 When actors study their craft, be it the method, the Miesner technique, Adler, or any other of the many forms taught around the globe, they are taught to use their entire body. Movement, often dance is taught to the students so they will understand how important the use of their entire being is in any performance.
When Hannibal Lector makes his first appearance in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) he is standing erect in the middle of his cell, as if at attention, his entire body taut, ready for the meeting he already knows is going to happen, like a predator patiently waiting for its prey. That was a decision made by actor and director, knowing already that the audience had heard so much about the character, they decided how best to allow that first visual. There are close ups in the film, several of Lector’s face, up close and personal, but the director, Jonathan Demme also knew when to pull back, when not to move in so tight. Read more on How Tom Hooper’s Direction Hurt ‘Les Miserables’…
 When the nominees for the Academy Award for Best Actor are announced next month, it will mark the end to a hard fought battle, and this is a fact, one of the boldest and most creative performances of the last twenty years could very well be on the outside looking in. The snub of Joaquin Phoenix by the Screen Actors Guild for his galvanizing performance in The Master was truly startling because one would hope actors would recognize the risk he took in that piece of acting, the boldness of the execution of what he attempted, and the genius in making it work. Phoenix walked a fine line between great acting and great overacting, never stepping into the latter, always managing to remain solid. Read more on On the Possible Snub of Joaquin Phoenix…
Read more on On the Possible Snub of Joaquin Phoenix…
 The first time I became aware of Kathryn Bigelow was in 1987 when I went to see a new vampire film entitled Near Dark (1987). There was little else out that interested me at the time, and Sherri and I always liked a good horror film, so despite the fact we knew only one member of the cast, we took a chance. Needless to say we were rocked in our seats by the brash and incredibly confident style of director Kathryn Bigelow. This was a vampire different from the others, tough and sinewy, with acts of terrible violence and roughly portrayed characters, all with a lived in feeling that worked for the film. To this day it remains the best vampire film I have ever seen, though I confess to being biased. Written by Bigelow and Eric Red, it was her first feature film, and displayed a staggering confidence with the characters, narrative and images that would become her trademark. It is a horror film merged with a western, sometimes called “that hillbilly vampire film” which would not necessarily be out of line. Read more on Historical Circuit: Near Dark (****)…
Read more on Historical Circuit: Near Dark (****)…
 In 2007 no one saw the Best Actor nomination for Tommy Lee Jones in In the Valley of Elah (2007), it was one of those happy surprises that reminded us the acting branch really does watch the films and pay some attention. Way back in 1975 there was another such shock when James Whitmore received a Best Actor nod for his filmed stage show Give ‘em Hell Harry (1975), though it was not quite as deserving as Jones’ nomination.
With the strong reviews coming in for Brad Pitt in Killing Them Softly (2012), could he knock out one of the so-called locks and be in the category come Oscar night? He is well liked, the Academy likes him, critics like him and he has grown substantially as an actor through the years. For my money he should have been nominated for Best Actor for The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) and for Babel (2006). Last year he won the New York Film Critics Award for Best Actor for Moneyball (2011) and was an Oscar nominee, and I think discounting him this year is a huge mistake. Read more on The Underestimation of the Lead Actor Brad Pitt in ‘Killing Them Softly’…
Categories: Blog Tags: American film directors, Brad Pitt, Cinema of the United States, Daniel Day-Lewis, Denzel Washington, Entertainment/Culture, Hugh Jackman, Human Interest, In the Valley of Elah, James Whitmore, Joaquin Phoenix, John Hawkes, Lincoln, Michael Douglas, Oscar, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, the LA Film Critics Award, the New York Film Critics Award, Tommy Lee Jones
 While Zero Dark Thirty, admittedly a brilliant, troubling film, has taken two of the major Best Picture and Best Director Awards, I am still a firm believer that Lincoln will take the Academy Award for Best Picture. Steven Spielberg I am less sure about, though the members of the Academy will acknowledge that his brilliant decision to allow the actors and the screenplay to shine was a superb directorial decision, the stuff of Best Director indeed. Audiences use to his stunning visuals, (and who isn’t?), instead found a film that focused on character, thereby performance, on words, and atmosphere, something he accomplished with Schindler’s List (1993) which won him his first Oscar for Best Director. Read more on Why ‘Lincoln’ Can Still Win Picture……
Categories: Blog Tags: American film directors, Ben Affleck, best picture, Cinema of the United States, Daniel Day-Lewis, Director, Director Oscars, Entertainment/Culture, Epic films, Film, first Oscar, Gandhi, George, John Ford, kathryn bigelow, Lincoln, Movie Release, Oscars, Patton, President of the United States, Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg, the Academy Award, The King's Speech, The Social Network, Tom Hooper, United Kingdom, United States
 David Lean’s masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia (1962) one of the greatest films ever made comes to Blu Ray this week in a stunning, pristine transfer so clean you can see the granules of sand in the vast ocean of desert where much of this superb film takes place. In celebrating the films’ 50th anniversary, Sony has given audiences a simply breathtaking Blu Ray edition of the film that will leave no doubt why this is considered one of the greatest films ever made. When you hear the old timers (I’m close but not there yet) say “they sure don’t make them like that anymore” they are speaking of this films and movies such as this and they are right. If they were to remake this film, which I hope they never do, much of the backgrounds would be computer generated rather than the actual desert where they went on location to film this movie. Back breaking work brought Lawrence of Arabia (1962) to the screen, and the clear-eyed vision of the great David Lean. The director manages to bring the heat to us, his imagery suggesting stifling temperatures causing the images we see in the vast desert to shimmer through the extraordinary heat. Read more on ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ Available on Blu Ray!…
 With rave reviews from the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, Time Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, Roger Ebert and many more, Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln has got the reviews it needed to launch it closer to those Oscar for Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Director. The reviews have labelled the film everything from a “masterpiece” to “a towering achievement”, earning Spielberg some of his best reviews in a decade, despite the strong critical showing of Munich (2005). Read more on Lincoln – Best Picture Frontrunner?…
 Having never been a fan of the 007 series, never being enthralled with car chases, international espionage, gun play (unless in a western) gadgets, or silly romantic encounters that make little sense to the plot, the films for me were always a chore. Having to see them angered me, because it was one part of the job that felt like a job, and being a film writer has rarely felt like a job. When I learned that Daniel Craig has been cast as the new James Bond in Casino Royale (2008) I went back and watched all the Bond films.
Every…single…one. Read more on Daniel Craig – Best Bond Ever?…
 Time Magazine recently called Daniel Day-Lewis the “greatest living actor” thus calling up the obvious comparisons to Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Robert Duvall and Sean Penn. There is indeed something very great about the work of Day-Lewis, who takes on a film only when he believes in it, choosing not to be part of the Hollywood world, and making clear to his director he works a certain way and expects to be able to do so. So demanding is he, he once walked off stage during a performance of Hamlet, sobbing uncontrollably, unable to continue nearly ruining his career yet making clear his fierce dedication to his craft for right or wrong. Read more on Ten Best Performances of Daniel Day-Lewis…
 If there is a criticism heard over and over about Steven Spielberg’s work as a director, it might be the lack of truly great performances in his films or the fact no actor has ever won an Oscar in a Spielberg picture. Excuse me??? Are they serious? Many of the performances in his films have earned Oscar nominations and while no one has ever won an Oscar for acting in a Spielberg film, did anyone in a Kubrick film win an Oscar for acting? Or Chaplin? Even the great Oscar-winning actor Burt Lancaster weighed in on the criticism about the performances in his films, focusing on Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) as the older actor knew a thing or two about finding the character and bringing the character to the audience while spending most of the film dodging bullets, fighting, cracking the whip, romancing the girl, and running and scampering. Understanding that Ford gave us a character from the moment he walked out of the dark into the light of the frame after cracking his whip and disarming a man of his gun with a knowing scowl, Lancaster had nothing but praise for the actor. Knowing the challenges of portraying a character in a physical film, Lancaster reminded audiences, actors and critics of just how fine Ford was as Jones, creating in a character in a film that barely gave him time to do so. Many of Spielberg’s films are special effects laden works, which means the actor often has to work twice as hard to create their character. However, make no mistake, his reputation among actors is very strong, and he widely considered, in his own way, an actors director.
With Lincoln, I think all of this might change, and Spielberg will be hearing an actor thank him from the stage of the awards, holding a little golden man. Read more on Top Ten Performances in Spielberg’s Films…
 After taking a week to let the Disney purchase of Lucasfilm to digest and roll around how the two greediest corporations in film sort of became one, I can finally write about it, though understand I am angry, cynical and bitter about the whole thing. Read more on Thoughts on Disney’s Star Wars…
 Anthony Hopkins won his first Academy Award on his first ever nomination at the age of fifty-four in 1991 for his brilliant performance in The Silence of the Lambs (1991) a performance so revered and popular it became a part of pop culture shortly after the film was released and before the Oscar was in Hopkins hands. So great was his impact in less than thirty minutes of screen time, he was voted the year’s Best Actor over formidable competition from Warren Beatty in Bugsy (1991) and Nick Nolte in The Prince of Tides (1991). Long before Jonathan Demme cast Hopkins in the part of Hannibal the Cannibal he was touted as the next Olivier, a young actor on the rise, and very early in his career worked with no less than Katherine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole in A Lion in Winter (1968) as their power-hungry son. But success and widespread fame would not come too soon for Hopkins and for many years looked like it might never arrive. He earned wide respect as an actor among actors, but audiences struggled often to remember who he was. He nearly broke through in Richard Attenborough’s Magic (1978) as a troubled ventriloquist who is struggling with the dummy taking over his life, and with an Oscar nod might have seen his career on a different route, but it did not happen. For whatever their reasons the Academy went with a bizarre nomination that year as the fifth that of Laurence Olivier in The Boys from Brazil (1978) for which Olivier’s performance drew comparisons to elderly Jewish women (no kidding). Hopkins certainly gave one of the year’s best performances, and might have been cheated out of an Oscar nod, though much could be said for either Dustin Hoffman (Straight Time) or Brad Davis (Midnight Express) earning the nod Olivier got. Read more on Ten Best Performances of Anthony Hopkins…
Read more on Ten Best Performances of Anthony Hopkins…
 Mentored by Steven Spielberg, Academy Award winner Robert Zemeckis has been one of the finest directors in American cinema for more than twenty years. One can see, and often feel the influence of Spielberg’s work in his films, but Zemeckis has managed to put his own very personal stamp on all of his best work. That said, while he has enjoyed great success at the box office, the critical community has often been mixed on what they think of his work, in the same manner they were with Spielberg early in his career. The thinking seems to be, if the film is making money, how can it be a great film? I hate that elitist crap. Where does it say that good or great films must be seen in little art houses and have no audience? Why can a director not make a film that is embraced by the public and perhaps half the critical community, though sure it’s nice when all the critics like your work, however that should never be the reason a film gets made, for critical approval. Granted a lot of really bad movies make money, but I cannot see a truly bad film on Zemeckis’ filmography! What a shame Zemeckis has his finger on the pulse of what the North American movie going public likes!! The success of his films bear him out, and frankly though he has won an Oscar, there should have been a few more nominations. The DGA nominated him for Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1987) while Oscar did not, and for me Back to the Future (1985) deserved greater attention in 1985 beyond the massive success at the box office and strong reviews. Read more on Robert Zemeckis’ Ten Best Films…
 We all know they happen, those performances that are somehow ignored by the Academy voters, often in favor of lesser work. In fact it has been happening since almost the very beginning, but in these days if intense campaigning, we are much more aware of who gets snubbed and who gets the nod. What shocks me about the acting branch is that actors do the nominating and one would assume that actors would appreciate a great performance, right? Well, maybe. For whatever reason some of the finest performances of the last twelve years have been ignored by the Academy, left out to be appreciated and celebrated in articles such as this. History will bear out the fact their work was outstanding, but they will not carry the tag Academy Award nominee. I think the snubs that shock me most are those that have taken home critics awards because one would believe they are at least on the radar of the Academy, but no, they obviously are not.
So here we go, the snubs in the categories of Best Actor and Best Actress, year by year. Watch for a follow up on the supporting categories within the week. Read more on Acting Snubs in the Leading Categories (2000-2012)…
With Hitchcock waiting release, and looking like it might nab Anthony Hopkins some Oscar attention for Best Actor, I got thinking about the history of the cinema and other great directors who deserve to have their stories told. Now, in fairness, the Hitchcock film is focusing on one aspect and one film in the directors life, very similar to what is happening in the HBO film “The Girl” featuring Toby Jones as the portly director. The films I am suggesting be made are biographies of these great directors, so length is not an issue, let’s do it right. So today I am the studio head and I have decided to make five biographies focusing on the careers of great directors. Here we go with my choices and my casting. Read more on Directors Needing the Biopic Treatment…
Read more on Directors Needing the Biopic Treatment…
Categories: Article Tags: American film directors, Anthony Hopkins, Cecil B. DeMille, CHAPLIN, Cinema of Germany, Cinema of the United States, Entertainment/Culture, Film, John Ford, Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will
 Toby Jones must be wondering what he has to do to get a break? In 2005 Capote is released and wins Phillip Seymour Hoffman an Oscar for Best Actor as Truman Capote, a role Jones had portrayed in the film Infamous (2006) which was waiting release, and after the success of the former film was delayed a year. Jones was terrific as Capote, perhaps less tortured and more playful than Hoffman, yet no less brilliant, but because audiences and already seen one story about essentially the same story (and it was) Infamous (2006) found no audience. Now the poor guy is portraying legendary director Alfred Hitchcock for HBO in “The Girl” just a month before the new Fox Searchlight film Hitchcock hits theaters with Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins in the title role. The stories differ in that The Girl focuses on the directors relationship and eventual obsession with actress Tippi Hedren, while Hitchcock will explore the shooting of his iconic film Psycho (1966). Read more on Toby Jones embodies Hitchcock in HBO’s “The Girl”…
Read more on Toby Jones embodies Hitchcock in HBO’s “The Girl”…
Categories: Article Tags: Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Hopkins, Entertainment/Culture, HBO, Infamous, Marnie, Psycho, The Birds, The Girl, Tippi Hedren, Toby Jones, Truman Capote
 Born to deaf-mute parents Lon Chaney’s gifts for communicating without sound made him a natural for the silent screen. Though there were bigger stars than Chaney through the silent era, I am not sure there was a greater actor, meaning a pure actor capable of finding the truth in his character and bringing that to the audience with the ease he did. There was beauty in his best work, an economy of acting as he allowed his gestures and body language to speak where words could not, Though expressionistic acting it was also shockingly real and as honest as anything put on the screen at that time.
Chaney found fame as an actor slowly, beginning on the stage before moving into film. He would begin work at Universal Studios before the paint was dry on the walls of the soundstages, becoming the company’s first superstar before the phrase was coined. Read more on The Chaneys and the Horror Legacy…
Read more on The Chaneys and the Horror Legacy…
 The first time I really took notice of John Hawkes was during his stint on the brilliant HBO series Deadwood, where he portrayed gentle Sol Starr. When pushed Starr could brandish a weapon with the best of them, but he chose to be a different sort of man in the brutal world that was the old west. His best friend was Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) a hot-headed lawyer, fast to fly off the handle, deadly with a weapon, and to whom Starr was often the conscience of the partnership. Though the series was crowded with fine acting, Hawkes was a standout, and began to show up in films being released, Miami Vice (2006) being one of the first that saw Hawkes in a decent role. Read more on The Sessions (****)…
Categories: Film Reviews Tags: As Good As It Gets, Ben Lewin, Bone, Cheryl, Cinema of the United States, Deadwood, Digital media, Entertainment/Culture, excellent writer and poet, Film, HBO & Company, Helen Hunt, John Hawkes, Lon Chaney, Mark, Miami Vice, Movie Release, open sex therapist, Oscar, poet, Priest, Seth Bullock, silent screen actor, Sol Starr, Sundance, The Surrogate, Timothy Olyphant, William H. Macy, Winter's Bone
 OK, I am the studio head and have access to two hundred million dollars. I have been asked to remake ten classics made before 1970, and attach actors to the projects to speed up the casting process. In some cases, I see more than one actor or actress in a role, and I say that. Here are the ten films I choose to remake along with the casting hopefuls. Each film can cost no more than twenty million dollars so much will be said to the actors about being involved in something very special.
Read more on Remaking Cinema – Before 1970…
Categories: Article Tags: Ben Foster, Brad Pitt, Christian Bale, Cinema of the United States, Denzel Washington, Film, George Clooney, Harrison Ford, Jack Nicholson, Jennifer Connelly, Jessica Lange, Julia Roberts, Leonardo di Caprio, Meryl Streep, Remaking Cinema, Sean Penn, Series, Terence Howard
In the mid-2000′s Ben Affleck was the last person I would have thought would change the course of his career and become one of the finest new directors in American cinema. Success came very quickly to Affleck, winning an Oscar for co-writing the screenplay to Good Will Hunting (1997) with his best friend Matt Damon, a film in which each had a major role, though it was Damon who was nominated for the Oscar as Best Actor. In the outstanding book Dirty Little Pictures by the great Peter Biskind, the author makes clear which many behind the scenes of the Affleck-Damon relationship knew, Damon was an actor, a true artist, while Affleck was a movie star who cared about his payday. He followed who was making what and understood his own worth to a film, wanting nothing more than to be paid for such. When Harvey Weinstein pulled his infamous “what I did for you…” business with Affleck, the actor reminded the mogul that part of the success had been Affleck and his contribution, so while he was grateful to Weinstein, he was not going to keep doing work for Harvey for so little. By 2002, he was commanding fifteen million dollars a film, but for the most part they were terrible scripts, offering the actor nothing in return. While Matt Damon found challenging work in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) and eventually The Bourne franchise, Affleck found his star waning. The failure and poor reviews for films such as Pearl Harbor (2001), Daredevil (2003), the woeful Gigli (2003) and Surviving Christmas (2004) had nearly ruined Affleck in the business, he was now something of a laughing-stock as an actor.
Read more on Argo (****)…
Categories: Film Reviews Tags: Amy Adams, Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck, Daredevil, ed harris, Films, Gone Baby Gone, Good Will Hunting, Harvey Weinstein, Hollywoodland, Jeremy Renner, Matt Damon, Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Freeman, Movie Release, Oscar, The Town
 This year’s race for the Academy Award for Best Actor will have no shortage of worthy nominees; in fact I daresay they could nominate five worthy actors right now. However there are still many more performances to be unveiled, work that will end up in the category, work that will not, disappointing audiences, the Academy and critics. Already I think we have seen a preview of that, though Clay might disagree in Bill Murray’s highly touted work in Hyde Park on Hudson, which after seeing at TIFF I felt would slowly drop out of sight and out of contention. The film’s reception at Telluride was weak, and in Toronto the same thing happened, with a rather shocked audience filing out mumbling about the disappointment they were feeling. I have stated already, Murray is never bad, weak or anything remotely negative, just not strong enough to be an Academy Award nominee. It is merely a good performance and lined up alongside the ones I think have a chance so far, it looks oddly out of place, which of course means nothing. Read more on Lead Actor Overstuffed…
Categories: Article Tags: Anthony Hopkins, Ben Affleck, Bill Murray, Brad Pitt, Burt Lancaster, Cannes, Cannes Best, Christopher Walken, Cinema of the United States, Clint Eastwood, Denzel Washington, Director nomination, Dustin Hoffman, Entertainment/Culture, Film, Flight, François Cluzet, Good Will Hunting, Hugh Jackman, Jack Nicholson, jamie foxx, Jean-Louis Trintignant, John Hawkes, Kirk Douglas, Lancaster, legendary director, Liam Neeson, Mads Mikkelsen, Matt Damon, Michael Shannon, Movie Release, Omar Sy, Oscar, Oscars, Peter Fonda, Pilot, powerful actor, President, Promised Land, Quentin Tarantino, Richard Kuklinski, Richard Nixon, robert duvall, Robert Zemeckis, serious actor, the Academy Award, the Oscars, The Polar Express, Toronto, Toronto International Film Festival, United States
 In addition to the release of Lincoln, his long awaited study of the last few weeks in the life of the sixteenth President of the United States, director Steven Spielberg will be quite present on DVD.
In addition to having the stunning Blu Ray of Jaws (1975) available since July, this past week saw the release on Blu Ray of The Indiana Jones Collection, which includes all four films and several hours of extras. The prints of the films are incredible, the best I have seen since seeing the movies in the theater for the first time. Seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) on Blu Ray was an extraordinary experience, akin to seeing the film for the first time again, the images clean and pristine, the audio perfect. Watching the first three is a crushing reminder of how weak the fourth is, and though at first it is like seeing an old friend again, it is ruined when that old friend survives an atomic bomb by climbing into a fridge. Is this really what they intended when at the end of the Last Crusade (1989) having drank the waters from the cup of Christ and gaining immortality?? I doubt it. Read more on Spielberg – Present in the Fall…
 After seeing Trouble with the Curve, at best a two star movie, with the Amy Adams performance the finest in the film, I think it is safe to say that there will be no Best Actor Oscar nomination for eighty two year old Clint Eastwood this year. It is simply not a very good film, and Eastwood’s performance, though entertaining is of the “been there, done that” school, the same sort of cranky old bird we saw in Gran Torino (2008). Now the first time we saw Eastwood in this mode it was interesting, and I quite liked his work in Gran Torino (2008) but to see him do almost exactly the same thing in this film was tiresome and more than a little disappointing. Any chance, any talk of an Oscar nod for Eastwood will stop within the week, if it has not already ceased. Read more on The Sun Has Set in the Eastwood…
Categories: Article Tags: Clint Eastwood, Clint Eastwood in the 2000s, Daniel Day-Lewis, Entertainment/Culture, Films, gran torino, Hugh Jackman, jamie foxx, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Joaquin Phoenix, Joel Cox, John Hawkes, Oscar, Phillip Serymour Hoffman
 Finding Nemo (2003) holds a very special place in the hearts of my daughter Ariana and I. To begin with it was the first movie she ever saw in a theater (and loved it) and a film that we played games with each other imitating the strange high-five and head bunt between father and son. I remember her tiny body walking over to me and saying, in an excited tone, “Fin…head….and then she would coo…..duuuude.” Ten times a day we used to do this and I never tired of it. When the film came out on DVD we watched the film over and over, again loving every minute of it, loving more the time we spent together watching the film, her curled up in my lap, her little arms holding onto me. Read more on Finding Nemo is (****), 3-D (non-existent)…
Read more on Finding Nemo is (****), 3-D (non-existent)…
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