping tendencies. To give you a gauge of how histrionic this film is: Davis' Margaret Elliott starts yelling at her agent around the two minute mark of the film, which, if you discount fifty seconds of opening credits, means she goes out guns ablazing with just over a minute of screentime.<br />
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Screenwriters Dale Eunson and Katherine Albert reportedly modeled the lead character after Joan Crawford. Watching the film with that context, it seems as though their modus operandi was to stack the story with as many opportunities to humiliate the actress as feasibly possible. The film essentially boils down to an hour-and-a-half of Davis reacting to an endless stream of unfortunate events inflicted upon her character, a woman who flirts with Norma Desmond-esque levels of delusion. Eunson and Albert have Davis undergo a number of outrageous scenarios - from driving drunk whilst providing a scrappy Starline tour to her Oscar statuette, to being jailed overnight for DUI, to shoplifting a bottle of perfume out of erratic impulse, to working as a lingerie saleslady at a department store only quit after she bitches out two elderly customers, to insisting on playing "sexy" during an audition for a supporting role in a film because she's convinced that her sexiness will land her the younger lead part instead, Davis does all of the above while chewing just about as much scenery as one could possibly expect with such material, all the while barking that she's a star and how dare you not know who she is.<br />
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To say that this is a lot to handle is an understatement, and it's almost a shame to witness an actress of Davis' stature submit herself to this sort of garbage, especially when you consider that she most likely felt this to be substantial, quality material at the time. I say that it's "almost" a shame because, as absurd as it all ends up being, it is still highly watchable. While the film likely believed itself to be an allegory of the darker side of fame and celebrity, it is so far removed from reality that one can't really view it with a serious eye, as that would take away some of the pleasure of watching Davis (who is completely committed to the role, if anything else) play out what is essentially Lindsay Lohan's entire career post-<i>Mean Girls</i>.<br />
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Her mother-daughter subplot with a young Natalie Wood (who is flat-out awful, by the way), while unnecessary, gives Margaret some much needed warmth, especially considering she spends the entire film so stubbornly delusional that it often makes it difficult for the viewer to like her. Her diva fits, of which there are many, are drenched in ego and almost read as though she's breaking the fourth wall to the viewer ("<i>Well if you're a star, you never stop being a star,</i>" and "<i>you don't win an Academy Award for nothing</i>," may as well have been accompanied with winks). Her screen test scene is one of the most perplexing acting moments I've ever witnessed from her - is it horribly cringeworthy? Expertly realized in how cringeworthy it is? Both? That scene, packaged together with the scene in which she watches said screen test, are the zenith and nadir of <i>The Star</i><i>.</i><br />
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She is turbulent. She is over-the-top. She is affected. She is jarring. But damn it all to hell if she doesn't show up, ready to throw down with her signature Bette Davis panache. This very panache, layered with ego, is what makes her a sure-fire entertainer, even when she's entertaining for the wrong reasons. Ultimately, that's what keeps me from outright hating <i>The Star</i>.<br />
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<br />Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-65721784201231243782018-09-22T22:30:00.001-07:002018-09-22T22:36:35.973-07:00Susan Hayward, With a Song in My Heart<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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To watch <i>With a Song in My Heart </i>is to be fed a two-hour tale of an impossibly saintlike (and horribly basic, if you ask me) individual. This ought not come as a surprise to me or you by now, as biopics, especially those of the classical Hollywood variety, are often semi-fictionalized and scrubbed of its subjects' imperfections, revealing little to us about said subjects aside from the fact that they may have had to endure something traumatic once, and/or they may have been faced with a difficult decision they had to make. Jane Froman herself had a heavy hand in the production of <i>With a Song in My Heart</i>, perhaps an acting influence on the film's insignificant narrative weight.<br />
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That said, it isn't Susan Hayward's fault that her character is quite dull. I'd go as far as to say that I think Hayward does her very best to elevate the subject matter given to her, and she succeeds at doing so. This is due to her seemingly innate gift of channeling genuine warmth, both in the way she carries the Jane Froman character and in the way she communicates to the characters around her. Jane is portrayed as an exceedingly amiable character in this film -- which I imagine can be emulated by many an actress -- and complementing this is Hayward's ability to play up warmth and kindness. When expressly leveraged, it is forceful and potent on screen. One moment that comes to mind is when Froman is reunited with a now shell-shocked soldier, whom she had previously met and sung a rousing number to before he went off to war. He makes the request that she sing "I'll Walk Alone<i>," </i>to which Hayward nods and says, "I love that song, it's one of my favorites." The moment is brief, easily overlooked given <i>With a Song in My Heart</i>'s aggressive cadence of back-to-back musical numbers, but Hayward's verbal delivery is rich with authenticity, a nice foil to the picture's hokey tendencies.<br />
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Profound moments like these are so few and far between in the film, which struggles to communicate anything interesting about Froman until nearly an hour in, once the plane crash hits and its ensuing drama unfolds. Up until that point, Hayward is essentially reduced to being a composite sketch of what might be considered a man's "ideal woman," that being one who is always smiling, always positive, always gracious and perhaps a smidge naive. There's an awkward scene around this time when the character of Don Ross, gunning to marry Froman, asks if she'd mind if he fixes himself a drink. She auto-replies, "of course not, I'll fix it for you," proceeding to do so, before very reluctantly accepting his proposal of marriage minutes later, even asking "do you really want me to do that?" when he suggests they get hitched at City Hall. And even as Don gets increasingly volatile as her star rises, Froman is incredibly understanding and courteous during their rows.<br />
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Was Froman truly this pleasant in real life? That I can't confirm. But given that the film omits the fact that she struggled with a stutter all throughout her adult life, and that she became addicted (and eventually overcame her addiction) to painkillers and alcohol after the crash, I've a hunch that the highly agreeable yet Stepford-Wifey Froman we see on screen was a stylistic decision made by the singer and/or the powers that be at 20th Century Fox.<br />
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If this is the case, I wonder how much more compelling the material would have been had it not been so "clean." As mentioned, Hayward does a solid enough job with what she's given, though more often than not she's a tediously prim and proper lady, one with an inability to develop an opinion of her own. The one time she does do so, in a nicely acted scene in which she bitterly tells her nurse sidekick (played by an also okay Thelma Ritter) that she wishes her leg were amputated so that she can rid herself of the endless surgical cycles she's endured, she is promptly reprimanded by Ritter for not "having what it takes" to remain positive (because damn it, her beautiful face and voice ought to be enough to keep the hope alive!)<br />
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While it's unfortunate that Hayward is largely limited in breadth of characterization, the film makes up for this by providing her with a shit ton of screen time to perform ultra-glam musical numbers. I don't say "shit ton" to demean the value of these numbers -- Hayward has a very comfortable, controlled stage presence whenever she's performing -- but the film could have cut about five and it'd have stood up just the same. After the umpteenth performance, the prospect of yet another Jane Froman number begins to grow stale, such that the only surprising element is that brief wardrobe malfunction (see: nip slip) Hayward suffers in the film's eponymous number. Blink and you miss it, the malfunction was removed from some of the existing prints of the film; it's the single unrefined moment of a picture that tries much too hard to demonstrate perfection, and it's just about the only unexpected moment the film and performance has to offer.<br />
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<br />Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-74144353484773032852018-09-18T01:30:00.000-07:002018-09-22T22:40:31.782-07:00Marlon Brando, Viva Zapata!<div style="text-align: left;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Won</b>: Cannes Film Festival - Best Actor</td></tr>
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It is only appropriate that the man often credited as being the trailblazing force behind bridging the gap between realism and film acting should also thrill us in his ability to bridge the gap between his own whiteness and other ethnicities. <i>Viva Zapata! </i>would not be the only film in the 1950s to which Marlon Brando attempted to play a character of an entirely different ethnicity from his own, and, based on what I've seen, Brando's Emiliano Zapata isn't nearly as jarring or disagreeable as his Sakini in <i>The Teahouse of August Moon</i>, released four years later. But Brando's interpretation of the Mexican revolutionary straddles the threshold of my own tolerance towards whitewashing - for at what point does it become a little too silly, thereby taking the viewer "out" of the picture?<br />
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I'm a particular moviegoer. And there're a number of things I'm loath to accept about a film. Though I'd say that at the top of my list, I'm generally not fond of male-driven narratives and long historical biopics. Somewhere in the middle would sit "negligent uses of accents." <i>Viva Zapata! </i>checks all three of these boxes, and the sight of so many crusty men emulating Mexicans by way of mustaches, sombreros and pristine American English is a hard pill to swallow for a viewer who is admittedly unforgiving when it comes to his ownmodern sensitivities.<br />
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There's a lot for me to un-package with this performance; I will start by saying that Brando's acting is pretty good, if we were to forget about the issue of ethnicity from the context of this film. Having taken the world by storm just one year prior in <i>A Streetcar Named Desire</i>, Brando brings some of that fluid energy here, traipsing through the film with a quiet yet conspicuous severity bubbling beneath him. Occasional bursts of emotion, such as his bit regarding the hungry child, infuses a dreadfully dull movie with some needed chutzpah. Underneath all that Mexican drag and bronzer still exists a consummate actor capable of drawing your unfeigned attention, even if he is woefully inappropriate for the part.<br />
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However, I'm still largely indifferent to this performance. At the end of the day, this is a tale of an important figure and time in Mexican history - a tale that just so happens to feature a barrage of white-skinned Americans made up to look brown, all donning the necessary cultural garb to make a viewer feel as though those involved with this film are actually participating in an advanced Halloween bash. This takes the narrative beyond belief, and no amount of Method acting from Brando can shake the grime of farcicality that weighs heavily upon every scene, every facial expression, every close-up. Brando could very well have tapped into the psyche of the character and convinced himself that he was Emiliano Zapata, but his surroundings offset the realism he presents to the screen. (It should be noted that Brando too <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/02/06/viva-zapata-anniversary_n_1258553.html?utm_hp_ref=ca-movies">felt</a> this film was lacking in authenticity!)<br />
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I just hated <i>Viva Zapata! - </i>I didn't care for the kooky juxtaposition of a bunch of grown, American men playing literal dress-up against Brando's all-too-serious Method acting. I was confused, during one extended scene in which Brando is topless looking yonder from his window, as to why I was suddenly witness to a Mexican Stanley Kowalski ("He may have brown skin, but he can still be a sex symbol everyone!" thought Darryl Zanuck, surely). Brando does a solid job here, and there's not a single moment during his performance to which you might feel as though he's completely phoning it in. I'd say that he believed in what he was doing; I just found myself unable to believe in him. Overall, a good performance that is a byproduct of an intrinsically flawed film.<br />
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<br />Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-24242591998267490202018-09-09T02:20:00.000-07:002018-09-09T02:20:12.738-07:00Alec Guinness, The Lavender Hill Mob<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I wasn't fond of <i>The Lavender Hill Mob</i>. In fact, it was a bit of a struggle for me to make my way through the film. I report this feeling queer about my overall sentiment, as though I've misunderstood something - for both the film and its lead performance from Alec Guinness seem to have favorable notices online. And yet, for whatever reason, neither registered for me.<br />
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I say this having seen Guinness in <i>Kind Hearts and Coronets</i> and thinking he was excellent in the film. Reserved yet caustically witty, he most certainly deserved a nomination in 1950's Best Actor field. That being said, I came in to <i>The Lavender Hill Mob</i> with high hopes.<br />
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It was surprising to find that the picture itself was a bit of a slow burn for me; it lacks an actionable catalyst until about a third of a the way through, its "Britishness" (see: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1951/10/16/archives/the-screen-in-review-the-lavender-hill-mob-with-alec-guinness-first.html">civilized humor</a>, as described by the New York Times) is central to the film yet came off as mostly stale for me, and I had a difficult time connecting with the story and the characters. As the quiet bank clerk turned gold bullion smuggler, I felt as though Guinness mostly goes with the flow, largely lacking charisma (of which he had tons in <i>Kind Hearts</i>). Henry Holland is not a character that needs to command attention per se, but I don't know that he really communicated aspects of Holland acutely; for example, you'll often see descriptors of Holland in reviews of the film as being "timid," or "mousey," and yet I never really felt that from Guinness. Even as Holland concocts and executes his master plan, there's little there that fully convinced me this was a determined man on a mission. It seems as though a good chunk of this performance is wildly underplayed, and it really did nothing for me.<br />
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There're some stronger moments across his performance; Guinness is decidedly goofy in the scene where he has to rough himself up, and this carries over in the last act in his Eiffel tower and police exhibition melees. This is where it's expressly clear that he's having the most fun, and it'd have been nice to see effervescence spread out more widely. Tonally, the film and performance are stodgier than I'd expect from a silly crime caper led by an actor who has previously done well within this context. Overall, I felt this to be perfectly adequate enough work, though I'm unclear on its merits to warrant consideration as being among the best of the year (though, if you feel otherwise, of course let me know!)<br />
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<br />Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-33761512739932463882018-08-26T03:30:00.000-07:002018-08-26T03:35:12.609-07:00Gary Cooper, High Noon<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Won</b>: Academy Award - Best Actor | Golden Globe (Drama) - Best Actor</td></tr>
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Years ago, before Oscargasms came to fruition, I was haphazardly watching and reviewing various movies that piqued my interest. One of those films was <i><a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2015/07/wings.html">Wings</a></i>. For a picture that had very little surprises outside of Buddy Rogers' drunken hallucinogenic bubble episode, one moment that I can usually recall is that of Gary Cooper’s cameo at the half hour mark. We see Cooper waking up from a nap, hair perfectly coiffed, where in typical old-Hollywood fashion, he then smolders his way through his 2 or so minutes of screen time. Moments later, Cooper's character dies in a plane accident while practicing figure eights. While brief, he had about him a radiant energy in those moments that are effortless yet impactful. I ramble on about this because I find it ironic — and fitting — that my journey with Cooper should end at <i>High Noon</i>. For what Cooper delivers in the film is heavily silent, and there is a forcefulness in his presence I’d not felt since that very cameo in Wings.<br />
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I suppose this archetype of the courageous idol who bravely sets off to fight the good fight would come to define Cooper’s most distinguished work. Familiar readers of this blog know that my viewing journey of Cooper’s Oscar-nominated performances has been nothing short of rocky; from <i><a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2014/03/gary-cooper-mr-deeds-goes-to-town.html">Mr. Deeds Goes to Town</a></i> to his Oscar-winning work in <i><a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2014/11/gary-cooper-sergeant-york.html">Sergeant York</a></i> to the godawful <i><a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2015/01/gary-cooper-pride-of-yankees.html">The Pride of the Yankees</a></i> to the dull-as-paint-drying <i><a href="https://oscargasms.blogspot.com/2015/04/gary-cooper-for-whom-bell-tolls.html">For Whom the Bell Tolls</a></i>, Cooper has carved out a speciality in stoic, solemn and (seemingly) unchallenging performances, portraying oft-detached man's men.<br />
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Where <i>High Noon</i> differentiates from the aforementioned films is simply due to the fact that it is a far superior picture, concisely ideated and honest. Cooper, visibly older (perhaps because I was watching a Blu-Ray version of the film) and a smidge ramshackled than last we left off with him, does not deviate from his usual quiet, pensive, unemotional persona here. But whereas this very persona does not pair well against the inspirational tone of <i>Yankees</i> or the flightier vibe of <i>Mr. Deeds</i>, it's well matched here with Fred Zinnemann's isolating direction.<br />
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The overall sense of dread is laid on thick in <i>High Noon</i>, and central to this is Will Kane's own cocktail of desperation and borderline-expired sheer will. Each of Cooper's 51 years of age are made obvious through every close-up the camera makes - the lines in his face a jarring contrast to an otherwise adolescent Grace Kelly - and yet it complements the broader film and the character quite nicely. While he has never been an emotive performer, his weathered mug serves as a nice canvas and window into the quiet storm that brews inside of Kane.<br />
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Cooper has certainly played action-savvy heroes before, but he's different here. <i>High Noon</i> is not a film crippled with a corny, propagandist agenda (<i>Sergeant York</i>), nor is it a dull, dawn out epic wherein Cooper is surrounded by a supporting cast more colorful than he (<i>For Whom the Bell Tolls</i>). <i>High Noon</i> is a breath of fresh air in that it's a picture wrought with anger; bookended by Frank Miller's vengeful anger and Will Kane's own anger towards Hadleyville for turning its back on him, Carl Foreman's pointed allegory to McCarthyism summons an honest, "human" hero out of Cooper, as opposed to the superficially "perfect" heroes he's played in <i>York</i> or <i>Yankees</i>.<br />
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As silly as it sounds, there is something very magical in watching a loner remain undaunted and overcome all odds to defeat the bad guy, and I'm tempted to credit Zinnemann's sharp direction for my own enjoyment of Cooper's performance. As usual, I don't think Cooper is a masterful actor here; his acting still reads as really simplistic at times (which is one of my biggest issues with him overall), and there're moments in his performance where I felt a more intense actor could have really packed a punch (curiously enough, Brando turned down the role, as did Monty Clift, which is baffling and awe-inspiring if only because I'm now playing out in my mind how both men would've handled the part). But for once, Cooper's general limitations as an actor fit inconspicuously into his film. I've spent a lot of time over the years crankily reviewing Cooper, so how lovely that we get to end on a high note.<br />
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<br />Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-33170492560063710962018-07-08T15:50:00.005-07:002018-07-08T15:50:53.663-07:00Kirk Douglas, The Bad and the Beautiful<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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If there's one thing I've deduced from the few Kirk Douglas performances I've watched so far, it's that he's quite good at playing a dick. In quick succession, Douglas delivered a pompous boxer in <i>Champion</i>, a pompous reporter in <i>Ace in the Hole</i>, and a hard ass detective in <i>Detective Story</i> who's technically a good guy but kind of pompous in the sense that he's riddled with toxic masculinity<i>. </i>As they say, if it ain't broke, don't fix it - and thus we're here to witness Douglas' third rendering of an ambitious tool who backstabs his way to the top, this time in the form of a Hollywood producer.<br />
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<i>The Bad and the Beautiful </i>is, in my opinion, the most enjoyable watch out of the aforementioned Douglas films. One might assume, going into the film, that we are to see Douglas ravage up the screen as he claws his way atop the Hollywood ladder. Alas, this is not the case - Douglas' Jonathan Shields, while fundamentally the driving force of the film, is projected to us through the eyes of three secondary characters, thus eliminating ample screen time and any opportunity for impactful character development.<br />
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If I had to nitpick about prior performances, I'd say that Douglas has a tendency to come off as one-note whenever he plays up his characters' douchebaggery. In <i>Champion</i> and <i>Ace in the Hole</i>, there's little else to read from him outside of the abject sliminess of the men he plays; this can make for some tiresome viewing experiences when "cad" is the only facet of the main character that registers with the viewer. The being said, <i>Beautiful </i>is different in that Jonathan is presented to us piecemeal; the core element of Jonathan (that being a man who is pompous) still stands, albeit at a curiously less saturated punch.<br />
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I actually expected Douglas to be much more villainous than he ended up being. Anyone familiar with the lore of Old Hollywood know that studio heads a la Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer, and Harry Cohn were all horrible men. Anyone who has paid attention to Harvey Weinstein's colossal fall from grace has a high-level idea of how seedy and manipulative powerful men in Hollywood can be. With this context, Douglas' Jonathan Shields is practically the Bernadette Soubirous in comparison. Described in the plot summaries as being "ruthless" and "unscrupulous," these are words that do not come to mind while watching Douglas in this film. In fact, Douglas is quite boring for much of the film - he plays "ruthless" Hollywood producer with a lack of vitriol and dynamism, thus coming off as much more ordinary instead.<br />
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He is charming to start as a younger, hungry Shields, boasting a cocky yet charismatic determination. Beyond the first act, however, things become stagnant. With the exception of a killer final confrontation at the tail-end of their storyline, his chapter with Lana Turner is, for the most part, quite tepid (the courting of Georgia is pretty dull, though Jonathan's internal conflict towards her could have been interesting to explore...but of course this is not). What's more, Douglas' storyline with Dick Powell is just about the most boring of the bunch (how does one manage to be so uninspiring when one is essentially responsible for homewrecking a friend's life?) Whereas <i>Champion</i>, <i>Ace in the Hole</i>, and <i>Detective Story</i> often had Douglas playing up the nastiness a bit too much, I was disappointed by the lack of it overall here.<br />
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Likely daring at the time of its release, <i>The Bad and the Beautiful </i>is, through a modern lens, a safe, glossy version of bold story it claims it's trying to tell. You might assume that MGM was never going to allow the picture to <i>really</i> <i>go there</i>, so as not to expose the true underbelly of and trigger controversy within its own community. So taking it for what it is - the picture is pretty decent. The role of Jonathan Shields, however, is a disappointment. It's one thing to be too much of a dick such that it becomes grating, and it's another thing to not really be one when the role calls for it.<br />
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<br />Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-65131409670540918192018-07-01T00:45:00.000-07:002018-07-01T00:46:13.781-07:00José Ferrer, Moulin Rouge<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Bravado was what made José Ferrer's performance in <i>Cyrano de Bergerac</i> so compelling to me, but not a lick of it is to be found in <i>Moulin Rouge</i>. However, the body disfigurement - and therefore, Oscar-baity "grotesqueness," if you will - is still there, this time child-sized legs on a grown man instead of an aggressively large nose.<br />
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It's interesting, with the thought of <i>Cyrano </i>still firmly on the mind, to see such a subdued Ferrer - he is the owner of a voice that is so deep and rich, one that practically begs to be bellowed to the back rows of a theater. With every word that Ferrer speaks in <i>Moulin Rouge</i>, it seems as though he's trying his very best to pull it back a few notches, so as to not disturb the high-level message that this is a "very pitiable" man.<br />
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I make a point about Ferrer's voice and the bravado he brings to <i>Cyrano</i> because I believe that - in spite of what you might think about his Oscar-winning turn - there is an undisputed passion that drives that performance forward. Not so much with <i>Moulin Rouge</i>.<br />
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His Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec is about as filled to the brim with "baggage" as a character could get - a cripple, an alcoholic, an embarrassment to his family name, a self-hating and lonely and insecure man hungry for love unfound - and yet the performance Ferrer delivers on screen does not translate as one that's as complicated as the written character. In fact, it's quite straight-forward and kind of dull to watch. It would seem as though Ferrer interprets all of these qualities in his performance via a series of somber, exhausted stares at or beyond the camera.<br />
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This is a mostly internalized performance (as it should be), yet there isn't much passion to be seen in his face or through his line delivery. He needn't be vocally audacious by way of <i>Cyrano </i>of course, but for a character that demands your pity, there isn't much here to be felt. I didn't feel bad for him - I just didn't really care altogether.<br />
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<br />Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-74012397351837465032018-06-27T00:15:00.005-07:002018-06-27T22:53:09.473-07:00Best Picture: The Greatest Show on Earth<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjpnCS1BXUf6BqJnccjLJ4FdrGUQxmYBHnQFv022ZcMSy51S4IuYU5gBceTk2IG7goqClUhqYlaPKfOLXGxxRi5STd7oLfV4DAWnLQRwUYRVgafAhQt3SPWEr2w6xUkfCVUWWmGhErepQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-04-10+at+12.56.18+AM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1204" data-original-width="1600" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjpnCS1BXUf6BqJnccjLJ4FdrGUQxmYBHnQFv022ZcMSy51S4IuYU5gBceTk2IG7goqClUhqYlaPKfOLXGxxRi5STd7oLfV4DAWnLQRwUYRVgafAhQt3SPWEr2w6xUkfCVUWWmGhErepQ/s640/Screen+Shot+2018-04-10+at+12.56.18+AM.jpg" width="640" /></a><br />
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At its core, <i>The Greatest Show on Earth</i> is a film constructed to be gawked at. If you view it from this perspective, the film is bearable enough. If you view it expecting anything more than a total embarrassment of visual riches and gimmicks, you'll be one of the many voices out there who believe this film to be one of the worst Best Picture winners in the history of the Academy Awards.<br />
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I for one couldn't help but be drawn in to the film's haphazard affinity for excess. The wild circus acts made me nervous. The weaving in of numerous, elaborate circus sequences don't make no kind of storytelling sense, but it's enough such that by the end of the film, I found myself researching the history of circuses. In spite of what you or I can criticize about this film, I think this shows that at the very least, <i>The Greatest Show on Earth</i> can still serve as a launchpad for igniting one's curiosity into The Circus; a grand relic of a world, one that was once an important channel of entertainment to the masses across the country.<br />
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That being said, this is still a shoddy film with little narrative backbone. Watching it, one might wonder why it <i>had</i> to be made, especially considering that the characters hint that the eponymous "<i>Greatest Show on Earth</i>" is increasingly faced with financial challenges at the very beginning of the film. Seems to me that Cecil B. DeMille just up and decided one day that he was to craft a filmic love letter to The Circus, perhaps by way of his own nostalgia...perhaps he was once a young boy enthralled by The Circus at one point in his life. This is demonstrated through his wildly operatic narrations in the film, which serve as some of the most hilarious executions of written word I've heard in a movie in some time. And yet, I'm baffled by how one can allegedly love something so much while also finding so little substance underneath its (many) surface(s).<br />
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Leveraging a peculiar documentary-née-drama format, the structure of scenes and tonality are totally disjointed. To start, you might find footage of men setting up a circus tent against the sounds of DeMille rambling on about how setting up a circus tent is one of the more heroic things man can do, followed by a 10-or-so minute sequence of what is essentially filmed footage of an actual circus, then followed by some actual fiction where we see the likes of Betty Hutton, Charlton Heston, Cornel Wilde and James Stewart act out some wildly ridiculous material.<br />
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It's been some time since an actor has ground my gears the way Betty Hutton does in this film - yikes. Every single word and affectation from her is just horrible. James Stewart as a fugitive doctor moonlighting as a clown who never takes off his makeup is a description that just about sums up the audacity of how melodramatic this film can veer. Don't get me wrong - it's enjoyable enough to watch - from Cornel Wilde's hand to the big train crash to Charlton Heston's blood transfusion to Gloria Grahame almost getting her face smashed in by an elephant, the drama that lives in <i>The Greatest Show on Earth</i> is cheap, soapy fun.<br />
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The spectacle of <i>The Greatest Show on Earth</i> is pretty enjoyable to watch as well. The film's own detriment lies in the fact that it tries to be too much, and cohesion is put to the wayside. Is this a quality film? No. Is this a worthy Best Picture winner? No. Is it much too long and nonsensical? Yes. Is it a guilty pleasure? I'd say so!<br />
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<br />Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-21439323823489123442018-05-21T22:25:00.000-07:002018-05-22T21:20:10.108-07:00Cheers to Five Years<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's been FIVE years since I started this blog. It's amazing that I've kept it running for as long as I have without giving up (though I know that in the last year or so it has seemed as though I've given up on it quite a bit)!<br />
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The truth is: work has been eating my life, not in a good way. It's to the point where I want to cherish every minute of my free time by doing absolutely nothing. I know this isn't good. And it has been tricky - being cognizant of the fact that there are passions you want to pursue, passions that are being put in the back burner because you can't quite reconcile the energy to simply do it and get it done.<br />
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But, another truth: I've not given up on this blog yet. I may be putting out a severely low volume of posts by the month, but the fact of the matter is, I'm still here, still typing away when I can, still watching movies but not writing as fast as I should (<i>The Greatest Show on Earth</i> and <i>Moulin Rouge</i> are next in the queue), still passionate about film, still daydreaming about watching <i>A Woman Under the Influence</i> some day but frustrated that I can't act on it at this exact moment in time because I'm abiding by a goal and promise I made for myself five years ago. I think about films - past, present, future - every day. Even if I don't write every day - the love I have for the medium endures.<br />
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So I hope that you bear with me as I continue to get my shit together. And I hope that you continue to check-in, to read, to comment, to share your thoughts. That's what keeps me going!Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-78506601216154774632018-04-07T16:05:00.000-07:002018-04-07T16:05:24.206-07:00Ralph Richardson, The Sound Barrier<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi66Rljyd0PXbiLmTZi_T5b5rbnHK5yXLZQbBVW7B6Tgpa7L95rDnyPHFBK4369ezpGYaQREhQI-19BWzJoPcbQJuN30eIlFXIJXJbuj0NbjySM4co1BGpBC-1TImeqh_NuIUyWUqK7Fe0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2018-03-25+at+10.14.15+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="969" data-original-width="1340" height="462" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi66Rljyd0PXbiLmTZi_T5b5rbnHK5yXLZQbBVW7B6Tgpa7L95rDnyPHFBK4369ezpGYaQREhQI-19BWzJoPcbQJuN30eIlFXIJXJbuj0NbjySM4co1BGpBC-1TImeqh_NuIUyWUqK7Fe0/s640/Screen+Shot+2018-03-25+at+10.14.15+PM.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>Won</b>: New York Film Critics Circle - Best Actor | National Board of Review - Best Actor</td></tr>
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Chuck Yeager may have been the first man to exceed the speed of sound in level flight, but if the Brits behind <i>The Sound Barrier</i> had their way, that'd have been an achievement accomplished by a British pilot who had in turn been egged on by an aircraft-obsessed oil magnate.<br />
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<i>The Sound Barrier</i> is a run-of-the-mill "science" picture that attempts to spotlight a complex scientific advancement for the masses a la <i>Madame Curie</i> or <i>The Story of Louis Pasteur</i>. Oddly enough, the film often puts aside the tactics of actually breaking of the sound barrier in favor of some fictionalized "behind-the-scenes" family drama that ultimately feels excessive and misplaced.<br />
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At the right of center of said drama is Ralph Richardson as the wealthy, obsessive John Ridgefield. I say right of center because, while he is undoubtedly the catalyst driving the plot forward, <i>The Sound Barrier</i> is an ensemble film through and through, and lays its focus on a variety of actors (Ann Todd, Nigel Patrick, John Justin) throughout its duration. For a good chunk of the film, Richardson is not seen or present. It's telling that a search of the film via Google Images summons a whole lot of stills that do not include him.<br />
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Ridgefield's stoic characterization is acted well enough by Richardson, but this is is a type of character I've seen him do before and one that I assume is not far out from his comfort zone. His climactic "a-ha" moment, in which he reveals the lonely man which lives beneath that brittle exterior, is sensitively executive yet far from sensational.<br />
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Ridgefield is essentially a watered-down version of Richardson's own Austin Sloper, and, similar to that role, he'd have likely been a better fit for the Supporting Actor field. Alas, the science of collective groupthink secured him wins via the New York Film Critics and National Board of Review bodies; in my opinion, the part was simply too minimal to make a strong enough case for Lead Actor. He is effective when he's around, though not a standout.<br />
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<br />Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-20046785787699938512018-03-12T01:20:00.001-07:002018-03-12T01:25:55.931-07:001952: 25th Academy Awards<br />
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">And the Nominees Were... </span></b></div>
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<li><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>MARLON BRANDO</b>, Viva Zapata!</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><b>GARY COOPER</b>, High Noon</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><b>KIRK DOUGLAS</b>, The Bad and the Beautiful</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><b>JOSÉ FERRER</b>, Moulin Rouge</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><b>ALEC GUINNESS</b>, The Lavender Hill Mob</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><b>SHIRLEY BOOTH</b>, Come Back, Little Sheba</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><b>JOAN CRAWFORD</b>, Sudden Fear</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><b>BETTE DAVIS,</b> The Star</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; font-size: x-small;"><b>JULIE HARRIS</b>, The Member of the Wedding</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: x-small;"><b>SUSAN HAYWARD</b>, With a Song in My Heart</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>plus </i><b>RALPH RICHARDSON</b>, The Sound Barrier</span></li>
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Well, I said I wouldn't take 7 months to cover and wrap up 1951, but that didn't end up working out. I won't make promises this time around, but I'll just say that I'll try my damnedest to produce posts at a regular enough cadence.<br />
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I'm a bit more interested in the Best Actor category than I am Best Actress this time around. I'm curious to see where Brando and Douglas will go with their films (How will a Method Brando pull off being a Mexican? Will Douglas be his usual abrasive, cranky self?), and Alec Guinness charmed me so much in <i>Kind Hearts and Coronets </i>that I hope <i>The Lavender Hill Mob</i> will be a similar delight as well. The Best Actress field seems "meh," - I'm not particularly excited about seeing three out of the five.<br />
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Looking forward to starting up a brand new year - who are your favorites and who do you think I'll like the most?Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8014874020674080213.post-89089528258689541522018-03-11T20:50:00.000-07:002018-03-11T23:48:33.467-07:00Best Actress 1951<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">5. Eleanor Parker, <i>Detective Story</i></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9z4wqQnGfazXS2A6cR3phw5IZU8zQI6HE0KI3s7szA4msUq8woix2pEHD0samGsHhgl6-_-VyrbnAZSXzOrvm2QmOlVIAxnYZFi61FP7U4rls6K3W8V0sYwOqc7e10D-WHHy_QNiCQ2I/s1600/Oscar2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="231" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9z4wqQnGfazXS2A6cR3phw5IZU8zQI6HE0KI3s7szA4msUq8woix2pEHD0samGsHhgl6-_-VyrbnAZSXzOrvm2QmOlVIAxnYZFi61FP7U4rls6K3W8V0sYwOqc7e10D-WHHy_QNiCQ2I/s1600/Oscar2.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">4. Jane Wyman, <i>The Blue Veil</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">3. Shelley Winters,<i> A Place in the Sun</i></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOVIvvTX7GT9f-fr8gOtsKExDGMfMmLbbyLVwz4veh0dDg97-fxLBqDzWNJo2uvL6L7ZFYP0UsescvtfiFRKWMPMBIZv0fB_jfMSO9y9K05024PqNYEFbQmj_HP6pCQEUv1ZO49WSkh-0/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-09-05+at+4.27.10+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1197" data-original-width="1600" height="474" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOVIvvTX7GT9f-fr8gOtsKExDGMfMmLbbyLVwz4veh0dDg97-fxLBqDzWNJo2uvL6L7ZFYP0UsescvtfiFRKWMPMBIZv0fB_jfMSO9y9K05024PqNYEFbQmj_HP6pCQEUv1ZO49WSkh-0/s640/Screen+Shot+2017-09-05+at+4.27.10+PM.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">2. Katharine Hepburn, <i>The African Queen</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>1. Vivien Leigh, <i>A Streetcar Named Desire</i></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>IN CONCLUSION</b></span></div>
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<b>Vivien Leigh</b> runs away with the win (but really, no one else stood a chance). Leigh's performance is one for the ages, and thank God for that because without her, the field is pretty bleak. The rest of our nominees are essentially afterthoughts to Leigh. <b>Katharine Hepburn</b> comfortably lands in second place, but I don't think <b>Jane Wyman</b>, <b>Eleanor Parker</b>, and <b>Shelley Winters</b> turn in performances worthy of nominations. Parker ends up last because I found her performance to be a one-note, supporting part. I don't care for Wyman's work in <i>The Blue Veil</i> whatsoever, but in deciding the lesser of two evils between her and Parker, I suppose Wyman gets the edge for having a larger part and carrying the weight of a horribly dull film on her shoulders. Winters gets in ahead of those two because I felt a more visceral reaction watching her performance than I did the other two (it should be noted I originally gave Winters a 3, but in retrospect I've downgraded her score to a 2).</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">OMISSIONS & OVERSIGHTS</span></b></div>
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Regarding the sixth spot - it's a tough call! Could it have been <b>Elizabeth Taylor</b> for <b>A Place in the Sun</b>? That would surely have been a nice "Star is Born" introductory nomination...though it seems like Shelley Winters was the one snagging the Actress accolades. If not Taylor, perhaps <b>Deborah Kerr</b> in the box office smash <b>Quo Vadis</b>? I also wonder if <b>Leslie Caron</b> was in the mix for <b>An American in Paris</b>, the very thought of which makes me cringe because Caron is god awful there.</div>
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Some other names: <b>Jan Sterling</b> won Best Actress via the National Board of Review for <b>Ace in the Hole</b>, but her chances may have been slim given that the film was not well represented at the awards. Perhaps <b>Susan Hayward</b> for <b>David and Bathsheba</b>? Additionally, <b>June Allyson</b> won a Golden Globe for <b>Too Young to Kiss</b> and may have contended for a spot in the final five. And, while likely a total stretch, I've heard good things about <b>Anita Björk</b> in <b>Miss Julie</b>. </div>
Allenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11964977693763983338noreply@blogger.com5