Chico & Rita Movie Review

Chico & Rita is a lovely little tribute to an era in American culture during which a new American genre was born and to a country and its people who helped foment that genre. The genre I speak of is jazz in the late 1940s and early 1950s and the country is Cuba, which lent a great many musicians to the New York music scene, bringing with them their conga drummers and smooth Latin beats to help transmute a the burgeoning new form.

2012 Academy Awards In Memoriam

Yesterday I made some quick predictions about inclusions in the annual montage of dead celebrities for the Oscar show. Here's the full list of those included.

Jane Russell - actor

Annie Girardot - actor - an odd inclusion this French actress as she doesn't seem to have any credits that would be well-known in the United States.

John Calley - executive - most recent winner of the Thalberg Award

Polly Platt - art director

Ken Russell - actor, writer, director - Oscar nominated as Best Director for Women in Love. Recently appeared in Mr. Nice.

Donald Peterman - cinematographer

Farley Granger - actor - Strangers on a Train and Rope

Whitney Houston - actress, ahem

Bingham Ray - executive

Tak Miyagishima - member-at-large - winner of 3 Scientific and Technical Awards as well as the Gordon E. Sawyer Award

Bert Schneider - producer - winner of an Oscar for Documentary Feature

Michael Cacoyannis - director, producer - 3 Oscar nominations for Zorba the Greek

David Z. Goodman - writer

James Rodnunsky- electrical department

Peter E. Berger - film editor

Jack J. Hayes - composer

Peter Falk - actor

Cliff Robertson - actor

Laura Ziskin - producer

Sidney Lumet - director

Sue Mengers - talent agent

Steve Jobs - executive

George Kuchar - experimental filmmaker

Hal Kanter - writer

Theadora Van Runkle - art director

Tim Hetherington - photojournalist and documentarian nominated last year for Restrepo. He was killed while covering the conflict in Libya last April.

Gene Cantamessa - sound

Gary Winick - director of such recent films as Bride Wars and 13 Going on 30.

Bill Varney - sound

Jackie Cooper - actor

Gilbert Cates - producer

Richard Leacock - documentary filmmaker

James M. Roberts - member-at-large

Marion Dougherty - member-at-large, casting

Norman Corwin - writer

Paul John Haggar - member-at-large, assistant film editor

Joseph Farrell - public relations

Ben Gazzara - actor

Elizabeth Taylor - actor

84th Academy Awards Live Blog

8:24 Getting ready. Starting to rethink my prediction for Best Documentary. Undefeated could well win the award. But I picked Pina.

8:30 Maybe I should have picked Hugo over Tree of Life for Cinematography too. Too late.

8:30 The quintessential "Magical Black Man" opens the theme of the show: "The Magic of the Movies."

8:32 I would have liked this a lot better if fucking Bieber hadn't shown up.

8:33 Crystal sneaks in a reference to The Princess Bride.

8:36 I actually just got a rush of excitement when Crystal came out on stage reminding me of watching the Oscars when I was younger.

8:37 An uncomfortable joke about Kodak's impending bankruptcy.

Handicapping the Oscar In Memoriam Montage 2012

I believe the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences uses the end of January as the cutoff date for fallen celebrities to be included in their annual montage. This rules out the possibility of Whitney Houston's inclusion unless they make a decision that she's too big not to include. She was never nominated for an Oscar, although some songs she performed in The Bodyguard were nominated, and she only starred in three Hollywood movies. I think it's possible we'll see her included, but not surprised if she's left out.

Frances Bay is an actress whose face you probably recognize for all the bit parts she's had over the years. I don't think we'll see her, but she died last September at age 92.

In Darkness Movie Review

I wonder if we’ve reached a saturation point where Holocaust films are concerned. Sure, there are millions of stories to be told from that travesty of human failure, but most would probably be fairly similar. Real eye-opening awareness of the horrors of the Holocaust came about in the 70s when documentaries and dramatic films began to crop up in Britain and the United States. In a cultural awareness sense this probably reached its pinnacle with Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List in 1993. Roman Polanski provided a new take on the subject by focusing not on anyone’s heroism or courage but on one man’s blind luck to come out alive in The Pianist. Given all that’s come before I really wonder what drove Polish director Agnieszka Holland to visit the Holocaust for a third time with In Darkness, adapted by David F. Shamoon from Robert Marshall’s book In the Sewers of Lvov which is itself based on a true story. That is generally the nail in the coffin for any criticism leveled at a Holocaust film.

Undefeated Movie Review

Undefeated is a documentary of such surprising power and emotion I was left stunned in my tracks. I didn’t know anything about it before I walked in except that the poster indicated it was about football. If you want a similar experience to my own, then consider this a spoiler warning and stop reading now.

It tells the story of the Manassas High School football team in West Memphis, Tennessee, under the direction of volunteer coach Bill Courtney. I stress volunteer because the film is always careful to point out when the coaching staff involved donates their time to this horribly underfunded program in a city all but forgotten by the rest of the state. Not that any government has an obligation to fun sports programs in public schools. I understand completely the decisions that are made to cut programs for lack of funding even when those programs can be proven to give kids reasons to stay in school and make something of their lives.

Hell and Back Again Movie Review

It often feels like every decade has its own subject that is annually nominated in the Best Documentary Feature category at the Oscars. This decade’s focus is the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Looking through the records, I’m surprised to discover that only three have been nominated (with one winning). Although this year the Iraq War as subject made its way into the Documentary Short category so I guess that makes up some ground.

One of this year’s nominees in the feature category is Hell and Back Again about a veteran of the Afghanistan War who suffered a bullet wound that shattered hip and his femur. Now he gets around with a walker or wheelchair, goes to physical therapy and probably suffers from some form of PTSD although the film is never really explicit about any of it.