Says who? - Thirty-nine Polarizing Hollywood Debates (Resolved)
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When hunky, twenty-year-old heart-throb Heath Ledger first came to the attention of the public in 1999, it was all too easy to tag him as a "pretty boy" and an actor of little depth. He spent several years trying desperately to sway this image, but this was a double-edged sword. His work comprised nineteen films, including 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), The Patriot (2000), A Knight's Tale (2001), Monster's Ball (2001), Ned Kelly (2003), The Brothers Grimm (2005), Lords of Dogtown (2005), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Casanova (2005), Candy (2006), I'm Not There (2007), The Dark Knight (2008) and The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009). He also produced and directed music videos and aspired to be a film director.
Heath Ledger was born on the fourth of April 1979, in Perth, Western Australia, to Sally (Ramshaw), a teacher of French, and Kim Ledger, a mining engineer who also raced cars. His ancestry was Scottish, English, Irish, and Sephardi Jewish. As the story goes, in junior high school it was compulsory to take one of two electives, either cooking or drama. As Heath could not see himself in a cooking class he tried his hand at drama. Heath was talented, however the rest of the class did not acknowledge his talent. When he was seventeen he and a friend decided to pack up, leave school, take a car and rough it to Sydney. Heath believed Sydney to be the place where dreams were made or, at least, where actors could possibly get their big break. Upon arriving in Sydney with a purported sixty-nine cents to his name, Heath tried everything to get a break.
His first real acting job came in a low-budget movie called Blackrock (1997), a largely unimpressive cliché; an adolescent angst film about one boy's struggle when he learns his best mate raped a girl. He only had a very small role in the film. After that small role Heath auditioned for a role in a T.V. show called Sweat (1996) about a group of young Olympic hopefuls. He was offered one of two roles, one as a swimmer, another as a gay cyclist. Heath accepted the latter because he felt to really stand out as an actor one had to accept unique roles that stood out from the bunch. It got him small notice, but unfortunately the show was quickly axed, forcing him to look for other roles. He was in Home and Away (1988) for a very short period, in which he played a surfer who falls in love with one of the girls of Summer Bay. Then came his very brief role in Paws (1997), a film which existed solely to cash in on guitar prodigy Nathan Cavaleri's brief moment of fame, where he was the hottest thing in Australia. Heath played a student in the film, involved in a stage production of a Shakespeare play, in which he played "Oberon". A very brief role, this offered him a small paycheck but did nothing to advance his career. Then came Two Hands (1999). He went to the U.S. trying to audition for film roles, showcasing his brief role in Roar (1997) opposite then unknown Vera Farmiga.
Then Australian director Gregor Jordan auditioned him for the lead in Two Hands (1999), which he got. An in your face Aussie crime thriller, Two Hands (1999) was outstanding and helped him secure a role in 10 Things I Hate About You (1999). After that, it seemed Heath was being typecast as a young hunk, which he did not like, so he accepted a role in a very serious war drama The Patriot (2000).
What followed was a stark inconsistency of roles, Ledger accepting virtually every single character role, anything to avoid being typecast. Some met with praise, like his short role in Monster's Ball (2001), but his version of Ned Kelly (2003) was an absolute flop, which led distributors hesitant to even release it outside Australia. Heath finally had deserved success with his role in Brokeback Mountain (2005). For his portrayal of Ennis Del Mar in in the film, Ledger won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and Best International Actor from the Australian Film Institute, and was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role and for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Ledger was found dead on January 22, 2008 in his apartment in the Manhattan neighborhood of SoHo, with a bottle of prescription sleeping pills near-by. It was concluded weeks later that he died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs that included pain-killers, sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication. His death occurred during editing of The Dark Knight (2008) and in the midst of filming his last role as Tony in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (2009).
Posthumously, he shared the 2007 Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award with the rest of the ensemble cast, the director, and the casting director for the film I'm Not There (2007), which was inspired by the life and songs of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. In the film, Ledger portrayed a fictional actor named Robbie Clark, one of six characters embodying aspects of Dylan's life and persona.
A few months before his death, Ledger had finished filming his performance as the Joker in 'The Dark Knight (2008). His untimely death cast a somber shadow over the subsequent promotion of the $185 million Batman production. Ledger received more than thirty posthumous accolades for his critically acclaimed performance as the Joker, the psychopathic clown prince of crime, in the film, including the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, a Best Actor International Award at the 2008 Australian Film Institute Awards (for which he is the second actor to win an acting award posthumously after Peter Finch who won an Oscar for Network (Best Actor 1977)), the 2008 Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor, the 2009 Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture, and the 2009 BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.Consensus is: 'Heath Ledger did not deserve his Best Supporting Oscar/only won his Oscar because he died.'
This one never fails to start an argument, and is quick to lead to digressions so I'll keep it succinct. Ledger was adequate in his performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight. His competition that year was not particularly enthralling. Did that seal his victory? Yes, but Robert Downey never would have won for a comedy wearing blackface. Philip Seymour Hoffman had won an Oscar a few years earlier, and voters do keep that kind of thing in mind. Michael Shannon is a largely obscure actor in a little-seen movie; he had no real shot. Which leaves Josh Brolin in Milk, playing a rather hideous real-life character as compared to the hideous but made-up (and therefore less scary) character of The Joker. Ledger's win is less suprising in retrospect; he already had a 50-50 shot before he passed untimely, I figure.- Director
- Writer
- Producer
Michael Cimino studied architecture and dramatic arts; later he filmed advertisements and documentaries and also wrote scripts until the actor, producer and director Clint Eastwood gave him the opportunity to direct the thriller Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974). But his biggest success was The Deer Hunter (1978) which won the Oscar for Best Picture. For another successful film, The Sicilian (1987), he got into trouble with critics when they accused him of portraying as a hero the Italian criminal Salvatore Giuliano.Consensus is: 'Heaven's Gate is the biggest bomb in history/proved why directors should never have complete control over a film production.'
Francis Ford Coppola pulled just about the same stunt at just about the same time. So, why is Apocalypse Now heralded and Heaven's Gate a panned 'failure'? Both directors ran up big budgets that endangered their studios and the then god-like power of directors through their mutual absurd perfectionism. The big difference is Heaven's Gate was doomed by early bad press it could not recover from. Coppola's movie made money and won awards. Cimino's credibility was destroyed overnight. Though Coppola would prove himself an equally abyssmal disappointment in the following decades. Heaven's Gate seems at least watchable, if terribly flawed. Even correctly edited, Heaven's Gate is still only mediocre, and too self-conscious. But it's not deserving of its reputation.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
George Walton Lucas, Jr. was raised on a walnut ranch in Modesto, California. His father was a stationery store owner and he had three siblings. During his late teen years, he went to Thomas Downey High School and was very much interested in drag racing. He planned to become a professional racecar driver. However, a terrible car accident just after his high school graduation ended that dream permanently. The accident changed his views on life.
He decided to attend Modesto Junior College before enrolling in the University of Southern California film school. As a film student, he made several short films including Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB (1967) which won first prize at the 1967-68 National Student Film Festival. In 1967, he was awarded a scholarship by Warner Brothers to observe the making of Finian's Rainbow (1968) which was being directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Lucas and Coppola became good friends and formed American Zoetrope in 1969. The company's first project was Lucas' full-length version of THX 1138 (1971). In 1971, Coppola went into production for The Godfather (1972), and Lucas formed his own company, Lucasfilm Ltd.
In 1973, he wrote and directed the semiautobiographical American Graffiti (1973) which won the Golden Globe and garnered five Academy Award nominations. This gave him the clout he needed for his next daring venture. From 1973 to 1974, he began writing the screenplay which became Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977). He was inspired to make this movie from Flash Gordon and the Planet of the Apes films. In 1975, he established ILM. (Industrial Light & Magic) to produce the visual effects needed for the movie. Another company called Sprocket Systems was established to edit and mix Star Wars and later becomes known as Skywalker Sound. His movie was turned down by several studios until 20th Century Fox gave him a chance. Lucas agreed to forego his directing salary in exchange for 40% of the film's box-office take and all merchandising rights. The movie went on to break all box office records and earned seven Academy Awards. It redefined the term "blockbuster" and the rest is history.
Lucas made the other Star Wars films and along with Steven Spielberg created the Indiana Jones series which made box office records of their own. From 1980 to 1985, Lucas was busy with the construction of Skywalker Ranch, built to accommodate the creative, technical, and administrative needs of Lucasfilm. Lucas also revolutionized movie theaters with the THX system which was created to maintain the highest quality standards in motion picture viewing.
He went on to produce several more movies that have introduced major innovations in filmmaking technology. He is chairman of the board of the George Lucas Educational Foundation. In 1992, George Lucas was honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Award by the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his lifetime achievement.
He reentered the directing chair with the production of the highly-anticipated Star Wars prequel trilogy beginning with Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) . The films have been polarizing for fans and critics alike, but were commercially successful and have become a part of culture. The animated spin-off series Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) was supervised by Lucas. He sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012, making co-chair Kathleen Kennedy president. He has attended the premieres of new Star Wars films and been generally supportive of them.Consensus is: 'George Lucas is a cinematic visionary.'
The Star Wars franchise is remarkable, though one could amend that by pointing out the most recent batch of prequels and merchandizing offshoots are less than memorable, and they compare terribly to the orignal three. I'll ignore the 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special for everyone's benefit. Barring Star Wars films or Star Wars-themed productions, he has done little but engage as a producer (which does not by its definition require any real creativity). In the end he seems to have gotten through forty years with excedingly few original or compelling ideas of his own. But he is quite a capitalist visionary.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
In 1976, if you had told fourteen-year-old Franciscan seminary student Thomas Cruise Mapother IV that one day in the not too distant future he would be Tom Cruise, one of the top 100 movie stars of all time, he would have probably grinned and told you that his ambition was to join the priesthood. Nonetheless, this sensitive, deeply religious youngster who was born in 1962 in Syracuse, New York, was destined to become one of the highest paid and most sought after actors in screen history.
Tom is the only son (among four children) of nomadic parents, Mary Lee (Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer. His parents were both from Louisville, Kentucky, and he has German, Irish, and English ancestry. Young Tom spent his boyhood always on the move, and by the time he was 14 he had attended 15 different schools in the U.S. and Canada. He finally settled in Glen Ridge, New Jersey with his mother and her new husband. While in high school, Tom wanted to become a priest but pretty soon he developed an interest in acting and abandoned his plans of becoming a priest, dropped out of school, and at age 18 headed for New York and a possible acting career. The next 15 years of his life are the stuff of legends. He made his film debut with a small part in Endless Love (1981) and from the outset exhibited an undeniable box office appeal to both male and female audiences.
With handsome movie star looks and a charismatic smile, within 5 years Tom Cruise was starring in some of the top-grossing films of the 1980s including Top Gun (1986); The Color of Money (1986), Rain Man (1988) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). By the 1990s he was one of the highest-paid actors in the world earning an average 15 million dollars a picture in such blockbuster hits as Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996) and Jerry Maguire (1996), for which he received an Academy Award Nomination for best actor. Tom Cruise's biggest franchise, Mission Impossible, has also earned a total of 3 billion dollars worldwide. Tom Cruise has also shown lots of interest in producing, with his biggest producer credits being the Mission Impossible franchise.
In 1990 he renounced his devout Catholic beliefs and embraced The Church of Scientology claiming that Scientology teachings had cured him of the dyslexia that had plagued him all of his life. A kind and thoughtful man well known for his compassion and generosity, Tom Cruise is one of the best liked members of the movie community. He was married to actress Nicole Kidman until 2001. Thomas Cruise Mapother IV has indeed come a long way from the lonely wanderings of his youth to become one of the biggest movie stars ever.Consensus is: 'Tom Cruise is overrated.'
This one is hard to debunk. Cruise makes a lot of movies, and very few are legitimately good. He is a victim of his success, and, well, his own persona. I will disregard the irrelevant Scientologist aspect, and simply say he is one of many actors who do not take many risks after becoming a success, and he has a tendency to make average movies. That similarly applies to 90% of Hollywood actors. Considering the excrement George Clooney, Johnny Depp and 'serious' actors regularly churn-out, Tom Cruise deserves a break.- Producer
- Director
- Actor
Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York City, to Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, who both worked in Manhattan's garment district, and whose families both came from Palermo, Sicily. He was raised in the neighborhood of Little Italy, which later provided the inspiration for several of his films. Scorsese earned a B.S. degree in film communications in 1964, followed by an M.A. in the same field in 1966 at New York University's School of Film. During this time, he made numerous prize-winning short films including The Big Shave (1967), and directed his first feature film, Who's That Knocking at My Door (1967).
He served as assistant director and an editor of the documentary Woodstock (1970) and won critical and popular acclaim for Mean Streets (1973), which first paired him with actor and frequent collaborator Robert De Niro. In 1976, Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), also starring De Niro, was awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and he followed that film with New York, New York (1977) and The Last Waltz (1978). Scorsese directed De Niro to an Oscar-winning performance as boxer Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980), which received eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, and is hailed as one of the masterpieces of modern cinema. Scorsese went on to direct The Color of Money (1986), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990), Cape Fear (1991), The Age of Innocence (1993), Casino (1995) and Kundun (1997), among other films. Commissioned by the British Film Institute to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of cinema, Scorsese completed the four-hour documentary, A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies (1995), co-directed by Michael Henry Wilson.
His long-cherished project, Gangs of New York (2002), earned numerous critical honors, including a Golden Globe Award for Best Director; the Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator (2004) won five Academy Awards, in addition to the Golden Globe and BAFTA awards for Best Picture. Scorsese won his first Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed (2006), which was also honored with the Director's Guild of America, Golden Globe, New York Film Critics, National Board of Review and Critic's Choice awards for Best Director, in addition to four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Scorsese's documentary of the Rolling Stones in concert, Shine a Light (2008), followed, with the successful thriller Shutter Island (2010) two years later. Scorsese received his seventh Academy Award nomination for Best Director, as well as a Golden Globe Award, for Hugo (2011), which went on to win five Academy Awards.
Scorsese also serves as executive producer on the HBO series Boardwalk Empire (2010) for which he directed the pilot episode. Scorsese's additional awards and honors include the Golden Lion from the Venice Film Festival (1995), the AFI Life Achievement Award (1997), the Honoree at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's 25th Gala Tribute (1998), the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award (2003), The Kennedy Center Honors (2007) and the HFPA Cecil B. DeMille Award (2010). Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio have worked together on five separate occasions: Gangs of New York (2002), The Aviator (2004), The Departed (2006), Shutter Island (2010) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013).Consensus is: 'Raging Bull was robbed of its rightful Oscar for Best Picture.'
The 53rd Academy Award for Best Picture came down to basically two films, Ordinary People and Raging Bull. In hindsight, Raging Bull appears the best movie of the year, possibly of the decade judging from some critics' opinions. Perhaps Robert Redford's Ordinary People just doesn't age well. I'm of the opinion of many critics, Scorsese's picture was brillant in all aspects. It is devastating, triumphant, and somewhat amusing all at once. It captures the nature of its protagonist's erratic life incredibly well, not to mention the scummy nature of boxing in that era. Ordinary People seems conventional and melodramatic in comparison. Raging Bull never seems dry or deliberate. And despite the fact the two cover similar topics as dysfunctional families, psychology, and has a similarly grandiose soundtrack, only one feels palpably real. Ordinary People elicits an empathetic nod. As a director, Scorsese deserves exactly one Oscar, and that should have been for Raging Bull not The Departed. ...Maybe another for Goodfellas, just to be fair.- Actor
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Born in London, England, Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis is the second child of Cecil Day-Lewis, Poet Laureate of the U.K., and his second wife, actress Jill Balcon. His maternal grandfather was Sir Michael Balcon, an important figure in the history of British cinema and head of the famous Ealing Studios. His older sister, Tamasin Day-Lewis, is a documentarian. His father was of Northern Irish and English descent, and his mother was Jewish (from a family from Latvia and Poland). Daniel was educated at Sevenoaks School in Kent, which he despised, and the more progressive Bedales in Petersfield, which he adored. He studied acting at the Bristol Old Vic School. Daniel made his film debut in Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), but then acted on stage with the Bristol Old Vic and Royal Shakespeare Companies and did not appear on screen again until 1982, when he landed his first adult role, a bit part in Gandhi (1982). He also appeared on British television that year in Frost in May (1982) and How Many Miles to Babylon? (1982). Notable theatrical performances include Another Country (1982-83), Dracula (1984) and The Futurists (1986).
His first major supporting role in a feature film was in The Bounty (1984), quickly followed by My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and A Room with a View (1985). The latter two films opened in New York on the same day, offering audiences and critics evidence of his remarkable range and establishing him as a major talent. The New York Film Critics named him Best Supporting Actor for those performances. In 1986, he appeared on stage in Richard Eyre's "The Futurists" and on television in Eyre's production of The Insurance Man (1986). He also had a small role in a British/French film, Nanou (1986). In 1987, he assumed leading-man status in Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988), followed by a comedic role in the unsuccessful Stars and Bars (1988). His brilliant performance as Christy Brown in Jim Sheridan's My Left Foot (1989) won him numerous awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actor.
He returned to the stage to work again with Eyre, as Hamlet at the National Theater, but was forced to leave the production close to the end of its run because of exhaustion, and has not appeared on stage since. He took a hiatus from film as well until 1992, when he starred in The Last of the Mohicans (1992), a film that met with mixed reviews but was a great success at the box office. He worked with American director Martin Scorsese in The Age of Innocence (1993), based on Edith Wharton's novel. Subsequently, he teamed again with Jim Sheridan to star in In the Name of the Father (1993), a critically acclaimed performance that earned him another Academy Award nomination. His next project was in the role of John Proctor in father-in-law Arthur Miller's play The Crucible (1996), directed by Nicholas Hytner. He worked with Scorsese again to star in Gangs of New York (2002), another critically acclaimed performance that earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Day-Lewis's wife, Rebecca Miller, offered him the lead role in her film The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005), in which he played a dying man with regrets over how his wife had evolved and over how he had brought up his teenage daughter. During filming, he arranged to live separate from his wife to achieve the "isolation" needed to focus on his own character's reality. The film received mixed reviews. In 2007, he starred in director Paul Thomas Anderson's loose adaptation of Upton Sinclair's novel "Oil!", titled There Will Be Blood (2007). Day-Lewis received the Academy Award for Best Actor, BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama, Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role, and a variety of film critics' circle awards for the role. In 2009, Day-Lewis starred in Rob Marshall's musical adaptation Nine (2009) as film director Guido Contini. He was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and the Satellite Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.Consensus is: 'Mr. Day-Lewis is the greatest working actor.'
Possibly the above claim is true, but can you say you've honestly ever looked forward to watching -- or re-watching -- one of his movies? It should be noted Day-Lewis has suprisingly few lead roles in his thirty-year career, and fewer truly memorable roles, which probably should count against him. (Look at the first five years of Brando's eccentric career, Deniro's hot streak between 1973-83, Glenn Close in the Eighties, Alec Guinness's work 1949-57, Rob Redford in the late Sixties/early Seventies, or better, Jack Nicholson's career 1969-75 for a sobering comparison.) We the viewer are supposed to endure actorly showcases and historical epics like some kind of cinematic vegetable, but to me, his film choices seem unimaginably bland or scenery-chewing. In a steady stream of overlong costume dramas, biopics & literary adaptations, and angsty social/political films, his career is the epitome of Oscar bait, even his lighter films. His most iconic 'bad guy' roles, like Gangs of NY or There Will Be Blood, are overpowering. He is the epitome of the 'serious actor,' or in other words, an actor you have no choice but to take seriously though most of his films are a chore to see. Should it matter? I think so. As for his legacy, only time can tell.- Director
- Writer
- Editor
Jean-Luc Godard was born in Paris on December 3, 1930, the second of four children in a bourgeois Franco-Swiss family. His father was a doctor who owned a private clinic, and his mother came from a preeminent family of Swiss bankers. During World War II Godard became a naturalized citizen of Switzerland and attended school in Nyons, Switzerland. His parents divorced in 1948, at which time he returned to Paris to attend the Lycée Rohmer. In 1949 he studied at the Sorbonne to prepare for a degree in ethnology. However, it was during this time that he began attending with François Truffaut, Jacques Rivette, and Éric Rohmer.
In 1950 Godard, with Rivette and Rohmer, founded "Gazette du cinéma", which published five issues between May and November. He wrote a number of articles for the journal, often using the pseudonym "Hans Lucas". After Godard worked on and financed two films by Rivette and Rohmer, Godard's family cut off their financial support in 1951, and he resorted to a Bohemian lifestyle that included stealing food and money when necessary. In January 1952 he began writing film criticism for "Les cahiers du cinéma". Later that year he traveled to North and South America with his father and attempted to make his first film (of which only a tracking shot from a car was ever accomplished).
In 1953 he returned to Paris briefly before securing a job as a construction worker on a dam project in Switzerland. With the money from the job, he made a short film in 1954 about the building of the dam called Operation Concrete (1958). Later that year his mother was killed in a motor scooter accident in Switzerland. In 1956 Godard began writing again for "Les cahiers du cinéma" as well as for the journal "Arts". In 1957 Godard worked as the press attache for "Artistes Associés", and made his first French film, All Boys Are Called Patrick (1959).
In 1958 he shot Charlotte and Her Boyfriend (1958), his homage to Jean Cocteau. Later that year he took unused footage of a flood in Paris shot by Truffaut and edited it into a film called A Story of Water (1961), which was an homage to Mack Sennett. In 1959 he worked with Truffaut on the weekly publication "Temps de Paris". Godard wrote a gossip column for the journal, but also spent much time writing scenarios for films and a body of critical writings which placed him firmly in the forefront of the "nouvelle vague" aesthetic, precursing the French New Wave.
It was also in that year Godard began work on Breathless (1960). In 1960 he married Anna Karina in Switzerland. In April and May he shot The Little Soldier (1963) in Geneva and was preparing the film for a fall release in Paris. However, French censors banned it due to its references to the Algerian war, and it was not shown until 1963. In March 1960 Breathless (1960) premiered in Paris. It was hugely successful both with the film critics and at the box office, and became a landmark film in the French New Wave with its references to American cinema, its jagged editing and overall romantic/cinephilia approach to filmmaking. The film propelled the popularity of male lead Jean-Paul Belmondo with European audiences.
In 1961 Godard shot A Woman Is a Woman (1961), his first film using color widescreen stock. Later that year he participated in the collective effort to remake the film The Seven Deadly Sins (1962), which was heralded as an important project in artistic collaboration. In 1962 Godard shot Vivre sa vie (1962) in Paris, his first commercial success since "Breathless". Later that year he shot a segment entitled "Le Nouveau Monde" for the collective film Ro.Go.Pa.G. (1963), another important work in the history of collaborative multiple-authored art.
In 1963 Godard completed a film in homage to Jean Vigo entitled The Carabineers (1963), which was a resounding failure with the public and stirred furious controversy with film critics. Also that year he worked on a couple of collective films: The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers (1964) (from which Godard's sequence was later cut) and Six in Paris (1965). In 1964 Godard and his wife Anna Karina formed their own production company, Anouchka Films. They shot a film called A Married Woman (1964), which censors forced them to re-edit due to a topless sunbathing scene shot by Jacques Rozier. The censors also made Godard change the title to "Une femme marié" so as to not give the impression that this "scandalous" woman was the typical French wife. Later in the year, two French television programs were produced in devotion to Godard's work.
In the spring of 1965 Godard shot Alphaville (1965) in Paris; in the summer he shot Pierrot the Fool (1965) in Paris and the south of France. Shortly thereafter he and Anna Karina separated. Following their divorce, Godard shot Made in U.S.A (1966), "Deux ou trois choses que je sais d'elle (1966)", "L'amour en l'an 2000" (1966) (a sequel to "Alphaville" shot as a sketch for the collective film "L'amour travers les ages" (1966)).
In 1967 Godard shot The Chinese (1967) in Paris with Anne Wiazemsky, who was the granddaughter of French novelist François Mauriac. During the making of the film Godard and Wiazemsky were married in Paris. Later in the year he was prevented from traveling to North Vietnam for the shooting of a sequence for the collective film Far from Vietnam (1967). He instead shot the sequence in Paris, entitled "Camera-Oeil". Also during 1967 Godard participated (as the only Frenchman) on an Italian collective film called Love and Anger (1969).
In 1968 Godard was commissioned by French television to make Joy of Learning (1969). However, television producers were so outraged by the product Godard produced that they refused to show it. In May of that year Henri Langlois was fired by the head of the French Jean-Pierre Gorin to form the Dziga-Vertov group, infuriating Godard. He became increasingly concerned with socialist solutions to an idealist cinema, especially in providing the proletariat with the means of production and distribution. Along with other militantly political filmmakers in the Dziga-Vertov group, Godard published a series of 'Ciné-Tracts' outlining these viewpoints. In the summer of 1968 Godard traveled to New York City and Berkeley, California, to shoot the film "One American Movie", which was never completed. In September he made a trip to Canada to start another film called "Communication(s)", which also went unfinished, and then made a visit to Cuba before returning to France.
In 1969 Godard traveled to England, where he made the film See You at Mao (1970) for BBC Weekend Television, but the network later refused to show it. In the late spring he traveled with the Dziga-Vertov group to Prague to secretly shoot the film "Pravda". Later that year he shot Lotte in Italia (1971) ("Struggle for Italy") for Italian television. It was never shown, either.
In 1970 Godard traveled to Lebanon to shoot a film for the Palestinian Liberation Organization entitled "Jusque à la victoire" (1970) ("Until Victory"). Later that year he traveled to dozens of American universities trying to raise money for the film. In spite of his efforts, it was never released.Consensus is: 'The French New Wave is the most important stylistic breakthrough in film history/Godard the most important director.'
Considering he has four films in Sight and Sound's recent top-fifty list, Jean-Luc Godard is arguably the greatest filmmaker of all time. Godard churned out countless films in his life, a few promising, but the majority of his work is obscure, dated, or too academic. De-emphasized narrative & dialogue, and experimentation too easily leads to plodding, preachy drivel. As Ingmar Bergman put it, 'He’s made his films for the critics' not real audiences. In my opinion he seems unconcerned or incapable of creating timeless characters or stories (which when you think of it, should be considered a damning handicap for a man who makes films for a living) than he is in the language of the craft.
Certainly cinema is better for embracing change (look no further then Italian neo-realism), but the concept was often better than the products. The raw, low-budget aesthetic usually yielded more cheap-looking duds that masterpieces (the dreadful Made in U.S.A., vacuous Alphaville, or masturbatory Weekend leap to mind). Much of JLG's work is redundant, over-conceptualized, and intentionally incomprehensible. Never has style and innovation proved so overrated. An ardent Marxist, Godard's tragic flaw is that as his films became increasingly unwatchable for the common man, Hollywood exploited what it had learned from the New Wave movement for its own advantage. In the process popularizing the irrititating belief among directors that they are all born screenwriters. The success of studio films like Gone With the Wind, Alien, The Wizard of OZ, and Casablanca sap the auteur theory, the essential component of the New Wave, of much of its persuasiveness. Sometimes 'interference' can help a picture otherwise filled with yes men and sycophants, call it the Lucas/Tarantino effect. His lasting legacy is more archetype than artist.- Actor
- Soundtrack
The zaniest of all madcap comedy teams were the Marx Brothers, namely Groucho (aka Julius Henry), Chico (aka Leonard), and Harpo (aka Adolph). There were also Zeppo (aka Herbert) -- who featured in their early comedies as a straight man and later became a theatrical agent -- and Gummo (aka Milton), who eschewed the entertainment industry for a career in business. Though the Marxes were born in New York, their father Simon (nicknamed 'Frenchie') originally hailed from Germany. He was a clothing cutter, who (according to Groucho) had lofty aspirations of becoming a tailor. He later changed his name to Sam. Their mother came from Alsace-Lorraine and was a noted beauty named Minnie Schoenberg. The brothers were raised in the Jewish faith and grew up in a poor Manhattan neighbourhood of mostly Italian and German immigrants on East 93rd Street.
Groucho Marx was the first to enter show business as a boy soprano with the Gus Edwards show 'Boys and Girls'. His first 'proper job' was on Coney Island, singing a song while sitting on a keg of beer. This earned him a dollar. Chico Marx became a piano salesman at Shapiro and Bernstein. In 1908, Minnie, whose parents had once operated a travelling theatrical troupe, organised Groucho, Harpo Marx, Gummo Marx and a kid named Lou Levy into a musical act on vaudeville. They became known as the Four Nightingales. With further additions, this expanded into the Six Mascots by 1912. The Marxe's uncle, a well-established German-born comic and vaudevillian named Al Shean, began to refine the show business personae of the brothers and also contributed to writing their first successful skit. Groucho now started walking with a loping stoop and became verbose. Harpo donned a red wig and became a mute. Chico wore a pointy hat and adopted an Italian accent. Their growing success on the vaudeville circuit led to a sojourn in England in the early 20s where they appeared in a musical revue entitled On the Balcony. In 1924, Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo achieved their first major breakthrough on Broadway in the comedy musical I'll Say She Is. Groucho, playing Napoleon Bonaparte, sported his painted on moustache for the first time on the big stage (the cigar came later). In 1925, the Marxes headlined with their own material in The Cocoanuts which later also became their first talking picture.
The brothers (after 1933 minus straight man Zeppo Marx) went on to star in another dozen motion pictures. These included Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup (1933) (for Paramount) and A Night at the Opera (1935),A Day at the Races (1937) (arguably their best), At the Circus (1939), Go West (1940) and The Big Store (1941) (for MGM). By the early 30s, their on- screen characters had become fully-fledged. Few directors could fully contain (or control) them, though some did better than others. Groucho pretty much dominated (and chewed) the scene as the garrulous master of barbed insults and double entendres (he also wrote or co-wrote most of the gags and one-liners). His characters had memorable names like Hugo Z. Hackenbush, J. Cheever Loophole and Rufus T. Firefly. Chico was slow-witted and somewhat shady, playing the piano with his inimitable style during musical interludes. Finally, child-like Harpo, eating plates, drinking ink and chasing girls (and, of course, playing the harp). Matronly Margaret Dumont, often on the receiving end of Groucho's jokes, remained mostly stoic, never quite 'getting it'.
Their uniquely anarchic style of comedy has remained popular to this day, neatly summed up by Fiorello (Chico) pointing out to Otis P. Driftwood (Groucho) in A Day at the Races that in a Marx Brothers contract "There ain't no Sanity Clause".
.Consensus is: 'The Marx Brothers' films are the funniest movies ever made.'
Groucho's jokes don't always age well, and seem less original after years of imitation and outright theft (not really his fault). Harpo is a riot, but like much of the Marx's films, his harp playing often seems like filler. The plots are non-existent. The musical numbers fall flat more often than not. Chico is an afterthought. The problem with the Marx Brothers is they are essentially remaking the same movie ad nauseum. Quite honestly, it's hard to differentiate the films in my mind. They are, after all, vaudeville performers not writers, they only need to update their act marginally from year to year. They are sporadically hilarious, but their movies mostly standout only because of the lack of genuine competitors in that era. Sorry, Stooges.- Actor
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Kevin Michael Costner was born on January 18, 1955 in Lynwood, California, the third child of Bill Costner, a ditch digger and ultimately an electric line servicer for Southern California Edison, and Sharon Costner (née Tedrick), a welfare worker. His older brother, Dan, was born in 1950. A middle brother died at birth in 1953. His father's job required him to move regularly, which caused Kevin to feel like an Army kid, always the new kid at school, which led to him being a daydreamer. As a teen, he sang in the Baptist church choir, wrote poetry, and took writing classes. At 18, he built his own canoe and paddled his way down the rivers that Lewis & Clark followed to the Pacific. Despite his present height, he was only 5'2" when he graduated high school. Nonetheless, he still managed to be a basketball, football and baseball star. In 1973, he enrolled at California State University at Fullerton, where he majored in business. During that period, Kevin decided to take acting lessons five nights a week. He graduated with a business degree in 1978 and married his college sweetheart, Cindy Costner. He initially took a marketing job in Orange County. Everything changed when he accidentally met Richard Burton on a flight from Mexico. Burton advised him to go completely after acting if that is what he wanted. He quit his job and moved to Hollywood soon after. He drove a truck, worked on a deep sea fishing boat, and gave bus tours to stars' homes before finally making his own way into the films. After making one soft core sex film, he vowed to not work again if that was the only work he could do. He didn't work for nearly six years, while he waited for a proper break. That break came with The Big Chill (1983), even though his scenes ended up on the cutting room floor -- he was remembered by director Lawrence Kasdan when he decided to make Silverado (1985). Costner's career took off after that.Consensus is: 'Kevin Costner is a terrible director/Waterworld is the worst bomb ever.'
Say what you want, Waterworld is far from the 'worst movie ever' and it made money when all final worldwide ticket sales are counted. It was daring and, yes, it failed but it was an admirable failure. Costner did drama, comedy, romance, gangster flicks, family films, sports films, then turned to directing and producing and succeeded in all. He won an Oscar and attempted to one-up George Lucas. The lame Waterworld and follow-up diaster Postman ruined his reputation for years, but Costner is a respectable auteur for at least taking chances.- Actor
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British actor and comedian Sacha Baron Cohen was born in Hammersmith, London. He is the son of Daniella (Weiser), a movement instructor, and Gerald Baron Cohen, a clothing store owner. His father, born in England and raised in Wales, was of Eastern European Jewish descent, while his mother was born in Israel, to German Jewish parents. He was educated at a private school, Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Hertfordshire, and went on to read History at Christ's College, Cambridge. Baron Cohen had an interest in performing from an early age, forming a breakdancing group as a teenager and acting in amateur plays with a Jewish youth group. While at university he joined the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club, and took part in such plays as "Cyrano de Bergerac" and "Fiddler on the Roof".
Upon leaving University, Baron Cohen briefly worked as a model, before moving on to work as a host on a satellite TV station. In 1995, Channel 4 put out an open call for new presenters, and Baron Cohen sent in a tape featuring himself in character as an Albania TV reporter (an early prototype for Borat). He was hired and worked on various 'youth TV' projects before, in 1998, appearing in The 11 O'Clock Show (1998) which became a cult hit thanks to his character, Ali G. Ali G proved so popular that a spin-off show Da Ali G Show (2000) and film Ali G Indahouse (2002) where produced.
America soon beckoned with a stateside version of Da Ali G Show. Feature film work followed with Baron Cohen providing the voice of Julien in Madagascar (2005) and appearing as Jean Girard alongside Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006). He followed this with the smash-hit Borat (2006), for which he won a Golden Globe and was nominated for a writing Oscar. His other film work includes supporting roles in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and Hugo (2011), and starring in the title roles of Brüno (2009), The Dictator (2012), and The Brothers Grimsby (2016).Consensus is: 'Cohen is the greatest comedian of this generation.'
Not so fast. Borat is a great character, and the movie Borat: Cultural Learnings is rather funny. However, the persona is a recycled character from two prior TV sketch shows. Borat is Cohen's best charcter, and perhaps his only legitimately funny one, and even that one became annoying after his non-stop, six month promotional tour. The Ali G movie is terrible, and Bruno is painfully forced and grating over two hours. His other movie roles are forgettable. He seems to only be able (or willing) to do the awkward, vaguely offensive foreigner caricature. And while he can be funny, he doesn't appear to have that much comedic range or imagination, just a lot of carefully crafted yet predictable antics. One great character, and one good movie in fifteen years in the business speaks for itself.- Director
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Stanley Kubrick was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Sadie Gertrude (Perveler) and Jacob Leonard Kubrick, a physician. His family were Jewish immigrants (from Austria, Romania, and Russia). Stanley was considered intelligent, despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would produce better academic performance, Kubrick's father sent him in 1940 to Pasadena, California, to stay with his uncle, Martin Perveler. Returning to the Bronx in 1941 for his last year of grammar school, there seemed to be little change in his attitude or his results. Hoping to find something to interest his son, Jack introduced Stanley to chess, with the desired result. Kubrick took to the game passionately, and quickly became a skilled player. Chess would become an important device for Kubrick in later years, often as a tool for dealing with recalcitrant actors, but also as an artistic motif in his films.
Jack Kubrick's decision to give his son a camera for his thirteenth birthday would be an even wiser move: Kubrick became an avid photographer, and would often make trips around New York taking photographs which he would develop in a friend's darkroom. After selling an unsolicited photograph to Look Magazine, Kubrick began to associate with their staff photographers, and at the age of seventeen was offered a job as an apprentice photographer.
In the next few years, Kubrick had regular assignments for "Look", and would become a voracious movie-goer. Together with friend Alexander Singer, Kubrick planned a move into film, and in 1950 sank his savings into making the documentary Day of the Fight (1951). This was followed by several short commissioned documentaries (Flying Padre (1951), and (The Seafarers (1953), but by attracting investors and hustling chess games in Central Park, Kubrick was able to make Fear and Desire (1952) in California.
Filming this movie was not a happy experience; Kubrick's marriage to high school sweetheart Toba Metz did not survive the shooting. Despite mixed reviews for the film itself, Kubrick received good notices for his obvious directorial talents. Kubrick's next two films Killer's Kiss (1955) and The Killing (1956) brought him to the attention of Hollywood, and in 1957 he directed Kirk Douglas in Paths of Glory (1957). Douglas later called upon Kubrick to take over the production of Spartacus (1960), by some accounts hoping that Kubrick would be daunted by the scale of the project and would thus be accommodating. This was not the case, however: Kubrick took charge of the project, imposing his ideas and standards on the film. Many crew members were upset by his style: cinematographer Russell Metty complained to producers that Kubrick was taking over his job. Kubrick's response was to tell him to sit there and do nothing. Metty complied, and ironically was awarded the Academy Award for his cinematography.
Kubrick's next project was to direct Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks (1961), but negotiations broke down and Brando himself ended up directing the film himself. Disenchanted with Hollywood and after another failed marriage, Kubrick moved permanently to England, from where he would make all of his subsequent films. Despite having obtained a pilot's license, Kubrick was rumored to be afraid of flying.
Kubrick's first UK film was Lolita (1962), which was carefully constructed and guided so as to not offend the censorship boards which at the time had the power to severely damage the commercial success of a film. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) was a big risk for Kubrick; before this, "nuclear" was not considered a subject for comedy. Originally written as a drama, Kubrick decided that too many of the ideas he had written were just too funny to be taken seriously. The film's critical and commercial success allowed Kubrick the financial and artistic freedom to work on any project he desired. Around this time, Kubrick's focus diversified and he would always have several projects in various stages of development: "Blue Moon" (a story about Hollywood's first pornographic feature film), "Napoleon" (an epic historical biography, abandoned after studio losses on similar projects), "Wartime Lies" (based on the novel by Louis Begley), and "Rhapsody" (a psycho-sexual thriller).
The next film he completed was a collaboration with sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is hailed by many as the best ever made; an instant cult favorite, it has set the standard and tone for many science fiction films that followed. Kubrick followed this with A Clockwork Orange (1971), which rivaled Lolita (1962) for the controversy it generated - this time not only for its portrayal of sex, but also of violence. Barry Lyndon (1975) would prove a turning point in both his professional and private lives. His unrelenting demands of commitment and perfection of cast and crew had by now become legendary. Actors would be required to perform dozens of takes with no breaks. Filming a story in Ireland involving military, Kubrick received reports that the IRA had declared him a possible target. Production was promptly moved out of the country, and Kubrick's desire for privacy and security resulted in him being considered a recluse ever since.
Having turned down directing a sequel to The Exorcist (1973), Kubrick made his own horror film: The Shining (1980). Again, rumors circulated of demands made upon actors and crew. Stephen King (whose novel the film was based upon) reportedly didn't like Kubrick's adaptation (indeed, he would later write his own screenplay which was filmed as The Shining (1997).)
Kubrick's subsequent work has been well spaced: it was seven years before Full Metal Jacket (1987) was released. By this time, Kubrick was married with children and had extensively remodeled his house. Seen by one critic as the dark side to the humanist story of Platoon (1986), Full Metal Jacket (1987) continued Kubrick's legacy of solid critical acclaim, and profit at the box office.
In the 1990s, Kubrick began an on-again/off-again collaboration with Brian Aldiss on a new science fiction film called "Artificial Intelligence (AI)", but progress was very slow, and was backgrounded until special effects technology was up to the standard the Kubrick wanted.
Kubrick returned to his in-development projects, but encountered a number of problems: "Napoleon" was completely dead, and "Wartime Lies" (now called "The Aryan Papers") was abandoned when Steven Spielberg announced he would direct Schindler's List (1993), which covered much of the same material.
While pre-production work on "AI" crawled along, Kubrick combined "Rhapsody" and "Blue Movie" and officially announced his next project as Eyes Wide Shut (1999), starring the then-married Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. After two years of production under unprecedented security and privacy, the film was released to a typically polarized critical and public reception; Kubrick claimed it was his best film to date.
Special effects technology had matured rapidly in the meantime, and Kubrick immediately began active work on A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), but tragically suffered a fatal heart attack in his sleep on March 7th, 1999.
After Kubrick's death, Spielberg revealed that the two of them were friends that frequently communicated discreetly about the art of filmmaking; both had a large degree of mutual respect for each other's work. "AI" was frequently discussed; Kubrick even suggested that Spielberg should direct it as it was more his type of project. Based on this relationship, Spielberg took over as the film's director and completed the last Kubrick project.
How much of Kubrick's vision remains in the finished project -- and what he would think of the film as eventually released -- will be the final great unanswerable mysteries in the life of this talented and private filmmaker.Consensus is: 'Kubrick never made a bad film.'
Stanley Kubrick never made a terrible film, I can say with certainty. But I would take note of Lolita. His 'clean' version is not as sparkling as the Nabokov book or Adrian Lyne adaptation years later. He seems to handle this subject material with kid gloves or rubber gloves, or something insinuating he is ill-prepared to adequately address the true depravity underlying the book's plot. The story drags, and the title role seems underplayed. Even a game James Mason and Peters Sellers' brief performance is not enough to save this PG-13 friendly adaptation. It's a hiccup in his otherwise peak years. I think this might be Kubrick's single weak link, not counting Eyes Wide Shut. I'll assume he was going senile when he made that.- Producer
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A graduate of Wesleyan University, Michael Bay spent his 20s working on advertisements and music videos. His first projects after film school were in the music video business. He created music videos for Tina Turner, Meat Loaf, Lionel Richie, Wilson Phillips, Donny Osmond and Divinyls. His work won him recognition and a number of MTV award nominations. He also filmed advertisements for Nike, Reebok, Coca-Cola, Budweiser and Miller Lite. He won the Grand Prix Clio for Commercial of the Year for his "Got Milk/Aaron Burr" commercial. At Cannes, he has won the Gold Lion for The Best Beer campaign for Miller Lite, as well as the Silver for "Got Milk". In 1995, Bay was honored by the Directors Guild of America as Commercial Director of the Year. That same year, he also directed his first feature film, Bad Boys (1995), starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, which grossed more than $160 million, worldwide. His follow-up film, The Rock (1996), starring Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage, was also hugely successful, making Bay the director du jour.Consensus is: 'Michael Bay is a hack.'
He is apparently the mind behind the great mid-Nineties 'Got Milk?' commercial about Aaron Burr. He directed many unimpressive films that made a lot of money, and produced even more. He also plans to make a third Transformer movie. And one could assume a forth.
That 'Got Milk?' ad looks more and more like a career peak.- Writer
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Hacks are nothing new in Hollywood. Since the beginning of the film industry at the turn of the 20th century, thousands of untalented people have come to Los Angeles from all over America and abroad to try to make it big (as writers, producers, directors, actors, talent agents, singers, composers, musicians, artists, etc.) but who end up using, scamming and exploiting other people for money as well as using their creative ability (either self-taught or professional training), leading to the production of dull, bland, mediocre, unimaginative, inferior, trite work in the forlorn hope of attaining commercial success. Had Edward D. Wood, Jr. been born a decade or two earlier, it's easy to imagine him working for some Poverty Row outfit in Gower Gulch, competing with the likes of no-talent and no-taste producers and directors--such as Victor Adamson, Robert J. Horner and Dwain Esper--for the title of all-time hack. He would have fit in nicely working at Weiss Brothers-Artclass Pictures in the early 1930s in directing low budget Western-themed serials, or directing low budget film noir crime drama features at PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation) in the following decade from 1940 to 1946. Ed Wood is the probably the most well known of all the Hollywood hacks because he is imprisoned in his own time, and in the 1950s, Ed Wood simply had no competition. He was ignored throughout his spectacularly unsuccessful film making career and died a penniless alcoholic, only to be "rediscovered" when promoters in the early 1980s tagged him "The Worst Director of All Time" (mostly thanks to the Medveds' hilarious book, "Golden Turkey Awards") and he was given the singular honor of a full-length biopic by Tim Burton (Ed Wood (1994)). This post-mortem celebrity has made him infinitely more famous today than he ever was during his lifetime.
Wood was an exceedingly complex person. He was born on October 10, 1924, in Poughkeepsie, NY, where he lived most of his childhood. He joined the US Marine Corps in 1943 at the height of World War II and was, by all accounts, an exemplary marine, wounded in ferocious combat in the Pacific theater (a transgender, he claimed to have been wearing a bra and panties under his uniform while storming ashore during the bloody beachhead landing at Tarawa in November 1943). He was habitually optimistic, even in the face of the bleak realities that would later consume him. His personality bonded him with a small clique of outcasts who eked out life on the far edges of the Hollywood fringe.
After settling in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, Wood attempted to break into the film industry, initially without success, but in 1952 he landed the chance to direct a film based on the real-life Christine Jorgensen sex-change story, then a hot topic. The result, Glen or Glenda (1953), gave a fascinating insight into Wood's own personality and shed light on his transgender identity (an almost unthinkable subject for an early 1950s mainstream feature). Although devoutly heterosexual, Wood was an enthusiastic cross-dresser, with a particular fondness for angora. On the debit side, though, the film revealed the almost complete lack of talent that would mar all his subsequent films, his tendency to resort to stock footage of lightning during dramatic moments, laughable set design and a near-incomprehensible performance by Bela Lugosi as a mad doctor whose presence is never adequately explained. The film deservedly flopped miserably but Wood, always upbeat, pressed ahead.
Wood's main problem was that he saw himself as a producer-writer-director, when in fact he was spectacularly incompetent in all three capacities. Friends who knew Wood have described him as an eccentric, oddball hack who was far more interested in the work required in cobbling a film project together than in ever learning the craft of film making itself or in any type of realism. In an alternate universe, Wood might have been a competent producer if he had better industry connections and an even remotely competent director. Wood, however, likened himself to his idol, Orson Welles, and became a triple threat: bad producer, poor screenwriter and God-awful director. All of his films exhibit illogical continuity, bizarre narratives and give the distinct impression that a director's job was simply to expose the least amount of film possible due to crushing budget constraints. His magnum opus, Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), features visible wires connected to pie-pan UFOs, actors knocking over cardboard "headstones", cars changing models and years during chase sequences, scenes exhibiting a disturbing lack of handgun safety and the ingenious use of shower curtains in airplane cockpits that have virtually no equipment are just a few of the trademarks of that Edward D. Wood Jr. production. When criticized for their innumerable flaws, Wood would cheerfully explain his interpretation of the suspension of disbelief. It's not so much that he made movies so badly without regard to realism--the amazing part is that he managed to get them made at all.
His previous film with Lugosi, Bride of the Monster (1955), was no better (unbelievably, it somehow managed to earn a small profit during its original release, undoubtedly more of a testament to how cheaply it was produced than its value as entertainment), and Wood only shot a few seconds of silent footage of Lugosi (doped and dazed, wandering around the front yard of his house) for "Plan 9" before the actor died in August 1956. What few reviews the film received were brutal. Typically undaunted, Wood soldiered on despite incoherent material and a microscopic budget, peopling it with his regular band of mostly inept actors. Given the level of dialog, budget and Wood's dismal directorial abilities, it's unlikely that better actors would have made much of a difference (lead actor Gregory Walcott made his debut in this film and went on to have a very respectable career as a character actor, but was always embarrassed by his participation in this film)--in fact, it's the film's semi-official status as arguably the Worst Film Ever Made that gives it its substantial cult following. The film, financed by a local Baptist congregation led by Wood's landlord, reaches a plateau of ineptitude that tends to leave viewers open-mouthed, wondering what is it they just saw. "Plan 9" became, whether Wood realized it or not, his singular enduring legacy. Ironically, the rights to the film were retained by the church and it is unlikely that Wood ever received a dime from it; his epic bombed upon release in 1959 and remained largely forgotten for years to come.
After this career "peak," Wood went into, relatively speaking, a decline. Always an "enthusiastic"--for lack of a better word--drinker, his alcohol addiction worsened in the 1960s due to his depression of not achieving the worldwide fame he had always sought. He began to draw away from film directing and focused most of his time on another profession: writing. Beginning in the early 1960s up until his death, Wood wrote at least 80 lurid crime and sex paperback novels in addition to hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces for magazines and daily newspapers. Thirty-two stories known to be written by Wood (he sometimes wrote under pseudonyms such as "Ann Gora" and "Dr. T.K. Peters") are collected in 'Blood Splatters Quickly', published by OR Books in 2014. Novels include Black Lace Drag (1963) (reissued in 1965 as Killer in Drag), Orgy of the Dead (1965), Devil Girls (1967), Death of a Transvestite (1967), The Sexecutives (1968), The Photographer (1969), Take It Out in Trade (1970), The Only House in Town (1970), Necromania (1971), The Undergraduate (1972), A Study of Fetishes and Fantasies (1973) and Fugitive Girls (1974).
In 1965, Wood wrote the quasi-memoir 'Hollywood Rat Race', which was eventually published in 1998. In it, Wood advises new writers to "just keep on writing. Even if your story gets worse, you'll get better", and also recounts tales of dubious authenticity, such as how he and Bela Lugosi entered the world of nightclub cabaret.
In the 1970s, Wood directed a number of undistinguished softcore and later hardcore adult porno films under various aliases, one of which is the name "Akdov Telmig" ("vodka gimlet" spelled backwards; it helps to imagine that you're a boozy dyslexic, as Ed Wood was). His final years were spent largely drunk in his apartment and occasionally being rolled stumbling out of a local liquor store. Three days before his death, Wood and his wife Kathy were evicted from their Hollywood apartment due to failure to pay the rent and moved into a friend's apartment shortly before his death on the afternoon of December 10, 1978, at age 54. He had a heart attack and died while drinking in bed.
Due to his recent resurgence in popularity, many of his equally interesting transgender - themed sex novels have been republished. The gravitational pull of Planet Angora remains quite strong.Consensus is: 'Plan Nine From Outer Space is the worst movie ever made/so bad it's good.'
Plan Nine is not as terrible as some would lead on. Tim Burton's recent biopic revived interest in Mr. Wood's creation, bringing it to the attention of a whole new generation. In general, many modern audiences judge all low-budget sci-fi movies made pre-Star Wars to be universally cheap-looking and laughable. Plan Nine, to me, does not look any worse than most movies of the era. Ed Wood's 'classic bomb' is not significantly worse than many films, and because it was made when standards were lower it actually stands up better than some cheap-looking modern duds (do I need mention any Robert Zdar film?). If you can laugh at a film it isn't a total waste, and I'd rather watch Plan Nine sooner than revisit the unintenionally slimy, corporate-con Snakes on Plane or Godard's completely valueless King Lear. Plan Nine is only scarcely memorable in retrospect compared to those much more annoying films; to Ed Wood's chagrin (or relief?), his bizarre flop will likely be forgotten.- Director
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Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 - 1942) and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock (1862 - 1914). His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and Eileen Hitchcock (born 1892). Raised as a strict Catholic and attending Saint Ignatius College, a school run by Jesuits, Hitch had very much of a regular upbringing. His first job outside of the family business was in 1915 as an estimator for the Henley Telegraph and Cable Company. His interest in movies began at around this time, frequently visiting the cinema and reading US trade journals.
Hitchcock entering the film industry in 1919 as a title card designer. It was there that he met Alma Reville, though they never really spoke to each other. It was only after the director for Always Tell Your Wife (1923) fell ill and Hitchcock was named director to complete the film that he and Reville began to collaborate. Hitchcock had his first real crack at directing a film, start to finish, in 1923 when he was hired to direct the film Number 13 (1922), though the production wasn't completed due to the studio's closure (he later remade it as a sound film). Hitchcock didn't give up then. He directed The Pleasure Garden (1925), a British/German production, which was very popular. Hitchcock made his first trademark film in 1927, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) . In the same year, on the 2nd of December, Hitchcock married Alma Reville. They had one child, Patricia Hitchcock who was born on July 7th, 1928. His success followed when he made a number of films in Britain such as The Lady Vanishes (1938) and Jamaica Inn (1939), some of which also gained him fame in the USA.
In 1940, the Hitchcock family moved to Hollywood, where the producer David O. Selznick had hired him to direct an adaptation of 'Daphne du Maurier''s Rebecca (1940). After Saboteur (1942), as his fame as a director grew, film companies began to refer to his films as 'Alfred Hitchcock's', for example Alfred Hitcock's Psycho (1960), Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot (1976), Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy (1972).
Hitchcock was a master of pure cinema who almost never failed to reconcile aesthetics with the demands of the box-office.
During the making of Frenzy (1972), Hitchcock's wife Alma suffered a paralyzing stroke which made her unable to walk very well. On March 7, 1979, Hitchcock was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award, where he said: "I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen and their names are Alma Reville." By this time, he was ill with angina and his kidneys had already started to fail. He had started to write a screenplay with Ernest Lehman called The Short Night but he fired Lehman and hired young writer David Freeman to rewrite the script. Due to Hitchcock's failing health the film was never made, but Freeman published the script after Hitchcock's death. In late 1979, Hitchcock was knighted, making him Sir Alfred Hitchcock. On the 29th April 1980, 9:17AM, he died peacefully in his sleep due to renal failure. His funeral was held in the Church of Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills. Father Thomas Sullivan led the service with over 600 people attended the service, among them were Mel Brooks (director of High Anxiety (1977), a comedy tribute to Hitchcock and his films), Louis Jourdan, Karl Malden, Tippi Hedren, Janet Leigh and François Truffaut.Consensus is: 'Hitchcock is the greatest director of all time.'
Hardly a true consensus, but Sight and Sound has found his Vertigo worthy to knock Citizen Kane out of the top spot after several decades as undisputed 'greatest film ever,' which certainly implies a lot. However, I take exception. I'm not alone in thinking Vertigo has a lot of problems. Never afraid to pour on the contrivances, his films for the most part lacked the emotional weight or psychological menace to pull it off. There is an over-processed artificiality permeating even his best films. The endings were usually too neat for their own good, and rarely satisfying. Look at a film like The Birds as a microcosm of his modus operandi. The film in retrospect is corny, utterly absurd, and dated -- if you watch the restored version you can probably see the strings. Hitchcock, not content with the original story, modifies it by removing the political allusion to Cold War dread and the trauma of the London blitz. In so he sanitizes it, transposing the action to an upper-middle class California hamlet, also inserting his signature Freudian character models and a more audience-friendly ending. He merely interupts a mechanical romance with a B-movie. Like any number of cheesy monster movies of the era, The Birds too includes some cheap thrills along with the standard damsel and her tall, dark and bland suitor. Though the climax here is a welcome change from his normal fare of bad guys falling off stuff.
....Or Psycho... From the extemporaneous captions which are never used the rest of the film, to the needlessly lurid hotel dalliance featuring Janet Leigh in her underwear, to the inexplicable swamp in the middle of the Arizona desert, to the fact Norman Bates could steal his mother's corpse without anyone noticing, the film feels lazily written.
...Or Frenzy... This is a film with such violent tonal shifts, from low brow gags practically out of I Love Lucy to some legitimately gripping horror (this is perhaps Hitchcock's most jarring film), I wonder if he forgot and thought he was filming two separate movies.
...Or Strangers on a Train... An otherwise brilliant premise is ruined by the director's inclination to remind us that we are merely diverting time at the matinee. Hitchcock's ability to churn out endless framed-man plots with happy endings, outrageous turns of fate, and intricate schemes doomed to collapse under their own duplicitous weight, makes it clear that filmmaking was to him more an industry than an art. Which is sadly his approach to almost every project.
...Or Sabotage... Easily one of his shoddiest, worst paced films, the sheer confusion surrounding this 1936 film (originally based upon a novel called Secret Agent, not to be confused with his 1942 film Saboteur or his other 1936 film Secret Agent) seems to hint at the interchangeability of his movies. The main villain is a brain-dead terrorist with an ideology the filmmakers can't bother to elaborate upon -- surely it isn't that difficult to just mention the word 'Anarchist' once in 90 minutes, granted that movement was already passé by 1936 anyway. The hero, the definition of the word 'vanilla,' is employed by a police force brilliant enough to uncover a terrorist ring but so incompetent to let a women who just confessed to a murder go free. The heroine a beautiful cretin who will conceivably lift her skirts for any passing man who smiles at her kid brother. The only thing worse than the direction or writing is the sound editing. The squeak of Oscar Homolka's patent leather shoes is more audible than fifty-percent of his dialogue.- Writer
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Paul Haggis established himself over twenty years with an extensive career in television, before his big break into features arrived when he became the first screenwriter to garner two Best Film Academy Awards back-to-back for his scripts: "Million Dollar Baby" (2004) directed by Clint Eastwood, and "Crash" (2005) which Paul directed himself.
In 2006, among others, Haggis penned two Clint Eastwood productions, "Flags of our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima," for which he earned his third Best Screenplay Oscar nomination. He also co-wrote "Casino Royale," which garnered considerable acclaim for reinvigorating the James Bond spy franchise.
In 2007, Haggis wrote, directed, and produced "In the Valley of Elah." The film starred Tommy Lee Jones, Charlize Theron, and Susan Sarandon, and earned Jones a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his performance.
In 2010, his film "The Next Three Days" was released, starring Russell Crowe, Liam Neeson, and Elizabeth Banks.
And in 2013 he wrote and directed the romantic, personal drama "Third Person," which starred Liam Neeson, Olivia Wilde, Mila Kunis, Adrien Brody, James Franco, and Kim Basinger.
Most recently, Haggis directed and executive produced all six episodes of the HBO mini-series "Show Me A Hero," starring Oscar Isaac, Catherine Keener, Winona Ryder, James Belushi, and Alfred Molina.
Currently, Haggis is co-directing a feature length documentary on the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, called "5B."
Equally committed to his private and social concerns, Haggis is the founder of Artists for Peace and Justice. Under this umbrella, many of his friends in the film business have come forward to major build schools and clinics serving the children of the slums of Haiti (www.APJNow.org).Consensus is: 'Crash didn't deserve its Oscar or even merited to be nominated for Best Picture.'
I jumped on the 'I hate Crash' bandwagon as soon as I first saw it, so I am not a neutral voice. I think any one of the other four nominees are justifiably more deserving of that Oscar. They all handle their rather adult-themed material exquisitely, Munich especially (forget the critics. Spielberg, of course, the only man alive that is scrutinized for pandering to and compromising Zionism). Crash is the noticeable ugly duckling of the group. It is contrived, politically correct, has few new insights into race relations, or even has any satisfying resolutions to any of its many loose ends. That it won for Original Script is equally disappointing, when you consider how cheesy and unwieldy the story was compared to the competition. This is why people hate the Oscar voters.- Writer
- Producer
- Director
Best known for his cerebral, often nonlinear, storytelling, acclaimed Academy Award winner writer/director/producer Sir Christopher Nolan CBE was born in London, England. Over the course of more than 25 years of filmmaking, Nolan has gone from low-budget independent films to working on some of the biggest blockbusters ever made and became one of the most celebrated filmmakers of modern cinema.
At 7 years old, Nolan began making short films with his father's Super-8 camera. While studying English Literature at University College London, he shot 16-millimeter films at U.C.L.'s film society, where he learned the guerrilla techniques he would later use to make his first feature, Following (1998), on a budget of around $6,000. The noir thriller was recognized at a number of international film festivals prior to its theatrical release and gained Nolan enough credibility that he was able to gather substantial financing for his next film.
Nolan's second film was Memento (2000), which he directed from his own screenplay based on a short story by his brother Jonathan Nolan. Starring Guy Pearce, the film brought Nolan numerous honors, including Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Original Screenplay. Nolan went on to direct the critically acclaimed psychological thriller, Insomnia (2002), starring Al Pacino, Robin Williams and Hilary Swank.
The turning point in Nolan's career occurred when he was awarded the chance to revive the Batman franchise in 2005. In Batman Begins (2005), Nolan brought a level of gravitas back to the iconic hero, and his gritty, modern interpretation was greeted with praise from fans and critics alike. Before moving on to a Batman sequel, Nolan directed, co-wrote, and produced the mystery thriller The Prestige (2006), starring Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as magicians whose obsessive rivalry leads to tragedy and murder.
In 2008, Nolan directed, co-wrote, and produced The Dark Knight (2008). Co-written with by his brother Jonathan, the film went on to gross more than a billion dollars at the worldwide box office. Nolan was nominated for a Directors Guild of America (D.G.A.) Award, Writers Guild of America (W.G.A.) Award and Producers Guild of America (P.G.A.) Award, and the film also received eight Academy Award nominations. The film is widely considered one of the best comic book adaptations of all times, with Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker receiving an extremely high acclaim. Ledger posthumously became the first Academy Award winning performance in a Nolan film.
In 2010, Nolan captivated audiences with the Sci-Fi thriller Inception (2010), starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role, which he directed and produced from his own original screenplay that he worked on for almost a decade. The thought-provoking drama was a worldwide blockbuster, earning more than $800,000,000 and becoming one of the most discussed and debated films of the year, and of all times. Among its many honors, Inception received four Academy Awards and eight nominations, including Best Picture and Best Screenplay. Nolan was recognized by his peers with a W.G.A. Award accolade, as well as D.G.A. and P.G.A. Awards nominations for his work on the film.
As one of the best-reviewed and highest-grossing movies of 2012, The Dark Knight Rises (2012) concluded Nolan's Batman trilogy. Due to his success rebooting the Batman character, Warner Bros. enlisted Nolan to produce their revamped Superman movie Man of Steel (2013), which opened in the summer of 2013. In 2014, Nolan directed, wrote, and produced the Science-Fiction epic Interstellar (2014), starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain. Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. released the film on November 5, 2014, to positive reviews and strong box-office results, grossing over $670 million dollars worldwide.
In July 2017, Nolan released his acclaimed War epic Dunkirk (2017), that earned him his first Best Director nomination at the Academy Awards, as well as winning an additional 3 Oscars. In 2020 he released his mind-bending Sci-Fi espionage thriller Tenet (2020) starring John David Washington in the lead role. Released during the COVID-19 pandemic, the movie grossed relatively less than Nolan's previous blockbusters, though it did do good numbers compared to other movies in that period of time. Hailed as Nolan's most complex film yet, the film was one of Nolan's less-acclaimed films at the time, yet slowly built a fan-base following in later years.
In July 2023, Nolan released his highly acclaimed biographic drama Oppenheimer (2023) starring Nolan's frequent collaborator Cillian Murphy- in the lead role for the first time in a Nolan film. The movie was a cultural phenomenon that on top of grossing almost 1 billion dollars at the Worldwide Box office, also swept the 2023/2024 award-season and gave Nolan his first Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, D.G.A. and P.G.A. Awards, as well as a handful of regional critics-circles awards and a W.G.A. nomination. Cillian's performance as quantum physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was highly acclaimed as well, and became the first lead performance in a Nolan film to win the Academy Award.
During 2023, Nolan also received a fellowship from the British Film Institute (BFI). In March 2024, it was announced that Nolan is to be knighted by King Charles III and from now on will go by the title 'Sir Christopher Nolan'.
Nolan resides in Los Angeles, California with his wife, Academy Award winner producer Dame Emma Thomas, and their children. Sir Nolan and Dame Thomas also have their own production company, Syncopy.Consensus is: 'Superhero movies are destroying cinema.'
From Steven Soderbergh, David Cronenberg, down to even Steven Spielberg, many prominent directors have recently targeted Hollywood's obsession with ultra-budget superhero films as evidence of the industry's curdling artistic integrity and possible impending doom. When you consider the proliferation of tentpole franchises the last decade, the 'bergs do seem to make a point. Sequels now are practically obligatory.
Independent and small films will always find an audience and a producer, often govt.-mandated ones. Superhero movies are bad for cinema, but more out of sheer stupidity and unoriginality. People have come to embrace derivative, dumbed-down movies. If not the entire industry, superhero movies are at very least perpetuating the debasement of cinema-goers' expectations. Take the Dark Knight trilogy for example, the most celebrated superhero series. In The Dark Knight, The Joker's basic motivation appears practically indistinguishable from that of South Park's Professor Chaos, itself a parody of comicbook villains, the most severe indictment of the genre's poverty of ideas. The sequel to that film, The Dark Knight Rises, is the worst type of blockbuster, the pseudo-intellectual. The film is only smart in that it doesn't let you ponder the story, dialogue, characters, or any one scene long enough to realize just how silly and illogical they appear before whisking you to another locale and subplot.
The Nolan Batman films despite their stylistic departure noticeably recycle ideas. Nolan's Batman dispenses with the Joker almost exactly as in the original Tim Burton movie, dangling off a building. Two-face's arc mirrors Schumacher's '95 film, a coin flip and fall to his death. TDK's pencil scene serves exactly the same purpose as the electrocution scene from Burton's film, The Joker's indifference to money again harkens back to the 1989 film. The primary set-piece in both TDK and the 1989 Batman serve to demoralize and expose Gothamites' immorality. Catwoman even repeats the same corny line in TDKR as she did in the '92 version. TDKR also features a villain crashing a charity event that evoke the '92 , '95, and the '97 film; the 1989 film even had a Wayne-charity scene. TDK's ultimatum, forcing Batman to choose saving innocents over his love interest, is straight out of Schumacher's '95 project, and also resembling the moral conundrum of the original '78 Superman, and 2002 Spiderman. Batman disposes of a hazardous device much the same as Batman did in Burton's '89 original. The Batman-as-public-enemy plotline, you guessed it, 1992's Batman Returns. Get the picture?... In this genre -- and franchise in particular -- there appears a limited number of ideas and themes to explore, and not nearly enough leeway to truly experiment.
The problem with condemning big, dumb action movies is that people actively anticipate and view them as culture. Hollywood is the same as ever, it has just gotten smarter at selling in bulk what its core audience demands most: formulaic, disposable, shiny dreck.- Writer
- Actor
- Director
Considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular character, the Little Tramp; the man with the toothbrush mustache, bowler hat, bamboo cane, and a funny walk.
Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in Walworth, London, England on April 16, 1889, to Hannah Harriet Pedlingham (Hill) and Charles Chaplin, both music hall performers, who were married on June 22, 1885. After Charles Sr. separated from Hannah to perform in New York City, Hannah then tried to resurrect her stage career. Unfortunately, her singing voice had a tendency to break at unexpected moments. When this happened, the stage manager spotted young Charlie standing in the wings and led him on stage, where five-year-old Charlie began to sing a popular tune. Charlie and his half-brother, Syd Chaplin spent their lives in and out of charity homes and workhouses between their mother's bouts of insanity. Hannah was committed to Cane Hill Asylum in May 1903 and lived there until 1921, when Chaplin moved her to California.
Chaplin began his official acting career at the age of eight, touring with the Eight Lancashire Lads. At age 18, he began touring with Fred Karno's vaudeville troupe, joining them on the troupe's 1910 United States tour. He traveled west to California in December 1913 and signed on with Keystone Studios' popular comedy director Mack Sennett, who had seen Chaplin perform on stage in New York. Charlie soon wrote his brother Syd, asking him to become his manager. While at Keystone, Chaplin appeared in and directed 35 films, starring as the Little Tramp in nearly all.
In November 1914, he left Keystone and signed on at Essanay, where he made 15 films. In 1916, he signed on at Mutual and made 12 films. In June 1917, Chaplin signed up with First National Studios, after which he built Chaplin Studios. In 1919, he and Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith formed United Artists (UA).
Chaplin's life and career was full of scandal and controversy. His first big scandal was during World War I, at which time his loyalty to England, his home country, was questioned. He had never applied for American citizenship, but claimed that he was a "paying visitor" to the United States. Many British citizens called Chaplin a coward and a slacker. This and other career eccentricities sparked suspicion with FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), who believed that he was injecting Communist propaganda into his films. Chaplin's later film The Great Dictator (1940), which was his first "talkie", also created a stir. In the film, Chaplin plays a humorous caricature of Adolf Hitler. Some thought the film was poorly done and in bad taste. However, the film grossed over $5 million and earned five Academy Award Nominations.
Another scandal occurred when Chaplin briefly dated 22 year-old Joan Barry. However, Chaplin's relationship with Barry came to an end in 1942, after a series of harassing actions from her. In May 1943, Barry returned to inform Chaplin that she was pregnant and filed a paternity suit, claiming that the unborn child was his. During the 1944 trial, blood tests proved that Chaplin was not the father, but at the time, blood tests were inadmissible evidence, and he was ordered to pay $75 a week until the child turned 21.
Chaplin also was scrutinized for his support in aiding the Russian struggle against the invading Nazis during World War II, and the United States government questioned his moral and political views, suspecting him of having Communist ties. For this reason, HUAC subpoenaed him in 1947. However, HUAC finally decided that it was no longer necessary for him to appear for testimony. Conversely, when Chaplin and his family traveled to London for the premier of Limelight (1952), he was denied re-entry to the United States. In reality, the government had almost no evidence to prove that he was a threat to national security. Instead, he and his wife decided to settle in Switzerland.
Chaplin was married four times and had a total of 11 children. In 1918, he married Mildred Harris and they had a son together, Norman Spencer Chaplin, who lived only three days. Chaplin and Harris divorced in 1920. He married Lita Grey in 1924, who had two sons, Charles Chaplin Jr. and Sydney Chaplin. They were divorced in 1927. In 1936, Chaplin married Paulette Goddard, and his final marriage was to Oona O'Neill (Oona Chaplin), daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1943. Oona gave birth to eight children: Geraldine Chaplin, Michael Chaplin, Josephine Chaplin, Victoria Chaplin, Eugene Chaplin, Jane Chaplin, Annette-Emilie Chaplin, and Christopher Chaplin.
In contrast to many of his boisterous characters, Chaplin was a quiet man who kept to himself a great deal. He also had an "un-millionaire" way of living. Even after he had accumulated millions, he continued to live in shabby accommodations. In 1921, Chaplin was decorated by the French government for his outstanding work as a filmmaker and was elevated to the rank of Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1952. In 1972, he was honored with an Academy Award for his "incalculable effect in making motion pictures the art form of the century". He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1975 New Year's Honours List. No formal reason for the honour was listed. The citation simply reads "Charles Spencer Chaplin, Film Actor and Producer".
Chaplin's other works included musical scores that he composed for many of his films. He also authored two autobiographical books, "My Autobiography" (1964) and its companion volume, "My Life in Pictures" (1974).
Chaplin died at age 88 of natural causes on December 25, 1977 at his home in Vevey, Switzerland. His funeral was a small and private Anglican ceremony according to his wishes. In 1978, Chaplin's corpse was stolen from its grave and was not recovered for three months; he was re-buried in a vault surrounded by cement.
Six of Chaplin's films have been selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress: The Immigrant (1917), The Kid (1921), The Gold Rush (1925), City Lights (1931), Modern Times (1936), and The Great Dictator (1940).
Charlie Chaplin is considered one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of American cinema, whose movies were and still are popular throughout the world and have even gained notoriety as time progresses. His films show, through the Little Tramp's positive outlook on life in a world full of chaos, that the human spirit has and always will remain the same.Consensus is: 'Charlie Chaplain is the greatest silent movie star.'
I find Chaplin's work similiar to the Marx Brothers', in that many of his comedies depend on drawn-out gags. I prefer Buster Keaton's physical comedy to Chaplin, and I think Lon Chaney Sr was a more intriguing actor; his movies are generally more mature and subtle unlike Chaplin's, whose work alternated from maudlin in the early years to speechifying in the latter. Chaplin's legacy can be partially attributed to the fact he outlived Chaney, Fatty Arbuckle's career was ruined, the silent starlets aged gracelessly into their thirties, and Keaton had little charisma in sound films; Chaplin was essentially the last great silent star standing. But as for directing, I think Fritz Lang or Murnau was obviously more visually creative. Griffith was more innovative. I think one could even make a case why Harold Lloyd is as entertaining as Chaplin for that matter, but I digress... Chaplin seems to be the only silent star most casual fans can name, but that is to their detriment.- Actor
- Soundtrack
At a consistently lean 6' 2", green-eyed Timothy Dalton may very well be one of the last of the dying breed of swashbuckling, classically trained Shakespearean actors who have forged simultaneous successful careers in theater, television and film. He has been comparison-shopped roundly for stepping into roles played by other actors, first following Sir Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights (1970), in Scarlett (1994).
Undaunted and good-natured, he has always stated that he likes the risk of challenges. He was born in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, the oldest of five children of Dorothy (Scholes) and Peter Dalton-Leggett. His father was stationed in Colwyn Bay during World War II, and moved the family to Manchester in the late 1940s, where he worked in advertising and raised the growing Dalton family, in an upper-class neighbourhood outside of Belper, Derbyshire. Timothy was enrolled in a school for bright children, where he excelled in sports and was interested in the sciences. He was fascinated with acting from a young age, perhaps due to the fact that both his grandfathers were vaudevillians, but it was when he saw a performance of "Macbeth" at age 16 that his destiny was clinched.
After leaving Herbert Strutt Grammar School at age 16, he toured as a leading member of Michael Croft's National Youth Theater. Between 1964-66, he studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). Just before completing his two years, he quit and joined the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, playing the lead in many productions under the direction of Peter Dews while at the same time then as James Bond in The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence to Kill (1989), and even more brutally, recently, as Rhett Butler turning professional. Dalton later said of RADA in an interview with "Seventeen" magazine (December 1970), "It took a year to undo the psychological damage that was caused by the oppressive teachers.".
His talent and classic good looks immediately landed him professional work in television, guest-starring on an episode of the short-lived series, Judge Dee (1969), and as a regular on the 14-episode series Sat'day While Sunday (1967) with the young Malcolm McDowell. In late 1967, Peter O'Toole recommended him for the role of the young King Philip of France in The Lion in Winter (1968) (coincidentally, this was also Anthony Hopkins' big break). The following year, he starred in the Italian film Giuochi particolari (1970) with Marcello Mastroianni and Virna Lisi, although his voice was dubbed into Italian by another actor. Dalton also mixed in a healthy dose of BBC work during this time, including The Three Princes (1968), Five Finger Exercise (1970) and Candida (1973). Also during this time, he was approached and tested for the role of James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969) which he turned down, feeling he was too young for the role. His next film was another costume drama, Cromwell (1970), working with director Ken Hughes, with whom he later made his first American film, Sextette (1977). He followed Cromwell (1970) with Wuthering Heights (1970) and Mary, Queen of Scots (1971).
He was already developing a pattern in his films that would follow him throughout his career: costume dramas where he played royalty, which he had done in three of his first four films (and ridden horses in three, and raised a sword in two). In 1972, he was contracted to play a role in Lady Caroline Lamb (1972). However, he was replaced at the last moment. Dalton sued the company and won, but the film went on without him. From the early to mid-1970s, he decided to further hone his skills by going back into the theater full time. He signed on with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and the Prospect Theatre Company (PTC), and toured the world with both, playing the leads in "Romeo and Juliet", "King Lear", "Henry V", "Love's Labours Lost" and "Henry IV" - parts 1 and 2.
In 1975, he returned to movies in the British/Austrian production of The Executioner (1975). It was followed in 1976 by the Spanish religious historical film about the inquisition, El hombre que supo amar (1976), which was never widely released. After this, he took another break from film, mixing in a healthy dose of theater, returning for his first American film, Sextette (1977), and the lengthy miniseries Centennial (1978), his first American television appearance, in which Lynn Redgrave played his wife. Because of his broad exposure to American audiences in this series, he began to get more frequent film and television work in the United States, including the Charlie's Angels (1976) episode "Fallen Angel" -- which, ironically, had several references to his character being like James Bond -- and the TV movie The Flame Is Love (1979). Although he did a few features, including playing Vanessa Redgrave's husband in Agatha (1979), most of his work until 1985 consisted of TV movies and miniseries. He played Prince Barin in the science fiction classic Flash Gordon (1980). He followed this with a small film, Chanel Solitaire (1981) and also filmed a staged production of Antony and Cleopatra (1984) opposite Lynn Redgrave, with Anthony Geary, as well as Nichelle Nichols and Walter Koenig of the original Star Trek (1966) series.
The years 1983-1987 have so far been the most prolific of his career. In 1983, he starred as Rochester in what he considers one of his best works, the popular BBC miniseries Jane Eyre (1983). Also, during this time, Roger Moore was considering leaving Bond, and Dalton was again approached, but due to his full schedule, he had to decline. In 1984, he did one of his many narrations in the Faerie Tale Theatre (1982) production of The Emperor's New Clothes (1987). That same year also saw him in the Hallmark Hall of Fame piece The Master of Ballantrae (1984) opposite Michael York and Richard Thomas, and another miniseries, Mistral's Daughter (1984), opposite Stefanie Powers and Stacy Keach. The next year was also a very busy one. He starred in another miniseries, Sins (1986), playing the brother of Joan Collins, and also starred in and narrated the four-hour miniseries Florence Nightingale (1985), opposite Jaclyn Smith. He also starred in The Doctor and the Devils (1985) as Dr. Thomas Rock, with Stephen Rea, Jonathan Pryce and Patrick Stewart.
In the mid-to-late 1980s, Dalton narrated many nature documentaries, most notably several episodes of the UK series Wildlife Chronicles (1987). In the spring of 1986, he teamed with Vanessa Redgrave for another revival of a Shakespeare production, The Taming of the Shrew (1988) and his interpretation of Petrucchio received uniformly high praise. Simultaneously, the world was playing a guessing game as to who would succeed Roger Moore as James Bond. Dalton was approached but was committed to the theater, and so Pierce Brosnan was offered the role. When Brosnan was unable to get out of his Remington Steele (1982) contract at the last minute, Dalton was again approached. Able now to work it into his tight schedule, he agreed. Although his first outing as Bond, The Living Daylights (1987), did reasonably well at the box-office, Licence to Kill (1989) suffered from a lack of marketing that appeared to harm its chances of big box-office success. However, Dalton's interpretation of "Bond" in this film received critical acclaim in some quarters as being the closest to author Ian Fleming's literary "Bond". Back in the theater, he teamed again with Vanessa Redgrave for a revival of Eugene O'Neill's seldom performed play, "A Touch of the Poet", which is considered by some to be his and Redgrave's finest professional collaboration. Although there were talks of bringing the play to Broadway, this never materialized.
Following Licence to Kill (1989), he immediately returned to one of his strengths, costume drama, in The King's Whore (1990). It was followed by his excellent performance in the Disney action adventure The Rocketeer (1991), where he played an Errol Flynn type Nazi agent. In August 1991, he teamed with Whoopi Goldberg for the first biracial interpretation of "Love Letters" for the final sold-out performances of the play in Los Angeles. When he had signed on to do Bond, it was for three pictures, but the rights to the Bond films became entangled in lengthy litigation, delaying production of the third. During this wait, he was set to star in the title role of another historical epic, Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (1992). However, the film was doomed from the start due to the competition with the Gérard Depardieu "Columbus" picture, which was racked with its own problems. When the director was replaced, Dalton backed out and was followed by his co-star, Isabella Rossellini.
In 1992, he starred in the A&E production Framed (1992), which won a bronze medal in the 1993 New York Film Festival. The next year, he journeyed to northern Alaska and Minnesota to make a documentary on one of his favorite subjects, wolves. In the Company of Whales (1991) went on to win a silver medal in the 1994 New York Film Festival. He kept busy in television through 1993 and 1994. He made Red Eagle (1994), Scarlett (1994) and managed to squeeze in a guest appearance on Tales from the Crypt (1989) in the episode "Werewolf Concerto". In 1994, he took on the role of Rhett Butler in the eight-hour miniseries Scarlett (1994), produced by Robert Halmi Sr. for the Hallmark Hall of Fame. In April of that year, believing he needed to move on to fresh challenges, he officially resigned the role of James Bond, a move which was much regretted by the producers, though they understood his reasons. After two months of negotiations, the role went to Pierce Brosnan.
In September 1994, Dalton was called upon for two readings of "Peter and the Wolf" at the Hollywood Bowl. He played to full-capacity crowds. In November, Scarlett (1994) premiered and, though given only a lukewarm response by critics, it was a ratings success not only in the United States but all over the world, breaking records in many European countries. As always after a major work, Dalton again withdrew quietly and without fanfare to search for his next project, a small, personal film. In the summer of 1995, he journeyed to Canada to shoot Salt Water Moose (1996). The film was made by Canada's Norstar Entertainment and was sold to Halmi to be the first video release in his new line of Hallmark family films. It premiered on Showtime in June 1996.
During the spring of 1996, he made the IRA drama The Informant (1997) in Ireland and, in May, he traveled to Prague to shoot Passion's Way (1999), opposite Sela Ward. On February 7, 1997, the comedy The Beautician and the Beast (1997) co-starring Fran Drescher opened in the United States. He also gleefully parodied his swashbuckling/James Bond image in Looney Tunes: Back in Action (2003) as a spy playing an actor playing a spy.
In 1995, Dalton began a relationship with Oksana Grigorieva which produced a child in 1997, Dalton's son Alexander. Over the following years, Dalton has been a caring and loving father of his son. Very much a private man, Dalton's pastimes include fishing, reading, jazz, opera, antique fairs and auctions and, of course, movies.Consensus is: 'He was the worst James Bond ever.'
Timothy Dalton is the odd-man-out in the Bond franchise. He only made two Bond movies, neither very memorable. But they made money (the only real measuring stick to those who make the series) and were not as bad as some of Roger Moore's duds or Pierce Brosnan's horrific Die Another Day. He avoided the stupid slapstick and bad puns of Moore for the most part (which oddly few will admonish Connery for originating), and reset a tone of seriousness without playing the role incredibly dour and bland like Craig. Dalton knew well enough what kind of role he was playing, and did it well. His Bond was tough, romantic, charming, but had the right level of smugness. Dalton was a hero in the Errol Flynn mold, but was wise enough to leave the parkour and choreographed fighting to other Bonds. He was unfortunate to follow Moore who had time to make the role his own, and preceded a likable Brosnan who revived a then dead franchise. Dalton is a great actor who found himself in danger of being typecasted, so wisely jumped ship before he found himself cameoing in Jean Claude Van Damme movies like Roger Moore or surfing a hundred-foot CGI wave on a surfboard in the arctic, fleeing a giant laser beam (I still despise Brosnan for agreeing to that scene.) His career suffered none the less, but not from lack of talent. Thus, in fairness, Dalton gets a pass. There is no rightful claimant to the title 'worst Bond' in my mind.- Director
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Although François Truffaut has written that the New Wave began "thanks to Rivette," the films of this masterful French director are not well known. Rivette, like his "Cahiers du Cinéma" colleagues Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Claude Chabrol and Éric Rohmer, did graduate to filmmaking but, like Rohmer, was something of a late bloomer as a director. He made two shorts (At the Four Corners (1949) and The Quadrille (1950), starring Jean-Luc Godard); in the mid-1950s he served as an assistant to Jean Renoir and Jacques Becker; and in 1958 he was, along with Chabrol, the first of the five to begin production on a feature-length film. Without the financial benefit of a producer, Rivette took to the streets with his friends, a 16mm camera, and film stock purchased on borrowed money. It was only, however, after the commercial success of Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959), Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) and Godard's Breathless (1960) that the resulting film, the elusive, intellectual, and somewhat lengthy (135 minutes) Paris Belongs to Us (1961), saw its release in 1960. In retrospect, Rivette's debut sketched out the path which all his subsequent films would follow; PARIS NOUS APPARTIENT was a monumental undertaking for the critic-turned-director, with some 30 actors (including Chabrol, Godard and Jacques Demy), almost as many locations, and an impenetrably labyrinthine narrative. His next film, the considerably more commercial The Nun (1966), was an adaptation of the Diderot novel which Rivette had staged in 1963. The least characteristic of all his features, it was also his first and only commercial success, becoming a succèss de scandal when the government blocked its release for a year. Rivette's true talents first made themselves visible during the fruitful period, 1968-74. During this time he directed the 4-hour Mad Love (1969), the now legendary 13-hour Out 1 (1971) (made for French TV in 1970 but never broadcast; edited to a 4-hour feature and retitled Out 1: Spectre (1972)), and the 3-hour Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), his most entertaining and widely seen picture. In these three films, Rivette began to construct what has come to be called his "House of Fiction"--an enigmatic filmmaking style influenced by the work of Louis Feuillade and involving improvisation, ellipsis and considerable narrative experimentation. Unfortunately, Rivette seems to have no place in contemporary cinema. On the one hand, his work is considered too inaccessible for theatrical distribution; on the other, although his revolutionary theories have influenced figures such as Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet and Chantal Akerman, he is deemed too commercial to be accepted by the underground cinema; he still employs a narrative and uses "name" actors such as Jean-Pierre Léaud, Juliet Berto, Anna Karina and Maria Schneider. Since CÉLINE AND JULIE, Rivette's career has been as mysterious as one of his plots. In 1976 he received an offer to make a series of four films, "Les Filles du Feu." Duelle (1976), the first entry, received such negative response that the second, Noroît (1976)--which some critics call his greatest picture--was held from release. The final two installments (one of which was due to star Leslie Caron and Albert Finney) were never filmed. The 1980s proved no kinder. He made five films, but only one of them, Love on the Ground (1984), opened in the US (it received disastrous reviews). Although he continues to be an innovative and challenging artist, Rivette has failed to find the type of audience that has contributed to the commercial success of his New Wave compatriots.Consensus is: 'The Holocaust is unfilmable.'
Less a consensus than a devil's advocate set-up -- this debate begins with Jacques Rivette's critique of the film Kapo over a single tracking shot (funnily enough, the notorious shot is much more complex than his facile reading of it would indicate). And though Stanley Kubrick and JL Godard's harsh evaluation of Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List seem personally motivated, Imre Kertész's criticism seems to have superficial merit. Claude Lanzmann, while at least having a point about the semantics of term 'Holocaust,' is another vocal critic caught up in an emotional and surreal argument of who 'owns' history.
When it comes to the Holocaust, the answer to that question varies conveniently depending on who's asking: for Godard, only a European; Lanzmann, only a pedant; Kubrick, a pessimist; Rivette, a morally-correct aesthetic; and Kertész, survivors to the exclusion of all else -- and probably further restrictive at that. Thus you can see the self-important, comically subjective, and increasingly prohibitive nature of 'authenticity.' One may only look at the support of Spielberg from European-born, Jewish filmmakers like Billy Wilder and Roman Polanski, to negate the above claims, as if one needed to. I say 'negate' because there is no answer to the question and not even really any question. Yes, even Uwe Boll has a right to address the Holocaust without pre-ordained moral, national, or artistic stipulations by self-appointed 'guardians' (Kertész's own words) of history and cinema.- Actor
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Growing up in Baltimore in the 1950s, John Waters was not like other children; he was obsessed by violence and gore, both real and on the screen. With his weird counter-culture friends as his cast, he began making silent 8mm and 16mm films in the mid-'60s; he screened these in rented Baltimore church halls to underground audiences drawn by word of mouth and street leafleting campaigns. As his filmmaking grew more polished and his subject matter more shocking, his audiences grew bigger, and his write-ups in the Baltimore papers more outraged. By the early 1970s he was making features, which he managed to get shown in midnight screenings in art cinemas by sheer perseverance. Success came when Pink Flamingos (1972) - a deliberate exercise in ultra-bad taste - took off in 1973, helped no doubt by lead actor Divine's infamous dog-crap eating scene.
Waters continued to make low-budget shocking movies with his Dreamland repertory company until Hollywood crossover success came with Hairspray (1988), and although his movies nowadays might now appear cleaned up and professional, they retain Waters' playfulness, and reflect his lifelong obsessions.Consensus is: 'Waters is the greatest subversive (cult) filmmaker/an underrated outsider.'
Another case of the claim being true but none the less still far from a compliment. I have to admit many of his later 'PG-13' movies are not particularly to my taste. The early ones are so obscure and forgotten that I only hear of them in passing film articles or in the form of nostalgic anecdotes. Most only know Mr. Waters from his rather sanitary film Hairspray and its remake. Waters has a unique vision that turns off many, part avant-guarde indie and half geek-show. As far as cult icons go, a drag queen eating a piece of dog *bleep* (fake or not) is pretty great though.- Actor
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Often credited as the greatest comedian of all time, Peter Sellers was born Richard Henry Sellers to a well-off acting family in 1925 in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth. He was the son of Agnes Doreen "Peg" (Marks) and William "Bill" Sellers. His parents worked in an acting company run by his grandmother. His father was Protestant and his mother was Jewish (of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi background). His parents' first child had died at birth, so Sellers was spoiled during his early years. He enlisted in the Royal Air Force and served during World War II. After the war he met Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine, who would become his future workmates.
After the war, he set up a review in London, which was a combination of music (he played the drums) and impressions. Then, all of a sudden, he burst into prominence as the voices of numerous favorites on the BBC radio program "The Goon Show" (1951-1960), and then making his debut in films in Penny Points to Paradise (1951) and Down Among the Z Men (1952), before making it big as one of the criminals in The Ladykillers (1955). These small but showy roles continued throughout the 1950s, but he got his first big break playing the dogmatic union man, Fred Kite, in I'm All Right Jack (1959). The film's success led to starring vehicles into the 1960s that showed off his extreme comic ability to its fullest. In 1962, Sellers was cast in the role of Clare Quilty in the Stanley Kubrick version of the film Lolita (1962) in which his performance as a mentally unbalanced TV writer with multiple personalities landed him another part in Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) in which he played three roles which showed off his comic talent in play-acting in three different accents; British, American, and German.
The year 1964 represented a peak in his career with four films in release, all of them well-received by critics and the public alike: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), for which he was Oscar nominated, The Pink Panther (1963), in which he played his signature role of the bumbling French Inspector Jacques Clouseau for the first time, its almost accidental sequel, A Shot in the Dark (1964), and The World of Henry Orient (1964). Sellers was on top of the world, but on the evening of April 5, 1964, he suffered a nearly fatal heart attack after inhaling several amyl nitrites (also called 'poppers'; an aphrodisiac-halogen combination) while engaged in a sexual act with his second wife Britt Ekland. He had been working on Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid (1964). In a move Wilder later regretted, he replaced Sellers with Ray Walston rather than hold up production. By October 1964, Sellers made a full recovery and was working again.
The mid-1960s were noted for the popularity of all things British, from the Beatles music (who were presented with their Grammy for Best New Artist by Sellers) to the James Bond films, and the world turned to Sellers for comedy. What's New Pussycat (1965) was another big hit, but a combination of his ego and insecurity was making Sellers difficult to work with. When the James Bond spoof Casino Royale (1967) ran over budget and was unable to recoup its costs despite an otherwise healthy box-office take, Sellers received some of the blame. He turned down an offer from United Artists for the title role in Inspector Clouseau (1968), but was angry when the production went ahead with Alan Arkin in his place. His difficult reputation and increasingly erratic behavior, combined with several less successful films, took a toll on his standing. By 1970, he had fallen out of favor. He spent the early years of the new decade appearing in such lackluster B films as Where Does It Hurt? (1972) and turning up more frequently on television as a guest on The Dean Martin Show (1965) and a Glen Campbell TV special.
In 1974, Inspector Clouseau came to Sellers rescue when Sir Lew Grade expressed an interest in a TV series based on the character. Clouseau's creator, writer-director Blake Edwards, whose career had also seen better days, convinced Grade to bankroll a feature film instead, and The Return of the Pink Panther (1975) was a major hit release during the summer of Jaws (1975) and restored both men to prominence. Sellers would play Clouseau in two more successful sequels, The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) and Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), and Sellers would use his newly rediscovered clout to realize his dream of playing Chauncey Gardiner in a film adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's novel "Being There". Sellers had read the novel in 1972, but it took seven years for the film to reach the screen. Being There (1979) earned Sellers his second Oscar nomination, but he lost to Dustin Hoffman for Kramer vs. Kramer (1979).
Sellers struggled with depression and mental insecurities throughout his life. An enigmatic figure, he often claimed to have no identity outside the roles that he played. His behavior on and off the set and stage became more erratic and compulsive, and he continued to frequently clash with his directors and co-stars, especially in the mid-1970s when his physical and mental health, together with his continuing alcohol and drug problems, were at their worst. He never fully recovered from his 1964 heart attack because he refused to take traditional heart medication and instead consulted with 'psychic healers'. As a result, his heart condition continued to slowly deteriorate over the next 16 years. On March 20, 1977, Sellers barely survived another major heart attack and had a pacemaker surgically implanted to regulate his heartbeat which caused him further mental and physical discomfort. However, he refused to slow down his work schedule or consider heart surgery which might have extended his life by several years.
On July 25, 1980, Sellers was scheduled to have a reunion dinner in London with his Goon Show partners, Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. However, at around 12 noon on July 22, Sellers collapsed from a massive heart attack in his Dorchester Hotel room and fell into a coma. He died in a London hospital just after midnight on July 24, 1980 at age 54. He was survived by his fourth wife, Lynne Frederick, and three children: Michael, Sarah and Victoria. At the time of his death, he was scheduled to undergo an angiography in Los Angeles on July 30 to see if he was eligible for heart surgery.
His last movie, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980), completed just a few months before his death, proved to be another box office flop. Director Blake Edwards' attempt at reviving the Pink Panther series after Sellers' death resulted in two panned 1980s comedies, the first of which, Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), deals with Inspector Clouseau's disappearance and was made from material cut from previous Pink Panther films and includes interviews with the original casts playing their original characters.Consensus is: 'Sellers is the funniest actor of all time.'
I think his genealogy is more interesting than many of his later film choices, and I'm not joking (Google it). If you ignore Dr. Strangelove, Being There, and one or two of his better Pink Panther movies, he actually seems to have made very few hilarious movies. Though his timing is impeccable and he always improves whatever project he was in by his mere presence, I always got the impression he wasted his talent on lesser productions. I cannot, however, think of another comedian who could match his wit and physical comedy on screen. Not even Groucho.- Writer
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Ayn Rand was born on 2 February 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire [now Russia]. She was a writer and actress, known for The Night of January 16th (1941), The Fountainhead (1949) and We the Living (1942). She was married to Frank O'Connor. She died on 6 March 1982 in New York City, New York, USA.Consensus is: 'Rand's political message is incapable of being properly translated onto film/her politically incorrect works will never again be adapted by a major studio.'
Aside from a decent, if condensed, version of The Fountainhead starring Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal made sixty years ago and a recent low-budget, utterly ignored adaptation of Atlas Shrugged, this stereotype appears as solid as ever. An irony considering that one of Rand's first jobs in America was writing screenplays for Hollywood.- Writer
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Lana Wachowski and her sister Lilly Wachowski, also known as the Wachowskis, are the duo behind such ground-breaking movies as The Matrix (1999) and Cloud Atlas (2012). Born to mother Lynne, a nurse, and father Ron, a businessman of Polish descent, Wachowski grew up in Chicago and formed a tight creative relationship with her sister Lilly. After the siblings dropped out of college, they started a construction business and wrote screenplays. Their 1995 script, Assassins (1995), was made into a movie, leading to a Warner Bros contract. After that time, the Wachowskis devoted themselves to their movie careers. In 2012, during interviews for Cloud Atlas and in her acceptance speech for the Human Rights Campaign's Visibility Award, Lana spoke about her experience of being a transgender woman, sacrificing her much cherished anonymity out of a sense of responsibility. Lana is known to be extremely well-read, loves comic books and exploring ideas of imaginary worlds, and was inspired by Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) in creating Cloud Atlas.Consensus is: 'The Wachowski Brothers never should have made the Matrix sequels/the Wachowskis ruined the Matrix series.'
(I realize that there are two Wachowskis and the name above is a woman's name, but trust me on this one.) Few would claim the two sequels were in the same league as the original. Noticeably less intellectual in tone, and mostly held together through the audience's anticipation of a few well-placed CGI fight scenes, the Wachowskis seemed to completely forget why the original was so engrossing. The bigger, more tepid, and dumber follow-ups contributed nothing to the achievements of the first. The oft repeated cliche regarding sequels is unfortunately too accurate in this case.- Director
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Tom Six was born on 29 August 1973 in Alkmaar, Noord-Holland, Netherlands. He is a director and writer, known for The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009), The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence) (2015) and The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) (2011).Consensus is: 'The Human Centipede is the most disgusting film ever made/a work of a repulsive mind.'
I was surprised to find Tom Six's The Human Centipede fairly modest when it came to nudity, explicit violence and, shall we say, biological matters. The film actually is quite well-paced and unpredictable. It is disgusting, but it is internal disgust. Your imagination determines your level of repulsion (or enjoyment, one could guess). It is suprisingly smarter than I expected and well-crafted. It is no masterpiece, and not terribly memorable for its acting or scripting, but is quite a nuanced, nicely executed (no pun intended), little horror film.- Actor
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Sean Penn is a powerhouse film performer capable of intensely moving work, who has gone from strength to strength during a colourful film career, and who has drawn much media attention for his stormy private life and political viewpoints.
Sean Justin Penn was born in Los Angeles, California, the second son of actress Eileen Ryan (née Annucci) and director, actor, and writer Leo Penn. His brother was actor Chris Penn. His father was from a Lithuanian Jewish/Russian Jewish family, and his mother is of half Italian and half Irish descent.
Penn first appeared in roles as strong-headed or unruly youths such as the military cadet defending his academy against closure in Taps (1981), then as fast-talking surfer stoner Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982).
Fans and critics were enthused about his obvious talent and he next contributed a stellar performance alongside Timothy Hutton in the Cold War spy thriller The Falcon and the Snowman (1985), followed by a teaming with icy Christopher Walken in the chilling At Close Range (1986). The youthful Sean then paired up with his then wife, pop diva Madonna in the woeful, and painful, Shanghai Surprise (1986), which was savaged by the critics, but Sean bounced back with a great job as a hot-headed young cop in Colors (1988), gave another searing performance as a US soldier in Vietnam committing atrocities in Casualties of War (1989) and appeared alongside Robert De Niro in the uneven comedy We're No Angels (1989). However, the 1990s was the decade in which Sean really got noticed by critics as a mature, versatile and accomplished actor, with a string of dynamic performances in first-class films.
Almost unrecognisable with frizzy hair and thin rimmed glasses, Penn was simply brilliant as corrupt lawyer David Kleinfeld in the Brian De Palma gangster movie Carlito's Way (1993) and he was still in trouble with authority as a Death Row inmate pleading with a caring nun to save his life in Dead Man Walking (1995), for which he received his first Oscar nomination. Sean then played the brother of wealthy Michael Douglas, involving him in a mind-snapping scheme in The Game (1997) and also landed the lead role of Sgt. Eddie Walsh in the star-studded anti-war film The Thin Red Line (1998), before finishing the 1990s playing an offbeat jazz musician (and scoring another Oscar nomination) in Sweet and Lowdown (1999).
The gifted and versatile Sean had also moved into directing, with the quirky but interesting The Indian Runner (1991), about two brothers with vastly opposing views on life, and in 1995 he directed Jack Nicholson in The Crossing Guard (1995). Both films received overall positive reviews from critics. Moving into the new century, Sean remained busy in front of the cameras with even more outstanding work: a mentally disabled father fighting for custody of his seven-year-old daughter (and receiving a third Oscar nomination) for I Am Sam (2001); an anguished father seeking revenge for his daughter's murder in the gut-wrenching Clint Eastwood-directed Mystic River (2003) (for which he won the Oscar as Best Actor); a mortally ill college professor in 21 Grams (2003) and a possessed businessman in The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004).
Certainly Sean Penn is one of Hollywood's most controversial, progressive and gifted actors.Consensus is: 'Hollywood has a liberal bias.'
Well, duh. But that isn't an inherent problem; so-called conservative values are still common, especially capitalism, militarism, and American exceptionalism. As the Blacklist-era proved, Hollywood, especially in the screenwriting department, is clogged with leftists. They never posed a danger of an underground, 'red' fifth column, but still were targeted all the same. Propaganda then, and propaganda like An American Carol today, has a tendency to egregiously misrepresent left of center politics. As loony as dictator-apologists Michael Moore, Sean Penn, and Oliver Stone sound, they are negligible outliers. Ironically, it should be pointed out time tends to make us all into traditionalists; Charlton Heston was a 'bleeding-heart liberal' before he outlived his era and became the quintessential Republican. Jane Fonda went from Hanoi Jane into the Oprah-friendly, born-again spouse of an arch-capitalist. Pro-Palestinian, Maoist Godard snuggled up to Hollywood-loving, Israeli fighter pilot-turned-financier Menaham Golan in the name of cinema. So in the end it really makes little difference. If a pseudo-socialist like Orson Welles can praise a proud Nixon-fundraiser like Jimmy Stewart, there's hope for this world.- Director
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Terry Gilliam was born near Medicine Lake, Minnesota. When he was 12 his family moved to Los Angeles where he became a fan of MAD magazine. In his early twenties he was often stopped by the police who suspected him of being a drug addict and Gilliam had to explain that he worked in advertising. In the political turmoil in the 60's, Gilliam feared he would become a terrorist and decided to leave the USA. He moved to England and landed a job on the children's television show Do Not Adjust Your Set (1967) as an animator. There he met meet his future collaborators in Monty Python: Terry Jones, Eric Idle and Michael Palin. In 2006 he renounced his American citizenship.Consensus is: 'Terry Gilliam is a genius.'
This sentiment might have made sense a decade ago when his career was on an upward trajectory. Terry Gilliam's success is mostly due to style, and a lot of luck. Admirers claim that his movies are so infused with Gilliam's personality that they can't work without him. That is exactly the problem, if you extract his set-pieces, and signature weirdness from his films you find the remainder trivial, a lot of garbled half-thoughts and rehashed tropes. Whether adapting a celebrated Hunter Thompson book, remaking a classic Chris Marker short film, recycling Orwell, or collaborating with Monty Python, his ego is founded in the exploitation of other's talents. His primary contribution to the Python films being the alien abduction scene from Life of Brian that worked specifically because it was so awkward and pointless within context to the rest of film. To put it bluntly, his own stories stink. Doctor Parnassus notably features such a central set-piece, a confusing dreamworld consisting of a lot of unattractive CGI, bizarre ethical lessons and convenient, contrived moments of catharsis and justice. The nerve of a film that delivers a happy ending while pretending to be too smart or above stooping to such a 'low' is simply aggravating. (Like many an experimental or expressionistic film it fails precisely when you begin to think about it too much.) And no, I don't think Heath Ledger could have saved it. While I admit Gilliam's had bad luck, for all those who claim he is jinxed, prevented from sharing masterpieces with the world, take note that Baron von Munchausen, Brothers Grimm, and Tideland are what happens when his ideas inevitably find their way to the screen.
Brazil, his supposed magnum opus, is at least from a superficial interpretation, the ultimate libertarian kiss-off to the inefficient, crypto-totalitarian model. This from a guy who has none too quietly railed against debt, police-states, bureaucracy, and consumerism his entire career and yet regularly makes twenty-million-dollar films, owns an Italian villa, and lives in London (the center of a stagnant welfare state with uncontrollable debt, the most sophisticated police surveillance system on earth, and sneaker and flat-screen-T.V. induced riots). His entire career is due to conspicuous consumption and financiers. Which is only appropriate for a wannabe Don Martin who makes films about evading reality in your own deluded fantasy world, where everyone is their own brave and righteous hero. No wonder his films are nonsense, his entire life is nonsense.- Writer
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Probably the most ambitious and visually distinctive filmmaker to emerge from Denmark since Carl Theodor Dreyer over 60 years earlier, Lars von Trier studied film at the Danish Film School and attracted international attention with his very first feature, The Element of Crime (1984). A highly distinctive blend of film noir and German Expressionism with stylistic nods to Dreyer, Andrei Tarkovsky and Orson Welles, its combination of yellow-tinted monochrome cinematography (pierced by shafts of blue light) and doom-haunted atmosphere made it an unforgettable visual experience. His subsequent features Epidemic (1987) and Europa (1991) have been equally ambitious both thematically and visually, though his international fame is most likely to be based on The Kingdom (1994), a TV soap opera blending hospital drama, ghost story and Twin Peaks (1990)-style surrealism that was so successful in Denmark that it was released internationally as a 280-minute theatrical feature.Consensus is: ' "Shaky cam" cinema is for hacks.'
If you've ever seen a Lars von Trier movie or found-footage flick, you know to what I'm referring. To you others, shaky cam is a reference to a particular style of spastic camera-operating that denotes gritty realism or chaos, as if a documentary. A holdover from the defunct Dogme '95 movement, the cinema verite technique is now associated more with blockbusters and Z-horror films. The problem is that the 'shaky cam' technique is so over-used and confusingly utilized today it tends to take one out of a particular scene. It draws attention to the artifice of cinematography much like 3-D does, it subtracts from overall intensity. Despite claims the shaky cam mimics human sight, our brain smooths out visual signals, the normal human body functions closer to steadycams than handhelds clutched by epileptics. As evident in Star Wars' cantina scene, the technique frequently conceals unpolished craftsmanship. When used in calmer moments it appears amateurish or a gimmicky distraction that frequently implies more about the director than the scene (The Road Warrior's scenes filmed atop a speeding semi are more stable than von Trier's unbearably artsy Dogville). It now conveys a visual laziness and a phony sense of authenticity. If a tracking shot is a matter of morality, shaky cam is matter of amorality. Acclaimed for its effectiveness in early films like Cannibal Holocaust, Saving Private Ryan, and Blair Witch, it has now been rightfully denigrated as a clichéd action-film crutch in The Bourne Trilogy, Babylon A.D., and Quantum of Solace. If Cloverfield was the tipping point, Battle Los Angeles is the last straw. Its time as an innovative action movie trope and avant-garde statement has long passed. Now if only we could get rid of the b & w art-film, prequels, and putting film titles at the end of the movie, but that's another headache.- Texas born, Harvard educated, Jack Valenti has led several lives; a wartime bomber pilot, advertising agency founder, political consultant, White House Special Assistant, movie industry leader. In his current role as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Motion Picture Association of America, Valenti has presided over a worldwide sea change in the industry, which has radically changed the landscape of the American film and television industry here and abroad. It is Valenti's duty and challenge to lead the U.S. film and TV industry's confrontation with these global dangers and opportunities. Born in Houston, Texas, Valenti was the youngest (age 15) high school graduate in the city. He began work a a 16-year-old office boy with the Humble Oil Company (now Exxon). As a young pilot in the Army Air Corps in World War II, Lieutenant Valenti flew 51 combat missions as the pilot-commander of a B-25 attack bomber with the 12th Air Force in Italy. He was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal with four clusters, the Distinguished Unit Citation with one cluster, the European Theater Ribbon with four battle stars. He has a B.A. from the University of Houston (doing all his undergraduate work at night, working during the day). He graduated from Harvard with an M.B.A. In 1952, he co-founded the advertising/political consulting agency of Weekley & Valenti. In 1955, he met the man who would have the largest impact on his life, the then Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, Lyndon B. Johnson. Valenti's agency was in charge of the press during the visit of President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Johnson to Texas. Valenti was in the motorcade in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Within hours of the murder of John F. Kennedy, Valenti was on Air Force One flying back to Washington, the first newly hired special assistant to the new President. On June 1, 1966, Valenti resigned his White House post to become only the third man in MPAA history to become its leader. Valenti has written four books, three non-fiction, The Bitter Taste Of Glory (World Publishing); A Very Human President (W. W. Norton Co.); Speak Up With Confidence (Wm. Morrow Co.); his newest book is a political novel, Protect Aand Defend (Doubleday, 1992). He has written numerous essays for the New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Reader's Digest, Atlantic Monthly, Newsweek, Cox newspapers and other publications. France awarded him its highly prized Legion d'Honneur, the French Legion of Honor. He has been awarded his own Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He and his wife, Mary Margaret Valenti, lived in Washington, though he spent half his time in Los Angeles. They had three children, Courtenay Valenti, John Valenti and Alexandra Valenti. He died from complications of a stroke in April 2007.Consensus is: 'Censorship is bad.'
Censorship, in its more restrained form, the rating of films, is quite necessary. That isn't to suggest that the MPAA or other rating boards aren't corrupt or biased, but the modern film boards are a far cry from Joseph Breen. Let's be honest, a sizeable percentage of young adults are impressionable zombies. We aren't so much protecting them from us, as we are retroactively protecting society from a certain number of maladjusted jerks when they grow up. Stanley Kubrick wisely self-censored himself, pulling Clockwork Orange from theaters after hearing of a girl raped in a manner clearly inspired by one of his films' characters (and after receiving death threats too). And we deserved it. Once-respected journalist David Icke was so enamored by They Live he devoted his life to a conspiracy theory based on the film's premise. To deny that movies influence society and behavior is wishful thinking. A frank discussion on the pathetic state of parenting might alleviate the need for ratings, but of course in this country that topic is as taboo as visible public hair and nipples, so why bother. Violent movies won't turn a kid into a killer and porn won't turn him into a rapist, but it can definitely give him some pointers. Though in truth, the media's moronic desire to celebritize spree killers is much worse than the effects of Natural Born Killers or Mortal Kombat combined. - Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
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Sergio Leone was virtually born into the cinema - he was the son of Roberto Roberti (A.K.A. Vincenzo Leone), one of Italy's cinema pioneers, and actress Bice Valerian. Leone entered films in his late teens, working as an assistant director to both Italian directors and U.S. directors working in Italy (usually making Biblical and Roman epics, much in vogue at the time). Towards the end of the 1950s he started writing screenplays, and began directing after taking over The Last Days of Pompeii (1959) in mid-shoot after its original director fell ill. His first solo feature, The Colossus of Rhodes (1961), was a routine Roman epic, but his second feature, A Fistful of Dollars (1964), a shameless remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), caused a revolution. It was the first Spaghetti Western, and shot T.V. cowboy Clint Eastwood to stardom (Leone wanted Henry Fonda or Charles Bronson but couldn't afford them). The two sequels, For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), were shot on much higher budgets and were even more successful, though his masterpiece, Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), in which Leone finally worked with Fonda and Bronson, was mutilated by Paramount Pictures and flopped at the U.S. box office. He directed Duck, You Sucker! (1971) reluctantly (as producer he hired Peter Bogdanovich to direct but he left before shooting began), and turned down offers to direct The Godfather (1972) in favor of his dream project, which became Once Upon a Time in America (1984). He died in 1989 after preparing an even more expensive Soviet co-production on the World War II siege of Leningrad.Consensus is: 'Dubbing sucks.'
Italy serves as a good microcosm, dubbing continues in that country today with little of the taint found here in the U.S. It is a long tradition in part due to an influx of many foreign actors and accents, and the necessary consideration of foreign markets. However, with the exception of Sergio Leone who employed the actors themselves to dub their own lines, the dubbing process rarely worked because audiences often know what certain actors sound like and in any case possess the natural ability to spot bad lip synchs. Worse, dialogue in one language obviously does not translate evenly phonetically into others. Other Italians, like Federico Fellini and Pier Pasolini were even less concerned with seamless vocals, creatively rewriting lines in post-production. Regardless, it still looked shoddy and distracting. The ubiquity of sloppily-synchronized voice-overs in foreign movies was so prominent by the Sixties it became an open joke in the biz and a central gag in Francois Truffaut's Day for Night.
As unnatural as dubbing can be, in some longer, talkier films, dubbing may serve a valuable role. After all, it can be frustrating to spend two hours without the ability to look up and see an actor's reaction or enjoy the cinematography. Animation and documentaries are more forgiving, and a lot of old movies from the Thirties and Forties had terrible acting to begin with. In some cases it might improve a film.- Producer
- Director
- Cinematographer
Steven Andrew Soderbergh was born on January 14, 1963 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, the second of six children of Mary Ann (Bernard) and Peter Soderbergh. His father was of Swedish and Irish descent, and his mother was of Italian ancestry. While he was still at a very young age, his family moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his father was a professor and the dean of the College of Education at Louisiana State University. While still in high school, around the age of 15, Soderbergh enrolled in the university's film animation class and began making short 16-millimeter films with second-hand equipment, one of which was the short film "Janitor". After graduating high school, he went to Hollywood, where he worked as a freelance editor. His time there was brief and, shortly after, he returned home and continued making short films and writing scripts.
His first major break was in 1986 when the rock group Yes assigned him to shoot a full-length concert film for the band, which eventually earned him a Grammy nomination for the video, Yes: 9012 Live (1985). Following this achievement, Soderbergh filmed Winston (1987), the short-subject film that he would later expand into Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989), a film that earned him the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or Award, the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director, and an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Over the next six years, he was married to actress Betsy Brantley and had a daughter named Sarah Soderbergh, who was born in 1990.
Also during this time, he made such films as Kafka (1991), King of the Hill (1993), The Underneath (1995) and Gray's Anatomy (1996), which many believed to be disappointments. In 1998, Soderbergh made Out of Sight (1998), his most critically and commercially successful film since Sex, Lies, and Videotape (1989). Then, in 2000, Soderbergh directed two major motion pictures that are now his most successful films to date: Erin Brockovich (2000) and Traffic (2000). These films were both nominated for Best Picture Oscars at the 2001 Academy Awards and gave him the first twin director Oscar nomination in almost 60 years and the first ever win. He won the Oscar for Best Director for Traffic (2000) at the 2001 Oscars.Consensus is: 'Behind the Candelabra is "too gay" for Hollywood.'
Where to start... To say that there have been no major gay-themed movies released or distributed by major or even independent studios is just stupid. Some of them have even won Oscars. The fact Steven Soderbergh could get a major theatrical release for duds like Kafka or The Girlfriend Experience but not BtC is either a load of $%^& or delicious karma. If he wanted it to happen, he could. It might take years, but can you blame a company for passing with Soderbergh's shaky track record? His films have an uneven history artistically and financially, and Liberace has a niche audience to put it mildly. To refuse a marginally marketable film in an era where the corporate model is built around blockbusters is not homophobic (Soderbergh's backtracking seems to confirm this). This all missing the larger point that BtC feels like a t.v.-movie. In fact there've already been two separate Liberace biopics on t.v. Apparently not 'too gay' for mainstream American network t.v. audiences in 1988. BtC is an adaption of a twenty-five-year-old property, a low-brow tell-all no less. Considering HBO's success with Mildred Pierce and Game of Thrones, it makes perfect sense; HBO is succeeding making precisely the mini-series and biographic tell-alls that network t.v. used to make. A flashy idea, the film quickly ventures into a mundane romance, the last half is remarkably dull. It's quirky, but there isn't much of a film here. Of course Soderbergh settled for t.v. More and more the 'too gay' remark feels like a calculating headline-grabber or churlish backbiting from a man who admittedly doesn't respect the studio system, or as self-ennobling political rhetoric. Soderbergh and Matt Damon are no stranger to films with overtly political themes, and this movie is, after all, implicitly about gay marriage.- Producer
- Additional Crew
- Director
Syrian-American Moustapha Akkad produced a series of "Halloween" movies but it was The Lion of the Desert (1980) and The Message (1976), on the history of Islam, into which he poured his heart. It was reportedly difficult for him to make it in Hollywood but no one could deny his talent as a director and producer. He was killed along with his daughter, Rima Al Akkad Monla, in a bombing in 2005 in Amman, Jordan.Consensus is: 'The Prophet Muhammad will never be depicted on screen.'
Whether Muhammad is not widely depicted in Western culture out of respect or safety for all involved are two very different things, and there lies the entire problem. You cannot legitimately appear respectful if there is always a chance you are simply being blackmailed into your position by a threat of violence. And for many Westerners the idea that artists can be collectively blackmailed prevents them from having any respect for Islam as a philosophy to begin. Moustapha Akkad (producer of Mohammad Messenger of God) among a few other non-Muslim filmmakers (entirely documentarians) have avoided depicting the Prophet. The very facts surrounding Mr. Akkad's film's U.S. premier (which narrowly avoided a bombing) and his death (killed in a suicide attack while scouting production of a film based on Saladin's life) bear out the observation, that perhaps it is better to avoid danger than take a chance in the name of art. Which is a shame, because taking risks is certainly what made Akkad a great man, and what often creates great art. Don't count on seeing this truism busted anytime this century.- Director
- Editor
- Producer
Consensus is: 'Wait, huh? The Shining is about Native American genocide, faking the moon landing, and the Holocaust?'
If you haven't seen Room 237, you really are missing out on some brilliant viewing. And regardless if the conspiratorial theories are a little out there, true Stanley Kubrick fans, and horror film fanatics in general, will enjoy the hours of attention the participants put in. The bad news is that while they were fixating upon the 'Calumet' baking soda label, or German typewriter, or Playgirl magazine (Jack Torrance is no dull boy after all) they seemed to willfully disregard the 'Golden Rey' pimento box, Bugs Bunny reference, the fellating bear-suit guy, and erotic Nubian art. A lot of the theories depend upon obvious continuity errors, coincidences, and paying attention to the most minute of details while ignoring others, ahem, bear-suit guy. How it is that people who've seen Kubrick's movie a hundred times obsess about the indeterminate race of a cameo role (who is simultaneously representative of colonized races and the N.S.A., no less) but miss the fact that the Overlook Hotel's maze's map doesn't match the real maze which doesn't appear to match the indoor model, is beyond me. The film seems to prove the human capacity to create and seek subjective patterns, and the inability of those same fans to let go of their idol, an enigmatic, perfectionist with a unique visual style. However, I'm completely buying the idea Kubrick was a bored genius, the symbolism of the Minotaur in the maze primed to 'devour' the resourceful youth does seem calculated in retrospect. The general premise (evident in the Indian burial ground line) does harken to forgotten traumas and repressed histories, though I'm not even sure Kubrick knew what the hell he meant by that ending.- Director
- Producer
- Actress
A very talented painter, Kathryn spent two years at the San Francisco Art Institute. At 20, she won a scholarship to the Whitney Museum's Independent Study Program. She was given a studio in a former Offtrack Betting building, literally in an old bank vault, where she made art and waited to be critiqued by people like Richard Serra, Robert Rauschenberg and Susan Sontag. Later she earned a scholarship to study film at Columbia University School of Arts, graduating in 1979. She was also a member of the British avant garde cultural group, Art and Language. Kathryn is the only child of the manager of a paint factory and a librarian.Consensus is: 'Hollywood is a boys' club/Women are unfairly discriminated against'
Women are disproportionately underrepresented in the fields of producing, directing, and writing. While it isn't a canard, the presumption that these fields must approximate the percentage of the female population is misguided. The disparity is obvious at awards ceremonies. With the exception of The Independent Spirit Award and Sundance, female directors and writers toil in obscurity, but I repeat myself. A critic at Salon has gone as far to recommend splitting Oscar's directorial category into two competitions based on gender, oblivious to the condescension to female directors this will instill (no matter what anyone says, I feel quotas run counter to the idea of credibility -- Title IX still hasn't made women's pro-leagues feasible, has it?), the necessary dilution it'll cause (already evident in knee-jerk expansion of the Best Picture category), and potential to horrifically backfire (can you honestly, off the top of your head, name five truly great films made by female directors in the last three years, let alone five this year?). Parity is fine as a cause, but if this is the way to bring it about, please concede the Academy its remaining dignity.
The hard truth to refute those arguments is that Nora Ephron's exposure for her writing nomination in 1983 did not lead to a stellar career but arguably a rather tepid, overexposed one. Also, many have admitted that Kathryn Bigelow's Best Director Oscar was largely due to mediocre competition, a low but not inaccurate observation. And on the wisdom of gendered categories, it is now evident that Meryl Streep will receive an obligatory acting nod no matter what she is in. Anecdotes I know, but films made by women about women typically gross considerably less in total, a fact studios are aware of by their proclivity toward CGI tentpoles and franchise-'universes.' So we can guess the long term feasibility of that possibility. I'm not sure if proportional cinematic gender-equality is natural or realistic (without draconian measures). This is either a situation of a problem with no answer, or an answer without a dilemma. Time will tell.- Producer
- Writer
- Director
Peter Farrelly was born on 17 December 1956 in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, USA. He is a producer and writer, known for Green Book (2018), There's Something About Mary (1998) and Dumb and Dumber (1994). He has been married to Melinda Farrelly since 31 December 1996. They have two children.Consensus is: 'Movie 43 is "The Citizen Kane" of bad movies.'
I can't defend this film except on principle. In fairness, it is designed as a spoof. Granted every parody aimed at the film industry (or whatever) doesn't work or even make much sense, but I think it's clear this is trying to subvert the concept of the formulaic, PG-13, mass-appeal film, which is a worthy mission.
In attempting to mock celebrity-fueled, self-indulgent, moron-friendly, unfunny, unpolished, no-reason-to-exist film fare, the film becomes exactly what it had targeted to begin. Though, honestly, I am personally more offended by films like The Big Lebowski, Detour, the first Kill Bill, Only God Forgives, and Ali G: Indahouse, because they receive accolade after lavished praise for their ineptness and irreverent awfulness. And while we are trashing pointless movies that exploit star-power, gratuitous nudity, and shallow ideas to disguise lazy writing, poor concepts, and mediocre acting, let's not forget Contempt. Star-studded, laughable debacles...What about Dune? Unwatchable corporate shams...Snakes on a Plane or Trail of the Pink Panther, anyone? Visceral, soul-hollowing, scattershot filmmaking...You guessed it, Salo and Inland Empire. Shallow, crass $#\¥ and dick 'comedies'?...Superbad, Bridesmaids, Due Date, etc. Is Movie 43 worse than all those? Yes, however the difference is only marginal. All these movies are despicable and annoying in their own unique way. It is the 'Citizen Kane of bad movies' in that it requires no mental exertion or courage for movie reviewers to denounce as it represents most of the worst aspects of filmmaking. As hard to believe as it seems, there are films less entertaining and with less merit (except the superhero and leprechaun segments, which are among the worst things ever filmed).- Producer
- Actor
- Writer
Bob Guccione was born on 17 December 1930 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and actor, known for Caligula (1979), Lowball (1996) and Penthouse Interactive Virtual Photo Shoot Vol. 1 (1994). He was married to April Dawn Warren, Katherine Keeton, Muriel Hudson and Lillian Abrams. He died on 20 October 2010 in Plano, Texas, USA.Consensus is: 'Caligula is the biggest debacle in cinematic history.'
It's hard to debunk this myth, the story behind the film is as notorious and entertaining as the deranged Claudian emperor himself. Caligula's plagued production ran over budget, partly leading to the demise of producer Bob Guccione's Penthouse empire, and was a monumental creative cluster$#{¥. Guccione, his director Tinto Brass, and screenwriter Gore Vidal never seeing eye-to-eye on the nature the project was supposed to take. Some of the stars were only cognizant of the pornographic tone and aimless pace of the film after it all was too late. Understandably derided as high-camp, soft core drivel when it was released, a more sober edit available on Netflix is nearly decent.- Writer
- Actor
- Director
Tommy Wiseau is an American actor, director, screenwriter & producer. He trained to be an actor at: American Conservatory Theater, Vince Chase Workshop, Jean Shelton Acting Lab, Laney College and Stella Adler Academy of Acting.
In 2001 he wrote, produced, directed and starred in The Room (2003), a feature film that received the 2003 Audience Award at the New York International Film Festival. In 2004, he produced the documentary Homeless in America (2004), which received the 2004 Social Award.
He is now working on several more projects.Consensus is: 'Cult Movies are born not made/so bad they're good'
The definition of a 'cult movie' is usually defined as a bad or eccentric movie later re-discovered and celebrated ironically, with the inevitable hint of economic or artistic failure, or all those viewing parties and re-quotes would just be annoying fanboy fawning over a blockbuster, wouldn't they? However, rating sites like Rotten Tomatoes and our own IMDb expose just how confusing and contradictory this entire premise is. Lists of cult movies are revealing. Harold and Maude is considered a cult film but it has a very high IMDb rating. Roger Corman's Little Shop of Horrors is better written than 99% of movies. Brazil was produced and distributed by large corporate entities and made millions. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is considered a cult work but is the natural culmination of the horror genre and now endlessly imitated. Snakes on a Plane was re-written and marketed specifically to exploit the cult phenomenon; if you can't be smart or entertaining you can at least be too cool for the room -- which speaks to the larger problem of whether you are suppossed to actually like cult movies or just partake in a knowing affirmation of our collective superiority and better judgement. Most modern cults are merely cheesy or unpleasant or some combination, think gore-porn or any low-budget musicals. The 'cult' designation appears as another way to define yourself by your taste in movies, born out of a need to standout against some imaginary mainstream culture and a narrow-minded, stodgy film industry of decades past.
It is my opinion that 'cult' is one of the most useless film classifications in cinematic lexicon. People no longer feel stigma for watching trashy movies, so how can you take pride in your ironic (or sincere) love of obscure, trippy, gory, or subversive movies today anyway? The sophistication of a globally connected, diverse film culture that routinely celebrates d.i.y. films like Blair Witch and enables million-dollar budgeted art-house films like Holy Motors has killed the very idea of an 'underground' aesthetic or clientele. The very prospect of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter being green-lit by a major studio twenty years ago strikes me as improbable as the The Producers' Springtime For Hitler. The final frontier and limitation of filmmaking (snuff film or bestiality) is readily available on Live Leak rendering a lot of the Mondo genre utterly dispensable; evidence that cults like Faces of Death can also fade out of cult status as easily as they gained notoriety. Cult is now a broad, mainstream, quaint genre if it can even be said to exist in any meaningful way at all.- Producer
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- Actor
Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father, Tony Tarantino, is an Italian-American actor and musician from New York, and his mother, Connie (McHugh), is a nurse from Tennessee. Quentin moved with his mother to Torrance, California, when he was four years old.
In January of 1992, first-time writer-director Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs (1992) appeared at the Sundance Film Festival. The film garnered critical acclaim and the director became a legend immediately. Two years later, he followed up Dogs success with Pulp Fiction (1994) which premiered at the Cannes film festival, winning the coveted Palme D'Or Award. At the 1995 Academy Awards, it was nominated for the best picture, best director and best original screenplay. Tarantino and writing partner Roger Avary came away with the award only for best original screenplay. In 1995, Tarantino directed one fourth of the anthology Four Rooms (1995) with friends and fellow auteurs Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez and Allison Anders. The film opened December 25 in the United States to very weak reviews. Tarantino's next film was From Dusk Till Dawn (1996), a vampire/crime story which he wrote and co-starred with George Clooney. The film did fairly well theatrically.
Since then, Tarantino has helmed several critically and financially successful films, including Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained (2012) and The Hateful Eight (2015).Consensus is: 'QT overuses violence and the word *beep* (i.e. the word so sensitive IMDb just censored it out of consideration of your fragile sensibilities) in his films.'
Critics, even some who aren't Spike Lee, have expressed outrage toward Quentin Tarantino's casual usage of the 'n-word.' Others have criticized him for excessive violence. In the context of the worlds he creates in his movies I don't see any problem. He doesn't make docudramas or pretend to defer toward political correctness, ethics, or good taste, he caters to gory, revenge fantasies. You can reasonably make the argument he comes across as a poseur, trying too hard to recreate the feel of the blaxploitation film of his youth, but a quick swing by WorldStarHipHop [sic] reveals Quentin is surprisingly close in his approximation of a very small but popular sub-culture of black life. It's clear in any case he isn't advocating anti-social behavior. And as the violence and n-bombs pile up, so does his ticket sales; the most important party in this debate, the paying audience, certainly has no complaints.
If there is anything that should nag your conscience it is his increasing predilection for homages, long-winded scripts, and a corny sense of humor. If anything prevented Django Unchained from being the great film it deserved to be it's the padded length and the bad puns, not repetitive use of a single historically accurate racial epithet or cartoon-proportion spurts of blood.- Writer
- Actor
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was born in Predappio, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. He was the son of Alessandro Mussolini, a socialist, and Rosa Maltoni, a devout Catholic schoolteacher. In 1915, Mussolini married Donna Rachele Guidi. Together, they had five children. On October 31, 1922, at the age of 39, Mussolini became the Prime Minister of Italy. He was removed from power and placed under arrest by order of King Victor Emmanuel III in July 1943, but two months later was rescued by the Germans and installed as the puppet leader of a German client state, the Italian Social Republic. On April 28, 1945, Mussolini was shot dead by Italian Communists in Giulino di Mezzegra, Lombardy, Italy and his corpse was hung by its feet. He was 61 years old.Consensus is: 'Italian Cinema is dead/dying.'
(I know this technically doesn't fit under the narrow confines of 'Hollywood debates,' but indulge me.) As far as I can tell this maxim has been uttered as far back as 1990, when the NYT claimed that not even Italians were seeing Italian movies anymore, a sea change from Italy's pivotal role in the Forties through the Sixties. Granted that among those Neorealist classics and experimental art films were countless cheesy Hollywood knock-offs in the form of Spaghetti Westerns, Spaghetti Zombies, Spaghetti Bond 'Eurospys,' sword & sandal epics, etc, not to mention the increasingly desperate Mondo genre. And it is all too easy to forget that the Italian cinematic explosion of the late Forties was born from the cinematic culture established by none other than Il Duce himself, Mussolini. While Hollywood survived the collapse of the studio system, Italy is reeling from the Roman Empire-like decay of their primary filmmaking hub.
What's my point? I don't know. But if I can only name three Italian films off the top of my head in the last twenty-years, that's a cliff worthy of Capri. I wouldn't call it a problem, cycles are regular, and national cinema renaissances are so often dependent upon a single national filmmaker, Sweden had Bergman in the Fifties, Kiarostami in the Nineties, France had any number in the early Sixties, Mexico had Bunuel in the Fifties and Sixties, Kurosawa was top dog in Japan throughout the Fifties. If you hadn't noticed the pattern, films in general were better in the late Fifties, but I digress. If there is any bottleneck of creative impulses, ideas, or energy being suppressed, anywhere, at anytime, it is bound to erupt in a fantastic display. Italy, and the world, is due for a revolution on par with the post-war period, I figure.- Producer
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- Writer
As a youth, he produced a number of short films on Super 8 and video. After short stints as guest auditor at Filmacademy Vienna and Filmhochschule Munich, Boll studied literature and economics in Cologne and Siegen. He graduated from university in 1995 with a doctorate in literature. From 1995-2000, he was a producer and director with Taunus Film-Produktions GmbH. Boll was Chief Executive Officer of Bolu Filmproduction and Distribution GmbH which he founded in 1992. He continued to direct, write and produce feature films until 2016. His main companies are Event Films in Vancouver and Bolu Film in Germany. A longtime resident of Canada, Boll owned the restaurant "Bauhaus" in Vancouver from 2015 to 2020. Returned to Germany and resumed filming in 2020.Consensus is: 'Uwe Boll is a morally bankrupt, artistically handicapped video-game enthusiast with a film crew at his disposal.'
Now we come to the very bottom of the barrel. Harsh I'll admit but it does seem all too true. I can only admit to seeing one of his films (Rampage) in its entirety, and the last thirty minutes of Bloodrayne and another minute or two of another one of his movies (the title escapes me). I intentionally avoid the rest of his work alltogether; I am not adequate to judge his reputation. I can only hope someone can articulate his true talent, because I am not willing to even risk watching any more of his movies.