1922

After a long hiatus, I present the Best of 1922! A solid year with quite a few classics, particularly strong for male performances.

BEST ACTOR: The 1950s

I finally pulled together my yearly Best Actor lists for the 1950s. I suppose I have a few blind spots (some Mizoguchi and Naruse here and there, plus Bergman's The Magician and maybe a few other foreign films of note), though this feels pretty comprehensive. My likes and dislikes should be pretty obvious!

1950
Humphrey Bogart, In a Lonely Place
William Holden, Sunset Blvd.
John Huston, The Furies
James Stewart, Harvey
Richard Widmark, Night and the City and Panic in the Streets
06 Marlon Brando, The Men
07 Joel McCrea, Stars in My Crown
08 Dana Andrews, Where the Sidewalk Ends
09 Toshirô Mifune, Rashômon
10 Spencer Tracy, Father of the Bride

1951
Marlon Brando, A Streetcar Named Desire
Kirk Douglas, Ace in the Hole
John Garfield, He Ran All the Way
Michael Redgrave, The Browning Version
Oskar Werner, Decision Before Dawn
06 Montgomery Clift, A Place in the Sun
07 Alec Guiness, The Lavender Hill Mob and The Man in the White Suit
08 Dick Powell, The Tall Target
09 Audie Murphy, The Red Badge of Courage
10 Richard Basehart, 14 Hours

1952
Gary Cooper, High Noon
Ralph Meeker, Glory Alley
Serge Reggiani, Casque d'Or
Robert Ryan, On Dangerous Ground
Takashi Shimura, Ikiru
06 James Mason, 5 Fingers
07 Robert Donat, The Magic Box
08 Robert Mitchum, Angel Face and The Lusty Men
09 Gene Kelly, Singin' in the Rain
10 Arthur Kennedy, The Lusty Men

1953
John Payne, 99 River Street
James Stewart, The Naked Spur
Spencer Tracy, The Actress
Charles Vanel, The Wages of Fear
Richard Widmark, Pickup on South Street
06 William Holden, Stalag 17
07 Vittorio De Sica, The Earrings of Madame de...
08 Charles Boyer, The Earrings of Madame De…
09 Ake Grönberg, Sawdust and Tinsel
10 Masayuki Mori, Ugetsu

1954
Dirk Bogarde, The Sleeping Tiger
Marlon Brando, On the Waterfront
Jean Gabin, Touchez pas au Grisbi
Charles Laughton, Hobson's Choice
James Stewart, Rear Window
06 Sô Yamamura, Sound of the Mountain
07 Sterling Hayden, Crime Wave
08 Glenn Ford, Human Desire
09 Anthony Quinn, La Strada
10 Burt Lancaster, Vera Cruz

1955
James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause
Alberto Closas, Death of a Cyclist
Broderick Crawford, Il Bidone
Robert Mitchum, The Night of the Hunter
Spencer Tracy, Bad Day at Black Rock
06 Henry Fonda, Mister Roberts
07 Ralph Meeker, Kiss Me Deadly
08 Fredric March, The Desperate Hours
09 Jean Servais, Rififi
10 Laurence Olivier, Richard III

1956
Dana Andrews, While the City Sleeps
Gary Cooper, Friendly Persuasion
Henry Fonda, The Wrong Man
James Mason, Bigger Than Life
Paul Newman, Somebody Up There Likes Me
06 John Wayne, The Searchers
07 Robert Ryan, The Proud Ones
08 Masahiko Tsugawa, Crazed Fruit
09 François Leterrier, A Man Escaped
10 Sterling Hayden, The Killing

1957
Ben Gazzara, The Strange One
Andy Griffith, A Face in the Crowd
Charles Laughton, Witness for the Prosecution
Marcello Mastroianni, Le Notte Bianchi
Anthony Perkins, Fear Strikes Out
06 Steve Cochran, Il Grido
07 Max von Sydow, The Seventh Seal
08 Victor Sjöström, Wild Strawberries
09 Robert Ryan, Men in War
10 Yves Montrand, The Wide Blue Road

1958
Vince Edwards, Murder by Contract
Paul Newman, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
James Stewart, Vertigo
Spencer Tracy, The Last Hurrah
Richard Widmark, The Law and Jake Wade
06 David Niven, Separate Tables
07 Alec Guiness, The Horse's Mouth
08 Chhabi Biswas, The Music Room
09 Zbigniew Cybulski, Ashes and Diamonds
10 Tony Curtis, The Defiant Ones

1959
Sergei Bondarchuk, Destiny of a Man
Vittorio De Sica, General della Rovere
Laurence Harvey, Room at the Top 
Jean-Pierre Léaud, The 400 Blows
James Stewart, Anatomy of a Murder
06 Fredric March, Middle of the Night
07 Harry Belafonte, Odds Against Tomorrow
08 Alec Guiness, Our Man in Havana
09 Jack Lemmon, Some Like it Hot
10 Jean-Louis Trintignant, Violent Summer

RECENT VIEWINGS: Vincente + Vincent

Vincente Minnelli certainly seems to be a no-brainer choice for a big screen adaptation of Vincent Van Gogh's story. Lust for Life (1956) is, unfortunately, all kinds of fail in its melodramatic, chronological play-by-play interspersed with art history and painting technique details. Minnelli expresses the visual inspiration that informs Van Gogh's work with finesse; the director always gets the aesthetic details of a story right. Here, he captures the struggle of artist assuredly in his trademark production design. Minnelli even makes a bold statement for a big budget film in 1956: at points, the screen becomes a slideshow of paintings, dividing episodes as if shuffling from gallery to gallery.

Yet the melodrama supersedes the aesthetic realization, something Minnelli usually avoids. The prime culprit for this beautiful descent into the mawkish is star Kirk Douglas in a performance that exposes the superficial screenplay. The actor certainly resembles Van Gogh and strives to depict his tortured struggles. Not that any celebrated painter demands subtlety, but Douglas approaches the character with such tremendous STRIFE and SUFFERING that there is little in the way of story arc. It's simply all AGONY, screaming and pounding AGONY. Nothing is internal here, but everything external and robust. Douglas comes across as a desperate novice and drags the film along. His performance lacks a core as does the by-the-books, heavily expository screenplay. The renderings of Minnelli are consistently betrayed, though the director is obviously to blame, too.

In a brief supporting performance as Paul Gauguin, Anthony Quinn shines. The actor balances audacity and vulnerability in a manner Douglas never finds.

RECENT VIEWINGS: Shohei Imamura

Shohei Imamura's exciting and tragic Pigs and Battleships (Buta to gunkan, 1961) juggles the entertainment and humor of an increasingly manic gangster caper film and the conviction of a sociopolitical commentary with invigorating showmanship. Small-time hoods of a seaport town feed upon the close American base (and vice versa, of course) but Imamura focuses on a  struggling couple. The young man is enticed by the corrupt ventures of the post-war Japanese-American relationship as the young woman is increasingly repulsed by the sordid opportunities available for her. The push-pull between the polite dextirity celebrated in Japanese culture and its unseemly flipside finally erupts. Imamura delivers a bizarre, captivating gunfight setpiece in which the titular pigs (a commodity of blackmarket enterprise) quite literally overtake lowlifes and the port city itself. It's an incredible sequence. Imamura has enough insight, however, to allow the livestock as well as the warships of the film's title to be very allegorical as well. Although very convoluted at times, Pigs and Battleships engagingly tackles very tangible themes even as further exploration uncovers less obvious commentary (i.e. Japan's relationship to Asian neighbors immediately after American control and the Korean War).

ICS Announces 2009 Award Winners. Yummy!

February 17, 2010
ICS ACCEPTS THE MYSTERY OF A SERIOUS MAN

LOS ANGELES -- The Coen brothers’ profound and hilarious retelling of the Book of Job, set in a midwestern Jewish suburb in 1967 on the cusp of the Sexual Revolution, has won the ICS award for best film of 2009. Best director and original screenplay kudos also went to Joel and Ethan Coen’s A Serious Man, perhaps their most personal and certainly their most brilliant exploration of the relationship between God and Man.

Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, a disturbing tale of pre-Nazi German repression, took runner-up honors for film and director, as well as winning top prizes for Christian Berger’s evocative black-and-white cinematography and for best film not in the English language.

The other big ICS winner was Fantastic Mr. Fox with three awards, including best animated film, the clever adapted screenplay by writer/director Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach, and Nelson Lowry’s fantastically stylized and textured production design.

Top acting honors went to Colin Firth in A Single Man for his emotional, nuanced turn as a gay professor dealing with the loss of his long-time lover, and to Tilda Swinton in a tour-de-force alcoholic paean to dysfunctional maternal instinct as Julia. In memorable supporting roles, Christoph Waltz got a bingo for Inglourious Basterds, while Vera Farmiga seduced us with her honesty (or did she?) in Up in the Air.

Previously released nominations may be found here.


PICTURE
01. A Serious Man
02. The White Ribbon
03. Fantastic Mr. Fox
04. Inglourious Basterds
05. Tokyo Sonata
06. 35 Shots of Rum
07. The Hurt Locker
08. District 9
09. Bright Star
10. Up In The Air

DIRECTOR
Ethan & Joel Coen – A Serious Man
runner-up: Michael Haneke – The White Ribbon

FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
01. The White Ribbon
02. Tokyo Sonata
03. 35 Shots of Rum
04. Summer Hours
05. Broken Embraces
06. Still Walking
07. Lorna’s Silence
08. The Beaches of Agnès
09. Ponyo
10. O’Horten
11. The Headless Woman

ACTOR
Colin Firth – A Single Man
runner- up: Michael Stuhlbarg – A Serious Man

ACTRESS
Tilda Swinton – Julia
runner-up: Abbie Cornish – Bright Star

SUPPORTING ACTOR 
Christoph Waltz – Inglourious Basterds
runner-up: Peter Capaldi – In the Loop

SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Vera Farmiga – Up In The Air
runners-up: Mo’Nique – Precious and Penélope Cruz - Broken Embraces

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY 
A Serious Man – Ethan & Joel Coen
runner-up: Inglourious Basterds – Quentin Tarantino

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY 
Fantastic Mr. Fox – Wes Anderson & Noah Baumbach
runner-up: In the Loop – Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci & Tony Roche

CINEMATOGRAPHY 
The White Ribbon – Christian Berger
runner-up: Inglourious Basterds – Robert Richardson

EDITING
The Hurt Locker – Chris Innis & Bob Murawski
runner-up: Broken Embraces – José Salcedo

PRODUCTION DESIGN 
Fantastic Mr. Fox – Nelson Lowry
runner-up: A Serious Man – Jess Gonchor

ORIGINAL SCORE 
A Single Man – Abel Korzeniowski
runner-up: Fantastic Mr. Fox – Alexandre Desplat

ENSEMBLE 
In the Loop
runner-up: The White Ribbon

ANIMATED FILM 
Fantastic Mr. Fox
runner-up: Ponyo

DOCUMENTARY 
The Beaches of Agnès
runner-up: Anvil! The Story of Anvil


www.icsfilm.org

REVIEW: Nine (Marshall, 2009)

It's time to play catch-up!


Nine (Marshall, 2009): It is unfortunate that the film adaptation of Nine has the aura of complete critical and box office failure. While very flawed, the film is also very watchable, a refreshingly dramatic musical in an age where musical cinema leans heavily upon the comedic and light. Italian film great Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis, far more capable here than detractors credit) is a director in creative crisis: he has no idea how to craft his ninth feature. A multitude of women from his life inform his tortured process in a parade of Academy Award-winning actresses. And then Kate Hudson and Fergie. 


For those who have seen the stage production or have enjoyed the inspiration for that work, Federico Fellini's masterpiece 8½, this is all very familiar.  Rob Marshall attempts to bridge the stage and the cinema in this version, crafting musical set pieces Contini's massive Cinecittà soundstage. These numbers are a manifestation of Contini's torment and searching. His creative process is revealed as the women of his life take stage, alternating between the sparkling and the somber. Contini ultimately unable to fashion his film despite these muses. Yet over the course of Nine, these encounters form the very film that eludes the filmmaker. In its finale, the director finally calls action on set but the viewer has already seen his completed work in the preceding minutes.


Marshall uses the same stage-as-prespective approach employed in Chicago (2002). The execution is more abrupt and distracting here, with exaggerated cross-cutting between the real and the cerebral that rob most numbers from cohesiveness. The impact of number like "Folies Bergere" (with Judi Dench as Contini's trusted costumer, Lilli), is dampened because Marshall seems unwilling to allow a viewer to experience the visceral without constantly reminders that these moments are, indeed, internal. In a parallel to his lead character, the director of Nine seems to be his own worst enemy.


Yet moments shine throughout and admirably prop up filmmaker missteps. Penelope Cruz, in particular, energizes in her scenes, balancing the melancholy with slinky, sexy allure. But it is Marion Cotillard who holds the film together as Contini's put-upon wife, Luisa. Her scenes ache with heart in a film sometimes too cold and her two musical numbers most successfully bridge the internal and external anguish of Guido through the sympathetic pleas of his wife.

REVIEW: Remember the Night

A holiday delight that resonates from a Preston Sturges creenplay, Remember the Night assays familiar moral territory inconspicuously. As he did with the scripter’s classic Easy Living (1937), Mitchell Leisen directs. In the earlier collaboration, down-on-her-luck Jean Arthur chances upon luxury, an impetus for the screenwriter to lightly pit haves against have-nots. In Remember the Night, new to DVD from the Universal-TCM Vault Collection, star Barbara Stanwyck initially has less serendipitous designs upon good fortune. 

Read the rest at Alt Film Guide!