Happy New Year!
This blog has become a ghost site - I thought it was bad last year, or the year before, but - 4 posts? Why bother at all? Well - if I could get back to posting, I suppose that would be the answer in itself. I won't promise it. As it is - it's as good a place as any to toss some thoughts out into the world, to let them float in the ether on a sea of forced metaphors. It's as good a place as any to welcome the new decade, to bid the last one farewell and all.
It was a strange decade. For me, personally, it began on something of an all time low: my mother died, the day after Christmas, in 2009; 2010 began with her funeral. There has been a lot of that this decade - I am of an age when the generations before me are starting to die. My father, a couple close friends, many uncles and aunts have passed, some of them very hard to process. But - I am of an age when that is going to happen. I am getting perilously close to the age when having my contemporaries die will seem less like a shock and more of the natural way of things. Another decade and I will be there, I am afraid.
But that said: the first half of the 2010s weren't a bad time for me. I moved to a place I liked, a good apartment, where I stayed for 7 years. I took classes, I wrote, I posted regularly, here, and sometimes on other blogs. I got out of the country a couple times, still played softball, sometimes well, I ate well, lived well. My job even seemed to reach a detente with me - though that got me accused of "complacency." That, of course, should have been a sign - was a sign - but - that's the second half of the decade. In all - I lived pretty well in the first half of the 10s. Even just using this blog as indication - I posted regularly; I started up a couple series that carried on a while, and gave me a chance to write some things I liked. History posts - following along with the Civil War, then WWI for a while; music posts, those band of the month posts; movies - screen shots and directors and things like that. It was good. I was, I think I would have to say, satisfied with my lot in life.
The second half fo the decade has been a bit different. Maybe not objectively - nothing really bad has happened to me, except of my own making (sort of) - but a lot of the things I was satisfied with had to go. And the world outside has gone straight to hell. For me - the job is what got me. Things changed. A generation of managers where I worked left, and a new generation came in - people who use words like "disruption" as a positive term; people who openly admitted to forming their management ideas by watching TED talks and reading online management consultants. The results were predictable. And I was not willing to take it, because I did not have to. I had resources to move, and did, though it meant I gave up living in the city - but I could live closer to my family, could support myself on a lot less money, and could engage in other past times - bowling and D&D in place of softball and education! So - not a bad tradeoff, over all. Though it changed me in strange ways. I went from being a fairly obsessive habitual movie goer to almost never going to movies, and barely even watching movies. I went from the blogging you see before 2017 to almost nothing since 2017. Some of this is me - some of this might be the world, the way the technology has evolved (as fewer and fewer blogs seem all that important - Twitter is where all the conversations seem to be happening. That is not a good thing.) BUt there is it.
And the world, of course, has gone to hell. It held on in the first half of the decade - but you could see the disaster coming. The mid-term elections in 2010 doomed us, giving the Republicans completely undeserved and unrepresentative control of the machinery of government that they have exploited to hold power as they sink into smaller and smaller minority status. The GOP, long having embraced white supremacy as a vital part of their politics, doubled down on it. They reacted shamefully to Obama's election, the worst of them used it to build the racist elements in the party. All this brought us to Trump, who has made all the racism, sexism, xenophobia and everything else the whole point of his existence. Was Trump a break from what the GOP had been? Maybe - there is a sense that earlier Republicans used racism as a way to get votes for their tax cuts. Trump and his closest supporters seem to be using tax cuts to keep support for their racism. The white supremacy seems to be their defining point. It sometimes seems like this is so.
And no? Trump himself is a plain fascist - he has all the makings: the racism, xenophobia, authoritarianism, use of violence for politics, corporatism, aestheticization of politics, turning it explicitly into spectacle, and working very hard to make only the spectacle seem to matter. (Though I think the most important element in the aesthetics of fascism is the idea of the dominance of Myth. It's the idea of a mythological justification - Make America Great Again. The red hats are part of it - but the idea of a lost golden age, an imaginary version fo the country that conforms to their political goals, etc, is what really defines fascism. This is an essay I am not going to write just now, though.) The country, of course, is something else - even now, he is only the president, one branch of government, he is a Republican, one party - if the other branches act, if the other parties resist, if his own party decides to try to not be fascists - he is not going to succeed in turning the country into something worse than it is. He has been impeached; there are elections coming; we will see how this goes.
But I don't want to write about the future. This is one last look back at the decade gone. So: the second half fo this decade - 2016 on at least - have gone from worse to worse. All the celebrity deaths in 2026 hit hard. My job went to hell in 2026. And Trump - getting elected came on top of a primary and election campaign that defied my ability to imagine the depths of stupidity possible int he American political system. Trump? The idiotic attacks on Hilary Clinton? Though the defenses of her were sometimes just as hard to take - I mean - how could any Democrat worth a damn vote for anyone who voted for the war in Iraq? why was that forgiven? I don't know. Now - 2020 - big chunks of the country, the Democrats in particular, seem determined to relive 2016. I don't get this. Why does so much of the discussion in the Democratic party revolve around Bernie Sanders (and by extension, Hilary Clinton?) That might be because I read Twitter and Facebook too much - that is a topic unto itself. The point is, 2016 was awful even before Trump got elected; his election just made sure the next 4 years would be even worse.
All right. That is enough. One more thing - just a hint. Technology - here is something I have been thinking about lately. There are major technological shifts going on - streaming, Disney's domination of the entertainment industry, the effects on discourse of Twitter and FAcebook, etc. But have there been any real technological changes in the last 10 years? Twitter and Fecebook existed in 2010; youtube did; streaming services existed. Digital film distribution. Almost everyhting that defines the technological world now existed, was even fairly significant, in 2010. Compare 2010 to 200 - that is not true. The 00s brought us youtube, Facebook and Twitter and MySpace and all the other dumber forms of online communication. It brought ius smart phones, tablets, iPods, it started streaming services. Or the 90s - from 1990 to 2000 we gaines DVDs, the world wide net and the popularization of the internet; computers changed fairly significantly; digital photography and video started to appear (though they became ubiquitous in the 00s). What has appeared int he 2010s that has changed things the way - any of a dozen things changed the world in the previous decades? This has been more about cultural shifts to accommodate technology - which have mostly felt bad: corporate control over all of it; the colonization of places like Facebook and Twitter by propagandists, who have made all of us amateur propagandists and ad writers. Another reason to worry, I guess.
But I won't end with pessimism. I like a lot of what the world offers. I can lose days browsing through YouTube - I don't know why videos have replaced blogs as the preferred method of amateur communication, but it seems they have. 10 years ago, I counted mostly blogs as the most interesting sources of information and discussion online. Now? it tends to be youtubers - Seth Skorkowsky! The History Guy! Scholagladatoria! (All reflecting my recent interest in games and history, no doubt.) Is this better than reading blogs? I won't say yes - but it's still a nice feature of the internet, the ease with which people with interesting things to say can communicate with the world, without a lot of extraneous resources.
And so - happy new year! Happy new decade! And here's hoping I manage to post something here before 2030...
Showing posts with label decades. Show all posts
Showing posts with label decades. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 01, 2020
Monday, October 14, 2013
2000s WITD Poll Votes
Over at Wonders in the Dark, they have almost reached the present in their yearly polls, hitting the 2010s. I imagine, in a couple weeks it will get interesting, as we find out what will be the best films of 2014 and 15 and beyond. Better get my time machine going...
Anyway - here are my votes for the 2000s, my posted votes by year, and my overall choices. I notice that I have changed the order of a couple films since I voted - I have posted most of these votes as I went along, but I am not going to look to see how that has changed. Orders of merit tend to be pretty arbitrary, beyond the absolute top, usually....
Decade:
PICTURE: Inland Empire
DIRECTOR (single): David Lynch, Inland Empire
(decade): Pedro Costa
LEAD ACTOR (single): George Clooney, O Brother Where Art Thou?
(decade): Song Kang-ho
LEAD ACTRESS (single): Laura Dern, Inland Empire
(decade): Emmanuelle Devos
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Bae Doona, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
SHORT: Heart of the World, Guy Maddin
SCORE: Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood
CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Lubtchansky, Regular Lovers
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Outside of the top 20? Mother... overall?
1. Secret Sunshine
2. Kings and Queen
3. Yi Yi
4. Mother
5. O Brother Where Art Thou?
Music: O Brother Where Art Thou?
Sound: Shirin
Martial Arts: House of Flying Daggers
Documentary: Los Angeles Plays Itself - though this might be the best decade for documentaries yet - so deserves a top 5 at least:
1. Los Angeles... (Anderson)
2. En Construccion (Guerin)
3. Forty-Nine Up (Apted)
4. RR (Bening)
5. Grizzly Man (Herzog)
Animated: Waking Life (plus - Wall E, Incredibles, A Scanner Darkly, Waltz with Bashir)
Musical: depending on your definitions... top 5?
1. O Brother...
2. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
3. Chunyang
4. No One Knows About Persian Cats
5. 24 Hour Party People
Total:
1. Inland Empire
2. Yi Yi
3. Kings and Queen
4. In Vanda's Room
5. Colossal Youth
6. Secret Sunshine
7. Death of Mr. Lazarescu
8. O Brother Where Art Thou
9. Los Angeles Plays Itself
10. Memories of Murder
11. 2046
12. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
13. L'Intrus
14. Goodbye, Dragon Inn
15. The Royal Tenenbaums
16. The Headless Woman
17. Mulholland Drive
18. Syndromes and a Century
19. The Son
20. There Will Be Blood
2009:
Decent year, 2009, though maybe lacking any great masterpieces. But lots of films in the almost-great range, if that means anything. A contest of Korean films for the top spot...
PICTURE: Mother
DIRECTOR: Bong Joon-ho, Mother
LEAD ACTOR: Song Kang-ho, Thirst
LEAD ACTRESS: Kim Hye-ja, Mother (This is another tough one, with Isabelle Huppert and Kim Ok-bin to think about...)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Melanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds
SHORT:
SCORE: Alexandre Desplat, Fantastic Mr. Fox
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Antony Dod Mantle, Antichrist
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Mother
Music/Sound: No One Knows about Persian Cats
1. Mother
2. Thirst
3. A Serious Man
4. Police, Adjective
5. White Material
6. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans
7. Inglourious Basterds
8. Limits of Control
9. Antichrist
10. The White Ribbon
2008:
This is something of a step back, though there are still plenty of decent films....
PICTURE: The Headless Woman
DIRECTOR: Steven Soderbergh, Che
LEAD ACTOR: Benicio del Toro, Ché
LEAD ACTRESS: Maria Onetto, Headless Woman
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Eddie Marsan, Happy Go Lucky
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Lina Leanderson, Let the Right One In
SHORT:
SCORE: Thomas Newman, Wall-E
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Steven Soderbergh, Ché
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Beaches of Agnes
Music: Sita Sings the Blues
Sound (& editing): Shirin
Documentary: Man on Wire
1. The Headless Woman
2. Che
3. Tokyo Sonata
4. Liverpool
5. Birdsong
6. 24 City
7. Hunger
8. Christmas Tale
9. Wall E
10. Night and Day
2007:
This is one of the best years of the decade - great at the top, and a deep run of good films.
PICTURE: Secret Sunshine
DIRECTOR: PT Anderson, There Will Be Blood
LEAD ACTOR: Daniel Day-Lewis
LEAD ACTRESS: Jeon Do-yeon (though this is a very strong year for actresses - Juliette Binoche, Sylvie Testud, Jeanne Balibar, Nina Hoss...)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Kurt Russell, Grindhouse
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton
SHORT:
SCORE: Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Harris Savides, Zodiac
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Secret Sunshine
Music/Sound: Darjeeling Limited - Kinks baby!
1. Secret Sunshine
2. There Will be Blood
3. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
4. Flight of the Red Balloon
5. Zodiac
6. California Dreamin'
7. No Country for Old Men
8. RR
9. In the City of Sylvia
10. Mourning Forest
2006:
Another very good year. With a couple of the really great films of the decade...
PICTURE: Inland Empire
DIRECTOR: David Lynch
LEAD ACTOR: Song Kang-ho, The Host
LEAD ACTRESS: Laura Dern, Inland Empire
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Bae Doo-na, The Host
SHORT:
SCORE: I rather like the electronic hum of Syndromes and a Century, I think.
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Akiko Ashikawa, Retribution
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Woman on the Beach, Hong Sang Soo
Music/Sound: Inland Empire
Design: I have to add this category to get The Fall mentioned somewhere. If there were an Exceeds Expectations category, it would win the all time award.
1. Inland Empire
2. Colossal Youth
3. Syndromes and a Century
4. The Woman on the Beach
5. Retribution
6. Still Life
7. Letters from Iwo Jima
8. Children of Men
9. Brand Upon the Brain
10. Triad Election
2005:
PICTURE: Death of Mr. Lazarescu
DIRECTOR: Hou Hsiao Hsien, Three Times
LEAD ACTOR: Issei Ogata, The Sun
LEAD ACTRESS: Keira Knightley, Pride and Prejudice
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Rob Brydon, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Amy Adams, Junebug
SHORT:
SCORE: Richard Thompson, Grizzly Man
CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Lubtchansky, Regular Lovers
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Mutual Appreciation, Andrew Bujalski
Music/Sound: Three Times (for both, music and sound)
Documentary: I think I have three of these in my top 10 - 49-Up, Grizzly Man and Into Great Silence
1. Death of Mr. Lazarescu
2. Forty-Nine Up
3. Regular Lovers
4. The Squid and the Whale
5. Grizzly Man
6. The President's Last Bang
7. Magic Mirror
8. Three Times
9. L'Enfant
10. Into Great Silence
2004:
This is another very good year.
PICTURE: Kings and Queen
DIRECTOR: Zhang Yimou, House of Flying Daggers
LEAD ACTOR: Jim Carrey, Eternal Sunshine fo the Spotless Mind
LEAD ACTRESS: Emmanuelle Devos
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Owen Wilson, Life Aquatic
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Lily Tomlin, I ♥ Huckabees
SHORT: Sombre Dolorosa, Guy Maddin
SCORE:
CINEMATOGRAPHY: 2046, Christopher Doyle, Lai Yiu Fai, Kwan Pun Leung
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Sound: Tropical Malady
Editing: Notre Musique
Documentary: Darwin's Nightmare
Scene: The grocery store robbery in Kings and Queen.
1. Kings and Queen
2. L'Intrus
3. 2046
4. House of Flying Daggers
5. Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
7. Los Muertos
8. The World
9. Innocence
10. Nobody Knows
2003:
PICTURE: Los Angeles Plays Itself
DIRECTOR: Tsai Ming-liang, Goodbye, Dragon Inn
LEAD ACTOR: Song Kang-ho, Memories of Murder
LEAD ACTRESS: Toni Collette, Japanese Story
SUPPORTING ACTOR: James Urbaniak, American Splendor
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Hope Davis, American Splendor
SHORT: Phantom Museum
SCORE: Kevin Shields, Lost in Translation
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Harris Savides, Elephant
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Memories of Murder
Music/Sound: A Mighty Wind
Editing: 21 Grams
Documentary: a very good year for it, but Los Angeles Plays Itself is in another world...
1. Los Angeles Plays Itself
2. Memories of Murder
3. Goodbye, Dragon Inn
4. Doppelgänger
5. Cafe Lumiere
6. Elephant
7. Blind SHaft
8. Morning Sun
9. Crimson Gold
10. Story of Marie and Julien
2002:
Kind of an odd year - solid films, lots of very interesting not quite great films, the likes of Zatoichi and Dolls and Secretary and the like, and somewhat muted at the top. Though I suppose not too muted - the top three - Mr. Vengeance, The Son, and the Pianist are very good...
PICTURE: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
DIRECTOR: Park Chanwook, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
LEAD ACTOR: Adrien Brody, The Pianist
LEAD ACTRESS: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Secretary
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Song Kang-ho, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Bae Doona, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
SHORT: The Skywalk is Gone, Tsai Ming-liang
SCORE: Elmer Bernstein, Far from Heaven
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Mark Li, Springtime in a Small Town
Plus bonus picks:
Script: The Son
Music/Sound: Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
1. The Son
2. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
3. The Pianist
4. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
5. Man Without a Past
6. Blissfully Yours
7. Gerry
8. Unknown Pleasures
9. Ten
10. Springtime in a Small Town
2001:
Another strong year; this was a particularly good year for actress. I feel almost guilty about adding another vote for Mulholland Drive though - looking at the results, it seems to be moving rapidly into the realm of the overrated. It's a clear enough favorite for 2001, but not by that much of a margin - this isn't 1986 or 2006, years where Lynch has no competition.
PICTURE: Mulholland Drive
DIRECTOR: David Lynch
LEAD ACTOR: Gene Hackman, Royal Tenenbaums
LEAD ACTRESS: Jeanne Balibar, Va Savoir
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Bill Nighy, Lawless Heart
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Laura Elena Harring, Mulholland Dr.
SHORT: In Public, Jia Jian-ke
SCORE: Angelo Badalamenti, Mulholland Dr.
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Peter Deming, Mulholland Dr.
Plus bonus picks:
Script: The Royal Tenenbaums
Music/Sound: The Royal Tenenbaums, again.
Best Takashi Miike film (I saw three of them from 2001, after all): Ichi the Killer (and Tadanobu Asano is a pretty close runner up to Hackman for best actor, I'd say. Best makeup anyway.)
1. Mulholland Drive
2. Royal Tenenbaums
3. Ichi the Killer
4. Va Savoir
5. En Construccion
6. Donnie Darko
7. Waking Life
8. Distance
9. La Cienega
10. Pistol Opera
2000:
PICTURE: Yi Yi
DIRECTOR: Edward Yang
LEAD ACTOR: George Clooney, O Brother Where Art Thou
LEAD ACTRESS: Maggie Cheung, In the Mood for Love
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Tim Blake Nelson
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ziyi Zhang, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
SHORT: Heart of the World (on the very shortlist for best ever)
SCORE: Mihaly Vig, Werckmeister Harmonies
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Christopher Doyle, Pung-Leung Kwan and Mark Lee Ping-bin, In the Mood for Love
Plus bonus picks:
Script: this is a tough one: Yi Yi and O Brother Where Art Thou are as good as you could ask.
Music/Sound: O Brother...
1. Yi Yi
2. In Vanda's Rom
3. O Brother Where Art Thou
4. Platform
5. Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors
6. Songs from the Second Floor
7. The Circle
8. Eureka
9. In the Mood for Love
10. The Gleaners and I
Anyway - here are my votes for the 2000s, my posted votes by year, and my overall choices. I notice that I have changed the order of a couple films since I voted - I have posted most of these votes as I went along, but I am not going to look to see how that has changed. Orders of merit tend to be pretty arbitrary, beyond the absolute top, usually....
Decade:
PICTURE: Inland Empire
DIRECTOR (single): David Lynch, Inland Empire
(decade): Pedro Costa
LEAD ACTOR (single): George Clooney, O Brother Where Art Thou?
(decade): Song Kang-ho
LEAD ACTRESS (single): Laura Dern, Inland Empire
(decade): Emmanuelle Devos
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Bae Doona, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
SHORT: Heart of the World, Guy Maddin
SCORE: Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood
CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Lubtchansky, Regular Lovers
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Outside of the top 20? Mother... overall?
1. Secret Sunshine
2. Kings and Queen
3. Yi Yi
4. Mother
5. O Brother Where Art Thou?
Music: O Brother Where Art Thou?
Sound: Shirin
Martial Arts: House of Flying Daggers
Documentary: Los Angeles Plays Itself - though this might be the best decade for documentaries yet - so deserves a top 5 at least:
1. Los Angeles... (Anderson)
2. En Construccion (Guerin)
3. Forty-Nine Up (Apted)
4. RR (Bening)
5. Grizzly Man (Herzog)
Animated: Waking Life (plus - Wall E, Incredibles, A Scanner Darkly, Waltz with Bashir)
Musical: depending on your definitions... top 5?
1. O Brother...
2. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
3. Chunyang
4. No One Knows About Persian Cats
5. 24 Hour Party People
Total:
1. Inland Empire
2. Yi Yi
3. Kings and Queen
4. In Vanda's Room
5. Colossal Youth
6. Secret Sunshine
7. Death of Mr. Lazarescu
8. O Brother Where Art Thou
9. Los Angeles Plays Itself
10. Memories of Murder
11. 2046
12. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
13. L'Intrus
14. Goodbye, Dragon Inn
15. The Royal Tenenbaums
16. The Headless Woman
17. Mulholland Drive
18. Syndromes and a Century
19. The Son
20. There Will Be Blood
2009:
Decent year, 2009, though maybe lacking any great masterpieces. But lots of films in the almost-great range, if that means anything. A contest of Korean films for the top spot...
PICTURE: Mother
DIRECTOR: Bong Joon-ho, Mother
LEAD ACTOR: Song Kang-ho, Thirst
LEAD ACTRESS: Kim Hye-ja, Mother (This is another tough one, with Isabelle Huppert and Kim Ok-bin to think about...)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Melanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds
SHORT:
SCORE: Alexandre Desplat, Fantastic Mr. Fox
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Antony Dod Mantle, Antichrist
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Mother
Music/Sound: No One Knows about Persian Cats
1. Mother
2. Thirst
3. A Serious Man
4. Police, Adjective
5. White Material
6. Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans
7. Inglourious Basterds
8. Limits of Control
9. Antichrist
10. The White Ribbon
2008:
This is something of a step back, though there are still plenty of decent films....
PICTURE: The Headless Woman
DIRECTOR: Steven Soderbergh, Che
LEAD ACTOR: Benicio del Toro, Ché
LEAD ACTRESS: Maria Onetto, Headless Woman
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Eddie Marsan, Happy Go Lucky
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Lina Leanderson, Let the Right One In
SHORT:
SCORE: Thomas Newman, Wall-E
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Steven Soderbergh, Ché
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Beaches of Agnes
Music: Sita Sings the Blues
Sound (& editing): Shirin
Documentary: Man on Wire
1. The Headless Woman
2. Che
3. Tokyo Sonata
4. Liverpool
5. Birdsong
6. 24 City
7. Hunger
8. Christmas Tale
9. Wall E
10. Night and Day
2007:
This is one of the best years of the decade - great at the top, and a deep run of good films.
PICTURE: Secret Sunshine
DIRECTOR: PT Anderson, There Will Be Blood
LEAD ACTOR: Daniel Day-Lewis
LEAD ACTRESS: Jeon Do-yeon (though this is a very strong year for actresses - Juliette Binoche, Sylvie Testud, Jeanne Balibar, Nina Hoss...)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Kurt Russell, Grindhouse
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Tilda Swinton, Michael Clayton
SHORT:
SCORE: Jonny Greenwood, There Will Be Blood
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Harris Savides, Zodiac
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Secret Sunshine
Music/Sound: Darjeeling Limited - Kinks baby!
1. Secret Sunshine
2. There Will be Blood
3. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
4. Flight of the Red Balloon
5. Zodiac
6. California Dreamin'
7. No Country for Old Men
8. RR
9. In the City of Sylvia
10. Mourning Forest
2006:
Another very good year. With a couple of the really great films of the decade...
PICTURE: Inland Empire
DIRECTOR: David Lynch
LEAD ACTOR: Song Kang-ho, The Host
LEAD ACTRESS: Laura Dern, Inland Empire
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Alan Arkin, Little Miss Sunshine
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Bae Doo-na, The Host
SHORT:
SCORE: I rather like the electronic hum of Syndromes and a Century, I think.
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Akiko Ashikawa, Retribution
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Woman on the Beach, Hong Sang Soo
Music/Sound: Inland Empire
Design: I have to add this category to get The Fall mentioned somewhere. If there were an Exceeds Expectations category, it would win the all time award.
1. Inland Empire
2. Colossal Youth
3. Syndromes and a Century
4. The Woman on the Beach
5. Retribution
6. Still Life
7. Letters from Iwo Jima
8. Children of Men
9. Brand Upon the Brain
10. Triad Election
2005:
PICTURE: Death of Mr. Lazarescu
DIRECTOR: Hou Hsiao Hsien, Three Times
LEAD ACTOR: Issei Ogata, The Sun
LEAD ACTRESS: Keira Knightley, Pride and Prejudice
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Rob Brydon, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Amy Adams, Junebug
SHORT:
SCORE: Richard Thompson, Grizzly Man
CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Lubtchansky, Regular Lovers
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Mutual Appreciation, Andrew Bujalski
Music/Sound: Three Times (for both, music and sound)
Documentary: I think I have three of these in my top 10 - 49-Up, Grizzly Man and Into Great Silence
1. Death of Mr. Lazarescu
2. Forty-Nine Up
3. Regular Lovers
4. The Squid and the Whale
5. Grizzly Man
6. The President's Last Bang
7. Magic Mirror
8. Three Times
9. L'Enfant
10. Into Great Silence
2004:
This is another very good year.
PICTURE: Kings and Queen
DIRECTOR: Zhang Yimou, House of Flying Daggers
LEAD ACTOR: Jim Carrey, Eternal Sunshine fo the Spotless Mind
LEAD ACTRESS: Emmanuelle Devos
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Owen Wilson, Life Aquatic
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Lily Tomlin, I ♥ Huckabees
SHORT: Sombre Dolorosa, Guy Maddin
SCORE:
CINEMATOGRAPHY: 2046, Christopher Doyle, Lai Yiu Fai, Kwan Pun Leung
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Sound: Tropical Malady
Editing: Notre Musique
Documentary: Darwin's Nightmare
Scene: The grocery store robbery in Kings and Queen.
1. Kings and Queen
2. L'Intrus
3. 2046
4. House of Flying Daggers
5. Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
7. Los Muertos
8. The World
9. Innocence
10. Nobody Knows
2003:
PICTURE: Los Angeles Plays Itself
DIRECTOR: Tsai Ming-liang, Goodbye, Dragon Inn
LEAD ACTOR: Song Kang-ho, Memories of Murder
LEAD ACTRESS: Toni Collette, Japanese Story
SUPPORTING ACTOR: James Urbaniak, American Splendor
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Hope Davis, American Splendor
SHORT: Phantom Museum
SCORE: Kevin Shields, Lost in Translation
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Harris Savides, Elephant
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Memories of Murder
Music/Sound: A Mighty Wind
Editing: 21 Grams
Documentary: a very good year for it, but Los Angeles Plays Itself is in another world...
1. Los Angeles Plays Itself
2. Memories of Murder
3. Goodbye, Dragon Inn
4. Doppelgänger
5. Cafe Lumiere
6. Elephant
7. Blind SHaft
8. Morning Sun
9. Crimson Gold
10. Story of Marie and Julien
2002:
Kind of an odd year - solid films, lots of very interesting not quite great films, the likes of Zatoichi and Dolls and Secretary and the like, and somewhat muted at the top. Though I suppose not too muted - the top three - Mr. Vengeance, The Son, and the Pianist are very good...
PICTURE: Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
DIRECTOR: Park Chanwook, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
LEAD ACTOR: Adrien Brody, The Pianist
LEAD ACTRESS: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Secretary
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Song Kang-ho, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Bae Doona, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
SHORT: The Skywalk is Gone, Tsai Ming-liang
SCORE: Elmer Bernstein, Far from Heaven
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Mark Li, Springtime in a Small Town
Plus bonus picks:
Script: The Son
Music/Sound: Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
1. The Son
2. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
3. The Pianist
4. Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary
5. Man Without a Past
6. Blissfully Yours
7. Gerry
8. Unknown Pleasures
9. Ten
10. Springtime in a Small Town
2001:
Another strong year; this was a particularly good year for actress. I feel almost guilty about adding another vote for Mulholland Drive though - looking at the results, it seems to be moving rapidly into the realm of the overrated. It's a clear enough favorite for 2001, but not by that much of a margin - this isn't 1986 or 2006, years where Lynch has no competition.
PICTURE: Mulholland Drive
DIRECTOR: David Lynch
LEAD ACTOR: Gene Hackman, Royal Tenenbaums
LEAD ACTRESS: Jeanne Balibar, Va Savoir
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Bill Nighy, Lawless Heart
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Laura Elena Harring, Mulholland Dr.
SHORT: In Public, Jia Jian-ke
SCORE: Angelo Badalamenti, Mulholland Dr.
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Peter Deming, Mulholland Dr.
Plus bonus picks:
Script: The Royal Tenenbaums
Music/Sound: The Royal Tenenbaums, again.
Best Takashi Miike film (I saw three of them from 2001, after all): Ichi the Killer (and Tadanobu Asano is a pretty close runner up to Hackman for best actor, I'd say. Best makeup anyway.)
1. Mulholland Drive
2. Royal Tenenbaums
3. Ichi the Killer
4. Va Savoir
5. En Construccion
6. Donnie Darko
7. Waking Life
8. Distance
9. La Cienega
10. Pistol Opera
2000:
PICTURE: Yi Yi
DIRECTOR: Edward Yang
LEAD ACTOR: George Clooney, O Brother Where Art Thou
LEAD ACTRESS: Maggie Cheung, In the Mood for Love
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Tim Blake Nelson
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ziyi Zhang, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
SHORT: Heart of the World (on the very shortlist for best ever)
SCORE: Mihaly Vig, Werckmeister Harmonies
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Christopher Doyle, Pung-Leung Kwan and Mark Lee Ping-bin, In the Mood for Love
Plus bonus picks:
Script: this is a tough one: Yi Yi and O Brother Where Art Thou are as good as you could ask.
Music/Sound: O Brother...
1. Yi Yi
2. In Vanda's Rom
3. O Brother Where Art Thou
4. Platform
5. Virgin Stripped Bare by her Bachelors
6. Songs from the Second Floor
7. The Circle
8. Eureka
9. In the Mood for Love
10. The Gleaners and I
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
1990s WITD Poll Votes
At Wonders in the Dark, the yearly polls are currently on summer vacation, as Sam Juliano and family are in England, visiting Allan Fish - they are up to 2003... and here are my votes for the 90s.
The 1990s is when I stepped up my movie watching - from almost night at the beginning of the year to over 400 films a year the last 4-5 years... obviously, a lot of that was catching up on the past - taking advantage of the Brattle and the Harvard Film Archive to see everything I could... But I finally saw enough contemporary films to make these kinds of lists... I remember it fondly - and looking back, it was an underrated decade. Great decade to be a fan of Chinese films, great decade for Iran, etc. - good stuff. Anyway - my votes, and my favorites for the decade are below...
Decade:
PICTURE: Rushmore
DIRECTOR (single): Wes Anderson, Rushmore
(decade): Wong Kar-wei
LEAD ACTOR (single): David Thewlis, Naked
(decade): Leslie Cheung
LEAD ACTRESS (single): Brigitte Lin, Swordsman II
(decade): Maggie Cheung
SUPPORTING ACTOR: John Goodman, Big Lebowski
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Catherine Keener, Being John Malkovich
SHORT: David Lynch in Lumiere and Company
SCORE: Neil Young, Dead Man [wait - I didn't vote for it in the year it was released? I may be confused here, though I don't know where.]
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Christopher Doyle, Fallen Angels
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Groundhog Day - best to miss the cut below...
1. Groundhog Day
2. Rushmore
3. Pulp Fiction
4. The Big Lebowski
5. Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould
Music: Rushmore - one of the most perfect uses of pre-recorded music ever
Sound: Viva L'Amour
Musical: Beijing Bastards
Martial Arts: Once upon a Time in China
Documentary: Close Up, Kiarostami
Animated: Nightmare Before Christmas
Musical: there are a surprising number of films that might qualify - more than one of which (Beijing Bastards, 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould, Nightmare BEfore Christmas) have already turned up here... Well - the top five?
1. Beijing Bastards
2. 32 Short Films...
3. Haut/Bas/Fragile
4. Nightmare Before Christmas
5. Topsy Turvy
Top 20:
1. Rushmore
2. Brighter Summer Day
3. Satantango
4. Fallen Angels
5. Breaking the Waves
6. Goodbye South, Goodbye
7. Happy Together
8. White
9. Through the Olive Trees
10. Beijing Bastards
11. Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
12. Once Upon a Time in China
13. Flowers of Shanghai
14. The Sweet Hereafter
15. Pulp Fiction
16. A Moment of Innocence
17. The River
18. Naked
19. Dead Man
20. To Sleep With Anger
And now by years:
1999:
PICTURE: Charisma
DIRECTOR: Dardennes Brothers, Rosetta
LEAD ACTOR: Russell Crowe, The Insider
LEAD ACTRESS: Emilie Dequenne, Rosetta
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Tom Cruise, Magnolia
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Catherine Keener, Being John Malkovich
SHORT:
SCORE: Angelo Badalamenti, The Straight Story
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Freddie Francis, The Straight Story
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Office Space
Music/Sound: Ghost Dog
Documentary: a good year for these - the best is probably American Movie
Action/Martial Arts: Hong Kong is starting to run down, though you still have some decent films, like Bullets Over Summer. In terms of Asian genre pictures, I should start a Best Miike category: that would be Audition, in 1999...
1. Charisma
2. Sons
3. Rosetta
4. L'Humanite
5. The Straight Story
6. Lies
7. American Movie
8. Peppermint Candy
9. The Little Girl WHo SOld the Sun
10. Audition
1998:
Another solid year, very strong at the very top, and fairly deep. Lots of great performances, especially by men; three or four films that contend for the best script of the decade; some magnificent looking films. With, in the end, the best film of the decade, in Rushmore.
PICTURE: Rushmore
DIRECTOR: Wes Anderson
LEAD ACTOR: Jeff Bridges, Big Lebowski
LEAD ACTRESS: Marie Riviere, Conte d’Automne
SUPPORTING ACTOR: John Goodman, Big Lebowski
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Erika Oda, After Life
SHORT:
SCORE: Mark Mothersbaugh, Rushmore
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Lee Ping Bin, Flowers of Shanghai
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Rushmore
Music/Sound: Rushmore (one of the best uses of pre-recorded music there is)
Martial Arts: we're past real martial arts films, but still need to mark some Hong Kong films - this year - Expect the Unexpected, which deserves the name.
1. Rushmore
2. Flowers of Shanghai
3. The Big Lebowski
4. Babe: Pig in the City
5. After Life
6. Forty-two Up
7. The Silence (Makhmalbaf)
8. Secret Defense
9. Book of Life
10. Expect the Unexpected
1997:
This is a very good year, but also maybe the most unbalanced year - there are some great European films, and some very good American films, but the top of the list is completely dominated by Asian films. 6 of the top 7, by my lights.
PICTURE: Happy Together
DIRECTOR: Wong Kar-wei
LEAD ACTOR: Thomas Jay Ryan, Henry Fool
LEAD ACTRESS: Pam Grier, Jackie Brown
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Robert Forster, Jackie Brown
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Julianne Moore, Boogie Nights
SHORT: Alone, Erick Zonca
SCORE: Angelo Badalamenti, Lost Highway
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Christopher Doyle
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Henry Fool
Music: Happy Together - the music selections, which are perfect
Sound: Taste of Cherry - but this is one of the best sounding films ever; Kiarostami films are so detailed, so rich, you want to watch them with your eyes closed, at least once.
Documentary: a fight to the finish between Little Dieter Needs to Fly and Fast Cheap and Out of COntrol, though I think the Herzog wins.
Martial Arts: nothing quite fits, but as Hong Kong goes over to China, you get quite a burst of creativity - Happy Together, running off to Argentina - and at home, Too Many Ways to be No. 1 has to get a mention of some kinds. For the upside down fight, if nothing else. (And the fact that those two films share a significant, extended upside down camera sequence - seems very likely to be related to the politics of the day. Both films, of course, being quite plainly about the handover, and what you are supposed to do now.)
1. Happy Together
2. The Sweet Hereafter
3. The River
4. Xiao Wu
5. Cure
6. Taste of Cherry
7. Too Many Ways to be No. 1
8. Henry Fool
9. Kingdom II
10. Funny Games
1996:
Beyond the top ten, beyond the top 20 - this year has a lot of films I find that I just really like, or remember fondly, all these years along. The Frighteners or Beavis and Butthead Do America or what have you...
PICTURE: Breaking the Waves
DIRECTOR: Lars Von Trier
LEAD ACTOR: Owen Wilson, Bottle Rocket
LEAD ACTRESS: Emily Watson (This is a very difficult choice: Kidman and McFarland, are hard to pass over, or Maggie Cheung for that matter.)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: William H. Macy, Fargo
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Nathalie Richard, Irma Vep
SHORT:
SCORE: Goodbye, South, Goodbye, Lim Giong
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Breaking the Waves, Robby Muller
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Fargo
Music/Sound: I think
Martial Arts: things are running out around here - this might be God of Cookery, typically entertaining Stephen Chiao nonsense. There are some nice action films in the next few years from Hong Kong, but fewer and fewer martial arts films.
1. Breaking the Waves
2. Goodbye. South, Goodbye
3. A Moment of Innocence
4. Portrait of a Lady
5. My Sex Life, or How I Got in an Argument
6. Fargo
7. The Delta
8. Without Memory
9. Drifting Clouds
10. Mahjong
1995:
Not a bad year at all, really. Looks a bit thin compared to some of the years around it, since that seems to have been a pretty nice stretch in the mid-90s, but still. Having a few certifiably great films helps... Anyway:
PICTURE: Fallen Angels
DIRECTOR: Wong Kar-wei
LEAD ACTOR: Takashi Kinoshiro, Fallen Angels
LEAD ACTRESS: Julianne Moore, Safe
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jackie Cheung, High Risk (or Meltdown, or whatever it's called in English - Die Hard ripoff, with Cheung sending up Jackie Chan)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Charley Young, Fallen Angels
SHORT: David Lynch's bit in Lumiere and Company, which I see is called "Premonition Following an Evil Deed"
SCORE: Eleni Karaindrou, Ulysses Gaze
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Christopher Doyle, Fallen Angels
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Dead Man
Music/Sound: Fallen Angels
Martial Arts: The Blade
Documentary: Gate of Heavenly Peace - though I wish I could say Forgotten Silver - the best fake documentary at any rate.
Best English Title for a Foreign Film: Tough Beauty and the Sloppy Slop - silly Supercop ripoff with Yuen Biao and Cynthia Khan, but the title - man, you want to see that, right?
1. Fallen Angels
2. Dead Man
3. Good Men, Good Women
4. Gate of Heavenly Peace
5. Hau/Bas/Fragile
6. Forgotten Silver
7. Safe
8. Red Cherry
9. Sharaku
10. Gonin
1994:
93 rivals this year at the very top, but for the volume of great films, this is a truly magnificent year. They just keep on going... doing any sort of justice to the range of great films this year is impossible.
PICTURE: Satantango
DIRECTOR: Abbas Kiarostami, Through the Olive Trees
LEAD ACTOR: Johnny Depp, Ed Wood
LEAD ACTRESS: Sandrine Bonnaire, Jeanne la Pucelle: Parts I & II
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Samuel L.Jackson, Pulp Fiction (I suppose this is a supporting role, though it's a big one; if he were up for the lead I could vote for Paul Newman in the Hudsucker Proxy...)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Faye Wong, Chungking Express
SHORT: I think this will be The Smell of Burning Ants, from Jay Rosenblatt.
SCORE: Zbigniew Preisner, Three Colours: Red
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Gábor Medvigy, Sátántángó
Plus bonus picks:
Script: who can deny Pulp Fiction?
Music: I have to split this from sound this year - the competition is for the best use of pre-recorded music is very steep - Chungking Express, Cold Water, Pulp Fiction - I have to give it to Chungking Express, though.
Sound: It's also a year full of magnificent sounding films, films making dense, brilliant use of sound - Satantango and Through the Olive Trees and Jeanne le Poucelle - but the one that stands out is Viva L'Amour.
Martial Arts: we're getting toward the end of Hong Kong's awe-inspiring run, but there are still some nice films coming out - so, though it has a strange reputation I guess - Ashes of Time is a pretty good action film. That might not be it's main appeal, in the end - but it's still remarkable, and well done. The way the fight scenes are atomized - blurs of motion & whooshing sound effects, sudden closeups, changing speeds - but still maintaining a kind of heft - not much flying, a kind of grounded physicality, which is, after all, a trademark of Samo's choreography. It has a relentless earthiness (along with recurring images of the four elements) that makes it memorable.
1. Satantango
2. White
3. Through the Olive Trees
4. Pulp Fiction
5. Viva L'Amour
6. Jeanne La Poucelle
7. Cold Water
8. A Borrowed Life
9. The Kingdom
10. A COnfucian Confusion
1993:
This is a tough year, as good a top 5 as we've seen in a while...
PICTURE: Beijing Bastards
DIRECTOR: Hou Hsiao Hsien, The Puppetmaster
LEAD ACTOR: David Thewlis, Naked
LEAD ACTRESS: Brigitte Lin, East is Red
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Ralph Fiennes
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Katrin Cartlidge, Naked
SHORT: The Wrong Trousers
SCORE: Zbigniew Preisner, Three Colours: Blue
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Gu Changwei, Farewell, My Concubine
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Groundhog Day
Music/Sound: Thirty-Two Short Films about Glen Gould - which is a close second for best film and script... Beijing Bastards is a strong contender here, Cui Jian is quite good, but this is Glen Gould - and it's a magnificent piece of sound work as well as music.
Martial Arts: Fong Sai Yuk - Jet Li and Josephine Siao putting on a great comic action show.
1. Beijing Bastards
2. Thirty-Two Short Films About Glen Gould
3. Naked
4. Groundhog Day
5. The Puppetmaster
6. The Blue Kite
7. Short Cuts
8. The East is Red
9. Nightmare Before Christmas
10. Sonatine
1992:
I'll take Brigitte Lin's eyes and Jet Li's drunken swordfighting and Rosamund Kwan with a whip over more or less anything you can offer more or less any time. Though putting it like that isn't quite right - because as entertaining a bit of pop film-making as it is, it's also packed tot he eyeballs with the Strange, and rather more clever in its apocalyptic gender-bending politics (sort of a Tsui Hark trademark, usually given an extra level of insanity when Ching Siu-tung gets involved) than most anything else on offer.
PICTURE: Swordsman II
DIRECTOR: Tsai Ming-liang, Rebels of a Neon God
LEAD ACTOR: Denzel Washington, Malcolm X
LEAD ACTRESS: I wish I could vote for Maggie Cheung in Actress, for she is truly great, but who am I kidding? I can't not vote for Brigitte Lin in Swordsman II - why pretend? She's one of the most marvelous things ever put on screen in that film. (And the next one; you can guess my '93 best actress vote, I assume.)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Steve Buscemi, Reservoir Dogs
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Hey hey! a chance! I can vote for Maggie Cheung in Dragon Inn!
SHORT: Stille Nacht III (Though Frog Baseball is the important one...)
SCORE: Angelo Badalamenti, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Poon Hang-Sang, Actress
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Reservoir Dogs
Music/Sound: And Life Goes On - Kiarostami is always an absolute master of the use of sound. Though one of his strongest competitors had a film out that year too - Tsai Ming-liang...
Martial Arts: Swordsman II, of course. Though it's a loaded year, with the Dragon Inn remake and Supercop and the second Once Upon a Time in China film, covering a neat range of styles...
Documentary: Lessons of Darkness
1. Swordsman II
2. One False Move
3. Rebels of a Neon God
4. Careful
5. Actress
6. Lessons of Darkness
7. Reservoir Dogs
8. And Life Goes On
9. Glengarry Glen Ross
10. Autumn Moon
1991:
A good year, though not the best of the decade quite. One of the best films of the decade though...
PICTURE: Brighter Summer Day
DIRECTOR: Edward Yang
LEAD ACTOR: Jet Li, Once Upon a Time in China
LEAD ACTRESS: Jodie Foster, The Silence of the Lambs
SUPPORTING ACTOR: John Goodman, Barton Fink
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Judy Davis
SHORT: Short of Breath?
SCORE: Zbigniew Preisner, The Double Life of Veronique
CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Lubtchansky, La Belle Noiseuse
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Brighter Summer Day
Music/Sound: Brighter Summer Day, named after a song after all...
Martial Arts: Once Upon a Time in China, a contender for the best martial arts film ever made.
1. Brighter Summer Day
2. Once Upon a Time in China
3. La Belle Noiseuse
4. Jacuot de Nantes
5. Rebels of a Neon God
6. Slacker
7. Thirty-Five Up
8. J'Etend Plus le Guitar
9. Life of the Dead
10. Sink or Swim
1990:
An okay year for films, but a killer for performances - trying to pick them brings back how many there are, and how indelible they are. Probably come in high on the list of years for memorable moments - Annette Bening jumping on the bed. "I'm funny?" Jane Horrocks' trouble with chocolate. Beat Takeshi and a baseball bat. Etc.
PICTURE: To Sleep With Anger
DIRECTOR: Kiarostami, Close Up
LEAD ACTOR: Leslie Cheung, Days of Being Wild - really? Over Glover?
LEAD ACTRESS: I have too many choices: I'll say - Laura Dern, Wild at Heart - not the best Lynch, but it's not her fault. (Though this is where Kati Outinen belongs for Match Factory Girl, outside this poll)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: this is even tougher, right? it's a good year for over the top - Joe Pesci; Chris Eigeman - is there such a thing as over the top deadpan? or Timothy Spall in Life is Sweet. I want to vote for Eigeman, but I think I have to join the crowd and vote for Pesci.
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: this is tough too - but - Annette Bening, The Grifters, gets the vote.
SHORT:
SCORE: Carter Burwell, Miller’s Crossing
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Christopher Doyle, Days of Being Wild
Plus bonus picks:
Script: To Sleep With Anger
Music/Sound: Close Up - this is for the sound, not music.
Martial Arts: it's mild mannered and same compared to the sequels, but Swordsman is first rate Wu Xia in its own right.
1. To Sleep With Anger
2. Days of Being Wild
3. Close Up
4. Goodfellas
5. The Match Factory Girl
6. Life is Sweet
7. Miller's Crossing
8. Europa Europa
9. Swordsman
10. Metropolitan
The 1990s is when I stepped up my movie watching - from almost night at the beginning of the year to over 400 films a year the last 4-5 years... obviously, a lot of that was catching up on the past - taking advantage of the Brattle and the Harvard Film Archive to see everything I could... But I finally saw enough contemporary films to make these kinds of lists... I remember it fondly - and looking back, it was an underrated decade. Great decade to be a fan of Chinese films, great decade for Iran, etc. - good stuff. Anyway - my votes, and my favorites for the decade are below...
Decade:
PICTURE: Rushmore
DIRECTOR (single): Wes Anderson, Rushmore
(decade): Wong Kar-wei
LEAD ACTOR (single): David Thewlis, Naked
(decade): Leslie Cheung
LEAD ACTRESS (single): Brigitte Lin, Swordsman II
(decade): Maggie Cheung
SUPPORTING ACTOR: John Goodman, Big Lebowski
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Catherine Keener, Being John Malkovich
SHORT: David Lynch in Lumiere and Company
SCORE: Neil Young, Dead Man [wait - I didn't vote for it in the year it was released? I may be confused here, though I don't know where.]
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Christopher Doyle, Fallen Angels
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Groundhog Day - best to miss the cut below...
1. Groundhog Day
2. Rushmore
3. Pulp Fiction
4. The Big Lebowski
5. Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould
Music: Rushmore - one of the most perfect uses of pre-recorded music ever
Sound: Viva L'Amour
Musical: Beijing Bastards
Martial Arts: Once upon a Time in China
Documentary: Close Up, Kiarostami
Animated: Nightmare Before Christmas
Musical: there are a surprising number of films that might qualify - more than one of which (Beijing Bastards, 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould, Nightmare BEfore Christmas) have already turned up here... Well - the top five?
1. Beijing Bastards
2. 32 Short Films...
3. Haut/Bas/Fragile
4. Nightmare Before Christmas
5. Topsy Turvy
Top 20:
1. Rushmore
2. Brighter Summer Day
3. Satantango
4. Fallen Angels
5. Breaking the Waves
6. Goodbye South, Goodbye
7. Happy Together
8. White
9. Through the Olive Trees
10. Beijing Bastards
11. Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould
12. Once Upon a Time in China
13. Flowers of Shanghai
14. The Sweet Hereafter
15. Pulp Fiction
16. A Moment of Innocence
17. The River
18. Naked
19. Dead Man
20. To Sleep With Anger
And now by years:
1999:
PICTURE: Charisma
DIRECTOR: Dardennes Brothers, Rosetta
LEAD ACTOR: Russell Crowe, The Insider
LEAD ACTRESS: Emilie Dequenne, Rosetta
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Tom Cruise, Magnolia
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Catherine Keener, Being John Malkovich
SHORT:
SCORE: Angelo Badalamenti, The Straight Story
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Freddie Francis, The Straight Story
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Office Space
Music/Sound: Ghost Dog
Documentary: a good year for these - the best is probably American Movie
Action/Martial Arts: Hong Kong is starting to run down, though you still have some decent films, like Bullets Over Summer. In terms of Asian genre pictures, I should start a Best Miike category: that would be Audition, in 1999...
1. Charisma
2. Sons
3. Rosetta
4. L'Humanite
5. The Straight Story
6. Lies
7. American Movie
8. Peppermint Candy
9. The Little Girl WHo SOld the Sun
10. Audition
1998:
Another solid year, very strong at the very top, and fairly deep. Lots of great performances, especially by men; three or four films that contend for the best script of the decade; some magnificent looking films. With, in the end, the best film of the decade, in Rushmore.
PICTURE: Rushmore
DIRECTOR: Wes Anderson
LEAD ACTOR: Jeff Bridges, Big Lebowski
LEAD ACTRESS: Marie Riviere, Conte d’Automne
SUPPORTING ACTOR: John Goodman, Big Lebowski
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Erika Oda, After Life
SHORT:
SCORE: Mark Mothersbaugh, Rushmore
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Lee Ping Bin, Flowers of Shanghai
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Rushmore
Music/Sound: Rushmore (one of the best uses of pre-recorded music there is)
Martial Arts: we're past real martial arts films, but still need to mark some Hong Kong films - this year - Expect the Unexpected, which deserves the name.
1. Rushmore
2. Flowers of Shanghai
3. The Big Lebowski
4. Babe: Pig in the City
5. After Life
6. Forty-two Up
7. The Silence (Makhmalbaf)
8. Secret Defense
9. Book of Life
10. Expect the Unexpected
1997:
This is a very good year, but also maybe the most unbalanced year - there are some great European films, and some very good American films, but the top of the list is completely dominated by Asian films. 6 of the top 7, by my lights.
PICTURE: Happy Together
DIRECTOR: Wong Kar-wei
LEAD ACTOR: Thomas Jay Ryan, Henry Fool
LEAD ACTRESS: Pam Grier, Jackie Brown
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Robert Forster, Jackie Brown
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Julianne Moore, Boogie Nights
SHORT: Alone, Erick Zonca
SCORE: Angelo Badalamenti, Lost Highway
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Christopher Doyle
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Henry Fool
Music: Happy Together - the music selections, which are perfect
Sound: Taste of Cherry - but this is one of the best sounding films ever; Kiarostami films are so detailed, so rich, you want to watch them with your eyes closed, at least once.
Documentary: a fight to the finish between Little Dieter Needs to Fly and Fast Cheap and Out of COntrol, though I think the Herzog wins.
Martial Arts: nothing quite fits, but as Hong Kong goes over to China, you get quite a burst of creativity - Happy Together, running off to Argentina - and at home, Too Many Ways to be No. 1 has to get a mention of some kinds. For the upside down fight, if nothing else. (And the fact that those two films share a significant, extended upside down camera sequence - seems very likely to be related to the politics of the day. Both films, of course, being quite plainly about the handover, and what you are supposed to do now.)
1. Happy Together
2. The Sweet Hereafter
3. The River
4. Xiao Wu
5. Cure
6. Taste of Cherry
7. Too Many Ways to be No. 1
8. Henry Fool
9. Kingdom II
10. Funny Games
1996:
Beyond the top ten, beyond the top 20 - this year has a lot of films I find that I just really like, or remember fondly, all these years along. The Frighteners or Beavis and Butthead Do America or what have you...
PICTURE: Breaking the Waves
DIRECTOR: Lars Von Trier
LEAD ACTOR: Owen Wilson, Bottle Rocket
LEAD ACTRESS: Emily Watson (This is a very difficult choice: Kidman and McFarland, are hard to pass over, or Maggie Cheung for that matter.)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: William H. Macy, Fargo
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Nathalie Richard, Irma Vep
SHORT:
SCORE: Goodbye, South, Goodbye, Lim Giong
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Breaking the Waves, Robby Muller
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Fargo
Music/Sound: I think
Martial Arts: things are running out around here - this might be God of Cookery, typically entertaining Stephen Chiao nonsense. There are some nice action films in the next few years from Hong Kong, but fewer and fewer martial arts films.
1. Breaking the Waves
2. Goodbye. South, Goodbye
3. A Moment of Innocence
4. Portrait of a Lady
5. My Sex Life, or How I Got in an Argument
6. Fargo
7. The Delta
8. Without Memory
9. Drifting Clouds
10. Mahjong
1995:
Not a bad year at all, really. Looks a bit thin compared to some of the years around it, since that seems to have been a pretty nice stretch in the mid-90s, but still. Having a few certifiably great films helps... Anyway:
PICTURE: Fallen Angels
DIRECTOR: Wong Kar-wei
LEAD ACTOR: Takashi Kinoshiro, Fallen Angels
LEAD ACTRESS: Julianne Moore, Safe
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jackie Cheung, High Risk (or Meltdown, or whatever it's called in English - Die Hard ripoff, with Cheung sending up Jackie Chan)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Charley Young, Fallen Angels
SHORT: David Lynch's bit in Lumiere and Company, which I see is called "Premonition Following an Evil Deed"
SCORE: Eleni Karaindrou, Ulysses Gaze
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Christopher Doyle, Fallen Angels
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Dead Man
Music/Sound: Fallen Angels
Martial Arts: The Blade
Documentary: Gate of Heavenly Peace - though I wish I could say Forgotten Silver - the best fake documentary at any rate.
Best English Title for a Foreign Film: Tough Beauty and the Sloppy Slop - silly Supercop ripoff with Yuen Biao and Cynthia Khan, but the title - man, you want to see that, right?
1. Fallen Angels
2. Dead Man
3. Good Men, Good Women
4. Gate of Heavenly Peace
5. Hau/Bas/Fragile
6. Forgotten Silver
7. Safe
8. Red Cherry
9. Sharaku
10. Gonin
1994:
93 rivals this year at the very top, but for the volume of great films, this is a truly magnificent year. They just keep on going... doing any sort of justice to the range of great films this year is impossible.
PICTURE: Satantango
DIRECTOR: Abbas Kiarostami, Through the Olive Trees
LEAD ACTOR: Johnny Depp, Ed Wood
LEAD ACTRESS: Sandrine Bonnaire, Jeanne la Pucelle: Parts I & II
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Samuel L.Jackson, Pulp Fiction (I suppose this is a supporting role, though it's a big one; if he were up for the lead I could vote for Paul Newman in the Hudsucker Proxy...)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Faye Wong, Chungking Express
SHORT: I think this will be The Smell of Burning Ants, from Jay Rosenblatt.
SCORE: Zbigniew Preisner, Three Colours: Red
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Gábor Medvigy, Sátántángó
Plus bonus picks:
Script: who can deny Pulp Fiction?
Music: I have to split this from sound this year - the competition is for the best use of pre-recorded music is very steep - Chungking Express, Cold Water, Pulp Fiction - I have to give it to Chungking Express, though.
Sound: It's also a year full of magnificent sounding films, films making dense, brilliant use of sound - Satantango and Through the Olive Trees and Jeanne le Poucelle - but the one that stands out is Viva L'Amour.
Martial Arts: we're getting toward the end of Hong Kong's awe-inspiring run, but there are still some nice films coming out - so, though it has a strange reputation I guess - Ashes of Time is a pretty good action film. That might not be it's main appeal, in the end - but it's still remarkable, and well done. The way the fight scenes are atomized - blurs of motion & whooshing sound effects, sudden closeups, changing speeds - but still maintaining a kind of heft - not much flying, a kind of grounded physicality, which is, after all, a trademark of Samo's choreography. It has a relentless earthiness (along with recurring images of the four elements) that makes it memorable.
1. Satantango
2. White
3. Through the Olive Trees
4. Pulp Fiction
5. Viva L'Amour
6. Jeanne La Poucelle
7. Cold Water
8. A Borrowed Life
9. The Kingdom
10. A COnfucian Confusion
1993:
This is a tough year, as good a top 5 as we've seen in a while...
PICTURE: Beijing Bastards
DIRECTOR: Hou Hsiao Hsien, The Puppetmaster
LEAD ACTOR: David Thewlis, Naked
LEAD ACTRESS: Brigitte Lin, East is Red
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Ralph Fiennes
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Katrin Cartlidge, Naked
SHORT: The Wrong Trousers
SCORE: Zbigniew Preisner, Three Colours: Blue
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Gu Changwei, Farewell, My Concubine
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Groundhog Day
Music/Sound: Thirty-Two Short Films about Glen Gould - which is a close second for best film and script... Beijing Bastards is a strong contender here, Cui Jian is quite good, but this is Glen Gould - and it's a magnificent piece of sound work as well as music.
Martial Arts: Fong Sai Yuk - Jet Li and Josephine Siao putting on a great comic action show.
1. Beijing Bastards
2. Thirty-Two Short Films About Glen Gould
3. Naked
4. Groundhog Day
5. The Puppetmaster
6. The Blue Kite
7. Short Cuts
8. The East is Red
9. Nightmare Before Christmas
10. Sonatine
1992:
I'll take Brigitte Lin's eyes and Jet Li's drunken swordfighting and Rosamund Kwan with a whip over more or less anything you can offer more or less any time. Though putting it like that isn't quite right - because as entertaining a bit of pop film-making as it is, it's also packed tot he eyeballs with the Strange, and rather more clever in its apocalyptic gender-bending politics (sort of a Tsui Hark trademark, usually given an extra level of insanity when Ching Siu-tung gets involved) than most anything else on offer.
PICTURE: Swordsman II
DIRECTOR: Tsai Ming-liang, Rebels of a Neon God
LEAD ACTOR: Denzel Washington, Malcolm X
LEAD ACTRESS: I wish I could vote for Maggie Cheung in Actress, for she is truly great, but who am I kidding? I can't not vote for Brigitte Lin in Swordsman II - why pretend? She's one of the most marvelous things ever put on screen in that film. (And the next one; you can guess my '93 best actress vote, I assume.)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Steve Buscemi, Reservoir Dogs
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Hey hey! a chance! I can vote for Maggie Cheung in Dragon Inn!
SHORT: Stille Nacht III (Though Frog Baseball is the important one...)
SCORE: Angelo Badalamenti, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Poon Hang-Sang, Actress
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Reservoir Dogs
Music/Sound: And Life Goes On - Kiarostami is always an absolute master of the use of sound. Though one of his strongest competitors had a film out that year too - Tsai Ming-liang...
Martial Arts: Swordsman II, of course. Though it's a loaded year, with the Dragon Inn remake and Supercop and the second Once Upon a Time in China film, covering a neat range of styles...
Documentary: Lessons of Darkness
1. Swordsman II
2. One False Move
3. Rebels of a Neon God
4. Careful
5. Actress
6. Lessons of Darkness
7. Reservoir Dogs
8. And Life Goes On
9. Glengarry Glen Ross
10. Autumn Moon
1991:
A good year, though not the best of the decade quite. One of the best films of the decade though...
PICTURE: Brighter Summer Day
DIRECTOR: Edward Yang
LEAD ACTOR: Jet Li, Once Upon a Time in China
LEAD ACTRESS: Jodie Foster, The Silence of the Lambs
SUPPORTING ACTOR: John Goodman, Barton Fink
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Judy Davis
SHORT: Short of Breath?
SCORE: Zbigniew Preisner, The Double Life of Veronique
CINEMATOGRAPHY: William Lubtchansky, La Belle Noiseuse
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Brighter Summer Day
Music/Sound: Brighter Summer Day, named after a song after all...
Martial Arts: Once Upon a Time in China, a contender for the best martial arts film ever made.
1. Brighter Summer Day
2. Once Upon a Time in China
3. La Belle Noiseuse
4. Jacuot de Nantes
5. Rebels of a Neon God
6. Slacker
7. Thirty-Five Up
8. J'Etend Plus le Guitar
9. Life of the Dead
10. Sink or Swim
1990:
An okay year for films, but a killer for performances - trying to pick them brings back how many there are, and how indelible they are. Probably come in high on the list of years for memorable moments - Annette Bening jumping on the bed. "I'm funny?" Jane Horrocks' trouble with chocolate. Beat Takeshi and a baseball bat. Etc.
PICTURE: To Sleep With Anger
DIRECTOR: Kiarostami, Close Up
LEAD ACTOR: Leslie Cheung, Days of Being Wild - really? Over Glover?
LEAD ACTRESS: I have too many choices: I'll say - Laura Dern, Wild at Heart - not the best Lynch, but it's not her fault. (Though this is where Kati Outinen belongs for Match Factory Girl, outside this poll)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: this is even tougher, right? it's a good year for over the top - Joe Pesci; Chris Eigeman - is there such a thing as over the top deadpan? or Timothy Spall in Life is Sweet. I want to vote for Eigeman, but I think I have to join the crowd and vote for Pesci.
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: this is tough too - but - Annette Bening, The Grifters, gets the vote.
SHORT:
SCORE: Carter Burwell, Miller’s Crossing
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Christopher Doyle, Days of Being Wild
Plus bonus picks:
Script: To Sleep With Anger
Music/Sound: Close Up - this is for the sound, not music.
Martial Arts: it's mild mannered and same compared to the sequels, but Swordsman is first rate Wu Xia in its own right.
1. To Sleep With Anger
2. Days of Being Wild
3. Close Up
4. Goodfellas
5. The Match Factory Girl
6. Life is Sweet
7. Miller's Crossing
8. Europa Europa
9. Swordsman
10. Metropolitan
Monday, May 20, 2013
1980s WITD Poll Votes
At Wonders in the Dark, voting for the film of the year continues to march through the years, up into the 90s, and so here, I'll repost my votes for the previous decade (with some slight amendment, I have to admit), along with my best of the decade votes. This is the 1980s - an odd stretch, that people seem to remember badly and not too fondly, and that I find - a mixed bag. Though looking through all these films - I find that somewhere in the middle of the decade the number of films I have records of seeing spiked - and stayed spiked ever since. Though this happened before the number of films I went to see in theaters spiked - very odd. Anyway - here it is - my favorites of the 1980s.
The Decade:
PICTURE: City of Sadness
DIRECTOR (single film): Hou Hsiao-Hsien, City of Sadness
DIRECTOR (decade): Hou Hsiao-hsien
LEAD ACTOR (single film): John Hurt, Elephant Man
ACTOR (decade): Chow Yun-fat
LEAD ACTRESS (one film): Brigitte Lin, Peking Opera Blues
ACTRESS (decade): Brigitte Lin?
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Dennis Hopper, Blue Velvet
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Isabella Rosselini, Blue Velvet
SHORT: Broken Down Film, Osamu Texuka
SCORE: Angelo Badalamenti, Blue Velvet
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Frederick Elmes, Blue Velvet
Plus bonus picks:
Script: City of Sadness (Chu Tien-wen & Wu Nien-jen)
Music: Stop Making Sense has the best music, I have to say. Something Wild, though, has the best use of a song - though over all, Blue Velvet's use of music is on a very rarified level. That sounds like three different votes, and probably is, since they use three different criteria.
Sound: this, though, I think is Ran
Martial Arts: I think the best martial arts film, as a martial arts film - is Project A part II. {eking Opera Blues is a better film as a film, I think - though not in a landslide - but Jackie Chan's virtues are more tightly bound to the actual stunts and acrobatics than Tsui Hark's...
Documentary: The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On
1. City of Sadness
2. Blue Velvet
3. Elephant Man
4. Fitzcarraldo
5. Sans Soleil
6. Dekalog
7. Peking Opera Blues
8. Do the Right Thing
9. Brazil
10. Blind Chance
11. Dust in the Wind
12. This is Spinal Tap
13. Raiders of the Lost Ark
14. The Emperor's Naked Army Matches On
15. Blade Runner
16. Ran
17. Kegemusha
18. Merry Christmas Mr. Laerence
19. The Big Red One
20. Black Rain
(I just noticed how many of the 80s best films are World War II films: City of Sadness (sort of; begins with the emperor's speech announcing the end of the war), Emperor's Naked Army, Nerry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, the Big Red One, Black Rain - and Come and See, which is as good as anything here; shoot, you can make a case for Raiders of the Lost Ark, too. More than one part of the Dekalog too.)
And By Year:
1989:
A fairly extraordinary year, to end the decade...
PICTURE: City of Sadness
DIRECTOR: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
LEAD ACTOR: Chow Yun-fat (sometimes, you just want a Movie Star)
LEAD ACTRESS: Kati Outinen (if Match Factory Girl is 89...)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jack Nicholson, Batman
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Rosy Perez, Do the Right Thing
SHORT: Creature Comforts
SCORE: Danny Elfman, Batman
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Takashi Kawamata, Black Rain
Plus bonus picks:
Script: This is also City of Sadness, the best film of the 80s, one of the all time greats.
Music/Sound: Leningrad Cowboys Go America? No, not really - Do the Right Thing, in a walk.
Martial Arts: Some nice films to choose from, but Jacky Chan's Capra remake, Miracles, takes the prize.
1. City of Sadness
2. Do the Right Thing
3. Black Rain
4. Johanna D'Arc of Mongolia
5. Mystery Train
6. Miracles - Mr. Canton and Lady Rose
7. The Killer
8. Why Has the Bodhi Darma Left for the East
9. Kiki's Delivery Service
10. Batman
1988:
PICTURE: Dekalog
DIRECTOR: Kieslowski
LEAD ACTOR: Forest Whitaker, Bird
LEAD ACTRESS: Carmen Maura, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Kevin Kline, A Fish Called Wanda
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Michelle Pfeiffer, Dangerous Liaisons
SHORT:
SCORE: Toru Takemitsu, Wuthering Heights
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Junichiro Hayashi, Wuthering Heights
Plus bonus picks:
Script: The Dekalog, collectively, and individually, they'd come close to being the top 10
Music/Sound: Married to the Mob has the Feelies again... Demme's soundtracks are usually as interesting as his films
Martial Arts: I forgot this last week. This is a good year for it though - Dragons Forever is absolutely thrilling
1. Dekalog
2. Dragons Forever
3. Wuthering Heights
4. Rouge
5. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
6. Damnation
7. Family Viewing
8. Chocolat
9. Beetle Juice
10. A Fish Called Wanda
1987:
This is a very strong year. Very strong.
PICTURE: Dust in the Wind
DIRECTOR: Kazuo Hara, Emperor's Naked Army Marches On
LEAD ACTOR: I am tempted to say Kenzo Okuzaki, documentary or not, not least because he is so aware of the camera, and his performance for the camera.
LEAD ACTRESS:
SUPPORTING ACTOR: the choices are overwhelming; Vincent D'Onofrio, though, I suppose has to take it. But Mandy Patinkin, Christopher Guest, Charles Grodin, R. Lee Ermey, etc. - what is there to choose among them?
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Maggie Cheung, Project A II?
SHORT: The Unnameable Little Broom? if that's the right year...
SCORE:
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Dust in the Wind (Ping-bin Lee)
Plus bonus picks:
Script: The Princess Bride
Music/Sound: Ishtar - if you admit that you play the accordion they won't let you play in a rock and roll band.
Documentary: The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On is among the best ever
Martial Arts: (I forgot to add this during the voting, though I'd already started putting them on the ballots - odd, since this is the year the film I think is the best straight martial arts film came out.) Project A Part II
1. Dust in the Wind
2. The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On
3. Full Metal Jacket
4. Project A II
5. Where is the Friend's House?
6. Evil Dead II
7. Raising Arizona
8. The Princess Bride
9. Ishtar
10. Daughter of the Nile
1986:
THere's a lot of good stuff in 86, and of course, one of the films of the decade at the top... It is also pretty much the beginning of the stretch where the Chinese completely took over my film viewing... And world cinema, for that matter.
PICTURE: Blue Velvet
DIRECTOR: David Lynch
LEAD ACTOR: Richard E.Grant, Withnail and I
LEAD ACTRESS: Bridgitte Lin, Peking Opera Blues
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Dennis Hopper
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Isabella Rosselini
SHORT: Rocky VI (though isn't Street of Crocodiles a short? or have I only seen part of it?)
SCORE: Angelo Badalamenti, Blue Velvet
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Frederick Elmes, Blue Velvet
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Blue Velvet
Music/Sound: I thought this one would probably be Assayas' Disorder (New Order and Pere Ubu? not likely to beat that...) - but that was because I had the idea that Something Wild came out in 87. That's got the Feelies - now, while they get in range of Pere Ubu, over all, in any sort of general contest, they do fall short... but in these films: it's Slipping (Into Something) vs. Non-Alignment Pact - great as Non-Alignment Pact is, it's not gonna win that comparison. And add in the Feelies doing Fame, and the Demme film wins, even without looking at the way the music is used in the films. But there - the way Demme scores the big turn in Something Wild to the musical turns in Slipping (into Something) - it's no contest. That's one of the great music/film moments ever.
Martial Arts: Peking Opera Blues
1. Blue Velvet
2. Peking Opera Blues
3. Terroriser
4. Something Wild
5. Down by Law
6. Ferris Bueller's Day off
7. Dream Lovers
8. From Beyond
9. Shadows in Paradise
10. Withnail & I
1985:
This is another very strong year, with obvious greatness and a disproportionate number of films that are rather better than they should be. Being particularly definitive of what might be a minor type of film. Teen comedies and jokey horror and the like, that are hard to compare with the Great Films of All Time, but are still infinitely enjoyable.
PICTURE: Brazil
DIRECTOR: Hou Hsiao-Hsien, A Time to Live, A Time to Die
LEAD ACTOR: Jonathan Pryce
LEAD ACTRESS: Sandrine Bonnaire, Vagabonde
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jeffrey Combs, Re-Animator
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kim Darby, Better off Dead (? - though this is not far off - she is so strange and wonderful...)
SHORT: Broken Down Film, Tezuka, which is one of the best short films ever.
SCORE: Toru Takemitsu, Ran
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda, Asaichi Nakai, Ran
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Taipei Story
Music/Sound: Desperately Seeking Susan takes this prize.
Martial Arts: (Added after the fact - I wasn't voting for them regularly then) Police Story
1. Brazil
2. Ran
3. Come and See
4. A Time to Live, a Time to Die
5. Taipei Story
6. Tampopo
7. Reanimator
8. When Father Was Away on Business
9. Vagabond
10. The Sure Thing
1984:
Oddly underwhelming year, despite the very fine films at the top.
PICTURE: This is Spinal Tap
DIRECTOR: Hou Hsiao Hsien, Summer at Grandpa's
LEAD ACTOR: Philip Baker Hall, Secret Honor
LEAD ACTRESS: Gena Rowlands, Love Streams
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Harry Dean Stanton, Repo Man
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Sigourney Weaver, Ghostbusters (why not? she's funny, she's cool amidst the nonsense, she's game - why not?)
SHORT: Jumping, Osamu Tezuka
SCORE: This is obviously Spinal Tap - not sure why it's not nominated, the songs were written for the movie... or - wait - wasn't the music for Purple Rain original to the movie too? holy crap.
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Zhang Yimou, Yellow Earth
Plus bonus picks:
Script: This is Spinal Tap
Music/Sound: no matter what was original and what wasn't - Prince vs. The Talking Heads offers as great a competition as you could ask.
Martial Arts: (Added after the fact) - Wheels on Meals
1. This is Spinal Tap
2. Twenty-Eight Up
3. Summer at Grandpa's
4. Secret Honor
5. Repo Man
6. Stranger than Paradise
7. Love Streams
8. Ghostbusters
9. The Funeral
10. Stop Making Sense
1983:
PICTURE: San Soleil
DIRECTOR: Chris Marker
LEAD ACTOR: Tom Conti, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
LEAD ACTRESS: Sylvia Chang, That Day on the Beach
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Takeshi Kitano, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Sandra Bernhard, The King of Comedy
SHORT: not yet... (Unless I were to arbitrarily abstract Hou Hsiao Hsien's "Sandwich Man" from the anthology of the same name...)
SCORE: MArk Knopfler, Local Hero
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Kiyoshi Hasegawa, The Makioka Sisters
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Marker again, Sans Soleil
Music/Sound: David Bowie singing Rock of Ages has to get a mention somewhere.
Martial Arts: (Added after the fact) - Project A
1. Sans Soleil
2. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
3. The Makioka Sisters
4. L'Argent
5. The Boys of Fengkui
6. That Day on the Beach
7. Zelig
8. Local Hero
9. The Green, Green Grass of Home
10. Project A
1982:
This is the thinnest year for me in a long time - I don't know if the year is that bad (probably not, since what I have seen is quite strong, with a handful of stone classics), but I have seen astonishingly few films from this year.
PICTURE: Fitzcarraldo
DIRECTOR: Herzog
LEAD ACTOR: Klaus Kinski
LEAD ACTRESS: Susan Berman, Smithereens
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Rutger Hauer, Blade Runner
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Karen Black, Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
SHORT: (I might get around to voting this week... gotta hope, lot of good looking stuff on offer...)
SCORE: Vangelis, Blade Runner
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Thomas Mauch, Fitzcarraldo
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Music/Sound: Smithereens, with its Feelies songs - can't beat that....
Martial Arts: (Added after the fact) - this is probably Fantasy Mission Force - another reason for the Best Actress of the decade vote - though an odd one.
1. Fitzcarraldo
2. Blade Runner
3. Fanny & Alexander
4. Burden of Dreams
5. Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
6. Chan is Missing
7. Forty Deuce
8. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
9. The Draughtsman's Contract
10. In Our Time
1981:
PICTURE: Blind Chance
DIRECTOR: Oliveira, Francisca
LEAD ACTOR: Andre Gregory?
LEAD ACTRESS: Barbara Sukowa, Lola
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Armin Mueller-Stahl, Lola
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: why is this one so hard?
SHORT: alas...
SCORE: Williams, Raiders
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Shinsaku Himeda, Eijanaika
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Blind Chance
Music/Sound: This is a Sound one - Das Boot, which gets as much from the sound as the visuals, really thrilling.
Martial Arts: (Added after the fact) - Prodigal Son
1. Blind Chance
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. Eijenaika
4. Lola
5. Francisca
6. Chan is Missing
7. Prodigal Son
8. Possession
9. Gallipoli
10. Das Boot or My Dinner with Andre
1980:
PICTURE: Elephant Man
DIRECTOR: Kurosawa
LEAD ACTOR: John Hurt
LEAD ACTRESS: Susan Sarandon, Atlantic City
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Peter Boyle, Where the Buffalo Roam
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Mary Steenbergen
SHORT: not yet...
SCORE: I think this is the Elephant Man, too...
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Freddie Francis, the Elephant Man
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Let's give this to Airplane!
Music/Sound: I'm inclined to be perverse and name Harry Nilsson for Popeye...
1. The Elephant Man
2. Kegemusha
3. The Big Red One
4. Atlantic City
5. Raging Bull
6. Melvin and Howard
7. Return to the 36th Chamber
8. The Last Metro
9. Airplaine!
10. Heaven's Gate
The Decade:
PICTURE: City of Sadness
DIRECTOR (single film): Hou Hsiao-Hsien, City of Sadness
DIRECTOR (decade): Hou Hsiao-hsien
LEAD ACTOR (single film): John Hurt, Elephant Man
ACTOR (decade): Chow Yun-fat
LEAD ACTRESS (one film): Brigitte Lin, Peking Opera Blues
ACTRESS (decade): Brigitte Lin?
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Dennis Hopper, Blue Velvet
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Isabella Rosselini, Blue Velvet
SHORT: Broken Down Film, Osamu Texuka
SCORE: Angelo Badalamenti, Blue Velvet
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Frederick Elmes, Blue Velvet
Plus bonus picks:
Script: City of Sadness (Chu Tien-wen & Wu Nien-jen)
Music: Stop Making Sense has the best music, I have to say. Something Wild, though, has the best use of a song - though over all, Blue Velvet's use of music is on a very rarified level. That sounds like three different votes, and probably is, since they use three different criteria.
Sound: this, though, I think is Ran
Martial Arts: I think the best martial arts film, as a martial arts film - is Project A part II. {eking Opera Blues is a better film as a film, I think - though not in a landslide - but Jackie Chan's virtues are more tightly bound to the actual stunts and acrobatics than Tsui Hark's...
Documentary: The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On
1. City of Sadness
2. Blue Velvet
3. Elephant Man
4. Fitzcarraldo
5. Sans Soleil
6. Dekalog
7. Peking Opera Blues
8. Do the Right Thing
9. Brazil
10. Blind Chance
11. Dust in the Wind
12. This is Spinal Tap
13. Raiders of the Lost Ark
14. The Emperor's Naked Army Matches On
15. Blade Runner
16. Ran
17. Kegemusha
18. Merry Christmas Mr. Laerence
19. The Big Red One
20. Black Rain
(I just noticed how many of the 80s best films are World War II films: City of Sadness (sort of; begins with the emperor's speech announcing the end of the war), Emperor's Naked Army, Nerry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, the Big Red One, Black Rain - and Come and See, which is as good as anything here; shoot, you can make a case for Raiders of the Lost Ark, too. More than one part of the Dekalog too.)
And By Year:
1989:
A fairly extraordinary year, to end the decade...
PICTURE: City of Sadness
DIRECTOR: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
LEAD ACTOR: Chow Yun-fat (sometimes, you just want a Movie Star)
LEAD ACTRESS: Kati Outinen (if Match Factory Girl is 89...)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jack Nicholson, Batman
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Rosy Perez, Do the Right Thing
SHORT: Creature Comforts
SCORE: Danny Elfman, Batman
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Takashi Kawamata, Black Rain
Plus bonus picks:
Script: This is also City of Sadness, the best film of the 80s, one of the all time greats.
Music/Sound: Leningrad Cowboys Go America? No, not really - Do the Right Thing, in a walk.
Martial Arts: Some nice films to choose from, but Jacky Chan's Capra remake, Miracles, takes the prize.
1. City of Sadness
2. Do the Right Thing
3. Black Rain
4. Johanna D'Arc of Mongolia
5. Mystery Train
6. Miracles - Mr. Canton and Lady Rose
7. The Killer
8. Why Has the Bodhi Darma Left for the East
9. Kiki's Delivery Service
10. Batman
1988:
PICTURE: Dekalog
DIRECTOR: Kieslowski
LEAD ACTOR: Forest Whitaker, Bird
LEAD ACTRESS: Carmen Maura, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Kevin Kline, A Fish Called Wanda
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Michelle Pfeiffer, Dangerous Liaisons
SHORT:
SCORE: Toru Takemitsu, Wuthering Heights
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Junichiro Hayashi, Wuthering Heights
Plus bonus picks:
Script: The Dekalog, collectively, and individually, they'd come close to being the top 10
Music/Sound: Married to the Mob has the Feelies again... Demme's soundtracks are usually as interesting as his films
Martial Arts: I forgot this last week. This is a good year for it though - Dragons Forever is absolutely thrilling
1. Dekalog
2. Dragons Forever
3. Wuthering Heights
4. Rouge
5. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
6. Damnation
7. Family Viewing
8. Chocolat
9. Beetle Juice
10. A Fish Called Wanda
1987:
This is a very strong year. Very strong.
PICTURE: Dust in the Wind
DIRECTOR: Kazuo Hara, Emperor's Naked Army Marches On
LEAD ACTOR: I am tempted to say Kenzo Okuzaki, documentary or not, not least because he is so aware of the camera, and his performance for the camera.
LEAD ACTRESS:
SUPPORTING ACTOR: the choices are overwhelming; Vincent D'Onofrio, though, I suppose has to take it. But Mandy Patinkin, Christopher Guest, Charles Grodin, R. Lee Ermey, etc. - what is there to choose among them?
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Maggie Cheung, Project A II?
SHORT: The Unnameable Little Broom? if that's the right year...
SCORE:
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Dust in the Wind (Ping-bin Lee)
Plus bonus picks:
Script: The Princess Bride
Music/Sound: Ishtar - if you admit that you play the accordion they won't let you play in a rock and roll band.
Documentary: The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On is among the best ever
Martial Arts: (I forgot to add this during the voting, though I'd already started putting them on the ballots - odd, since this is the year the film I think is the best straight martial arts film came out.) Project A Part II
1. Dust in the Wind
2. The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On
3. Full Metal Jacket
4. Project A II
5. Where is the Friend's House?
6. Evil Dead II
7. Raising Arizona
8. The Princess Bride
9. Ishtar
10. Daughter of the Nile
1986:
THere's a lot of good stuff in 86, and of course, one of the films of the decade at the top... It is also pretty much the beginning of the stretch where the Chinese completely took over my film viewing... And world cinema, for that matter.
PICTURE: Blue Velvet
DIRECTOR: David Lynch
LEAD ACTOR: Richard E.Grant, Withnail and I
LEAD ACTRESS: Bridgitte Lin, Peking Opera Blues
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Dennis Hopper
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Isabella Rosselini
SHORT: Rocky VI (though isn't Street of Crocodiles a short? or have I only seen part of it?)
SCORE: Angelo Badalamenti, Blue Velvet
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Frederick Elmes, Blue Velvet
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Blue Velvet
Music/Sound: I thought this one would probably be Assayas' Disorder (New Order and Pere Ubu? not likely to beat that...) - but that was because I had the idea that Something Wild came out in 87. That's got the Feelies - now, while they get in range of Pere Ubu, over all, in any sort of general contest, they do fall short... but in these films: it's Slipping (Into Something) vs. Non-Alignment Pact - great as Non-Alignment Pact is, it's not gonna win that comparison. And add in the Feelies doing Fame, and the Demme film wins, even without looking at the way the music is used in the films. But there - the way Demme scores the big turn in Something Wild to the musical turns in Slipping (into Something) - it's no contest. That's one of the great music/film moments ever.
Martial Arts: Peking Opera Blues
1. Blue Velvet
2. Peking Opera Blues
3. Terroriser
4. Something Wild
5. Down by Law
6. Ferris Bueller's Day off
7. Dream Lovers
8. From Beyond
9. Shadows in Paradise
10. Withnail & I
1985:
This is another very strong year, with obvious greatness and a disproportionate number of films that are rather better than they should be. Being particularly definitive of what might be a minor type of film. Teen comedies and jokey horror and the like, that are hard to compare with the Great Films of All Time, but are still infinitely enjoyable.
PICTURE: Brazil
DIRECTOR: Hou Hsiao-Hsien, A Time to Live, A Time to Die
LEAD ACTOR: Jonathan Pryce
LEAD ACTRESS: Sandrine Bonnaire, Vagabonde
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jeffrey Combs, Re-Animator
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kim Darby, Better off Dead (? - though this is not far off - she is so strange and wonderful...)
SHORT: Broken Down Film, Tezuka, which is one of the best short films ever.
SCORE: Toru Takemitsu, Ran
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda, Asaichi Nakai, Ran
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Taipei Story
Music/Sound: Desperately Seeking Susan takes this prize.
Martial Arts: (Added after the fact - I wasn't voting for them regularly then) Police Story
1. Brazil
2. Ran
3. Come and See
4. A Time to Live, a Time to Die
5. Taipei Story
6. Tampopo
7. Reanimator
8. When Father Was Away on Business
9. Vagabond
10. The Sure Thing
1984:
Oddly underwhelming year, despite the very fine films at the top.
PICTURE: This is Spinal Tap
DIRECTOR: Hou Hsiao Hsien, Summer at Grandpa's
LEAD ACTOR: Philip Baker Hall, Secret Honor
LEAD ACTRESS: Gena Rowlands, Love Streams
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Harry Dean Stanton, Repo Man
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Sigourney Weaver, Ghostbusters (why not? she's funny, she's cool amidst the nonsense, she's game - why not?)
SHORT: Jumping, Osamu Tezuka
SCORE: This is obviously Spinal Tap - not sure why it's not nominated, the songs were written for the movie... or - wait - wasn't the music for Purple Rain original to the movie too? holy crap.
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Zhang Yimou, Yellow Earth
Plus bonus picks:
Script: This is Spinal Tap
Music/Sound: no matter what was original and what wasn't - Prince vs. The Talking Heads offers as great a competition as you could ask.
Martial Arts: (Added after the fact) - Wheels on Meals
1. This is Spinal Tap
2. Twenty-Eight Up
3. Summer at Grandpa's
4. Secret Honor
5. Repo Man
6. Stranger than Paradise
7. Love Streams
8. Ghostbusters
9. The Funeral
10. Stop Making Sense
1983:
PICTURE: San Soleil
DIRECTOR: Chris Marker
LEAD ACTOR: Tom Conti, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
LEAD ACTRESS: Sylvia Chang, That Day on the Beach
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Takeshi Kitano, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Sandra Bernhard, The King of Comedy
SHORT: not yet... (Unless I were to arbitrarily abstract Hou Hsiao Hsien's "Sandwich Man" from the anthology of the same name...)
SCORE: MArk Knopfler, Local Hero
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Kiyoshi Hasegawa, The Makioka Sisters
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Marker again, Sans Soleil
Music/Sound: David Bowie singing Rock of Ages has to get a mention somewhere.
Martial Arts: (Added after the fact) - Project A
1. Sans Soleil
2. Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence
3. The Makioka Sisters
4. L'Argent
5. The Boys of Fengkui
6. That Day on the Beach
7. Zelig
8. Local Hero
9. The Green, Green Grass of Home
10. Project A
1982:
This is the thinnest year for me in a long time - I don't know if the year is that bad (probably not, since what I have seen is quite strong, with a handful of stone classics), but I have seen astonishingly few films from this year.
PICTURE: Fitzcarraldo
DIRECTOR: Herzog
LEAD ACTOR: Klaus Kinski
LEAD ACTRESS: Susan Berman, Smithereens
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Rutger Hauer, Blade Runner
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Karen Black, Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
SHORT: (I might get around to voting this week... gotta hope, lot of good looking stuff on offer...)
SCORE: Vangelis, Blade Runner
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Thomas Mauch, Fitzcarraldo
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Fast Times at Ridgemont High
Music/Sound: Smithereens, with its Feelies songs - can't beat that....
Martial Arts: (Added after the fact) - this is probably Fantasy Mission Force - another reason for the Best Actress of the decade vote - though an odd one.
1. Fitzcarraldo
2. Blade Runner
3. Fanny & Alexander
4. Burden of Dreams
5. Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
6. Chan is Missing
7. Forty Deuce
8. Fast Times at Ridgemont High
9. The Draughtsman's Contract
10. In Our Time
1981:
PICTURE: Blind Chance
DIRECTOR: Oliveira, Francisca
LEAD ACTOR: Andre Gregory?
LEAD ACTRESS: Barbara Sukowa, Lola
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Armin Mueller-Stahl, Lola
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: why is this one so hard?
SHORT: alas...
SCORE: Williams, Raiders
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Shinsaku Himeda, Eijanaika
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Blind Chance
Music/Sound: This is a Sound one - Das Boot, which gets as much from the sound as the visuals, really thrilling.
Martial Arts: (Added after the fact) - Prodigal Son
1. Blind Chance
2. Raiders of the Lost Ark
3. Eijenaika
4. Lola
5. Francisca
6. Chan is Missing
7. Prodigal Son
8. Possession
9. Gallipoli
10. Das Boot or My Dinner with Andre
1980:
PICTURE: Elephant Man
DIRECTOR: Kurosawa
LEAD ACTOR: John Hurt
LEAD ACTRESS: Susan Sarandon, Atlantic City
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Peter Boyle, Where the Buffalo Roam
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Mary Steenbergen
SHORT: not yet...
SCORE: I think this is the Elephant Man, too...
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Freddie Francis, the Elephant Man
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Let's give this to Airplane!
Music/Sound: I'm inclined to be perverse and name Harry Nilsson for Popeye...
1. The Elephant Man
2. Kegemusha
3. The Big Red One
4. Atlantic City
5. Raging Bull
6. Melvin and Howard
7. Return to the 36th Chamber
8. The Last Metro
9. Airplaine!
10. Heaven's Gate
Sunday, March 24, 2013
1970s WITD Poll Votes
The voting at Wonders in the Dark for films of the year is by now half way through the 80s - taken me a terrible amount of time to get around to polishing up my 1970s votes. Well - here they are!
DIRECTOR (Individual): Altman, McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Director (Decade): Altman (closely followed by Herzog and Fassbinder, and Cassavetes - and Rivette, if I were able to see more of his 70s films, I think))
LEAD ACTOR (Film): Warren Beatty, McCabe and Mrs Miller
Actor (Decade): Robert DeNiro
LEAD ACTRESS (Film): Gena Rowlands, A Woman Under the Influence
Actress (Decade): Rowlands (who had a better director to work for.... the answer might, again, be someone like Bulle Ogier, though, if I could see more of the Rivettes)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Sterling Hayden, the Long Goodbye
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ronee Blakely in Nashville
SHORT: Hapax Legomena I: Nostalgia, Hollis Frampton
SCORE: Leonard Cohen, McCabe and Mrs Miller
CINEMATOGRAPHY: McCabe and Mrs Miller again
CINEMATOGRAPHY: while this is a strong decade for photography - Vilmos Szigmond wins out over all - those Altman films are magnificent looking
Script: I think Life of Brian might take the cake here... listing the top 5, though, not to make the top 20 films:
1. The Marriage of Maria Braun
2. Charlie Verrick
3. A New Leaf
4. Doomed Love
5. Chinatown
Music/Sound: Gimme Shelter
Documentary: really strong decade for this - enough so that I have to make another top 5 - 1 is not enough:
1. Grin Without a Cat
2. Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974
3. Hitler: A Film From Germany
4. Gimme Shelter
5. Sayonara CP
Best films:
1. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
2. Celine and Julie Go Boating
3. Aguirre Wrath of God
4. Nashville
5. The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser
6. A Woman Under the Influence
7. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
8. Killer of Sheep
9. The Long Goodbye
10. Camera Buff
11. Saint Jack
12. Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail
13. Life of Brian
14. Erasorhead
15. Vengeance is Mine
16. Mean Streets
17. The Conversation
18. World on a Wire
19. The Godfather
20. Trash
And now by years:
1979:
Much stronger year, to end the decade.
PICTURE: Camara Buff, Kieslowski
DIRECTOR: Herzog, Nosferatu Phantom of the Night
LEAD ACTOR: Ken Ogata, Vengeance is Mine
LEAD ACTRESS: Hanna Schygulla, The Marriage of Maria Braun
SUPPORTING ACTOR: why not Kinski, in Nosferatu (that might be a lead, though, hard to say)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Eva Mattes, Woycek
SHORT: at least for now, video again - Ancient of Days, by Bill Viola
SCORE: Nosferatu, Popol Vuh (assuming it's original)
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Jorg Schmidt-Ritwein, Nosferatu
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Life of Brian
Music/Sound: this one isn't easy - you have a Sex Pistols movie and a Who movie coming released this year - but great as those bands are, neither are up to the level of the Ramones, so Rock and Roll High School wins the prize.
1. Camera Buff
2. St. Jack
3. Life of Brian
4. Vengeance is Mine
5. Marriage of Maria Braun
6. Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night
7. The Tin Drum
8. Apocalypse Now
9. The Third Generation
10. Alien
1978:
PICTURE: Amor de Perdicao (though IMDB has it for 1979 - but you and Harvard have it for 1978, so that's 2 to 1, and that'll do for me... I have mixed feelings about that, since I wanted to vote for Chahine and Alexandria Why? but - on the other hand, 79 is a much stronger year, and de Oliveira wasn't going to win that, so I guess this works out...)
DIRECTOR: Manoel de Oliveira
LEAD ACTOR: Richard Pryor, Blue Collar
LEAD ACTRESS: Jamie Lee Curtis, Halloween (well - it's what sticks in my head after all theze years.)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Yaphet Kotto, Blue Collar
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Linda Manz, Days of Heaven (though since she narrates the damned thing, shouldn't she be the lead?)
SHORT: another post-ponement, though I'm starting early enough, I might be able to get it done this week.
SCORE: Morricone, Days of Heaven
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Nestor Almendros & Haskell Wexler, Days of Heaven
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Another vote for Doomed Love, in all its tangled romantic glory
Music/Sound: I suppose the obvious answer is the Last Waltz (which is also the documentary winner) - but - for one given song, I can't miss the chance to note Earth Wind and Fire's version of Got to Get You Into My Life from that, um, well, you know, Sgt. Pepper film.
1. Doomed Love
2. Alexandria Why?
3. The Cycle
4. Blue Collar
5. The Deer Hunter
6. Drunken Master
7. 36th Chamber of Shaolin
8. The Brinks Job
9. Days of Heaven
10. Snake in the Eagle's Shadow
1977:
PICTURE: Killer of Sheep
DIRECTOR: Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, Hitler...
LEAD ACTOR: Bruno S., Stroscek
LEAD ACTRESS: Shelly Duvall, 3 Women
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Clemens Scheitz, Stroscek
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Eva Mattes, Stroscek
SCORE: Goblin, Suspiria
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Luciano Tovoli, Suspiria
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Stroscek
Music/Sound: Suspiria - it is a grand achievement for the senses...
Documentary: a couple big contenders, though both in the essay form more than the documentary form - Grin Without a Cat probably would win, though Hitler is an astonishing film.
1. Killer of Sheep
2. Eraserhead
3. Grin Without a Cat
4. 3 Women
5. Hitler: A Film from Germany
6. Stroscek
7. Suspiria
8. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
9. Ceddo
10. Annie Hall
1976:
There are Rivettes I've missed, so I don't know how well this vote would hold up, but...
PICTURE: Killing of a Chinese Bookie
DIRECTOR: John Cassavetes
LEAD ACTOR: Robert DeNiro, Taxi Driver
LEAD ACTRESS: Eiko Matsuda, Ai No Corrida
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Timothy Carey, Killing of a Chinese Bookie
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Jodie Foster, Taxi Driver
SHORT: I shall try to come back to this, though I'm tempted just to vote the for the Devo, for its place in history, and, you know, being brilliant.
SCORE: Herrmann, Taxi Driver
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Ballhaus, Taxi Driver
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Music/Sound: this would probably be those Devo films, in any case...
Documentary: Harlan County USA, which has to land high on any list...
1. Killing of a Chinese Bookie
2. Taxi Driver
3. Ai No Corrida
4. Bad News Bears
5. Anatomy of a Relationship
6. Harlan County USA
7. Rocky
8. All the President's Men
9. People of the Wind
10. The Man Who Fell to Earth
1975:
PICTURE: Nashville
DIRECTOR: Robert Altman
LEAD ACTOR: Jack Nicholson, in the Passenger (not just to be perverse - I tend to find Cuckoo's Nest a bit overwrought... here, he is restrained, and the restraint plays well with his essential Jack-ness)
LEAD ACTRESS: Delphine Seyrig
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Henry Gibson, Nashville
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: this is very difficult - it didn't really occur to me before, but all the really good parts in Nashville are for women - the performances are all good, but the men tend not to be so important to the film - with Gibson and Carradine and Keenan Wynn as exceptions - but the women, all of them, are superb, and the film really turns around them. If I have to pick? maybe not for her pure acting, but for her overall performance, and her place in the film - it's Ronee Blakely, all the way.
SHORT: Two Solutions to One Problem
SCORE: Jaws, I'm afraid...
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Luciano Tovoli, The Passenger
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail, obviously
Music/Sound: Nashville
1. Nashville
2. Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail
3. Jeanne Dielman 23 Quai du Commerce 108 Bruxelles
4. The Man Who WOuld be King
5. The Passenger
6. Galileo
7. Smile
8. Salo or 120 Days of Sodom
9. Dersu Urzala
10. I Am a Cat
1974:
PICTURE: Celine and Julie Go Boating
DIRECTOR: Rivette
LEAD ACTOR: Bruno S., Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
LEAD ACTRESS: Gena Rowlands, Woman Under the Influence
SUPPORTING ACTOR: John Huston, Chinatown
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Madeline Kahn, Blazing Saddles
SHORT: we'll have to be back, when the chance arrives...
SCORE: Jerry Goldsmith, Chinatown
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Jorg Schmidt-Ritwein, Kaspar Hauser
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Cassavetes, A Woman Under the Influence
Music/Sound: I'd say Kaspar Hauser - mix of classical, Bruno on the piano, and so on... very nice.
Documentary: another great Kazuo Hara film - Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974
1. Celine and Julie Go Boating
2. Mystery of Kaspar Hauser
3. A Woman Under the Influence
4. The Conversation
5. Out 1: Spectre
6. Chinatown
7. Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974
8. Godfather II
9. Fear Eats the Soul
10. The Circumstance
1973:
PICTURE: The Long Goodbye
DIRECTOR: Fassbinder, World on a Wire
LEAD ACTOR: Robert Mitchum, Friends of Eddie Coyle
LEAD ACTRESS: Sissy Spacek, Dablands
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Sterling Hayden, The Long Goodbye, though it's hard to pass by De Niro
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ana Torrent, Spirit of the Beehive
SHORT: not really being qualified to vote on these, I'll vote for another great piece of video art - Nam June Paik's Global Groove
SCORE: John Williams, The Long Goodbye
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Vilmos Szigmond, The Long Goodbye
Plus bonus picks:
Script: I need a vote for Charley Varrick in here somewhere, and this makes a good spot for it
Music/Sound: Mean Streets
Best Quotation in another film or other medium: Tarantino's recycling the "pair of pliers and a blowtorch" line from Charley Varrick is a strong contender, but I have to vote for "if the devil comes, we'll shoot him with a gun" from Pere Ubu's Laughing (by way of Badlands).
1. Long Goodbye
2. Mean Streets
3. World on a Wire
4. Badlands
5. Charley Varrick
6. Spirit of the Beehive
7. The Mother and the Whore
8. Don't Look Now
9. Sleepers
10. The Wanderers
1972:
PICTURE: Aguirre Wrath of God
DIRECTOR: Werner Herzog
LEAD ACTOR: Klaus Kinski
LEAD ACTRESS: Liza Minelli, Cabaret
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Joel Gray, Cabaret
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Hanna Schygulla
SHORT: Vertical Roll (video art by Joan Jonas)
SCORE: Popul Vuh, Aguirre
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Thomas Mauch, Aguirre
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Love in the Afternoon. Rohmer
Music/Sound: probably Cabaret.
Documentary: Sayonara CP, by the inimitable Kazuo Hara
1. Aguirre Wrath of God
2. The Godfather
3. Sayonara CP
4. Solaris
5. Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
6. Fat City
7. Pink Flamingos
8. Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean
9. The Heartbreak Kid
10. Fourteen Amazons
1971:
A good year, but totally dominated by its best film. (Though that's partly because I've only seen the later, shorter, version of Out 1.)
PICTURE: McCabe and Mrs. Miller
DIRECTOR: Robert Altman
LEAD ACTOR: Warren Beatty
LEAD ACTRESS: Julie Christie
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Warren Oates
SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
SHORT: Hapax Legomena I: Nostalgia, Hollis Frampton
SCORE: Leonard Cohen, McCabe
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Vilmos Szigmond, McCabe
Plus bonus picks:
Script: A New Leaf, Elaine May
Documentary: Land of Silence and Darkness, Herzog
1. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
2. The Ceremony
3. Two Lane Blacktop
4. Land of Silence and Darkness
5. Walkabout
6. Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
7. Get Carter
8. A New Leaf
9. Harold and Maude
10. Minnie and Moskowitz
1970:
PICTURE: Trash
DIRECTOR: Oshima, for The Man Who Put His Will on Film
LEAD ACTOR: Joe D'Alessandro, Trash
LEAD ACTRESS: Julie Christie, Go-Betweens
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Elliot Gould, MASH
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Holly Woodlawn, Trash
SHORT: I don't know if it's a vote, but I'll say Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty...
SCORE: Toro Takemitsu, Dodes'ka-den
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Vittorio Storaro, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Pinter, for the Go-Betweens
Music/Sound: Gimme Shelter, which is also the best documentary of the year.
1. Trash
2. The Wild Child
3. The Man Who Left His Will on Film
4. The Conformist
5. Gimme Shelter
6. The Go Between
7. Dodeskaden
8. Zabriskie Point
9. Bed and Board
10. Claire's Knees
DIRECTOR (Individual): Altman, McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Director (Decade): Altman (closely followed by Herzog and Fassbinder, and Cassavetes - and Rivette, if I were able to see more of his 70s films, I think))
LEAD ACTOR (Film): Warren Beatty, McCabe and Mrs Miller
Actor (Decade): Robert DeNiro
LEAD ACTRESS (Film): Gena Rowlands, A Woman Under the Influence
Actress (Decade): Rowlands (who had a better director to work for.... the answer might, again, be someone like Bulle Ogier, though, if I could see more of the Rivettes)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Sterling Hayden, the Long Goodbye
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ronee Blakely in Nashville
SHORT: Hapax Legomena I: Nostalgia, Hollis Frampton
SCORE: Leonard Cohen, McCabe and Mrs Miller
CINEMATOGRAPHY: McCabe and Mrs Miller again
CINEMATOGRAPHY: while this is a strong decade for photography - Vilmos Szigmond wins out over all - those Altman films are magnificent looking
Script: I think Life of Brian might take the cake here... listing the top 5, though, not to make the top 20 films:
1. The Marriage of Maria Braun
2. Charlie Verrick
3. A New Leaf
4. Doomed Love
5. Chinatown
Music/Sound: Gimme Shelter
Documentary: really strong decade for this - enough so that I have to make another top 5 - 1 is not enough:
1. Grin Without a Cat
2. Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974
3. Hitler: A Film From Germany
4. Gimme Shelter
5. Sayonara CP
Best films:
1. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
2. Celine and Julie Go Boating
3. Aguirre Wrath of God
4. Nashville
5. The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser
6. A Woman Under the Influence
7. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie
8. Killer of Sheep
9. The Long Goodbye
10. Camera Buff
11. Saint Jack
12. Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail
13. Life of Brian
14. Erasorhead
15. Vengeance is Mine
16. Mean Streets
17. The Conversation
18. World on a Wire
19. The Godfather
20. Trash
And now by years:
1979:
Much stronger year, to end the decade.
PICTURE: Camara Buff, Kieslowski
DIRECTOR: Herzog, Nosferatu Phantom of the Night
LEAD ACTOR: Ken Ogata, Vengeance is Mine
LEAD ACTRESS: Hanna Schygulla, The Marriage of Maria Braun
SUPPORTING ACTOR: why not Kinski, in Nosferatu (that might be a lead, though, hard to say)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Eva Mattes, Woycek
SHORT: at least for now, video again - Ancient of Days, by Bill Viola
SCORE: Nosferatu, Popol Vuh (assuming it's original)
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Jorg Schmidt-Ritwein, Nosferatu
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Life of Brian
Music/Sound: this one isn't easy - you have a Sex Pistols movie and a Who movie coming released this year - but great as those bands are, neither are up to the level of the Ramones, so Rock and Roll High School wins the prize.
1. Camera Buff
2. St. Jack
3. Life of Brian
4. Vengeance is Mine
5. Marriage of Maria Braun
6. Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night
7. The Tin Drum
8. Apocalypse Now
9. The Third Generation
10. Alien
1978:
PICTURE: Amor de Perdicao (though IMDB has it for 1979 - but you and Harvard have it for 1978, so that's 2 to 1, and that'll do for me... I have mixed feelings about that, since I wanted to vote for Chahine and Alexandria Why? but - on the other hand, 79 is a much stronger year, and de Oliveira wasn't going to win that, so I guess this works out...)
DIRECTOR: Manoel de Oliveira
LEAD ACTOR: Richard Pryor, Blue Collar
LEAD ACTRESS: Jamie Lee Curtis, Halloween (well - it's what sticks in my head after all theze years.)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Yaphet Kotto, Blue Collar
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Linda Manz, Days of Heaven (though since she narrates the damned thing, shouldn't she be the lead?)
SHORT: another post-ponement, though I'm starting early enough, I might be able to get it done this week.
SCORE: Morricone, Days of Heaven
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Nestor Almendros & Haskell Wexler, Days of Heaven
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Another vote for Doomed Love, in all its tangled romantic glory
Music/Sound: I suppose the obvious answer is the Last Waltz (which is also the documentary winner) - but - for one given song, I can't miss the chance to note Earth Wind and Fire's version of Got to Get You Into My Life from that, um, well, you know, Sgt. Pepper film.
1. Doomed Love
2. Alexandria Why?
3. The Cycle
4. Blue Collar
5. The Deer Hunter
6. Drunken Master
7. 36th Chamber of Shaolin
8. The Brinks Job
9. Days of Heaven
10. Snake in the Eagle's Shadow
1977:
PICTURE: Killer of Sheep
DIRECTOR: Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, Hitler...
LEAD ACTOR: Bruno S., Stroscek
LEAD ACTRESS: Shelly Duvall, 3 Women
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Clemens Scheitz, Stroscek
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Eva Mattes, Stroscek
SCORE: Goblin, Suspiria
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Luciano Tovoli, Suspiria
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Stroscek
Music/Sound: Suspiria - it is a grand achievement for the senses...
Documentary: a couple big contenders, though both in the essay form more than the documentary form - Grin Without a Cat probably would win, though Hitler is an astonishing film.
1. Killer of Sheep
2. Eraserhead
3. Grin Without a Cat
4. 3 Women
5. Hitler: A Film from Germany
6. Stroscek
7. Suspiria
8. Close Encounters of the Third Kind
9. Ceddo
10. Annie Hall
1976:
There are Rivettes I've missed, so I don't know how well this vote would hold up, but...
PICTURE: Killing of a Chinese Bookie
DIRECTOR: John Cassavetes
LEAD ACTOR: Robert DeNiro, Taxi Driver
LEAD ACTRESS: Eiko Matsuda, Ai No Corrida
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Timothy Carey, Killing of a Chinese Bookie
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Jodie Foster, Taxi Driver
SHORT: I shall try to come back to this, though I'm tempted just to vote the for the Devo, for its place in history, and, you know, being brilliant.
SCORE: Herrmann, Taxi Driver
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Ballhaus, Taxi Driver
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Killing of a Chinese Bookie
Music/Sound: this would probably be those Devo films, in any case...
Documentary: Harlan County USA, which has to land high on any list...
1. Killing of a Chinese Bookie
2. Taxi Driver
3. Ai No Corrida
4. Bad News Bears
5. Anatomy of a Relationship
6. Harlan County USA
7. Rocky
8. All the President's Men
9. People of the Wind
10. The Man Who Fell to Earth
1975:
PICTURE: Nashville
DIRECTOR: Robert Altman
LEAD ACTOR: Jack Nicholson, in the Passenger (not just to be perverse - I tend to find Cuckoo's Nest a bit overwrought... here, he is restrained, and the restraint plays well with his essential Jack-ness)
LEAD ACTRESS: Delphine Seyrig
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Henry Gibson, Nashville
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: this is very difficult - it didn't really occur to me before, but all the really good parts in Nashville are for women - the performances are all good, but the men tend not to be so important to the film - with Gibson and Carradine and Keenan Wynn as exceptions - but the women, all of them, are superb, and the film really turns around them. If I have to pick? maybe not for her pure acting, but for her overall performance, and her place in the film - it's Ronee Blakely, all the way.
SHORT: Two Solutions to One Problem
SCORE: Jaws, I'm afraid...
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Luciano Tovoli, The Passenger
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail, obviously
Music/Sound: Nashville
1. Nashville
2. Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail
3. Jeanne Dielman 23 Quai du Commerce 108 Bruxelles
4. The Man Who WOuld be King
5. The Passenger
6. Galileo
7. Smile
8. Salo or 120 Days of Sodom
9. Dersu Urzala
10. I Am a Cat
1974:
PICTURE: Celine and Julie Go Boating
DIRECTOR: Rivette
LEAD ACTOR: Bruno S., Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
LEAD ACTRESS: Gena Rowlands, Woman Under the Influence
SUPPORTING ACTOR: John Huston, Chinatown
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Madeline Kahn, Blazing Saddles
SHORT: we'll have to be back, when the chance arrives...
SCORE: Jerry Goldsmith, Chinatown
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Jorg Schmidt-Ritwein, Kaspar Hauser
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Cassavetes, A Woman Under the Influence
Music/Sound: I'd say Kaspar Hauser - mix of classical, Bruno on the piano, and so on... very nice.
Documentary: another great Kazuo Hara film - Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974
1. Celine and Julie Go Boating
2. Mystery of Kaspar Hauser
3. A Woman Under the Influence
4. The Conversation
5. Out 1: Spectre
6. Chinatown
7. Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974
8. Godfather II
9. Fear Eats the Soul
10. The Circumstance
1973:
PICTURE: The Long Goodbye
DIRECTOR: Fassbinder, World on a Wire
LEAD ACTOR: Robert Mitchum, Friends of Eddie Coyle
LEAD ACTRESS: Sissy Spacek, Dablands
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Sterling Hayden, The Long Goodbye, though it's hard to pass by De Niro
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ana Torrent, Spirit of the Beehive
SHORT: not really being qualified to vote on these, I'll vote for another great piece of video art - Nam June Paik's Global Groove
SCORE: John Williams, The Long Goodbye
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Vilmos Szigmond, The Long Goodbye
Plus bonus picks:
Script: I need a vote for Charley Varrick in here somewhere, and this makes a good spot for it
Music/Sound: Mean Streets
Best Quotation in another film or other medium: Tarantino's recycling the "pair of pliers and a blowtorch" line from Charley Varrick is a strong contender, but I have to vote for "if the devil comes, we'll shoot him with a gun" from Pere Ubu's Laughing (by way of Badlands).
1. Long Goodbye
2. Mean Streets
3. World on a Wire
4. Badlands
5. Charley Varrick
6. Spirit of the Beehive
7. The Mother and the Whore
8. Don't Look Now
9. Sleepers
10. The Wanderers
1972:
PICTURE: Aguirre Wrath of God
DIRECTOR: Werner Herzog
LEAD ACTOR: Klaus Kinski
LEAD ACTRESS: Liza Minelli, Cabaret
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Joel Gray, Cabaret
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Hanna Schygulla
SHORT: Vertical Roll (video art by Joan Jonas)
SCORE: Popul Vuh, Aguirre
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Thomas Mauch, Aguirre
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Love in the Afternoon. Rohmer
Music/Sound: probably Cabaret.
Documentary: Sayonara CP, by the inimitable Kazuo Hara
1. Aguirre Wrath of God
2. The Godfather
3. Sayonara CP
4. Solaris
5. Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
6. Fat City
7. Pink Flamingos
8. Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean
9. The Heartbreak Kid
10. Fourteen Amazons
1971:
A good year, but totally dominated by its best film. (Though that's partly because I've only seen the later, shorter, version of Out 1.)
PICTURE: McCabe and Mrs. Miller
DIRECTOR: Robert Altman
LEAD ACTOR: Warren Beatty
LEAD ACTRESS: Julie Christie
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Warren Oates
SUPPORTING ACTRESS:
SHORT: Hapax Legomena I: Nostalgia, Hollis Frampton
SCORE: Leonard Cohen, McCabe
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Vilmos Szigmond, McCabe
Plus bonus picks:
Script: A New Leaf, Elaine May
Documentary: Land of Silence and Darkness, Herzog
1. McCabe and Mrs. Miller
2. The Ceremony
3. Two Lane Blacktop
4. Land of Silence and Darkness
5. Walkabout
6. Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
7. Get Carter
8. A New Leaf
9. Harold and Maude
10. Minnie and Moskowitz
1970:
PICTURE: Trash
DIRECTOR: Oshima, for The Man Who Put His Will on Film
LEAD ACTOR: Joe D'Alessandro, Trash
LEAD ACTRESS: Julie Christie, Go-Betweens
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Elliot Gould, MASH
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Holly Woodlawn, Trash
SHORT: I don't know if it's a vote, but I'll say Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty...
SCORE: Toro Takemitsu, Dodes'ka-den
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Vittorio Storaro, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Pinter, for the Go-Betweens
Music/Sound: Gimme Shelter, which is also the best documentary of the year.
1. Trash
2. The Wild Child
3. The Man Who Left His Will on Film
4. The Conformist
5. Gimme Shelter
6. The Go Between
7. Dodeskaden
8. Zabriskie Point
9. Bed and Board
10. Claire's Knees
Wednesday, January 09, 2013
1960s WITD Poll Votes
In the continuing yearly polls at Wonders in the Dark, they have reached the 70s - so it's time for me to post my votes for the 60s. This is - along with the 1930s and 1950s - one of the great decades, and one that featured the high point of a few of my all time favorite directors. Godard and Imamura in particular - both of them did work in the 60s that should count among the best decades of work in film history - up there with Kurosawa in the 50s or Keaton in the 20s, Capra in the 30s, almost up there with Ozu in the 30s or the 50s.... They were hardly alone - Oshima and Truffaut and Bresson and Suzuki and Pasolini and Olmi are all superb, Rivette and Rohmer got started - it's a blessed time for films.
The Decade:
PICTURE: The Pornographers
DIRECTOR (single film): Imamura, for The Pornographers
DIRECTOR (decade): Godard - for the sheer productivity - at an almost unmatched level. Imamura holds his own, but Godard made more films.
LEAD ACTOR (film): Toshiro Mifune, in High and Low
LEAD ACTOR (decade): Tatsuya Nakadai - who is in so many great films through the 60s... there's a good deal of competition - though the 60s strike me as a bit of an auteurist decade - at least the films I like the most depend much more on their directors than the actors.
LEAD ACTRESS (film): Hideko Takemine, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
LEAD ACTRESS (decade): Anna Karina
SUPPORTING ACTOR (film): Tsutomo Yamazaki, High and Low
SUPPORTING ACTRESS (film): Angela Lansbury, Manchurian Candidate
SHORT: The poll itself I think counted TV - which would get the likes of the Charlie Brown Christmas and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas on the ballot. That seems a bit off, though. Sticking to actual films, leaves Chris Marker's La Jetee as the clear winner.
SCORE (film): Ennio Morricone, for The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
SCORE (decade): This is tough - Morricone and others hang around, but for me it comes down to a death match between two Japanese composers - Toru Takemitsu and Toshiro Mayazumi. And though Takemitsu turns up on more films, and gets more attention - I think I have to go with Mayazumi, who is an integral part of all those magnificent Imamura films.
CINEMATOGRAPHY (film): Shinsaku Himeda, The Pornographers - which might be the most eye-popping film I have ever seen.
CINEMATOGRAPHY (decade): Shinsaku Himeda, easily. Coutard's work is also astonishing, and there are a lot of great looking films in the world in the 60s - but those Imamura films are just transcendent. There's a reason for the fish on the banner on this page...
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Dr. Strangelove stands tall.... I'll add the five best not to make the top 20:
1. Lolita
2. The Producers
3. One Fine Day
4. The Servant
5. Night and Fog in Japan
Documentary: A Man Vanishes
Music/Sound: This has to be A Hard Day's Night
1. The Pornographers
2. Pierrot le Fou
3. Vivre Sa Vie
4. Playtime
5. High and Low
6. The Gospel According to St. Matthew
7. The Insect Woman
8. Breathless
9. Pigs and Battleships
10. Intentions of Murder
11. Dr. Strangelove
12. Alphaville
13. Mouchette
14. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
15. The Sun's Burial
16. A Man Vanishes
17. A Touch of Zen
18. A Hard Days Night
19. L'Amour Fou
20. Two or Three Things I Know About Her
1969:
Template:
PICTURE: A Touch of Zen
DIRECTOR: Rivette, L'Amour Fou
LEAD ACTOR: Rip Torn, Coming Apart
LEAD ACTRESS: Bulle Ogier, L'Amour Fou
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Tetsuo Abe, Boy
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Akiko Koyama, Boy
SHORT: Not sure; might come back to vote...
SCORE: Toru Takemitsu, for Double Suicide
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Motokichi Hasegawa, Eros + Massacre
Plus bonus picks:
Script: I want to plug Un Certo Giorno, a very fine film by Ermanno Olmi; he seems to slip under the radar, and I wish he didn't.
Music/Sound: I'm going to pick La Lit de la Vierge, Philippe Garrel's Jesus film, with it's Euro-rock and Nico
1. Touch of Zen
2. L'Amour Fou
3. Boy
4. One Fine Day (Olmi)
5. Z
6. Th eSorrow and the Pity
7. Eros + Massacre
8. Antonio das Muertes
9. My Night at Maud's
10. The Cow
1968:
PICTURE: Faces
DIRECTOR: Oshima
LEAD ACTOR: I'm going with Zero Mostel, I think; comedy deserves credit.
LEAD ACTRESS: Mia Farrow
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Seymour Cassel (though I'm tempted to say Keith Richards, who knows how to dominate a room, even a room with Mick Jagger in it, without ever seeming to notice the camera - more than anyone will ever say of Mick...)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ruth Gordon
SHORT: Saute ma Ville, Chantelle Akerman's debut
SCORE: Morricone - though which one? there are like five to choose from... Once Upon a Time in the West, I suppose, is the best choice...
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Sven Nykvist, Shame
Plus bonus picks::
Script: The Producers
Music/Sound: One Plus One, pretty obviously. Not that there isn't plenty of competition, but how do you improve on watching Sympathy for the Devil take form?
1. Faces
2. The Producers
3. Death by Hanging
4. Teorema
5. Planet of the Apes
6. Stolen Kisses
7. Rosemary's Baby
8. The Smugglers
9. 2001: A Space Odyssey
10. Shame
1967
PICTURE: Playtime
DIRECTOR: Tati
LEAD ACTOR: Lee Marvin, Point Blank
LEAD ACTRESS: Catherine Deneuve, Belle du Jour
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Gene Hackman, Bonnie and Clyde
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Katharine Ross, The Graduate
SHORT: not yet...
SCORE: Toru Takemitsu, Samurai Rebellion
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Tamas Samlo, The Red and the White
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Accident
Music/Sound: Don't Look Back - but not documentary
Documentary: A Man Vanishes - one fo the great docs ever, if it is, in fact, a documentary
1. Playtime
2. Mouchette
3. A Man Vanishes
4. Two or Three Things I know About Her
5. The Red and the White
6. Week End
7. Titicut Follies
8. Branded to Kill
9. Don't Look Back
10. Point Blank
1966
PICTURE: The Pornographers
DIRECTOR: Shohei Imamura
LEAD ACTOR: Eli Wallach, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
LEAD ACTRESS: Anna Karina, La Religieuse
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jack Nicholson, The Shooting
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Charlotte Rampling, Georgy Girl
SHORT: I think Hold Me While I'm Naked would get my vote
SCORE: Ennio Morricone, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (though it's tempting to load up on the Pornographers even more with another great Mayazumi score.)
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Shinsaku Himeda, The Pornographers
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Luc Moullet, for Bridgitte and Bridgitte
Music/Sound: a good spot to note the Velvet Underground movie...
1. Pornographers
2. Chelsea Girls
3. Masculine Feminine
4. Persona
5. Blow Up
6. Fighting Elegy
7. Tokyo Drifter
8. Violence at Noon
9. The Good the Bad and the Ugly
10. Yesterday Girl
1965:
I am surprised that this year, all the films I'm inclined to vote for, I haven't seen for - 10 years or more. The Godards excepted. It's strange, and makes it difficult.
PICTURE: Pierrot le Fou
DIRECTOR: Godard, Pierrot le Fou
LEAD ACTOR: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Pierrot le Fou
LEAD ACTRESS: Julie Christie, Darling
SUPPORTING ACTOR: John Gielgud, Chimes
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kyoko Kagawa, Red Beard
SHORT: Well, if it's eligible, obviously, A Charlie Brown Christmas.
SCORE: I'll go with Vince Guaraldi
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Raoul Coutard - but which one? I think Alphaville...
Plus bonus picks:
Script: I'll say, The Golden Thread, Ritwak Ghatak
Music/Sound: Pierrot le Fou, I think...
1. Pierrot le Fou
2. Alphaville
3. Subara Nekha
4. Tokyo Olympiad
5. Story of a Prostitute
6. Ride the Whirlwind
7. Vinyl
8. Red Beard
9. Simon of the Desert
10. It Happened Here
1964:
This is an interesting year; certainly some stone classics, in the running for best X of all time (script, adaptation, etc.)... Another almost arbitrary choice between the top two, which I've ended up splitting between film and director...
PICTURE: Gospel According to St. Matthew - I think this might well be the lest literary adaptation ever made. Contends with The Maltese Falcon, for many of the same reasons - a kind of explicit faithfulness to the text, but controlled in a way that uses film's resources... really great.
DIRECTOR: Imamura, Intentions of Murder
LEAD ACTOR: Peter Sellers, Dr. Strangelove
LEAD ACTRESS: Catherine Deneuve
SUPPORTING ACTOR: this is a very difficult choice, since both are superb, but great in different ways... I am going to give the nod to Sterling Hayden over George C Scott, though not by much...
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Jitsuko Yoshimura, Onibaba
SHORT: Scorpio Rising
SCORE: It's a Toro Takemitsu year - I think Kwaidan is the winner
CINEMATOGRAPHY: much competition, but I'll go with Urevsevski
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Dr. Strangelove - in some moods - most moods - I think this is the best script ever written...
Music: We have to revive this category to accommodate those four sweet boys from Liverpool... we are, of course, moving into the era of the use of pre-existing recordings for films, with Kenneth Anger's offering leading the way...
1. Gospel According to Matthew
2. Intentions of Murder
3. Dr. Strangelove
4. I Am Cuba
5. Umbrellas of Cherbourg
6. Charulata
7. Trial of Joan of Arc
8. Kwaidan
9. The Woman in the Dunes
10. Three Outlaw Samurai
1963:
PICTURE: High and Low
DIRECTOR: Shohei Imamura, Insect Woman
LEAD ACTOR: Mifune, High and Low
LEAD ACTRESS: Sachiko Hidari, Insect Woman
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Tsutomo Yamazaki, High and Low
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Sarah Miles, The Servant
SHORT: Yes, I'd say The House is Black is it...
SCORE: Georges Delerue, Le Mepris
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Coutard, Le Mepris
Plus bonus picks:
Script: I'll go with Pinter and the Servant here,
Song: The Pink Panther theme has to be here somewhere, though I think the Contempt score is better overall...
1. High and Low
2. The Insect Woman
3. Youth of the Beast
4. The Servant
5. Contempt
6. An Actor's Revenge
7. The Fiances
8. The Leopard
9. The Courtship of Eddie's Father
10. Feu Follet
1962:
PICTURE: Vivre sa Vie
DIRECTOR: Godard
LEAD ACTOR: James Mason, Lolita
LEAD ACTRESS: Anna Karina vs. Hideko Takamine vs Corinne Marchand - but I think Takamine takes it for Wanderer's Notebook....
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Peter Sellers, Lolita
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Angela Lansbury, Manchurian Candidate
SHORT: La Jetee
SCORE: Hikaru Hayashi, Akitsu Springs - probably not the best music in a film, but the use of music is extraordinary - it comes back to me now, that moment when the tone shifts (repeated over and over...)
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Frederick Young, Lawrence of Arabia
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Cleo from 5 to 7
1. Vivre Sa Vie
2. Cleo from 5 to 7
3. Lolita
4. Autumn Afternoon
5. L'Eclisse
6. Lawrence of Arabia
7. The Manchurian Candidate
8. Ivan's Childhood
9. The Wanderer's Notebook
10. Sanjuro
1961:
PICTURE: Pigs and Battleships
DIRECTOR: Imamura
LEAD ACTOR: Mifune, Yojimbo
LEAD ACTRESS: Harriet Anderson, Through a Glass Darkly
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Scott or Clift
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Rita Moreno, West Side Story
SHORT: Very Nice, Very Nice
SCORE: Toshiro Mayazumi, Pigs and Battleships
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Shinsaku Himeda, Pigs and Battleships
Plus bonus picks::
Script:
1. Pigs and Battleships
2. Yojimbo
3. Paris Belongs to Us
4. West Side Story
5. Viridiana
6. Il Posto
7. Human Condition III: A Soldiers Prayer
8. Alenka
9. E-Flat (Kormal Ghandhar)
10. Two Daughters
1960:
(This year just keeps going...)
PICTURE: Breathless
DIRECTOR: Godard
LEAD ACTOR: Belmondo
LEAD ACTRESS: Takamine, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Fred MacMurray, The Apartment
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Janet Leigh, Psycho
SHORT: High Note
SCORE: Psycho
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Coutard, Breathless
Plus bonus picks:
Script: When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
1. Breathless
2. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
3. The Sun's Burial
4. Shoot the Piano Player
5. Psycho
6. Home from the Hill
7. L'Aventura
8. Night and Fog in Japan
9. The Apartment
10. Cloud Tipped Star
The Decade:
PICTURE: The Pornographers
DIRECTOR (single film): Imamura, for The Pornographers
DIRECTOR (decade): Godard - for the sheer productivity - at an almost unmatched level. Imamura holds his own, but Godard made more films.
LEAD ACTOR (film): Toshiro Mifune, in High and Low
LEAD ACTOR (decade): Tatsuya Nakadai - who is in so many great films through the 60s... there's a good deal of competition - though the 60s strike me as a bit of an auteurist decade - at least the films I like the most depend much more on their directors than the actors.
LEAD ACTRESS (film): Hideko Takemine, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
LEAD ACTRESS (decade): Anna Karina
SUPPORTING ACTOR (film): Tsutomo Yamazaki, High and Low
SUPPORTING ACTRESS (film): Angela Lansbury, Manchurian Candidate
SHORT: The poll itself I think counted TV - which would get the likes of the Charlie Brown Christmas and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas on the ballot. That seems a bit off, though. Sticking to actual films, leaves Chris Marker's La Jetee as the clear winner.
SCORE (film): Ennio Morricone, for The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
SCORE (decade): This is tough - Morricone and others hang around, but for me it comes down to a death match between two Japanese composers - Toru Takemitsu and Toshiro Mayazumi. And though Takemitsu turns up on more films, and gets more attention - I think I have to go with Mayazumi, who is an integral part of all those magnificent Imamura films.
CINEMATOGRAPHY (film): Shinsaku Himeda, The Pornographers - which might be the most eye-popping film I have ever seen.
CINEMATOGRAPHY (decade): Shinsaku Himeda, easily. Coutard's work is also astonishing, and there are a lot of great looking films in the world in the 60s - but those Imamura films are just transcendent. There's a reason for the fish on the banner on this page...
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Dr. Strangelove stands tall.... I'll add the five best not to make the top 20:
1. Lolita
2. The Producers
3. One Fine Day
4. The Servant
5. Night and Fog in Japan
Documentary: A Man Vanishes
Music/Sound: This has to be A Hard Day's Night
1. The Pornographers
2. Pierrot le Fou
3. Vivre Sa Vie
4. Playtime
5. High and Low
6. The Gospel According to St. Matthew
7. The Insect Woman
8. Breathless
9. Pigs and Battleships
10. Intentions of Murder
11. Dr. Strangelove
12. Alphaville
13. Mouchette
14. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
15. The Sun's Burial
16. A Man Vanishes
17. A Touch of Zen
18. A Hard Days Night
19. L'Amour Fou
20. Two or Three Things I Know About Her
1969:
Template:
PICTURE: A Touch of Zen
DIRECTOR: Rivette, L'Amour Fou
LEAD ACTOR: Rip Torn, Coming Apart
LEAD ACTRESS: Bulle Ogier, L'Amour Fou
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Tetsuo Abe, Boy
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Akiko Koyama, Boy
SHORT: Not sure; might come back to vote...
SCORE: Toru Takemitsu, for Double Suicide
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Motokichi Hasegawa, Eros + Massacre
Plus bonus picks:
Script: I want to plug Un Certo Giorno, a very fine film by Ermanno Olmi; he seems to slip under the radar, and I wish he didn't.
Music/Sound: I'm going to pick La Lit de la Vierge, Philippe Garrel's Jesus film, with it's Euro-rock and Nico
1. Touch of Zen
2. L'Amour Fou
3. Boy
4. One Fine Day (Olmi)
5. Z
6. Th eSorrow and the Pity
7. Eros + Massacre
8. Antonio das Muertes
9. My Night at Maud's
10. The Cow
1968:
PICTURE: Faces
DIRECTOR: Oshima
LEAD ACTOR: I'm going with Zero Mostel, I think; comedy deserves credit.
LEAD ACTRESS: Mia Farrow
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Seymour Cassel (though I'm tempted to say Keith Richards, who knows how to dominate a room, even a room with Mick Jagger in it, without ever seeming to notice the camera - more than anyone will ever say of Mick...)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ruth Gordon
SHORT: Saute ma Ville, Chantelle Akerman's debut
SCORE: Morricone - though which one? there are like five to choose from... Once Upon a Time in the West, I suppose, is the best choice...
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Sven Nykvist, Shame
Plus bonus picks::
Script: The Producers
Music/Sound: One Plus One, pretty obviously. Not that there isn't plenty of competition, but how do you improve on watching Sympathy for the Devil take form?
1. Faces
2. The Producers
3. Death by Hanging
4. Teorema
5. Planet of the Apes
6. Stolen Kisses
7. Rosemary's Baby
8. The Smugglers
9. 2001: A Space Odyssey
10. Shame
1967
PICTURE: Playtime
DIRECTOR: Tati
LEAD ACTOR: Lee Marvin, Point Blank
LEAD ACTRESS: Catherine Deneuve, Belle du Jour
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Gene Hackman, Bonnie and Clyde
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Katharine Ross, The Graduate
SHORT: not yet...
SCORE: Toru Takemitsu, Samurai Rebellion
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Tamas Samlo, The Red and the White
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Accident
Music/Sound: Don't Look Back - but not documentary
Documentary: A Man Vanishes - one fo the great docs ever, if it is, in fact, a documentary
1. Playtime
2. Mouchette
3. A Man Vanishes
4. Two or Three Things I know About Her
5. The Red and the White
6. Week End
7. Titicut Follies
8. Branded to Kill
9. Don't Look Back
10. Point Blank
1966
PICTURE: The Pornographers
DIRECTOR: Shohei Imamura
LEAD ACTOR: Eli Wallach, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
LEAD ACTRESS: Anna Karina, La Religieuse
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Jack Nicholson, The Shooting
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Charlotte Rampling, Georgy Girl
SHORT: I think Hold Me While I'm Naked would get my vote
SCORE: Ennio Morricone, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (though it's tempting to load up on the Pornographers even more with another great Mayazumi score.)
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Shinsaku Himeda, The Pornographers
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Luc Moullet, for Bridgitte and Bridgitte
Music/Sound: a good spot to note the Velvet Underground movie...
1. Pornographers
2. Chelsea Girls
3. Masculine Feminine
4. Persona
5. Blow Up
6. Fighting Elegy
7. Tokyo Drifter
8. Violence at Noon
9. The Good the Bad and the Ugly
10. Yesterday Girl
1965:
I am surprised that this year, all the films I'm inclined to vote for, I haven't seen for - 10 years or more. The Godards excepted. It's strange, and makes it difficult.
PICTURE: Pierrot le Fou
DIRECTOR: Godard, Pierrot le Fou
LEAD ACTOR: Jean-Paul Belmondo, Pierrot le Fou
LEAD ACTRESS: Julie Christie, Darling
SUPPORTING ACTOR: John Gielgud, Chimes
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kyoko Kagawa, Red Beard
SHORT: Well, if it's eligible, obviously, A Charlie Brown Christmas.
SCORE: I'll go with Vince Guaraldi
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Raoul Coutard - but which one? I think Alphaville...
Plus bonus picks:
Script: I'll say, The Golden Thread, Ritwak Ghatak
Music/Sound: Pierrot le Fou, I think...
1. Pierrot le Fou
2. Alphaville
3. Subara Nekha
4. Tokyo Olympiad
5. Story of a Prostitute
6. Ride the Whirlwind
7. Vinyl
8. Red Beard
9. Simon of the Desert
10. It Happened Here
1964:
This is an interesting year; certainly some stone classics, in the running for best X of all time (script, adaptation, etc.)... Another almost arbitrary choice between the top two, which I've ended up splitting between film and director...
PICTURE: Gospel According to St. Matthew - I think this might well be the lest literary adaptation ever made. Contends with The Maltese Falcon, for many of the same reasons - a kind of explicit faithfulness to the text, but controlled in a way that uses film's resources... really great.
DIRECTOR: Imamura, Intentions of Murder
LEAD ACTOR: Peter Sellers, Dr. Strangelove
LEAD ACTRESS: Catherine Deneuve
SUPPORTING ACTOR: this is a very difficult choice, since both are superb, but great in different ways... I am going to give the nod to Sterling Hayden over George C Scott, though not by much...
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Jitsuko Yoshimura, Onibaba
SHORT: Scorpio Rising
SCORE: It's a Toro Takemitsu year - I think Kwaidan is the winner
CINEMATOGRAPHY: much competition, but I'll go with Urevsevski
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Dr. Strangelove - in some moods - most moods - I think this is the best script ever written...
Music: We have to revive this category to accommodate those four sweet boys from Liverpool... we are, of course, moving into the era of the use of pre-existing recordings for films, with Kenneth Anger's offering leading the way...
1. Gospel According to Matthew
2. Intentions of Murder
3. Dr. Strangelove
4. I Am Cuba
5. Umbrellas of Cherbourg
6. Charulata
7. Trial of Joan of Arc
8. Kwaidan
9. The Woman in the Dunes
10. Three Outlaw Samurai
1963:
PICTURE: High and Low
DIRECTOR: Shohei Imamura, Insect Woman
LEAD ACTOR: Mifune, High and Low
LEAD ACTRESS: Sachiko Hidari, Insect Woman
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Tsutomo Yamazaki, High and Low
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Sarah Miles, The Servant
SHORT: Yes, I'd say The House is Black is it...
SCORE: Georges Delerue, Le Mepris
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Coutard, Le Mepris
Plus bonus picks:
Script: I'll go with Pinter and the Servant here,
Song: The Pink Panther theme has to be here somewhere, though I think the Contempt score is better overall...
1. High and Low
2. The Insect Woman
3. Youth of the Beast
4. The Servant
5. Contempt
6. An Actor's Revenge
7. The Fiances
8. The Leopard
9. The Courtship of Eddie's Father
10. Feu Follet
1962:
PICTURE: Vivre sa Vie
DIRECTOR: Godard
LEAD ACTOR: James Mason, Lolita
LEAD ACTRESS: Anna Karina vs. Hideko Takamine vs Corinne Marchand - but I think Takamine takes it for Wanderer's Notebook....
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Peter Sellers, Lolita
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Angela Lansbury, Manchurian Candidate
SHORT: La Jetee
SCORE: Hikaru Hayashi, Akitsu Springs - probably not the best music in a film, but the use of music is extraordinary - it comes back to me now, that moment when the tone shifts (repeated over and over...)
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Frederick Young, Lawrence of Arabia
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Cleo from 5 to 7
1. Vivre Sa Vie
2. Cleo from 5 to 7
3. Lolita
4. Autumn Afternoon
5. L'Eclisse
6. Lawrence of Arabia
7. The Manchurian Candidate
8. Ivan's Childhood
9. The Wanderer's Notebook
10. Sanjuro
1961:
PICTURE: Pigs and Battleships
DIRECTOR: Imamura
LEAD ACTOR: Mifune, Yojimbo
LEAD ACTRESS: Harriet Anderson, Through a Glass Darkly
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Scott or Clift
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Rita Moreno, West Side Story
SHORT: Very Nice, Very Nice
SCORE: Toshiro Mayazumi, Pigs and Battleships
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Shinsaku Himeda, Pigs and Battleships
Plus bonus picks::
Script:
1. Pigs and Battleships
2. Yojimbo
3. Paris Belongs to Us
4. West Side Story
5. Viridiana
6. Il Posto
7. Human Condition III: A Soldiers Prayer
8. Alenka
9. E-Flat (Kormal Ghandhar)
10. Two Daughters
1960:
(This year just keeps going...)
PICTURE: Breathless
DIRECTOR: Godard
LEAD ACTOR: Belmondo
LEAD ACTRESS: Takamine, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Fred MacMurray, The Apartment
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Janet Leigh, Psycho
SHORT: High Note
SCORE: Psycho
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Coutard, Breathless
Plus bonus picks:
Script: When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
1. Breathless
2. When a Woman Ascends the Stairs
3. The Sun's Burial
4. Shoot the Piano Player
5. Psycho
6. Home from the Hill
7. L'Aventura
8. Night and Fog in Japan
9. The Apartment
10. Cloud Tipped Star
Monday, October 15, 2012
1950s Voting
And, the Wonders in the Dark yearly poll has finished another decade - the 1950s - a very impressive stretch of films. Here are my votes - I think - this is what I made for myself anyway. Plenty of these choices are capricious enough that I could very well have changed them between composition and hitting "post" over there...
PICTURE: Early Summer
DIRECTOR (Single Film): I think I will say Ozu, for Early Summer - though it is a very tight competition. But this film - overwhelms me when I see it. The precision of the construction of space, the mastery of story telling, the use of movement, the jokes and games he plays with the construction of the story - it is surprising and thrilling from start to finish.
DIRECTOR (Decade): Ozu, slam dunk.
LEAD ACTOR (Single Film): James Stewart, Vertigo
LEAD ACTOR (Overall): Toshiro Mifune
LEAD ACTRESS (Single film): Kinoyu Tanaka, probably in Life of Oharu
LEAD ACTRESS (Overall): I think this would be between Hideko Takamine (especially in all those Naruse films) and Setsuko Hara - probably Hara, but Takamine is a force.
SUPPORTING ACTOR (single): Takasahi Shimura, Seven Samurai
SUPPORTING ACTRESS (single): Thelma Ritter, Pickup on South Street
SHORT: Duck Amuck - pretty much top of the heap.
SCORE (Single): Bernard Herrmann, Vertigo - one of the all time greats
SCORE (Overall): Herrmann - he's in the running over and over...
CINEMATOGRAPHY (Single): Sergei Urevsevski, Cranes are Flying - as I said at the time, this is one of great tour de force moments in cinema...
CINEMATOGRAPHY (Overall): Russell Metty - all those Sirk films can't be denied.
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Sweet Smell of Success, I think, is going to have to win - damn, that's a clever piece of work. I'll do a quick run down, though, of the best of the decade - it's hard to separate script from film (the film, for me, tends to obliterate and encompass all the arts that go into it - separating them out is a bit artificial - in this case, it probably means something like the 5 I would most like to read, something like that...) I am, however, somewhat arbitrarily, going to eliminate the films that make the overall top 20...
2. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
3. Ace in the Hole
4. Good Morning
5. Beat the Devil
Editing: Ozu - this is, I think, the key to all his work. His construction of his films. He doesn't get credit, he's not as flashy as some, but he makes so much happen with the way one shot connects to another... Early Summer, in particular, is a film, like M and the Mabuses, and 20s Eisenstein, where I remember cuts and transitions, that give me chills.
1. Early Summer
2. Seven Samurai
3. Vertigo
4. Ugetsu Monagatari
5. Tokyo Story
6. Touch of Evil
7. Pather Panchali
8. Rear Window
9. The Searchers
10. Fires on the Plain
11. Late Chrysanthemums
12. Sweet Smell of Success
13. Night of the Hunter
14. Rebel Without a Cause
15. Imitation of Life
16. Sansho The Bailiff
17. A Man Escaped
18. Ordet
19. Rashomon
20. Life of Oharu
1959:
This is a very tough year for picks. It might lack the films at the very top (like Vertigo vs. A Touch of Evil, last year), but they just keep going.
PICTURE: Fires on the Plain
DIRECTOR: This one is painful - I am tempted to indulge myself in a tie, since I do not want to choose. Ozu at his most Tati-esque, playing all kinds of games with depth and space? or Sirk at his most Sirkian, playing all kinds of games with color and space and set design... I will not choose.
LEAD ACTOR: Cary Grant, North by Northwest - though it pains me not to vote for Lemmon or Curtis, or Funekoshi, or Leaud, or Nakadai, or John Wayne....
LEAD ACTRESS: Marilyn Monroe, Some Like it Hot
SUPPORTING ACTOR: James Mason, North by Northwest
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Juanita Moore
SHORT: Pull My Daisy, almost by default.
SCORE: I shall be a bit perverse and go off the nominations to Toshiro Mayazumi, for Good Morning - it's a strange score on an Ozu film, but it works, contributing, I'd say, to that Tati-esque feel of the film... I should probably say, this is probably not Mayazumi's last appearance on one of my ballots. We're getting into Imamura territory now, and he's integral to those films.
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Metty, Imitation of Life
Plus bonus pick:
Script: Good Morning, Ozu and Noda
1. Fires on the Plain
2. Imitation of Life
3. Some Like it Hot
4. 400 Blows
5. Good Morning
6. North by Northwest
7. Pickpocket
8. World of Apu
9. The Key
10. Shadows
1958:
PICTURE: Vertigo
DIRECTOR: Hitchcock
LEAD ACTOR: Stewart
LEAD ACTRESS: Kim Novak
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Joseph Calleia, Touch of Evil
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kinuyo Tanaka, Equinox Flower (this is one where she actually gets to be happy! it's a gift.)
SHORT: A Movie, Bruce Conner
SCORE: Vertigo, obviously
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Robert Burks, Vertigo (though Shinsaku Himeda tempts me - he'll win most of the 60s, I suspect, whatever the competition - that fish ain't on top of my blog for nothing.)
Plus bonus pick:
Script: Giants and Toys. This is not an easy year for scripts - the films at the top seem to me to be there more because of their direction, photography, set designs, and acting than usual - whether those things are elevating less deserving scripts or obscuring the virtues of the scripts, I don't know. I just know I don't quite know what to make of Vertigo or Touch of Evil, or even Some Came Running... So - Giants and Toys is some kind of masterpiece, and since Masumura is a filmmaker I really like, but I doubt he'll be in the running for any top spots - I'll put in a plug for him here.
1. Vertigo
2. Touch of Evil
3. Some Came Running
4. Summer Clouds
5. Ashes and Diamonds
6. Endless Desire
7. Mon Oncle
8. Equinox Flower
9. Giants and Toys
10. Cairo Station
1957:
PICTURE: Sweet Smell of Success
DIRECTOR: Mikhail Kalatazov, Cranes Are Flying
LEAD ACTOR: Burt Lancaster, Sweet Smell of Success
LEAD ACTRESS: Tatiana Samoilova, Cranes Are Flying
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Niall McGinnis, Night of the Demon
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Isuzu Yamada, Tokyo Twilight
SHORT: What's Opera, Doc?
SCORE: Elmer Bernstein, Sweet Smell of Success
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Sergei Urevsevski, Cranes are Flying - this being one of the over the top extravaganzas of all time, after all - whether it adds up as art or not (and mostly it does), it has to be gazed on and marveled at.
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Sweet Smell of Success - this is another outsized tour de force; it's rather a shame it is so good - I have somehow managed not to get anything from Will Success Spoil Rock Hudson? on this ballot - it should be somewhere - it makes a good companion to Sweet Smell of Success - less self-important, less vicious, obviously less moving, but almost as sharp... "Wow - contains 'fallout'!"
1. Sweet Smell of Success
2. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter
3. Cranes Are Flying
4. Tokyo Twilight
5. Throne of Blood
6. Seventh Seal
7. The Tall T
8. Paths of Glory
9. The Lower Depths
10. Full Up Train
1956:
PICTURE: The Searchers
DIRECTOR: Sirk, There's Always Tomorrow
LEAD ACTOR: James Mason, Bigger than Life
LEAD ACTRESS: Barbara Stanwyck, There's Always Tomorrow
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Lee Marvin. Seven Men From Now (my taste for hamming comes out, I admit it)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Dorothy Malone, Written on the Wind
SHORT: I'm going off ballot for The Phantom Ship, a glorious cut-out animation from Japan I managed to see somehow...
SCORE: Steiner, The Searchers
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Russell Metty, Written on the Wind
Plus bonus picks:
Script: A Man Escaped
1. The Searchers
2. Written on the Wind
3. A Man Escaped
4. The Burmese Harp
5. The Killing
6. There's Always Tomorrow
7. Flowing
8. Early Spring
9. Seven Men from Now
10. Aparajito
1955:
PICTURE: Pather Panchali
DIRECTOR: Dreyer, Ordet
LEAD ACTOR: Robert Mitchum, Night of the Hunter
LEAD ACTRESS: Hideko Takamine, Floating Clouds
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Sal Mineo, Rebel Without a Cause
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Lillian Gish, Night of the Hunter
SHORT: Night and Fog
SCORE: Ravi Shankar, Pather Panchali
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Stanley Cortez, Night of the Hunter
Bonus pick:
Script: James Agee, Night of the Hunter
1. Pather Panchali
2. Night of the Hunter
3. Rebel Without a Cause
4. Ordet
5. The Man from Laramie
6. Floating Clouds
7. Rififi
8. All That Heaven Allows
9. Smiles of a Summer Night
10. Cobweb
1954:
PICTURE: Seven Samurai
DIRECTOR: Kurosawa
LEAD ACTOR: James Stewart, Rear Window
LEAD ACTRESS: Haruko Sugimura, Late Chrysanthemums
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Takashi Shimura
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kinuyo Tanaka, Sansho Dayu
SHORT: Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century
SCORE: Gojira
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Kazuo Miyagawa, Sansho the Bailiff
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Late Cshrysanthemums
Editing: LC - or SS
1. Seven Samurai
2. Rear Window
3. Late Chrysanthemums
4. Sansho the Bailiff
5. Sound of the Mountain
6. Twenty Four Eyes
7. A Billionaire
8. Magnificent Obsession
9. Voyage to Italy
10. The Maggie or Godzilla
1953:
PICTURE: Ugetsu Monogatari
DIRECTOR: Mizoguchi
LEAD ACTOR: Richard Widmark, Pickup on South Street
LEAD ACTRESS: Chieko Hagasiyama
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Lee Marvin
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Thelma Ritter
SHORT: Duck Amuck
SCORE: Ugetsu Monogatari
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Kazuo Miyagawa, Ugetsu
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Beat the Devil ("I'm going upstairs to read my bible")
The top two films here are as close as they can be...
1. Ugetsu Monagatori
2. Tokyo Story
3. Beat the Devil
4. Little Fugitive
5. M Hulot's Holiday
6. Mr Pu
7. The Naked Spur
8. The Big Heat
9. Pickup on South Street
10. 5000 Fingers of Dr. T
1952:
PICTURE: Mother [I guess I can work a Naruse into the top spot! This year is more wide open, with a bunch of very good films, so the choice is just a bit more arbitrary than most, and that makes a fine opportunity to spread the wealth.]
DIRECTOR: Welles, Othello
LEAD ACTOR: Takashi Shimura, Ikiru
LEAD ACTRESS: Kinoyu Tanaka, um - pick em. Say Life of Oharu, for balance's sake.
SUPPORTING ACTOR: this is harder than it look - Michael MacLiammoir is superb, but I think I have to go with Arthur Kennedy in Bend on the River...
SUPPORTING ACTRESS:Gloria Grahame, Bad and the Beautiful
SHORT: Water, Water Every Hare
SCORE: Tiomkin, High Noon
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Othello
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Ikiru
1. Mother
2. Life of Oharu
3. Ikiru
4. Othello
5. Singin' in the Rain
6. Le Plaisir
7. Lightning
8. Bend on the River
9. Flavor of Green Tea over Rice
10. The Bad and the Beautiful
1951:
PICTURE: Early Summer
DIRECTOR: Ozu
LEAD ACTOR: Kirk Douglas, Ace in the Hole
LEAD ACTRESS: Setsuko Hara, Repast (competing with herself, but since the other is a bit more of an ensemble, I think this takes the prize.)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Karl Malden, Streetcar
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kim Hunter, Streetcar
SHORT: Rabbit Fire (these films are so deeply buried in my head, how can I not vote for them?)
SCORE: North, Streetcar Named Desire
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Claude Renoir, The River
Plus bonus picks::
Script: here, I would have to choose - the efficient perfection of Ozu/Noda? or the bitterness of Ace in the Hole? All things considered - has to be Early Summer
Editing: again, the Ozu of course - there are 3 or 4 cuts in this film that floor me as completely as anything in any film anywhere. And every cut (in just about every Ozu film) is so perfect... there's nothing like it.
1. Early Summer
2. The African Queen
3. Repast
4. An American In Paris
5. Ace in the hole
6. Strangers on a Train
7. The Lavender Hill Mob
8. Man in the White Suit
9. Diary of a COuntry Priest
10. The River
1950:
PICTURE: Rashomon
DIRECTOR: Kurosawa
LEAD ACTOR: Sterling Hayden
LEAD ACTRESS: Barbara Stanwyck, The Furies
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Dan Duryea
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Danielle Darrieux
SHORT: Rabbit of Seville
SCORE: (Rashomon?)
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Miyagawa, Rashomon
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Winchester 73
1. Rashomon
2. Asphalt Jungle
3. Winchester 73
4. Sunset Boulevard
5. Flowers of St. Francis
6. La Ronde
7. Orpheus
8. The Furies
9. In a Lonely Place
10. Three Came Home
PICTURE: Early Summer
DIRECTOR (Single Film): I think I will say Ozu, for Early Summer - though it is a very tight competition. But this film - overwhelms me when I see it. The precision of the construction of space, the mastery of story telling, the use of movement, the jokes and games he plays with the construction of the story - it is surprising and thrilling from start to finish.
DIRECTOR (Decade): Ozu, slam dunk.
LEAD ACTOR (Single Film): James Stewart, Vertigo
LEAD ACTOR (Overall): Toshiro Mifune
LEAD ACTRESS (Single film): Kinoyu Tanaka, probably in Life of Oharu
LEAD ACTRESS (Overall): I think this would be between Hideko Takamine (especially in all those Naruse films) and Setsuko Hara - probably Hara, but Takamine is a force.
SUPPORTING ACTOR (single): Takasahi Shimura, Seven Samurai
SUPPORTING ACTRESS (single): Thelma Ritter, Pickup on South Street
SHORT: Duck Amuck - pretty much top of the heap.
SCORE (Single): Bernard Herrmann, Vertigo - one of the all time greats
SCORE (Overall): Herrmann - he's in the running over and over...
CINEMATOGRAPHY (Single): Sergei Urevsevski, Cranes are Flying - as I said at the time, this is one of great tour de force moments in cinema...
CINEMATOGRAPHY (Overall): Russell Metty - all those Sirk films can't be denied.
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Sweet Smell of Success, I think, is going to have to win - damn, that's a clever piece of work. I'll do a quick run down, though, of the best of the decade - it's hard to separate script from film (the film, for me, tends to obliterate and encompass all the arts that go into it - separating them out is a bit artificial - in this case, it probably means something like the 5 I would most like to read, something like that...) I am, however, somewhat arbitrarily, going to eliminate the films that make the overall top 20...
2. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
3. Ace in the Hole
4. Good Morning
5. Beat the Devil
Editing: Ozu - this is, I think, the key to all his work. His construction of his films. He doesn't get credit, he's not as flashy as some, but he makes so much happen with the way one shot connects to another... Early Summer, in particular, is a film, like M and the Mabuses, and 20s Eisenstein, where I remember cuts and transitions, that give me chills.
1. Early Summer
2. Seven Samurai
3. Vertigo
4. Ugetsu Monagatari
5. Tokyo Story
6. Touch of Evil
7. Pather Panchali
8. Rear Window
9. The Searchers
10. Fires on the Plain
11. Late Chrysanthemums
12. Sweet Smell of Success
13. Night of the Hunter
14. Rebel Without a Cause
15. Imitation of Life
16. Sansho The Bailiff
17. A Man Escaped
18. Ordet
19. Rashomon
20. Life of Oharu
1959:
This is a very tough year for picks. It might lack the films at the very top (like Vertigo vs. A Touch of Evil, last year), but they just keep going.
PICTURE: Fires on the Plain
DIRECTOR: This one is painful - I am tempted to indulge myself in a tie, since I do not want to choose. Ozu at his most Tati-esque, playing all kinds of games with depth and space? or Sirk at his most Sirkian, playing all kinds of games with color and space and set design... I will not choose.
LEAD ACTOR: Cary Grant, North by Northwest - though it pains me not to vote for Lemmon or Curtis, or Funekoshi, or Leaud, or Nakadai, or John Wayne....
LEAD ACTRESS: Marilyn Monroe, Some Like it Hot
SUPPORTING ACTOR: James Mason, North by Northwest
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Juanita Moore
SHORT: Pull My Daisy, almost by default.
SCORE: I shall be a bit perverse and go off the nominations to Toshiro Mayazumi, for Good Morning - it's a strange score on an Ozu film, but it works, contributing, I'd say, to that Tati-esque feel of the film... I should probably say, this is probably not Mayazumi's last appearance on one of my ballots. We're getting into Imamura territory now, and he's integral to those films.
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Metty, Imitation of Life
Plus bonus pick:
Script: Good Morning, Ozu and Noda
1. Fires on the Plain
2. Imitation of Life
3. Some Like it Hot
4. 400 Blows
5. Good Morning
6. North by Northwest
7. Pickpocket
8. World of Apu
9. The Key
10. Shadows
1958:
PICTURE: Vertigo
DIRECTOR: Hitchcock
LEAD ACTOR: Stewart
LEAD ACTRESS: Kim Novak
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Joseph Calleia, Touch of Evil
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kinuyo Tanaka, Equinox Flower (this is one where she actually gets to be happy! it's a gift.)
SHORT: A Movie, Bruce Conner
SCORE: Vertigo, obviously
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Robert Burks, Vertigo (though Shinsaku Himeda tempts me - he'll win most of the 60s, I suspect, whatever the competition - that fish ain't on top of my blog for nothing.)
Plus bonus pick:
Script: Giants and Toys. This is not an easy year for scripts - the films at the top seem to me to be there more because of their direction, photography, set designs, and acting than usual - whether those things are elevating less deserving scripts or obscuring the virtues of the scripts, I don't know. I just know I don't quite know what to make of Vertigo or Touch of Evil, or even Some Came Running... So - Giants and Toys is some kind of masterpiece, and since Masumura is a filmmaker I really like, but I doubt he'll be in the running for any top spots - I'll put in a plug for him here.
1. Vertigo
2. Touch of Evil
3. Some Came Running
4. Summer Clouds
5. Ashes and Diamonds
6. Endless Desire
7. Mon Oncle
8. Equinox Flower
9. Giants and Toys
10. Cairo Station
1957:
PICTURE: Sweet Smell of Success
DIRECTOR: Mikhail Kalatazov, Cranes Are Flying
LEAD ACTOR: Burt Lancaster, Sweet Smell of Success
LEAD ACTRESS: Tatiana Samoilova, Cranes Are Flying
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Niall McGinnis, Night of the Demon
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Isuzu Yamada, Tokyo Twilight
SHORT: What's Opera, Doc?
SCORE: Elmer Bernstein, Sweet Smell of Success
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Sergei Urevsevski, Cranes are Flying - this being one of the over the top extravaganzas of all time, after all - whether it adds up as art or not (and mostly it does), it has to be gazed on and marveled at.
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Sweet Smell of Success - this is another outsized tour de force; it's rather a shame it is so good - I have somehow managed not to get anything from Will Success Spoil Rock Hudson? on this ballot - it should be somewhere - it makes a good companion to Sweet Smell of Success - less self-important, less vicious, obviously less moving, but almost as sharp... "Wow - contains 'fallout'!"
1. Sweet Smell of Success
2. Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter
3. Cranes Are Flying
4. Tokyo Twilight
5. Throne of Blood
6. Seventh Seal
7. The Tall T
8. Paths of Glory
9. The Lower Depths
10. Full Up Train
1956:
PICTURE: The Searchers
DIRECTOR: Sirk, There's Always Tomorrow
LEAD ACTOR: James Mason, Bigger than Life
LEAD ACTRESS: Barbara Stanwyck, There's Always Tomorrow
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Lee Marvin. Seven Men From Now (my taste for hamming comes out, I admit it)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Dorothy Malone, Written on the Wind
SHORT: I'm going off ballot for The Phantom Ship, a glorious cut-out animation from Japan I managed to see somehow...
SCORE: Steiner, The Searchers
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Russell Metty, Written on the Wind
Plus bonus picks:
Script: A Man Escaped
1. The Searchers
2. Written on the Wind
3. A Man Escaped
4. The Burmese Harp
5. The Killing
6. There's Always Tomorrow
7. Flowing
8. Early Spring
9. Seven Men from Now
10. Aparajito
1955:
PICTURE: Pather Panchali
DIRECTOR: Dreyer, Ordet
LEAD ACTOR: Robert Mitchum, Night of the Hunter
LEAD ACTRESS: Hideko Takamine, Floating Clouds
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Sal Mineo, Rebel Without a Cause
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Lillian Gish, Night of the Hunter
SHORT: Night and Fog
SCORE: Ravi Shankar, Pather Panchali
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Stanley Cortez, Night of the Hunter
Bonus pick:
Script: James Agee, Night of the Hunter
1. Pather Panchali
2. Night of the Hunter
3. Rebel Without a Cause
4. Ordet
5. The Man from Laramie
6. Floating Clouds
7. Rififi
8. All That Heaven Allows
9. Smiles of a Summer Night
10. Cobweb
1954:
PICTURE: Seven Samurai
DIRECTOR: Kurosawa
LEAD ACTOR: James Stewart, Rear Window
LEAD ACTRESS: Haruko Sugimura, Late Chrysanthemums
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Takashi Shimura
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kinuyo Tanaka, Sansho Dayu
SHORT: Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century
SCORE: Gojira
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Kazuo Miyagawa, Sansho the Bailiff
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Late Cshrysanthemums
Editing: LC - or SS
1. Seven Samurai
2. Rear Window
3. Late Chrysanthemums
4. Sansho the Bailiff
5. Sound of the Mountain
6. Twenty Four Eyes
7. A Billionaire
8. Magnificent Obsession
9. Voyage to Italy
10. The Maggie or Godzilla
1953:
PICTURE: Ugetsu Monogatari
DIRECTOR: Mizoguchi
LEAD ACTOR: Richard Widmark, Pickup on South Street
LEAD ACTRESS: Chieko Hagasiyama
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Lee Marvin
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Thelma Ritter
SHORT: Duck Amuck
SCORE: Ugetsu Monogatari
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Kazuo Miyagawa, Ugetsu
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Beat the Devil ("I'm going upstairs to read my bible")
The top two films here are as close as they can be...
1. Ugetsu Monagatori
2. Tokyo Story
3. Beat the Devil
4. Little Fugitive
5. M Hulot's Holiday
6. Mr Pu
7. The Naked Spur
8. The Big Heat
9. Pickup on South Street
10. 5000 Fingers of Dr. T
1952:
PICTURE: Mother [I guess I can work a Naruse into the top spot! This year is more wide open, with a bunch of very good films, so the choice is just a bit more arbitrary than most, and that makes a fine opportunity to spread the wealth.]
DIRECTOR: Welles, Othello
LEAD ACTOR: Takashi Shimura, Ikiru
LEAD ACTRESS: Kinoyu Tanaka, um - pick em. Say Life of Oharu, for balance's sake.
SUPPORTING ACTOR: this is harder than it look - Michael MacLiammoir is superb, but I think I have to go with Arthur Kennedy in Bend on the River...
SUPPORTING ACTRESS:Gloria Grahame, Bad and the Beautiful
SHORT: Water, Water Every Hare
SCORE: Tiomkin, High Noon
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Othello
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Ikiru
1. Mother
2. Life of Oharu
3. Ikiru
4. Othello
5. Singin' in the Rain
6. Le Plaisir
7. Lightning
8. Bend on the River
9. Flavor of Green Tea over Rice
10. The Bad and the Beautiful
1951:
PICTURE: Early Summer
DIRECTOR: Ozu
LEAD ACTOR: Kirk Douglas, Ace in the Hole
LEAD ACTRESS: Setsuko Hara, Repast (competing with herself, but since the other is a bit more of an ensemble, I think this takes the prize.)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Karl Malden, Streetcar
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kim Hunter, Streetcar
SHORT: Rabbit Fire (these films are so deeply buried in my head, how can I not vote for them?)
SCORE: North, Streetcar Named Desire
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Claude Renoir, The River
Plus bonus picks::
Script: here, I would have to choose - the efficient perfection of Ozu/Noda? or the bitterness of Ace in the Hole? All things considered - has to be Early Summer
Editing: again, the Ozu of course - there are 3 or 4 cuts in this film that floor me as completely as anything in any film anywhere. And every cut (in just about every Ozu film) is so perfect... there's nothing like it.
1. Early Summer
2. The African Queen
3. Repast
4. An American In Paris
5. Ace in the hole
6. Strangers on a Train
7. The Lavender Hill Mob
8. Man in the White Suit
9. Diary of a COuntry Priest
10. The River
1950:
PICTURE: Rashomon
DIRECTOR: Kurosawa
LEAD ACTOR: Sterling Hayden
LEAD ACTRESS: Barbara Stanwyck, The Furies
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Dan Duryea
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Danielle Darrieux
SHORT: Rabbit of Seville
SCORE: (Rashomon?)
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Miyagawa, Rashomon
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Winchester 73
1. Rashomon
2. Asphalt Jungle
3. Winchester 73
4. Sunset Boulevard
5. Flowers of St. Francis
6. La Ronde
7. Orpheus
8. The Furies
9. In a Lonely Place
10. Three Came Home
Sunday, August 05, 2012
1940s Votes
Updating my votes, and extended lists, from the ongoing Yearly Polls at Wonders in the Dark. They are, currently, a couple years into the 1950s - a bit of a relief - the 40s are a softer decade for me than most. Not sure why, though I suppose my general obsession with Japanese film is one reason (the 40s being a bad decade for that film industry), though so are my tastes for comedy, musicals, and art films, the first two of which thrived in the 30s, and the art films start to really take off in the 50s and 60s - so...
The Decade as a whole:
PICTURE: It's a Wonderful Life
DIRECTOR: Ozu, Late Spring
LEAD ACTOR: Jimmy Stewart, Wonderful Life
LEAD ACTRESS: Setsuko Hara, Late Spring
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Walter Huston, Sierra Madre
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Anna Magnani, Open City
SHORT: Spider and Tulip
SCORE: Prokofiev, Ivan the Terrible I
CINEMATOGRAPHY: 47 Ronin
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Late Spring
Sound: Citizen Kane
Documentary: Battle of San Pietro
Musical: Cabin in the Sky
Animated: Pinocchio
1. It's a Wonderful Life
2. Maltese Falcon
3. Late Spring
4. His Girl Friday
5. Ivan the Terrible I
6. The Big Sleep
7. Citizen Kane
8. Fort Apache
9. Third Man
10. Stray Dog
11. Germany Year Zero
12. Bicycle Thieves
13. The Lady Eve
14. Day of Wrath
15. Treasure of the Sierra Madre
16. To Have and Have Not
17. Dead of Night
18. The Shop Around the Corner
19. The 47 Ronin
20. I Walked With a Zombie
1949:
There are a lot of good films this year, but no contest at the top - Late Spring is one of the very short list of great films...
PICTURE: Late Spring
DIRECTOR: Ozu
LEAD ACTOR: Chishu Ryu
LEAD ACTRESS: Setsuko Hara
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Orson Welles, Third Man
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Haruko Sugimura
SHORT: Begone Dull Care, Norman McLaren
SCORE: Karas, Third Man
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Lasker, Third Man
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Late Spring
1. Late Spring
2. Third Man
3. Stray Dog
4. Jour de Fete
5. Le Plaisir
6. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
7. Orpheus
8. Battleground
9. Whiskey Galore
10. Kind Hearts and Coronets
1948:
PICTURE: Fort Apache
DIRECTOR: Rosselini, Germany Year Zero
LEAD ACTOR: Bogart, Sierra Madre
LEAD ACTRESS: Jean Arthur, Foreign Affair
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Walter Huston, Sierra Madre
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Jean Simmons, Hamlet
SHORT: Haredevil Hare
SCORE: Red Shoes
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Red Shoes
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Bicycle Thieves
1. Fort Apache
2. Germany Year Zero
3. Bicycle Thieves
4. Treasure of the Sierra Madre
5. Letter from an Unknown Woman
6. Hamlet
7. The Red Shoes
8. The Fallen Idol
9. Red River
10. Foreign Affair
1947:
PICTURE: Odd Man Out
DIRECTOR: Ozu, Record of a Tenement Gentleman
LEAD ACTOR: James Mason
LEAD ACTRESS: Kinuyo Tanaka, Love of Sumiko the Actress
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Kirk Douglas,Out of the Past
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kathleen Ryan, Odd Man Out
SHORT: School for Postmen
SCORE: Webb, Out of the Past
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Krasker, Odd Man Out
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Out of the Past
1. Odd Man Out
2. Love of Sumiko the Actress
3. Spring River Flows East
4. Out of the Past
5. Record of a Tenement Gentleman
6. Quai de Orfevres
7. Lady from Shanghai
8. M. Verdoux
9. Dreams That Money Can Buy
10. Lured
1946:
PICTURE: It's a Wonderful Life
DIRECTOR: Capra
LEAD ACTOR: Jimmy Stewart
LEAD ACTRESS: Ingrid Bergman, Notorious
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Elisha Cook Jr., The Big Sleep
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Martha Vickers, The Big Sleep
SHORT: Can't vote for this one, I'm afraid
SCORE: Prokofiev
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Henri Alekan; La Belle et la Bête
Plus bonus picks:
Script: The Big Sleep
Music/Sound:
1. It's a Wonderful Life
2. The Big Sleep
3. Notorious
4. Paisan
5. Beauty and the Beast
6. Ivan Terrible II
7. My Darling Clementine
8. Bedlam
9. Murderers Among Us
10. Gilda
1945:
PICTURE: Dead of the Night
DIRECTOR: Rosselini, Open City
LEAD ACTOR: Boris Karloff, Body Snatcher
LEAD ACTRESS: Gene Tierney, Leave her to Heaven
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Michael Redgrave, Dead of Night
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ana Magnani, Open City
SHORT: Battle of San Pietro
SCORE: Spellbound
Plus bonus picks:
Cinematography: Leave Her to Heaven
Script: Dead of Night
1. Dead of the Night
2. Open City
3. They Were Expendable
4. The Body Snatcher
5. Leave her to Heaven
6. A Walk in the Sun
7. The Southerner
8. The Clock
9. Children of Paradise
10. Isle of the Dead
1944:
PICTURE: Ivan the Terrible
DIRECTOR: Eisenstein
LEAD ACTOR: Nikolai Cherkasov
LEAD ACTRESS: Stanwyck, Double Indemnity
SUPPORTING ACTOR: William Demarest, Hail the Conquering Hero
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ann Carter, Curse of the Cat People
SHORT: I guess Little Red Riding Rabbit
SCORE: Prokofiev
Plus bonus picks:
Cinematography: Meet Me in St. Louis (George Folsey - though it might be something of a combined award for photography and set design...)
Script: To Have and Have Not
Best Song: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
1. Ivan the Terrible
2. To Have and Have Not
3. Meet me in St. Louis
4. Double Indemnity
5. Hail the Conquering Hero
6. Miracle of Morgan Creek
7. The Woman in the Window
8. Henry V
9. Laura
10. Curse of the Cat People
1943:
PICTURE: Day of Wrath
DIRECTOR: Dreyer
LEAD ACTOR: Ferdinand Marian, Romance in a Minor Key
LEAD ACTRESS: Lisbeth Movin, Day of Wrath
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Charles Coburn, The More the Merrier
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Jean Brooks, Seventh Victim
SHORT: [here the source of the list comes into play: comment included]... Meshes of the Afternoon - a rather difficult choice though; this is (like Sam said) one of the all time greats - but I've seen Spider and Tulip, a beautiful little animated film from Japan. I will defer to the nominations, to resolve this difficulty.
...you'll note that Spider and Tulip, is my pick for the decade
SCORE: Webb, I Walked With a Zombie
Plus bonus picks:
Cinematography: Karl Anderson, Day of Wrath
Script: Cabin in the Sky, Joseph Shrank
Editing: Mark Robson, Zombie
Music/Sound: Cabin in the Sky again. I also lingered long over the actress categories - Ethel Waters in particular is awful close...
1. Day of Wrath
2. I Walked With a Zombie
3. Cabin in the Sky
4. The Leopard Man
5. Romance in a Minor Key
6. Hangmen Also Die
7. Seventh Victim
8. Agnes des Peches
9. Munchhausen
10. Song Lantern
1942:
PICTURE: Palm Beach Story
DIRECTOR: Ozu, There Was a Father
LEAD ACTOR: Chishu Ryu, There Was a Father
LEAD ACTRESS: Claudette Colbert, Palm Beach Story
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Laird Cregar, Black Swan
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Marie Lohr, Went the Day Well?
SHORT: Der Fuhrer's Face, I suppose, is a hard one to deny.
SCORE:Steiner, Casablanca
Plus bonus picks:
Cinematography: Ambersons (Cortez)
Script: Palm Beach Story
Editing/Sound: Cat People - superbly building atmosphere out of the most minimal resources. A feature of all those Lewton films...
1. Palm Beach Story
2. Went the Day Well
3. Aniki Bobo
4. There Was A Father
5. Cat People
6. Mrs. Miniver
7. In Which We Serve
8. To Be Or Not to Be
9. Magnificent Ambersons
10. The Road to Morocco
1941:
PICTURE: The Maltese Falcon
DIRECTOR: Mizoguchi, 47 Ronin
LEAD ACTOR: Welles, Kane
LEAD ACTRESS: Stanwyck, The Lady Eve
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Sydney Greenstreet
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: ?
SHORT: In the Sweet Pie and Pie
SCORE: Herrmann, Kane
Plus bonus picks:
Cinematography: Toland, Kane
Script: Huston, Maltese Falcon
Music/Sound: Kane - nice use of radio techniques, in a modern sound picture
1. Maltese Falcon
2. Ivan the Terrible, Part I
3. Citizen Kane
4. The Lady Eve
5. 47 Ronin
6. Sergeant York
7. Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Clan
8. Sullivan's Travels
9. Meet John Doe
10. Man Hunt
1940 Votes:
PICTURE: His Girl Friday
DIRECTOR: Hawks, His Girl Friday
LEAD ACTOR: James Stewart, Shop Around the Corner
LEAD ACTRESS: Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Basil Rathbone, Mark of Zorro
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ida Lupino, They Drive by Night
SHORT: A Wild Hare
SCORE: Korngold, The Sea Hawk
Plus bonus picks:
Cinematography: Toland, in Grapes of Wrath
Script: His Girl Friday (Charles Lederer, from the play)
Documentary: London Can Take It - I need to mention it somewhere...
1. His Girl Friday
2. Shop Around the Corner
3. The Mortal Storm
4. Pinocchio
5. Fantasia
6. Philadelphia Story
7. The Bank Dick
8. Grapes of Wrath
9. Mark of Zorro
10. Travelling Actors
The Decade as a whole:
PICTURE: It's a Wonderful Life
DIRECTOR: Ozu, Late Spring
LEAD ACTOR: Jimmy Stewart, Wonderful Life
LEAD ACTRESS: Setsuko Hara, Late Spring
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Walter Huston, Sierra Madre
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Anna Magnani, Open City
SHORT: Spider and Tulip
SCORE: Prokofiev, Ivan the Terrible I
CINEMATOGRAPHY: 47 Ronin
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Late Spring
Sound: Citizen Kane
Documentary: Battle of San Pietro
Musical: Cabin in the Sky
Animated: Pinocchio
1. It's a Wonderful Life
2. Maltese Falcon
3. Late Spring
4. His Girl Friday
5. Ivan the Terrible I
6. The Big Sleep
7. Citizen Kane
8. Fort Apache
9. Third Man
10. Stray Dog
11. Germany Year Zero
12. Bicycle Thieves
13. The Lady Eve
14. Day of Wrath
15. Treasure of the Sierra Madre
16. To Have and Have Not
17. Dead of Night
18. The Shop Around the Corner
19. The 47 Ronin
20. I Walked With a Zombie
1949:
There are a lot of good films this year, but no contest at the top - Late Spring is one of the very short list of great films...
PICTURE: Late Spring
DIRECTOR: Ozu
LEAD ACTOR: Chishu Ryu
LEAD ACTRESS: Setsuko Hara
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Orson Welles, Third Man
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Haruko Sugimura
SHORT: Begone Dull Care, Norman McLaren
SCORE: Karas, Third Man
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Lasker, Third Man
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Late Spring
1. Late Spring
2. Third Man
3. Stray Dog
4. Jour de Fete
5. Le Plaisir
6. She Wore a Yellow Ribbon
7. Orpheus
8. Battleground
9. Whiskey Galore
10. Kind Hearts and Coronets
1948:
PICTURE: Fort Apache
DIRECTOR: Rosselini, Germany Year Zero
LEAD ACTOR: Bogart, Sierra Madre
LEAD ACTRESS: Jean Arthur, Foreign Affair
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Walter Huston, Sierra Madre
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Jean Simmons, Hamlet
SHORT: Haredevil Hare
SCORE: Red Shoes
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Red Shoes
Plus bonus picks:
Script: Bicycle Thieves
1. Fort Apache
2. Germany Year Zero
3. Bicycle Thieves
4. Treasure of the Sierra Madre
5. Letter from an Unknown Woman
6. Hamlet
7. The Red Shoes
8. The Fallen Idol
9. Red River
10. Foreign Affair
1947:
PICTURE: Odd Man Out
DIRECTOR: Ozu, Record of a Tenement Gentleman
LEAD ACTOR: James Mason
LEAD ACTRESS: Kinuyo Tanaka, Love of Sumiko the Actress
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Kirk Douglas,Out of the Past
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kathleen Ryan, Odd Man Out
SHORT: School for Postmen
SCORE: Webb, Out of the Past
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Krasker, Odd Man Out
Plus bonus picks::
Script: Out of the Past
1. Odd Man Out
2. Love of Sumiko the Actress
3. Spring River Flows East
4. Out of the Past
5. Record of a Tenement Gentleman
6. Quai de Orfevres
7. Lady from Shanghai
8. M. Verdoux
9. Dreams That Money Can Buy
10. Lured
1946:
PICTURE: It's a Wonderful Life
DIRECTOR: Capra
LEAD ACTOR: Jimmy Stewart
LEAD ACTRESS: Ingrid Bergman, Notorious
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Elisha Cook Jr., The Big Sleep
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Martha Vickers, The Big Sleep
SHORT: Can't vote for this one, I'm afraid
SCORE: Prokofiev
CINEMATOGRAPHY: Henri Alekan; La Belle et la Bête
Plus bonus picks:
Script: The Big Sleep
Music/Sound:
1. It's a Wonderful Life
2. The Big Sleep
3. Notorious
4. Paisan
5. Beauty and the Beast
6. Ivan Terrible II
7. My Darling Clementine
8. Bedlam
9. Murderers Among Us
10. Gilda
1945:
PICTURE: Dead of the Night
DIRECTOR: Rosselini, Open City
LEAD ACTOR: Boris Karloff, Body Snatcher
LEAD ACTRESS: Gene Tierney, Leave her to Heaven
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Michael Redgrave, Dead of Night
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ana Magnani, Open City
SHORT: Battle of San Pietro
SCORE: Spellbound
Plus bonus picks:
Cinematography: Leave Her to Heaven
Script: Dead of Night
1. Dead of the Night
2. Open City
3. They Were Expendable
4. The Body Snatcher
5. Leave her to Heaven
6. A Walk in the Sun
7. The Southerner
8. The Clock
9. Children of Paradise
10. Isle of the Dead
1944:
PICTURE: Ivan the Terrible
DIRECTOR: Eisenstein
LEAD ACTOR: Nikolai Cherkasov
LEAD ACTRESS: Stanwyck, Double Indemnity
SUPPORTING ACTOR: William Demarest, Hail the Conquering Hero
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ann Carter, Curse of the Cat People
SHORT: I guess Little Red Riding Rabbit
SCORE: Prokofiev
Plus bonus picks:
Cinematography: Meet Me in St. Louis (George Folsey - though it might be something of a combined award for photography and set design...)
Script: To Have and Have Not
Best Song: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
1. Ivan the Terrible
2. To Have and Have Not
3. Meet me in St. Louis
4. Double Indemnity
5. Hail the Conquering Hero
6. Miracle of Morgan Creek
7. The Woman in the Window
8. Henry V
9. Laura
10. Curse of the Cat People
1943:
PICTURE: Day of Wrath
DIRECTOR: Dreyer
LEAD ACTOR: Ferdinand Marian, Romance in a Minor Key
LEAD ACTRESS: Lisbeth Movin, Day of Wrath
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Charles Coburn, The More the Merrier
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Jean Brooks, Seventh Victim
SHORT: [here the source of the list comes into play: comment included]... Meshes of the Afternoon - a rather difficult choice though; this is (like Sam said) one of the all time greats - but I've seen Spider and Tulip, a beautiful little animated film from Japan. I will defer to the nominations, to resolve this difficulty.
...you'll note that Spider and Tulip, is my pick for the decade
SCORE: Webb, I Walked With a Zombie
Plus bonus picks:
Cinematography: Karl Anderson, Day of Wrath
Script: Cabin in the Sky, Joseph Shrank
Editing: Mark Robson, Zombie
Music/Sound: Cabin in the Sky again. I also lingered long over the actress categories - Ethel Waters in particular is awful close...
1. Day of Wrath
2. I Walked With a Zombie
3. Cabin in the Sky
4. The Leopard Man
5. Romance in a Minor Key
6. Hangmen Also Die
7. Seventh Victim
8. Agnes des Peches
9. Munchhausen
10. Song Lantern
1942:
PICTURE: Palm Beach Story
DIRECTOR: Ozu, There Was a Father
LEAD ACTOR: Chishu Ryu, There Was a Father
LEAD ACTRESS: Claudette Colbert, Palm Beach Story
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Laird Cregar, Black Swan
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Marie Lohr, Went the Day Well?
SHORT: Der Fuhrer's Face, I suppose, is a hard one to deny.
SCORE:Steiner, Casablanca
Plus bonus picks:
Cinematography: Ambersons (Cortez)
Script: Palm Beach Story
Editing/Sound: Cat People - superbly building atmosphere out of the most minimal resources. A feature of all those Lewton films...
1. Palm Beach Story
2. Went the Day Well
3. Aniki Bobo
4. There Was A Father
5. Cat People
6. Mrs. Miniver
7. In Which We Serve
8. To Be Or Not to Be
9. Magnificent Ambersons
10. The Road to Morocco
1941:
PICTURE: The Maltese Falcon
DIRECTOR: Mizoguchi, 47 Ronin
LEAD ACTOR: Welles, Kane
LEAD ACTRESS: Stanwyck, The Lady Eve
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Sydney Greenstreet
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: ?
SHORT: In the Sweet Pie and Pie
SCORE: Herrmann, Kane
Plus bonus picks:
Cinematography: Toland, Kane
Script: Huston, Maltese Falcon
Music/Sound: Kane - nice use of radio techniques, in a modern sound picture
1. Maltese Falcon
2. Ivan the Terrible, Part I
3. Citizen Kane
4. The Lady Eve
5. 47 Ronin
6. Sergeant York
7. Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Clan
8. Sullivan's Travels
9. Meet John Doe
10. Man Hunt
1940 Votes:
PICTURE: His Girl Friday
DIRECTOR: Hawks, His Girl Friday
LEAD ACTOR: James Stewart, Shop Around the Corner
LEAD ACTRESS: Rosalind Russell, His Girl Friday
SUPPORTING ACTOR: Basil Rathbone, Mark of Zorro
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Ida Lupino, They Drive by Night
SHORT: A Wild Hare
SCORE: Korngold, The Sea Hawk
Plus bonus picks:
Cinematography: Toland, in Grapes of Wrath
Script: His Girl Friday (Charles Lederer, from the play)
Documentary: London Can Take It - I need to mention it somewhere...
1. His Girl Friday
2. Shop Around the Corner
3. The Mortal Storm
4. Pinocchio
5. Fantasia
6. Philadelphia Story
7. The Bank Dick
8. Grapes of Wrath
9. Mark of Zorro
10. Travelling Actors
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