1954: The Year that Coulda Been a Contender

I'm going to go ahead and assume this was another one of those years where the winner was so obvious that they nominated some other movies by some kind of arbitrary selection process. Like names in a hat. Or headless chickens on a giant selection wheel. One of those. Certainly no other options. Actually, this blog is a landmark for two reasons. One is that my Internet-moronic self has figured out how to add links (which means I have to go back and add links to like 8 million entries now). And also because I'm going to get all faux-feminist on everybody. I usually chalk things up to "oh you know, it was a different time" whenever there's a borderline racist/sexist scene in these movies. But even I have my breaking points. Excited yet?

I wish I could've segued right into the movie I was talking about, but the alphabet demands I instead start with The Caine Mutiny. This reverse-reminded me of Mister Roberts actually. In fact, I think I was doing my 1955 write-up which included Mister Roberts when I was watching The Caine Mutiny, which is just way confusing. MR is a "heart-warming comedy" about a Navy dude that stands up to his oppressive commander and then gets relocated and killed. TCM is a drama about a Navy dude who stands up to his questionably oppressive commander, takes him to Naval court, loses, and probably gets kicked out. I mean...they're not even kind of different. It's like comparing two Steven Seagal sequels. I would definitely say that TCM is the better of the two, because it at least tries to be serious. But it's also worse in the sense that the commander wasn't really that crazy. He was played by Bogart for one thing, so you already like him more than everybody else. In addition, it made it seem like the guy going after him was just really paranoid. Which would be fine if they addressed that he was paranoid. Instead, we're asked to sympathize with his journey to oust a man who only "might be a little crazy" and then have the Naval court basically tell him he didn't have a case. Well that's a realistic outcome. But what's the point of the movie then? It's well-acted but still a bit too long. People are always telling me how short movies back then were. Where are they? Maybe the arbitrary nomination requirement was "anything over two hours." There's definitely a lot of star power in the movie, but to be honest...that didn't mean as much back then. And it certainly didn't mean as much in the 40s, 30s, and so on. The reason being that a lot of these actors just worked for film companies and starred in whatever they were told to star in. Plus, movies filmed in like two weeks or something crazy. So big time actors were in a lot of stuff. So did Bogart do a much better job in this role than a lot of other people would've? Certainly. Does that mean it's a great movie? Not really. It's a "solid" movie though. I'll say that.

A movie I wish I'd paid more attention to is The Country Girl. From the title, does it sound like something that is A) something I'd enjoy or B) something that requires my full attention? Nope! And its plot description doesn't make it sound too interesting either. As it turned out, the film is actually pretty interesting. It's about an alcoholic actor who is washed up and gets a role that might be a chance to get his career back on track. So why does it have the title it does? I'm not sure because I missed the title drop, if there was one. I do know that it refers to Grace Kelly's character, who is a sort of living MacGuffin. I was thinking about making "MacGuffin" a link to explain what it is, but that would be too easy. Can't go explaining all of my references. Now allow me to explain my reference: a MacGuffin is something that drives the plot without really being super important within it. So basically, every James Bond villain plot ever. Why did the bad guy go to Venice? So that Bond could have a nifty Venice chase scene! So in this movie Grace Kelly is both the most important and least important person. She kind of falls for this other actor who's not an alcoholic (which is a plus). But in the end she decides to stick with the schmo because we all know that when alcoholics quit drinking it's for realsies and they never relapse right? It was a good movie up until that BS ending. And it also had what I thought was a fantastic line: "they all start out as Juliets and end up Lady Macbeths." I want to put that on a t-shirt and make millions by selling it to nice guys in college who aren't "edgy" enough for the lehdays. It will further damage their dating chances but they will love it. Anyway, this film caused a big upset when Grace Kelly won Best Actress. There's a whole story online about how Judy Garland was expected to win and all of the drama surrounding it. I haven't seen her movie, but since Grace Kelly essentially mopes around for an hour and forty while Bing Crosby and William Holden act around her, I'd say the uproar was appropriate. So yeah it's an interesting film that's kind of like a slightly different The Lost Weekend, which I will review in 9 blog years. Not much new ground broken, but certainly better than the Rom-Dram I was expecting it to be.

And herein lies the sexism, with Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Holy. Freaking. Crap. Let me begin by saying that the Eddie Cantor song "The Dumber They Are" is one of my favorite songs because it's so terrible and misogynistic that it's hilarious to me. Because I have a dark sense of humor. My favorite episode of Seinfeld is the one where Jerry steals the marble rye from an old lady. He's stealing bread from an old lady! That's possibly a felony! And he's doing it to help George with his future in-laws! Genius. Dark and genius. But this movie is just messed up. Granted, it's a goofy musical of the 50s. So it's not meant to be really serious. But this is like if Michael Bay directed a 50s musical. All of the dance sequences are SO over-the-top and the plot elements are really messed up but they're treated casually. Just like Michael Bay movies. Basically, this dude legit rides into town (he's a mountain man, no hyperbole) and takes a woman. Not woos a woman. Not sings a love ballad to a woman with implied wooing. He freaking TAKES her. Like in Taken. He would be the taker that Liam Neeson is voice-pwning over the phone. Then his six brothers get jealous and they ALL TAKE MORE WOMEN. Let me explain this again. All seven main characters take seven women from town, Viking style, and make them their wives. And they sing about it! And then the guys in town are mad because these women they had intended on wooing have been kidnapped. We're supposed to view the angry townspeople as villains, even though they're trying to save kidnapped women from crazed mountain men. It's probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my life. If I was making a movie making fun of movies like this, I would make this movie. I don't want to be mistaken for someone who is socially conscious and who cares about if people are offended, but this is offensive. Seriously. On the bright side, it might have single-handedly started the Women's Rights Movement. It would not surprise me.

A movie that's at least less offensive, even if it's not much better, is Three Coins in the Fountain. I may or may not have been playing Ocarina of Time on my 3DS about halfway through this movie. I'd like to tell you that I missed something by only half paying attention. But I didn't. And I checked the detailed TCM description to be sure. It's about three women who throw coins in a fountain (yes the metaphor is personified right from the getgo, I am also nauseated) wishing for love. It's in Italy anyway, so the scenery is nice. Oh sorry, I started talking about the scenery before I finished explaining the plot: all three of them find love. Spoilers! Forgot to warn about that. Of course, as the Netflix description says: "it happens in unexpected ways!" Well, it happened at all. Which isn't unexpected. Know what would've been cool? A harsh-ish study in fate where only two of their coins landed heads up or something and those two ended up finding love but the third did not. Did she fail to find love because that's what fate had in store for her or did she fail because she instigated a self-fulfilling prophecy? Interesting right? Lots better than this drivel. Even the opening song (sung beautifully by Sinatra, easily the only highlight) sort of implies that not everyone gets a happy ending. Then everyone does! Like 50s Rom-Com Shyamalan. It's not because I want everything to be depressing (although that's part of it), it's that I hate when movies essentially announce their intentions to you and then deliver. Or worse: announce a vaguely interesting intention and then don't do that. Actually, announcing your intentions and delivering can be fine. As long as that's not the whole point of the movie. But there's no B story here and no real suspense or surprise. Even my dad questioned its nomination and he loves old movies. So while it's true that I might be too cynical and biting to enjoy the movie at all, I think many can agree that this is a questionable choice for a nominee.

Which makes it differ from this year's absolutely deserving winner: On the Waterfront. Even today this plays as a fairly intense movie. Not because of the visible violence but for the violent themes within the film. Right from the beginning there's an undertone of suspense. We see Brando delivering a pigeon to a man, knowingly leading him to the roof and unknowingly leading him to his demise. The love interest in the movie is that dead man's sister. So you're like 10 minutes into the movie and the main character is dating the sister of the guy he indirectly killed. That's. Awesome. I should've known from Leonard Bernstein's music score that things were about to get hairy (just as I thought the music was a bit much, a dude up and gets thrown off a roof). The man was killed for coming forward to testify against the mob of sorts that had sprouted among the waterfront unions. Brando plays a man who used to be a prize fighter, until he threw a fight to help his brother out. This is revealed in the famous "contender" scene in the back of the car. Some say it was mostly ad-libbed. Some say the opposite. I say: who cares? It's a great scene! It relies heavily upon one of my favorite themes throughout fiction: the idea that someone could end up somewhere they're not supposed to be. That perhaps their destiny was one place, until a series of events knocked them off-course. Which is why my favorite line in the new Star Trek movie was "James Kirk was a great man, but that was another life." Can Kirk still be a great man even though his life didn't turn out the way it was supposed to? The answer there is yes. And in this movie Brando's character, Terry Malloy, ends up becoming far more important to society than he could have ever been as a fighter. So maybe he was right where he was supposed to be after all. The film is teeming with great actors and is directed by Elia Kazan, one of the all-time best directors. And I'd say it's probably his best work. Lit-trally everyone should watch this movie. It's powerful without being sappy and thought-provoking without being overly complex. It also doesn't overstay its welcome at a cool hour and forty-eight minutes. Just pointing that out.

Well that's it for 1954, not the most memorable year but I had the winner memorized years ago because it's one of my favorites. The fact that it was the winner, not the whole movie. That would be crazy. It feels good to be back, but I'm glad I took some time off. It was nice to watch a bunch of stuff that I didn't have to dissect to death. But now my batteries are re-charged and my war on the Academy continues. I don't know how good or bad 1953 is. All I know for now is it will include Romans killing Jesus, Romans killing Caesar, and Romans making out or something.

Quick Rant: A Non-Farewell to Arms and a Shakespeare Shout-Out

Well I've been on sabbatical for about a month from my journey backwards through The Oscars. Because sociological time travel can take its toll on you. I had watched so many movies from the 50s in close succession that I was coming dangerously close to calling women "doll" and then sharing my cigarette with them whilst ordering around my portrayed-in-a-borderline-racist-way elderly black female maid. Either that or I was taking a few weeks to re-watch all of Fringe, The Vampire Diaries, and Parks and Recreation. You decide. Either way, I'm back now (in black, in the saddle, and in the day). So today I am resuming my quest to watch every Best Picture nominee in history. And lambast them as needed. I'll also throw in some "quick rants" like this one that will deal with things that are very philisophically interesting as pertaining to media. Or that will talk about TV shows with cool explosions. Hopefully both. So keep an eye out tomorrow for my 1954 post, which I promise will contain enough pop culture references and hyperbolic insults to society (both modern and 50s era) that you'll hardly know I'm talking about movies you've never heard about.

I'd also like to take a second to direct you toward a guest piece that I wrote for some friends of mine who put on a great Shakespeare show in New York. They're called The Tempest Ladies and they basically achieve the impossible by putting on a Shakespeare show that I felt like sitting through. Don't be suspicious because of how optimistic I sound in the write-up, it really is me. I do enjoy things on occasion. So give the post and the accompanying trailer a look and check them out if you're in NYC. I'm looking at you, 58 page views from Russia who probably vacation here as Soviet spies on occasion! So anyway, here's the link: http://oneproducerinthecity.typepad.com/one_producer_in_the_city/2011/09/awesome-person-thursday-the-tempest-ladies.html

I hope you enjoy, and I will see you back here tomorrow (all 3 and counting of you!) for some 50s craziness.

1955: The Year that Was Basically Gossip Girl Minus Blake Lively

I actually don't watch Gossip Girl and have never seen it so I suppose I can't be using it too effectively as a means to make fun of stuff. But what I do know is that I'd probably intensely dislike all the melodrama, but it'd possibly be worth it to ogle Blake Lively. If my unemployment ever reaches a staggering second year, I'll watch the full run of the show and make a lot of subsequent jokes about myself. But for now, we'll have to settle with the 3(!) melodramas from this year to make fun of. Luckily I'm a big fan of the winner, so it's not all negative.

We begin with Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing. Do I normally capitalize words like "is" and "a?" I'm not certain...it's kind of bothering me. Like, a lot. I'm just that way. It's going to be tough writing about these because I have the exact same complaints about all three of them and I'd like to parcel it out beforehand but I've never done an outline for a research paper (let alone a blog entry). And before you ask: yes I got all As on my research papers. Past a certain point in my education cycle anyway. Okay...so the movie. It's about two ill-fated lovers. One of whom is in the military and one of whom is half-Asian. And it's the era when that love would be looked down upon anyway, but certainly during the aftermath years of World War II. And one of them is a widow and one of them is still married or something...I forget. Yes, he's married (I've just remembered without Wikipedia, I'm proud of myself). Because he asks her out and she's like "aren't you married?" and he's all "so?" and she goes "tee hee!" Then before you know it, they're both willing to spit in the face of societal norms and put themselves in possibly actual physical danger by being together. There must have been some seriously X-Rated banging going on off-screen because all we see them do is have tea like once and then they're madly in love. And there's my sole complaint of all of these types of films. They never sell the romance. They go right from barely knowing each other to moving heaven and earth to be together in about the time it'd take you to check the movie's IMDB Trivia section (true story). It should take most of the movie for them to get together, or they should already be together at the beginning. If I were to apply the same level of development to a crime drama: Michael Corleone would kill the heads of the five families because one of them stepped on his shoe once. It's jumping straight into the plot where the movie needs to go without having sufficient reason to be there. Especially when you've got things like racial tension going on, you REALLY have to have some good reasons for the two to be a couple. Beyond the reason that they're both attractive. Plenty of attractive people out there. And I'm not super sure who Jennifer Jones is/was/whatever but she was definitely hot enough to snag whoever. Just saying. Then he goes to war and dies. So they put them together for no reason, tore them apart for no reason, and I'm sure everyone ate it up and loved it because it was at least more drama than they were getting on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. In closing: good performances. Great music. Not much to work with though.

A flawed but certainly much better film is Mister Roberts. It sounds like the heartwarming tale of an old curmudgeon who befriends his young next door neighbor, thus revealing his inner humanity, and then dies having let go of the pains of his past. But it's not. I wish I still had the Netflix slip cover with the plot description, because it was absurdly inaccurate. It said it was a heartwarming movie about the triumph of blah blah or something. It's actually a fairly serious movie with comedic undertones. Very much like most stage plays, and it is unsurprisingly based on one. Stage plays always try to make people laugh, even if it's way dark, because a laughing audience is an engaged audience. It's a bit of an odd movie because it has two directors, one of whom is John Ford, and Jimmy Cagney is the bad guy but it's sort of a comedic role. It's lost in the space between comedy in drama. It's kind of in that awkward 90th minute stage that most comedies nowadays hit where things get all dramatic, except that's the whole movie. It's definitely good though. With Cagney and Henry Fonda and the rest of the cast it would have been tough to screw up. It's the usual story: the commander of the ship is a bit crazy and so the hero of the movie has to stand up to him while simultaneously keeping the crew in line. I added too much detail for it to be a "usual story" but it's actually crazy similar to the 1954 movie I'm watching now (which at least knows it's a drama). But the story of the chain of command getting in the way and having the moral quandary of duty vs. "the right thing to do" was even old in 1955. Not to say that makes the movie bad or not enjoyable or poorly written. Because it's not. Although it is a bit too long for what it is, I will say that. But it's a bit like watching a good episode of Law and Order. It's enjoyable and you don't expect much from it. But if it suddenly got nominated for an Emmy for that episode you'd say "wait...what?" 1955 seems like a dull year. Even the winner, which I quite like, is a small and cute movie. Maybe with all the gravitas of 1954's winner and quite possibly some of the other nominees (we'll see) they wanted some fodder this year. I don't know. But there's not much more I can really say, other than that if you see this movie on TV then give it a watch. It's a good way to spend your time, even if it's not the best way.

Continuing with the melodrama is Picnic. At least Kim Novak was a hottie. I was already a fan of hers from Vertigo (a FANTASTIC movie that is brilliantly directed by Hitchcock. See it anywhere on my blog as a nominee? No? It was among the first films to be Dark Knight-ed). The whole movie is basically a big picnic, as the title would suggest, and the various melodramatic goings-on. There's the young girl looking to break free from her family, the middle-aged woman who can't let go of the past, the older dude who's lonely for whatever reason, blah blah. They essentially have a character for everyone in the audience to empathize with. Not "recognize with" mind you, as that would be the quite incorrect way to phrase that (contrary to my previous posts). But the whole thing is so pointless. Because you know where a lot of it is going and all of the acting is so over-the-top and soap opera esque. Not to say the actors in it are bad in other things because they're not. But Academy Award winner Frances McDormand was in Transformers 3 and she was really stupid in it. It happens. Wikipedia says it was praised at the time for being a richly detailed snapshot of the Midwest in the 50s. Well I sincerely hope that they just mean in terms of atmosphere and not in terms of character archetypes. Although they probably mean both in some ways. I'll admit that it's difficult for me to tell what the film's intentions are with regards to certain characters. So I don't know if it's trying to be ironic at times or if it is actually meant to be taken seriously. Because since there's such a gap in my mind between societal norms today and societal norms back then, it's basically impossible for me to view it within the intended contexts. Which is the mark of a not great movie in many cases. There should be more to a film than just zeitgeist and angst. Zeitgeist and angst is another possible title for my autobiography, I'll write that down. Anyway, the most ridiculous point comes at the end when Kim Novak (who's playing an 18-year-old I think) decides to run off with William Holden (who's older and has been around the block a few times. You know, the euphemism-y kind of block). Her mother tells her something along the lines of: "you know he's just going to cheat on you and toss you aside when he gets bored!" To which she replies: "nobody's perfect mother!" When Billy Wilder ended his brilliant Some Like It Hot with that same line (sans mother) it's hilarious. Because it's so absurd. But this is played COMPLETELY seriously. So I'm sitting there thinking to myself: "this is the happy ending to the movie? The teenage girl running off with a dude who she reasonably expects might cheat on her?" So what's the point of all that? Don't know. Don't really care. I give them points for helping to move the cinemascope format forward (which was new at the time) but it's a bit of an odd movie for it. Just saying.

A slightly-better-but-still-melodramatic movie is The Rose Tattoo. What's with these titles? Tattoos and picnics and off-brand Mr. Rogers. They sound even more boring than the movies actually are, which is impressive. This one is about an old Italian lady dealing with the death of her husband and being really restrictive of her younger daughter, who is trying to live a life of her own. See a trend here? It's not even the 60s and there's been a whole lot of moonbeam-y mess. Somebody can't let go of the past, somebody else can't grasp the future, and I'm sure somebody had present issues too. Probably all of them, elsewise it would've been a strange 2001 precursor. So the old Italian lady's husband dies in an accident. Then she finds out he had been cheating on her. Then she becomes a misanthrope and prevents her daughter from living her life. Then she changes her mind after some scenery gets devoured and everybody is happy at the end. And somewhere in there are two tattoos of roses on various people and I'm sure they represent something profound like life or anti-monasticism or something. I remember reading somewhere, and I wish I could remember where, that people really took to the movie because they had never seen breasts as big as Anna Magnani's before (she's the middle-aged biddy). Really? Really 1950s? This does support my theory for why Titanic won so many awards and why it made so much money, but the 50s is supposed to be better than that. And it's not like there were a bunch of terrible looking women in movies back then. They were classy, top-of-the-line hotties and great actresses. I'd take a 30s-50s starlet over any actress today any day of the week (except Annie from Community). The movie is a little too serious if you ask me. If you don't balance out the serious with some humor then the whole thing becomes melodrama. For instance, other films that I enjoy which also feature the same few people bickering in a few rooms for two hours are Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Lion in Winter. In the latter, there are actual things at stake so that helps. But in the former there's basically nothing at stake. It's still really good. Because it's funny at times, and the acting is better, and the writing is better, and everything is better. It balances itself out well. The scenes have some variety. I think that's what gets to me the most. Films like Tattoo seem to consist of the same two conversations over and over again. It might as well just be "can I?" "No!" "Can I?" "No!" (final two minutes) "Can I?" "Well, okay. Molto bene!" Cue credits. They consist of two characters having the same prolonged conversation and one of them finally giving up. There's more to it of course, but nothing particularly interesting.

Thankfully, this year's winner is our savior: Marty. Now here is a great movie that happens to be about basically nothing. It has no major consequences and doesn't concern anything too important. But it's really excellent, and also the shortest movie ever to win Best Picture I might add. I can't stress enough how great that is. In today's movies (and even starting in the 60s) when he decides to go call the girl after all there would be 40 more minutes of movie with more canned drama. But instead it leaves us with the idea that they'll live happily ever after and that's PLENTY. No need to overstay your welcome. As Jonathan Swift once said, "I apologize for the length of this letter. I didn't have the time to write a short one." I love that. Not that I follow that particular philosophy on my blog of course (although in some ways I do). But if I was making a movie or show, I absolutely would. The movie is also very funny. It captures the type of nonsensical dialogue of guys sitting around deciding what to do. They basically talk about nothing and keep repeating the same nothing. Paddy Chayefsky really nailed it with the dialogue. And then Marty, who gets grief from everybody about when he's going to get married, finally has a nice time with a lovely woman who other people just label "a dog." But as he says at the end, "I had a nice time! Who cares what she looks like? I think she's beautiful and I had a great time last night!" See, the film deals with some very recognizable issues but it doesn't shove them in your face. You instantly recognize the point being made without the movie telling you straight out. Because everyone has experienced situations where people give you advice about things and you discover that you should really just decide things for yourself. Or situations where you realize that the people you're hanging around with are no good and it's time for a change. His life is filled with guys talking about nothing and old Italian ladies talking about how everything sucks and everybody's dead that they knew. But they manage to make it hilarious! There are undertones of seriousness but it's truly funny. I'd call it a "delightful" film. That's the exact word I'd use. For what it is, they couldn't have made it any better.

Well I'm looking down the list of 1954 nominees and it's already more interesting just from the titles alone. So I hope it won't let me down. Because this year was just a complete mess. Peyton Place times 3 basically. The winner for '54 is already one of my favorites of all time, so it's already a better year. Hopefully the rest of the year will follow suit. All I know for now is that it will contain seven weddings, three bachelorettes, and one failed contender.

Quick Rant: "Historical Accuracy" in Fiction and Why It's Stupid

I was thinking about writing a Facebook note today about this very subject, but then I thought: why not share it with the whole world? Or at least the quark of a percentage of it that reads the blog. The concept I'll be addressing today is not just historical accuracy but some aspects of "realism" in general that some internet people like to attack. So I hope you enjoy the visual sound of my voice as much as I do.

Right then, I'll start by talking about an aspect of fiction that I always keep in mind but that few others do. What you're watching isn't our world. No matter how much it looks like our world or tries to feel like our world, it isn't. Now of course you're sitting there and thinking "umm...this is true..." and wondering if I've finally lost my tenuous grip on reality. Everyone knows it's not our world because they're watching it on TV or on a movie screen, but they don't really think about all the implications that go along with that knowledge. And I'll use an unusual example: The Office. People have complained because the characters often go to Chili's to eat (and for the Dundies) but there apparently is not a Chili's in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Know what else isn't really in Scranton? Dunder Mifflin. And you can search far and wide for Toby Flenderson, H.R. Representative for Dunder Mifflin Scranton but I guarantee you won't find him. Because he doesn't exist. But what else does that mean? It means that his parents don't exist either. In fact, every single person in his bloodline from today and back to the beginning of time is an implied fictional character. Which means that the world of the show is probably at least a little different from ours, since there are thousands of people in it stretching throughout history who never existed in our world. And they all interacted with the world around them and changed it. That's just Toby's lineage. Add to that the histories of every other character on The Office that has ever been, whether they be regular, recurring, guests, or just extras. Add to that characters who are mentioned but never seen, such as the founding members of Dunder Mifflin (although we did meet one of them) and Michael's former boss who died off-screen in one episode. Every single one of those people adds thousands of ancestors to the world's history. Which would make their world pretty freaking different from ours. So is it not possible that at some point one of those people butterfly effect-ed a Chili's into Scranton, Pennsylvania?

As Neo would say: whoa.

Now, obviously none of this was in the minds of the people involved with the show (except maybe Rainn Wilson). But it speaks to a lot of common complaints that people have about a lot of shows and they always annoy me. All that matters is continuity within the show itself. There was a similar complaint during 24 that the D.C. Metro station didn't look like the actual one in real life. My snarky answer to that is: really? They couldn't halt transportation in the most important city in the world for a whole day to film two scenes of a TV show? Shocking. But if you take into account what I just explained then it means even more here. After all, not only are there a lot of major world events on 24 that never happened in real life, but there are also a lot more characters from a lot more countries. This fundamentally changes a ton about that fictional universe to set it aside from ours. So I'd say the Metro can look different and it makes sense. As I said, what matters is the continuity within the show or movie. I would hope that their version of the D.C. Metro looks the same from episode to episode. Did Hitler really die the way he did in Inglourious Basterds? Obviously not. Could he have been if the Basterds had existed? I'd say yeah.

That brings me to the historical aspect of things. I don't think they should soil a good man's name needlessly so I wouldn't be a fan of a portrayal of Abe Lincoln as a pedophile since there's obviously no evidence to support this. But if you can look at a person a few different ways or interpret their actions to suit the artistic vision of your movie, I say go for it. And putting more emphasis on the style of dress of the time or the types of teacups they used rather than on the story itself is crazy. Both would be nice, but if I had to pick one I'd pick the story. I also think we should be free to make things like Inglourious Basterds which completely just change things and go for it. Because honestly, if you believe the events of the movie then I think your mental state is more a danger to the country than the movie is. And for me, it's the equivalent of someone in 2051 watching the caricatured version of President Bush in Transformers and then saying "but wait a second! He was a real President but I can't find anything in my school textbook about these Decepticons!" None of it is real and thus the filmmakers should have some freedom. Movies like Schindler's List are obvious exceptions, since it is intended to educate as well as tell a story. But if all you're doing is spinning an artistic yarn, you should be able to do so to the best of your ability without people whining about how many buttons are on Union Soldier Number 6's waistcoat.

In case you couldn't tell, I dislike people on the internet who make comments about stuff. But I think this shows that I spend more time thinking about a great many things than they do. So if you hear someone complaining about a great show like The Sopranos because the real Satriale's Deli has a bigger selection than the one on the show, I'd be happy to rant to them in person.

1956: The Year that The King of Siam Let Moses' People Go

Now this was a pretty fun year! I hope my exclamation point doesn't imply that I enjoyed all of the nominees for this year. I don't think I have yet enjoyed all of a year's nominees and I certainly won't be starting with this one. But how about 2 1/2 out of 5? And actually since three of the nominees were over 3 hours long then that's not too bad! Of course, Netflix still cut off the last 15 seconds of one of them...some of us watch the credits Netflix! They've been sending me a lot of full screen stuff too lately. Know who shares my disdain? Roger Ebert. I haven't been in company this good since I learned that Quentin Tarantino is the second person after me who really likes Superman Returns. But I blather. Let's lovingly and brutally make hyperbolic jokes about good movies.

And also some bad ones, as always, which this time around is Friendly Persuasion. This was kind of a mess. My dad said so too and he usually lauds almost everything from this era. The premise is actually fairly interesting. It's about how a pacifist Quaker family copes with the Civil War and how they eventually support it. Sounds interesting right? Well like so many things, the real thing isn't what you thought it would be. And the suggestion of the idea is more fascinating than the idea itself. This was apparently Ronald Reagan's favorite movie and he loaned a copy to Gorbachev in the waning days of the Cold War. And this helped our cause for some reason. If it was me, I'd have loaned him Poltergeist II and said "tear down this wall or we'll make another one of these!" I was somewhat surprised to see that this was directed by William Wyler, a man who so expertly crafted Ben-Hur and several other Best Picture winners that I'll watch further down the road. It's instead directed with the type of silliness mixed with seriousness that John Ford used. Except it's not balanced as well as he did in say...The Searchers (WHICH came out in this year and was not nominated, one of the Academy's most egregious errors). I mean, it's a movie about people who are forced to rethink their entire philosophy after a series of harrowing events and the first scene in the movie depicts a quasi-anthropomorphic goose chasing a little kid around a farm. In fact, most of the film is spent sitting around being inane. And while you know that the Confederate army is drawing ever closer, and that adds an element of suspense, it doesn't come up enough throughout the film and there's no real payoff. Gary Cooper is the father so you're expecting him to go all Marshall Kane on the Confederates. I think he fights like one dude. His son is the one who joins the war effort, but only very briefly. And he joins up with a whole troup...so it's not like he really had to shoot at people. Instead of the film's message being "sometimes a series of events can be so dangerous and a man can be pushed so far that he will cease being a pacifist and become more warlike to defend his family," it was "even in the 1860s teenagers were rebellious." Seriously. The kid seemed like he wanted to fight because it was what all the cool kids were doing. So yeah, maybe the book does a better job of showing the slow and agonizing decisions that would lead a man to abandon his faith. But this didn't.

Thankfully I'm a little more positive about Giant. Although I just wish it wasn't like 3 hours and 20 minutes long. I was NOT expecting it to be that long at all. I thought it was an Instant Watch glitch. James Dean's other 2 films (which are WAY better I might add) are a respectable length and they're each appropriately dark. But you know what this reminded me of? Brace yourself: the fourth Harry Potter movie. Because both are trying to fit entirely too much material into a smaller time frame than it needs. You'd think over 3 hours would be enough time but there's no real flow. I can respect that they wanted to incorporate as much of the book as they could, and the book covers several generations of an oil baron family. Whereas in HP all you needed was an extra 15-20 minutes tops to fix the pacing problem, this should have been a miniseries. Or they could have just made the focus more on the characters and less on the overall story. Because no one really cares about a family that makes a bunch of money on oil and ends up owning an empire. What they care about is the personal toll that having such an empire takes on the people. What are the moral implications? Are they fully aware of said implications? Instead what we got was basically a series of vignettes showing the progress of the family over time. And James Dean does a fantastic job but he isn't in it nearly enough. On a side note: he didn't win the Oscar! The man was dead! It was his last chance! Jerks. His character is easily the best in the film, and even though they cast him as a villain the only villainous thing he seemed to do was lust after Rock Hudson's wife. The wife happened to be played by Elizabeth Taylor, the eternal hottie. If Mr. Dean wasn't attracted to her then there's something wrong with the continuity. Plus, all he does is call her pretty and stuff. He wasn't a jerk about it...but whatever. I liked the incorporation of anthems into the music score, but even my dad yelled down from upstairs: "how many times do they have to play 'the yellow rose of Texas?'" Almost as over-used as "Also Sprach Zarathustra" in 2001. Anyway, this is a well-filmed movie with great actors but they used some cinematic scatter shot when they should have focused on just a few stories.

A thankfully much better-flowing film is The King and I. This is a highly charming picture. I thought I was going to spend this entire write-up making jokes about how Russian-born Yul Brynner was playing an Asian king...but you know what? He actually looked the part. Normally with these things from this era, it's all too obvious that it's a white guy with tan makeup. But he looked the part, acted the part, and sang the part. I have absolutely no clue how. He had realistic mannerisms and everything. Sooooooooooo ahead of its time. Seriously. Normally performances like this from way back then are really dated and kind of take you out of it. Side note: at one point in the movie he starts talking about Moses, and he played Pharaoh in another nominee this year. Side side note: pharaoh is the most obnoxious word to spell, ever. This film has to work at its romance quite a bit more than other musicals of the time. Because instead of My Fair Lady where it's "we have to make you believe that someone would fall in love with Audrey Hepburn" this is more like "we have to make you believe that Deborah Kerr would fall for a crazy Asian monarch dude with like 600 bastard children." Way tougher. His performance is unexpectedly quirky and charming though. I laughed quite a bit more than I thought I would. And the songs aren't quite as superfluous as many other musicals of the time. In fact, I think the dialogue is a lot better than the song lyrics. Usually I'm just waiting for the musical numbers but this was quite the opposite. Now, I know I just said James Dean should've won but Yul Brynner definitely earned every bit of this Oscar. Which is why James Dean should've been nominated for Supporting Actor. He was a supporting character in that film, so why put him up against Brynner? I have no idea. Anyway, it's also refreshing that a lot of side characters and extras are actual Asians instead of just painted white people. It makes the scenes believable and not ridiculous, unlike a certain Elizabeth Taylor Egyptian fiasco. It's also unexpectedly sad at the end, which makes the film far more powerful and meaningful than its blue skies contemporaries. So a highly pleasant surprise overall. And Deborah Kerr was a hottie. Had to fit that in there.

If you liked Yul as a Siamese then you'll love him as an Egyptian in The Ten Commandments. If only he were in it more. Okay, here comes the film snobbery. I try to have a good balance of "hmm that's interesting cinematography" and "I enjoyed the attractive women and explosions" in my reviews. Because if you're just in one of those camps, you're missing out. But I get really snobby when something could've been so good and ended up being a mixed bag due to fixable mistakes. There were like four screenwriters and I felt like two of them were probably really good and two sucked. Because there are a lot of great scenes and great lines and also a lot of silly stuff. Okay, let's break it down. The film is shot in 1.85:1 (similar to HDTV shows today, widescreen but not super wide). This is a mistake. Films of an epic nature should be shot as widely as possible to give a sense of the grand scale (see: Lawrence of Arabia). Not only does it downplay some of the more grand scenes, the camera is too close to the people and the costumes and weapons look fake at times. Then there's the rear-screen projection. I'm a big fan of this filming trick. But here's a question: if you obviously filmed a scene actually in the hills nearby actual sheep, then why is there a dialogue scene right before it that's in front of a previously filmed scene of sheep and hills? They're obviously on a stage and it takes you out of the moment. But they were on location! Why not film those scenes outside like the others? And when Moses is revealing this massive statue construction to his father, it's also the two of them looking at a screen. There was no CGI back then so they clearly filmed actual actors doing the constructing. So why not film the Moses scene at the same location? Instead it just looks ludicrous, which is unfortunate because it could have been quite grand. The film makes other mistakes but I'll not mention them here. It's a real shame, because this was when stories from the Bible started to peter out. Whatever your religious affiliations, there are some truly great and epic stories in the Bible. You could make some crazy and gritty movies about it with blood and guts and boobs and all sorts of things. But nobody wants to anymore, so this was most of what we get. Certainly some moving scenes and I'm still a fan of most of the film but it could have been a lot more than it was.

Which brings us to a similar case, this year's winner: Around the World in 80 Days. This is kind of a fluff movie, but it's good fluff. They went on location for all of their scenes and there are some truly breathtaking shots. But here again: it could've been so much more. It spends too much time winking at the audience with all of its cameos and that dilutes the main characters to some extent. And one of the main guys is supposed to be French and played by a Mexican dude...talk about all the Mexican characters played by white guys and all this time there was a Mexican actor and they have him play a white guy? Love them 50s. Still, I enjoyed most of the film. I didn't like that at the end they had some canned drama that almost prevented him from winning, and he basically cheated to win too. Because they gained a day by crossing the international date line. So even though he arrived exactly 80 days later at the same spot, it took him 81 days. Get it? Cheater! But that's not a huge deal I guess, since the movie isn't totally serious. That's my only major qualm, aside from the fact that the only character motivation is: "I'm a rich British guy and in order to become richer I'm going around the world in 80 days for fun." I haven't read the book, but I would hope there's some more motivation there. That he needs the prize money, that he's in a race, etc. Something! But there are mostly positives about the film. It's a lot of fun and even though it's 3 hours long it keeps things fresh enough by moving around the world that it doesn't get dull. And the end credits are an awesome little short film all their own, definitely worth sitting through. I also like that it incorporated national anthems into its musical score. Britain's "theme music" never sounded so good. I thought it was odd that of all the American music to pick they picked "Yankee Doodle Dandy" though...and they have the "Mexican Hat Dance" for Mexico too. For the Mexican actor playing a Frenchman. Let that sink in. Of course, Moses in the other movie was basically a Gentile playing a Jew playing an Egyptian. So whatever. Oh! I've just remembered that this movie also began with an intro from Edward R. Murrow and clips from Georges Méliés A Trip to the Moon which was one of the first real movies. And YES I have seen it in its entirety. I'm legit. While this was cool and would have been cool before the movie, I don't like that it's officially part of the film. Because I'm a purist. And a film douche at times. Shirley Maclaine was a hottie in this. There you go. I'm dialing it back.

Well that year had some variety anyway. I like to make fun of different things instead of just complaining about British people prattling on all the time. I was a little harsher on some of these than I perhaps meant to be, and I liked them a lot more than I let on. But I criticize because I love. Someday I'll make a movie about Moses where he goes back and kills all the people that helped him out for 40 years (look it up, it's in the Good Book), thus making a lot of money off of controversy. And if a movie is 3 hours and 40 minutes and at least 2 1/2 hours are good then I guess that's okay. I can only hope that 1955 is as interesting. But somehow I don't think so. All I know for now is that it will include tattooed melodrama, picnicking melodrama, and interracial melodrama. Scandalous!

1957: The Year that Ron Swanson Ate Steak with Obi-Wan

That's right, this year's winner is apparently one of the favorites of Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation. He was fictionally born on my birthday you know. And it is indeed a great movie. Thankfully, it's not completely alone in being good for this year. There are some requisite stinkers as well and they tell me some interesting things about the progression of entertainment in this country. And since that particular film was a big soap opera, I'll probably spend more time on the societal implications than the film itself. But believe me: you're better off.

And look! We're talking about the soap opera already: Peyton Place. I really thought this would be later in the write-up but I guess it's kind of a wonky year in terms of alphabetization. Actually, I wanted to list another film first but Wikipedia didn't list it that way and I don't want to break my Wiki-pattern. Anyway, this movie is schmaltz to the Nth degree. Basically, it's the classic small town hiding secrets. Gasp! The nice town isn't all that it seems? People are actually messed up and not all nice and stuff? Shocker. What I find interesting is that a lot of critics smashed this movie at the time because they felt it was simply a lot of controversy thrown together to get attention rather than tell a story. So even though today it's basically a tame episode of Gossip Girl, back then it was scandal. And I'm glad there were those that recognized it for what it was. But it was a ginormous hit! Because apparently in 1957 a girl on screen talking vaguely about sex was tantemount to a Jessica Alba striptease. I would like to direct everyone to my 1997 write-up where I discuss why Titanic was such a huge hit (a clue: the answer is in the beginning of the title). It works today and it worked in 1957. By means of another for instance: the trailer for Cowboys and Aliens makes it look like Olivia Wilde gets naked. But the film's rating and her own Twitter account a year ago tell a different story. But they want you to think it's possible so that you'll go to see it. It's a delicate game they play, because you have to make a movie that's good enough to appease people looking to follow the plot and also has parts in it that make for a good trailer tease. I haven't seen the trailer for the 1957 nominee in question, but if they were similar at that time then I imagine the trailer was just the scene where the two teens talk about books about sex they purchased. Because if the trailer was: "this is a movie that's over 2 1/2 hours and most of that is boring, but there's one scene where they almost talk about sex sort of" then no one would have seen it. In fact, the Catholic church apparently approved this film for its members so how lewd could it have been? Others back then said that the original novel was quite raunchy to a purpose and thus very good. I can't imagine that's true, but it's probably better than the movie. Because the film just gives you a small tease of everything, which is bad from a storytelling point of view. If you dance around certain issues, that might excite tweeners but the rest of us are stuck here wondering what's going on. They play one too many scandals in the film and it becomes ridiculous. Child born out of wedlock? Okay. Unrelated pre-marital sex for the sake of being a rebellious teen? Fine. Step-father impregnating his step-daughter? Too far. If that was the whole story then that's fine but I mean come on, it was like they were begging for attention. So as bad as I thought the film was, it at least brought me some comfort to learn that people were the same in 1957 even if their threshold for controversial content was much lower.

Another film that's entirely too long is Sayonara. Ready for my Roger Ebert impression? "Say sayonara to this Japanimerican mess." What a waste of Marlon Brando. This was right in the midst of some of his most iconic and excellent pre-Godfather work. This film is so bad that I actually hated when they said the title in it. Here's how it's done: "When you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die." Boom! Or: "Authority is not given to you to deny The Return of the King." Sweet! Now how about: "What should we tell the Army?" "Tell 'em, sayonara!" HAHAHAHA get it? Of course you don't, as I haven't explained the movie. It's about a military dude who disapproves of his friend dating an Asian chick and then he predictably falls for an Asian chick and spends the rest of the movie convincing himself and others why they should be together. Then he up and decides to leave the Army. So when he says "sayonara" it's signifying not only saying goodbye to the Army but also hello to his new quasi-Japanese lifestyle. Get it? It would've been good if they delivered it properly but it was such a wink-wink moment that it was terrible. It was like, "pay attention! Here is why the movie is called this!" If more of the film had been about him being torn between duty and love it might have been salvageable. And maybe more of it was about that then I thought but it was so boring for almost 2 1/2 hours that it's possible I missed it. Instead, it takes like 45 minutes to establish that he disapproves dating Asians before he meets the girl. That's too much buildup. We should have met her like 20 minutes in, tops. It'd still be dumb, but it would have been more believable for 20 minutes of one opinion to switch around rather than 45 minutes. And he shouldn't have fallen for her so quickly, or if he did then it should have been established that maybe he wasn't buying his own opinion this whole time. Because we're not talking like this was a "I have never dated blondes...oh hey! There's a hot blonde, I think I'll date her" situation. It was more of a "I am racist against Asians. Oh hey! There's an attractive one, and I'm no longer a bigot for some reason" situation. Didn't buy it, didn't buy their romance. Which is weird since all they did was re-enforce that they were in love for the whole movie. And why was this nominated anyway? This is like the world's least awwww-inducing chick flick. And why is he falling for a Japanese girl during the Korean War? Wouldn't it have been better to have him fall for a Japanese girl during WWII or a Korean girl during the Korean War? That would have been a nice together-ness message either way. Instead it was a "this supports together-ness if you think all Asians look alike" message. Classy. I'm being a bit unfair, but I doubt anyone cares 54 years later anyway so I'll let it stand.

A thankfully good movie is 12 Angry Men. I would put numbers before letters but I guess Wikipedia goes by pronunciation. Weird. Anyway, here is an example of a movie taking place in one room and during what is basically one long conversation being incredibly well-done. And why does it work so well? For one thing, it's not too long. It's a bit over 1 1/2 hours which is exactly how long it should be. It doesn't waste time getting to its premise and it doesn't overstay its welcome. Almost the entire movie takes place in the jury room at the end of a murder trial, deciding if they should sentence the man to death by proclaiming him guilty or not. Henry Fonda leads the great ensemble cast as the first man to put in a bid for "not guilty." And Sidney Lumet manages to make some really good directorial decisions even though the whole movie takes place in one room. As things get more tense the camera gets more claustrophobic, increasing the suspense. It also allows us to see the characters in all their heated desperation, as subtext abounds near the conclusion of the film. I think this movie is required viewing for everyone who was upset over the Casey Anthony verdict. Because over the course of the film, we are never certain whether the culprit committed the crime or not. And as Henry Fonda admits, he's not saying he's convinced of the man's innocence either. But he also says that the evidence isn't strong enough to convict him. The sequences of events that break down each piece of evidence one by one are brilliantly paced and played out so well. By the end you are in no way convinced that the man is innocent, just that many jury members were allowing their impatience, non-chalance, and own personal issues cloud what should be their unbiased opinions. It couldn't have been timed better that I was re-watching this during the Casey Anthony aftermath. Because it's a similar case of how circumstantial evidence isn't enough to put someone away, certainly not when the death penalty is involved. So it's always fascinating to see similar arguments being waged almost 60 years ago as today. Ordinarily I might say it's depressing, but I think in this case it's a good thing. We should always question these types of situations to no end, because human life is at stake. The film manages to convey all of this while telling a compelling story with great actors and a solid script. In another year it might have won the Oscar, in fact I wish it had come out in 1958 instead and beaten the French strumpet, but it was no match for this year's winner. Which isn't up next, sorry for the mislead.

Instead, up next is another compelling legal drama of a different kind: Witness for the Prosecution. This is based on an Agatha Christie short story, so you have to figure that it's A) better than most courtroom dramas and B) there are probably more twists and turns than most courtroom dramas. As it turned out, I think they did one twist too many. It's a really good movie and the initial twist at the end is fantastic but if they had left it at that then the bad guy would've gotten away. That would have been a chilling and excellent ending but in 1957 the bad guy pretty much always has to bite it. As such, the ending is kind of disappointing and the tone is odd. But the rest of the film is really good. It's a Billy Wilder film so it manages to balance humor with the drama without seeming too silly. Charles Laughton steals the show as the recently hospitalized defense attorney. The other actors are good too for the most part, but they look like amateurs next to Laughton in many of the scenes. He's like a precursor to the David E. Kelley lawyers of The Practice and Boston Legal. He charms the audience with his humor right before he reminds us that he is very sly and a genius when it comes to argument. In fact, I liked his character so much that I found myself wishing that this was the pilot to some ahead-of-its-time 50s show. The plot itself is also carried out in a well-plotted manner. It utilizes POV flashbacks that may or may not be reliable and also spends a fair amount of non-flashback time outside of the courtroom at the beginning of the film. This establishes the tone and the characters in an environment that isn't so open and public as a courtroom. Every courtroom drama should do this, because otherwise you can only get the façade of the courtroom which rarely allows us to see a character's true intentions. Anatomy of a Murder also did a good job with that, but it went on a bit too long. At just under 2 hours this movie is delivered as well as it possibly could have been, aside from that last twist of course.

A film that manages to earn its lengthy running time is this year's excellent winner: The Bridge on the River Kwai. This is another David Lean masterpiece. Though its cinematography is not as stunning as Lawrence of Arabia or Dr. Zhivago (due to the setting of the film being less scenic) it's still more stunning than pretty much any WWII film and more than most any film. The story concerns a unit of British soldiers in a Japanese prison camp. They are instructed that they all must begin working on a bridge over the river Kwai so as to carry a new railway line. What follows is one sequence of unfortunate events after another. Because at first, there is a lot of understandable strife between the British and the Japanese. But the head Japanese officer comes to respect Alec Guinness' character and the British soldiers eventually take great pride in the building of the bridge. Not necessarily because they've switched sides, just because they've worked so hard for so long on it. We eventually meet an American soldier at the camp as well. He escapes and is then sent back on a mission to destroy the bridge. I won't ruin the ending, but the film becomes very interesting when considering everyone's motives. After being in a POW camp for several years, if you're being treated fairly well and taking pride in your work, are you still a fervent part of the war effort for Queen and country? And if you're on a dangerous mission because of a threat and not because of your own choice, can you really be trusted to carry it out? The film dares to show the absurdity of war and the similarities between two warring sides during a time in America's history when everyone still remembered WWII. But it said these things with its story, not by being preachy. So it's a film that is carried out well, with a thought-provoking message, and some very impressive visuals. It's certainly one of those iconic Best Picture winners that many people remember, rather than the ones that are given the Oscar simply because it has to go to someone.

Well that was overall a good year of movies. Which is good because I was beginning to wonder about the 50s. My dad was laughing because of all the good movies that came out in some of these years, none of which were nominated. Though this legitimizes my initial reason for starting the escapade, so I guess I should be happy. Hopefully next year will be more in line with this one. All I know for now is that it has a Mexican guy playing a Frenchman, a white guy playing an Asian, and a Gentile playing a Jew playing an Egyptian.

1958: The Year that The French Ethnic Slur Beat the Thing that Rhymes With It

Yep, we're getting meta with our titles. And we're talking like Gollum now apparently. Oh man! I should have called it The French Mistake, because it's a famous meta sequence that also involves French things. Well this was a rough year. Because not only did I not enjoy most of the movies, they're not strange enough to warrant proper rantings. All I can really say is that they're dull. I'll try my best to be creative but I might risk sounding like the film snob elitist douches that I purport to despise. What a narrative this blog has, eh? I just hope that when I hit 1927 I don't Colonel Kurtz myself.

We start things off with Auntie Mame. To begin with, Rosalind Russell (the star who plays the titular character) grew up in my dad's hometown of Waterbury, Connecticut. So that's pretty cool. And I hope I see some of her more interesting work down the road. Because this was basically over-the-top nonsense. It was entertaining to see that her character was likely a large influence on the character of Edna in The Incredibles. But that character was clearly supposed to be funny. I wasn't sure what this movie was trying to tell me. Because near the end of the film she is supposed to be the heroic rebel standing against the upper class snobbery who came close to being her nephew's in-laws. But she's also an upper class snob. She eats alligator and caviar and travels the world so she can fit into that "life is for crazy adventures!" archetype. But people who are always on the move are running from something. From commitment or responsibility or reality or any number of things. The film doesn't have any sobering moments that cause her to take a step back and perhaps reveal why she is the way she is. Which means that what it should be is a comedy. Which means that it's about a half an hour too long to be an overly long comedy. The character is supposed to be uplifting in the sense that she's seeing the world and doing all of these crazy things with her nephew. But since her nephew just grows up to almost marry a snob anyway, what was the point? And then at the end she's taking her nephew's son on all of her adventures instead. But if the nephew just grew up to be like his father, a straight-laced disdainer of adventures, then why did we just watch the movie? Wasn't the kid supposed to be introduced to all these new things and then become like her? That would have been a rehash of lots of other movies but at least it would've given the film a point. Instead, the point becomes that everyone grows up except for Auntie Mame. Which makes her quite a bit pathetic in my opinion. Now I'm going to use my own Ebert-ism and reference her famous line: "life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death!" Well, (in my douchey New York Times esque reviewer voice) if life is a banquet than Aunie Mame is a glutton, taking too much for herself and leaving none of the joy for the audience.

A slightly more redeemable picture is Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. I always hear about this movie as being one of THE stage plays of the time. So when I finally saw it I think I was mostly underwhelmed. I thought the acting was very good but the plot was a little spotty. It wasn't quite a series of vignettes and it certainly didn't come together too well. Although I will admit that I spent most of the first part of the movie wondering when and how they'd mention the title and ogling Elizabeth Taylor. And I ogled during most of that spending. The cat in question is Liz herself, which is why it's quite odd that she isn't in most of the second half of the film. This was my problem. The first bit is mostly about her and her husband, the injured former sports hero. The second bit is mostly about her husband's father dying of cancer. Then there are some other characters sprinkled in here and there for little reason. I can't really take characters seriously who are named "Big Momma" and "Big Daddy." According to my parents it's more common in the South to hear things like that. Well it's common in Boston to hear things like "wicked smahrt!" but I wouldn't include those phrases in a Boston-set character study. Because it's unintentionally funny and it takes the audience out of the movie. But that's not really a huge deal. My main problem, as I already said, is that there's no real main character and it's not truly an ensemble piece either. Given the title, you figure Liz is playing the main character. But then she's not in it for like, forever. The whole thing plays like an unexpectedly well-cast pilot episode of some CW show. Family drama! Pregnancy drama! Relationship stuff! Boring. As you may recall, I referred to another such family drama, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as being quite good. So I'm not inherently against movies with a small cast and only family drama to drive the plot. But this was all over the place. If it was just about the aging sports star and his father, or him and his wife, that could have been good. But it ends up jumping from one thing to another too quickly and everything is ultimately the same at the end of the day. Just like a cat on a hot tin roof! OH SNAP.

Next up is this year's only good offering: The Defiant Ones. Anytime Sidney Poitier is in anything it's always going to be that much better, even if the overall product isn't that great. But this particular character study is well-paced, well-written, and well-acted by not only Mr. Poitier but also Tony Curtis. It's basically a two-man show between them and they both did an excellent job. The film would have completely fallen apart if one of them wasn't up to the same level as the other. It's basically about two escaped prisoners, one white and one black (in the deep South mind you) who are chained to each other and try to reach freedom. What's interesting is that they seem to dislike each other at first not because of their difference in race but because of their personal differences. I'm finding progressive examples of black actors MUCH more back in time than I ever expected. Needless to say, the two end up respecting each other and becoming friends and yadda yadda. But it thankfully plays as more of a character study than a "races should get along" thing. Which is really good because the second message will come across anyway if you do the first one in an effective way. Of course, it was 1958 and since no one back then wanted to set a bad example for the kiddies the two men were never going to escape. Nowadays they might have, or even in the 60s perhaps. But it's largely irrelevant because the real story is the personal connection. Speaking of Tony Curtis, I found it amusing that he has a convincing Southern accent in this. Because it would've worked a lot better than his native New Yorker accent that he uses in Spartacus, which takes you out of the movie entirely. So one wonders why Kubrick had him do that...I guess 1960 came and went and I forgot to mention that Spartacus should have gotten a nomination that year. The battle at the end is a little anemic but the rest of it is fantastically well done and it features what may well be the greatest love theme ever written, by Mr. Alex North. Anyway, back to Poitier and Curtis, the film shows up on TCM from time to time so if you see it coming up then you should check it out. It's only about an hour and a half (perfect length for the movie) and it features some truly stellar performances.

Another performance-based film that's sadly a bore is Separate Tables. I guess it's refreshing that boring British movies about people whose time has gone by are not a new phenomenon. Know what's a movie about people whose time has passed? Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch. Excellent film. Know why? It has a plot. This is just people sitting around rehashing the same conversations over and over. I was actually expecting to like this, but mostly because Rita Hayworth is in it. I have no idea why, but I am lit-trally obsessed with her. Like, seriously. Possibly more than a lot of modern actresses. It's a good thing I wasn't around back then because I would have run the risk of pulling a Hinckley on her love interest from Gilda. She has an undeniable allure, on top of also being a great actress. That's why Domenic is Team Rita and not Team Marilyn. Let it be known. She was...40 I think...yes Wikipedia says 40, anyway she was 40 when she made this and she's playing the glamour model who's time has passed. In one sense that's appropriate since I guess that was her story at the time. But on the other hand it's a bit absurd since she was still gorgeous. So she's sitting around lamenting how no one pays attention to her anymore and I'm just not buying it. Even back then 40 wasn't that old! Maybe in the Old West or something but goodness. To tell you the truth, I don't remember much of the movie. And I watched it like 3 days ago. It was just a bunch of Soap-y mess. "Oh we'll never be happy together! But we'll never be happy apart either!" Maybe if I was an aged someone-or-other I would have felt for one or several of the characters and felt a personal connection to their story. In fact, I never thought I'd say this in a million blog posts but that sort of factor added to my enjoyment of Transformers 3. It was the best of the 3 anyway, but in it the main guy just graduated with a more prestigious degree than mine and couldn't find work. And he mostly wanted to help the Autobots so that he could feel like he mattered again, and that's something I can really relate to. So I enjoyed it more than if I had seen it last year at this time, or (hopefully) next year at this time. But a movie shouldn't be dependent on a sub-sect of people having a personal connection. There should have been some more variety with the characters, but even if there was it'd still be fairly boring.

And speaking of boring, we come to this year's winner: Gigi. This won 9, count them: 9! Academy Awards. Umm...why? Not that there was much competition this year, judging by the Picture nominees, but still. Instead of describing the plot myself, I'd like to share the description on my Netflix DVD. Because it's the most absurd thing I've ever seen. "Leslie Caron stars as Gigi, an avant-garde French waif being groomed as the fille de joie of affluent and handsome Gaston (Louis Jourdan). Soon Gigi metamorphoses into a stunning beauty, and the head-over-heels Gaston asks for her hand. But Gigi's courtesan grandmother is aghast: no one in the family has ever considered something as plebeian as matrimony!" Okay...so I have a better vocabulary than most people, and I've seen the movie, and I have no idea what that first sentence means. And the last sentence sets off your douche alarm doesn't it? Even though it's all supposed to be funny, you're still watching snobs be snobs. And much like Auntie Mame, the girl who is in apparent opposition to the snobbery is a snob herself. Maybe that was supposed to make it funny. I don't know. But it wasn't. And aside from a pretty great duet that involves the two older members of the cast remembering a date they once had in completely different detail (easily more charming and enjoyable than the entire rest of the movie) the songs were forgettable. Except, of course, for the opening/closing number: "Thank Heaven for Little Girls." I could not believe my ears. An old French guy singing about how great little girls are. I know it's not meant to be taken in a perverted way, but good lord. Even in 1958 there must have been people in the audience going: "really?" Not to mention, this whole thing is basically My Fair Lady with the charm turned down. AND I checked, and MFL was already in existence on stage before this movie or its own movie came out so: HA! It is a ripoff. And critics of the time pointed this out, even though they also didn't seem to care. The only redeeming quality it has is Mr. Jourdan's character, who complains of everything being a bore. He's pretty funny when he's going around hating everything. And then it's all nice because Gigi is the only person crazy and unpredictable enough to interest him. Everyone else and everything else is just so boring. And I think that's a nice story, but it reverse-reminded me of As Good As It Gets because as soon as they fall in love the movie loses its interest. Because then it's just canned drama. It should've ended with them getting together and left the rest to your imagination. It's always better that way. If you took out the absurd opening song, either made it shorter or made them not get together until the end, and lost some of the snobbery this would actually be an enjoyable little movie. Still not even close to deserving 9 Oscars, or even a few, but it would be far better than what it actually was.

Well this wasn't as glaringly bad as some other years, and the movies were almost all mercifully short. So that's a plus. Still, I'm kind of surprised because this is supposed to be an era of good movies. And there are a lot of good ones but there were a lot of boring ones too. I know for a fact there are some really good winners coming up, so I hope they'll be in good company. All I know for sure about next year is that there will be dancing Asians, warrior Asians, and arguing Cauc Asians.