Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Adapted Screenplay 1981

The Contenders:

The French Lieutenant’s Woman
On Golden Pond (winner)
Pennies from Heaven
Prince of the City
Ragtime

The (Very) Slow Passage of Time

Films: A Ghost Story
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on The New Portable.

Sometimes, this hobby is a frustrating one. I don’t expect to love every movie that I watch, but I’m not always game for a film that is going to more or less be work. A Ghost Story, for much of its 92-minute running time, is work. This is one of those films where nothing happens for a very long time. Sometimes, like with the films of Robert Bresson, that can work for me. Other times, that becomes not unlike sitting through Jeanne Dielmann and I want to pull my own head off. Oddly, A Ghost Story is both.

This is not a plot-heavy film. A musician (Casey Affleck) and his wife (Rooney Mara) live in a house, evidently in or around Dallas. She wants to leave and he doesn’t. One night, something makes a noise on the piano, but they can’t find a cause. Soon after, he is killed in a car accident. His wife identifies the body. When everyone has left, he sits up, still covered in the sheet. That sheet is going to be important, because our spirit is going to spend the rest of the film wearing it much like the old-school depiction of a ghost, a sheet with eye holes cut into it.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1938

The Contenders:

Bette Davis: Jezebel (winner)
Norma Shearer: Marie Antoinette
Wendy Hiller: Pygmalion
Margaret Sullavan: Three Comrades
Fay Bainter: White Banners

Urban Haute Bourgeoisie

Films: Metropolitan
Format: DVD from Mokena Public Library through interlibrary loan on The New Portable.

In the end of the blogging swimming pool where I swim, the nicest guy around is Dan Heaton. Dan named his blog, Public Transportation Snob, after a line from Metropolitan. The more I think about this, the more I am fascinated by it. Dan is a genuinely good guy and seems like the complete opposite of the smug, entitled douchebags that populate the world of this film. Clearly, Dan is a fan of this film. It seems incongruous; he’s too nice to like these people.

If you think that’s a hint as to where this review might be going, you’d be right. Metropolitan is more or less a series of conversations among a collection of pseudo-intellectual, filthy rich college students home for Christmas. More specifically, these conversations happen at a series of debutante parties and after parties in New York. Even more specifically, this is about the experience of Tom Townsend (Edward Clements) falling in with this wealthy, preppy crowd.

Wednesday Horror: Private Parts (1972)

Films: Private Parts (1972)
Format: DVD from NetFlix on The New Portable.

For what it’s worth, not all of these reviews write that easily. Some of them are a real pain in the ass. Private Parts, the weird horror/comedy film from 1972, not the Howard Stern biopic, is of the latter type. I’m honestly not even sure where to begin with this one. I mean, I understand the idea behind it and where it was intended to go, but this is a weird mishmash of things combined to make something really ugly.

Let’s start with the basics. Cheryl Stratton (Ayn Ruymen) is a teenage/early-20s runaway who fled Ohio for California with her friend Judy (Ann Gibbs). The two fight when Judy catches Cheryl watching her have sex, and Cheryl runs again, this time to a Skid Row hotel called the King Edward that happens to be run by her Aunt Martha (Lucille Benson). And, because this is the sort of movie it is, everyone who lives at the King Edward is weird, disturbing, creepy, or awful. This includes a gay priest, a drunk, and most especially photographer George (John Ventantonio), Aunt Martha’s son.

The Show Must Go on (and on)

Films: Funny Girl
Format: DVD from NetFlix on The New Portable.

I’m going to be upfront here; Funny Girl is the sort of movie that really isn’t made for me at all. I certainly recognize that Barbra Streisand is a real talent, the sort of performer who, like Judy Garland, can do just about anything and make it work. I just don’t love her. I recognize the talent without being a huge fan of the talent. That puts me in a weird position with a movie like Funny Girl that is very much about Streisand being front and center and on screen for virtually the entire running time that isn’t overture, entr’acte, or closing credits.

Funny Girl is the story of Fanny Brice (Streisand), once and future Ziegfeld Follies girl and a portion of her life. The film doesn’t include her first, short marriage and doesn’t include her third marriage, either. It focuses instead on the bulk of her Ziegfeld career and her marriage to gambler “Nick” Arnstein (Omar Sharif).

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1992

The Contenders:

Robert Downey Jr.: Chaplin
Stephen Rea: The Crying Game
Denzel Washington: Malcolm X
Al Pacino: Scent of a Woman (winner)
Clint Eastwood: Unforgiven