Pop culture blogathons took off this year, starting with the "Showgirls" orgy Jan. 11. Since then, we've seen Internet-wide, single-topic essays on Robert Altman, Code Unknown, Abel Ferrara and, most recently, Angie Dickinson.
And so it goes. Film Experience is coordinating a Michelle Pfeiffer blogathon tomorrow (April 28). 
Quiet Bubble is calling for a Hayao Miyazaki blogathon May 12-14. Girish is calling for a blogathon on avant-garde cinema, with pieces going online August 2. For details, click on the highlighted links. Closer to home, Edward Copeland on Film is heading into the final leg of his poll of the the Best Best Picture winners of all time. No, that's not a typo -- he wants you to submit a ballot with your choice of the ten Best Picture winners that you consider most deserving of that title. The rationale for each pick is entirely up to you; just rank the titles in order, with (1) being the best, and email it to eddiesworst@yahoo.com before midnight on Saturday.
My own ballot is below:
1. "The Godfather." (1971) This was a tough one; I do think "Godfather II" is a richer, subtler and in some ways more daring work, but it would not have existed without the original, so I have to give the edge to the movie that came first. It's as close to a completely satisfying film as I've ever seen. It's sweeping and suspenseful, the character arcs are cleanly defined and there's enough intrigue to keep viewers riveted even if they're not aware of the huge debt director Francis Coppola owes to Luchino Visconti's "The Leopard" and other movies he freely raided for inspiration. This comes closer to being both art and entertainment than all but a handful of Best Picture winners, and frankly, 35 years down the road, it has dated a lot better than many of its rivals.
2. "The Godfather, Part II." (1974) The equal of the original in every way, but an altogether darker, more demanding movie, about the main character's systematic and self-willed moral disintegration. In Part I, Michael breathes new life into the Corleone enterprise; in Part II, he gives his soul to it. 
The flashbacks to Don Vito's rise in Little Italy at the turn of the century complicate our sympathies for Michael further still. Vito's jump into criminality was willed, too, but at least had components of ethnic pride, community affection and social striving; Michael, a philosophical rich kid who could have escaped the life if he'd wanted, is more self-aware than Vito, more conscious of alternatives to the life, and therefore, in some fundamental way, more open to condemnation for all the blood he spilled, including his own brother's. The caretaker of the family business preserves the business by destroying the family.
3. "Lawrence of Arabia." (1962)
Yes, the main character is a bit vague even for an iconic enigma, the psychoanalytic approach to characterization hasn't worn that well, and there may be, in the end, a bit less to the movie than meets the eye. But my God, it's a beautiful film, shot in beautiful terrain, starring two beautiful men, Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif; the small screen truly does not do it justice. David Lean's masterpiece is such a strirring example of commercial narrative filmmaking technique that it's easy to forget some of its best-remembered sequences (including Lawrence's rescue ride into the sandstorm and Ali Ibn el Hussein's entrance, one of the greatest in movie history) are so radically conceived that they verge on the experimental.
4. "Schindler's List." (1993) It sometimes overexplains and succumbs to unecessary mawkishness. But like "Lawrence" (a movie Steven Spielberg re-watches prior to each new project) it's a intricately constructed, morally complex work that taps wellsprings of grief and anger Spielberg had rarely accessed before. Like the "Godfather" films, it offers more proof that spectacle and art needn't be mutally exclusive. Less remarked upon is how grimly funny it is; some of the situations are blackly absurd, in a Kubrick/Bunuel vein. This seems altogether appropriate considering it's a portrait of a whole civilization gone homicidally mad.
5. "The Best Years of Our Lives." (1946) More than a valentine to returning servicemen, this William Wyler classic is arguably one of Hollywood's first and only epic domestic melodramas, a film that depicts men and women at every layer of their society (a small town) struggling to rebuild their lives in the aftermath of war.
6. "On the Waterfront." (1954) Truth be told, Marlon Brando's lead performance as ex-boxer-turned-layabout-dockworker Terry Malloy has held up better than the work of his peers (except costar Eva Marie Saint, who's just right). And the movie's problematic for a lot of reasons, including the too-obvious Christ imagery and the sense that this is, in the end, a veiled explanation of why director Elia Kazan named names before the House Un-American Activities Committee. But these flaws are overshadowed by Terry's moral struggle, romantic aspirations and emotional growth, Kazan's gritty yet poetic use of real locations, Budd Schulberg's Damon-Runyon-with-brass-knuckles dialogue, Leonard Bernstein's score, and Boris Kaufman's photography, which audaciously invokes both documentaries and film noir. I've seen "Waterfront" probably 50 times, more than any other film on the Best Picture list. There are better movies, but few that mean as much to me.
7. "Gone With the Wind." (1939) With each passing year, it becomes less politically correct to admit liking this movie. The slave characters were more complex than others seen up to that point, yet still stereotypical, and the unabashed nostalgia for antebellum culture sticks in the craw. But contemporary attitudes are a poor yardstick for judging artistic merit. Scene for scene, minute for minute, line for line, this is 1930s Hollywood at its aesthetic and technical peak. Few American films, before or since, are as gorgeous.
8. "Casablanca." (1943) I mean, come on.
9. "All About Eve." (1950) More a verbal than visual pleasure, but the words have fire and music, and so do the performances. It was made to be quoted.
10. "Amadeus." (1984) Like the "Godfather" films, it comes pretty close to being all things to all people. If you start watching it at any point, you tend to stay until the end. And in its portrait of cagey mediocrity outsmarting and destroying genius, it's inadvertently the best explanation of Oscar politics that the industry has ever come up with.
Post your own picks, observations and refutations below, if you wish. But don't forget to email your ballot to Eddie at eddiesworst@yahoo.com, since that's the whole point of this exercise.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Some links, for now
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31 comments:
I was wondering if 'Sunrise' would be eligible, having received a special award for "most unique and artistic pisture"--that's at least enough of an excuse for me to put it near the top of my list. (It was also an excuse enough for Fox to include it in their Studio Classics- Best Picture DVD collection).
(Also, for sake of clarification, I'm assuming Michael Corleone's moral disintegration was "self-willed" not "sell-willed"?)
Where's Annie Hall? It ranks in Allen's all-time top five. (I dare anyone to make a case that Crimes And Misdemeanors is better than Match Point.)
Of the films nominated in 1986, Platoon was the right choice. It remains a singular experience in conveying a soldier's POV from the war zone.
I thought I was looking in a mirror when i scrolled down to number 3.
One of the first film critics I started listening to, back in the day, always defended that "Lawrence of Arabia" should be banned from being seen on TV/videotape, if only for the scene of Omar Sharif's first appearance: your average home video-watching punk will just hit FFWD after a couple of seconds, in order to see quickly "who's that guy".
Matt--like your list. Gives me a "God's in His heaven, all's right with the world" kind of feeling. In your "Lawrence" write-up, I believe you mean Ali Ibn el Hussein (Omar Sherif). Though there's not much call for it, I'm something of a T.E. Lawrence expert (have a first Jonathan Cape edition of Seven Pillars, etc. etc.)
Aaron Aradillas, how could a film that merely restates every idea a previous film ever had in different language, while being completely devoid of the sharp writing, wit, and keen eye which are the directors' forte, be the better of the two films?
Matt, someday explain to me your love of AMADEUS. I just don't get it. Milos Forman strikes me as the most incredibly boring, static filmmaker...Or maybe I just reached a saturation point with all costume dramas...
Thomas and M.A. Peel -- thanks for the catches, I already fixed them. I wrote this one in a hurry to get to a screening of THE PROPOSITION, which is stunning, by the way. Though definitely not a movie for people with no stomach for graphic violence.
Aaron: I like ANNIE HALL a lot, but ultimately it didn't make the cut. I struggled about leaving THE APARTMENT off the list as well, and I still have a weakness for WEST SIDE STORY. The compositions, editing, design, choreography and overall spirit are just right -- Spike Lee and Martin Scorsese both learned a lot from it -- but I had to leave it off the list because there's too much I have to excuse. As I told Sean Burns, I consider it to be the greatest film ever made within the Hollywood system with two miscast lead actors. GANGS OF NEW YORK would be second on that list, if you're curious.
Be careful about issuing challenges like your CRIMES VS. MISDEMEANORS/MATCH POINT; somebody, probably Odienator, might take you up on it. Personally, I agree; MATCH POINT is a more controlled, purposeful, less schematic work, though it hits all the same moral/sociological points just as hard. C&M, while honorable, feels too much like faux-Bergman to me, and the blind rabbi was too much even by Allen's standards.
Oh come now, Woody has like 10 films that you could dismiss as being "faux-bergman" if so inclined, but I think that's being a bit unfair...
Brett: Okay, you're right. But many of those ten-or-so other films (would your list be the same as mine?) are funny, sad and often beautiful on their own terms. C&M too often feels like a primer on Allen's thematic/spiritual/moral preoccupations, with great actors delivering a series of position papers. It's not a bad film by any stretch, but to me it often feels more like an outline for a movie than a really satisfying work of art. MATCH POINT is more cinematically interesting and more on-point. Of the other films I'd call "faux Bergman," I prefer INTERIORS.
Also, to Grand Epic, re: the LAWRENCE photo: Of course. That's why I picked it.
Matt, I'm curious as to what you think of Bridge on the River Kwai, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Deer Hunter, and Silence of the Lambs--for my money the best Best Pictures that didn't make your list.
I like all of those movies, and in fact, at some point I intend to write an entire piece defending THE DEER HUNTER, which, despite its many problematic aspects, remains the greatest American film ever made about how men express emotion. They didn't make the list because there were only ten slots, and the movies that did make it on the list had fewer weak elements that had to be rationalized away. (For example, when watching KWAI, my interest flags whenever Alec Guinness isn't front and center; it's a good movie, but LAWRENCE is a great one.)
These things are subjective, though. BRIDGE, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and THE LAST EMPEROR, to name just three winners, are all more imaginatively directed than ALL ABOUT EVE and AMADEUS, but the latter make up for that lack in other departments (mainly dialogue, performance and humor) and for a variety of other ineffable reasons, I simply have more of a desire to watch them over and over. They're like favorite albums you never get tired of listening to. Or at least I don't.
MZS: Be careful about issuing challenges like your CRIMES VS. MISDEMEANORS/MATCH POINT; somebody, probably Odienator, might take you up on it.
Must resist...must resist...
My hatred of Match Point is no secret on this blog. I named it the worst movie of 2005. I'm no fan of Crimes and Misdemeanors either--I agree completely with you about it, Matt--but I found it more watchable than Match Point. Plus, it's not a ripoff of A Place in the Sun.
Both films suffer from the same problem. The victim is a shrew so horribly overacted that the scenery has Rod Steiger-sized bites missing from it. However, in C&M, Jerry Orbach is actually menacing, and Landau turns in a credible performance even if it feels like a term paper on guilt.
On the other hand, Match Point's "villain," and the crime he commits, aren't believable for a second. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is as menacing as the Nestle's Hot Cocoa dog, and about as realistic. The execution of the crime doesn't hold up (is everybody deaf in that building?) and yet the guy gets away with it? Please! Sloppy and lazy writing from Woody all around, and he gets a pass because it's Woody Allen.
If Crimes and Misdemeanors is, as Matt correctly put it, faux-Bergman, than Match Point is not-even-close-Hitchcock.
The best thing I can say about Annie Hall is that it's better than Match Point, but not as funny.
Matt wrote:
I consider it [West Side Story] to be the greatest film ever made within the Hollywood system with two miscast lead actors. GANGS OF NEW YORK would be second on that list, if you're curious.
Of the three leads in that, which do you consider the two miscast? I imagine I know, but want to make sure you don't consider one of my favorite bat-shit insane performances of the last 10 years miscast. As for the other two, I agree with you 75-80% on that. GANGS never gets enough love for my taste. We should have more cinematic disasters like that if thats how most people view it.
As for winners, I think The Apartment has to top out my list, even though I've only seen it a few times. It completely rehabilitated my youthful, wrong views on both Jack Lemmon and Shirley McLain. Silence of the Lambs would be on there as well for me, but on the whole I like your list. Cheers!
James: In GANGS, I'd consider Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron Diaz miscast. They're not awful, but between Diaz's very 21st century Hollywood vocal cadences and up-to-the-minute standard of beauty, and DiCaprio's fussy, sort of college-theater-program self-awareness, I just didn't buy them as dirt poor 19th century immigrants.
Worse, DiCaprio has the same problem as Richard Beymer in WEST SIDE STORY: I simply didn't buy him as a street tough, much less the future leader of a gang of street toughs. Ed Norton, Joaquin Phoenix, Matt Damon and (my choice) Colin Farrell all would have done better (though none of them had the box office mojo necessary to justify Scorsese's budget, so of course this whole comment is purely hypothetical). Even Mark Wahlberg, though he hasn't got a tenth of DiCaprio's range, would have been more effective, because onscreen and off, he is 100% credible as a man capable of shocking bursts of violence.
I don't have an unkind syllable for Daniel Day-Lewis, though. He gets the spirit of Scorsese and screenwriter Jay Cocks' vision so completely that he magnifies the movie's virtues and lends the whole story a coherence it probably would not have had without him. It's one of the funniest, scariest, most technically daring performances ever given in a Scorsese movie, and that's saying a lot.
Credit where credit is due: Cocks wrote the story for GANGS, but the screenplay is co-credited to him, Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan.
And if you've read all the way to the bottom of this thread, yet still haven't sent your ballot to eddiesworst@yahoo.com, please do so. Eddie doesn't require comments (though he might excerpt them when he publishes the results of the poll). He just wants a list of 10 Best Picture winners, with 1 being your pick as the best.
I'm really intrigued by everyone's comments on Crimes and Misdemeanors and Match Point, because I thought they both sucked. Actually, I thought "funny parts" of C&A were pretty good, but the rest were tiresome and obvious.
I think back on how good Woody Allen used to be, and it makes me kind of sad. I haven't enjoyed one of his movies, start-to-finish, since Radio Days, which I loved in spite of its faux-Fellini-ness. That was 19 years ago.
Matt wrote: "...DiCaprio has the same problem as Richard Beymer in WEST SIDE STORY..."
I think Beymer is a bit weak too, but to be fair I've always wondered if Tony is basically unplayable. I haven't had the pleasure of seeing many West Side Story productions, but I'd imagine it's hard to seem remotely like a tough guy after singing "Something's Coming."
My list is almost the exact same titles as yours, although in a different order. The only difference is I did not include The Godfather Part II and did include The Apartment. I really do love the Godfather II, and would have liked to include it, but my lame logic was just I had other titles to include and didn't want to let the Corleones take up 20% of the real estate.
My list, which I sent, was:
1. 1974 - The Godfather Part II
2. 1939 - Gone With the Wind: feminist before the term "feminist" existed; Scarlett O'Hara is the most interesting female protagonist in film history.
3. 1977 - Annie Hall
4. 1943 - Casablanca
5. 1972 - The Godfather
6. 1983 - Terms of Endearment -- Still one of a kind in its mix of humor and sadness.
7. 1991 - The Silence of the Lambs
8. 1934 - It Happened One Night
9. 1992 - Unforgiven
10. 1976 - Rocky -- Yes, it spawned a formula that persists (mostly badly) to this day, but the original works because Rocky doesn't win. And you don't care.
I like both C&M and MP, but I adore the former. As Ebert summarized it, "The evil are rewarded, the blameless are punished, and the rabbi goes blind." And, of course, God has gone out the window, so to speak.
Regarding "Code Unknown," I just saw it recently for the first time and would love someone to enlighten me. My very off-the-cuff opinions are here:
http://crowesmostlymovies.blogspot.com/2006/04/code-very-unknown.html
MZS: I wrote this one in a hurry to get to a screening of THE PROPOSITION, which is stunning, by the way.
Yes it is. And also notable for containing the first Danny Huston performance that did not make me want to flee the auditorium. One quibble - don't you think it could've been just a bit more violent? Personally I don't feel like enough people got shot in the head.
MZS on DDL: It's one of the funniest, scariest, most technically daring performances ever given in a Scorsese movie, and that's saying a lot.
Hell yes! I'm only sorry my early prediction didn't come true - that Bill The Butcher's flamboyance would be embraced by the hip-hop community a la Tony Montana, and that the latest "street fashions" would include wacky moustaches, plaid pants and stovepipe hats. I so desperately wanted to hear rap lyrics about "not giving a tuppany fuck, you motherwhoring Irish niggaz. Whoopsie Daisy, yo!"
Oh well, at least Bill spawned Al Swearengen... but more on that one later.
And to stick up for my precious CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS (which admittedly seemed a lot more life-changing and a lot less obvious upon its initial release, when I was 14 years old and just discovering symbolism), the Woody Allen/Alan Alda plotline now strikes me as the soul of the film.
I've always been taken with the final scene's perspective shift, when you suddenly realize that Alda -though a hysterical braying jackass- is actually a pretty decent guy, and probably is going to make Mia Farrow a lot happier than miserable, grousing Woody ever could.
Woody's character has been set up the whole time as our audience surrogate, so it's a shock to see him perched on a barstool next to a murderer, content to spend the rest of his life whining and hating everyone in the world for not living up to his absurd, highfalutin standards.
That, and he's got some killer one-liners: "A strange man defacated on my sister."
"I'm out the window."
The Alan Alda (or should I say "Allen/Alda") part of C&M is the part that works.
SB: Bill The Butcher's flamboyance would be embraced by the hip-hop community a la Tony Montana, and that the latest "street fashions" would include wacky moustaches, plaid pants and stovepipe hats.
Where were you in 1974? I didn't have a wacky mustache (that wouldn't occur until 1982), but I sure had plaid pants and the "Superfly" hat, which made me look like the pimp of the playground.
SB: I so desperately wanted to hear rap lyrics about "not giving a tuppany fuck, you motherwhoring Irish niggaz. Whoopsie Daisy, yo!"
Well, I'm sure that would have occurred if Marty hadn't kept appearing at the bottom of the screen during screenings of Gangs of New York saying GIMME THAT OSCAR! PANT PANT! GIMME THAT OSCAR! PANT PANT! MUST HAVE THE PRECIOUS! As usual, I was distracted by Marty's bushy eyebrows, so I didn't even know what Daniel Day Lewis was saying onscreen.
I mean, Scarface is fun, even if it is a raging piece of shit. Gangs is Marty's first attempt at being an Oscar whore, and we in the hip-hop community write songs about Oscar's ho's, not Oscar whores.
Maybe Three Six Mafia can write you a song about Oscars and hos.
Odie: Where were you in 1974?
The womb.
Seanie B. (I promise I will never call you this again):
[The Proposition is also notable for containing the first Danny Huston performance that did not make me want to flee the auditorium.]
Weird, that. It was the first time I was almost totally underwhelmed by him. Granted, he's usually somewhat miscast, but he usually makes it work: I even felt he brought a clumsy warmth to his bureaucrat in The Not-So-Constant Gardener. But this time he just disappeared, leaving no impression.
Unless that's what you meant.
Also, yes, this movie's pretty kind of awesome. Go Ray Winstone.
Odie: Where were you in 1974?
SB: The womb.
Touche, Mssr. Poosey-cat!
Odienator, I still haven't seen your ballot. Thomas, re: Sunrise. While it is great, I don't count it as eligible since it wasn't best picture, it was a category called artistic quality of production, which the Academy killed the following year. In fact, in older Oscar reference books, no one even mentioned that the category existed. It's just in the past couple of decades, that they've revised the history to include it. In fact, if you ask the Academy itself, it still says Wings won the first best picture prize and doesn't try to say there were two. Still, we are only ranking the best picture winners. If we included the category for which Sunrise won, should we not then allow the other feature film awards they give like foreign language film, documentary feature and animated feature as well?
Matty P on Danny H: I even felt he brought a clumsy warmth to his bureaucrat in The Not-So-Constant Gardener. But this time he just disappeared, leaving no impression.
That's weird - I always find his performances so frantic, grating and overly mannered, this time I really appreciated the stillness he brought to his character.
Of course, it's also a can't-miss Harry Lime role - everyone else in the movie talks him up for so long before he even appears onscreen, the smartest thing an actor can do in that situation is just hang back and coast on what the audience been cooking up in their heads for the past hour or so.
Huston did a Q&A after the IFF Boston screening, and got stuck answering the honest-to-gawd dopiest question I've ever heard at one of these things:
"Your voice reminds me of the director, John Huston's. Any relation?"
If I wasn't so terrified of losing my free-booze afterparty privliges I would have followed that gem up with: "So how come your sister doesn't sound like Clint Eastwood in WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART?"
I'm sort of surprised, and sort of not, by your list Matt. My question would be how many of your listed movies would make it on your all time, or some other similar type, top 10?
I'm trying to list my top 10, except I feel it's somewhat of a disservice since I haven't seen enough of the Best Pictures. And I just have a hard time listing the top ten from that list.
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