MIFF Blogathon: Day 7 (Winter's Ugly Furniture)

This blogathon is an initiative of MIFF for their 60th anniversary year. I am one of six bloggers given the mission of seeing 60 films in 17 days and writing, reporting, reviewing and wrangling my way through the tiredness and hunger to bring the festival experience to your computer.

The Ugly Duckling
Dir. Garri Bardin
Running Time: 75mins

This Russian adaptation of the famed "ugly duckling" tale is most certainly the only time in cinema history that we will ever be able to describe a movie as "Chicken Run meets Black Swan!" and have it be absolutely accurate. The Ugly Duckling [Gadkiy utyonok] is Garri Bardin's first feature after a career of short movies that spans 40 years. While at only 75 minutes and bare storytelling it's hard to really define it as a feature at all, but a feature we shall call it nevertheless. This adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's short story is lovingly crafted and features several charming songs, but it's hard to deny the slight nature of its being and that

As featured in the "Next Generation" section of the festival, The Ugly Duckling is most definitely a film that would appeal to a younger audience. While I got quite a bit out of it, especially marvelling at the wonderfully expressive and detailed character creations, the fact that its made for kids with little consideration of adults was somewhat off-putting. I can't imagine anybody other than children finding the shrill singing voice of the ugly cygnet hatchling to be hilarious - and in a frustrating turn, we don't even get to hear the redemptive beautiful singing voice of the swan once he has transformed. Seems like a missed opportunity, especially in such a short movie.


In fact, the film's golden egg to speak in terms of adults viewers has surely come about purely by accident. Bardin has used Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake music as the basis for the original songs and the score routinely swells into the decadence of the musical pieces that were recently made pop culturally significant again due to Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan. The aesthetic is very 1980s TV Christmas movie - you know what I'm talking about if you grew up during the era - but that is another endearing quality that the film has in its plumage. The Ugly Ducking isn't particularly special, but curious parents could certainly do far worse (like, say, Cars 2!) B

Strangely, our print had both French and English subtitles on it. I've never seen this before! It was confusing at first.

Winter's Daughter
Dir. Johannes Schmid
Running Time: 92mins

It's about time I start using a thesaurus for words like "sweet" and "charming". The way I'm going, seemingly describing every second film as one or two of those adjectives, I will have well and truly burnt them out and they'll have as much meaning as "the Australian Liberal Party" or "Chris Brown: pop star". But, sometimes, they are the correct words to apply and in the case of Johannes Schmid's Winter's Daughter [Wintertochter], a wonderfully endearing tale of a two German women of different generations (who can tell where this one's going already, can't you?) driving through Poland to discover their lost and unknown families.

Nina Monka stars as 11-year-old Kattaka. She swims, is friends with the young boy next door and goes Christmas tree shopping with an elderly neighter, Ursula Werner's tough Lene. After being told by her mother (Katharina M Schubert) that the man she thought was her father (Maxim Mehmet) is not, but instead is a Russian trawler mechanic named Alexis, Kattaka and Lene travel to the Poland port town of Szczecin to meet him before segueing to the place Lene lived upon the breakout of WWII. It's hard to explain why Winter's Daughter was so good, but it really is just such a satisfying film that made me smile and feel a bit warm inside. The performances are uniformly excellent, especially Werner as well as Leon Seidel as a teenage boy who helps them on their way. The stark, wintery landscapes are wonderfully captured by Michael Bertl and the screenplay by Michaela Hinnenthal, Nora Lämmermann and Thomas Schmid is a restrained charmer. B+

True story: I actually wrote down "SEXY DAD!" in my notes. Add this Maxim Mehmet to the growing list of incredibly-sexy-i-hope-you-get-cast-in-staff-i-get-to-see-throughout-the-year MIFF actors.

Tiny Furniture
Dir. Lena Dunham
Running Time: 98mins

Could we have a new favourite of the 2011 film festival? Why yes, I think we do! Lena Dunham's extraordinary debut feature Tiny Furniture is a wonderful gem filled with hilarious insights into both twentysomething and adult life and a truly wicked outlook on all things "hipster". Many will take Tiny Furniture as being an actual hipster film - the "Mumblecore" movement of filmmaking does that to people - but I instead found Dunham's screenplay to be a vicious attack on the ideas of hipsters, as if pointing to the absurdity of it and cruelly jabbing it.

Following 23-year-old Aura (played by writer, director and - obviously - star Lena Dunahm) as a recently graduated, but emotionally and professionally questioning individual that I identified with greatly. As she moves back in with her mother and sister she finds it hard to identify what it is she wants and how to go about it. There are a lot of movies about this very topic, but it's the unique humour that Dunham brings to the material that stood out as well as the brittle deadpan delivery of she and her cast. My favourite bit was the line about watching reruns of Seinfeld. I watch reruns of Seinfeld! The way it came out of nowhere, much like most of the laugh out loud moments, elevated it beyond simple gag.


Curious to note that Tiny Furniture shares a cinematographer with my other best-of-the-fest title, Martha Marcy May Marlene since they look so different and do such different things with their surroundings (MMMM mostly exteriors, TF mostly interiors.) I adored the way Jody Lee Lipes framed Dunham's film. Major notice must go to art direction by Jade Healy and Chris Trujillo who were in charge of making this interior world amongst the New York suburbs of Tribecca and DUMBO look as refreshing and comical as it does. Dunham - also appearing in The Innkeepers this fest - is a wonderfully refreshing presence in front of the camera. Almost like a female Seth Rogen. Laurie Simmons, on the other hand, isn't so much refreshing as just deliciously lived in and natural as Aura's artist mother.

Whether Tiny Furniture classifies itself as Mumblecore is beyond my care, but what I really focus on is the precise and dedicated wit that Dunham brought to it. Tiny Furniture is a special, hilarious and deeply personal film that I will remember long after the festival. A

Beauty and the Beast
Dir. Jean Cocteau
Running Time: 96mins

Another retrospective title for MIFF and it's a wonderful one that I had never seen before. Jean Coteau's 1946 adaptation of Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont's 1756 tale is a sumptuously designed affair with elaborate, dreamlike sets that incorporate gothic design and inventive visual effects. Meanwhile, costumes by Antonio Castillo, Marcel Escoffier and an uncredited Christian Bérard are almost as equally divine.

As classic as the film is - and despite having never seen it before, I can easily say that it is indeed a classic - it's hard not to laugh at some of the overt theatricality of it all. And as much as I'd love to admit I didn't laugh when Jean Marais's bête appeared for the first (and second and third...) time dressed like a cross between David Bowie in Labyrinth and Bjorn from ABBA wearing Liza Minelli's favourite black sequin top, however that would be lie. A big fat lie! A-

MIFF TALES
This evening at the Kino Palace for Beauty and the Beast there was very almost an "incident". In fact, I thought for sure I was witnessing a man dying right there in the cinema. You could've fooled me because it sounded like actual like vanishing from a man. As this elderly gentleman wheezed, coughed and splattered upon himself towards the start of the movie it, at first, sounded quite humourous ("now that's a cough!") but quickly sounded as if it was becoming very serious. Those sitting around him leaned in and offer assistance, one woman went running out of the cinema for assistance, one man yelled that he "take it outside!" (!!!) And then when one woman who had moved across the isle to help him asked "Someone's gone for help, are you okay?" and just like that he stopped coughing, said "Yes" in an inquisitive 'why wouldn't I be okay?' tone and then resumed watching the film never to be heard of again. Curious.

Curiouser still because just moments early I had returned from my own cinema exit rush as I absolutely had to leave for a spectacular coughing fit. It sounded like someone had removed a vital internal organ it was that long and loud. Yikes.

I also attended a screening today - Winter's Daughter - that was attended by what I think was several school classes. It was so refreshing to go to a film with teenagers in attendance and not wanna smack them with their phones and because of their endless chatter. They even laughed and applauded the opening commercial with Geoffrey Rush and clapped at film's end, too. I hope that amongst that large group of MIFF attendees there is at least one person as batty as we cinemagoers seeing 60 films a festival.

MIFF Blogathon: Day 6 (Tomboys and Film-Noir in Oregon)

This blogathon is an initiative of MIFF for their 60th anniversary year. I am one of six bloggers given the mission of seeing 60 films in 17 days and writing, reporting, reviewing and wrangling my way through the tiredness and hunger to bring the festival experience to your computer.

If you've missed other days just click the "MIFF" tag at the bottom of the entry. I also wrote a dispatch for Trespass Mag on the first four days of the fest.

The Third Man
Dir. Carol Reed
Running Time: 104mins

Carol Reed's masterpiece The Third Man was released two years after his exceptional Odd Man Out, and together the two make a rather stunning double. The chance to see The Third Man, the story of Harry Lime and his mysterious death in a road accident outside his Vienna apartment, on the big screen was far too good to pass up. Even more so when I knew it meant not necessarily having to watch the film with my critical brain on. Having already seen it and thought of it as one of the greatest films ever made, I was able to simply soak in the beautiful Italian locations (yes, even the sewers are beautiful!), the perfect Oscar-winning cinematography by Robert Krasker, the crackling chemistry between all four lead characters, the dazzling looks of Valli and revel in the excitement and thrills of the final 40 minutes, one of the greatest chase sequences ever put to celluloid.

Unlike Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy on day one of the festival, there is no need for me to request my dear readers hail The Third Man as a newly minted masterpiece as it has been hailed as one since the day it won the Palme d'Or in Cannes (or, as it was known in 1949, the "Grand Prize of the Festival"). I can only suggest you watch it (or watch it again) and agree with the masses. A

I Wish I Knew
Dir. Jia Zhangke
Running Time: 138mins

This peculiar film comes from the director of Still Life, which reminds to this one of the two or three greatest films I've ever seen at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Perhaps that's why I keep going to his films - perhaps? it is - but neither of the subsequent Zhang films have been, well, good. While this long, meandering testimonial documentary is certainly better than Useless, I Wish I Knew failed to grab me and resulted in a long series of walkouts. I was never offended or truly annoyed by the film to walk out sooner, but I did have to leave several minutes before the end due to another session. To be honest, I don't think I missed much.

The film follows an unnamed woman as she trudges about the city of Shanghai. As she does nothing of note, we are greeted to lovely footage of citizens of Shanghai going about their daily routine: mahjong, a young child running around looking for a fight to show off his "muscles", shopping for produce at a market. Throughout the movie are dozens or interviews with subjects ranging from the recognisable (Hsiao-hsien Hou for instance) to the not (I'm not sure if they were all supposed to be famous. were they?) as they recall memories about the city of Shanghai. Occasionally these interviews produced some wonderful stories, but others (like one man who talks about moving a sofa lounge? I admit to probably dozing off during that one!) are unfocused and uninteresting.


My favourite interview was Wang Tung/Wang Toon who directed the 1997 film Red Persimmon. The film is interlaced with film clips and locations sequences of Shanghai are gloriously lensed by Ke-Jia's frequent cinematographer Nelson Yu Lik-wai in his trademark colour palate of sea green and smoggy whites. The heavily synthesised score by Giong Lim is a highlight, but eventually becomes repetitious. Like I said, it's hardly offensive enough to my sensibilities, but there lacks any serious bite to really engage. C-

How to Die in Oregon
Dir. Peter Richardson
Running Time: 107mins

To be perfectly honest with you, I'm not sure I am quite ready, willing and able to discuss this documentary about dying with dignity. Peter Richardson's deeply moving How to Die in Oregan follows a few cases of people wanting to die with dignity after contracting debilitating terminal illness, as well the Washington state's proposition to legalise it like it is in Oregon. Richardson mainly follows one case, however, and that's the beautiful Cody Curtis, a mother and wife with liver cancer. After the movie I tweeted this, and it's entirely true:



It knocked me out.

I don't really want to use my blog here to get into a big theological discussion about whether dying with dignity is a basic human right or not (I think it is, ahem), but I honestly don't know how anyone could watch this documentary and not be moved. There's a sequence in the film that shows religious protesters who believe when we die is the matter of God and God alone, but it's probably quite easy for them to say that when they're not the one dealing with crippling disease and pain. Hmmm. A-

Tomboy
Dir. Céline Sciamma
Running Time: 82mins

"Sweet" is the word that I - and I presume many others, too - keep coming back to when deciding what to write about this French childhood comedy, the first film by Céline Sciamma since Water Lilles in 2007. Tomboy follows a young girl, Laure, whose family has recently moved to a new area. She has a younger sister and her mother is pregnant. Laure, as played by the wonderful and touching Zoé Héran, does "the boy thing" - cuts her hair short, wears boys clothes, and actually passes for a boy in the presence of others.

The performances by Héran, Malonn Lévana as sister Jeanne and Sophie Cattani as their mother are uniformly excellent. Héran especially gives a beautiful performance and one that goes deeper than the rather shallow waters of the screenplay. It's one of the finest child actor performances of recent years. Unlike many other viewers though, I suspect sweetness is Tomboy's major thematic virtue. Does Sciamma's screenplay have much else to say on the matter of androgyny and even, though never explicitly discussed but certainly raised, homosexuality in young children? I'm not too sure. In fact, I happen to think that Tomboy works best as a look at sisterly bond than anything relating to a girl dressing up as a boy. B

MIFF TALES
Today was the first day of the festival where I didn't feel like I really wanted to just stay in bed and take flu-fighting drugs. I actually felt like perky today. Perhaps I've got the initial wind that most people had on the first day of the festival? That or I'll wake up tomorrow feeling like crap again and I'll wanna punch myself in the face for jinxing myself.

It's gotten to the stage of the festival where I truly, honestly, don't know what day it is or even what time it is. It's also gotten to the stage where I start to see and hear things. During yesterday's films I couldn't help but watch boring paedophile drama Michael and see Buster Bluth! Today, as I was watching The Third Man I routinely got the theme tune to Curb Your Enthusiasm in my brain! That zither music does weird things to the brain, I swear!

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Rebel Without a Cause

When Nathaniel Rogers at The Film Experience said he was doing a "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" feature on Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause I made sure I made a preemptive blog note to be involved. I so rarely get the chance to do so, but not only do I actually own Rebel on DVD, it's also one of my favourite films. And when I say "favourite films" I mean favourite films, I mean top five of all time. The first day I ever saw it I didn't just watch it once, or even twice, but three times.

I was hooked on the film - and the film's star, James Dean, naturally - and any chance I can get to rave about it I will take. Of course, I got super busy and then these past two days I've had the flu and haven't felt like writing much and subsequently forgot all about this. Nevertheless, even though I'm a little late, there was no way I gonna miss out on this baby. I knew immediately what shot was my favourite, but that doesn't mean we can't look at a few others, right? A movie as gorgeous as this deserves to be obsessed over.


This shot is a fabulous one because it says so much about the relationship between these two characters, played by Dean and Natalie Wood. His volatile reactionary behaviour becomes blunted by the beautiful Judy that he can't even face her, while she is almost confused by why he would act this way. Everyone wants to look at her.



I adore these two shots, shared between Dean's Jim Stark and Sal Mineo's Plato. The flirtation between these two is so tragically erotic that it adds a whole 'nother dimension to the film. But I love these shots specifically because it's almost as if you can feel Plato's heart beating within them as Jim, the boy he lusts after, stands so close. The second shot of Jim playfully touching Plato's nose as he hides behind bars is very symbolic of how Plato surely feels about his sexuality. Like he's trapped behind the bars of society, but maybe - just maybe - Jim could be the one to remove those bars. Their relationship is so touching, and pains me somewhat to even talk about it.


This shot, meanwhile, exposes the sad, lonely lives of these two teenagers. It's a shot that director Ray and cinematographer Ernest Haller hold on screen for a long time, but this very moment where all three principal characters have this look of longing on their face feels the most devastating. The three of them brought together by their sadness.


Meanwhile, this shot of James Dean bathed in the shimmering light of the planetarium during the big finale? Well, I just like it because of the way it played with light and illuminates, but doesn't glorify, Dean's beauty.






However, my choice for favourite shot is this one. It comes roughly half way through the film as Jim tells his parents that he wants to go to the police regarding the "chicken death" on the clifftop. As this "all-American family" talk and argue - most argue - the camera suddenly tilts for seemingly no apparent reason. First time I saw it was confused by it, but liked it as an unexpected moment to remind audiences of 1955 that - to borrow a famous movie poster catchphrase - it's only a movie.

But after seeing the film many times since, I've come to identify it as a moment that symbolises a shift in the dynamics of this family, and especially between Jim and his father (Jim Backus). The way the camera moves ever so slightly like the scales of two prize-fighters, one of which has the upper hand. It's from this moment on that sets up the rest of Jim's story. How can he go back to the way it was before after what has happened now that his world has been shifted off of its axis?

It's a masterful shot in a masterful movie.

Read more "best shots" at The Film Experience.

Recreating Gilda

As some of my longtime readers may recall, I listed the poster for George Vidal's 1946 film noir Gilda as the 17th best of all time (please note, that list is most certainly outdated - or, at least, the lower rungs are). Gilda is getting a cinematic re-release in England - lucky sods - and with it comes a gorgeous new quad poster from Park Circus.


Utilising that iconic pose of Rita Hayworth's, but ramping up the noir with a striking contrast of black and white. It's beautiful to look at, don't you think? As a matter of fact, Gilda has produced many memorable posters thanks to Hayworth's striking imagery. Check out some of my favourites below.



Which is your favourite?

Old, Older, Oldest

I haven't just been watching insiped kids' movies, chilly, porcelain art films and meditative journey's through time. No, I do occasionally give myself time to see movies made before the invention of the DVD and thank heavens for that because the only film I've seen from 2011 that even approaches the brilliance of the follow trio of films has been Meek's Cutoff - a movie that has gotten a barely there release, even by Australian standards.

Beginning with David Cronenberg's frighteningly prophetic Videodrome seems as good a place as any, doesn't it? As I slowly make my way through the man's oeuvre I find myself becoming more and more of a fan. So much so, actually, that as I viewed the recently launched trailer for his latest, the Freud and Jung psychoanalysis A Dangerous Method, I kept hoping for something deliciously wicked to happen like - oh, I dunno - Michael Fassbender dissolving into a giant vagina made of goo and thorns.

Nevertheless, Videodrome is a crazy psycho-sci-fi-horror flick that paints a lurid, grotesque picture of a mentally decaying civilisation, which, in a neat twist, has turned out to be a spot on prediction of the future. Made in 1983, it presents a world where executives of a niche television network play amongst themselves trying to push the boundaries of taste and to tell you any more would be silly because, even though it's nearly 30 years old (!!!), to witness its hallucinogenic mindfunks free of knowledge is still the best way to go.

If you must - or if you've already seen it - how about this trailer! Created on a Commodore 64 with graphics that look like a long lost Lime record cover, it's certainly a relic of its time.


James Woods plays James Woods as always, but how great is Deborah Harry? She pops up in the strangest of places (usually Canadian) and yet is always a treat. As the seductress with an interest in the burgeoning kink scene, Debbie's "Nikki Brand" is a wonderful creation and it helps that she can play it so very well. Cronenberg is so enamoured with Harry's lips that they become the centrepiece of what is arguably Videodrome's most famous sequence. I love how smouldering she looks on the two ace Videodrome posters below. The film as a whole is just terrific though. Ugly and menacing, yet never stifling and claustrophobic. It's science fiction at its most fascinating and mind-blowing. Long live the new flesh Videodrome! A


I recently had the chance to see Victor Fleming's 1939 epic Gone with the Wind on the big screen and, without hesitation, I jumped at it. Screening at The Astor Theatre with overture and intermission in tact - the only thing missing was Marzipan creeping around the lobby (she was at the vet).

What is there that can be said about Gone with the Wind that hasn't already been said? And I'm not just saying that because I can't be bothered typing much about it, but because there really isn't much to say that wouldn't just sound like heavy squeals - VIVIAN LEIGH! THE COSTUMES!! THE SETS!!! VIVIAN LEIGH!!!! EVERYTHING!!!!! VIVIAN LEIGH!!!!!! ETC!!!!!!! You get the deal. Seeing it on a big screen was, needless to say, a bit better than a DVD on the TV (and, on at least one viewing, with the wrong side of the disc in, resulting in watching a hefty chunk of the film's second half before everything else. Oops.) I lost track of the amount of times my face lit up with a grin as big as Tara witnessing those images projected onto a cinema screen for the first time. Tomorrow is another day... A+

Lastly - just last night in fact - I immersed myself in The Battleship Potemkin, Sergei Eisenstein's famed 1925 silent film about the mutiny on board the titular ship and the effects - albeit fictionalised - it had on the nearby port town of Odessa. It's an astonishing film, and one that is constantly surprising in its use of editing and cinematography, not to mention the curiously numerous moments of homoerotic imagery that Eisenstein, a gay man, put into the film. Querelle eat your heart out! Okay, maybe not that much...


As someone who finds his resistance to silent films deteriorating with each subsequent viewing, I was shocked by how little it felt like a chore to sit through as some silents can be. There was only one instance of my biggest silent movie pet peeve where a character speaks for what feels like a lengthy moment of time and yet only one brief title card of dialogue appears on screen afterwards! That's a win in my book. Much like the best silent films I have seen - Murnau's Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Nosferatu, Pabst's Pandora's Box, Lang's M and Metropolis - it has a vibrancy and a strength of storytelling ability that belies its origins. It's why I don't care for DW Griffith's The Birth of a Nation or Intolerance, both of which are unwieldy, excessive and over-wrought. For all the "he invented [insert camera trick]!" praise that Griffith gets, I couldn't help but feel that watching this film, and in particular the "Odessa Steps" sequence, was more akin to watching cinema for the first time. It's such a striking, deeply powerful piece of filmmaking that actually had be gasping. It's amazing how techniques seen hundreds of time since can still have such an impact like they do here. I'd heard about the "Odessa Steps" scene and everytime I saw those steps I thought to myself "is this is?" When it began, however, I could tell "oh, this is it!" and was instantly swept up, just as I was the rest of the film. A

I, unfortunately, feel like I could barely find time to watch all 74 minutes of Battleship Potemkin once this weekend let alone twice, which is what I wanted to do. I have heard the Pet Shop Boys' score to the film long before I'd seen the movie itself and now that I've seen it I really did want to watch it again with the sound on mute and their 2007 electronic synth driven music score on the speakers. It's a thrilling 69 minutes worth of music from the Boys - credited as Tennant/Lowe for some reason - and would be interested to see how it plays alongside the monster of a film. Has anybody done it or, better yet, been a one of the rare screenings featuring the Pet Shop Boys' score? People have done the same thing to Metropolis, which would be another fascinating combination given science fiction and synthesisers go hand in hand.

If you're at all like me and are curious, here is a video that somebody uploaded. Very interesting.

It Might Get Loud*

It's hard to watch a movie like Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz with a critical eye. If I was to look at it purely on an entertainment level then it would flirt with an A because The Band and their music are so genuinely brilliant and amongst the best ever committed to cinema. Yet, then again, Scorsese's handling of the interview material interspersed throughout is rather weak and inconsequential, unlike Madonna: Truth or Dare, and I couldn't give it much higher than a C+. However, if I'm looking at the film from a technical standpoint then I'd probably go with a B because it's certainly more inventive than Neil Young: Heart of Gold but lacks the stripped back yet inventive energy of Stop Making Sense (both directed by Jonathan Demme for what it's worth). What am I to do?

Beginning with that wonderful title card that you see up top (am I crazy for feeling like I've seen it before at the start of another movie?), Martin Scorsese's documentation of the final ever concert by The Band is a joy to watch because, as I've said, the music is simply glorious. Featuring guest performances by Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond (free of irony), Emmylou Harris, Ringo Starr, The Staple Sisters, Muddy Waters and even Bob Dylan, The Last Waltz is veritable treasure trove for music fans. Scorsese doesn't do much with the footage, which is both a blessing and a curse, although I do wish we were able to see more than the 117 minutes (it's my understanding that the actual concert went much longer). In the end I'm going to slice the difference and give it a B+.

I'm unable to embed my favourite performance, but I would have to go with "Stage Fright", how about you?


*Yes, this is probably the only time you will see me willingly reference a Davis Guggenheim documentary. Savour it if you'd like.

Unsocial Network

I recently watched Sidney Lumet's Network for the first time. While I liked Lumet's boldly satirical film - that final line is surely one of the finest closing moments in a film ever, right? - is excellent when dealing with the ins and outs of the television news business, I couldn't help but be disappointed by the romantic subplot involving Faye Dunaway and William Holden.


Faye is not amused.
I know, I know... but surely I am not the only one who found it all a bit silly and trite? I liked how it weaved around the idea of the romance being so cliche - in fact, there was so freaky similarity between Network's "I'm turning into one of your scripts" outbursts and Scream 4! - but it never really caught on until Holden's big final scene. "You're television incarnate, Diana."

It's a shame then because the rest of the film is so fantastic. Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay is a marvel of verbal gymnastics, with witty barbs thrown about as casually as breath. The performances are of equal worth, too, especially Dunaway who just lashes her tongue and rips your face off with her vocal delivery. Network won for Oscars and is one of only two films to win three acting trophies. As one of the winners, Beatrice Straight's five minute performance as William Holden's put upon wife can't help but be judged harshly. There's nothing there that's particularly revelatory about what is essentially a two scene cameo and, frustratingly, her character is a whole mountain of silly. But, you know, she yells a lot in her big scene and I guess that's all you need. Beatrice Straight is certainly no Viola Davis in the pantheon of great cameo actresses, that's for sure. Ned Beatty's equally small part, however, is one I can entirely get behind.

Having now seen it, I can see the reasons why people were comparing this year's Oscar race to that of 1977. The talky, modern day, socially relevant movie with a screenplay for the all time list wins several major categories, but is ultimately trumped by a feel good movie. That Rocky and The King's Speech were both incredibly well-received by critics and audiences alike means nothing to the tsk tsk-ing important people who begrudge their wins. No doubt that Network and The Social Network were amongst the best films of their year, but for all the talk of the "real classic" being unrewarded, I can think of several films from both 1976 and 2010 that deserved the Academy's statue even more. B+

Marilyn the Misfit

Was Marilyn ever more stunning than in John Huston's The Misfits? I'd certainly say that it's one of her absolute finest performances, too. I can never quite tell which performance I prefer more: The Misfits or Bus Stop.





Images via DVD Beaver.

What's Up, Ryan?

The hotel room scene: The moment I fell in love with Ryan O'Neal in What's Up, Doc?