Encounters with the late Mickey Rooney

FJI contributor Bruce Feld recalls his two encounters with movie legend Mickey Rooney, who died on April 6 at the age of 93.

He holds a special place in my recollections because he is the only actor I ever interviewed who had actually made silent films. The first time I interviewed him, I had to drive way the hell out into the San Fernando Valley to a nondescript office in a bland suburb about as glamorous as a used-car lot. His office was clean, well-organized and rather small. I laid my recorder in front of him and sat in front of his wooden desk. His manner was amiable and he was one of the most forthcoming and open subjects I ever met.

He was also unique in another respect. Most people I interview speak with me; Mickey performed. He did not simply answer questions...he did a little play. His voice rose as if he were projecting to a balcony, though, as I said, it was a relatively small office. Stage spit fired through the air and made the conversation a wee bit dangerous, though I don't think he hit me. It didn't matter what the question was about. I would see him look at me, then past me to an invisible audience, and off he would go. When I asked him about Judy Garland, the volume diminished a little. He looked heartsick and said he would have given anything to have maintained her health or prolonged her life. I felt he was still heartbroken about her, but he was a deceptively good actor and I could not swear what he was saying was spontaneous or another lively performance.

The second time we met was for lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel. We sat in a super-comfortable booth side by side ("Good," I thought, "the stage spit won't hit me"), facing the room rather than each other. He was warm and friendly, and put his arm around me when an assistant took our photo. I put the recorder on the table and had no trouble transcribing the interview. He spoke loudly enough so that he could be heard for the length of ten or fifteen feet. He mentioned again that he had been "Box office star #1 for two years in a row," although he had said that during the first interview. And he was laudatory about his eighth wife, Jan. I was sorry to hear that that particular relationship ended the year before he died. The rumor was that her relatives were siphoning off his income. He had even been compelled to testify before Congress. I watched the news clips on television. He did more than testify about the indignities of old age. He performed.

Week in review 4/7 - 4/11

Mickey Rooney, the man whose 90-year career was the longest any actor has ever enjoyed in Hollywood, and whose many starring roles included turns alongside Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn and Judy Garland, among other industry greats, passed away Sunday. He was 93.

From an accepted legend to a tireless aspirant, we transition (is there a graceful way to do so?) from Rooney to James Franco. The latter raised eyebrows when he was caught soliciting a 17-year-old on Instagram last week. Naturally, the teen posted their exchange online, including some pretty damning Franco selfies that made it well near impossible for the actor to deny his involvment, should he have wanted to do so. (Franco went on to issue a public apology.) Was the social media stunt just that -- a stunt, timed to coincide with the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of his new movie, Palo Alto, in which Franco stars as, yup, an older man who hits on a teen? Or is James Franco an irredeamable creep?

Does it matter? Seth Abramson of Indiewire wants to know.

Well, we would like to know how soon in advance we can buy tickets to the Tina Fey film in which Amy Poehler just agreed to co-star, The Nest. 

We're thrilled by the news, and equally excited by the prospect of uncovering the next powerhouse female comedy team. The new Females First initiative from Dazed and Confused may do just that. The magazine's femme-centric project asks industry veterans to judge works from aspiring female filmmakers, and to select one film they believe worthy of note. Jane Campion and Helen Mirren are among the stacked jury.

Octavia Spencer would make for a great addition to the Females First team, though, so far as we know, she is not involved. Too bad, because the actress has some pretty insightful things to say about the state of the marginalized in today's film industry.

Finally, we leave off with a story that didn't technically make this week's headlines, but which did form the basis for the recent British movie, U Want Me 2 Kill Him? (Longform.org posted the archived story this week, so it makes the cut.) Fascinating, unnerving stuff.

Legendary Actor Mickey Rooney Dead at 93, The Hollywood Reporter

METAMERICANA: Is James Franco a Creep? Thank God We'll Never Know, Indiewire

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler Team Up for 'The Nest,' Slashfilm

Women in Hollywood Seeking to Help Out New Female Filmmakers, Jezebel

Octavia Spencer Doesn't Agree with John Singleton's Claim that Black Directors are Being Shut Out, Indiewire

'U Want Me 2 Kill Him?', Vanity Fair

Bulleit Bourbon partners with First Time Fest

Being as it is the eastern (many would say cooler, and not just meteorologically) hub of filmmaking, New York City is ever awash with cinematic offerings. This weekend, the tide will have a distinctly smoky flavor as whisky manufacturer Bulleit Bourbon presents First Time Fest, a showcase for
first-time filmmakers. Specifically, the festival exhibits work from first-time directors, actors, writers, producers, editors, cinematographers, and composers, and also invites established filmmakers to screen their debut movies and participate in panel discussions. Julie Taymor, Michael Moore, Peter Bogdanovich, Lake Bell, Tom McCarthy, and Jennie Livingston of the recently resurgent doc Paris is Burning, among others, are all on deck to participate in the latter, super-cool aspect of the festival.

As for today’s neophyte artists, ten of their films will screen in competition. Below, we’ve included a brief summary of each feature vying for the title of “Bulleit Frontier Film.”

What does the mantle Bulleit Frontier Film mean, you might wonder? Which characteristics must the winner possess? A sense of progressivism: the film must demonstrate a willingness to push the boundaries of cinematography, writing, directing, etc.

Next week, we’ll announce which film we believe deserves the award, and expound upon our reasons for thinking such-and-such a title has proven itself a pioneer, the cinematic equivalent of a prospector out for gold in the formerly untamed wilds of the West. Except, successful.

We’ll be live-tweeting tonight’s Bulleit event, a dinner and, naturally enough, whisky tasting featuring a Q&A with actor (The Station Agent, Spider-Man), writer and now director, Jayce Bartok (photo above). Bartok’s film Fall to Rise looks like a sound contender for the Bulleit Frontier Film award.

Take a look at the ten movies screening in competition, and be sure to follow us on Twitter tonight using the hashtag #Bulleit!

1982: A family drama set in Philadelphia at the onset of the crack epidemic, 1982 follows a father's efforts to protect his 10-year-old daughter from her drug-addicted mother, while trying to steer her towards recovery. Winner of the grand prize at the U.S. in Progress Showcase in Paris, 1982 premiered to acclaim at the Toronto Film Festival. 

Bittersweet: Move over, Rocky. In Marieke Niestadt’s documentary, the Australian boxer Diana Prazik accepts a seemingly impossible challenge: a match with World Champion Frida Wallberg. The undefeated champion is a beautiful blonde, a favorite of media and sponsors. Prazik has little more going for her than her fearless passion and her secret weapon, the Los Angeles trainer and six-time world champion Lucia Rijker. The mentor-student relationship between them becomes the heart of the film.

Butter on the Latch: After a personal breakdown, a Brooklyn performance artist and her friend head to California to become immersed in a rustic camp atmosphere and to learn folk music and dance. But the intended escape devolves into a psychosexual drama that pushes their friendship – and sanity – to the edge. Butter on the Latch had its international premiere at the 2014 Berlin Film Festival, with Decker's second film, Thou Wast Mild and Lovely.

Class Enemy: A drama that unfolds like a thriller, Rok Bicek’s  film follows a group of high-school students who rally against their demanding new German professor following the suicide of one of their classmates. An undercurrent of tension and potential violence runs through the film, which combines intimate closeups and widescreen compositions. The film premiered at the 2013 Venice Film Festival, and was Slovenia's official entry for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars. 

Fall to Rise: This  drama follows a renowned principal dancer whose injury forces her out of her company and uncomfortably into the role of motherhood. She realizes that her identity depends on dance and she struggles to return with the help of another former company dancer. The film includes turns by ballerina Katherine Crockett (featured in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and Daphne Rubin-Vega, revealing the conflict between art and life, between marriage and independence.

Farewell, Herr Schwarz: A brother and sister survive the concentration camps but  are separated in 1945. She migrated to the Middle East; he returned to Germany, where he became a Communist and lived near the camp where he was imprisoned. Their grandchildren are haunted by family secrets; the two families, in Germany and Israel – not knowing each other for years – are strangely mirrored. Yael Reuveny’s documentary is a journey spanning three generations, two countries and one fateful decision.

Getting to the Nutcracker:  Every year, The Nutcracker is performed by ballet companies around the world. Serene Meshel-Dillman’s documentary takes us inside the immense effort involved in gathering the resources, assembling the volunteers, casting the dancers and rehearsing and staging the performances of this classic ballet. Taking us inside the Los Angeles-based Marat Daukayev School of Ballet, the film shares the auditions, the rigorous rehearsals, and the joys and pains of the young dancers, who give their everything to the ballet.

Love Steaks: Infused with the chaotic energy of its main character, Lara – an alcoholic chef at a luxury hotel – Love Steaks is an unlikely love story that erupts as sparks fly between the fiery Lara and a sensitive masseur named Clemens. As deliberately off-key as Lara’s guitar-playing, this black comedy was filmed in an improvisatory style amidst a real hotel staff. Love Steaks was the winner of the Lions Film Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival.

Miss Julie: This drama transports August Strindberg’s 19^th-century play about lust, love, class and the battle of the sexes to a 1920s country mansion. Miss Julie has recently broken her engagement to her wealthy fiancé; her father was relying on the new groom to rescue the family from their financial troubles. One night, with her father out of town, Miss Julie and her best friend throw a party for their friends; on the same day, a newly hired servant arrives, and it quickly becomes clear he is looking for more than a job. Miss Julie builds in tension until its shattering finale. 

The Sleepwalker: Kaia and her boyfriend Andrew are enjoying a quiet, secluded life while restoring her late father’s rural Massachusetts estate. Their tranquility is shattered by the unexpected arrival of her sister, Christine, and her affluent fiancé, Ira. The sisters’ troubled family history begins to unravel as tensions mount between the two men. The Sleepwalker premiered in competition at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

Cinematic TV and 'Carnivàle'

With shows like our dearly departed “Breaking Bad,” Netflix’s offering to the zeitgeist, “House of Cards,” and recent critical and, increasingly, fan darling, “True Detective,” the divide between television series and movies as we’ve traditionally understood it is in a state of erosion. Zachary Wigon over at Tribeca Film has written a brief thought piece on why this blending of form, narrative styles and technique is a development worthy of our enthusiasm.  Says Wigon:

“…filmmakers who are apprehensive of working in TV need to understand that the medium is continually reshaping itself to accommodate their needs. Anyone who has doubts about TV’s allowances for formalism should check out the virtuoso 6-minute shot that ends episode four of True Detective. But just as crucially, it’s necessary to remind TV fans that TV is not gaining a greater share of cultural influence because it’s ‘better’ than cinema; it’s gaining a greater influence because it is reappropriating the tenets of cinema.”

Wigon’s blog post led me to wonder which other shows demonstrate a flair for the cinematic and, specifically, which shows, if any, “reappropriated the tenets of cinema” long before it was cool to do so. Although I had a list in mind (classics “The Wire” and “Twin Peaks” foremost among my ideas), there is one series that stood out as a preeminent example of a cinema-TV hybrid – and which, for all its opacity, maintains its preeminence.

I first came across a clip from HBO’s “Carnivàle” last year, embedded in a blog post that asked if the below scene was the most beautiful ever filmed for TV. The author admitted he had no idea what was going on between the characters, but also that his ignorance didn’t bother him. The scene was that compelling.

 

“Carnivàle” is a bizarre show with a dense mythology many viewers found daunting and many others found pretentious when the series ran on HBO from 2003-2005. The show’s pilot set a record ratings high for an HBO original upon its premiere, but, although creator Daniel Knauf had crafted a storyline he intended to unwind over six seasons, the network cut “Carnivàle” short after only two.

The show concerns itself with a mythic battle between the forces of good and evil as played out against the backdrop of the Dust Bowl. These opposing forces seek human proxies with each new generation, “avatars” who must continue their fight. Of course, the humans don’t necessarily know they’re proxies, which is the case with “good” Ben Hawkins (Nick Stahl) and “bad” Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown).  “Carnivàle” follows both men, although Ben’s relationship with a traveling troupe of carnies, many of who possess their own magic abilities, seems to be the focus.

Biblical imagery and allusions, historical references, “avatars,” tarot readings, “prophets,” “ushers,” and many more abstract and esoteric elements left viewers scratching their heads, especially as the above explanation was never explicitly given within the series, but rather left for audiences to parse on their own and actively discuss in online forums, “Carnivàle” being one of the first shows to foster intense Internet fandom. Much of the cinematic beauty of “Carnivàle” is in fact a function of the series’ obsession with leaving clues. For instance, the positioning of Ben Hawkins and Brother Justin Crowe in relation to the two men sitting at the table behind them in the clip above is a clue, as is, possibly, their re-positioning when Brother Justin looks in the mirror. The song that plays in the background of the scene, as well as the waitress’ cryptic “Every prophet in his house” are both repeated several times throughout the series – more clues.

“Carnivàle” could be considered cinematic for the painstaking attention afforded its cinematography and the staging of its shots, as well as by virtue of the sheer scope of its narrative ambition – you don’t get much grander than biblical. Of course, neither an emphasis on style nor one on universal themes is exclusively the purview of film. However, given cinema’s larger budgets and scale, “big” has traditionally been left to the big screen.  Not so with “Carnivàle,” which HBO afforded $4 million for its every episode. Additionally, given HBO’s great no-commercials policy, the show’s creators were able to tailor the runtime of each episode to the story’s needs. The hour-long show in actuality often ran anywhere from 40, 45 to a little over 60 minutes.

That Carnivàle seems to share a cinematic sensibility may have something – or everything – to do with the fact that creator Knauf initially wrote his series as a film script. Since “Carnivàle’s” cancelation, Knauf has vocalized his desire to either have another network pick up the rest of his story, or possibly have a studio turn it into a feature film. Given the hybridized nature of TV today, the landscape is ripe  for a continuation of his cinematic show. Audiences may not have been ready for “Carnivàle” a decade ago, but by the looks of things, pop culture may have finally caught up.

Valentine's Day special: Top Period Romances

The domestic box office is packed with remakes this weekend, with updates on classic ‘80s films RoboCop, About Last Night and Endless Love all opening wide. Today, of course, is also Valentine’s Day, our nationally sanctioned date night. While many couples and groups of friends will likely celebrate the latter by viewing one of the former, given the persistence of bad weather throughout much of the country (just this morning I overheard one woman lamenting the lack of favorable conditions for appropriate V-Day shoes: How can she be expected to wear heels in so much slush?) we’re guessing there’ll be plenty of people who opt for dinner and a movie on the couch instead.

 Instead of a standard list of the best Valentine’s Day films streaming online, however, we’ve decided to take our cue from Hollywood and its current obsession with the past. Today’s batch of films is made up of the Best Period Romances. Yes, that means femme-targeted fare Gone With the Wind and the underrated A Knight’s Tale have made the cut, but so has an Adam Sandler movie, as well as a beloved animated classic neither gender should ever admit to disliking.

Grab yourself a bowl of pasta, a glass of red wine and an it’s-a-cliché-for-a-reason box of chocolates, and take a look through our list of the Top Period Romances:

The Deep Blue Sea – Available for rent on Amazon
Set in 1950, this adaptation of a Terence Rattigan play centers on depressed well-to-do British housewife Hester (Rachel Weisz) whose affair with a younger officer (Tom Hiddleston, PL, or pre-Loki) has begun to lose its luster so far as he, if not she, is concerned. We see their relationship build and then unravel through a series of flashbacks on this day Hester has chosen to take a dramatic step. It’s not the cheeriest of romances, but it’s a fabulous showcase for the two leads, and deeply romantic in the way it emphasizes the sister-half of passion: tragedy.

  

The Wedding Singer – Available for rent on Amazon
On the opposite end of the spectrum from artsy-serious The Deep Blue Sea, we have what is still Adam Sandler’s best film, The Wedding Singer. The period element comes in the form of the movie’s over-the-top 1980s setting, in which blue suits, Members Only jackets, and a preoccupation with rock stars wearing eyeliner, Boy George and Billy Idol, are as commonplace as perms. This first pairing of Sandler with Drew Barrymore is also, in the old-fashioned sense of the term, movie magic. Funny, romantic, and featuring a song rife with potential for real-life proposals, The Wedding Singer is a shoo-in for our list:

 

A Knight’s Tale – Available to buy on Amazon
Thirteen years on and this rocking riff on Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale continues to bear up. Heath Ledger plays Will, the titular knight who is, in fact, not a knight at all but a poor squire. When the real knight he serves dies, Will dons his armor in order to compete in a tournament and win some money to buy food for himself and fellow hungry squire Roland (Mark Addy). Turns out peasant Will is a natural fighter, and his success in subsequent competitions – as well as the sight of noblewoman Jocelyn (Shannyn Sossamon) – moves him to continue with his ruse. A supporting cast of characters, including Paul Bettany in what endures as one of his best supporting roles, the gambling and oft-nude Chaucer, and a gleefully anachronistic rock soundtrack help lift A Knight’s Tale above the common make of knights and damsels yarns. Fun fact: The Artist’s Berenice Bejo got her big break playing Jocelyn’s kindly abetting lady in waiting, Christiana.

 

Gone With the Wind – Available to rent on Amazon
Well, obviously. They don’t come much more romantic than Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, the blackguarded black sheep of the South. It takes a while for Leigh’s Scarlett O’Hara to come to the same conclusion Gable’s Rhett Butler drew the moment he saw her descending the stairs of that dippy Ashley Wilkes’ grand estate: They were made for each other. It’s too bad her revelation comes when it does, but watching her work her way there, amid the real-life drama of the Civil War and the melodrama of author Margaret Mitchell’s plot, is a whole lot of fun:

 

Lust, Caution – Netflix
The sexiest film on our list is, unsurprisingly, a tale of espionage and betrayal. The period in question is late 1930’s and early 1940’s Hong Kong. A group of earnest university students form a covert spy cell in order to assassinate powerful government official Mr. Yee. The naïve Chia Chi is given the role of elegant society woman and tasked with seducing Mr. Yee, the better to lure him into the cell’s trap. It’s a simple enough plan, until feelings among the cell’s members and those between Chi and Mr. Yee muddy the course. Lust, Caution remains one of the best collaborations between director Ang Lee and co-writer and former Focus Features head James Schamus to date:

 

The Secret in Their Eyes – Available to buy on Amazon
This one stretches the definition of “period film,” but a great deal of the movie does take place in an earlier period, 1970s Argentina, so it qualifies. When the movie opens, retired judiciary worker Benjamin Esposito is having some trouble beginning a novel he would like to write about a rape and murder case he covered 25 years ago. He visits the offices of a former love interest and colleague who also worked on the case, now a high-powered judge, to ask for advice. She tells him, a la Maria von Trapp, to start at the beginning – a very good place to start. And so begins a series of flashbacks that reveal both the troubled nature of the criminal case and Benjamin and Irene’s relationship. The Secret in Their Eyes won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film back in 2012, and with good reason:

 

The Dead – Netflix
John Huston’s final film is an adaptation of the final tale in James Joyce’s collection of short stories, Dubliners. The year is 1904 and Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta are attending a dinner party.  One of the guest’s rendition of the song “The Lass of Aughrim” prompts Gretta to recall certain romantic and painful memories she describes to Gabriel later that night. The Dead, as the title may suggest, is not an uplifting tale of love and passion, but a deeply affecting story imbued with director Huston’s own sense of impending mortality. We dare you not to feel something when Huston’s daughter Angelica reveals depths previously unknown to her husband:

 

Who Framed Roger Rabbit – Available for rent on Amazon
Like Scarlett and Rhett, Roger and Jessica Rabbit form a film couple for the ages. The 1947-set genre-bending live-action/animated hybrid is many things – adventure tale, crime caper, murder mystery, slapstick comedy, witty comedy, ensemble comedy – but it is, at its core, a love story. The plot’s resolution in fact hinges upon a declaration of love. Doesn’t get more romantic than that:

  

The Princess Bride – Available for rent on Amazon
Peter Falk says it best when describing The Princess Bride to his skeptic of a grandson: “Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Revenge. Giants. Monsters. Chases. Escapes. True Love. Miracles.” The film delivers on all of the above and is one of cinema’s finest examples of comedy happily wed to earnest romance. It is typical Princess Bride style to toss off lines that are equal parts facetious and worthy of a dreamy sigh: “Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.”

 

LGBT films & WWII footage among final Berlinale highlights

Our correspondent at the Berlin Film Festival and France 24 writer, Jon Frosch, recently spoke with the director of standout LGBT film Test, Chris Mason Johnson. Test is set in 1987 and follows a young gay dancer as he agonizes over whether or not to take the new HIV test. Johnson shared his views on the state of queer cinema today: “I think after an initial phase of amazing queer cinema in the ‘90s, we entered a phase that was less adventurous. And now I think we’re coming out of that into a more artful, realistic representation.”

Frosch’s final dispatch from the international film showcase includes his thoughts on the harrowing 1945 documentary, German Concentration Camps Factual Survey. The work was filmed by British, American and Russian cameramen with the intent of eventually screening their finished product before a German audience, forcing the German people to face the horrors begot by their support or indifference. The filmmakers soon determined, however, that the film (overseen by a prominent Hollywood director) would work to counteract the Allies’ goal of German reconciliation. The Berlin premiere marked the first time the documentary screened in full feature-length form. Factual Survey stands in stark contrast to the “Hollywood cheese” of George Clooney’s WWII yarn, The Monuments Men.

Candid American tales of sex take Berlin by surprise

FJI correspondent Jon Frosch is at the Berlin Film Festival, reporting on the annual event for France 24.  Here's his latest dispatch on a pair of dark, sexy American indies and the disappointing new film from Rachid Bouchareb.

Paley Center celebrates the legacy of Roger Ebert

Film Journal International had the privilege of attending a very special Rooftop Films/Piper-Heidsieck-sponsored screening last night at NYC’s Paley Center of Life Itself, the absorbing, poignant documentary about the life of Roger Ebert that premiered to acclaim at Sundance. Director Steve James (Hoop Dreams) arrived just in time from a snowstorm-delayed flight to introduce this wide-ranging, unflinching account of the beloved Chicago film critic whose battle with thyroid cancer spurred a brave and remarkably productive new chapter in his life.

New York Times film critic A.O. Scott, who moderated a post-screening Q&A with James, Ebert’s widow Chaz and Ebert’s filmmaking friend Ramin Bahrani, accurately noted that Life Itself is many things: a biography, a portrait of Ebert’s hometown of Chicago and the world of film critics, a love story, and a tale of courage. James admitted that he initially “thought I’d rip off” Ebert’s memoir of the same name for this CNN Films adaptation, but the doc morphed into something quite different when Ebert fractured his hip shortly before filming began. The director had wanted to show how active and vibrant Ebert was despite the illness that forced the removal of his lower jaw and robbed him of the power of speech and the ability to eat or drink. Instead, the film became a chronicle of the last five months of his life, largely confined to a hospital bed but still able to watch films and make copious contributions to his blog at rogerebert.com. The scenes of Ebert being attended to with suction tubes and clearly in pain are uncomfortable to witness, but the man himself insisted that these intimate moments be included in the film.

Ebert’s dignified widow Chaz confided that the film is difficult for her to watch, but noted that she’s “glad it exists as a maintenance of Roger’s legacy.” Of the “unfettered access” she and her husband gave to James, she commented, “We’re not reality-TV people, but we trusted Steve” based on his past work as a documentarian, which Ebert often championed.

In a very touching moment, Chaz revealed that the previous day had been especially sad for her with the shocking news of the death of Philip Seymour Hoffman, as Roger had told her if he were ever to be played in a movie, his ideal casting would have been the gifted Hoffman.

Life Itself is by no means just a mournful affair. It’s a richly entertaining look at a remarkable life, spanning from Ebert’s childhood and first taste of journalism as the prodigious editor of his college newspaper, to his hard-drinking days as part of the legendarily colorful Chicago newspaper fraternity (with priceless comments from some of those drinking buddies), to his startling collaboration with nudie director Russ Meyer on Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, to the public-TV pairing with rival Chicago film critic Gene Siskel that eventually made him a household name. James expands on the book’s relatively brief section on Siskel, charting the complexities of a relationship that could be genuinely antagonistic but in time found its way to mutual respect and even love. The footage of outtakes of their hilarious bickering while doing TV promos for their show is alone worth the price of admission.

The movie also includes lively commentary from a host of friends and colleagues including directors Martin Scorsese (singularly diverting as ever), Werner Herzog and Errol Morris (who says he owes his career to Ebert’s eager support) and fellow critics Scott, Richard Corliss and Jonathan Rosenbaum. The devoted Chaz, with whom Ebert shared a life-changing bond, is not only a warm presence throughout, but an equally admirable example of courage and determination.

James revealed that Ebert only viewed a few short clips of interviews with his Chicago friends; Chaz said, “He knew he would never see the movie.” The fact that Roger Ebert did some of his most thoughtful and influential writing through a horrendous health crisis that would have defeated most of us is an inspiration, and that inspiration is bound to live on as this marvelous film finds a wider audience in 2014.

Deadline looms for 35mm

Two recent blog postings take impassioned stands on the film vs. digital debate. Kyle Westphal's excellent roundup 2013 in Review: Whose Film Is It, Anyway? considers the consequences to artists and viewers when film is no longer available. Don't Worry About the End of Film, argues Richard Brody in his New Yorker blog, The Front Row.

Both writers agree that the era of theatrical projection of 35mm features has passed. (It was hard to ignore recent news articles announcing that Paramount has stopped distributing film prints.) But they reach different conclusions about what this means for moviegoers.

Westphal points out that 35mm projection was supposed to continue in art houses, museums, and other niche theaters, but finds that digital has dominated those markets as well. The last New York Film Festival screened mostly digital, the Chicago International Film Festival exclusively digital. Even To Save and Project, the Museum of Modern Art's annual film preservation festival, had to resort to some digital for its 2013 series.

This despite the fact that the actual people who make movies still want to work with and watch film. Of this year's nine Best Picture nominees, four were shot on film: American Hustle, Captain Phillips (on 16mm!), 12 Years a Slave, and The Wolf of Wall Street (both Wolf and Phillips have some digital shots).

Westphal cites a Joel Coen comment that Inside Llewyn Davis might be the last project he and his brother Ethan make on film. (J.J Abrams said something similar about why he used film for Star Trek Into Darkness.) And as I pointed out in my piece on The Grandmaster, Wong Kar Wai would still shoot on film if he could. It took months for the director to see The Grandmaster projected on film.

Digital enthusiasts keep insisting that a DCP (Digital Cinema Package) delivers an as good as or better image than a 35mm print. There's no question that DCP's are cheaper in the long run than film, which degrades a little (or a lot) with each projection. And after years of viewing poor quality commercial prints projected poorly, most customers probably prefer the rock-solid, spliceless, scratchless digital experience.

For Brody, "ultimately, what matters is not film or video but the idea." He points out that artists have manipulated film since its origins, and brings up the dirty secret that's often missing from this debate: just about every feature* is digitized for post-production work, usually with 2K scans. (*I can't think of a recent feature that was edited by hand, but one could exist.) Basically all the movies we see in commercial theaters have already undergone a digital conversion.

I don't think anyone can argue for a return to 35mm distribution and projection. It doesn't make economic sense, and in almost all cases it doesn't make artistic sense. That doesn't mean digital is superior or even preferable to film. It only means that seeing 35mm in a theater will become more and more difficult.

Try this analogy. Few would insist that an e-book reads the same as a hardbound version published on a letterpress with rag paper. Is the digital version cheaper? Does it contain all the text? Is it endlessly clone-able? Sure. But reading a book on a Kindle is not the same experience as holding a book in your hand.

What looks better? A jpg of oil canvas, or the real thing? A digital file, or a platinum print? No matter how much you manipulate pixels to look like painting or still photography or motion picture film, the differences remain obvious. The whole goal of digital movie formats is still to look "just as good as" film.

Lost in the debate is the fate of our film heritage prior to the digital takeover. It turns out that film is an excellent archival medium—digital, not so great. Archivists are battling these issues out right now on the AMIA listserve, but I will point out that there are no industry-wide standards for digital preservation, no long-term case studies, no real idea what the costs will be.

And there is no market formula right now for the thousands of films from the pre-digital age. Who will pay to digitize them? And if they aren't digitized, how long will it be before the machinery required to see them becomes obsolete?

As one AMIA poster put it,

Caches of nitrate film are still being found—we were nitrate would only survive for 50 years, but there it is, 100 years old and older. Much of it can be saved digitally, but some deserves to survive as film as long as we are able to save it. Should Potemkin or Casablanca or The Red Shoes or Paisan or Caligari or [fill in a title] only survive in digital versions?

NATO’s trailer guidelines & best previews of all time

It’s a feeling familiar to many moviegoers: You’re stalled in traffic; there are train delays on the subway; you thought you had arrived at the theatre right on time, only to find yourself stuck at the end of a line snaking its way out and away from the building’s entrance. You’re going to be late for your movie, there’s no doubt about it, but happily, your anxiety is checked by the recollection of common cinema practice. Movies never start on time. They always begin 10 minutes later than listed, at least. And why? Because it’s standard form for a host of pre-show previews to play before each feature.  And so you breathe easy, knowing there’s a nice, long buffer of movie trailers between you and the opening scene of your film.

It remains to be seen whether or not the new set of voluntary guidelines released by the National Association of Theatre Owners today will dramatically affect this common 10-minute lag-time, between when a film is listed to begin and when it does begin, but one thing is likely: The trailers themselves will be shorter. NATO has asked that all movie trailers run no longer than two minutes, a full 30 seconds shorter than today’s norm. They’re also asking distributors not to release a trailer more than five months ahead of a film’s premiere. These new guidelines, however, do allow for two exemptions per year, per distributor. They’re scheduled to go into effect next fall.

Does this mean theatre audiences will be treated to many more short trailers before their film begins, or will a movie scheduled for 8PM now in fact start closer to 8:05 instead of 8:10PM? Most importantly for trailer fans, what effect will the time restriction (should distributors choose to adhere to it) have on the caliber of preview itself?

Perhaps it will result in the creation of trailers that skew towards the kind of quality work that makes up today’s list, inspired by NATO’s announcement, of the best movie trailers of all time. It’s true, most of the below previews do not run much longer than two minutes. Other similarities include an ingenious use of music (Jefferson Airplane providing the aural relief at the end of the anxious A Serious Man trailer; the fervid interest The Social Network’s trailer stoked in a capella, and preferably foreign, covers of Radiohead; Arcade Fire reaching the masses via the Where the Wild Things Are preview; and of course, everything auditory about the Pulp Fiction trailer) and, in most instances, a tendency to tease and hint at rather than explain an entire premise. (Remember the Cloverfield phenomenon?)

Admittedly, our list trends towards more recent films, with a certain emphasis on horror and indies, so if you have any suggestions for older works or genres not included, feel free to sound off in the comments below!

The Social Network
 

Where the Wild Things Are
 

Pulp Fiction
 

The Exorcist
 

Citizen Kane
 

A Serious Man
 

Cloverfield
 

The Shining
 

The Blair Witch Project
 

Little Children
 

Alien
 

Our critics’ takes on the 9 Best Picture nominees

The writers here at Film Journal seem to agree with The Academy and its selection of the top films of 2013. Each of the nine Best Picture nominees found favor with our critics when it first premiered last year.  Spike Jonze’s dystopian love story, Her, came the closest to receiving what could be considered a negative review, with critic David Noh singling out “eternal sufferer” protagonist, Theodore Twombly, for being too passive a hero. Yet, even with Twombly’s persistent moroseness, the character's world was nonetheless full of “droll moments and real surprise,” Noh acknowledged. As is the case with several directors whose films received nominations, Spike Jonze turned in one of his finest works in years.

Here’s what the FJI critics had to say about the best films of 2013:

12 Years A Slave:
12 Years a Slave is a landmark film, complete with a terrific ensemble (Paul Dano, Sara Paulson and Brad Pitt need to be mentioned in certain key roles), and the vision and skill required to do justice to such historically complex material. It is one of those rare pieces of art that all its successors taking a shot at the same topic will be measured against.

Click here for the full review.

American Hustle:
With a crackling script and masterful direction, Russell has made a fiction that is stranger—and way more fun—than the truth. He has the help of a dream cast of actors, all at the top of their games.

Click here for the full review.

Dallas Buyers Club:
Screenwriters Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack don’t fall back on any heroic or clichéd turns but keep Woodroof on an outlaw course where no pro-gay marches or quilts sweeten the way or soften the character’s macho, prejudicial core. Yet it’s McConaughey’s savvy incarnation of this Lone Star brute that makes this gritty tale worth the ride.

Click here for the full review.

Captain Phillips:
But Captain Phillips functions most as a handsomely, elaborately produced “hardware” movie that satisfies in both its details and the sustained suspense of its action elements.  And by having Hanks in the starring role.

Click here for the full review.

The Wolf of Wall Street:
Unlike its mostly slimy characters, The Wolf of Wall Street favorably impresses on every level. Perversely enjoyable and entertaining, this wild ride of a film offers a motor-mouth chorus of really bad boys whose rousing cantata celebrates the recent era of easy money and financial funny business. Audiences—their values be damned—will sing along.

Click here for the full review.

Nebraska:
Like a Hitchcock MacGuffin, the non-existent prize is the peg on which screenwriter Bob Nelson hangs an alternately charming and caustic road movie about the often exasperating bonds between parents and children and how we could all benefit from taking the time to get to know those sometime-strangers we call Mom and Dad.

Click here for the full review.

Philomena:
Philomena is as much a sharp exploration of class, sexuality, faith and relationships as it is a wittily written, devastating account of the barbaric treatment of unwed mothers in Ireland as recently as the 1950s, with a plum role for the remarkable Judi Dench.

Click here for the full review.

Gravity:
Cuarón and his team have created screen spectacle with a searing human dimension, and bring a true sense of wonder to a groundbreaking movie experience.

Click here for the full review.

Her:
It's a fiendishly clever concept, his most satisfying outing since the brilliant Being John Malkovich, rife with droll moments and real surprise.

Click here for the full review.

The Internet is of course full of Oscar lists and countdowns today, posing much more of a distraction than usual for film-lovers. In-keeping with this spirit of enjoyable diversions, here’s another (brief!) list outlining What the Internet Has to Say About Oscar:

Film.com: The 12 Best Acceptance Speeches in Oscar History
Replete with video and fully subjective commentary.

Entertainment Weekly: The 10 Most High-Powered Oscar Races of the Past 25 Years
A fun trip down commemorative lane. Who knew Kate Winslet had already received three nominations by age 26? More importantly: Can Jennifer Lawrence best her record?

Vulture: Where to Stream This Year’s Oscar-Nominated Documentaries
A fantastic resource.

Indiewire: Interview: Lupita Nyong’o
Months before she received a Best Supporting Actress nomination for 12 Years a Slave.

Vanity Fair: Celebrating The Oldest-Ever Class of Best Actress Nominees
Take that, Sexist Agism.

2014 Academy Awards nominees revealed

And they’re here! After months of speculation, campaigning and enduring those obnoxious for-your-consideration pop-up ads (all of which will now, unfortunately, only intensify) the nominations for the 2014 Academy Awards have been announced.

If you haven’t read through them already, odds are, you’ll be able to guess the major categories.

Nine features earned nods for Best Picture: American Hustle, Captain Phillips, Dallas Buyers Club, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, Philomena, 12 Years a Slave, and The Wolf of Wall Street.

Not a dark horse among the aforementioned. This year, who and what got snubbed is a much more interesting topic of conversation than who and what made the cut. The award for Most Glaring Omission goes to the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, which not only failed to receive a nomination for Best Picture, but which was also shut out of the Best Actor (Oscar Isaac) and Best Director categories. A friend of mine may have inadvertently expressed the general sentiment when he explained his reasons for disliking the feature: The Coen Brothers made a very beautiful film about a very unlikable guy. He felt it lacked personal resonance. It was a movie he could appreciate for its technical and aesthetic mastery, but which ultimately left him cold. The Academy may have felt similarly.

Others may be surprised favorites Tom Hanks and especially Emma Thompson were left out of the Best Actor and Actress groups. Captain Phillips director Paul Greengrass failed to impress members of The Academy as well, and, although we’ve known for some weeks that, having been left off the shortlist for Best Foreign Language Feature, Iran’s The Past wouldn’t receive a nomination, the snub of Asghar Farhadi’s complex drama is still a shame.

Having acknowledged the fallen, however, the focus must now land on those left standing. It’s a mighty strong group of contenders that features American Hustle and Gravity at the front of the pack with their 10 nominations each, and 12 Years a Slave following close behind with nine nods.

Without further vamping, then, here is the complete list of nominees for the 2014 Academy Awards (slated to air March 2, on ABC):

Best Picture
American Hustle
Captain Phillips
Dallas Buyers Club
Gravity
Her
Nebraska
Philomena
12 Years a Slave
The Wolf of Wall Street

Performance by an actor in a leading role
Christian Bale, American Hustle (Sony Pictures Releasing)
Bruce Dern, Nebraska (Paramount)
Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street (Paramount)
Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave (Fox Searchlight)
Matthew McConaughey,  Dallas Buyers Club (Focus Features)

Performance by an actress in a leading role
Amy Adams, American Hustle (Sony Pictures Releasing)
Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine (Sony Pictures Classics)
Sandra Bullock, Gravity (Warner Bros.)
Judi Dench, Philomena (The Weinstein Company)
Meryl Streep, August: Osage County (The Weinstein Company)

Best performance by an actor in a supporting role
Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips
Bradley Cooper, American Hustle
Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave
Jonah Hill, The Wolf of Wall Street
Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club

Best performance by an actress in a supporting role
Lupita Nyong'o, 12 Years a Slave
Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle
June Squibb, Nebraska
Julia Roberts, August: Osage County
Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine

Best Animated Feature
Frozen
The Croods
The Wind Rises
Despicable Me 2
Ernest & Celestine

Achievement in cinematography
The Grandmaster, Philippe Le Sourd
Gravity, Emmanuel Lubezki
Inside Llewyn Davis, Bruno Delbonnel
Nebraska, Phedon Papamichael
Prisoners, Roger A. Deakins
 
Achievement in costume design
American Hustle, Michael Wilkinson
The Grandmaster, William Chang Suk Ping
The Great Gatsby, Catherine Martin
The Invisible Woman, Michael O’Connor
12 Years a Slave, Patricia Norris
 
Achievement in directing
American Hustle, David O. Russell
Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón
Nebraska, Alexander Payne
12 Years a Slave, Steve McQueen
The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese
 
Best documentary feature
The Act of Killing, Joshua Oppenheimer and Signe Byrge Sørensen
Cutie and the Boxer, Zachary Heinzerling and Lydia Dean Pilcher
Dirty Wars, Richard Rowley and Jeremy Scahill
The Square, Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer
20 Feet from Stardom, Nominees to be determined
 
Best documentary short subject
CaveDigger, Jeffrey Karoff
Facing Fear, Jason Cohen
Karama Has No Walls, Sara Ishaq
The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life, Malcolm Clarke and Nicholas Reed
Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall, Edgar Barens
 
Achievement in film editing
American Hustle, Jay Cassidy, Crispin Struthers and Alan Baumgarten
Captain Phillips, Christopher Rouse
Dallas Buyers Club, John Mac McMurphy and Martin Pensa
Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón and Mark Sanger
12 Years a Slave, Joe Walker
 
Best foreign language film of the year
The Broken Circle Breakdown, Belgium
The Great Beauty, Italy
The Hunt, Denmark
The Missing Picture, Cambodia
Omar, Palestine
 
Achievement in makeup and hairstyling
Dallas Buyers Club, Adruitha Lee and Robin Mathews
Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa, Stephen Prouty
The Lone Ranger, Joel Harlow and Gloria Pasqua-Casny
 
Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)
The Book Thief, John Williams
Gravity, Steven Price
Her, William Butler and Owen Pallett
Philomena, Alexandre Desplat
Saving Mr. Banks, Thomas Newman
 
Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)
“Alone Yet Not Alone” from “Alone Yet Not Alone”
Music by Bruce Broughton; Lyric by Dennis Spiegel
“Happy” from “Despicable Me 2”
Music and Lyric by Pharrell Williams
“Let It Go” from “Frozen”
Music and Lyric by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez
“The Moon Song” from “Her”
Music by Karen O; Lyric by Karen O and Spike Jonze
“Ordinary Love” from “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom”
Music by Paul Hewson, Dave Evans, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen; Lyric by Paul Hewson

Best motion picture of the year
“American Hustle” Charles Roven, Richard Suckle, Megan Ellison and Jonathan Gordon, Producers
“Captain Phillips” Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti and Michael De Luca, Producers
“Dallas Buyers Club” Robbie Brenner and Rachel Winter, Producers
“Gravity” Alfonso Cuarón and David Heyman, Producers
“Her” Megan Ellison, Spike Jonze and Vincent Landay, Producers
“Nebraska” Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa, Producers
“Philomena” Gabrielle Tana, Steve Coogan and Tracey Seaward, Producers
“12 Years a Slave” Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Steve McQueen and Anthony Katagas, Producers
“The Wolf of Wall Street” Nominees to be determined
 
Achievement in production design
“American Hustle” Production Design: Judy Becker; Set Decoration: Heather Loeffler
“Gravity” Production Design: Andy Nicholson; Set Decoration: Rosie Goodwin and Joanne Woollard
“The Great Gatsby” Production Design: Catherine Martin; Set Decoration: Beverley Dunn
“Her” Production Design: K.K. Barrett; Set Decoration: Gene Serdena
“12 Years a Slave” Production Design: Adam Stockhausen; Set Decoration: Alice Baker
 
Best animated short film
“Feral” Daniel Sousa and Dan Golden
“Get a Horse!” Lauren MacMullan and Dorothy McKim
“Mr. Hublot” Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares
“Possessions” Shuhei Morita
“Room on the Broom” Max Lang and Jan Lachauer
 
Best live action short film
“Aquel No Era Yo (That Wasn’t Me)” Esteban Crespo
“Avant Que De Tout Perdre (Just before Losing Everything)” Xavier Legrand and Alexandre Gavras
“Helium” Anders Walter and Kim Magnusson
“Pitääkö Mun Kaikki Hoitaa? (Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?)” Selma Vilhunen and Kirsikka Saari
“The Voorman Problem” Mark Gill and Baldwin Li
 
Achievement in sound editing
“All Is Lost” Steve Boeddeker and Richard Hymns
“Captain Phillips” Oliver Tarney
“Gravity” Glenn Freemantle
“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” Brent Burge
“Lone Survivor” Wylie Stateman
 
Achievement in sound mixing
“Captain Phillips” Chris Burdon, Mark Taylor, Mike Prestwood Smith and Chris Munro
“Gravity” Skip Lievsay, Niv Adiri, Christopher Benstead and Chris Munro
“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” Christopher Boyes, Michael Hedges, Michael Semanick and Tony Johnson
“Inside Llewyn Davis” Skip Lievsay, Greg Orloff and Peter F. Kurland
“Lone Survivor” Andy Koyama, Beau Borders and David Brownlow
 
Achievement in visual effects
“Gravity” Tim Webber, Chris Lawrence, Dave Shirk and Neil Corbould
“The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” Joe Letteri, Eric Saindon, David Clayton and Eric Reynolds
“Iron Man 3” Christopher Townsend, Guy Williams, Erik Nash and Dan Sudick
“The Lone Ranger” Tim Alexander, Gary Brozenich, Edson Williams and John Frazier
“Star Trek Into Darkness” Roger Guyett, Patrick Tubach, Ben Grossmann and Burt Dalton
 
Adapted screenplay
“Before Midnight” Written by Richard Linklater, Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke
“Captain Phillips” Screenplay by Billy Ray
“Philomena” Screenplay by Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope
“12 Years a Slave” Screenplay by John Ridley
“The Wolf of Wall Street” Screenplay by Terence Winter
 
Original screenplay
“American Hustle” Written by Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell
“Blue Jasmine” Written by Woody Allen
“Dallas Buyers Club” Written by Craig Borten & Melisa Wallack
“Her” Written by Spike Jonze
“Nebraska” Written by Bob Nelson

The Sundance legacy

The 2014 Sundance Film Festival kicks off tomorrow in Park City, Utah, with another round of indie offerings from both the established set and those eager to break through its ranks. There’s a host of movies already generating the de rigueur advanced buzz, with Richard Linklater‘s latest (Boyhood), Zach Braff’s follow-up to 2004 Sundance favorite Garden State (Wish I Was Here), SNL alums Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader’s foray into drama (The Skeleton Twins), Amy Poehler’s spoof of the romantic comedy (They Came Together), and another John le Carré adaptation (A Most Wanted Man) among them.

Will any of the above ascend to the heights of classic Sundance premieres Clerks, Spanking the Monkey, Primer, or Little Miss Sunshine? The festival has been around in its current incarnation for nearly 30 years (prior to 1984 it was known as the Utah/US Film Festival). Within that time, it’s acted as a critical and popular launching pad for directors like Quentin Tarantino, David O. Russell and Steven Soderbergh. The golden girl who can do no wrong – or rather, when she does, we like her even more for it – Jennifer Lawrence got her first star turn in a Sundance hit, 2010’s Winter’s Bone. Last year, USC film grad Ryan Coogler stole the show with his assured feature debut and current awards contender, Fruitvale Station.

To get you in the mood for all the coverage about to burst forth from the Utah hills alive with the sound of applause, we’ve tailored today’s list to reflect the Sundance legacy. Here are 10 of the most important and beloved films to have emerged from the American movie showcase:

Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989)
Streaming on Netflix? No
Widely regarded as the film that started the modern indie movement, Steven Soderbergh’s writer-director debut, about four people navigating their complicated relationships, sex lives, and, yes, lying about the two, is considered a contemporary classic. Unfortunately, Videotape isn’t available on either Netflix or Amazon, though if you were to buy the DVD sight unseen, you can rest assured your investment would be a worthwhile one. You can never have too much of James Spader in his prime.

 

Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Streaming on Netflix? Yes
Before Tarantino became Tarantino, the kind of guy whose name doubles as an adjective (Tarantino style, Tarantino violence, Tarantino-esque) he was a first-time director and writer pushing a film that vigorously nodded to the pulpy classics he grew up idolizing. It was the precursor to what is still his best feature, Pulp Fiction, and the film demonstrates many of the director’s hallmarks. The music, those names, that ear-cutting dance… you can’t consider yourself a connoisseur of cult classics until you’ve seen Dogs.

 

Hoop Dreams (1994)
Streaming on Netflix? Yes
Like Sex, Lies, and Videotape before it, Hoop Dreams pushed genre boundaries, this time as they applied to documentary film. In an interview with writer Jason Guerrasio, director Steve James recalls one executive meeting in particular. Dreams wasn’t serious enough, James remembers this executive telling him in no uncertain terms, as documentaries at the time focused on “sobering” issues (because adult pressures placed upon the backs of children, and the difficulties of lifting oneself out of urban poverty, are light-hearted themes). Instead, should the film’s subjects suddenly become drug addicts, or get killed, or something, then James would have a picture. Thankfully, those things didn’t happen, and the director’s sprawling portrait of two aspiring basketball stars got made and acclaimed, anyway. Which just goes to show: Guns are not the answer.

 

Clerks (1994)
Streaming on Netflix? Yes
In the Darwinian or at least cinematic development of foundering twentysomethings, today’s hipsters evolved from yesterday’s Clerks. Kevin Smith’s day-in-the-life look at a 22-year-old slacker who comes in on his day off from work only to repeatedly close shop for various reasons, semi-legitimate and asinine alike, was a breakout comedic hit back in 1994. We were treated to deep thoughts on The Return of the Jedi as well as introduced to recurring Smith characters Jay and Silent Bob. The fact that the film was shot on a budget that would barely have covered shoe-strings for everyone involved, and took place in the store where Smith actually worked, only added to the avant garde indie aura surrounding Clerks.

 

Spanking the Monkey (1994)
Streaming on Netflix? No
One of the hottest directors in town first made waves with this darkly comedic take on a mother-son relationship. Raymond loses his prestigious medical internship and, increasingly, his grip on his life and longings when he is forced to stay home and care for his unhappy mother one steamy summer. David O. Russell’s memorable debut.

 

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)
Streaming on Netflix? No
Available on Amazon
Hedwig’s story is difficult to compress into one easy log line, but here’s a go: A transsexual punk rocker moves from East Berlin to the United States, where she falls in love with a shy musician who eventually makes off with her heart and songs. Great soundtrack, wonderful performances, and some seriously surreal pathos quickly turned Hedwig into that which Sundance does best: a cult classic.

 

Primer (2004)
Streaming on Netflix? No
Available on Amazon
Former engineer Shane Carruth, who also holds a degree in math, refused to dumb down his film’s technical language and was subsequently applauded for the respect (or disregard, depending on your perspective) he afforded his audience. As you would expect, Primer is a tough film, which turns on questions of time, space, science, philosophy… and other minutiae.  The movie was shot for an incredible $7,000 and still managed to achieve its lofty aims. It remains a testament to innovative filmmaking.

 

Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Streaming on Netflix? No
Available on Amazon
With one of the best crowd-pleasing endings in years, Little Miss Sunshine first entertained Sundance attendees before it went on  to charm the rest of the country.  Throw a bunch of quirky family members into a van, shake well, and add a nicely timed pinch of Rick James. A recipe for comedic success.

 

Winter’s Bone (2010)
Streaming on Netflix? DVD only
Available on Amazon
Or, the film in which Katniss Everdeen skins a rabbit. Winter’s Bone, of course, came out long before both Katniss and the actress who plays her, Jennifer Lawrence, became cultural reference points. Set among an impoverished clan living in the Ozarks, Bone follows 17-year-old Ree as she tries to track down her missing meth-addicted father before the authorities seize her family’s house. You can see the beginnings of an action star in Lawrence, whose character must hunt, fish, chop wood, care for her siblings, and otherwise weather harsh economic, to say nothing of emotional, conditions in order to survive.

 

Fruitvale Station (2013)
Streaming on Netflix? No
Available on Amazon
Ryan Coogler was working towards a graduate degree in film at USC when 22-year-old Oscar Grant was shot and killed by a policeman at the titular BART subway station in San Francisco. The tragedy inspired Coogler to write a movie about Oscar, imagining the victim’s last hours before the shooting. The resulting film, Coogler’s first feature, is a moving character study that plays with audience expectation: If you’re watching the movie, odds are you already know how the story ends, but that doesn’t stop you from improbably wishing things might turn out a little differently, this time. The ability to make people wish and hope on behalf of your character is a mighty fine talent. Coogler may one day join the ranks of acclaimed writer-directors about whom the organizers of Sundance can say: “I knew him when.”

 

Added bonus: Check out Vulture’s cache of classic Sundance photos here.

'Celluloid Ceiling' survey results released

The industry news of the day is a far cry from the delights of watching the Tina Fey and Amy Poehler-hosted Golden Globes ceremony on Sunday. The telecast enjoyed its best ratings in seven years, thanks, in large part, to Fey and Poehler. But the realities of working females in Hollywood is nothing to smile about, so say the results of the annual “Celluloid Ceiling” survey released earlier today.

The employment survey focused on the top 250 domestic movies of 2013. According to the analysis, just 16 percent of the year’s 2,938 filmmakers were women, a figure that is down 2% from 2012. One of its unsurprising findings included a breakdown of employment by genre: women were most likely to be found working on drama, comedy and documentary films, and least likely to be found contributing to animation, horror and sci-fi projects.

Two major roles, those of director and writer, saw a decrease in women participants. The number of women directors currently stands at 6 percent, a downturn of 3 percent from 2012, while women make up 10 percent of working writers in Hollywood, down 5 percent.

As disheartening as it is to read a litany of these statistics, the female talent that is currently breaking through the ranks, bumping into that “celluloid ceiling” until it gives, is top-rate. There have been many articles written about the untapped wealth of women filmmakers, and they have inspired us to contribute our own small share of the positivity. The below list names just a few of the successful women working behind-the-scenes today, in roles that are indispensable to their lauded projects.

And for a great, thorough breakdown of female influence in Hollywood, take a read through indiewire’s “A to Z” list of women in film here.

Director: Nicole Holofcener, Enough Said
The pack of talented directors whose 2013 films have been raking in award nominations and box-office receipts is undoubtedly one of the strongest in years. Steve McQueen, David O. Russell, Alfonso Cuaron… they have produced important, fun work all. But the acknowledgment of their talent doesn’t make it any less of a shame that an innovative, albeit unshowy director like Nicole Holofcener should get widely overlooked when it comes time to tip our hats to the best films of the year. Enough Said is small, quiet, awkward, funny, sad, awkward-funny, awkward-sad, and pretty darn true to life. We love that star Julia Louis-Dreyfus has received some well-deserved attention, but Holofcener should be running the awards circuit alongside her. We do have confidence, however, that someone with such a resonant voice can’t be marginalized forever, and Hollywood at large will eventually catch up.

Eventually.

 

Writers: Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith, Saving Mr. Banks
It seems only natural that one of the best female roles of the year, the difficult and complex Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers, should have been written by two women. Saving Mr. Banks is a tough story to tell, as so much of the present action between Travers and Walt Disney is dependent upon an understanding of Travers’ past. Although some, like our critic David Noh, found the Banks script a little thin, Marcel and Smith succeeded in fully fleshing out the most important part of the film, Travers herself. It helped that they had feminist firebrand Emma Thompson to bring their character to life, too. Marcel will next tackle the hyped 50 Shades of Grey script. If that choice gives some female advocates pause, no one can say Marcel hasn’t landed one of the most hotly anticipated, and therefore most competitive, films of 2015.

 

Producer: Megan Ellison, American Hustle
Ellison is a fascinating story, one which may warrant a film in its own right someday. The daughter of the third-richest man in America, software company Oracle Co-Founder Larry Ellison, 28-year-old Megan’s brief list of producing credits thus far is, frankly, ridiculous. True Grit, The Master, Spring Breakers, Zero Dark Thirty, Her, and, of course, American Hustle (you might have noticed her up on stage with the rest of the cast when Hustle won for Best Musical or Comedy at the Globes Sunday night), to name just a few. As a 2013 story in Vanity Fair recounts, when Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal were seeking financing for Zero Dark Thirty, trying to find backers for their film outside of the major studios, Ellison offered to write a check for the movie’s entire budget herself. Lest you think Ellison is one who simply likes to swing her weight about with the help of Daddy’s hefty checkbook, however, the aforementioned list of projects testifies to the fact that she has a nose for this kind of thing. She’s currently working on the new Terminator reboot series, and the Seth Rogen-penned animated comedy, Sausage Party. Starting off with money helps, of course, but clearly Ellison knows how to make her own.

 

Editor: Thelma Schoonmaker, The Wolf of Wall Street
Behind every successful man is a woman, and behind every successful director is an editor. You’ve got both in the person of Thelma Schoonmaker, Martin Scorsese’s longtime collaborator. The 73-year-old Schoonmaker is the recipient of three Oscars herself, for Raging Bull, The Aviator, and The Departed, accolades that only underscore the fact that without her, there would be no heralded Scorsese oeuvre. More recently, there would be no Wolf of Wall Street if Schoonmaker hadn’t worked tirelessly to cut the film down to its current runtime of 179 minutes. In an interview with Variety, Schoonmaker admitted the final stretch of cutting Wolf was “particularly horrendous.” But does she mind not being front-and-center alongside Scorsese, mind never having directed a picture herself? “I think if I was working on disappointing films, well maybe” she would direct, she muses. “But I get this wonderful treasure trove. How many editors can say that?”

 

Cinematographer: Rachel Morrison, Fruitvale Station
Young film student and director Ryan Coogler may be the hot topic of conversation surrounding Fruitvale Station, but, like Schoonmaker, without Morrison’s expertise, there would have been no Fruitvale Station, and no breakout for Coogler. Morrison has been carving out her niche in one of the industry’s most male-dominated roles (which is saying something), cinematography, since 2002. She’s worked on kitschy TV series “Room Raiders” and “The Hills,” and, more recently, on the Alan Cumming indie Any Day Now. But it was her collaboration with Coogler that brought her work to a broader audience, a coup that will hopefully land her more of the same interesting, progressive projects in the future.

 

Best would-be movie adaptations of 2013

As your newsfeeds and Digg accounts can attest, the end of the year is a time for Best-Of lists, a time that extends the spirit of Thanksgiving, as we take a moment to  appreciate the (over)abundance of media we’ve consumed these past 12 months.  

This year, in addition to our list of the Top 10 Films of 2013, we wanted to express our reflections with an eye towards the future. Combining an equal love of books and film, the below group of four books and one essay published in 2013 are those we believe would make for noteworthy – creatively interesting, or popular – films in the years ahead.

Here are our bids for the best would-be movie adaptations of 2013:

D.T. Max: Every Love Story is A Ghost Story: The first biography of David Foster Wallace (or DFW, to the late author’s dedicated base of fans, many, many of whom can be found in Brooklyn) chronicles the troubled writer’s struggle with the depression that would ultimately overwhelm him.  DFW’s magnum opus Infinite Jest, as well as his collection of essays Remember the Lobster, remain popular as ever, if not more so, as (and as is generally the case with modern mythologizing) the further we get from Wallace’s ’97 suicide, the more closely he becomes associated with the cult of artistic genius arrested, in the vein of Kurt Cobain or James Dean.

It’s important to note, however, we weren’t the first ones to think a DFW film would tap the zeitgeist: There’s already a movie about the author in development, an adaptation of the book Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself. An account of the five days writer David Lipsky spent accompanying Wallace on his book tour for Infinite Jest, Yourself has Jason Segel playing DFW.  We believe Ghost Story would lend itself to a more straightforward character study, perhaps narrowing in on that section of Wallace’s life when he was working on rather than promoting Infinite Jest, arguably his most popular work. There are certainly many ways to approach or rather represent a man who’s been alternately canonized (“gentle,” “kind,” “wise”) and vilified (“pompous,” “grandstanding” “a jerk”), but we believe one of the more rewarding approaches would involve mining Ghost Story’s extensive – in the sense of author Max’s access to personal letters and the like – insight to produce a film that makes conveying Wallace’s paradoxes its primary focus.

In other words, this would be the “thinker” or art-house DFW film.

Cheryl Sandberg: Lean In
This nonfiction book written by the former Chief Operating Officer for Facebook sparked a feminist controversy when it first hit shelves earlier this year. A sort of guidebook for the gentler sex in the workplace (if you want to succeed, don’t act like the gentler sex), Lean In outlines those steps women should take as well deconstructs those myths Sandberg thinks they shouldn’t believe.

In terms of how this non-narrative book could lend itself to a film adaptation, we were thinking something along the lines of the 2012 movie What to Expect When You’re Expecting, which used the popular mommy-to-be handbook as a jumping off point for a fictional story. A film about a young woman who receives a promotion at a tech company (tech tends to be a  male-dominated industry) and then has to contend with the modern issues Sandberg raises would be both timely and trendy. Let’s give Isla Fisher a part that puts her comedic skills and everywoman likability to good use – and gives her more of an edge than the confectionary Confessions of a Shopaholic.

Alice McDermott: Someone
Someone is just what its title suggests: In its portrayal of one “unremarkable” woman’s life, from childhood through old age, the story is both generic and, as this is a particular human life, inimitable. This film would be another art-house offering, as there’s no easily taglined plot to the story – the action is driven more by time than, well, action. But if cast correctly, including three great actresses, a girl, a woman, and an older woman, to play protagonist Marie at various points in her life, the cinematic version of Someone could bring a heightened immediacy to the novel’s theme of human universality. It would also pose a creative challenge to translate the author’s lovely prose into visual equivalents.

As NPR points out in their review, Marie “doesn’t undergo any kind of dramatic transformation,” which is something of a narrative no-no in both modern books and movies. But we happen to think a realistic portrayal of a real character would be simply really great.

Donna Tartt: The Goldfinch
Slightly more high-concept than Someone, The Goldfinch was rated by the NYT Book Review as one of the best books of the year. An orphan steals a painting from the museum he was forced to hide in during a terrorist attack. Then he tries to keep out of foster care and away from “the man” by staying with a friend. Then his father finds him and takes him to Vegas. Then he becomes involved with the underworld art set and ends up in Europe. A lot of other things happen too, meaning there’s plenty of action and memorable characters to make Goldfinch a broadly appealing bid at the box office.

Galya Diment: Two Lolitas (Vulture essay)
The Oscar-bait. Dorothy Parker may or may not have seen an early copy of Nabokov’s Lolita prior to its publication, but she certainly wrote an eerily similar short story that appeared in the The New Yorker. Famous wit Parker contending with her fading star, and ascendant Nabokov trying to find a home for his rebel Lolita, are two juicy parts. This is the film Laura Linney and Bill Murray should have made instead of Hyde Park on Hudson.

 

'Llewyn Davis' and '12 Years' lead FJI ten best list

My 2013 list of films that were actually worth my time is much longer than any year’s in recent memory. The general consensus is that ’13 was an outstanding year in movies, to the degree that the Motion Picture Academy will have no trouble filling their expanded Best Picture category with ten worthy contestants.

Here’s my own personal honor roll of the best of the best:

1. Inside Llewyn Davis: This astringent look at the New York City folk-music scene in 1961 is one of my favorite Coen Brothers films. Oscar Isaac’s title character is ill-mannered, condescending and abrasive, yet you still root for this talented but pig-headed musician to catch the break he deserves. The Coens’ filmmaking and evocation of the period are
   immaculate, and they’ve surrounded Isaac with a lively supporting cast, especially dependable John Goodman as a hilariously confrontational junkie jazz musician.


2. 12 Years a Slave: Steve McQueen’s devastating drama is something rare: an unflinching account of our nation’s horrible legacy of slavery as seen from the vantage point of the enslaved. The mesmerizing Chiwetel Ejiofor deserves the Oscar for his highly empathetic portrayal of a free black man in 1840s New York who is drugged and sold into a degrading life of bondage. I can’t recall having a stronger emotional reaction to a film than I did at the story’s heart-shaking conclusion.


3. Gravity: Especially as seen in IMAX 3D, Alfonso Cuarón’s groundbreaking sci-fi thriller is a truly immersive experience. Sandra Bullock’s performance as an astronaut struggling to survive after a catastrophic collision with space debris is a revelation. The viewer becomes one with her odyssey in this visual tour de force that really seems to have been shot “on location” in outer space.


4. The Past: It’s a puzzlement that Oscar winner Asghar Farhadi’s new film isn’t one of the nine finalists for this year’s Oscar race for Best Foreign-Language Film. Once again, he turns
   the complex relationships of men and women into a many-layered drama that has the surprise and gripping tension of a taut thriller. Bérénice Bejo, so delightful in The Artist, is another revelation as the mercurial woman at the center of the story.


5. Before Midnight: Like Michael Apted’s “Up” series, the every-nine-years collaboration of director Richard Linklater and actors/co-writers Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy has evolved into a remarkable chronicle of how people evolve with the passage of time. This third in the series finds the onetime magically romantic pair settled into domestic life with twin daughters, their flirtatious conversations now transformed into something more weary and barbed. It climaxes with a searing hotel-room encounter that recalls the psychological savagery of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage. It’s a bold, brave turn for an ongoing story whose nonstop talk remains altogether compelling.


6. Stories We Tell: Canadian actress Sarah Polley, who directed that marvelous Julie Christie drama Away from Her, looks inward for this formally innovative documentary about the mysteries within her own family. Polley’s mother was herself a vivacious actress who died when she was eleven; along with her desire to learn more about this special woman, the director also seeks to deny or confirm family scuttlebutt that her beloved dad Michael is not her biological father. Polley’s extremely personal film takes a number of surprising turns, abetted by her own audacious filmmaking sleight-of-hand.


7. Short Term 12: Destin Daniel Cretton’s low-budget drama was the indie surprise of the year—a subtle and compelling look at life inside a group home for troubled teenagers, inspired by the director’s own experience working in such an institution. Rising young actress Brie Larson is terrific as a counselor with issues of her own, and the entire cast creates the impression that you’re watching a fly-on-the-wall documentary, not a piece of fiction.


8. 20 Feet from Stardom: For sheer delight, few 2013 films could beat this documentary about the “unsung” tribe of backup singers who bring so much of the magic to popular recordings. Morgan Neville’s film makes us think about the connections (or lack of same) between talent, luck, ambition and stardom, while providing a well-deserved showcase for gifted performers like Darlene Love, Merry Clayton and Lisa Fischer amidst a wealth of irresistible performance clips.


9. American Hustle: David O. Russell’s follows his crowd-pleasing Silver Linings Playbook with this ambitious, high-energy, twisty tale of the con artists behind the Abscam corruption
   sting of the late 1970s. With a kinetic style influenced by Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, this fast-paced wallow in polyester, perms and pulsating disco is buoyed by a quintet of diverting star performances by Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jeremy Renner and a scene-stealing Jennifer Lawrence.


10.  No: The political TV ad campaign that ousted Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1988 is the subject of this slyly satirical film from director Pablo Larraín. Gael Garcia Bernal plays the ad man who masterminds the “No” (anti-Pinochet) strategy which beats the odds by underplaying serious political content in favor of more traditional marketing tricks. The film was shot with antiquated cameras that make it nearly impossible to distinguish new footage from the riotous actual commercials of the period.

And, for the record, my runners-up in this very strong year include Blue Is the Warmest Color, Lone Survivor, In the House, Call Me Kuchu, Captain Phillips, Philomena, Rush, Fruitvale Station, Nebraska and Her.