It's A Wonderful Movie

People who know me know that I love the movie It's a Wonderful Life (1946), and like to quote from it from time to time, much to the annoyance of my friend Missy.

But what they may not know is that my favorite film of the 1940s is The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), featuring two of the great film performances of all time: Humphrey Bogart as Fred C. Dobbs and Walter Huston as the old prospector.

One of the main actors in Treasure, a competing prospector played well by Bruce Bennett (whose real name was Herman Brix), died yesterday at the age of 100. He beat out Ronald Reagan to win the role as Bogart's nemesis.

In a long career Brix also played many others roles, including Tarzan in 1935. (He was the favorite to originally play the part, instead of Johnny Weissmuller, but was sidelined with a sports-related injury.) Brix himself was an athlete: He won a silver medal at the 1928 Olympics, played in the Rose Bowl and set world shot-put records. Here's a nicely written obit.

Had he been born a little later, say seven decades later, a man as handsome and multi-talented as Brix/Bennett would probably be a household name, showing up regularly in The Star magazine and on Perez Hilton's blog, and probably shirtless a lot of the time, giving Matthew McConaughey a run for his money.

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Mexican Bandit: We are Federales ... you know, the mounted police.
Dobbs: If you're the police, where are your badges?
Mexican Bandit: Badges!? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges! I don't have to show you any stinkin' badges!

This is a classic piece of dialogue from the film, and often misquoted. It also proves that Fred C. Dobbs distrusts and fears Mexicans as much as Lou Dobbs does. Both also show similar levels of paranoia and have a keen interest in sharing their views on treasure and treasury securities with all who will listen.

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TRIVIA: Can you name the young actor at right who plays the kid selling the lottery ticket near the beginning of the film? This child actor himself would wind up with a life almost as tragic as Dobbs himself.

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Below is the trailer for The Treasure of Sierra Madre. Enjoy!

On Golden Stars: Was Mirren Being Snarky?

"My sister told me all kids love to get gold stars -- this is the biggest and best gold star I’ve ever had in my life," Helen Mirren said as she accepted her Oscar statuette Sunday night.

Was this some sort of shout-out or allusion to fellow nominee Judi Dench? Could she have been rubbing it in that she won, or sending a subtle "you were great, too" message to a friend?

The reason I say this is because "gold stars" play a role in Dench's movie Notes On A Scandal. Whenever her character, Barbara Covett, has a particularly juicy entry, she puts a gold star (or two, or three, or four) next to it in her diary, a way of marking the pages she finds most devious and thrilling. (I allude to this in this note on a movie.)

Was Helen sending a subtle shout-out or was she being snarky?

Or am I reading too much into this?

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Go to this website. Click "Trailer and Clips." Go to the last video on the list, Gold Star Day, and enjoy Dame Judi Dench in a deliciously revealing clip. It's a great clip, despite the mistake noted below. (It's worth taking the trouble to find; make sure you click "next" in the trailer and clips section so you can find the final clip, which is Gold Star Day.)

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From www.moviemistakes.com:

"There's a scene where Barbara Covett is writing in her journal and the voice-over refers to it as 'A Gold Star Day,' and we see a close-up shot of Barbara's index finger pasting a gold star on the page of her journal; her fingernail is unpolished and just a bit grimy. In the next shot, we see Barbara still writing in her journal but now her nails are polished pink. "

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Post-Sunday Letdown

I can't believe it's over. The press coverage. The media punditry. The office pools. After weeks of frenzied speculation in the blogosphere, Sunday's presidential election in Senegal is now just a memory.

And although we know that Binta & The Great Idea (starring a little girl from Senegal) did not win for Best Live Action Short last night at the Oscars, the results of the Senegalese Presidential election still remains in doubt as millions of Americans anxiously await word from half a world away.

Will the winner be the octogenarian incumbent Abdoulaye Wade, a professor and free-trade advocate who opposed socialist rule in a surprise win seven years ago?

Or will be it be one of 14 other opposition candidates, including the popular Idrissa Seck, a former Wade ally?

Or how about Ousmane Tanor Dieng, a diplomat who represents, perhaps, the best hope for the Socialist Party?

But don't count out Moustapha Niasse, leader of the Alliance of Progress Forces. His former experience as a diplomat and prime minister could be just what Senegal needs right about now.


This is an important election for the 11 million souls of this west African nation. The country ranks 156 among the 177 countries listed in UN's 2006 human development index ranking. Can this fragile young democracy break the Top 125 under a new president?

In other news, did you see that Jack Nicholson shaved his head?

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Five Movies to Watch For in 2007, Inspired By Movies From 2006

Now that the Academy Awards are over -- the broadcast did eventually end, didn't it? -- it's time to look ahead to the great movies of 2007 that will be loosely inspired by the movies of 2006 and early 2007.

Notes On A Sandal: A lesbian diarist spends a summer at the beach.

Charlotte's World Wide Web: A spider starts a blog and captures the heart of a nation

Last King of Scotch Land: A biopic on the life of Peter O'Toole.

The Ghost Writer: A man sells his soul to the devil (Harvey Weinstein) to get a movie script produced. Nicholas Cage stars.

Blood Diamonique: The seedy underbelly of faux jewelry.

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Ellen Hosts the Oscars

I don't agree with this. I agree with this.

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These Little Girls Are Winners

Two little girls portrayed in movies set half a world apart -- Albuquerque and Senegal -- could win Oscar gold tonight.

Binta & The Great Idea is a movie about a young girl who tells the story of a man (her father) who hopes to change the world, and a girl (her cousin) who wants to go to school. It's nominated for Best Live Action Short. It'd get my vote.

Over in the Best Picture category, it's certainly possible that Little Miss Sunshine could pull off an upset, and in the Best Supporting Actress category, voters tend to like surprise choices. This puts a win for Abigail Breslin in the realm of possibility, even though Jennifer Hudson already has the mantle space cleared off.

In any case, I'd say it'd be a great idea not to bet against Binta, a ray of sunshine that left me beaming.

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You can download the nominated live action and animated shorts here.

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MONDAY UPDATE: Binta did not win for Live Action Short, and Little Miss Sunshine won two Oscars: best supporting actor and best original screenplay.

This is Horrifying

Dancing cardboard stars. Snow White. Rob Lowe. Oy.

This is 10 minutes long. It feels like forever.

But it is fun watching the phonies clap.

Oscar Prediction For Best Film

Last Sunday was TV Sunday -- 12 straight hours of hangover-induced TV watching, and a span where I didn't bother to crack a book, strike a yoga pose or utter a responsorial psalm.

Today is Big Movie Saturday. Within a 24 hour period I will have seen three full-length movies and five shorts -- all of which have some connection with tomorrow's Academy Awards.

After today, I'll be qualified to judge 80 of the 113 individual nominations covering every category, which isn't bad considering I saw fewer movies in 2006 than in a long time.

This includes seeing every nominee for Best Picture.

So, what movie do I think will win, and what should win?

If the vote were held an hour from now, I'm not sure which film I'd choose for Best Picture. It really would depend on my mood at the time.

For starters, I wouldn't vote for Babel. Why? Here's my "54 word" review.

I also wouldn't vote for Little Miss Sunshine, though I loved it. By even being nominated, this movie has won, and it's a ray of welcome sunshine in a world that needs great comedies.

So it's down to three movies as my personal choice:

* Letters From Iwo Jima. This is one-half of the Eastwood World War II masterpiece, along with Flags of Our Fathers. This film had moments that will stick with me forever. (Here's my thoughts on the film.)

* The Departed. Maybe the most entertaining film of the year. Think about it: This film was based on a Hong Kong film that was inspired by Scoresese in the first place. So it's derivative of something that was derivative of Scorsese to begin with. How often has that happened? But this isn't Scorsese's absolute best movie. How can Scorsese win for this fine film when two finer films, Goodfellas and Raging Bull, didn't?

* The Queen. I think this film, on all levels, was the most perfect this year, all things considered: acting, writing, everything. All involved should celebrate with a nice cup of tea. Good show!

So what do I think will win? The Departed.

Which film would I vote for, if push comes to shove? ...The Departed.

But if either Letters or The Queen comes out on top, I certainly won't be disappointed.

All three films tower over Babel.

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What do you think?

The Departed: Must-See Scorsese

THIS WAS WRITTEN LAST FALL

Come February, some tear-filled actress or emotional actor or on-top-of-the-world director are going to accept Academy Awards for their work in the motion picture industry.

It's a feeling that Martin Scorsese wouldn't know. He has never won.

Not for Goodfellas: Dancing With Wolves won in 1990, with Kevin Costner nabbing best picture and director Oscars.

Nor for Raging Bull: Another actor-director, Robert Redford, won in 1980 for Ordinary People.

And Scorsese wasn't recognized, either, for one of the all-time great comedies, The King of Comedy, a satire about media and celebrity that remains as relevant (and probably moreso) than the day it was released in 1983.

He also hasn't been honored for great work in recent years for The Aviator and Gangs of New York.

That he has never won for best director or best picture -- and yet movies such as The Greatest Show on Earth and Terms of Endearment have -- kind of cheapens the Oscar a little, don't you think?


Does anybody still care two bits about Dances With Wolves? Who wants to sit through this movie again?

Yeah, didn't think so.

That's one of the key things about his movies: Like a work of Shakespeare, Scorsese's films stand the test of time and multiple viewings. Sometimes, and I suspect this may be true of his new movie The Departed, they're even better the second time.

So when Ellen DeGeneres hosts the Oscars next year, and when a winner starts gushing a la Halle Berry or Sally Field, just remember: The work of Martin Scorcese has never been honored. Nor has the directing of Alfred Hitchcock, Robert Altman, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles and Stanley Kubrick.

And this, my friends, cheapens the value of the Academy Award itself.

Pick up a cell phone, call a friend and go see The Departed. It's in the same league as ScorSese's all-time best.

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A Note On A Movie

Last night Wally and I saw Notes On A Scandal. Judi Dench is indescribably good playing the lonely and loathsome history teacher. It would take the pen of Barbara Covett herself, the diary-writing character Dench plays, to come up with a wickedly appropriate description of this astonishingly good performance.

In any other year, Dench would be the easy front-runner for Best Actress. No matter who else was on screen, including her co-nominee Cate Blanchett, it was hard NOT to look at Dench and relish every forced smile, grimace and (more often than not) blank stare, a stare that haunts as it betrays Covett's inner emptiness and utter loneliness.

To look away from Dench for a moment would be to miss something: This character speaks volumes even when, and especially when, she speaks nothing.

Dench probably won't get the golden statuette tomorrow night, but this performance deserves a dozen gold stars neatly placed (and long remembered) on those pages of Oscar history describing the greatest performances that didn't win.

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Oscar Predictions: Part I

On Oscar night, we here at The Cup of Joe predict that Hattie McDaniel, the first-ever African-American winner of an Academy Award for her role in Gone With the Wind, will be smiling down from heaven, celebrating the fact that 75 percent of the acting awards will, quite deservingly, go to a black person.

Here are my predictions:

Best Actor: Forest Whitaker
Best Actress: "Lone Caucasian" Helen Mirren
Best Supporting actress: Jennifer Hudson
Best Supporting actor: Eddie Murphy
Best Director: Martin Scorsese

I just hope that some Academy voters aren't of the mindset, for some strange reason, that they wouldn't vote for THREE black actors in the same year. Would that be a horrible reason, to, say, withhold a vote for Murphy or Whitaker and tilt the balance just enough in favor of another actor?

After today, I will have watched almost everything nominated in the bottom four categories above. Acknowledging that I haven't seen quite everything (like a number of Oscar voters, I suppose), my predictions are exactly the same as the way I'd vote, even though there was nothing "supporting" about Hudson's "leading" role in Dreamgirls.

I'll discuss Best Picture choices in a post tomorrow.

A Movie About, But Not For, Little Children

Little children, particularly those of a certain age, are not ones to put restraints on their urges. If they want a cookie, they'll eat it. If they're tired of doing THIS or THAT, they'll start crying and usually mommy and dad will be there to take care of the situation. The parent, giving in to the tears or the screams or even the simple unemotional request, will push the swing, switch the TV channel, empty the diaper.

There are plenty of adults who continue to act like children all their lives, always wanting something, unable to control the urges in their life. They may be married, or in a monagomous relationship, but they will cheat on their spouse because they can't resist the urge. They may have extreme credit card debt, but they'll buy that jacket they don't need because they WANT it. DESIRE wins over CONTROL.

A new movie by Todd Field, Little Children, is about adults, adults with obsessions, who for a variety of reasons can't resist the same kind of desires that cause children to steal cookies.

The mental instabilities of the characters in this film all involve obsessions: the ex-cop obsessed with harassing a sex offender; the brainy woman obsessed with the not-so-brainy hunk; the married man obsessed with masturbating on the internet; the sex offender obsessed with his complex desire to expose his genitals ... and masturbate publicly.

Most of the main characters in Little Children give in to their urges, their obsessions.

Other characters live lives of repression. The results are no better.

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Little Children is directed by the man who did In The Bedroom, which was my pick as the best movie of 2001, and is still one of my favorite films of the decade.

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AND I'M TELLING YOU

Phyllis Somerville, who plays the mother of the sex offender in the movie, gives a performance worthy of an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress. She wasn't nominated, maybe placing sixth on the list since Jennifer Hudson's LEAD role was honored with a SUPPORTING nod for Dreamgirls? What a shame. Her son in the movie, played by Jackie Earle Haley, did receive a nomination, and is so worthy of this honor.

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Near the end of the movie, a little girl around 3 years of age gives in to an urge -- the desire to get off her swing, leave a public park at night and stare from the middle of a street at bugs swarming a light pole.

What did she see in that stare? Just bugs swarming around a light?

These weren't moths drawn to a flame. These bugs aren't going to die.

But they're going to keep swarming around that light because they can't help it.

Best Supporting Actor?

Norbit, the new Eddie Murphy movie, opens in theaters nationwide today.

There is talk that Norbit could cost Murphy the best supporting actor Oscar for Dreamgirls. "Is this what a future Oscar winner looks like?" was the headline in the LA Times.

So releasing this film now could be a really big mistake for Eddie?

All I really know is that the film poster at right gives new meaning to the phrase "best supporting actor."

I'm Going to Regret This

Ten years ago, I sponsored an Oscar Party contest involving who could come up with the best fake porn movie title based on Best Picture nominated films and other films released during 1996.

Some of the results were ... quite upsetting. The grand prize was a deck of adult playing cards.

It's the last year I did the contest.

I'm pleased to announce that the competition returns this year!

The rules are the same. Please post your answers in the comments.

Remember, this is both an opportunity to win prizes and disgust your friends.

Emission Impossible 3 ... Wet Dreamgirls ... Fags of Our Fathers.

What say YOU?

CLICK TO ENLARGE!

P.S. I lied. There are no prizes.

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A Movie for At Least 546 To See Now

It was the sweater that I noticed first.

The man wearing it, grieving in a most painful and public way, stood beside a pile of dead bodies in a market near the center of Baghdad, the aftermath of explosions that killed 88.

I own a similar sweater. Same color, too.

I'm not desensitized to such images of violence. They really bother me. Violence in movies, which I know is fake, usually doesn't affect me, but the "real thing" is something I have a more difficult time with.

Can any thinking person not look at this without feeling a sense of horror?

The photo (and others like it, which are being created on a daily basis) has been in my head all week, since it appeared on the front page of the New York Times on Tuesday. It's really hard to forget.

I suppose all this was in the back of my mind when I wrote this, and it certainly was in the back of my mind last night, when my friends and I went to see Letters From Iwo Jimo, part II of the Eastwood masterpiece of filmmaking that started with Flags of Our Fathers, and a two-movie set that I wish every single American would see, think about, and learn from.

I don't know if it's realistic for all 300 million Americans to see, but why don't we start with 546 individuals?

Let's do the math together: That would be the 100 U.S. Senators, the 435 U.S. Representatives, the 9 members of the Supreme Court, our single Chicken Hawk vice president, and plus his boss, the former Yale cheerleader, the child of privilege who was able to skip out on his National Guard service because his daddy was a Congressman and his grandpa was a Senator.

Letters from Iwo Jima movie site.

Why United 93 Didn't Get Nominated

Deadlinehollywooddaily.com has an interesting argument answering this question, and it kind of puts the shallowness of Hollywood in perspective, don't you think?

No way United 93 would get a Best Picture nomination. Why? Because this critics' darling had no name stars in it, and the most elite Screen Actors Guild members make up the largest segment of Academy voters. They don't like it when somebody with a good script makes a great movie with a C-grade cast. In a nutshell, it's bad for their biz (their biz, of course, consisting of implausibly padded perks, ironclad start and stop dates, half-hearted promotional efforts in exchange for those studio jet flights, and other pain-in-the-ass behavior that drives up production costs.). There was also the content problem: no one in Hollywood wanted to nominate a jingoistic rah-rah America drama. Not when this year's seven-times nominated Babel was to global bleakness what last year's Crash was to Los Angeles. Instead, the punishment they meted out is to nominate Paul Greengrass for Best Director and, on Oscar night, force him to sit for hour after hour and hour of that interminable awards broadcast inside that fucking prison impersonating the Kodak Thater.

For me, United 93 was one of the three best movies of last year. Fifty years from now, United 93 will be remembered and watched. I don't think the same will hold true for Babel.

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A Tower of Babble

Last night, while at the movie Babel, which was just nominated for Best Picture, I glanced over at my friend Elgie, whose expression was pretty much like the monkey at right.

I think she was trying to figure out how to say the words "contrived" and "manipulative" in as many different languages as possible.

Wally's Take on the Oscars

Wally, he of few words, and he who never posts replies on this blog, just sent me an email with his reaction to the Oscar nominations. As usual, his 12 words are few and well-chosen:

"I'm just glad that Borat wasn't listed in any of the scategories."

Indeed, there'll be no Best Actor Oscar for Sacha Baron Cohen because you can't win if your peers don't enter you.

And it looks like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences wasn't quite ready to reward Cohen's quite literal bag of tricks.

If you haven't seen the movie, Sasha's "bag of tricks" is actually a "bag of poop" during the dinner scene pictured above. He may have better luck securing an award from the Anal Academy of Motion Picture Arts.

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One More Brief Note on Oscar Nominations

How soon we forget United 93.

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2007 Oscar Nominations: A Quick Reaction

Jackie Earl Hailey, the guy who played Kelly in the 1976 movie Bad News Bears, is now an Oscar-nominated actor as of one minute ago.

Cool!

Morris Buttermaker (and not to mention the late Oscar winner Walter Matthau) must be proud.

Also, we here at The Cup of Joe are delighted that Little Miss Sunshine herself, Abigail Breslin, was also recognized with a Best Supporting Actress nomination, as was the movie itself for Best Picture.

And choosing Little Miss Sunshine over the NOT-nominated Dreamgirls for Best Picture wasn't a bad choice, no? Anybody?

Not that I take awards seriously.

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