Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Seventy-Three: Great Danes

After two Shakespearian adaptations failing to win the Oscars in the 1930s, the final winner at a 1940's Oscar Ceremony was indeed based on one of Will's best loved works. And it was by one of the men who would become famous for his Shakespearian leads that being Laurence Olivier who also won as Best Lead Actor and produced and directed the piece. Unlike a lot of the other films I'm not providing a plot synopsis here because most of you should know the story of Hamlet i.e. Danish prince tries to avenge the death of his father by his uncle, who then married his mother, by trying to get him to admit to the crime and then killing him himself. Obviously this being a tragedy the lion's share of the characters die one way or another, Hamlet's love Ophelia goes a bit potty and drowns herself, Hamlet's mum is poisoned and my favourite is Polonious who is stabbed while behind a curtain giving us the message that Peeping Toms never prosper. But adaptations of Shakespeare's plays should always be analysed by how they look visually. To some extent Olivier has done a good job the scene in which Hamlet writes a play basically about his uncle killing his father is done very well, with the space used for the play being particularly apt. The way this whole scene is lit is brilliant and some colour almost creeps into the scene also. The way that Hamlet's father's ghost is portrayed is also done very well with a suit of armour with a blacked out face surrounded by smoke creating a sense of fear. The filmic techniques also allow for some of the dialogue to be changed with Hamlet delivering some of his soliloquies in voice-over. On the whole though I did find the film was overly stagey and Olivier didn't quite utilitise all that was available to him in terms of filmic space. As there was so much oppourtunity to do something special I feel it was squandered and most of the scenes felt like they were simply being acted on the stage. I know its an adaptation but Olivier failed to make edits and almost 2 and a half hours it feels too long.

Another problem I had was in Olivier's lead performance, although there's no denying he's one of the greatest actors of all time, I just feel that he was maybe a little too old for Hamlet and he failed to portray some of his vulnerability instead going for all out thespian-mode. The other nominated member of the cast, Jean Simmons as Ophelia, also didn't do a lot for me and I was rather glad when she drowned herslef. There were some good supporting performances mainly from Basil Sydney as Claudius, Eileen Herlie as Gertrude and Felix Alymer as Polonious. At the end of the day I think the academy wanted to seem a little cultured that year and that's maybe why Olivier's Hamlet won the big one. I'm not saying its a bad film but for me Olivier failed to make a film instead this felt more like a filmed version of a Hamlet performance.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Seventy-Two: Mine all Mine

If I asked which of these films are the least well known - Hitchcock's Suspicion, The Maltese Falcon, Citizen Kane or John Ford's Welsh mining drama How Green Was My Valley. I think most people would say the final film in that list but however that was the film that won at the 1942 ceremony beating those other four films. I would've given it the benefit of the doubt but after watching it I don't think it really deserved the credit it got in terms of its five Oscars. The film deals with the Morgan family as narrated by the youngest son Huw who is recalling his childhood and the various entanglements that his siblings got into. The main theme is old vs new as the stuck-in-ways old school miner father Gwilym refuses to go on strike his sons, who are fed up of being paid pittance, so the majority of them move out. We are also told the story of Huw's sister who falls for the local preacher who shows kidness to her younger brother, but as he is a man of God and because of the scandal it would cause she marries and older man. However the rumors of a relationship between the two, started by her new husband's housekeeper, sees the sister disgraced and the preacher move away. As Huw grows up he briefly loses the use of his legs after rescuing his mother from drowning but soon recovers and goes away to a school for upper-class boys. Due to his humble origins he is bullied by both the other pupils and the teachers and is taught to stand up for himself by members of his town. The film ends with a large mining disaster in which all members of the family band together to rescue the father from the mine. Although they do pull him out of the mine he dies soonafter and Huw recounts his funeral before the adult Huw leaves his family home once and for all.

To give the film its dues, How Green Was My Valley is directed well by Ford who won the Oscar that year and it does have a coherent narrative. There are some impressive set pieces with the mother's drowning and the final mining accident well crafted and the scenes of family life around the dinner table are also well done. There are also some decent performances Donald Crisp won Best Supporting Actor for his role as the family's patriach and, as the preacher Mr. Gruffyd, Walter Pidgeon was also mightly impressive as was Supporting Actress nominee Sara Allgood as Huw's sister Beth. However the film just didn't wow me and I found it incredibly ordinary, Roddy MacDowall's Huw got the lion's share of the screen time and wasn't that interesting and the camera work was also farely mundane. There was nothing very memorable about the film and almost seventy years on from its release it isn't heralded as a classic and isn't even considered one of Ford's best. Also a lot of members of the cast do struggle to get the Welsh accents down with some of them just using Irish instead. I think if nothing else that spoils the film because if you can't do Welsh why be cast as a Welshman in the first place?

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Seventy-One: Getting a Bit Windy

Back to the start of the decade now with the winner of the 1940 ceremony and possibly one of the most famous films of all time - Gone with The Wind. It holds a place in Oscar history as it is the first Best Picture filmed entirely in colour and also the first film to feature an Oscar winning turn by an African American performer but more on that later. The story follows Southern Belle Scarlett O'Hara who we meet at the start of the American Civil War, Scarlett is admired by several suitors but she is in love with the debonair Ashley Wilkes but she discovers that he is to marry his cousin Melanie. Simply out of spite Scarlett decides to marry Melanie's brother Charles but he is soon killed when the Civil War starts. At the same time Scarlett meets the dashing rogue Rhett Butler who seems to have offended everyone who comes into contact with him. As the men go away to fight in the war Scarlett promises Ashley that she will look after Melanie, the two of them soon move to Atlanta to tend to sick soldiers but then a pregnant Melanie gets sick and Scarlett helps to deliver her baby. Scarlett enlists Rhett's to help transport Melanie and the baby back to Scarlett's estate which she finds in a state and her father who has since succumb to dementia and then dies just after the war finishes. Scarlett struggles to keep her estate going and soon marries her sister's suitor the middled-aged Frank Kennedy with whose money she buys a saw mill and convinces Ashley to help her run it. After Scarlett is attacked Frank, Ashley and a returning Rhett go after the attackers and Frank is fatally injured in the scuffle. Scarlett and Rhett eventually marry and have a child but Rhett realises that she is still in love with Ashley and starts to drink heavily and then asks Scarlett for a divorce however she doesn't want the scandal so instead Rhett takes their daughter away to London. They return after Rhett realises Bonnie needs her mother but then Bonnie dies after falling off a horse and then Melanie dies during her second pregnancy. After seeing how distraught Ashley is when Melanie dies she realises that he could never have loved her in the way he did Melanie and finally decides that she is in love with Rhett. However at this point Rhett has had enough and when Scarlett asks what she will do without Rhett he utters the line 'frankly my dear I don't give a damn' and this is followed by the film's other famous line 'tomorrow is another day' when Scarlett realises that the only thing that is left in her life is her family's estate and that's what her priority has to be.

It has been a while since I saw Gone With The Wind and the DVD I rented came as two discs seperated by the interval which the original audience would have got. Part One of the film is definitely it's stronger half with the opening scene at the barbecue where we get the feel of all of the four principal characters followed by the war itself. You get the feel of the epic scale of the picture as we get a shot of all the injured soldiers laid out across the land there also some very interesting camera techniques and the use of colour is expertly done. The film's second half is where things get a bit flaby as director Victor Flemyng takes to long telling the story of the love quadrangle that takes place but the film picks up in its final part with the marriage and seperation of Scarlett and Rhett and the deaths of Bonnie and Melanie. The production itself seemed to be very fraught with original director George Cukor being fired and replaced by The Wizard of Oz's Flemyng while there was about 20 actresses in the frame for Scarlett but the role went to the then unknown British actress Vivien Leigh. Leigh's performance won her an Oscar and she did a good job portraying the incredibly complex Scarlett. Clark Gable was brilliant as Rhett but he lost out to Robert Donat and Olivia De Havilland was also nominated as Melanie but she also lost. The actress she lost to was Hattie MacDaniel who portrayed the O'Hara's servant Mammy, McDaniel stole most of the scenes that she featured in especially the opening scenes which without her would've been awfully melodramatic. McDaniel laid down the legacy which saw other African American performers being accepted by the academy equally impressive was Butterfly McQueen as the jittery servant Prissy.

Although I do have a lot of love for what The Wizard of Oz did in terms of its special effects and use of colour there's no denying that Gone With The Wind is weightier in terms of its tone. Although, at three and a half hours its a bit long, at the time the audience would've appreciated tihs and the cinema was much more of a communal event than it is now. Although I am yet to watch seven of the other films that were nominated against it at the moment I can definitely say that Gone with The Wind was a good choice to be the first winner of the 1940s ceremonies.

Review: The A-Team

It seems recently a lot of popular brands have presented almost prequel films to start the story once again. In many cases this would've been to refresh an ailing franchise - Batman Begins, Casino Royale, the most recent Star Trek film or tell alledgelly retell a well known legend - Ridley Scott's Robin Hood. This trend is continued with the new A-Team film in which we find out how Murdoch, B.A., Face and Hannibal all first met, why they were locked up for a crime they didn't commit and most importantly why B.A. 'ain't getting on no plane'. The story itself involves U.S. treasury plates, a double-crossing CIA agent and Jessica Biel trying to convince us that she's a Captain. But that's not really the point of the film its about the four characters and how much we care about what they're doing. As Hannibal, Liam Neeson does get the leadership thing right and is quite compelling in some parts but the problem is that Nesson tries to hard to do a growly voice and therefore you miss most of what he's saying. Bradley Cooper is basically just a smile and some hair as Face he doesn't have the charm that Dirk Benedict had in the original and is reduced to a couple of smarmy lines. Fairing better is District 9's Sharlto Copley who steals all the scenes as Murdoch, he gets the crazy look in his eye and you do believe that he was in an insane asylum. However the biggest problem is Quinton 'Rampage' Jackson as B.A. Baracus. There's nothing particularly wrong with Jackson's performance, for his first acting role its decent enough but there's only one person that can play B.A. and that's Mr. T and there's no covering that up.

The main problem I have is that the film loses its sense of fun about half way through. It starts quite light, with a few jokes, the same old catchphrases and some explosions. But after the boys are jailed it all gets a bit serious and the film gets shot with some moody lighting for about twenty minutes. There's also a major problem with the way some of the sound is recorded and you do miss some of what the characters say. At the end of the day this film starts fun and is fairly enjoyable when you watch it but it does try a bit too hard to be something it's not. But at least know this is in cinemas we don't have to put up with Liam Neeson saying 'I Love it when a Talk Plan Comes Together' every time we got to the cinema.

Review: Please Give

In her last film, Friends with Money, Nicole Holofcener looked at how money and class effected a group of friends it had an ensemble cast who were all equally great but I thought it was just alright. Four years later Holofcener is back with another film about how having money and possessions can make you feel guilty. Holofcener again casts Catheirne Keener this time as Kate a middle-aged mother who, along with her husband, runs a shop selling furniture that is bought from the children of dead people after their parents die. However Kate becomes guilty about this and wants to do good for the community offering to volunteer for various organistations and constantly giving large sums of money to homeless people. Kate and her husband have also bought the apartment of their elderly next door neighbour and plan to knock it down when she has died. However the neighbour is Andra, a cantacrous 90 year old who has no plans of dying just yet. Andra's grandaughter Rebecca runs all her chores for her, including walking her dog, but doesn't have much or a personal life and spends all her day conducting mamograms. Meanwhile her other granddaughter Mary is more selfish preferring to get regular tans and spy on her ex's new girlfriend. As the film goes on Kate's husband starts sleeping with Mary while Rebecca finds herself a man and Kate gets more and more paranoid about how she's getting her money.

I have to say I really enjoyed Please Give thanks mainly to the ensemble cast. Although Catherine Keener is a more than adequate lead I believe it is the story of Rebecca, played by Rebecca Hall who is incredibly meek at the start of the film but grows as a character throughout. Hall has really come on as an actress and I hope that this film will propel her into the big leagues. Meanwhile Oliver Platt is on hand to give most of the laughs as Kate's husband Alex and Amanda Peet plays to her bitchy best as Mary. Kate and Alex's teenage daughter Abby, is also a refreshing character in that she is a normal young person with worries about her weight and her spots. She is also the first teen character in a film, that I can remember, that isn't once caught up in any kind of romantic entanglement. But the star of the show is undoubtedly Ann Morgan Guilbert as Andra she gets all the laughs shouting her way through the film and insulting everyone she comes into contact with. While this is no masterpiece it is still a fine little film that ticks along nicely, has some things to say about family and possessions and provides a few gentle laughs along the way.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Seventy: Three's Company

As we saw in the 1930s there were a lot of Screwball comedies knocking about, these films usually revolved a round a couple who weren't together for some reason and had to resolve issues - usually of class in order to become a couple by the end. That tradition seems to continue in The More the Merrier, a nominee at the 1944 ceremony which was a film that touched on the serious issue of the housing shortage during the Second World War but did it with plenty of screwball comedy-esque touches. The film revolves around Benjamin Dingle, an adviser on the housing shorage who arrives in Washington to find his hotel won't be ready for two days. Dingle then has to find an apartment and ends up moving in with a young girl named Constance Milligan. Costance and Dingle have trouble working out a routine while living together which is further complicated when Dingle rents half of his room out to soldier Joe Carter. Joe and Costance start to fall for each other but she is already engaged to the straight-laced burecrat Charles Pendergrass. Through several different means Dingle starts to orchestrate situations where Joe and Constance will be together and even delays Pendergrass by asking him to help with some of his duties. From there, there are romantic complications as Joe and Constance fall in love and Pendergrass then discovers the whole house-sharing mess. The final scene sees Dingle seal the fate of the two younger characters and then sings outside their door with a group of homeless men.

I really enjoyed The More The Merrier and I even found myself laughing out loud at some points, something I have rarely done to any of these films. Most of the reason for that is down to Charles Coburn as Dingle, who steals every scene he is in and the highilight is the very first morning he and Constance are together they construct an almost silent routine which is absoultely hilarous. Coburn won the Oscar for Supporting Actor that year, the only award the film recieved, and taht was more than justified jsut as with Lionel Barrymore in the 1930s, Coburn is a supporting star who we will see more of throughout the decade. Jean Arthur, previously the plucky heroine in You Can't Take it With You, here plays the practical but ultimately romantic Constance with some ease and also earned an Oscar nomination. The film does suffer when Coburn isn't on the screen and the romantic scenes between Joe and Constance go on a little too long. However the film is incredibly well written and also well shot including the scenes in which Joe and Constance talk to each othe through the wall which are filmed through the window so you can see both characters. A nice little comedy with a serious social issue at its heart and some good performances.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Sixty-Nine: A sprinkling of Ginger

Before I started this voyage, I always thought that Ginger Rogers was just Fred Astaire's dancing partner in whimsical little films. Then I saw her small performance in 42nd Stret and then her starring role in Stage Door and suddenly my opinion of her changed. More research proved that she was one of 67 women who has one the Best Actress Oscar and she did at the 1941 Oscar ceremony in the film Kitty Foyle, which was also nominated for Best Picture. The film sees Rogers as the eponymous Foyle who from the outset has to choose between a sensible but dull Doctor and a man named Wyn who has turned up at her doorstep. As she leaves her apartment, seemingly to go off with Wyn, she is taunted by her reflection in a snow-globe which makes her relive her life up to this point. We see Kitty living in Philadelphia with her crotchety but loving father, who has a habit of exclaiming Judas Priest and telling his daughter to be realistic when it comes to choosing a partner. However while working as a typist she meets Wyn who is the member of the well-to-do Stafford family and runs a magazine which Kitty goes to work for. When Wyn's magazine goes under, Kitty tries to convince him to move to New York but he doesn't want to leave his jet-set lifestyle so she moves on her own and meets and starts dating doctor Mark. Wyn returns and the two get married but Wyn wants to change her into a society wife while Kitty still wants to work. Kitty then finds out she's pregnant and at the same time that Wyn is to remarry, tragedy comes thick and fast as she loses the child in cihldbirth and then returns to Philadelphia where she runs into Wyn and his new family. The film ends with her deciding to chose the sensible Mark as their dates seemed to have a lot less drama packed into them and because he was really a rather charming fella while Wyn was a bit of a bastard.

Kitty Foyle is considered to belong to the cannon of 'women's films' that were big from the thirties to the fifites. They always had a big female star and it usually appealled to a female audience as they could see elements of their life in them. For example the scenes in which Kitty shares a cramped New York apartment with two other shop girls would obviously resonate with females who were living alone for the first time. What I didn't like was the gender politics of the whole tihng where Kitty was only happy when she was with a man and indeed the premise of the film is that she should either be with Mark or Wyn there's never an argument made for her to be on her own. As we see towards the latter stages of the film bad things happen when she's on her own - her father dies and she loses her child who she was going to raise as a single mother which I'm assuimng was frowned upon at the time. That aside Kitty Foyle was a pleasent enough film which never dragged and at its centre was a passionate performance from Ginger Rogers who really did deserve that Bet Actress Oscar.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Sixty-Eight: A Couple more Bogeys

Okay so I know I've been chastising eveyrone for not watching some of the classics over the last few days but I'm no saint myself when it comes to missing out on the oldies. In fact I've seen less the ten film from this decade's list including the next two films. Also in the last post we looked at Casablanca, but leading man Humphrey Bogart was a busy boy in the 1940s. After a lot of supporting roles in the 1930s he finally became a big star and was probably the top leading man in that decade. Although he didn't win his Best Actor Oscar, for The African Queen, until the 1950s the 1940s were definitely Bogey's best decade. And recently I watched two of his films from the decade one pre and one post Casablanca and both directed by John Huston.

First up we have The Maltese Falcon, Huston's first film as a director, and a nominee at the 1942 ceremony. In it Bogart plays private detective Sam Spade whose detective partner is shot while on a job tracking a man for a girl whose sister has supposedly run off with him. The man also dies that night and Spade is fingered for both murders and has to find out who killed who. Spade then gets charged with the task of finding a black figure of a bird which turns out to be the titular Maltese Falcon, a jewel encrusted figure which was a gift to King Charles V of Spain from the Kinghts of Malta. During his investigation Bogart meets the diminutive and excitable Joel Cairo and the large and domineering Kasper Gutman sometimes referred to as the fat man. Cairo is the man who first asks Spade to look for the bird and Gutman is able to explain its significance. Meanwhile Spade finds out that the girl Brigid was also after the bird with the man who was killed. The film then builds to a climax as we try to discover who shot who and who is scamming who and what will Spade do? Bogart's Spade isn't a million miles away from Casablanca's Rick, both characters don't really have an emotional attatchment to the item on offer and both would rather no attract trouble. Unlike Rick, Spade is basically after money, although there is a brief spark between him and Brigid its nothing like the Rick and Ilsa romancei n Casablanca. The similarities to Casablanca don't end there though as Bogart's co-stars are Peter Lorre (as Cairo) and Sidney Greenstreet (as Gutman), the former played the petit criminal in Casablanca while the latter played the rival bar owner. Greenstreet in fact was nomianted for Best Supporting Actor and rightly so as, apart from Bogart, his performance is the film's best, the excellent adapted screenplay was also nominated. What I will say is that this is the first proper mystery film that I've watched since I've been doing this quest. While The Thin Man did have a kind of murder mystery structure, The Maltese Falcon was incredibly involving and very well plotted, I believe that Bogart's performance here at least deserved an Oscar nom but this was the year that How Green Was My Valley walked off with most of the awards and there was hardly anything left for even Citizen Kane.

Bogart returned to Oscar-nominated films at the last ceremony of the decade with The Treasure of The Sierra Madre which did however win Best Director and Adapted Screenplay for John Huston and Best Supporting Actor for his father Walter. The film sees Bogart's Dobbs teaming up with Huston's Howard and Tim Holt's Curtin to find gold in the Sierra Madre mountains in Mexico. Dobbs and Curtin meet as two Americans down on their luck in Mexico and soon decide to seek Gold with the help of old-timer Howard. They soon strike it lucky but there are complications which include the arrival of bandits, a fourth American discovering them and Dobbs' own paranoia and greed. It is the final one of those three that the film ultimately plays on as Dobbs believes that Howard is out to get him and that Curtin plans to short change him later on. In terms of plot that's about it and that's the beauty of the film as it is a study of the human psyche and how much trust we can give our fellow man. This theme is played upon nicely both by the haunting score and by the brilliantly shot close-ups of all three men. The central three performances are all excellent, Bogart really did deserve a Best Actor nomination here as his portrayal of the greedy Gringo Dobbs is an intense and sometimes unlikeable one. Dobbs is definitely different from Bogart's other two roles in this decade and that's even better as we don't really expect a man who's played so many heros to here play a morally ambigous character. Walter Huston also does well as the old-timer who's obviously seen men effectd by gold in a similar way before, Huston impressed me with his work in Dodsworth so its nice to see him winning an award while Tim Holt also does well as the upstanding Curtin. The film isn't perfect, it takes a little too long to get started and some of Howard's scenes in the Mexican village should've been quicker but overall this is a masterpiece that shows you don't need a huge story to keep audiences entranced for two hours.

There will be a little bit more bogey before the decade is out but these are definitely two of his defining films and I'm glad that I got to watch both of them for the first time.

Review: Whatever Works

In recent years Woody Allen's work has been hit and miss, some of his films even fail to get a general release in this country. His last release, Vicky Cristna Barcelona, was fair at best and spent too long concentrating on crazy Penelope Cruz and less on the more interesting Rebecca Hall character. For his latest, Whatever Works, Allen returns to New York and teams up with Curb Your Enthusiasm's Larry David who essentially plays Allen in this film. The basic plot sees David's Boris taking in a Southern runaway Melodie played by Evan Rachel Wood. Boris essentially hates everything already has one failed suicide attempt on his hands while Melodie is a chipper God-fearing Belle. Melodie starts to buy into Boris' world views and soon an unlikely relationship develops which sees the two of them get married. Things are complicated with the arrival of Melodie's over-the-top mother and then her father. There was a lot of Woody Allen's early dialogue that is heard through the lips of David and indeed some of his diatribes don't really fit into the plot but are just random thoughts that Allen wanted to slip into the script. To an extent Allen is going back to some of his more memorable pictures most notably Manhattan which also had a similar age gap relationship and also gave a several sumptious shots of New York. And indeed Allen has included lots of the Big Apple's landmarks as Boris gives Melodie his own unique take on the city.

Any fans of Curb Your Enthusiasm will probably appreciate David in this film as he brings most of the elements of his persona in the hit show to this film. In fairness he does know how to deliver a good deadpan line and there are some very decent laugh-out-loud one-liners. Evan Rachel Wood showed how she has matured as a performer, even though she is playing a young innocent this is probably her most grown-up turn to date. She interacts with David better than you would expect and the scenes that just feature the two of them together are some of the film's best. However as Melodie's parents, Patricia Clarkson and Ed Begley Jr., steal the show as their Christian values are tested and changed as they are desensitised to New York's culture. Although there are some things that I didn't like about the film, for example Melodie's younger love interest to me felt even less appealing than Boris, overall this was at times very funny and had a good ensemble cast. Maybe not a complete return to form for Allen but certainly one of his funniest films in quite a while.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Sixty-Seven: You Must Remember This

At the 1944 Oscar ceremony, ten films were nominated for Best Picture, this was the last time this would happen until 2010. The film that triumphed that year was obviously one that is still hailed as a classic that is Casablanca. Those who haven't seen Casablanca, and I will stop chastising people for not seeing these films, will still know lines from it 'here's looking at you kid', 'of all the gin joints in all the world she had to walk into mine' and 'Louis, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship'. There's also the 'Play it Again Sam' quandry as that line doesn't appear in the film when Bogart tells piano player Sam to play 'As Time Goes By', the song which also is something that people would associate with the film. The basic plot concerns people stuck in Casablanca trying to travel from Nazi occupied Europe to the neutral Lisbon and then on to America. Our central figure is Humphrey Bogart's Rick who is seemingly uninvolved in all the struggles that are going on around him and instead is happy to take people's money whether they be Nazi officers or those trying to escape. The item that keeps the plot moving are letters of transit, documents which let whoever holds them travel freely around Europe, which end up in Rick's possession after they are handed him by a petit theif who is arrested by the Nazi Officers. Rick's former love Ilsa, played by Ingrid Bergman, comes into his bar and back into his life after the two had a fleeting romance in France years earlier. Ilsa along with her husband Victor are another couple trying to leave Casablanca and is after letters of transit himself. From there the film is both a love triangle and a thriller revolving around the transit papers will Rick give them willingly to Ilsa and will they be discovered in his possession by Claude Rains' corrupt cop Louis. Again I'm not going to ruin it for you either you've seen it already or you really need to watch it.

One thing I do really love about Casablanca is the characterisation. None of the main leads are either truly good or bad, even the despicable Louis has a moment of redemption in the film's final scenes. Rick's motivations are unclear for most of the film, and he certainly isn't a hero preferring to be a passive figure during this war. While Ilsa isn't just a wallflower and seems to more in control then husband Victor in terms of their quest for the papers. I also have to applaud the art direction in particular Rick's cafe, in which the majority of the film is set, comes to life through the hustle and bustle of the various patrons and the gambling rooms in the back. Of the performances themselves Bogart is amazing in the lead while Bergman manages to hold her own. Also I do love Claude Rains as Louis, he is incredibly slimy but also humourous and straight-laced when he needs to be. Rains and Bogart were both nominated for acting awards but neither were succesful while Bergman wasn't even nominated for her role here, although she did get a nomiantion this year for her role in Whom The Bell Tolls. As well as Best Picture, the Adapted Screenplay and Michael Curtiz's direction also won, but I think Casablanca should've swept the board. But again this is a classic which more than deserves its place as one of the 82 films that have won Best Picture.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Sixty-Six: Today's Big Story - It Didn't Win Best Picture

If you look at lists made of the Best Films of All Time by noted cinema critics, there's one film that always seemed to top the list, Citizen Kane. It is odd then that this film didn't recieve a Best Picture award, which went to How Green was My Valley, and only won one award of the nine awards that it was nominated for. That was for Best Original Screenplay which is more than justified as, for a movie made in the early 1940s, it has one of the best scripts of the era. In terms of the narrative structure I believe that it is the only film that I have watched thusfar that has a non-linear narrative. For those who haven't seen the film, no excuse really, but the plot involves the death of newspaper magnate whose last word was simply 'Rosebud'. This triggers newsreel reporter Jerry Thompson to try and discover the significance of this final word. Thompson interviews various people in Kane's wife including his business manager, his butler, his best friend and his second wife as well as reading the memoirs of Kane's former guardian. While Thompson's interviews take place in the present once the interviews start we get flashbacks from Kane's past starting with his childhood where he is taken from his parents to live with banker Walter Thatcher, we see him as a ruthless newspaper owner and also running for governer before a romance with a singer ruins his political career as well as ending his first marriage. His second wife Susan is an aspiring singer but Kane pushes her into singing opera which she is really no good and eventually leaves Kane when she realises that he wants her to be something that she can't be. Obviously the final shot of the film reveals the significance of the word Rosebud and if you're any kind of fan of film then you will already know who or what Rosebud is. But again for those of you who are yet to watch it I won't spoil the surprise.

What I will bang on about however is how revolutionary the film is, while it may not be the best film of all time, it is certainly the best film of it's time. The cinematography is incredibly well executed from the wide angle shots of Kane's Xanadu mansion to the close-ups on character's expressions every scene is given significance. The art direction is also spot-on, every set is given a lot of detail and it really captures the viewer's imagination, again both cinematography and art direction went to How Green was My Valley. All of this is a testament to Orson Welles, whose cinematic vision is realised here he is a presence both as a director and an actor, again he was nominated for both and lost out to John Ford and Gary Cooper respectively. Although I think the Oscars usually get it right, to give Citizen Kane only one Oscar when it is visually spectacular and narratively brilliant, is just wrong. Having never seen How Green was my Valley I really don't know but it must have to be spectacular to match the power of Kane.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Sixty-Five: Lions and Tigers and Bears and Dead Wives Oh My!

So we're finally into the ten ceremonies that took place in the 1940s, in other words films that were released between 1939 and 1948, the first five ceremonies still had ten nominees but at the 1945 ceremony it retreated back to the original format of five nominees something that stayed the same until this year's ceremony where we went back to ten nominations. Anyway that's way in the future but what's quite exciting is that I own four DVDs of films nominated in this decade so that's where I'm going to start.

And first up is a classic that most of us have seen at one time or another yes it's The Wizard of Oz. I won't really go into the plot that much because if you don't know the story then you've lead a very sheltered life and your childhood was obviously very severe if no-one ever sat down with you and watched the film. What I will do is talk about some of the bits I'd forgotten and some of the segments that make it filmically impressive. Obviously the first thing to say is the transformation between the sepia beginnings when Dorothy is still in Kansas and then the brilliant technicolour scenes in Oz. In particular when Dorothy arrives in Oz the colours are so stark and it is so well filmed that at the time audiences must have been stunned. What I'd forgotten about is how good those pre-Oz scenes where and how well Judy Garland portrays a girl who really wants to escape the life she has. The other misconception I'd had was that this was a strong musical film however the second half of the film, from the first meeting with the Wizard onwards, contains no singing whatsoever. For a film released in 1939 the effects are really well done, the twister scene in which Dorothy's house flies through the air and encounters all the other characters is very well executed and later the scenes where the gang encounter the Wizard for the first time is also very well done. From the costumes, to the make-up and the acting the film is just excellent. Which makes it very odd that it was shown very little love at the 1940 Oscar Ceremony. Although it was included in the list of ten films that was nominated for Best Picture, it only got another four noms. From the 1940s some films were shot in colour while a lot remained in black and white, because of this the cinematography category was split into how the pictures were filmed and Wizard of Oz was nominated for colour cinematography as well as special effects both of which it should have won and didn't. There was success for the film in the Original Score and Song categories, the latter was for Over the Rainbow but that's it and that's a shame because there should've been at least a couple of acting nods. In particular Margaret Hamilton as The Wicked Witch of The West deserves a mention, from her opening scenes as the evil Miss Gulch to her terrifying presence after she dons the green make-up she steals the show from everyone else. One scene that still scares me to this day is the one in which Dorothy sees Aunt Em through the witch's crystal ball and as she is shouting her aunt's name the witch appears and taunts her, Hamilton should've got a nomination for Best Supporting Actress and I would've also but The Wizard himself Frank Morgan in there as Supporting Actor. However director Victor Flemyng wasn't that upset as his other picture released that year went onto win, you may have heard of it as it was a little film called Gone with The Wind.

Talking of winners the next year's ceremony saw the only Alfred Hitchcock film to win the award and it was Hitch's first major Hollywood picture - Rebecca. I will forgive anyone who doesn't know the plot of this film but basically it sees Joan Fontaine's character, who is never named, meet Laurence Olivier's widower Maxim De Winter while in Monte Carlo. After a whirlwind romance the two get married and return to Maxim's large stately home Manderlay. Soon the new Mrs. DeWinter is told tales of the eponymous Rebecca, Maxim's first wife, who supposedly drowned during a boating accident. In particular Fontaine has many run-ins with Manderlay's housekeeper the chilling Mrs. Danvers who starts by making subtle digs at her and soon is blatantly taunting her. Maxim also seems to be haunted by memories of his first wife and when his new wife appears in one of Rebecca's old dresses he becomes enraged and forces her to change into a new dress. The final third of the film discovers the mysterious circumstances in which Rebecca died but to talk about those would be to reveal the plot. What I will say is that Rebecca is an excellent film and in particular the filming of both the exterior and interior of Manderlay is what makes it particularly chilling. The film did win Best Cinematography, its only win apart from Best Picture, which is more than justified as the camerawork makes Manderlay another character in and of itself and evokes memories of Rebecca in all of the other characters. The nominated score also deserves a mention as a lot of the scenes feature Fonatine creeping around the large house trying to discover Rebecca's memories for herself. Olivier and Fontaine were both nominated for their lead performances but lost ot James Stewart and Ginger Rogers respectively. However the best performance in the film belongs to Judith Anderson as the cold, distant and ultimately wicked Mrs. Danvers who has to be one of the best screen villains of all time. Anderson was nominated also nominated, as Supporting Actress, but also lost out. In all Rebecca got eleven nominations but only two wins, it was also the first of five nominations for Hitch who famously never won an Oscar for directing. This has to be one of the biggest snubs of all time and its a damn shame that one of the finest directors of all time was never rewarded with accolades that he deserved.

Back soon with more fourties good.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge: The First 11 Ceremonies (1929-1939)

As you know the way that I have set this challenge out is by Oscar Ceremony rather than by decade so the first ten films that I will encounter at the 1940 ceremony were actually released in 1939. But I've done it this way because of the way the first five ceremonies concentrated on films over two years. So here's a ceremony by ceremony breakdown of the decade that I've wrapped up.


Ceremony 1: 1929
Winner: Wings
Nominees I've Watched: Seventh Heaven and The Racket
Did the Right Film Win: Yes
The first year only three films were nominated and luckily I've been able to watch all three. While I didn't think much of The Racket, Seventh Heaven was a fairly good film however it felt a little disjointed and overall Wings had the better structure so it was the right choice to win the first Best Picture award.

Ceremony 2: 1930 (I)
Winner: The Broadway Melody
Nominees I've Watched: Alibi, Hollywood Revue of 1929 and In Old Arizona
Did The Right Film Win: Probably
The first of two ceremonies from 1930 and the first winner in sound. The Broadway Melody was by far the film that had the best structure however both Alibi and In Old Arizona played around with more filmic techinques. But overall I think Broadway Melody has stood the test of time out of the four I've watched. Meanwhile I will never get to see the filth film - The Patriot as their is no full print of the film.

Ceremony 3: 1930 (II)
Winner: All Quiet on The Western Front
Nominees I've Watched: The Big House, Disraeli, The Divorcee, The Love Parade
Did The Right Film Win: Yes
After the advent of sound the films at the third ceremony started to draw on contreversial themes such as what prison life was like - The Big House and the break up of marriages - The Divorcee. We also had biopics and Maurice Chevalier musicals but that year's eventual winner still stands up as one of the greatest war films of all time.

Ceremony 4: 1931
Winner: Cimarron
Nominees I've Watched: The Front Page and Skippy
Did The Right Film: Yes
As you've just read my review of Cimarron then you know there's not much choice in the way of an alternate winner. East Lynne and Trader Horn are the other two films that would be in contention but saying that I still think at the time with its epic backdrops and relevant themes - Cimarron would've been a hard film to beat.

Ceremony 5: 1932
Winner: Grand Hotel
Nominees I've Watched: Arrowsmith, Bad Girl, The Champ, One Hour With You, Shanghai Express, The Smiling Lieutenant
Not available to me: Five Star Final
Did the Right Film Win: Yes
The year that the number of nominees went up from five to eight. Although I did enjoy the realistic nature of Bad Girl, the father/son relationship in The Champ and the plotting of Shanghai Express, Grand Hotel was ably to do it on a bigger scale and had some topnotch performances to boot.

Ceremony 6: 1934
Winner: Cavalcade
Nominees I've Watched: 42nd Street, A Farewell to Arms, I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang, Lady for A Day, Little Women, The Private Life of Henry VIII and She Done Him Wrong
Not Available to Me: State Fair and Smilin' Through
Did The Right Film Win: Yes
Oscar took a year off and returned with two more nominees with the total going up to ten. Again two films stand out for me - I am A Fugitive and 42nd Street were both favourites of mine but the multi-layered narrative and historical accuracy of Cavlacade marked it out as an original piece of film-making and deserved of a best picture prize.

Ceremony 7: 1935
Winner: It Happened One Night
Nominees I've Watched: Cleopatra, The Gay Divorcee, Here Comes The Navy, The House of Rothschild, Imitation of Life, The Thin Man, Viva Villa
Not Available to Me: The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Fliration Walk, One Night of Love, The White Parade
Did the Right Film win: Yes
For those of you who can count 1935 gave us twelve nominees which was just a little bit silly as films such as the fluffy Gay Divorcee and offensive Here Comes the Navy made the cut. Claudette Colbert was in three of the films and although I really enjoyed Imitation of Life I will concede that It Happened One Night was the best over all.

Ceremony 8: 1936
Winner: Mutiny on The Bounty
Nominees I've Watched: Alice Adams, Captain Blood, David Copperfield, The Informer, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, Les Miserables, A Midsummers Nights Dream, Naughty Marietta, Ruggles of Red Gap and Top Hat
Not Available To Me: Broadway Melody of 1936
Did the Right Film Win: Yes
Sticking with twelve nominees again saw a lot of musical and comic nonsense and some long sprawling epics make the cut. Mutiny on The Bounty wasn't a perfect picture but it was the best from this group of nominees

Ceremony 9: 1937
Winner: The Great Ziegfeld
Nominees I've Watched: Dodsworth, Libelled Lady, Mr Deeds Goes to Town, Romeo and Juliet, San Franscisco, The Story of Louis Pasteur, A Tale of Two Cities and Three Smart Girls
Not Available to Me: Anthony Adverse
Did The Right Film Win: No
Back to ten nominees we still have a couple of non-starters but a lot more strong contenders. Now that we're getting towards the end of the decade film making has become more elobarate as is seen in the adaptation of Romeo and Juliet and the disaster movie San Francisco as well as that year's winner The Great Ziegfeld. However I feel that Ziegfeld was too long and basically just a vaudeville stage show on the big screen. I think in terms of film-making both San Francisco and Dodsworth did it better and told a better story so, in my mind, one of those two films should've won.

Ceremony 10: 1938
Winner: The Life of Emile Zola
Nominees I've Watched: The Awful Truth, Captain Courageous, Dead End, In Old Chicago, Lost Horizon, One Hundred Men and A Girl, Stage Door and A Star is Born
Not Available To Me: The Good Earth
Did The Right Film Win: Yes
I wasn't sure about The Life of Emile Zola in terms of sustaining the narrative over the length of time the film was on screen. But it was a poor year in terms of nominees and only Stage Door and A Star is Born were on the same level but neither of those had the level of gravitas that Emile Zola had. I have a feeling however if I had watched The Good Earth that things might have been different but for now I'm saying that Zola was the right film to win.

Ceremony 11: 1939
Winner: You Can't Take It With You
Nominees I've Watched: The Adventures of Robin Hood, Boys Town, Four Daughters, La Grande Illusion, Jezebel, Pygmallion and Test Pilot
Not Available to Me: Alexander's Ragtime Band and The Citadel
Did The Right Film Win: No
As much as I enjoyed Frank Capra's second screwball comedy to win the Best Picture award I feel it didn't deserve Best Picture as much as two of the other films on the list. First of all The Adventures of Robin Hood which was the first film out of the ones I've watched that really knew what to do with the use of technicolour and was a very good swashbuckler. While La Grande Illusion was just a fantastically made piece of gripping film and one of Renoir's finest. When you've got two films that have defined the history of cinema a comedy about a rich and poor family doesn't really seem that important.


Okay so that's the twenties and thirties out of the way so lets start going with the films that won and were nominated in the ceremonies held between 1940 and 1949.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Sixty-Four: Matt hits a roadblock but ends on a winner

At this point I am left with two films that I can feesibly watch - The Good Earth a 1938 nominee and the film that won the Best Picture Award at the 1931 ceremony - Cimarron. I thought I would end with the winner and went to watch the copy of The Good Earth that I had found on an obscure Asian streaming site. However when I got to actually watch the copy I found it was crackly, and skipping and essentially unwatchable so I had to scrap that and add it to the list of films that I might have to come back to at the end.

So instead I end the first part of this journey with the final winning film- Cimarron a sprawling epic set during the 1880s and looking at the first settlers in Oklahoma as it became a boomtown and the life of a family experiencing it over fourty years. The film starts with erstwhile newspaper editor and lawyer Yancey Cravat returning home from the settlements after five years and taking his wife and son along with him to find a place to live in Oklahoma. Over time we see Yancey try and make the place more inhabitable by getting rid of all the cowboys and bandits and setting up a new newspaper - The Oklahoma Wigwam as well as lessening the amount of taverns and undesirables in Oklahoma. Meanwhile Yancey's wife Sabra also becomes a valuable member of the community setting up a women's group and also looking after various facets of the newspaper and becomes a mother for the second time. As the film tracks later into the future Yancey starts to get restless and leaves home for large periods of time leaving Sabra to become the main face of the family. When Yancey comes back, Sabra starts to feel that he is tarnishing their reputation by writing reports about Native Americans having the same rights as them and defending a woman accused of being a prostitute. As the film gets int the early 1920s, Yancey has left again and Sabra is accepted into the U.S. senate and also acknowledges for the first time that her son has married a young American Indian girl. The final scene of the film sees her witnessing an old man being hit by a cart which turns out to be Yancey who then dies in her arms. Not a joyous ending but an interesting film nonetheless that deals with issues of restlessness, perception, race, class and gender.

What is most notable about the film however, is the large number of extras involved in the early scenes as peole race to find settlements in Oklahoma. Indeed up to 5,000 extras were used in the film and up to 28 cameramen were employed at any one time. Indeed during the depression a film like this seemed to make a mockery of the state the country was in as RKO were able to lay on a budget of 1.5 million dollars. Another thing that is interesting in the film is the issue of race especially in the later scenes as the couple's son Cimarron, which incidentally means wild, marries the young Indian girl. While Yancey doesn't see a problem with equality others frown at the Indian settlers with Sabra describing them as 'dirty, filthy, savages' this issue is one of many in which views are challenged. The performances are pretty good Richard Dix plays the lead well a man who doesn't know whether to choose his family over new adventures and Irene Dunne is brilliant as his long-suffering wife, both were nominated for acting Oscars but neither were succesful. The film did win an award for its art direction which was more than justified and for its script which I did find long and meandering at times. I have only been able to watch two of Cimarron's competitors - The Front Page and Skippy both of which weren't half as good as this epic but unless I get to see the other two films I'll never know whether Cimarron deserved to win.

Right so 75 films watched and thats all I can do for the ceremonies between 1929 and 1939 for now. Next up are the ceremonies between 1940 and 1949 but before that a little look back at the decade I've just wrapped up.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Sixty-Three: Coimin' Atcha

Although it was one of my favourite films from a couple of years ago, Clint Eastwood's Changeling also let me know that at the time of the 1935 Oscar ceremony everybody thought that Cecile B DeMille's Cleopatra was going to clean up and win big at that year's ceremony, apart from Angelina Jolie's character who reckoned that It Happened One Night would triumph. Of coure Ange was right and Frank Capra's film became only one of three films ever to win the Big Five (Picture, Actor, Actress, Screenplay, Director) while Cleopatra only went home with the cinematography statuette. Not that Claudette Colbert was that arsed as she was the lead female in both films, plus a third nominated film - Imitation of Life. Indeed Colbert was probably the perfect choice to play Cleopatra - not too young, not too old and beautiful without being over-the-top. Indeed Colbert's Cleopatra is very flirty and sexy but never that dominant instead she is always waiting to find out what her man is going to do. The first third of the film essentially steals from Shakespeare's Julius Casear as we follow Cleopatra from Egypt to Rome with J.C. where he is betrayed by Brutus. She is then able to seduce Marc Anthony who has come to deal with Caesar's killers but instead finds himself caught up in a battle of wits with the Egyptian queen in a relationship where they both try and kill each other. The final third of the film sees Ceasar's only living relative, Octavian try and overthrow Marc Anthony as leader of Rome and get rid of Cleo once and for all. And in the final scene the Romans barge into Cleopatra's bedroom obviously to arrest her.

But the plot doesn't really seem to be that important to DeMille, instead he seems to want to concentrate on the detail and the extravoganze that surrounded Cleo, Julius and Marc during their days in Egypt and Rome. So there are plenty of half naked servant girls, large dance numbers and any number of animals lying around. Indeed the film opens with a naked servant girl who has been lit for purposes of modesty, this was just before censorship hit cinemas so this was DeMille's chance to get away with a bit more raunchy material than he would in later pictures. Claudette Colbert was great in the lead and she is fast becoming one of my favourite actresses however I still prefer her performance in Imitation of Life. Meanwhile Warren William makes a fine Caesar and Henry Wilcoxon was perfectly adequate as Marc Antony. However as a whole the film was style over substance and, even though I enjoyed a few of the later battle scenes, overall I thought if you took away all the detail you were left with a pretty flimsy film.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Sixty-Two: An Almost Silent Witness

The films that I have watched from the second Oscar ceremony have all been quite interesting as they are some of the first films to be in sound. While winning entry The Broadway Melody and variety show the Hollywood Revue of 1929 were quite happy to concentrate on being able to broadcast entertaining musical numbers and comedy skits the other films tried to see how far they could push the boundaries. In Old Arizona was the first ever sound film to go outdoors and therefore it seems a little archane now and I'm never going to be sure about The Patriot because there isn't a print of it in existence any more. However the fifth film from the list - Alibi experiments with various camera angles and sound techniques however at the same time you can really tell that it is an early sound film as the actors themselves are still getting used to having their voices recorded. The basic plot sees gangster Chick Williams released from jail, alledgelly for a crime he didn't commit, and start dating cop's daughter Joan. There is then an incident where a policeman is shot and Chick is implicated however he was at the theatre with Joan at the time so he has as the title would suggest - an alibi. The film asks the audience to believe whether Chick has turned over a new leaf or if he is still in league with the old gang. Do we side with the police? Or are they just wanting to frame him especially since Joan's would-be-beau is also a policeman? I actually did get quite into the plot in the later stages of the film and it is fascinating that very little is needed to create this mood.

The acting, I have to say, isn't perfect and a lot of performances, especially those from the police informant and the cop's daughter are laughable. But in the lead role Chester Morris as Chick conveys a very morally ambigous character who you're not sure whether to trust or not and indeed he was nominated for Best Actor that year. The way the film is shot, especially in the final scenes, is very impressive given the time when it was released and even though some of the fight scenes and the shoot-outs seem very old-fashioned this must have been really revolutionary when it first arrived at cinemas. Although The Broadway Melody is probably a better film structurally, Alibi was possibly the most ambitious of the five films nominated in the academy's second year.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Sixty-One: Girls Just Wanna Get Married

At the start of the film Four Daughters, Claude Rains is on the piano while his four on screen daughters are playing various instruments and singing. For a moment what I thought I was going to get was a light-hearted musical romp as Rains chastises the girls for not getting into classical music and instead blowing bubble-gum and reading romance magazines. But instead of being independent all of the girls want to be married especially eldest sister Emma, played by Gale Page the only one of the Four Daughters not portrayed by the real life Lane sisters, who wants romance and a knight in shining armour. As the film rolls on each girl apart from Kay gets a suitor, Thea's suitor is the much older Ben while Emma starts to get interested in a man named Ernest. Then composer Felix Deitz comes around catching Emma's eye but instead romancing younger sister Ann. However the film's most interesting character is the wise-cracking cynical composer Mickey Borden who starts to fall for Ann and convinces her that Emma is in love with Felix. On Ann and Felix's wedding day she runs off and marries Mickey and we see their life isn't as happy as either would think. Returning on Christmas Ann and Mickey find that Emma and Ernest are together and that Kay has gone off to London to sing on the radio. Mickey drives Felix to the station and on the way back gets into an accident and later passes away but at the end of the film we get the impression that Felix and Ann will get together once again.

If the plot sounds a little melodramatic then that's because this film was totally over the top. I think the one problem I had with it was that it couldn't really decide what it wanted to be first of all it was a bit musical and light-hearted with the girls talking about boys a lot and various suitors popping up but towards the end it all started to get a little serious with Ann and Mickey getting into debt and then him dying in a car accident. But the main problem was that I just didn't connect with any of the characters and the Lane sisters acting wasn't up to much. There were some good performances from the supporting players especially from Claude Rains as the girl's father and May Robson as their aunt. The best character of all though was Mickey and he was ably played by John Garfield, who was nominated as Best Supporting Actor. However I feel that this film was just something that Michael Curtiz did to fill his time between making the much more well-known The Adventures of Robin Hood and Angels with Dirty Faces.

Review: Inception

Before he became the man who rejuvinated the Batman franchise, Christopher Nolan was always a film-maker who was interested in playing around with the ideas about the human psyche and playing with the film formula as we all witnessed in Memento. Between Batman films he also made The Prestige which I would say has the most in common with Nolan's new film Inception. Of course since Memento, Nolan has made The Dark Knight one of the most succesful films of all time and therefore with his next ideas films he has had a lot more money to play around with so his ideas can now be imagined on a much larger scale. To talk too much about the plot of Inception would be to spoil it but it basically involves a gang of thieves lead by Leonardo DiCaprio's Cobb who go into people's minds and steal information while they are asleep. When a businessman, who was previously robbed by Cobb, offers him a deal he can't refuse he jumps at the chance. However the businessman wants Cobb and his gang to plant an idea in someone's mind or inception, something that has been tried before but is incredibly risky. Revealling any more than that would spoil the body of the film and I try as much as I can not to do that.

As it is coming out in the summer and it has a massive budget Inception will be hailed as a blockbuster. And indeed some of the scenes, involving various shootouts and explosions, would be at home in the usual blockbuster dirge that we see every summmer. However unlike your Pirates of the Caribbeans or your Spidermans, Inception is incredibly intelligent and plays with your mind more than Memento did. One of the few problems with the film is that you have to keep up with all the rules we are given about what you can and can't do in dreams or when creating your own dream. After overhearing a conversation between two fellow cinemagoers they had struggled with some of the concepts presented so once piece of advice I would give is concentrate on all of the dialogue from the very beginning or you may well miss something. Although it is incredibly original you could also argue that Inception shares a lot of the same characteristics and protagoinists as the classic heist movie. So you have your front-man, his second in command, the designer of the heist, the forger, the provider of the ingredients of the heist and the money man. And of course it is visually fantastic from beginning to end, the last ten minutes or so particularly will keep you on the edge of your seat and keep you thinking at the same time. But boil this down further and it is a film about simple relationships between husbands and wives, fathers and sons and teachers and pupils something that we can all relate to.

Of the actors themselves DiCaprio is great in the lead anchoring the other characters while dealing with his own personal demons and using that confused face that he perfected in Shutter Island. Ellen Page stars in her first non indie-comedy role since her breakout in Juno, she was previously one of the X-Men but that was much more of a supporting role, here as the trainee dream architect she brings both incredible intelligence and emotional depth to a character that could easily have been forgotten about. Joseph Gorden-Levitt plays the level headed sidekick while Ken Watanbe displays gravitas as the money man and Cillian Murphy is also fairly compelling as the man whose sub-concious the gang invade plus bizzarely enogh their is a decent performance by Tom Berenger. The star of the show for me was Tom Hardy playing Eames the forger, he was quick-witted and stole every scene that he was in, and this could be the role that marks him out as a big star. Marion Cotillard was also as brilliant as ever but to reveal any facets of her character would again spoil the plot.

Overall then this is an intelligent and high-concept summer film that should herald a new era of intteligent blockbusters. I think that it should easily make a mint at the box office because everyone will go and see it twice to see if they understand and work out if that ending made any sense at all. For me this replaces Kick-Ass as my film of the year so far.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Sixty: Anyone fancy an Indian? Well how about a trip to France?

A bit of globe-trotting now as we journey to India and then to France. First off is the Lives of a Bengal Lancer which was nominated for Best Picture at the 1936 ceremony. Its hard to describe the film as it isn't really a war film although it does feature scenes of conflict. It is set during the days of the British Raj where Lt. McGregor is stationed and welcomes two new Lieutenants the cocksure Forsythe and Tom Stone the son of the unit's commander Donald. It is this relationship between father and son that is the backbone of the film, as Tom is captured following being tempted by a woman working for the villainous Mohammed Kahn. Despite being told by Donald not to go after his son, Forsythe and McGregor journey to the enemy camp where they are captued and all three are tortured. Tom eventually gives out sensitive information to Kahn but before he can use it Donald and his men burst in and in the ensuing battle Tom kills Kahn but McGregor dies. Tom and Forsythe are given medals of honor and McGregor is posthmously awarded the Victoria Cross. Although not exactly packed full of action, The Lives of a Bengal Lancer was still a very accomplished picture. This was mainly due to the screenplay, which was nominated for the Oscar, which gave opportunties for all the central characters chances to grow and develop and also develop some laddish banter, especially that between Forsythe and McGregor. The acting is also very good with Gary Cooper giving his best performance so far on this quest and Richard Cromwell was also very stoic as Donald the man who wanted to get to know his son but his life as a soldier and almost stunted his emotions. The film was nominted for eight Oscars in total but only one two Oscars for its assistant directors, which is a shame as I really enjoyed this one.

After looking at Charles Dickens adaptations the other day, we have another adaptation this time of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, now much better known as a musical than from its source text. In this version it is Frederic Marsh who plays Frenchman Jean Valjean the man who is imprisoned and after escaping is treated almost like a beggar but is able to rehabilitated by a kindly priest. He then transforms himself into Monsieur Madelaine a factory owner and later mayor however he encounters Inspector Javert, played by Charles Laughton, the head of the police who he remembers from his time in prison. At the same time Madeline takes in the woman-of-questionable-morals Fantine and her daughter Cossette. Javert reveals that a man is being tried under the name of Valjean, as he is about to be imprisoned the real Valjean reveals himself. Just before Javert is able to bring him to justice he escapes along with Cossette. Valjean is then able to work as a gardener and make enough money to enrol Cossette into a fancy school. During this final part of the story there is an uprising in France as groups start to rebel against the harsh nature of the police. Cossette falls for the leader of the group, who themselves start to attract police attention. This means that Javert comes back into Valjean's life, although Javert is captured by Valjean he reconsiders and lets him go. Javert continues to pursue Valjean but in the end commits suicide by jumping in the river and Valjean and Cossette are reunited. Having only been faintly familiar with the story I think Richard Boleslawski did a good job of bringing it to life. The scenes at the end of the film involving Javert and Valjean are incredibly startling as our Valjean's life following him leaving prison. Like with a star is born, Frederic march is able to dispaly a full range of emotions as Valjean while Charles Laughton steals the show as the villainous and despicable Javert. The film doesn't outstay its welcome and hits all the main plot points without lingering on any one character for too long. However it lost to another Laughton film, Mutiny on The Bounty.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Fifty-Nine: Two Different Houses

Back to the serious stuff once again with two films that have nothing in common apart from the word house in the title. First of we have The House of Rothschild which was nominated for the Oscar in 1935. The film is basically a propaganda film bigging up the Jews in response to the start of the Anti-Semetic movement coming from Hitler's Germany. At a time when most of the heads of the major studios were Jewish they decided to fight back in film form. It basically looks at the Rothschild family who grew up on 'Jew Street' a place where the Jews had to stay and keep in from 6 in the evening till 6 in the morning. The family is headed by patriach Meyer who convinces his five sons to each start banks in Europe's major cities but to always consult each other on major matters. Later on the Rothschild boys are all grown-up and together helped finance the fight against Napoelon, however once Napoleon is captured, because of the Rothschilds being Jewish, their contribution to the success of the war is glossed over and they are once again ignored. When Napoeleon escapes the brothers retreat back to see their mother on Jew Street they think about allying themselves with Napoeleon but in the end they decide to stay on the side of the allies this portrays the Rothschilds as caring as they help the people who wouldn't help them. The final scene of the film, for some reason, is presented in three-strip technicolour and sees Nathan Rothschild meet the Duke of Wellington who finally congratulates him on his help during the war-effort. Personally I didn't really 'get' The House of Rothscild, I thought the performances were perfectly adequate especialy George Arliss in the duel role of Nathan and Meyer Rothschild. But the story itself was weak there was a horrible subplot in which Nathan's daughter wanted to marry a non-Jew which was just insipid. Also although I got the point in the films which promoted the goodness of the Jews I felt it wasn't really strong enough to constitue being considered as propaganda. I also found the three-strip technicolour a little gimmicky and I really didn't see the point in it. This was never going to be a match for that year's winner, It Happened One Night.

A better film comes from the third ever Oscar ceremony and could possibly be considered the first ever proper prison film. The film follows Kent Marlowe as he is imprisoned, supposedly wrongly, for manslaughter. He is forced to share a cell with Wallace Beery's fearsome Butch as well as Chester Morris' sensible and good-natured thief John Morgan. Kent quickly becomes a snitch and plants a knife on Morgan. Morgan escapes anyway and meets up with Kent's sister who he falls for but the rest of the family ring the police and Morgan gets put in jail once again. He then finds out that Butch is planning a breakout and Kent is thinking of joining him but, after meeting Kent's family, Morgan tries to talk him out of it. In the end Morgan gets involved in the breakout to stop Kent breaking out but in the process also helps out the guards aprehend the escapees and his release is granted as he leaves the prison hoping to reunite with Kent's sister and live on an island. Although the plot is quite slight, The Big House seems like a revolutionary film, the scenes of the prisoners moving from their cells, to the yard, to the dining hall are filmed very well for an early talking picture. Wallace Beery was the star of the show as the menacing Butch but Chester Morris made a pretty good leading man as the likeable Morgan. This well written film was rewarded for an Oscar for its screenplay as well as being the first ever film to win the Best Sound Oscar. It's just a shame that it came up against the realistic war picture All Quiet on The Western Front because this film really did give you a feel for what life must be like in prison from the first shot in which Kent comes into prison up to the riot itself this was a very good film indeed.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Fifty-Eight: Some Light Relief

After bubonic plagues, evil stepfathers and French revolutions dominating the last three films I watched on the challenge I thought it was time to indulge in a bit of light-hearted relief so here we go with another screwball comedy, bizzarely directed by the guy who directed the Tale of Two Cities adaptation, Libelled Lady. The film sees Connie a millionaire heiress played by Myrna Loy sue a newspaper after a they print a scandalous rumor about her. The newspaper's editor, played by Spencer Tracy, decides to hire ladies' man Bill, played by William Powell, to get Connie to drop the suit. He does this by getting the editor's fiancee Agnes, played by Jean Harlow, to marry him and then manouvere it for Connie to fall for him and Agnes to catch them together. Of course this being a screwball comedy things don't go to plan, and Agnes begins to fall for Bill much to the editor's displeasure. Things come to a head as Connie and Bill get engaged and Agnes reveals that she and Bill are actually married and then Connie and Bill have to convince her that she and the editor belong together.

Unless Frank Capra is involved I find these romantic screwball comedies incredibly lightweight. Not that that is neccesarily a bad thing and this one trots along at a nice pace. William Powell and Myrna Loy have proved that they have great on-screen chemistry and indeed the scenes featuring Connie and Bill are probably the film's best. Despite Powell and Loy's chemistry, it was Powell and Harlow who were involved at the time of the film's release. This is in fact Jean Harlow's first appearance in the challenge, she accounts herself well in quite a small role but she is still strong enough to contend with the other actors while Tracy excels at doing something a bit lighter than what I have usually seen him in. Not really an Oscar contender per se, this is still an amiable enough comedy that wiles away an hour and a half quite easily.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Fifty-Seven: A Bit of Charlie

In what seems like a lifetime ago I watched two films based on the works of one of Britain's best loved wordsmiths, William Shakespeare, now I'm dipping back into the list and getting two films that follow a similar pattern as both were based on works written by another chap you may have heard of - Charles Dickens.

First off is George Cukor's massive adaptation of David Copperfield, Copperfield is probably one of the better known of Dickens' work and was obviously a good choice to be one of the first of his books to be adapted since the advent of talking movies. Cukor was also responsible for some of the 1930s adaptations that I've already looked at on this list, Little Women and Romeo and Juliet. For those unfamiliar with the story it shows the development of David Copperfield, from being born to being raised by a single mother with the help of Peggorty the maid. Copperfield's mother then remarries and he is sent first to a boarding school (not seen in the film) and then to a factory in London. There he meets the jovial but constantly in debt lanlord Wilkins Micawber but when Micawber is sent to the debter's prison, Copperfield feels like he has nothing to live for and treks from London to Dover to live with his great aunt and her dotty companion Mr. Dick. As David grows up he falls in love with the beautiful Dora while he also works as a trainee clerk alongside the devious Uriah Heap. David's old school friend Steerforth returns and seduces and absconds with Peggoty's niece Emily, this incident gives the film one of its most vivid scenes as Pegggoty's brother searches high and low for Emily in a windswept montage. In the end David married Dora but she dies in childbirth so he remarries the sensible Agnes while the bad guys all get their comeuppance.

For one of the earliest Dickens adaptations, Cukor has been able to fit in a lot of detail and filmed some rather superb sequences. David's trek from London to Dover is a brilliant sequence as comes ever nearer to his aunt. The scene in which Steerforth and David meet Dora for the first time is also rather cute and as previously mentioned the search for Emily. Its a shame then that the two actors in the lead role almost let the film down Freddie Bartholemew who was annoying in Captain Courageous doesn't change my opinion of him here, while Frank Lawton as the older David is fairly bland. Thankfully the colourful characters are given fitting actors to play them W.C. Fields is witty and warm as Micawber, Lionel Barrymore is as excellent as ever as Mr Peggoty and the Benny Hill-like Lennox Pawle brings the eccentric Mr. Dick to life spectacularly. Although, at well over two hours, the film sometimes drags overall Cukor has done a good job of bringing the world of Copperfield to life.

Although both of these adaptations were released in the same year Copperfield qualified for the 1935 ceremony losing to Mutiny on The Bounty while A Tale of Two Cities had to wait till 1936 to lose to The Great Zigfield. This time Jack Conway, who we've previously met directing Viva Villa!, tries to adapt Dickens' account of the French revolution. The story sees Lucie Manette discover that her father is still alive imprisoned in the Bastille. Lucie brings her father back across the channel and while on the boat meets the charming Darnay who comes from one of France's most tyrinacal aristocratic families. On entrance to England, Darnay is framed for treason, but is released thanks to the efforts of Sydney Carton a lawyer who is able to get a confession out of the men who frame Darnay. Carton falls for Lucie but Lucie has already fallen for Darnay and they marry and have a daughter. We are then taken back to Paris where the French underclasses rebel against the aristocrats but then a certain number of them what revenge against the families that have wronged them including Darnay. He is tricked in going back to Paris only to be arrested despite Lucie and Carton's best efforts he sentenced to be executed but the day before this happens Carton swaps places with Darnay and is able to end his life a hero.

Again a brilliant adaptation this time the scenes that resonate the most are those during the French revolution. A comibnation of dim lighting transposed with large amounts of fire is quite horrifying. Also the scenes in which Carton falls for Lucie are incredibly well done meaning that the terror is transposed with some humor. Ronald Colman as Carton is brilliant here, previously I wasn't sure about his acting ability especially in Arrowsmith, but in A Tale of Two Cities he brings the drunken, smitten and ultimately selfless lawyer to life. Also worth a mention are two actors who appeared in both of these films first of all Basil Rathbone who has played villains in both pieces as Copperfield's evil stepfather in the first film he terrifies every time he comes on screen while here as the heartless Marquisse he is incredibly sinister. Meanwhile Edna May Oliver, who also played the aunt in Little Women and the nurse in Romeo and Juliet, played Copperfield's mad aunt and the loyal and eccentric maid in A Tale of Two Cities, in the latter role she is able to kick-ass and protect Lucie in the final scenes.

I think both of these films deserved their place on the nomination lists as they were able to bring Dickens' stories to an audience who had probably never read them. Although Copperfield probably wasn't a match for Mutiny on The Bounty, A Tale of Two Cities in some way was better than the overly-long specatcular The Great Ziegfeld. But both are examples of how adaptations of classic novels should be done.

Review: Greenberg

Its fair to say that Noah Baumbach is an acquired taste, he seems to direct films about cold upper-class people who are unhappy with their lives. I thought The Squid and The Whale was fairly enjoyable mainly due to the performances from the young actors while I found Margot at The Wedding rather cold thanks to Nicole Kidman's icy performance. For his third feature Baumbach has been able to snag yet another big Hollywood star in Ben Stiller who plays Roger Greenberg the manic depressive who has just come out of psychatric care to houesit for his brother while he and his family are away. However Stiller doesn't appear on screen until at least ten minutes into the film instead we are also asked to follow Florence, the Greenberg's young housekeeper, who we meet in the very first frame of the film following her on her various errands. Predictably Florence and Roger form a kind of self-destructive relationship with both of them incapable of proper feelings this is very on-off. But this is a film about past regrets as Roger returns to L.A. after 15 years in New York he has to meet his old friends some of whom he let down when he decided not to sign a record contract for their band. One friend in particular, Ivan, hasn't quite forgivern him and is now working fixing computers and is currently seperated from his wife. The film then follows Roger's relationships with both Florence and Ivan and will look at the problems behind his instability.

Ben Stiller has tried films outside his comic safety-zone before especially in the Wes Anderson films, but Greenberg sees him play almost an unlikeable character who is incredibly selfish and often has arguments with people for no reason at all. But Stiller still seems to make him likeable and there are some very funny moments most involving Greenberg writing angry letters to various companies and also through his bonding with his brother's dogs. Rhys Ifans also gives a very low-key performance as the put-upon Ivan still trying to cope with Roger's friendship despite all he has already gone through with him. But it is Greta Gerwig's Florence who is the most relatable and likeable character, Gerwig is an accomplished actress whose performance is realistic and just very cute. Overall Greenberg, like most of Baumbach's films, isn't for everyone in fact five people walked out during the screening but it is quirky without being annoying and features a fine performance from an actress who has a bright future in front of her.