The Executioner's Song
Lawrence Schiller, 1982 (8.7*)
Showing posts with label Pulitzer Prize. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pulitzer Prize. Show all posts
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Gone With the Wind
Best Picture (AA)
Much ballyhooed epic long considered the “most popular” movie is really just a too lengthy soap opera – it needs an hour-long trim as each scene runs on and on - with an overblown budget (and music score) and one good war scene: the train platform at Atlanta littered with hundreds of wounded and dying soldiers. Unfortunately, author of the Pulitzer-prize winning book Margaret Mitchell couldn’t convince Hollywood that it “couldn’t be filmed”; it is better as literature. Even at four hours, the film is just a synopsis of what seemed like decades in Scarlett’s life (maybe it was decades to read!). The film would have been better as a 10-12 hr miniseries, and with perhaps less-stereotypical characters all-around, not just the slaves either.
It’s ironic that the two leads, Scarlett O’Hara, played by Vivien Leigh in her Oscar-winning performance, and Rhett Butler, Clark Gable at his most wooden, are really two of the least likeable characters in the story. Each is arrogant, shallow, and self-centered, while their friends Melanie (Olivia de Haviland) and Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard) have the real humanity and heart, along with Oscar®-winning nanny Hattie McDaniel, who steals the film and received the only Academy Award for an African-American actor until Sidney Poitier roughly 25 years later, and the only woman until Whoopi Goldberg half a century later! Ironically, she’s really better as a comic actress yet her tearful scenes here likely tipped the voters.
Directed by Oscar®-winner Victor Fleming (The Wizard of Oz), the film’s plus is a great epic look, which ironically makes some of the faked studio scenes stand out more, like a carriage ride with Rhett and Scarlett in Atlanta before the war with an obviousy filmed backdrop moving at a different speed than they are, or the overused silouettes of actors against giant painted or filmed backdrops. This film also screams for widescreen, but alas, “Cinemascope” had not been invented yet so we’re forever stuck with the square 35mm image – but at least they used color, which the remastering has faithfully maintained. Winner of a then-record 8 Oscars, with 13 nominations.
Quote: As God is my witness, if I have to lie, cheat, steal, or kill, I shall never be hungry again. - Scarlett (apparently losing all ethics in a dog eat dog world!) Read more...
Friday, January 23, 2009
The Great White Hope
Martin Ritt, 1970 (8.2*)
This is a hard-hitting and Pulitzer prize-winning play by Howard Sackler about boxer Jack Johnson, the first African-American heavyweight champ. James Earl Jones recreated his Tony-winning Broadway role, and it rightfully made him a star – he even looks like a good boxer, not an actor boxer (like Stallone).
Jones was nominated for an Oscar®, and should have won. Jane Alexander as his mistress was also nominated. The film is primarily about the racism throughout American that brought up each new “great white hope”, or inferior Causasian boxers, in attempts to dethrone Johnson. This is really a tough film to watch, especially with liberal use of the N word (even from Johnson himself), because you know this man will not get equal treatment or respect, no matter what. Johnson also flaunted his celebrity, with Caucasian girlfriends, expensive coats, taunting chatter to the fight crowds, which made the hatred even worse. (To paraphrase 48 hours, he was everyone's worst nightmare, a black man with a title..)
Martin Ritt (Hud, Norma Rae) bravely exposes social injustice in his films, and was once blacklisted, which he covered in the film The Front, with Woody Allen playing a dramatic lead for Ritt. When I tried to see this film in Georgia just after release, the theater was evacuated for a bomb threat, so the racism exposed in the film still brought out the worst in people half a century later. This is a great sports and boxing film, which must be seen in widescreen, if you can withstand the hatred you’ll witness.
Quote: (when he weighed less then Brady) Can you believe that? The man says I’m lighter than you!
Read more...
This is a hard-hitting and Pulitzer prize-winning play by Howard Sackler about boxer Jack Johnson, the first African-American heavyweight champ. James Earl Jones recreated his Tony-winning Broadway role, and it rightfully made him a star – he even looks like a good boxer, not an actor boxer (like Stallone).
Jones was nominated for an Oscar®, and should have won. Jane Alexander as his mistress was also nominated. The film is primarily about the racism throughout American that brought up each new “great white hope”, or inferior Causasian boxers, in attempts to dethrone Johnson. This is really a tough film to watch, especially with liberal use of the N word (even from Johnson himself), because you know this man will not get equal treatment or respect, no matter what. Johnson also flaunted his celebrity, with Caucasian girlfriends, expensive coats, taunting chatter to the fight crowds, which made the hatred even worse. (To paraphrase 48 hours, he was everyone's worst nightmare, a black man with a title..)
Martin Ritt (Hud, Norma Rae) bravely exposes social injustice in his films, and was once blacklisted, which he covered in the film The Front, with Woody Allen playing a dramatic lead for Ritt. When I tried to see this film in Georgia just after release, the theater was evacuated for a bomb threat, so the racism exposed in the film still brought out the worst in people half a century later. This is a great sports and boxing film, which must be seen in widescreen, if you can withstand the hatred you’ll witness.
Quote: (when he weighed less then Brady) Can you believe that? The man says I’m lighter than you!
Sunday, January 18, 2009
In Cold Blood
Richard Brooks, 1967, bw (8.8*)
Journalistic filming of Truman Capote’s Pulitzer-winning non-fiction book about the ruthless killing of the Clutter family of Kansas by two burglers, who had heard in prison that the family had a safe in the house. Director Brooks has made this chilling account more realistic and frightening by the use of flashbacks in the killers words, and a slightly grainy ‘newsreel’ look, also by building up to the actual crime, which is mostly shot by flashlight. One of the more spine-tingling crime re-enactments on film.
A later film, Capote (which won an acting Oscar for Philip Seymour Hoffman), examines this period in Capote’s life, when he was torn between researching his book, justice for the Clutters, and sympathy for the killers, who were awaiting execution.
The killers are excellently portrayed by Scott Wilson (from In the Heat of the Night), and tv's Robert Black (a former Little Rascal), in their best performances of their careers. This is a must-see for all true crime fans, more eerie than any Hitchcock film, in fact, it's almost too realistic to recommend.
Quote: That Mr. Clutter was a real nice gentleman, right up until I slit his throat.
Read more...
Journalistic filming of Truman Capote’s Pulitzer-winning non-fiction book about the ruthless killing of the Clutter family of Kansas by two burglers, who had heard in prison that the family had a safe in the house. Director Brooks has made this chilling account more realistic and frightening by the use of flashbacks in the killers words, and a slightly grainy ‘newsreel’ look, also by building up to the actual crime, which is mostly shot by flashlight. One of the more spine-tingling crime re-enactments on film.
A later film, Capote (which won an acting Oscar for Philip Seymour Hoffman), examines this period in Capote’s life, when he was torn between researching his book, justice for the Clutters, and sympathy for the killers, who were awaiting execution.
The killers are excellently portrayed by Scott Wilson (from In the Heat of the Night), and tv's Robert Black (a former Little Rascal), in their best performances of their careers. This is a must-see for all true crime fans, more eerie than any Hitchcock film, in fact, it's almost too realistic to recommend.
Quote: That Mr. Clutter was a real nice gentleman, right up until I slit his throat.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
All the President's Men
Alan J. Pakula, 1972 (9*)
Based on the true story of Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who broke the story of Nixon's illegal directives, Watergate "Plumbers", and usurping of the Constitution, and which eventually led to his resignation to avoid impeachment. This is a tightly plotted film put together like a mystery-thriller, and stars an excellent cast, led by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, supported by Jason Robards as the Post editor Benjamin Bradley, who gave them license to dig into and run the story. Based on the Pulitzer-winning book, this is docudrama at its best, even knowing the eventual outcome doesn't spoil the suspense.
Read more...
Based on the true story of Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who broke the story of Nixon's illegal directives, Watergate "Plumbers", and usurping of the Constitution, and which eventually led to his resignation to avoid impeachment. This is a tightly plotted film put together like a mystery-thriller, and stars an excellent cast, led by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, supported by Jason Robards as the Post editor Benjamin Bradley, who gave them license to dig into and run the story. Based on the Pulitzer-winning book, this is docudrama at its best, even knowing the eventual outcome doesn't spoil the suspense.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
You Can't Take It With You
Dir: Frank Capra, 1938 (8.3*)
Best Picture (AA)
This is one's of Frank Capra's signature films: a depression era anti-capitalist, pro avg joe type film. The story centers on businessman James Stewart, the uninterested, unmotivated inheritor of dad Edward Arnold's capitalist empire, the type of guy who's always so busy making deals he never takes time to know those closest to him. Stewart falls for peppy secretary Jean Arthur, whose lovably eccentric family is led by Capra favorite Lionel Barrymore, in probably his most appealing role, Spring Byington as his daughter, Ann Miller (an awful dancer as a parody) as another granddaughter (Arthur's sister), and a host of males in the basement inventing both new fireworks and other enjoyable toys. The funniest sequence involves an IRS tax collector in the family living room grilling Barrymore as to WHY he never filed any tax returns nor paid any taxes. The play by George Kaufman and Moss Hart won a Pulitzer prize, and this deservedly won Best Picture and Director in 38 but for some reason isn't seen very often anymore. Perhaps its lack of a strong plot. "Repression from corporate capitalists" also comes to mind, as the film would have been banned and then used as fodder by the HUAC had it come out 15 yrs later, but the anti-business attitude of the pre-war 30's depression era made it not only timely and popular but still relevant today. Noticed by the Oscars as well, 7 nominations, 2 Oscars
Quote: Did you ever notice how they try to use fear to control us? (Barrymore)
Read more...
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Driving Miss Daisy
Dir: Bruce Beresford, 1989 (8.1*)
Best Picture (AA, GG)
Gentle southern comedy about a strong-willed, traditional southern widow, Oscar winner Jessica Tandy, and her chauffeur Hoke, Morgan Freeman, in what should have been his first Oscar winning role, based on Alfred Uhry's Pulitzer Prize-winning play. Oscar nominee Dan Akroyd is the frustrated but loving son, in his best and only Oscar-nominated performance, who talks her into a chauffeur in the first place against her will after she has a minor accident in the driveway. Beresford has used terrific acting to make this a heartwarming and moving film, yet at the same time showing people of different backgrounds and races using kindness and humility to become close and loyal friends . Four Oscars
Read more...
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Dir: Mike Nichols, 1966, bw (8.5*)
Read more...
AFI Top 100
Stage director Mike Nichols makes an impressive dramatic film debut in Edward Albee’s Pulitzer prize-winning play. Elizabeth Taylor (who added quite a few pounds and won her 2nd Oscar® for best actress), and husband Richard Burton are jaded married college professors George and Martha, who are entertaining a new young professor, George Segal and his ditzy wife, Sandy Dennis (Oscar® for Supp. Actress). What starts as fun degrades into more cruel revelations and distress in this party in emotional hell. Ensemble acting doesn’t get any better than this, everyone leaves you emotionally drained. All the actors were Oscar nominated, the ladies both won, and it's likely the picture would have but was (before ratings) banned to filmgoers under 18 due to coarse language, so the Oscar went to the tame and inoffensive Sound of Music. 5 Oscars®
A Streetcar Named Desire
Dir: Elia Kazan, 1951, bw (8.9*)
AFI and Time Mag Top 100
Not for all tastes, but a terrifically acted version of the Tennessee Williams Pulitzer-winning play about aberrant, abusive relationships. Marlon Brando is searing as Stanley Kowalski, ironically the only main actor to not win an Oscar for his role in this. Janet Leigh as Blanche du Bois (Best Actress), moves in with sister Stella, Kowalski's wife played by Kim Hunter (Supp. Actress), and dates hopeful, and naive beau Karl Malden (Supp. Actor). This was a field day for the new school of 'method actors', while Leigh proved her Oscar® for Gone With the Wind was not a one-trick fluke. One of Kazan’s best, along with A Face in the Crowd, and On the Waterfront which won Marlon his first, and belated Oscar®. 4 Oscars®
Quote: "They told me to take the streetcar named Desire, transfer to one called Cemetaries, go six blocks and get off at Elysian Fields." - Blanche
Saturday, August 30, 2008
To Kill a Mockingbird
Dir: Robert Mulligan, 1962, bw (10*)
Best Drama (GG)
AFI Top 100
This beautifully small and simple story makes one wish that Harper Lee (from Alabama) had written more novels, this one won a Pulitzer Prize. Gregory Peck had his most enduring and universal role, and won an Oscar, as a southern lawyer fighting racial injustice in a small town. Oscar nominee Mary Badham was his daughter, a terrific child actress in a part she was "born to play". Look for Robert Duvall in one of his first, and very small parts, yet a very integral role in the plot. This has a very authentic ring, and one of the few films that fights for social and criminal justice for everyone.
Quote: They always said it was a sin to kill a mockingbird.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Lonesome Dove
Dir: Simon Wincer, 1989, 6 hrs. (9.1*)
Larry McMurtry is our generation's best novelist (Terms of Endearment, Hud, The Last Picture Show), and here his epic, grandiose Pulitzer-winning novel is made into a worthy miniseries starring Robert Duvall and Tommie Lee Jones. The title is the small ranch on the Rio Grande they live on, but the drama of the series comes from a 2,500 mile cattle drive from Texas to Montana. Angelica Huston and Diane Lane also star, and for once they filmed a novel properly. My only complaint (hence 9*'s not 10) is that its not widescreen, shot in 35mm for TV, otherwise the perfect Western. 6 Emmys for 18 nominations.
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