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In This Dispatch:
- What's New: Ponyo, Beaches of Agnes, and oodles more.
- What We're Watching: Make Way for Tomorrow, $9.99, and The Hurt Locker (pre-Oscars review).
- Explore: The September Issue.
- Special Promo: TCM's 31 Days of Oscar.
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Master animator Hayao Miyazaki reworks " The Little Mermaid" in his own absolutely unique way in this charmer, which is his "most kid-accessible movies," writes Peter Hartlaub, "but still an unnerving film." The film, adds Michael Sragow, "never ceases to be a genuine odyssey in short pants. It's fundamentally about childhood curiosity and courage... Everything in Ponyo is simultaneously supernatural and sensible." |
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Truly lovely film from/by/about Agnes Varda who explores her evolution as an artist. "A captivating cine-memoir," writes Carrie Rickey, "impressionistic and surrealistic, surveying Varda's formidable career as a still photographer, filmmaker, documentarian, and life force." Adds Manhola Dargis: "The images are as delightful, unexpected and playfully uninhibited as Ms. Varda, perhaps the only filmmaker who has both won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and strolled around an art exhibition while costumed as a potato (not at the same time)." |
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Of all the comedy filmmakers who tried to make the switch to serious stuff, Leo McCarey was perhaps the most graceful. McCarey started out in the silent era as one of the original creative forces behind Laurel & Hardy. In the sound era, he directed the best Marx Brothers movie, Duck Soup, the Charles Laughton comedy classic Ruggles of Red Gap, and an entertaining Harold Lloyd picture. In 1937, he made the screwball comedy classic The Awful Truth and helped make Cary Grant a star. Incredibly, he won an Oscar for Best Director for that film, but when he accepted the statue, he gratefully thanked the Academy and then added: "You gave it to me for the wrong picture." He was talking about Make Way for Tomorrow, which was his first... Read more >> |
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Up to now, I've not been an enormous fan of the animation technique known as claymation. Of course I've loved the Wallace & Gromit stuff, but beyond that, not a whole lot has appealed. Now that I've seen $9.99, the relatively new (2008) animated film from director/co-adapter Tatia Rosenthal and Israeli writer Etgar Keret, all that has changed. This 78-minute, Australian/Israeli co-production seems a perfect fit for the claymation process. With its rough edges and let-the-seams-show animation, the look compliments Keret's characters -- slightly weird, off-kilter, and other-worldly -- to a "t." (The characters' voices belong to some of Australia's finest actors: Geoffrey Rush, Anthony LaPaglia... Read more >> |
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Steve Dollar on Guru: "If Kathryn Bigelow succeeds in winning an Oscar for best director next Sunday, which many pundits (including this one) anticipate, it will strike a revolutionary blow in the Hollywood Gender Wars: The 57-year-old action specialist will become the first woman ever to take home a Miniature Gold Bald Man for a job that's as male-dominated as the U.S. military once was. It's not a complete novelty to have been nominated. Lina Wertmüller ( Seven Beauties) in 1976, Jane Campion ( The Piano) in 1993, and Sofia Coppola ( Lost in Translation) in 2003, managed it. And she's hardly a shoo-in, what with ex-hubby James Cameron (the 27-D, future-of-all-media, aggro-mythic Avatar) and..." Read more >> |
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Aaron Hillis muses on R.J. Cutler's documentary The September Issue: Cutler's luxuriant pop doc takes a fly-on-the-wall peek at how one of the titular editions of Vogue magazine (colloquially known in the fashion industry as "The Bible") is produced, and 2007's Sienna Miller-covered 840-pager was clearly a dishy ish to document. Editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, the Prada-clad devil herself, inexplicably allowed Cutler intimate access to her daily wheeling, dealing and notorious ice-queeny disapproval, yet remains as guarded in plain sight as Bob Dylan was in Don't Look Back. More >> |
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Turner Classic Movies is in the midst of its month-long event featuring 360 Academy Award-nominated and winning movies, all presented uncut and
commercial-free. The month's schedule is designed so that each movie is linked to the next movie in the lineup through a
shared actor or actress. TCM's Robert Osborne, who is also the official biographer of the Academy Awards and the Academy's red carpet greeter, hosts 31 DAYS OF OSCAR, which marks its 16th year on Turner Classic Movies. Schedule here >> |
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Oscar Winners:
Best Picture
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