In Contention

Tag: Bird

  • Those underrated gems of the 1980s

    BirdFor me, no decade was as overall weak for films as the 1980s, a 10-year span when bad movies made a fortune good ones went unnoticed. Of course there were exceptions to that rule.  “Amadeus,” “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial” and “Platoon” were brilliant productions that also scored at the box office, but more often than not, great films were discovered on video, sometimes years after release.

    A quick glance at the decade will show you that “Raging Bull” was not hailed as a masterpiece right away, and was by all acounts a failure at the box office, as was Warren Beatty’s masterful “Reds.” Phillip Kaufman’s extraordinary space adventure “The Right Stuff” had all the makings of a great American film (which it was and remains) and a box office smash, but sadly never found an audience, falling by the wayside in the summer of 1983. Audiences were flocking to see junk like “Flashdance,” “Footloose,” “Top Gun” and “Dirty Dancing” while many great films opened and closed without causing a ripple.

    I went back through the 1980s recently and re-visited 15 films that deserved attention when they were released, deserved Academy Award nominations (or more than they got), and certainly should have found an audience at the time of their release. Many of them were admired by critics, but I have left out the obvious — “Raging Bull,”  “Blade Runner,” etc. — to include smaller films that need a little love. Here they are, in no particular order…

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  • Lensers set to honor Jack Green’s lifetime achievement

    American Society of CinematographersThis report from Variety kind of got lost in the shuffle this week, but it seems the great Jack Green will be feted by the American Society of Cinematographers this year.  Here’s the story:

    Jack Green will receive the 2009 American Society of Cinematographers Lifetime Achievement award at the 23rd ASC Outstanding Achievement Awards on Feb. 15.

    The awards will be held at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel and past recipients of the award have included Conrad Hall and Gordon Willis.

    In his time as a cinematographer, Green has compiled more than 40 credits and of those credits, has worked on eleven pics with Clint Eastwood as director.

    Very cool.  Green (typically credited Jack N. Green) has done a lot of work with Clint Eastwood, most notably the jazzy cool hues of “Bird” and the gritty sprawl of “Unforgiven.”  But they first began their collaboration way back in 1978 when Green was a camera operator on “Every Which Way But Loose.”

    I’ve always felt Eastwood had a great eye for good cinematographers.  His current collaborator is Tom Stern, criminally underrated and consistently ignored by the Academy for solid work year in and year out.  But it’s good to see that Green, who only has one Oscar nomination (and no wins) to his credit, is getting a boost from his peers.

  • Clint Eastwood — anything he does grabs Oscar’s attention

    Let me begin with something very personal, something I prefer not to do in this column. Movies have not mattered much this past week, as my wife of 18 years, the love of my life was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. This Thursday we journey to Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto to allow the finest surgeons in the country to go in and take the tumor out, with the hope she does not have to have chemotherapy or radiation. There is a chance I could lose her, and that I couldn’t bear. The past few days have been a blur, and yet it is her who urged me back to the computer, with a gentle, “You can’t let the movie writing stop because of this…please…write…” God I love that girl. She is at this moment snoozing behind me as I write this.

    Later this year we will see the release of “Changeling,” the latest from Clint Eastwood who over the last 16 years has become one of the finest directors working in movies. Now seriously, had anyone ever told me in the 70s that one day I would be celebrating the works of Eastwood the director by writing a book about him and his work, I would have laughed in their face at the thought.

    Dirty Harry, the man who acted with apes, becoming a world class director? Yet here we are in 2008 and Eastwood has won two Academy Awards for Best Director, twice been honored by the Directors Guild of America, and won countless critics prizes for his work. Revered by actors, beloved by the studios for whom he works, and respected by his colleagues, he has quietly risen to the very peak of the directing world, sitting alongside Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. His films have the lean feel and look of the best work of John Huston and Howard Hawks to whom story was paramount.

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