Perhaps Worst Oscar Campaign Takedown Ever

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Today is technically the tenth anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden, as the infamous al-Qaeda mass murderer breathed his last at 1 am Abbottobad time on 5.2.11. The choppers bearing the Navy Seals took off a couple of hours earlier in Afghanistan. President Obama announced the killing on 5.10 from Washington, D.C., which is twelve hours behind Abbottabad.

This is as good a reason as any to re-submit to Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal‘s Zero Dark Thirty (’12), one of the finest films of this century and probably the greatest military-intel drama ever made.

For the sin of honestly telling the story of how Bin laden’s hideout was discovered (omitting CIA-sanctioned torture of suspected Al-Qaeda and bin Laden confidantes would have been a lie) Bigelow’s film was savaged by a cabal of Academy lefties (including many in the press), and so it lost the Best Picture Oscar to Ben Affleck‘s Argo, which, due respect, was a far less accomplished film and full of inventions and falsehoods.

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“Bullshit Factory Known As Fox News”

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Today (5.2) CNN’s Jim Acosta didn’t lament the well-ingrained tendency at Fox News to report b.s. — rumor, heresay, invention, flat-out lies. For the first time in my recollection he called it “bullshit“, and not once but twice (between 1:45 and 2:02).

Maybe other mainstream news anchors have been using agreeably frank language from time to time and I haven’t been paying attention. If so, when did occasionally salty terminology first break the ice on a major-market outlet?

The first time I heard a well-known news anchor say “bullshit” was in a fictional context — Peter Finch‘s Howard Beale in Network, roughly 45 years ago.

“Strangelove” Pie-Fight Recall

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4 pm update: Before anything else, consider information supplied this morning by Lee Hill, a British-residing HE reader and Terry Southern biographer who stated that the Dr. Strangelove pie-fight sequence exists on film and is currently being stored in British Film Institute archives.

Earlier: This morning I stumbled upon a fascinating article by Dr. Strangelove co-writer Terry Southern. Titled “Notes From The War Room“, it contains several inside-baseball stories about the making of Stanley Kubrick‘s 1964 classic comedy, and particularly a blow-by-blow description of the pie-fight scene:

“[Then] we began shooting the famous eleven-minute ‘lost pie fight,’ which was to come near the end of the movie. This footage began at a point in the War Room where the Russian ambassador is seen, for the second time, surreptitiously taking photographs of the Big Board, using six or seven tiny spy-cameras disguised as a wristwatch, a diamond ring, a cigarette lighter and cufflinks.

“The head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) catches him in flagrante and, as before, tackles him and throws him to the floor. They fight furiously until President Merkin Muffley intervenes: “This is the War Room, gentlemen! How dare you fight in here!”

“General Turgidson is unfazed. ‘We’ve got the Commie rat redhanded this time, Mr. President!’

“The detachment of four military police, which earlier escorted the ambassador to the War Room, stands by as General Turgidson continues: ‘Mr. President, my experience in these matters of espionage has caused me to be more skeptical than your average Joe. I think these cameras” — he indicates the array of ingenious devices — “may be dummy cameras, just to put us off. I say he’s got the real McCoy concealed on his person. I would like to have your permission, Mr. President, to have him fully searched.’

“‘All right,’ the President says, ‘permission granted.’

“General Turgidson addresses the military police: ‘Okay boys, you heard the President. I want you to search the ambassador thoroughly. And due to the tininess of his equipment, do not overlook any of the seven bodily orifices.’ The camera focuses on the face of the ambassador as he listens and mentally calculates the orifices with an expression of great annoyance.

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To-Die-From Parenting

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A few years ago I ran a list of the five worst cinematic parents of all time: John Huston‘s Noah Cross from Chinatown, Daniel Day Lewis‘s Daniel Plainview from There Will Be Blood, Chris Walken’s Brad Whitewood from At Close Range, Faye Dunaway‘s Joan Crawford in Mommmie Dearest and Marion Lorne‘s Mrs. Antony (mother of Robert Walker‘s Bruno) in Alfred Hitchcock‘s Strangers on a Train.

And then a real motherfucker of a dad I hadn’t thought of in a long time popped into my head: Karl Malden‘s oppressively demanding John Piersall, the father of Tony Perkins‘ Jim Piersall, in Robert Mulligan‘s Fear Strikes Out (’57).

I decided to stream an HD version the other night on Amazon, in part because I wanted to savor the detail of a black-and-white film shot in VistaVision. It looked pretty great, but God, Malden played such a fiend I couldn’t believe it. His son’s glories and accomplishments were never enough. The film throws a semi-happy gloss on their relationship at the end, but Malden is the kind of papa you need to keep at a certain distance until he’s dead.

But you know what? The Malden-Perkins relationship is almost exactly the kind of thing I have going on with the little man in my chest who’s never fully satisfied with anything good that I do. He’s always saying “okay, that’s pretty good but don’t get smug and coast on your laurels. You could probably do a little better than you’ve done so far, as you know. Because while you have talent and drive, you could use a bit more of each. And what about tomorrow’s agenda? And don’t forget to buy groceries and call the cleaning lady,” etc.

Please post your favorite dads and moms. The deceased Mrs. Bates in Psycho. Angela Lansbury in The Manchurian Candidate and All Fall Down, for sure. Harrison Ford in The Mosquito Coast. Who else?

“Mosquito Coast” For Morons?

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The latest trailer for Apple TV’s The Mosquito Coast says it all — it’s obviously been made for ADD idiots who need a lot of noisy gunfire and threats of violence and death to stay interested.

A non-adaptation of Paul Theroux’s 1981 novel about a cranky, hyper genius who despises modern life, the seven-part series premiered last night, although I couldn’t be bothered to watch.

L.A. Times critic Robert Lloyd says “it’s as if someone decided The Catcher in the Rye might be improved by some chase scenes, a gun battle and a jailbreak, and that Holden Caulfield would be a more compelling character if he knew how to use a Coke can to get out of handcuffs.”

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“Oh, God, That’s Too Bad”

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Respect and regrets for the late Olympia Dukakis, the veteran actress whose career peaked with an Oscar win for her performance in Moonstruck (’87). She’s passed at age 89. Her career rumbled along in mid-gear until Moonstruck came along, when she was 56. Her other big role was in Steel Magnolias, which I can’t speak of directly as I’ve never seen it. But we all love Moonstruck! Hugs and condolences for Olympia’s family, friends, fans.

I never knew Olympia played supporting roles in Brian DePalma‘s Sisters (’73) and Michael Winner‘s Death Wish (’74). Now I do.

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Hamlet vs. Macbeth

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Don’t forget that Joel Coen‘s The Tragedy of Macbeth (A24), a black-and-white adaptation of William Shakespeare‘s classic tragedy with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand in the lead roles, won’t be the only Bard-related melodrama about ambitious bloodletting to open this year.

Robert Eggers The Northman (Focus Features), based upon the Scandinavian legend of Amleth which inspired Shakespeare‘s Hamlet, will also surface. The costars include Alexander Skarsgård, Nicole Kidman, Anya Taylor Joy, Ethan Hawke, Claes Bang, Willem Dafoe and Bjork.

Neither have official release dates, but it’s probably safe to say they’ll open sometime in the fall or holiday periods, and probably within a few weeks of each other.

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Most Enduring Films of 1979

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Six years ago I posted a piece about the great and very good films of 1971 (“They Won’t Forget”). Before assembling it I’d never quite thought of ’71 as one of the truly legendary years in American cinema, but now I do — it was arguably as rich and bountiful as 1939, 1962 and 1999 were.

Now it’s time to add 1979 to the list of standout years. At least 27 films released that year were seriously top-tier, compared to the same number in ’71. The mythical ’70s, in short, were still going great guns in the decade’s final year.

Herewith are the top 27 along with (b) 21 that were fully admired and respected in their time and still are today but have perhaps lost a bit of steam here and there, plus (c) eight that I wouldn’t call stinkers but are certainly among the least enduring (most bothersome, hardest to-rewatch, most listless or underwhelming). And in these orders:

Top Ten:

Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now
Hal Ashby’s Being There
Woody Allen’s Manhattan
Ridley Scott’s Alien
Peter Yates’ Breaking Away
Franc Roddam’s Quadrophenia
Paul Schrader’s Hardcore
James Bridges’ The China Syndrome
Robert Benton’s Kramer vs. Kramer
Carroll Blanchard’s The Black Stallion

11 to 27 (17):

Don Siegel’s Escape from Alcatraz
Lewis John Carlino’s The Great Santini
Stephen Frears’ Bloody Kids
George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead
Arthur Hiller’s The In-Laws
George Miller’s Mad Max
Martin Brest’s Going in Style
Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz
Gillian Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career
Ted Kotcheff’s North Dallas Forty
Martin Ritt’s Norma Rae
Terry Jones’ Monty Python’s Life of Brian
Albert Brooks’ Real Life
Richard Pryor: Live in Concert
Alan J. Pakula’s Starting Over
Alan Clarke‘s Scum
Jerry Schatzberg‘s The Seduction of Joe Tynan

Foreign Language Picks (5)

Andrei Konchalovsky‘s Siberiade
Shohei Imamura‘s Vengeance Is Mine
Volker Schlöndorff‘s The Tin Drum
Rainer Werner Fassbinder‘s The Marriage of Maria Braun
Andrei Tarkovsky‘s Stalker

Respectable Second Tier, Pretty Good, Holding On, Fading A Bit (21):

Peter Bodganovich’s Saint Jack
Harold Becker’s The Onion Field
Blake Edwards 10
Richard Lester’s Cuba
Nicholas Meyer’s Time After Time
Walter Hill‘s The Warriors
Douglas Hickox’s Zulu Dawn
Fred Walton’s When a Stranger Calls
Sydney Pollack’s The Electric Horseman
John Badham’s Dracula
Ivan Reitman’s Meatballs
Robert Aldrich’s The Frisco Kid
Milos Forman’s Hair
Robert Wise’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture
Carl Reiner’s The Jerk
William Richert’s Winter Kills
John Huston’s Wise Blood
Jonathan Demme’s Last Embrace
George Roy Hill A Little Romance
Peter Weir’s The Plumber
John Schlesinger’s Yanks

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“Easter Bunny Cartoon Cash”

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Over the last decade I’ve ignored anything whatsoever to do with Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency — instant toilet-flush of definitions, explanations, graphs, charts, market analyses. Sorry but I feel good about this. Like Bill Maher and many others I too believe…okay, sense that there’s nothing actually “there”, that it’s all hat and no cattle.

Maher: “I’ve read articles about cryptocurrency, [and] I’ve had it explained to me and I still don’t get it. And neither do you or anyone else.

“In 2008 an anonymous person or persons made up Bitcoin out of thin air by using the fake name ‘Satoshi Nakamoto“, which I think are the Japanese words for monopoly money.”

Hilarious Bird Beaks

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I’ll never forget the first time that my sons (Jett, Dylan) and I watched Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds together, and more particularly their reaction to the “homicidal crows attack the fleeing schoolchildren” scene. They were somewhere around 8 or 9 years old, as I recall, and basically found it hilarious. The more the schoolkids cried and screamed and fell to the ground and bloodied their knees, the more J & D laughed. A better word is “cackled.”

This happened, I immediately presumed, because the boys found the absurdly mannered and constricted behavior of the kids ridiculous. (Hitchcock was always terrible with children). They especially couldn’t stand the stilted, formal-sounding dialogue that poor Veronica Cartwright was obliged to say. And who, by the way, who doesn’t loathe that awful, perfectly phrased song the kids were singing inside Suzanne Pleshette‘s schoolhouse just before the attack?

Excerpt from Camille Paglia’s book-length essay about The Birds (BFI Film Classics): “It’s another race, this time foot versus wing. Like Furies, the crows harass the children from behind, nipping their necks and cheeks, as we seem to slide helplessly backward downhill, with the mob about to trample us. There’s a tremendous noise of mingled screams and raucous bird cries.

“After the first flash of real horror, I generally settle down to laughing and applauding the crows, whom I regard as Coleridgean emissaries vandalizing sentimental Wordsworthian notions of childhood. It’s like my idol Keith Richards cuffing about Pollyanna and Beaver Cleaver. There’s an exuberant, Saturnalian, Mad magazine zaniness to the whole grisly business.“

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Scott’s “Strangelove” Story

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Certain George C. Scott recollections about the never-seen Dr. Strangelove pie-fight sequence were recently posted on Facebook by director-writer Patrick Reade Johnson. Johnson directed Scott in Angus (’95), and presumably got the following from him during shooting.

I’d never read Scott’s story until this morning, and I have to say two things. One, I don’t believe that Strangelove director Stanley Kubrick would have behaved in the petty, wimpy, small-minded way that Scott describes. And two, I’ve found a photo of Kubrick directing Scott during the pie-fight sequence so take the following with a grain:

Johnson: “Scott told me a couple great stories from the Strangelove shoot. One contradicted a popular myth about the film — that the removal of the pie-fight scene was due to concerns over a line in which Scott’s General Buck Turgidson (or someone else in the scene) said, ‘Gentlemen, our beloved president has been struck down in the prime of his life!’ It was deemed insensitive in the wake of JFK’s assassination.


Obviously the rear angle means we can’t be 100% certain this is a shadowed Stanley Kubrick directing the pie-fight sequence, but it sure looks like him.

“Another theory holds that Kubrick just felt the scene didn’t work.

“’Bullshit!’, roared George, when asked about it. ‘The scene was terrific! Which is WHY Stanley CUT it!” George’s eyes narrowed, a big, toothy grin spreading across his face… “Because the sonofabitch didn’t DIRECT it! THE FIRST A.D. DIRECTED IT!”

“I asked George why Stanley would entrust his first A.D. (possibly Eric Rattray) with directing a high comedy scene, featuring most of his leading cast. And why the venerable actors would even agree to that arrangement.

Scott: “We DIDN’T agree to it! But on the day when we all showed up to shoot the fucking scene, including the guy with 500 goddamn pies, Stanley was nowhere to be found! We sat around on our asses for an hour or so, until the 1st A.D. walked in and said Stanley had a terrible cold…ALL OF A SUDDEN…and that he wouldn’t be able to work today.

“But then he added that Stanley had also said that if we didn’t forge on without him, the scene, which everyone LOVED, would NEVER get DONE!”.

Johnson: “So, you just went ahead and…“
Scott: “And SHOT a goddamn SCENE for a fucking STANLEY GODDAMN KUBRICK FILM that was NOT DIRECTED BY STANLEY GODDAMN KUBRICK! Which is WHY the fucking scene never made into the fucking MOVIE!”

Johnson: “But what about JFK and being sensi—“

Scott: “OH, what a load of CRAP! Stanley couldn’t have cared less about that! If ANYTHING, he PROBABLY HATED not having something so GODDAMN IRREVERENT in his FILM! He just didn’t hate it as much as he hated his First A.D.’s goddamn DIRECTING!”

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Changed My Mind

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For what it’s worth episode #2 (“Fathers”) of Mare of Easttown felt more engaging. I felt myself giving into the limited series, the mucky rural Pennsylvania milieu aside. I forgot that I’m not much of a Winslet fan. Her character’s limp stopped bothering me. I got used to the town and the natives, and now I’m looking forward to episode #3 (“Enter Number Two”). I’m down for the entire run.

HE to Guy Pearce’s Richard Ryan character: If you invite a woman whom you’re involved with to a book-signing event, you immediately engage when she enters the book store. Offer greetings, take her coat, get her a drink, thank her for coming and invite her to take part in the discussion that was underway when she arrived. You never just wave and go right back to talking to fans who want you to sign their book copy, and then come over to her 10 or 15 minutes later.