The Dark Knight Rises Tragedy

I thought I'd say a few words about this.  I see a lot of movies and have spent many hours in a darkened theater being moved/ thrilled/ happy/ bored by the latest film.  When I saw The Dark Knight Rises I couldn't help but think in its opening minutes about the horror that befell the patrons at Aurora, and yet here I was watching the same movie settling in to enjoy what turned out to be a great epic film.  The experience was tainted as it will be for anyone who has a heart, and for me I felt especially so because the movies seem to be the one place where you can (and should be able to) forget your troubles and its also the place where, frequently, you can marvel at the most positive of our abilities: the creativity of the human race. And now I'll always probably think about how some innocent people lost there lives by going to the movies. People who instead should have been forgetting their troubles and enjoying themselves.

Best of the Year So Far: Mid-Year Top 5 2012

Several years back I realized that I had trouble diferentiating between the movies I liked and the movies I loved from the early part of the year. Roger Ebert has always suggested that this was true of the Academy and why the Oscars have such "short attention span."  He recommended a mid-year ballot to go along with the end-of-the-year ballot combining both to create the nominations list.

For me, I decided a mid-year top 5 usually works.  I wait until July 15, since the first few weeks of January are generally a wash for new releases, and so 7/15 is a little closer to the mid-point (sorry, although it would have been "eligible" I haven't yet seen Spider-Man-- I just can't get excited for a reboot that's premature!).

I have just eight "nominees" for my top 5 this year (the least since 2008)— but three at the top, i.e. "must see" (Moonrise Kingdom, Prometheus, and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World).  This year's nominees (films I'd seen by 7/15 that made my "must see" and "recommended" categories) include: The Avengers, The Grey, Haywire, Snow White and the Huntsman, The Hunger Games, Moonrise Kingdom, Prometheus, and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.

My top 5 2012 so far (listed alphabetically)

The Grey

Haywire

Moonrise Kingdom

Prometheus

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Paramount's 100th

Yes, in addition to Universal's 100th, it's also Paramount Pictures' 100th. If you go to Vanity Fair's site, you can zoom in on the people in this photo, and they are identified. I've been hearing about this photo for a while, nice to finally see it. Of course most of the "comments" are negative ones, because people just HAVE to be jerks. I think it was nicely done myself, and I especially enjoyed the nostalgic pairings, like John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John and Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw.

At the bottom of this article is a video showing the gathering.

Four Surviving Cast Members (Speaking Parts) Remain from "Gone With the Wind"

With the passing of Ann Rutherford at the age of 94, just four cast members with speaking parts are left from the all-time classic Hollywood epic Gone With the Wind (according to all available sources online).   As "Carreen O'Hara" she played the youngest sister of Scarlett, and is first seen at 14 minutes into the film. Here's her Associated Press obit.





The surviving actors are as follows:

Alicia Rhett (b. 2/1/15) as "India Wilkes."  She is the young daughter from the Twelve Oaks Plantation.  She can be seen at 18 minutes into the film (using the 4-disc Collector's Edition DVD version of the movie as a guide).



Olivia de Havilland (b. 7/1/16) as "Melanie Hamilton."  De Havilland was fourth billed and received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for Gone With the Wind.   She's first seen at 19 minutes into the film.



Mary Anderson (b. 4/30/20) as "Maybelle Merriwether." She is the first girl "auctioned" at the Atlanta bazaar (where Scarlett dances with Rhett). She can be seen at 43 minutes into the film.



Mickey Kuhn (b. 9/21/32) as "Beau Wilkes."  Playing Ashley and Melanie's son, he appears toward the very end of the film (216 minutes into the approximately 223 minute film [1 hour 48 min into DVD 2])


Among the non-speaking parts is cast member Patrick Curtis who appeared at a screening of GWTW at the Motion Picture Academy— he played Beau Wilkes as a baby (and was therefore born c. 1938-39). I was also informed by a poster in the comments of my last blog entry [thanks, Julia] that Greg Giese, who was born in 1939 and played infant Bonnie and infant Beau, is still alive.

Universal's 100th Anniversary

Universal Studios is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, and it's hardly a secret.  Here's one of their early films, By the Sun's Rays (1914) [from the Internet Archive], Lon Chaney Sr.'s earliest surviving film; a western short with Chaney as the villain, it runs 11 minutes.

Summer Movie Preview 2012

Entertainment Weekly's Summer Movie Preview is on the shelves, and as always, I can't wait for the summer movies to begin. This year seems to have some particularly strong offerings.

Here are the twenty movies I'm most excited to see (early summer heavy, it seems). The two most anticipated movies for me are probably Prometheus and The Campaign.





May 4: The Avengers
May 11: Dark Shadows
May 16: The Dictator (maybe)
May 18: Battleship
May 25: Moonrise Kingdom
May 25: Men in Black 3

June 1: Snow White and the Huntsman
June 8: Prometheus
June 22: To Rome With Love
June 22: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (maybe)
June 22: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World
June 29: Take This Waltz (maybe)

July 3: The Amazing Spider-Man
July 6: Savages (maybe)
July 20: The Dark Knight Rises

Aug 3: The Bourne Legacy
Aug 3: Total Recall (maybe; no Mars!)
August 10: Hope Springs
August 10: The Campaign
August 17: The Expendables 2 (maybe)

84th Annual Academy Awards: A Review

Billy was back, and he nailed it! In his opening montage (which I was actually dreading, fearing, “old hat”) he was very funny, as were the cameos: To George Clooney: “Say ‘I’m Batman’”/ Justin Bieber (“Good luck, Bob”), Sammy Davis Jr./ The Help gag: “It’s your duty isn’t it?”/ Billy as Tintin. Crystal’s perennial Best Picture nominee medley was terrific too, especially the Hugo bit “…shoot Ben Kingsley in bed, ‘cause you’re Marty!” and even the Tree of Life digs, sung to Alfie: “What’s it all about Malick?…. I heard it even freaked out God.”

Of Crystal’s countless gags that hit the mark:

- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: That’s how my relatives are watching the show.

- We’re here at the beautiful Chapter 11 Theater.

- The movies have always been there for us. They’re the place to go to laugh, to cry, to question, to text.

- Nothing can take the sting out of the world’s economic problems like watching millionaires present each other with gold statues.

- The Academy bought a pair of ruby slippers, that Tom Sherak is wearing tonight.

- Harry Potter’s movies made $7.7 billion and yet they only paid 14% income tax, which is interesting.

Only a couple missteps for Billy, like that semi-racist Beverly Hills gag and his Christopher Plummer age stuff, as well as his off-the-mark this time “what are they thinking” bit.

The best comedy bit was with Melissa McCarthy backstage with Billy— started rocky, but had a great pay-off. Additionally, I loved after the big splashy Oscar score thing Billy went, “eh”.

So many really good presenters too this year: Chris Rock— side-splittingly funny, on doing animated films (It’s getting dark outside”); Cymbals bit with Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis; Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz doing that strange butts to camera over-the-shoulder thing actually was refreshingly silly, since they were so stiff up until then, saving them in the end (no pun intended); Ben Stiller and Emma Stone— at last Ben owns up to his usual over-the-top presenting and Emma was fun!

A few “not great” presenters: The Robert Downey Jr. documentary bit wasn’t at all funny and was endless; the Muppets kind of flopped; Bridesmaids humor was pretty lame.

Most stunning looking: Penelope Cruz (again) and Berenice Bejo.

The clip packages were not great.  Especially poor were the celebs talking about “the movies”—they seriously needed to be scripted because people just talking never works [what was Brad Pitt saying about gargantuas?]—Billy was hilarious when he deadpanned after one of them “I’ve never had any of those feelings.”  “The Wizard of Oz” bit with the Christopher Guest regulars was OK amusing.

The Cirque du Soleil act was pretty entertaining (only one slight slip up by one performer).  They should do it every year.  It broke things up, and is better than performing Best Songs—which they left out this year.

Oscar trivia appeared mid-show: 9 SNL cast members who are Oscar nominees (only a few were revealed), sent us scratching our heads at my Oscar party. They are: Dan Aykroyd, George Coe (obscure early cast member; short film nominee), Joan Cusack, Robert Downey Jr., Michael McKean (song), Eddie Murphy, Bill Murray, Randy Quaid, Kristen Wiig.

Odds and ends: I wish they’d go back to the Best Supporting Actress Award as the first given, starting on a “technical” award is always a bore; the band in the balcony was a strange shot to see over and over (the music was good, just the shot was weird); I’m so glad they continued the reading of the name of the movie when announcing winners for the technical categories before the names of the winners, so viewers at home could score their ballots; Descendents co-writer (TV’s Community co-star) Jim Rash mimicking Angelina Jolie’s stance was hilarious and Alexander Payne’s thing about his mother was good too; not just your TV award: the audio was strange at times (weird piercing/beeping sound as people spoke).

La Streep triumphs! Oscar records scorecard time: Meryl Streep is now only one of five actors who have won 3 Oscars (the others: Walter Brennan, Katharine Hepburn [won 4], Ingrid Bergman, and Jack Nicholson).

To sum it up: Billy, we’ve missed you! Another good one, Billy on Academy President Tom Sherak’s speech: “Thank you Tom, and thank you for whipping the crowd into a frenzy”—haha! Billy, please come back next year.