If there's one thing the 1997 James Cameron film and the 1912 steam liner both have in common is that they were unprecedented cultural juggernauts. Simply by setting sail out of Southhampton, England on April 10th, 1912, the Titanic set a world record for the largest moving object. Of course, it would go onto set more records later in the week for death and disaster, but it was a symbol of crowning achievement for the guilded age nonetheless
Similarly, no movie had captured the public attention in my lifetime like the film did. It's budget and attention to detail was unimaginable and clearly enhanced the film in an era when the American blockbuster was still evolving as an art form. It's 15-week run as America's number one film (very few films today last more than 2 weeks at the number one spot and I highly doubt any film has gone more than four weeks at #1 since 2000) and subsequent shattering of a 20-year-old record for domestic gross was ample evidence that this is the film everyone saw if they were alive in 1998 and not living in a cave.
I first saw the film in the theater a few months after its release in my early teens with my late grandfather (on a bittersweet note, this was the last film he saw) and was overtaken with sadness. To witness the senseless tragedy of those lives lost was a severely depressing experience that haunted me for a couple days. I wasn't a film enthusiast back then so rather than admire James Cameron for so effectively depressing the hell out of me, I just wished I hadn't seen the film in the first place.
About nine years later in college, I saw the film again with a more detached emotional perspective and found the film to be a brilliant film and used it as the topic for a term paper in one of my film courses. I no longer saw Titanic as a portrait senseless tragedy but a well-thought out expose on class tension. The tragedy wasn't that a lot of people died but that existing views on class (the fact that lifeboats for third class passengers weren't provided because they'd aesthetically clutter up the deck strolling experiences of the first class is the kind of thing you can go wild with in such an essay) prevented lives from being saved.
Fast-forward to the present where I've become much more educated on the Titanic. The 100th Anniversary of the sinking had an article in National Geographic that spurned my interest along with a recent Reddit question and answer session by a preservationist for the Titanic exhibit. The more I've diven into the research about the Titanic, the more I've realized that the mysteries of the Titanic are unknowable. We now have greater forensic technology to piece together what happened in the North Atlantic at 41'N, 48'W in the early morning hours of August 15th and research and new books have kept going on the disaster but those new books have the effect of disproving what the earlier books said and those new books are in doubt too.
For instance, the Californian and its captain Robert Lord took a lot of heat because they were apparently closer to the Titanic than the Carpathia (the ship that eventually picked up the survivors, making contact with the first lifeboat, approximately an hour and forty minutes after the Titanic sank and everyone not in a lifeboat died of hypothermia from being in 29 degree water) and did not respond to the disaster in time. However, new research by the British Department of Transport and another maritime historian David Gittins have supposedly cleared Lord's name by calculating that the Californian was likely too far away to be able to make a rescue in time. This pushed forward the theory that the ship that the people on board Titanic and the Californian saw over the horizon was a third unidentified ship (The Samson) that was sailing illegally in those waters. The problem with that theory is that another Titanic researcher, Leslie Reade, followed this revelation by consulting Icelandic port records (the Samson's destination) and did the math to discover that the Samson couldn't have been there in time. With that myth debunked, most Titanic researchers are pointing their fingers again at the Californian as the likely mystery ship on the horizon but how does that explain the fireworks seen on the bow of the ship?
These are still issues hotly debated today and whether the water was even 29 degrees or whether anyone lasted more than an hour in the water (see Charles Joughin) were up for debate.
Several of the survivors such as Colonel Archibald Gracie and Molly Brown made names for themselves as amateur historians after the incident and perhaps that's where James Cameron fits in: Cameron pieced together the most exacting details of history he could find while sifting through inexact historical speculation to create a powerful story and perhaps that's as good as one can hope for.
Showing posts with label Titanic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Titanic. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Friday, February 25, 2011
Stock Stereotypes: The Elegant, Cultured and Well-Educated Villain
Good News: I'm very close to being published on cracked.com.
Since discovering TVTropes.org, I've been very interested in various stock characters in fiction, and when someone on a message board I frequent recently asked me which of several examples was the best "Elegant, Cultured, and Well-Educated Villain," I thought I'd take on the trope in general:
When someone recently asked me for a good example of an elegant and sophisticated villain, he was missing a key point: Perhaps making a villain elegant and sophisticated is more stereotypical and cheap rather than something to be admired and emulated.
If you make a villain elegant, cultured, and well-educated and nothing more, it ends up boring and familiar. Very weak movies such as Johnny English and The Avengers have introduced us to characters like these with little to no variation.
Portraying someone as overtly intellectual is just a screenwriter's prop to show us that they're smart or that they mirror qualities of the protagonist (presumably the protagonist is smart too) which makes them a more ruthless enemy.
Ironically, I think of these traits with regard to Hannibal Lechter's character as a weakness of the way the screenwriter(s) of Silence of the Lambs constructed him. Lechter is undoubtedly a great character but his penchant for listening to classical music before eating someone or entertaining people at a formal dinner party come off as over the top. Similarly, Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) of Batman Begins Henri Ducard was never a very strong, memorable character and his somewhat philosophical soliloquies on why he should poison the city to expose humanity's underbelly was a case of telling more than showing.
Four of my favorites are Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas, Wall Street), Magneto (Ian McKellan, X-Men and Hans Landa (Christophe Waltz, Inglorious Basterds) and Cal (Billy Zane) from Titanic. The first three don't jump out at me as being elegant, well-educated and sophisticated for the sake of being well-elegant, educated and sophisticated and they show rather than tell. Landa speaks many languages and is occasionally poetic and from there we see that there's more to the villain. Other than that, the writers don't go out of their way to show he's sophisticated. Similarly, Magneto might have some sense of refinement and knowledge but it's just organic to the story. If Gekko is enjoying the high-life it's because that's what people in his profession do, and if he appears educated, it's because intelligence oozes out of everything he's saying.
As for Cal, that's just a classical example which is executed very, very well. There's usually only room for one or two iconic performances in the mold before everything else seems stale. It also helps that his villainous character is organic to the era of history and he represents an old-money/new-money dichotomy which is a legitimate fear.
As for an example that I find very odd, Chirstopher Lee as Count Dooku in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. Even if Christopher Lee nailed the part, it would be hard for him to fit in at a place with some of the sillier and base characters with which George Lucas populated the Star Wars universe. If Hannibal Lecter was acting alongside the Muppets, it would be tonally awful. Same thing here. Another more nitpicky concern is that the cultural, elegant and well-educated are traits that are specific to an Earth-bound setting. Does it hold up in a fantasy world or galaxy far, far, far away? Cultural and elegant applies to perceptions of someone who has, for example, read Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. I don't doubt that people in the Star Wars universe are well-educated and cultured, but for all we know, someone who's cultured and well-educated on Tattoine might be someone who sounds by our standards as if he's speaking in a cockney accent
Another interesting example is Henry Blackwood from the 2019 Sherlock Holmes film but this could apply to any villain from Victorian times and it reminds me of how we tend to assume people speaking with British accents are automatically more refined. I read Blackwood as disturbed. He might have sounded refined, but that's because he comes from Victorian times where everyone is refined. In order to fit this category, you have to be more refined than the protagonist or anyone else.
Since discovering TVTropes.org, I've been very interested in various stock characters in fiction, and when someone on a message board I frequent recently asked me which of several examples was the best "Elegant, Cultured, and Well-Educated Villain," I thought I'd take on the trope in general:
When someone recently asked me for a good example of an elegant and sophisticated villain, he was missing a key point: Perhaps making a villain elegant and sophisticated is more stereotypical and cheap rather than something to be admired and emulated.
If you make a villain elegant, cultured, and well-educated and nothing more, it ends up boring and familiar. Very weak movies such as Johnny English and The Avengers have introduced us to characters like these with little to no variation.
Portraying someone as overtly intellectual is just a screenwriter's prop to show us that they're smart or that they mirror qualities of the protagonist (presumably the protagonist is smart too) which makes them a more ruthless enemy.
Ironically, I think of these traits with regard to Hannibal Lechter's character as a weakness of the way the screenwriter(s) of Silence of the Lambs constructed him. Lechter is undoubtedly a great character but his penchant for listening to classical music before eating someone or entertaining people at a formal dinner party come off as over the top. Similarly, Henri Ducard (Liam Neeson) of Batman Begins Henri Ducard was never a very strong, memorable character and his somewhat philosophical soliloquies on why he should poison the city to expose humanity's underbelly was a case of telling more than showing.
Four of my favorites are Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas, Wall Street), Magneto (Ian McKellan, X-Men and Hans Landa (Christophe Waltz, Inglorious Basterds) and Cal (Billy Zane) from Titanic. The first three don't jump out at me as being elegant, well-educated and sophisticated for the sake of being well-elegant, educated and sophisticated and they show rather than tell. Landa speaks many languages and is occasionally poetic and from there we see that there's more to the villain. Other than that, the writers don't go out of their way to show he's sophisticated. Similarly, Magneto might have some sense of refinement and knowledge but it's just organic to the story. If Gekko is enjoying the high-life it's because that's what people in his profession do, and if he appears educated, it's because intelligence oozes out of everything he's saying.
As for Cal, that's just a classical example which is executed very, very well. There's usually only room for one or two iconic performances in the mold before everything else seems stale. It also helps that his villainous character is organic to the era of history and he represents an old-money/new-money dichotomy which is a legitimate fear.
As for an example that I find very odd, Chirstopher Lee as Count Dooku in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. Even if Christopher Lee nailed the part, it would be hard for him to fit in at a place with some of the sillier and base characters with which George Lucas populated the Star Wars universe. If Hannibal Lecter was acting alongside the Muppets, it would be tonally awful. Same thing here. Another more nitpicky concern is that the cultural, elegant and well-educated are traits that are specific to an Earth-bound setting. Does it hold up in a fantasy world or galaxy far, far, far away? Cultural and elegant applies to perceptions of someone who has, for example, read Shakespeare and Charles Dickens. I don't doubt that people in the Star Wars universe are well-educated and cultured, but for all we know, someone who's cultured and well-educated on Tattoine might be someone who sounds by our standards as if he's speaking in a cockney accent
Another interesting example is Henry Blackwood from the 2019 Sherlock Holmes film but this could apply to any villain from Victorian times and it reminds me of how we tend to assume people speaking with British accents are automatically more refined. I read Blackwood as disturbed. He might have sounded refined, but that's because he comes from Victorian times where everyone is refined. In order to fit this category, you have to be more refined than the protagonist or anyone else.
Friday, December 28, 2007
10th Anniversary of the Titanic: Titanic Review
This is an essay I wrote on the Titanic in a film class that I think might be one of the best things I've ever written on films: Titanic as the collision of two worlds
Titanic was a monumental blockbuster that shattered box office records in 1997 and 1998 and was hailed as a critical success. However, the picture has been forgotten and dismissed as a very lucky yet unremarkable blockbuster, in the wake of the overload of big-budget pictures that have come along in the last few summers and holiday seasons. Titanic, at 3 hours and 14 minutes, is really two pictures rolled into one. For the latter two hours, it is a disaster movie that marvels in special effects, tense situations, and showdowns heroes and villains who are defined by how they chose their fate in one of history’s most famous moments.
For the first hour and a half, however, Titanic is a story about the traditional rags-to-riches myth, as epitomized by the character of Jack Dawson. The rags-to-riches myth, coined by Horatio Alger in essays about Americana, is about the man who can rise to success from humble beginnings to gain wealth and ingenuity. Dawson, dressed in period blue-collar clothes, wins a ticket on board the Titanic in the most capitalist of ways: a combination of wit, luck, skill and a willingness to invest his money into a poker game. He demonstrates ingenuity in his ability to be act under pressure in the scene where he saves Rose’s life. In contrast, his nemesis Cal is unable to react with anything but anger, frustration, and even bouts of violence when he faces an unexpected turn of events. Also, Dawson and his friends in third class are a metaphor for the “melting pot” of America with different cultures converging together. Dawson’s traveling companion, Fabrizio, is a stereotypical Italian and they room with Germans. Another example is from the juxtaposition of scenes between the formal dinner in the stateroom and the party on the lower deck.
On the lower deck, the third class passengers are very active as they create their own eclectic brand of music and dance to it, while the dinner guests on the promenade are passive spectators to a string quartet.
The rags-to-riches myth embodied by Jack Dawson, is contrasted by the antiquated class-stratified society of Europe that the American dream was born out against, symbolized by characters like Rose’s mother and Cal. The film characterizes these people as being obsessed with appearances as well as being lazy and unwilling to work. Rose’s mother is a widow explains to her daughter that all they have are, “bad debts hidden by a good name,” and is desperate to marry her off because she doesn’t want to have to work as a seamstress.
Thus, she and her friends were always concerned with looking proper and maintaining appearances. For instance, Cal disapproves of Rose’s choice of art, maybe because he doesn’t like it but also out of defensiveness. Cal doesn’t want to empower any art or artists outside the accepted conventions, which he would have been doing by buying their work.
In fact, the concern of the rich to keep the poor out is symbolic of the Titanic itself. Besides, the obvious metaphor of the passengers being divided by class, there’s also the fact that Jack would have never been accepted onto the promenade without the help of Molly Brown, an insider, who gave him clothes (again, the theme of appearance resurfaces). The upheavel over Jack’s romance with Rose is because he’s seen as someone who threatens to infiltrate their world.
The Titanic is usually seen as a fascinating trinket in history regarding man’s overconfidence in technology and the power of nature to destroy something which man once thought was invincible. However, director James Cameron portrays Titanic as something more than a story about a shipwreck. To him, Titanic was an inevitable collision between those two worlds. The Titanic’s mistake wasn’t that the watchman didn’t spot the iceberg soon enough or even hitting the iceberg, for that matter, because the Titanic would not have been remembered nearly as well if everyone was evacuated to safety. The Titanic took aboard 3rd-class passengers, to maintain the illusion of a harmonious society but that illusion was exposed by the fact that they didn’t provide enough lifeboats for them and they perished which made bigger headlines than any of the Titanic’s accomplishments in engineering ever did.
This is all the more ironic when you consider that the ship’s designer explains in the film that they didn’t put enough lifeboats on board because he didn’t want to clutter up the deck, a most literal concern with appearances. Once the ship hits the iceberg, the drama plays out through images that echo this theme. One of the most emotionally moving images is of a string quartet playing to their deaths so that the rich will have something pleasant to listen to as they board their lifeboats is great. The primary concern, once again, was to keep life pleasant for the upper classes at the cost of the safety of the lower classes.
The Titanic was a ship bound for America and that is both literal and symbolic: that antiquated era of class lines would end soon, and the bright spot of the movie is that somehow Rose survives into that new era. The line in Celine Dion’s song “I feel you in my heart forever, my heart will go on,” suggests that it was through meeting Jack Dawson and absorbing his vision of what America is today that she was able to chose the right path (not with Cal who would later shoot himself) when she got off the boat.
Titanic was a monumental blockbuster that shattered box office records in 1997 and 1998 and was hailed as a critical success. However, the picture has been forgotten and dismissed as a very lucky yet unremarkable blockbuster, in the wake of the overload of big-budget pictures that have come along in the last few summers and holiday seasons. Titanic, at 3 hours and 14 minutes, is really two pictures rolled into one. For the latter two hours, it is a disaster movie that marvels in special effects, tense situations, and showdowns heroes and villains who are defined by how they chose their fate in one of history’s most famous moments.
For the first hour and a half, however, Titanic is a story about the traditional rags-to-riches myth, as epitomized by the character of Jack Dawson. The rags-to-riches myth, coined by Horatio Alger in essays about Americana, is about the man who can rise to success from humble beginnings to gain wealth and ingenuity. Dawson, dressed in period blue-collar clothes, wins a ticket on board the Titanic in the most capitalist of ways: a combination of wit, luck, skill and a willingness to invest his money into a poker game. He demonstrates ingenuity in his ability to be act under pressure in the scene where he saves Rose’s life. In contrast, his nemesis Cal is unable to react with anything but anger, frustration, and even bouts of violence when he faces an unexpected turn of events. Also, Dawson and his friends in third class are a metaphor for the “melting pot” of America with different cultures converging together. Dawson’s traveling companion, Fabrizio, is a stereotypical Italian and they room with Germans. Another example is from the juxtaposition of scenes between the formal dinner in the stateroom and the party on the lower deck.
On the lower deck, the third class passengers are very active as they create their own eclectic brand of music and dance to it, while the dinner guests on the promenade are passive spectators to a string quartet.
The rags-to-riches myth embodied by Jack Dawson, is contrasted by the antiquated class-stratified society of Europe that the American dream was born out against, symbolized by characters like Rose’s mother and Cal. The film characterizes these people as being obsessed with appearances as well as being lazy and unwilling to work. Rose’s mother is a widow explains to her daughter that all they have are, “bad debts hidden by a good name,” and is desperate to marry her off because she doesn’t want to have to work as a seamstress.
Thus, she and her friends were always concerned with looking proper and maintaining appearances. For instance, Cal disapproves of Rose’s choice of art, maybe because he doesn’t like it but also out of defensiveness. Cal doesn’t want to empower any art or artists outside the accepted conventions, which he would have been doing by buying their work.
In fact, the concern of the rich to keep the poor out is symbolic of the Titanic itself. Besides, the obvious metaphor of the passengers being divided by class, there’s also the fact that Jack would have never been accepted onto the promenade without the help of Molly Brown, an insider, who gave him clothes (again, the theme of appearance resurfaces). The upheavel over Jack’s romance with Rose is because he’s seen as someone who threatens to infiltrate their world.
The Titanic is usually seen as a fascinating trinket in history regarding man’s overconfidence in technology and the power of nature to destroy something which man once thought was invincible. However, director James Cameron portrays Titanic as something more than a story about a shipwreck. To him, Titanic was an inevitable collision between those two worlds. The Titanic’s mistake wasn’t that the watchman didn’t spot the iceberg soon enough or even hitting the iceberg, for that matter, because the Titanic would not have been remembered nearly as well if everyone was evacuated to safety. The Titanic took aboard 3rd-class passengers, to maintain the illusion of a harmonious society but that illusion was exposed by the fact that they didn’t provide enough lifeboats for them and they perished which made bigger headlines than any of the Titanic’s accomplishments in engineering ever did.
This is all the more ironic when you consider that the ship’s designer explains in the film that they didn’t put enough lifeboats on board because he didn’t want to clutter up the deck, a most literal concern with appearances. Once the ship hits the iceberg, the drama plays out through images that echo this theme. One of the most emotionally moving images is of a string quartet playing to their deaths so that the rich will have something pleasant to listen to as they board their lifeboats is great. The primary concern, once again, was to keep life pleasant for the upper classes at the cost of the safety of the lower classes.
The Titanic was a ship bound for America and that is both literal and symbolic: that antiquated era of class lines would end soon, and the bright spot of the movie is that somehow Rose survives into that new era. The line in Celine Dion’s song “I feel you in my heart forever, my heart will go on,” suggests that it was through meeting Jack Dawson and absorbing his vision of what America is today that she was able to chose the right path (not with Cal who would later shoot himself) when she got off the boat.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
The AFI 100 is finally rereleased: preliminary thoughts on the new films
First of all, here's the list in case you missed it last night. It's actually relatively annoying that the AFI isn't publicly displaying it:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2007-06-20-AFI-movie-list_N.htm
Now this is basically the only time in 10 years that knowledge of classic film and current events ever mix together, so I better take advantage of that and start writing away. This was such an exciting event for me, because I didn't even recognize the names of most of those movies the last time around. So here are some notes:
-I talked to a spokesman for the AFI in an interview and she said the AFI is redoing the top 100 list to account for the last 10 years of film, but she also said that no films from the 400-ballot date later than 2004 because the films do need time to breathe to be properly evaluated and I agree with that. The end result is a little bit low, though. Only 4 films were included: Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, Lord of the Rings and The Sixth Sense. The most frustrating thing about this is the incongruity of this is that since only one of these films was in the 2000's, this could almost, almost pass for a 20th century list right up to the very last year.
-It also has me worried that perhaps since film critics are exposed to so many more Oscar contenders and there is so much Internet criticism out there, that maybe we can't agree on greatness anymore. During the Great Depression, films like It Happened One Night and 42nd Street pulled people together. I don't know if that's the case. We can still all get excited over Spiderman, Pirates of the Caribbean and X-Men, and Brokeback Mountain, Dreamgirls and Departed do dominate water cooler buzz, but maybe it's a fracture between the critics and the public. Spiderman, Shrek and Pirates were all on the ballot as were many of the Oscar nominees. At the very least it's nice to see a few films added:
-I noticed 3 directors who moved up from being one-hit wonders to two-timers and that's because they had a good decade: Mike Nicholls who had recent critical successes with Closer and Angels in America got his 2nd best film, Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff added to the list in addition to "The Graduate." Rob Altman had a modest success in Prairie Home Companion and a big one in Godsford Park, but more importantly he strategically passed away right before they were balloting. No, I'm just kidding. Rob Altman's 2nd entry to the list "Nashville" was one of the glaring errors of the first list and with McCabe and Mrs. Miller or Godsford Park he could have easily had three or four. The same is true for the ever-so-prolific Sidney Lumet, recent recipient of the Honorary Oscar whose film 12 Angry Men made the list. 12 Angry Men is very deserving.
-The "Third Man" is a great film. One of my favorites. The photography is beautiful, Orson Welles' sudden appearance is so unexpected. It works on so many levels. I personally read it in so many ways: a pulp fiction novelist trying to give himself his own storybook ending with the girl at the end, the American literature form trying to return to its European influences. Maybe it didn't make the list this time, because it just wasn't an American production?
-I think it is upsetting that films like "A Place in the Sun," "Stagecoach," and especially "From Here to Eternity" (my favorite war film) were omitted from the list but i don't think that necessarily renders them historically irrelevant. The fact that they were on the first top 100 list cements them as classics, and it's simply that they wanted to mix it up a little. Mostly what the list did was introduce the public to some films that should have made the list last time (and probably almost did):
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2007-06-20-AFI-movie-list_N.htm
Now this is basically the only time in 10 years that knowledge of classic film and current events ever mix together, so I better take advantage of that and start writing away. This was such an exciting event for me, because I didn't even recognize the names of most of those movies the last time around. So here are some notes:
-I talked to a spokesman for the AFI in an interview and she said the AFI is redoing the top 100 list to account for the last 10 years of film, but she also said that no films from the 400-ballot date later than 2004 because the films do need time to breathe to be properly evaluated and I agree with that. The end result is a little bit low, though. Only 4 films were included: Saving Private Ryan, Titanic, Lord of the Rings and The Sixth Sense. The most frustrating thing about this is the incongruity of this is that since only one of these films was in the 2000's, this could almost, almost pass for a 20th century list right up to the very last year.
-It also has me worried that perhaps since film critics are exposed to so many more Oscar contenders and there is so much Internet criticism out there, that maybe we can't agree on greatness anymore. During the Great Depression, films like It Happened One Night and 42nd Street pulled people together. I don't know if that's the case. We can still all get excited over Spiderman, Pirates of the Caribbean and X-Men, and Brokeback Mountain, Dreamgirls and Departed do dominate water cooler buzz, but maybe it's a fracture between the critics and the public. Spiderman, Shrek and Pirates were all on the ballot as were many of the Oscar nominees. At the very least it's nice to see a few films added:
- Lord of the Rings is an undeniable safe choice because it has been both part of the Blockbuster culture and the Oscar culture which divides film viewing now more than ever.
- I've already seen a lot of complaining about the Sixth Sense on message boards, but I say, let's just try to agree on something, rather than have this decade not represented. Sixth Sense is an interesting offbeat pick from a director who has a gift for originality. Even if he's currently struggling a little with where to go with it at the moment (Lady in the Water hit a nerve with audiences and it ended the director's streak of commercial success), let's honor how he once showed us something new and original.
- Saving Private Ryan was a film that came along when there was nothing left to say about World War II. It's another war classic and it shows that the tradition of making great war movies has not been forgotten. Flags of Our Fathers/Letters from Iwo Jima is the recent continuation of this.
- Titanic is such an interesting pick. When the last list came out in 1998, Titanic seemed like the biggest cinematic event to hit the face of the Earth. It broke all box office records and it had the biggest production budget ever and it won a record number of Oscars. Nowadays, box office draw and critical acclaim are two different things entirely. The box office champions of the last few years Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Star Wars III, Shrek II, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Spiderman, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Mission Impossible II, have virtually no chance at a best picture nomination and seldom appear on critic's top 10 lists. But back then, Titanic was unstoppable. Even if you wanted to hate it because it was a Goliath of a film and you tend to root for the Davids, the story was so damn moving and emotional, that you couldn't deny it's greatness. If Titanic was eligible for that ballot, who knows how high it would have gotten on the list. Some might have voted it #1 due to the fact that box office draw and greatness might have been more correlated. Nearly 10 years later, Titanic is almost forgotten and its entry onto this list is a fairly heavy reminder of the pervasiveness Titanic once held in our culture that one year. I still think it's relevant because Titanic was the last box office champ to even be nominated for an Oscar and for that might have been the last true blockbuster before our blockbuster culture got saturated. (Sixth Sense cracked the top 10 all time and it was nominated, however)
-I noticed 3 directors who moved up from being one-hit wonders to two-timers and that's because they had a good decade: Mike Nicholls who had recent critical successes with Closer and Angels in America got his 2nd best film, Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff added to the list in addition to "The Graduate." Rob Altman had a modest success in Prairie Home Companion and a big one in Godsford Park, but more importantly he strategically passed away right before they were balloting. No, I'm just kidding. Rob Altman's 2nd entry to the list "Nashville" was one of the glaring errors of the first list and with McCabe and Mrs. Miller or Godsford Park he could have easily had three or four. The same is true for the ever-so-prolific Sidney Lumet, recent recipient of the Honorary Oscar whose film 12 Angry Men made the list. 12 Angry Men is very deserving.
-The "Third Man" is a great film. One of my favorites. The photography is beautiful, Orson Welles' sudden appearance is so unexpected. It works on so many levels. I personally read it in so many ways: a pulp fiction novelist trying to give himself his own storybook ending with the girl at the end, the American literature form trying to return to its European influences. Maybe it didn't make the list this time, because it just wasn't an American production?
-I think it is upsetting that films like "A Place in the Sun," "Stagecoach," and especially "From Here to Eternity" (my favorite war film) were omitted from the list but i don't think that necessarily renders them historically irrelevant. The fact that they were on the first top 100 list cements them as classics, and it's simply that they wanted to mix it up a little. Mostly what the list did was introduce the public to some films that should have made the list last time (and probably almost did):
- Do the Right Thing: Spike Lee has combined his filmic ambitions with his desire to infuse the country with racial awareness
- Blade Runner (Ridley Scott): The film didn't have enough sci-fi the first time, and Blade Runner was aside from being a great and highly praised film, a great influence in the genre. It also introduced Ridley Scott to the list
- Cabaret (Bob Fosse): I saw this film in my film genres class when we studied musicals and in terms of reinventing the conventions of a genre, it's hard to top this film. In musicals, the songs are used to celebrate life, courtship, community and vitality. In Cabaret, the musical numbers are used to illustrate decadence and foreshadow death.
- All The President's Men (Alan Paluka): This film was basically the 1970's version of "Good Night and Good Luck," only it was actually relevant to the times. A strict docudrama that featured Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford running around and looking busy like the casts of Aaron Sorkin shows traditionally like to do, All the President's Men was as great of a suspense thriller as it was a history lesson. All the recent buzz about the story with Mark Felt's identity revealed as deep throat might have contributed to the film making the list this time around
- Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges): I've seen two of the three really famous Preston Sturges films: Palm Beach Story and The Lady Eve and wasn't much of a fun of either of them. The third, Sullivan's Travels, looks quite appealing now that I've seen clips of it and I'm thinking I might watch it. Perhaps, three times a charm. Many film historians consider him to be a historically significant film director because he was ingeneous at getting racy dialogue past the censorsing board.
- The General (Buster Keaton): The great silent film star who has been considered 2nd best next to Chaplain for the last 40 or 50 years or so. The General was his most epic film and I believe his most expensive to produce. I did see it and personally did not think it was as great as Chaplain or even Harold Lloyd's films, but it is certainly a different brand of comedy.
- 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet): Along with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (also on the list), there is no film that captures the spirit of American Democracy better than this film. It's also such an impressive film because its setting is pretty much confined to one single room and there's nothing but the dramatic tension to keep things moving
- Swing Time (George Stephens): If you thought that with A Place in the Sun and Giant that George Stephens got eliminated from the list, that's not true, because he got represented with "Swing Time." This is a far better and more convincing film than the other film that's cited as the best Astaire-Rogers pairing "Top Hat." Swing Time has a more endearing love story, a lightning-fast opening that grabs your attention right away, the brilliantly conceived dance number in which Astaire saves Rogers job by showing how quick of a study she is, a more convincing pairing of romantic doubles in Viktor Moore/Helen Broderick; a very nice change of piece in "Just the Way You Look Tonight" where Astaire just sings without dancing, and a more menacing foil in Ricky Romero.
- Sophie's Choice: This is the only film on the list that I know absolutely nothing about (there were other films that I knew close to nothing about). All I knew about this film was that it won Meryl Streep an Oscar and I wasn't even sure of that. Once again, the AFI list made me feel stupid, but that's ok.
-I think the biggest waste of a choice was Night at the Opera because one Marx Brothers film is enough. Honestly, I can't even remember if I've seen a Night at the Opera. I've seen about 4 or 5 Marx Brothers Films and i can't remember them by name. I think they all just blend into each other. Some have Zeppo and some don't, that's the only difference.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
AFI's list of films from the last decade
These are the films on AFI's 400 film list that came from the last decade. These, in other words, are the films that have come around since the last release of the list. 1997 films LA Confidential and Titanic were released in 1997 and the list came out in 1998, but were probably not on the original 400. It's an interesting set of choices, except I'm not sure why they picked Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkhaban. I think they're missing The Pianist, Master and Commander, the Truman Show, Last Samurai, Munich, Lost in Translation, Seabiscuit, and Mystic River and just like the Oscars, they went overboard by giving every installment of Lord of the Rings a nomination. Chicago vs Moulan Rouge should be interesting, I predict one of those two entries will make it on and it will be Chicago, most likely. Chicago placed 11th or 12th on AFI's recently released list of top 25 musicals, while Moulan Rouge placed 25th.
Also of note:
-Of these 29 films, 15 are best picture Oscar nominees
-8 of these films broke into the Box Office top 10 when they came out
-8 are either a sequel or a film that launched sequels
1 American Beauty
2 Austin Powers
3 Being John Malkovitch
4 Chicago
5 Finding Nemo
6 Gladiator
7 Harry Potter and the Prisoners of Azkhaban
8 Hotel Rwanda
9 The Hours
10 The Insider
11 LA Confidential
12 Lord of the Rings I
13 Lord of the Rings II
14 Lord of the Rings III
15 Matrix
16 Momento
17 Moulin Rouge!
18 Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl
19 Ray
20 Rushmore
21 Saving Private Ryan
22 Shakespeare in Love
23 Shrek
24 Sixth Sense
25 Sideways
26 Spiderman 2
27 There’s Something About Mary
28 Three Kings
29 Titanic
Also of note:
-Of these 29 films, 15 are best picture Oscar nominees
-8 of these films broke into the Box Office top 10 when they came out
-8 are either a sequel or a film that launched sequels
1 American Beauty
2 Austin Powers
3 Being John Malkovitch
4 Chicago
5 Finding Nemo
6 Gladiator
7 Harry Potter and the Prisoners of Azkhaban
8 Hotel Rwanda
9 The Hours
10 The Insider
11 LA Confidential
12 Lord of the Rings I
13 Lord of the Rings II
14 Lord of the Rings III
15 Matrix
16 Momento
17 Moulin Rouge!
18 Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl
19 Ray
20 Rushmore
21 Saving Private Ryan
22 Shakespeare in Love
23 Shrek
24 Sixth Sense
25 Sideways
26 Spiderman 2
27 There’s Something About Mary
28 Three Kings
29 Titanic
Monday, April 30, 2007
Breakout Supporting Roles and Best Picture Winners
I just noticed this pattern as i was strolling through some best picture winners. They usually feature either great supporting roles, breakout actors in supporting roles, or actors in supporting roles before they broke-out:
Titanic:
pre-Fantastic Four Ioan Gufford (if i spelt his name wrong, i don't care)
pre-Alias Viktor Garber
Kathy Bates
Shakespeare in Love:
pre-Love Actually Colin Firth
pre-Vera Drake Imadela Staunton
pre-In the Bedroom Tom Wilkinson
American Beauty:
pre-Star Trek: Enterprise Scott Bakula
pre-Seabiscuit Chris Cooper
pre-Ghost World Thora Birch
pre-West Wing Allison Janey
pre-O.C. Peter Gallagher
Gladiator:
pre-In America Djimon Hotsou
pre-Walk the Line Joaquin Pheonix in a breakout role
A Beautiful Mind:
pre-Rent Anthony Rapp
pre-Sweet Home Alabama Josh Lukas
perrenial character actor Adam Goldberg
Judd Hirsch
Ed Harris
pre-Wimbledon Paul Bettany in a Breakout Role
Chicago:
pre-Talladega Nights John C Riley in a Breakout Role
Lucy Lui
Christine Barinski
Queen Latifah
Lord of the Rings:
pre-Pirates Orlando Bloom (sort of)
pre-Hidalgo Virgo Mortgensen in a breakout role
Sean Astin
Christopher Lee
Cate Blanchett
Mirando Otto
Ian McKellan
Million Dollar Baby:
bucks the trend
Crash:
Ryan Phillipe
Thandie Newton
pre-Hustle and Flow (by 3 months) Terrence Howard
Jennifer Esposito
Sandra Bullock
Matt Dillon
Don Cheadle
Chris "Ludacris" Bridges in a breakout role
Departed:
Anthony Anderson, Vera Farminga, Ray Winstone and Mark Wahlberg will break out onto a new level of stardom, I predict
In addition, Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin inhabit great small roles in this movie
Million Dollar Baby is the only one which bucks the trend, which is odd because Golden Globe winner of that year Aviator fits that trend better with a supporting cast that include:
Wilhem DeFoe, Jude Law, Gwen Stefani, Kate Beckinsdale, Cate Blanchett, John C. Riley, Ian Holm, Alec Baldwin and Alan Alda
Titanic:
pre-Fantastic Four Ioan Gufford (if i spelt his name wrong, i don't care)
pre-Alias Viktor Garber
Kathy Bates
Shakespeare in Love:
pre-Love Actually Colin Firth
pre-Vera Drake Imadela Staunton
pre-In the Bedroom Tom Wilkinson
American Beauty:
pre-Star Trek: Enterprise Scott Bakula
pre-Seabiscuit Chris Cooper
pre-Ghost World Thora Birch
pre-West Wing Allison Janey
pre-O.C. Peter Gallagher
Gladiator:
pre-In America Djimon Hotsou
pre-Walk the Line Joaquin Pheonix in a breakout role
A Beautiful Mind:
pre-Rent Anthony Rapp
pre-Sweet Home Alabama Josh Lukas
perrenial character actor Adam Goldberg
Judd Hirsch
Ed Harris
pre-Wimbledon Paul Bettany in a Breakout Role
Chicago:
pre-Talladega Nights John C Riley in a Breakout Role
Lucy Lui
Christine Barinski
Queen Latifah
Lord of the Rings:
pre-Pirates Orlando Bloom (sort of)
pre-Hidalgo Virgo Mortgensen in a breakout role
Sean Astin
Christopher Lee
Cate Blanchett
Mirando Otto
Ian McKellan
Million Dollar Baby:
bucks the trend
Crash:
Ryan Phillipe
Thandie Newton
pre-Hustle and Flow (by 3 months) Terrence Howard
Jennifer Esposito
Sandra Bullock
Matt Dillon
Don Cheadle
Chris "Ludacris" Bridges in a breakout role
Departed:
Anthony Anderson, Vera Farminga, Ray Winstone and Mark Wahlberg will break out onto a new level of stardom, I predict
In addition, Martin Sheen and Alec Baldwin inhabit great small roles in this movie
Million Dollar Baby is the only one which bucks the trend, which is odd because Golden Globe winner of that year Aviator fits that trend better with a supporting cast that include:
Wilhem DeFoe, Jude Law, Gwen Stefani, Kate Beckinsdale, Cate Blanchett, John C. Riley, Ian Holm, Alec Baldwin and Alan Alda
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Lose an oscar, win a cult following
Tonight in one of the most wide-open races in years, Oscar fans with hopes of what film will join the historic pantheon of Best Picture winners that includes "All About Eve", "Casablanca", "The Godfather", "Gone with the Wind", and "On the Waterfront". But there’s no reason to get nervous about it, because who wins Best Picture is irrelevant. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying the Oscars are irrelevant. Every acting and directing award has been paramount to helping that person’s career flourish and the same goes for the other categories.
The nominations for Best Picture are also of the utmost importance. Three years ago, for example, six pictures were considered locks for an Oscar nomination and "Cold Mountain" found itself the odd film out. While "Cold Mountain" isn’t necessarily forgotten in history, its status as a future classic is less assured than "Master and Commander" or "Seabiscuit." The same thing happened the year before with "Far From Heaven". Ask your average person on the street if they have ever heard of "Far From Heaven" and think about how different that answer would be if it was "Best Picture Nominee Far From Heaven." The point is recent history suggests that being the perennial sixth film doesn’t bode well for your legacy. While "Dreamgirls" fans were massively disappointed at the film’s snub this year, I doubt they’ll still be making much noise three or four years from now.
But losing an Oscar in a close race, on the other hand, does wonders for your legacy. Aside from "Schindler’s List", the most loved films of the 1990’s have arguably become "Pulp Fiction", "Shawshank Redemption", "Saving Private Ryan", "Fargo", and "Goodfellas", all losers in close races. The winning pictures of "Forrest Gump", "Dances with Wolves", "The English Patient", and "Shakespeare in Love" get the actual award and a place in the history books, but the losers get a contingent of loyal supporters who will protest the merits of those films and who they thought was the rightful winner for years to come. How many message board threads or articles have you read on the topic? “Greatest injustices the academy has made” and counted the victories of "Forrest Gump" and "Dances with Wolves." Little by little, each of those threads, posts, and articles helps that picture get more action on the DVD shelves at local video stores.
The overkill on this subject comes from everyone from Richard Roeper to the guys posting on the IMDB and OscarWatch message boards. My theory is that it comes from a sense of pride you might have as a self-proclaimed film buff. That losing picture, whether Goodfellas or Shawshank, represents you and your tastes and not only can you take pride in promoting a film as one of your favorites that’s a good film, but you can also take pride in personally promoting a film that the high-and-mighty Academy got wrong. You can go around saying, “Schindler’s List is such a great movie, you’ve gotta see it!” but everyone knows that. Identifying yourself as a fan of these also-rans becomes a calling card of sorts for film snobs who wish to proclaim their tastes superior to that of the mainstream.
With the increase of the prominence of the blogosphere and Oscar sites, it seems only likely that this backlash against a best picture win will grow stronger as evidenced by last year’s win. How many hits are there on a simple Google search for “Brokeback Mountain” and “Crash” proclaiming the Oscar injustice there.
Perhaps, people are forgetting that the films that won aren’t necessarily unworthy films in their own right. For example, back in 1994, "Forrest Gump" had both critics entranced and moviegoers all over America buzzing. It didn’t even finish #1 on its opening weekend at the box office (True Lies did) but through good word-of-mouth it became the highest grossing film of the year and the 4th highest to date. It also won at the WGAs, the DGAs, was nominated at the BAFTAs (where it lost to Four Weddings and a Funeral) and won the National Board of Review’s prize.
Roger Ebert gave it four stars and wrote, “I've never seen a movie quite like ‘Forrest Gump.’ Any attempt to describe him will risk making the movie seem more conventional than it is.” Rolling Stone called it, “A movie heartbreaker of startling wit and grace,” and gave it 3 ½ stars which was the same rating he gave to Pulp Fiction and Shawshank Redemption. A look back to reviews originally written in 1994 on rottentomatoes.com, shows that with the exception of the New York Times’ Stephen Holden, most of the reviews were highly favorable. Many of the ones that gave poor reviews were only written years later in retrospect. Christopher Null of Filmcritic.com wrote, “Run, Forrest, run! It sure seemed great at the time, but Gump is aging, and it's starting to show a wrinkle or too….. what a crazy chain of events Forrest Gump has spawned: a poorly-received book sequel, a restaurant chain, and hordes of imitators -- not to mention a critical backlash.”
My theory for the backlash would be that Forrest Gump was a bittersweet emotional ride that resonated with a certain generation at a certain point in time. It’s not something that holds up well to repeat viewings. Pulp Fiction, in contrast, is a revisionist genre film that can be watched over and over again by film students interested in dissecting its film conventions. The same can also be said for neo-noir films Fargo and LA Confidential, which were also best picture losers. "Dances with Wolves", similarly is an emotional epic that swept many viewers away on first viewing and was the first Western with a fighting chance of being honored since "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (the only previous Western to actually win the award was the 1931 film "Cimarron").
As for Shawshank, Tim Dirks at Filmsite.org summarizes its predicament best: “Only through positive word-of-mouth (following cable TV and broadcast airings, and then video releases) did the film do well - although its original reception at the box-office was lukewarm.” Shawshank didn’t even get voted into AFI’s Top 100 Films, but when the Institute rereleases their Top 100 list later this year, rest assured that revisionist history will give Shawshank a place (both the winner Forrest Gump and other runner-up from that year Pulp Fiction are on that list). But as with "Dances with Wolves" and "The English Patient" (I won't say "Shakespeare in Love" was exactly deserving), people fail to acknowledge that at the time those were the most popular films of their year and only through a revisionist tide do those facts get lost. That tide is a powerful one, so let that be a consolation to you if your picture loses tonight.
The nominations for Best Picture are also of the utmost importance. Three years ago, for example, six pictures were considered locks for an Oscar nomination and "Cold Mountain" found itself the odd film out. While "Cold Mountain" isn’t necessarily forgotten in history, its status as a future classic is less assured than "Master and Commander" or "Seabiscuit." The same thing happened the year before with "Far From Heaven". Ask your average person on the street if they have ever heard of "Far From Heaven" and think about how different that answer would be if it was "Best Picture Nominee Far From Heaven." The point is recent history suggests that being the perennial sixth film doesn’t bode well for your legacy. While "Dreamgirls" fans were massively disappointed at the film’s snub this year, I doubt they’ll still be making much noise three or four years from now.
But losing an Oscar in a close race, on the other hand, does wonders for your legacy. Aside from "Schindler’s List", the most loved films of the 1990’s have arguably become "Pulp Fiction", "Shawshank Redemption", "Saving Private Ryan", "Fargo", and "Goodfellas", all losers in close races. The winning pictures of "Forrest Gump", "Dances with Wolves", "The English Patient", and "Shakespeare in Love" get the actual award and a place in the history books, but the losers get a contingent of loyal supporters who will protest the merits of those films and who they thought was the rightful winner for years to come. How many message board threads or articles have you read on the topic? “Greatest injustices the academy has made” and counted the victories of "Forrest Gump" and "Dances with Wolves." Little by little, each of those threads, posts, and articles helps that picture get more action on the DVD shelves at local video stores.
The overkill on this subject comes from everyone from Richard Roeper to the guys posting on the IMDB and OscarWatch message boards. My theory is that it comes from a sense of pride you might have as a self-proclaimed film buff. That losing picture, whether Goodfellas or Shawshank, represents you and your tastes and not only can you take pride in promoting a film as one of your favorites that’s a good film, but you can also take pride in personally promoting a film that the high-and-mighty Academy got wrong. You can go around saying, “Schindler’s List is such a great movie, you’ve gotta see it!” but everyone knows that. Identifying yourself as a fan of these also-rans becomes a calling card of sorts for film snobs who wish to proclaim their tastes superior to that of the mainstream.
With the increase of the prominence of the blogosphere and Oscar sites, it seems only likely that this backlash against a best picture win will grow stronger as evidenced by last year’s win. How many hits are there on a simple Google search for “Brokeback Mountain” and “Crash” proclaiming the Oscar injustice there.
Perhaps, people are forgetting that the films that won aren’t necessarily unworthy films in their own right. For example, back in 1994, "Forrest Gump" had both critics entranced and moviegoers all over America buzzing. It didn’t even finish #1 on its opening weekend at the box office (True Lies did) but through good word-of-mouth it became the highest grossing film of the year and the 4th highest to date. It also won at the WGAs, the DGAs, was nominated at the BAFTAs (where it lost to Four Weddings and a Funeral) and won the National Board of Review’s prize.
Roger Ebert gave it four stars and wrote, “I've never seen a movie quite like ‘Forrest Gump.’ Any attempt to describe him will risk making the movie seem more conventional than it is.” Rolling Stone called it, “A movie heartbreaker of startling wit and grace,” and gave it 3 ½ stars which was the same rating he gave to Pulp Fiction and Shawshank Redemption. A look back to reviews originally written in 1994 on rottentomatoes.com, shows that with the exception of the New York Times’ Stephen Holden, most of the reviews were highly favorable. Many of the ones that gave poor reviews were only written years later in retrospect. Christopher Null of Filmcritic.com wrote, “Run, Forrest, run! It sure seemed great at the time, but Gump is aging, and it's starting to show a wrinkle or too….. what a crazy chain of events Forrest Gump has spawned: a poorly-received book sequel, a restaurant chain, and hordes of imitators -- not to mention a critical backlash.”
My theory for the backlash would be that Forrest Gump was a bittersweet emotional ride that resonated with a certain generation at a certain point in time. It’s not something that holds up well to repeat viewings. Pulp Fiction, in contrast, is a revisionist genre film that can be watched over and over again by film students interested in dissecting its film conventions. The same can also be said for neo-noir films Fargo and LA Confidential, which were also best picture losers. "Dances with Wolves", similarly is an emotional epic that swept many viewers away on first viewing and was the first Western with a fighting chance of being honored since "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (the only previous Western to actually win the award was the 1931 film "Cimarron").
As for Shawshank, Tim Dirks at Filmsite.org summarizes its predicament best: “Only through positive word-of-mouth (following cable TV and broadcast airings, and then video releases) did the film do well - although its original reception at the box-office was lukewarm.” Shawshank didn’t even get voted into AFI’s Top 100 Films, but when the Institute rereleases their Top 100 list later this year, rest assured that revisionist history will give Shawshank a place (both the winner Forrest Gump and other runner-up from that year Pulp Fiction are on that list). But as with "Dances with Wolves" and "The English Patient" (I won't say "Shakespeare in Love" was exactly deserving), people fail to acknowledge that at the time those were the most popular films of their year and only through a revisionist tide do those facts get lost. That tide is a powerful one, so let that be a consolation to you if your picture loses tonight.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)