OSCARS + OTHER NEWS

OSCAR WINNER?

OSCAR LOSER!

Roger Deakins won the Academy Award as best cinematographer of the year for the film 1917.  But Deakins was a loser when it came to his presenters.  He had to accept his honor from two people who had just made a joke of it.  The is par for the course on what has become “The Oscar Show.”  But cinematography IS movies.  It is what creates what we see.  This award is one of the most significant of all and so much more important than that for best song that the matter does not bear discussion  Mr. Deakins deserved better than Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

Everyone I know is sick and tired of the scripted inanities that ridicule the award we are then expected to take seriously.  I wish Deakins had refused the honor or had at least commented on the mode of presentation.  I am still waiting for someone to have sufficient anatomical appendages  to do that.

Why is it that the best presenters, the ones with poise and presence  —  Mirren, Cruise, Kidman, Scott Thomas, Witherspoon  —  never have these embarrassing scripted moments?  Have they refused to participate?

This past Christmas I was given a beautiful calendar of OLD HOLLYWOOD.  Each month has a splendid black and white photograph from Hollywood’s splendid past.  The February picture is of the Pantages Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, the site for years of the Oscar event.  The marquee reads “ACADEMY AWARDS PRESENTATION.”  Note, it does not say “Show.”  It never used to be a show, you know.

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On January 20 last, the New York Times reported the death of Lorenza Mazzetti.  In describing this Jane-of-all-trades, the first sentence of the first paragraph of a half-page six-column obituary mentions that she helped “create an influential British film movement.”

She and three friends, one night, wrote a manifesto dedicating themselves to making innovative films.  They wrote the manifesto at a table in a London bar where Mazzetti was working as barmaid.   The three friends?  Tony Richardson, Karel Reisz and Lindsay Anderson.

Karel Reisz wrote “The Technique of Film Editing” and directed SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING

The rest, as they say, is history.

Lorenza Mazzetti, who survived the genocidal Nazi retreat from Italy during World War ll, was 92.

(Shelley Boettcher, “Lorena Mazzetti, 92, Wartime Survivor Who Became Filmmaker and Writer.”  New York Times 1/20/20.)

 

 

NEXT FRIDAY POST March 13

Until then,
ENJOY A MOVIE!
Rick

MODERNIST ROY AT IT AGAIN — and ANOTHER FILM LOSS

Man From Oklahoma
Frank McDonald
1945

Film within a film marks the climax of this 1945 Rogers vehicle in which he and Dale Evans are on opposite sides in a family feud that goes way-back-there.  Each side owns half of a valley now wanted by an unscrupulous businessman who has  —  without telling either side  —  discovered oil there.

BEN-HUR IN THE SOONER STATE:  Man From Oklahoma offers its own brand of chariot race by way of a reenactment of the Oklahoma land rush.  SPOILER ALERT:  Gabby Hayes and Roy are defeated through treachery later revealed through home movies taken of the race.

MOVIE WITHIN A MOVIE:  The release date of Man From Oklahoma makes Roy more post-modern than modern, but Roy here seems to continue commenting on himself and his medium.  Roy Rogers, as a varied career proves, is in his own way MR. SHOW  BUSINESS.

Roy sings “Skies Are Bluer,” and Dale Evans, in a nightclub setting, performs a quiet sizzle of “I’m Beginning to See the Light.”

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The New York Times, the middle of last month, reported the death of Czech film director Ivan Passer.  Passer was assistant director on Milos Forman’s Black Peter and also Loves of a Blonde, the delightful comedy of which he was co-writer.  He wrote Forman’s The Firemen’s Ball” as well.  His directorial debut was Intimate Lightning (1965).

He later directed Law and Disorder, Silver Bears, Cutter’s Way, Creator and Haunted Summer.  (Neil Genzlinger, “Ivan Passer, Noted Czech Director Who Went to Hollywood…”, New York Times, 1/15/20.

NEXT Friday POST February 28

Until then,
Ride ’em Cowboy,
and
See you at the movies,
Rick