In Contention

Tag: JFK

  • THE LISTS: Top 10 Oscar nominee fields

    Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's ListIn exactly one week’s time, we’ll have a brand new list of Oscar nominations to pore over, pick apart and eventually file away in our subconscious with the other 81 editions of this annual collective. For Oscar geeks, nomination day is in many ways more exciting than the ceremony itself, celebrating a broader spectrum of work and throwing up far more surprises along the way.

    For all that, once the winners are announced, the nomination list as a whole tends to be disregarded, returned to only by trivia buffs and the geekiest of Oscar geeks. (Guilty on both counts.) And that’s shame, because a field of five nominees can often be more illuminating viewed collectively than even the worthiest of individual champions.

    Today’s list, then, is devoted to that most elusive of Oscar holy grails: the perfect nominee field.

    Yes, more often than not, the Academy will nominate several notable achievements in a single category. But rarer than hen’s teeth are the robust Oscar categories that feature a full house of five outstanding nominees, five contenders that would all be worthy of a win in any other year. No unremarkable coaster nominees sliding in on the coattails of a popular picture. No bad films with an expensively studio-bought  nominations. No filler. No fat. Just five superb achievements.

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  • ‘Silence’ smack-down

    (from left) Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster in The Silence of the LambsI stumbled onto Noah Forrest’s ribbing of Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of the Lambs” over at Movie City News today toward the end of this piece, and frankly, I found little I could argue with.

    Here’s the key graph:

    I think seeing Bill Hader’s brilliant impression of Jame Gumb on a recent SNL made me question a lot of things about The Silence of the Lambs. First off, Jodie Foster is plain old not good in that film. Her accent is awful and she over-emotes constantly. Secondly, Ted Levine’s performance as Jame Gumb has turned out to be the most memorable thing about that film (“Is she a great big fat person?”). Thirdly, that film is really not that great and it pains me to say that because I always held it in high esteem. In fact, it plays better as an unintentional comedy than as a thriller.

    Ever since the film was released back in February of 1991, I’ve found myself scratching my head at its somewhat over-elevated status as a modern classic.  I fully agree with Forrest’s assessment of Jodie Foster’s Oscar-winning performance, for starters, and beyond the sheer thrill-factor of the film (it can’t be said that it’s not a solid genre entry), I never…ever…understood the awards train it dominated in the fall of that year.

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  • Kevin Bacon makes the rounds

    Kevin Bacon in Frost/NixonAs “Frost/Nixon” continues to pop up as a formidable guild contender this awards season, I must say, despite my personal appreciation for the effective drama, I’m a little surprised.  It isn’t the expert craftsmanship of “Slumdog Millionaire” or the creative explosion of “Synecdoche, New York,” obviously, but it is a solid, well-constructed piece of work nonetheless.  And it is apparently reaping the benefits of being one of the few films of the year that is simply easy to watch.

    Well, one of the elements from the film that stood out to me more than any other was Kevin Bacon’s subdued performance as Nixon chief-of-staff Col. Jack Brennan.  Bacon is probably the ultimate “Wall of Shame” actor for the Academy, still waiting on his first nomination despite two decades of solid, effective work.  In a sense, his career is an interesting mirror of the film he stars in this year, a fine-tuned machine that isn’t overly miraculous but is inarguable all the same.

    Bacon remains one of my all time favorite interviews.  Probably my favorite interview.  We spoke once nearly five years ago when he was campaigning for “The Woodsman,” a 2004 drama starring Bacon as a pedophile trying to cope in society that should have earned the actor more kudos than it did.  What was supposed to be a 20-minute discourse turned into nearly an hour of discussion, and for me, just a kid in college hammering out a piece for another outlet, it was the bee’s knees.  He couldn’t have been cooler or nicer, offering plenty of advice for a film school grad hoping to poke his way into the business some day.

    With that in mind, I was happy to stumble upon this Daily Telegraph interview with the actor, who hasn’t received a lot of press for his work in “Frost” this year.  Less an example of good writing from journo Nigel Farndale than a case study in letting the subject tell the story, it does a wonderful job of casting the Hollywood particulars to the periphery in favor of concentrating on Bacon the man more than Bacon the actor.

    There are plenty insightful asides regarding Bacon’s family life, his philosophy of raising children, his insistence on living away from the fray in New york, etc.  Farmdale scatters the piece with this nugget or that regarding roles in “Footloose,” “JFK,” “Mystic River” and “A Few Good Men,” but mostly, its a character study of Bacon himself.  There was, however, this interesting remark concerning his adeptness at portraying military types on the screen that I thought I’d spotlight:

    “I don’t think I could cut it in the army but, hey, it was never going to arise. I’m an actor. I play marines. I’ve had them say ‘you could do it’ and I say ‘trust me, I could not’. I don’t think I have the marine mentality.”

    He gesticulates with his fork, conducting the conversation with it. ”But I don’t question my manliness. That’s not something I struggle with. One of the fun things about being an actor is that you can put yourself in situations where you test yourself.”

    As we all do if given the chance, Farndale asks about the infamous “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” a game I should have to explain to anyone reading these words, but in case I do, click here.  Bacon’s response was inspired, I thought:

    Take me out of it and the idea of connectivity is kind of beautiful. A powerful, small world idea that says that whatever you or I are doing will affect other people down the road, for good or ill.

    It’s a great interview.  Check out the rest here.

  • Oliver Stone on Bill Maher

    Boy, Oliver Stone is a terrible television interview.  Don’t get me wrong, I could listen to him wax on all day long.  He’s usually at his best when he taps into that weird, oblivious monologue (listen to the director’s commentary of “JFK” for thorough evidence of this).  But anyway, it’s nice to see him out there peddling “W.” at the right places, namely, “Real Time with Bill Maher.”  The best bit is when he says Bush “probably would have died” if he went to Vietnam.

    Check it out:

  • Stone’s ‘W’ could be his ticket back to Oscar

    I like the films of Oliver Stone, though I am acutely aware he tends to pound us over the head to get his message across, is known to bully his actors and audiences, and from time to time has bent history to suit himself and the film he is making.

    That said, it cannot be denied Stone creates powerful, visceral films, beginning with the vastly under appreciated “Salvador” back in 1986 that was somewhat overshadowed by his Vietnam drama “Platoon” which won the Oscar for best film and director making Stone a household name. Aside from being the most realistic film about the war in Vietnam, “Platoon” obliterated those terrible comic book style films like “Rambo: First Blood Part II” and “Missing in Action” in which the war had been reduced to a comic book and a single American could go back and win it!!

    Three years later he won his second Academy Award and Directors Guild Award for “Born on the Fourth of July” a film he had wanted to make for years, at one point in the 70s with Al Pacino as Ron Kovic. Both Vietnam films were powerful and deeply moving, populated with strong performances that drew the viewer into the story. In between those pictures he made “Wall Street,” now horribly dated, and “Talk Radio,” an underrated little film based on the hit play.

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