A decade after its first list, the American Film Institute has issued a revised Top 100 Movies. Here’s their top 10:
1 CITIZEN KANE
2 THE GODFATHER
3 CASABLANCA
4 RAGING BULL
5 SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN
6 GONE WITH THE WIND
7 LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
8 SCHINDLER’S LIST
9 VERTIGO
10 THE WIZARD OF OZ
“But on the whole her book is bound to be dull, because she is averse to examining what actually happened.”
Tim Parks reviewing a new biography of Garibaldi.
“Long ago, when the impact of ‘Star Wars’ was beefed up by a line of merchandise, some of us noticed that the five-inch Lukes and Leias possessed a depth and mobility that was denied to their onscreen counterparts….”
Anthony Lane in a review of Transformers.
Those who have seen Field of Dreams or read the book on which it was based, Shoeless Joe by W.P. Kinsella, will remember the character “Moonlight” Graham, played by Burt Lancaster in the film.
Archibald Wright Graham (1876-1965) was an actual player — and a doctor. Graham played in one game for the New York Giants. He was in the field for two innings but was on deck when his one game ended.
It was 102 years ago today, June 29, 1905 (in the movie it was the last game of 1929).
“Ratatouille” is a nearly flawless piece of popular art, as well as one of the most persuasive portraits of an artist ever committed to film. It provides the kind of deep, transporting pleasure, at once simple and sophisticated, that movies at their best have always promised.
There was a moment near the end of Ratatouille (Disney)—the scene in which a snooty food critic, hilariously voiced by Peter O’Toole, finally samples the movie’s title dish—when I choked up a little bit. Not for the usual reasons you’d cry in a movie: because the story was moving (though it was) or because I identified with the protagonist’s triumph (though I did). No, Ratatouille moved me to tears because it was just so well-done—not kinda cute, not OK-for-a-kids’-movie, but a work of art crafted with as much passion and attention to detail as its hero, Remy the rat chef, puts into every vat of soup he makes.
The nine-minute excerpt free from iTunes is delightful.
“Evan Almighty — an update on Noah’s Ark for Christian-conservative families everywhere — is the most expensive Hollywood comedy ever made. Problem? It’s not that funny. I compute that every laugh cost about $20 million. And most of those of are poop jokes.”
NewMexiKen has seen A Mighty Heart, the new film starring Angelina Jolie as the wife of kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl. Pearl, a reporter for the The Wall Street Journal, was taken in Karachi in 2002 and eventually beheaded by terrorists. The movie tells the story of the search from the pregnant wife and police point of view, with some memory flashbacks and a minor bit of epilogue. It is based on A Mighty Heart: The Inside Story of the Al Qaeda Kidnapping of Danny Pearl
It’s a good film, exceptionally fast-paced. Jolie is superb — and “the star” — but the other roles are quite well-played as well. It’s a heavy story that could I suppose have been told like Munich, a film which pretty much made me give up all faith in human nature. A Mighty Heart, on the other hand, tries — and largely succeeds — in rising above bitterness and despair.
Worldwide about 16½ million people have their birthday today, among them …
Lou Brock, who’s 68.
Recognized as one of the most gifted base runners in baseball, Lou Brock helped to revolutionize the art and science of this element of the game as he totaled 938 stolen bases during his 19-year career. A six-time All-Star selection, Brock also accumulated more than 3,000 hits to help lead the St. Louis Cardinals to three National League pennants and two World Series championships. Although his stolen base records have been eclipsed, the National League honors each year’s stolen base leader with the Lou Brock Award.
Paul McCartney. He’s 65.
So’s Roger Ebert.
Best actress Oscar nominee Carol Kane is 55.
Not eligible for the Pro Football Hall of Fame until 2009, Bruce Smith is 44 today. Smith was Virginia Tech’s first great football player.
George Mikan was born on June 18 in 1924. At 6-10 Mikan was the first “big man” in basketball leading the Minneapolis Lakers to five NBA titles in six years. The widening of the lane, the NBA shot clock and the rule against defensive goaltending were brought about by Mikan’s dominance. He was named one of the 50 best ever in the NBA in 1996. George Mikan died in 2005.
That’s Mikan with Abdul-Jabbar and Shaq.
Emmy-award winning actor E.G. Marshall was born on June 18 in 1914. Marshall appeared in more than 100 television programs, most famously for The Defenders.
The famed oil firefighter Red Adair was born on June 18 in 1915. A generation ago Adair’s feats were well-known enough to inspire a John Wayne movie, Hellfighters.
Bud Collyer was born on June 18 in 1908. Collyer was the voice of Superman on the radio 1940-1951, but known better now as one of the first TV game show hosts, in particular for Beat the Clock.
And last, where and when will you meet your Waterloo? Napoleon met his Waterloo at Waterloo (Belgium) on June 18, 1815.
“Leslie thinks it’s a bad idea, but worst-case scenario, I’ve got great home videos.”
Judd Apatow on including his and actress Leslie Mann’s daughters in the cast of the film Knocked Up.
From a profile in The New York Times Magazine.
A funny, hilarious at times, entertaining movie. And, though more than two hours long, never draggy. Not a classic by any means, but well worth $9.50.
Here’s Anthony Lane’s review from this week’s New Yorker. In one line, “Call it the taming of the Shrek.”
Romantic comedies have come a long way since Doris Day and Rock Hudson — or even since Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.
… would have been 78 today. (She died in 1993.)
Ms. Hepburn was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role five times, winning the first time for Roman Holiday in 1954. (The other nominations were for Sabrina, The Nun’s Story, Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Wait Until Dark.) She also received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, posthumously in 1993. Hersholt had presented the Oscar to Hepburn in 1954.
Audrey Kathleen Hepburn-Ruston was born in Brussels, Belgium, daughter of John Victor Hepburn-Ruston, an English banker, and Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch baroness.
In 1963, it was Audrey Hepburn who sang “Happy Birthday” to President Kennedy. Marilyn Monroe sang to him the year before.
Actresses nominated for an Oscar for playing a nun (Meryl Streep is playing a nun this year in the movie Doubt):
Jennifer Jones – “The Song of Bernadette” winner
Gladys Cooper – “The Song of Bernadette”
Ingrid Bergman – “The Bells of St. Marys”
Loretta Young – “Come to the Stable”
Celeste Holm – “Come to the Stable”
Audrey Hepburn – “A Nuns Story”
Lilia Skala – “Lilies of the Field”
Julie Andrews – “The Sound of Music”
Peggy Wood – “The Sound of Music”
Anne Bancroft – “Agnes of God”
Meg Tilly – “Agnes of God”
Susan Sarandon – “Dead Man Walking” winner
Priests have done even better, at least so far as actually winning:
Spencer Tracy – “Boys Town” (winner)
Bing Crosby – “Going My Way” (winner)
Barry Fitzgerald – “Going My Way” (winner)
Richard Burton – “Becket”
Jason Miller – “The Exorcist”
List from The Envelope.
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“Can I just say how proud I am to live in a country where a humble bounty hunter like Boba Fett can get his own postage stamp?” |
See all the Star Wars stamps, which will be released May 15th (the day after the postage increases to 41¢).
. . . of Maria Schneider. She’d be having that “Last Tango in Paris” at 55 now. She was 20 then.
. . . of Mariah Carey. She’s 37.
. . . of Fergie. No, not that Fergie. The singer. She’s 32.
Three-time Oscar nominee for best actress Gloria Swanson was born on this date in 1897. She’s best known for Sunset Blvd., which was made in 1950, and was only her second film since 1934. She’s perhaps even better known for an affair with Joseph P. Kennedy. Ms. Swanson died in 1983.
. . . is 44 today. An excerpt from the profile at The Writer’s Almanac:
Instead of going to film school, he got a job at video rental store that had one of the largest video collections in Southern California. Several other aspiring filmmakers worked there, and they would watch movies all day at work, discussing camera angles and dialogue. He spent five years working at the video store, writing screenplays, but he wasn’t getting anywhere in his career.
He finally got a break when he met an actor who knew another actor who knew Harvey Keitel, and Keitel agreed to look at one of Tarantino’s scripts. Keitel was impressed enough to volunteer to help Tarantino produce the film, and to act in it himself. The result was Reservoir Dogs (1992), which made Tarantino internationally famous. His next film, Pulp Fiction, won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1994, and it went on to win an Academy Award for best screenplay.
NewMexiKen saw Zodiac last night. It was good; somewhat in the way the Law & Order is good, but that’s OK. It left a lasting-enough impression that Jake Gyllenhaal — or the character he played — or someone who looked like him — was in an uncomfortable dream I had early this morning.
Aretha Franklin is 65 today and Elton John is 60. Throw in Anita Bryant, who is 67, and Nick Lowe, who is 58, and March 25th is a pop music birthday bonanza.
Marcia Cross is 45 and Sarah Jessica Parker is 42.
I thought The Wisdom of Children was funny when I read it yesterday. Veronica sent the link a few hours later, so between the two of us it must be good.
At such moments, [Amazing Grace] offers a dream of perfect articulateness—superbly trained actors delivering expertly phrased remarks with ease and force. . . . In this country, we have great actors, but not these kinds of great actors—men and women who can play historical figures and hold to formal syntax without losing their sense of play. Our founding crew of statesmen and intellectuals were no less gifted than Pitt and Wilberforce, but, despite an endless number of best-selling books about them, there isn’t a single good movie devoted to their efforts. At this point, no one can look at an American in a powdered wig without laughing. Popular culture and the democratization of taste and style have made our history irredeemable as entertainment—which is a loss, though I don’t suppose anyone will do much about it.
And if you didn’t like the film, you probably won’t like it.
Animation of a Samuel L. Jackson Pulp Fiction speech in type.
… is 53 today. He’s been on TV and in the movies for 48 years and, of course, won an Oscar for best director for A Beautiful Mind. Howard has been married to Mrs. Howard since 1975.
Ron is the older brother of TV and film character actor Ron Howard’s brother.
Forget Celine Dion (great pipes, no heart) and hear some of Ennio Morricone’s wonderful film music, “The Ecstasy of Gold” from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Buono, il brutto, il cattivo).
David Denby asks some good questions:
As an Academy Award nominee for best picture, “Babel” was a startling choice. The movie, which was written by Guillermo Arriaga and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, is composed of three stories held together by a slender thread, and the mood is darkly calamitous; even the few joyous moments are suffused with dread. In the Arriaga-Iñárritu world, if something bad can happen it happens—hardly a typical American movie’s view of life. Earlier, the two men made, in Mexico, the bloody, turbulent “Amores Perros” (2000) and, in the United States, the dolorous “21 Grams” (2003), which starred Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio Del Toro. Now, however, the collaborators have had a falling out (each claiming the greater credit for what appears in the movies). As they seem to be heading in separate directions, these fate-driven films can be seen as a kind of trilogy. All three send characters from separate stories smacking into one another in tragic accidents; all three jump backward and forward in a scrambling of time frames that can leave the viewer experiencing reactions before actions, dénouements before climaxes, disillusion before ecstasy, and many other upsetting reversals and discombobulations.
The Arriaga-Iñárritu films are hardly the sole topsy-turvy narratives out there. In recent years, we’ve had movies, like “Adaptation” (written by the antic confabulator Charlie Kaufman), that are explicitly about the making of movies, and others, like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (also written by Kaufman), that move forward dramatically by going backward in time. Then, there is a related group of clogged-sink narratives, like “Traffic,” “Syriana,” and “Miami Vice,” which are so heavily loaded with subplots and complicated information that the story can hardly seep through the surrounding material. “Syriana” made sense in the end, but you practically needed a database to sort out the story elements; the movie became a weird formal experiment, testing the audience’s endurance and patience.
Some of the directors may be just playing with us or, perhaps, acting out their boredom with that Hollywood script-conference menace the conventional “story arc.” But others may be trying to jolt us into a new understanding of art, or even a new understanding of life. In the past, mainstream audiences notoriously resisted being jolted. Are moviegoers bringing some new sensibility to these riddling movies? What are we getting out of the overloading, the dislocations and disruptions?
… of Academy Award winning actress Joanne Woodward. She is 77 today. Miss Woodward won the best actress Oscar for The Three Faces of Eve (1957). She was nominated for best actress three other times. Woodward and Paul Newman have been married 49 years.
… of two-time Academy Award winning actress Elizabeth Taylor. She is 75 today. Miss Taylor won best actress Oscars for Butterfield 8 (1960) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).
… of Ralph Nader. He’s 73.
… of Chelsea Clinton. She’s 27, which means she was 12 when her father was elected president.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on this date in 1807.
Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate’er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.
Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.
And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.
He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter’s voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.
It sounds to him like her mother’s voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his haul, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.
Toiling,–rejoicing,–sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.
Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.
Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, “who observers believe influenced American life more than any of his colleagues in modern time,” was born on this date in 1886. The Constitution was his bible.
“Where’s my Constitution?” Justice Black asked, ruffling through his pockets and spreading out the papers on his desk.
“I always keep my Constitution in my coat pocket. What could have happened to it? Have you got one on you?” he asked of a visitor a few years ago.
“You ought to keep one on you all the time,” he said, buzzing for his secretary. “Where’s my Constitution?”
The woman searched his desk drawers and scanned the library shelves in the spacious Supreme Court chambers, but found no Constitution.
“I like to read what it says. I like to read the words of the Constitution,” Justice Black said in a slight Southern drawl, after dispatching the secretary to fetch one. “I’m a literalist, I admit it. It’s a bad word these days, I know, but that’s what I am.”
Shortly, the Constitution was delivered. Hugo LaFayette Black, then 81 years old and completing his 30th year on the United States Supreme Court, laid it tenderly on his lap and opened it to the Bill of Rights.
“Now,” he said with a warm smile, “now let’s see what it says.”
Perhaps as well as anything else, the incident illustrated what formed Chief Justice Earl Warren called the “unflagging devotion” of Mr. Black to the Constitution of the United States.
Perhaps no other man in the history of the Court so revered the Constitution as a source of the free and good life. Few articulated so lucidly, simply and forcefully a philosophy of the 18th- century document. Less than a handful had the impact on constitutional law and the quality of the nation as this self-described “backward country fellow” from Clay County, Alabama.
“I believe that our Constitution,” Justice Black once said, “with its absolute guarantee of individual rights, is the best hope for the aspirations of freedom which men share everywhere.”
John Steinbeck was born on this date in 1902.
Among the masters of modern American literature who have already been awarded this Prize – from Sinclair Lewis to Ernest Hemingway – Steinbeck more than holds his own, independent in position and achievement. There is in him a strain of grim humour which, to some extent, redeems his often cruel and crude motif. His sympathies always go out to the oppressed, to the misfits and the distressed; he likes to contrast the simple joy of life with the brutal and cynical craving for money. But in him we find the American temperament also in his great feeling for nature, for the tilled soil, the wasteland, the mountains, and the ocean coasts, all an inexhaustible source of inspiration to Steinbeck in the midst of, and beyond, the world of human beings.
The Swedish Academy’s reason for awarding the prize to John Steinbeck reads, “for his realistic as well as imaginative writings, distinguished by a sympathetic humour and a keen social perception.”
“I know this—a man got to do what he got to do.”
NewMexiKen correctly picked 17 of 24 award-winners at last night’s Oscars.
Alan Arkin and those lousy short-subjects were my downfall.
How did I get 17 right? I’ll let you know my secret — I cheated.
… was born on this date in 1925.
It was Alfred Hitchcock who noticed Altman’s work early on and hired him to direct episodes of the television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Altman went on to write and direct numerous TV shows, including Bonanza, but he began to experiment with a new way of portraying dialog in movies. He thought it was unrealistic to have only one actor speaking at a time, since in real life groups of people are constantly interrupting each other and talking over each other. So he developed a style in which he would put a microphone and a camera on each of the actors in a scene, and he encouraged them to improvise dialogue and to interrupt each other and talk over each other and to have simultaneous conversations.
Altman finally got his first chance to try out his new style when he chose to direct a movie about a group of military surgeons in the Korean War. The script had been passed over by 14 other directors. It was written as a comedy, but Altman chose to film the surgery scenes like a documentary, with the actors talking over each other and being interrupted by announcements on a loud speaker. And he chose to use lots of fake blood. The studio almost didn’t release the movie because the executives thought the mixture of violence and comedy was morbid and the profanity was too strong. But when it came out at the height of the Vietnam War, M*A*S*H (1970) became the highest-grossing movie of the year.
Altman went on to make a series of movies that are now considered classics, including McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), about a brothel in the Old West; and Nashville (1975), about the country music industry.
Hard to believe there’s ever been a better performance in a film than Helen Mirren in The Queen, a pretty good movie overall.