Category: Movies

Cecil B. DeMille…

was born on this date in 1881.

Producer/director DeMille won the Best Picture Oscar in 1953 for The Greatest Show on Earth, a wonderful, if melodramatic film about circus life in the days of the big top. It starred Charlton Heston, Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Dorothy Lamour, James Stewart (always in clown makeup) and actual circus performers. DeMille was nominated, but did not win the Oscar for director for the movie.

DeMille’s was also nominated for Best Picture in 1957, for The Ten Commandments.

It’s also the birthday

… of Robert Shaw, born on this date in 1927. Shaw was Doyle Lonegan in The Sting and Captain Quint in Jaws. He was nominated for the Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his portrayal of Henry VIII in A Man for All Seasons. A favorite of NewMexiKen is his work as Mr. Blue in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Shaw died in 1978.

… of Sam Elliott, born on this date in 1944. Elliott just looks like a cowboy, or the image we think of when we think of cowboy. NewMexiKen liked him best as General John Buford in Gettysburg and he was good in The Contender.

Marilyn Monroe…

was found dead on this date in 1962. She was 36.

According to Joe DiMaggio biographer Richard Ben Cramer, after Monroe’s marriage to Arthur Miller had ended, she and DiMaggio had reconciled — the Kennedys notwithstanding. By 1962 they planned to re-marry. The wedding was set for Wednesday, August 8, 1962. Very private, very hush-hush.

Five days before the wedding date, on Saturday night, August 3, Marilyn died, a presumed suicide. (According to Cramer, no coroner’s inquest was held.) Marilyn Monroe’s funeral was August 8, 1962.

NewMexiKen posted an entry on the cause of Marilyn and Joe’s initial break up last January.

Of course, Bobby Kennedy was in Los Angeles at the time of Marilyn’s death, so maybe …

Aha!

NewMexiKen isn’t the only one. The Ethicist questions the conventional wisdom as well.

I do agree that it can be tough on the parents having to tell a child something at least potentially painful and confusing. But you have years of practice ahead of you when you try to explain, for example, why the “Lord of the Rings” movies won all those Oscars.

Spidey Crushes ‘Fahrenheit’ in 2004

Frank Rich gets real about Fahrenheit 911 and writes a swell review of Spider-Man 2 as well.

The extraordinary popularity of this hero on the Fourth of July weekend might give partisans on both sides of this year’s political race pause. As a man locked in a war against terror, Peter Parker could not be further removed from the hubristic bravura of Mr. Bush and his own cinematic model, the Tom Cruise of “Top Gun.” There’s nothing triumphalist about Spider-Man; he would never declare “Mission Accomplished” after a passing victory, and his very creed is antithetical to the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war. But neither is he a stand-in for John Kerry. Whatever inner equivocation he suffers over his role as a superhero, he stops playing Hamlet when he has a decision to make. Nor does he follow Mr. Kerry’s vainglorious example of turning his own past battles into slick promotional hagiography.

Spider-Man 2 took in $152 million its first five days, a record. It added 18 of NewMexiKen’s dollars Friday night. It’s good. For its genre it’s very, very good.

Hollywood babes

NewMexiKen knows that my readers are not interested in this sort of thing, but in the interest of providing “a little bit about a lot of things” here’s a Los Angeles Times article on “Several high-profile pregnancies have made motherhood a hot trend in Hollywood. And what the tabloids wouldn’t do for a baby picture.”

Tom Hanks…

is 48 today. Hanks has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role five times, winning for Philadelphia (1993) and Forrest Gump (1994).

You hosers

According to a story in The New York Times, Canadians Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas have provided a DVD commentary for Brother Bear “in which two guys who sound a lot like the beer-loving McKenzie brothers dissect the movie, the art of animation, even Disney itself.”

In any case viewers who watch the DVD commentary are getting a skewed sort of education in the finer points of animation. For instance Rutt and Tuke point out that the appearance of a chipmunk in an animated film is always a harbinger of danger. And Rutt explains how Disney has been able to keep costs under control all these years:

“You know those ads in the magazines and stuff, `Learn to Draw’? So, like Walt Disney Company says, ‘Draw a bear exactly like this,’ and they get thousands of drawings of bears in, and then they put them all together and color them in, and that becomes the bear part of the movie.”

Lena Horne…

is 87 today. American Masters leads its essay on Horne with this:

Even in her eighties, the legendary Lena Horne has a quality of timelessness about her. Elegant and wise, she personifies both the glamour of Hollywood and the reality of a lifetime spent battling racial and social injustice. Pushed by an ambitious mother into the chorus line of the Cotton Club when she was sixteen, and maneuvered into a film career by the N.A.A.C.P., she was the first African American signed to a long-term studio contract. In her rise beyond Hollywood’s racial stereotypes of maids, butlers, and African natives, she achieved true stardom on the silver screen, and became a catalyst for change even beyond the glittery fringes of studio life.

And no cartoon

From Late Night with David Letterman:

Top Ten George W. Bush Complaints About “Fahrenheit 9/11”

10. That actor who played the President was totally unconvincing

9. It oversimplified the way I stole the election

8. Too many of them fancy college-boy words

7. If Michael Moore had waited a few months, he could have included the part where I get him deported

6. Didn’t have one of them hilarious monkeys who smoke cigarettes and gives people the finger

5. Of all Michael Moore’s accusations, only 97% are true

4. Not sure – – I passed out after a piece of popcorn lodged in my windpipe

3. Where the hell was Spider-man?

2. Couldn’t hear most of the movie over Cheney’s foul mouth

1. I thought this was supposed to be about Dodgeball

Passionate, clever, scathing, funny, snarky, brutal, sad, glib and at times superficial

From Editor & Publisher:

While the country as a whole appears split, along political lines, over the controversial Michael Moore documentary, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” movie reviewers at U.S. daily newspapers are not.

An E&P survey of 63 daily papers that ran reviews, in “red” and “blue” states alike, finds that 56 gave the film a positive nod, with only seven abstaining, an almost 90% favorable rating.

The headline for this entry is from the review of Mary Pols in the Contra Costa Times.

The 1,000 Best Movies Ever Made

The 1,000 Best Movies Ever Made. All 1,000 original reviews from The New York Times on-line.

From A.O. Scott’s introduction —

And so this volume is a collection of first words, some prescient, some premature, and worth a good deal less than the thousand pictures they describe. Though its title may invoke the authority of The New York Times, this collection is more likely to start arguments than to settle them, argument being one of the solemn duties of criticism and, more importantly, one of the great pleasures of movie-going.

AFI’s Top 100 movie tunes

Perhaps you saw the show on CBS last night (NewMexiKen caught the last hour). The American Film Institute has named its 100 greatest movie songs.

Here’s the top ten:

  1. “Over the Rainbow” from “The Wizard of Oz”
  2. “As Time Goes By” from “Casablanca”
  3. “Singin’ in the Rain” from “Singin’ in the Rain”
  4. “Moon River” from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”
  5. “White Christmas” from “Holiday Inn”
  6. “Mrs. Robinson” from “The Graduate”
  7. “When You Wish Upon a Star” from “Pinocchio”
  8. “The Way We Were” from “The Way We Were”
  9. “Stayin’ Alive” from “Saturday Night Fever”
  10. “The Sound of Music” from “The Sound of Music”

Demands to be seen

Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan —

Unabashedly partisan, wearing its determination to bring about political change on its sleeve, “Fahrenheit” can be nitpicked and second-guessed, but it can’t be ignored. Set to open today in New York and Friday in Los Angeles and across the country, this landmark in American political filmmaking demands to be seen.

Read the whole review.

13-time Oscar nominee…

Meryl Streep is 55 today. Ms. Streep won the Academy Award for Best Actress in Sophie’s Choice and for Best Supporting Actress in Kramer vs. Kramer. Born in New Jersey, Ms. Streep is a graduate of Vassar College and the mother of four children.

The first film critic…

to win the Pulitizer Prize for distinguished criticism, Roger Ebert, is 62 today. His name at birth was Reinhold Timme.

NewMexiKen particularly likes Ebert’s reviews of what he calls the Great Movies. There’s now close to 200 of them.

“Every great film should seem new every time you see it.”

“Fahrenheit 9/11” Gets Standing Ovation

The Fox News reviewer:

It turns out to be a really brilliant piece of work, and a film that members of all political parties should see without fail.

As much as some might try to marginalize this film as a screed against President George Bush, “F9/11” — as we saw last night — is a tribute to patriotism, to the American sense of duty — and at the same time a indictment of stupidity and avarice.

Frances Ethel Gumm…

was born 82 years ago today. We know her as Judy Garland. She was just under 5-feet tall and the need for weight-control lead her to drugs, which controlled much of her adult life. She died of a barbiturate overdose at age 47.

Ms. Garland was nominated for Best Actress in a Leading Role for A Star is Born (1955) and Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Judgment at Nuremberg (1962). She won a special “Juvenile Oscar” for The Wizard of Oz (1940).