De Laurentiis pt 5: the Schlocky 80s

This week at TFE we've celebrated the centennial of one of cinema’s most prolific and legendary producers, Dino De Laurentiis... with look backs at his Italian breakthrough, his expensive taste in 60s epics, an American reinvention, and the hubris of King Kong.

Here's Chris Feil to wrap things up...  

With the exception of Hannibal Lecter, history tends to overlook Dino De Laurentiis genre contributions. In fact when Manhunter (1986) would arrive, Hannibal was somewhat the closing chapter to what Dino would bring in the late 70s and 80s. Instead the interim brought its share of delightful schlock, namely giving David Lynch enduring battle wounds and introducing the world to Arnold Schwarzenegger. I’m talking about the earnest disasterpieces Dune and Conan the Barbarian.

Think of this as the De Laurentiis dessert of our week-long series...

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Sweden narrows down Oscar options: true story, sci-fi drama, or gay romance?

A few tidbits of note in the Best International Film competition at the forthcoming Oscars. Two countries have been approved to submit that never have before: Uzbekistan and Uganda! In other "U" alphabetized news, The Ukraine will select their film on August 23rd.

But the most speficic recent news is that Sweden has already whittled their possible submission down to three films, and one of them is basically a Georgian film (though Georgia definitely won't be submitting it as they do not approve). They are...

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De Laurentiis Pt 4: T'was beauty that... ooh, look King Kong

This week at TFE we're celebrating the centennial of one of cinema’s most prolific and legendary producers, Dino De Laurentiis.  Here's Nathaniel R with a film that made the producer even more globally famous.

Dino de Laurentiis with "a new star" Jessica Lange

It's easy to see the retro but continuing appeal of King Kong to filmmakers. The legendary Beauty & Beast story is always about the movies themselves. An actress is the damsel in distress, the plot catalyst character is a movie director, the supersized monster is the myth being made. Along the way the story intending to be told by the showbiz cast of characters radically changes but the movie still manages to be about putting on a show. It's just another kind of show altogether after they meet Kong. The story, or, more accurately, the need to reboot it over and over again, is a great metaphor for the amoral churning of Hollywood as Capitalistic Machine. In most versions of King Kong, you dispose of the talent just as the show ends. Death to Kong! (Long live New Kong!)

While De Laurentiis was not actually a director, he was enough of a character in showbiz to often feel like the man behind the curtain instead of the man calling the shots on set (Directed by who?). Such was the case with his remake of King Kong (1976)...

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Oscar Chart Updates: Two-Lead Men's Movies

Robert Pattinson & Willem Dafoe in "The Lighthouse"

We're in for it with category fraud this year, y'all. Yes, we're in for it every year of course until something finally breaks within the Academy (disgruntled character actors stage a revolution, "do you hear the people sing singing the song of angry men..." c'mon SAG!) but 2019 in particular appears to be a film year with an unusual amount of two-leading-men films. We've got (arguably) The Lighthouse, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Ford v Ferrari, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, The Two Popes, and maybe more. So we've opted to just kind of ignore the problem and assume we know who is going where in the BEST ACTOR and BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR chart updates though as always we wish the leading men would just stay in lead like they're supposed to. If it was good enough for Amadeus, it's good enough for you, people!

Having said all that we just realized we left Matt Damon (Ford v Ferrari) and Robert Pattinson (The Lighthouse) off of either chart which is silly but not intentional. We'll squeeze them in somewhere as soon as we have a moment.  What do you think of the new rankings? Any strong hunches this August? 

Oscar Chart Updates: 5 Questions about the Actresses

It was long past time for a revision of those April Foolish Oscar Predictions charts. ("That's an understatement," the readers scream in unison) so here we go, finally for early August. It's just a few weeks before things really get churning with the fall festivals. So here are ten questions that are on our mind now that we've finished updating the BEST ACTRESS and BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS charts - so check them out. And please to do your own speculation in the comments about these questions.

01. Will Scarlett Johansson finally get an Oscar nomination? Or TWO? She's got a lead actress bid with the buzzy Marriage Story and we know that Noah Baumbach is good with actors. But we still think she's more likely as the brave mother in Taiki Waitit's satire JoJo Rabbit. The hilarious thing about Scarlett is she's so underrated as an actor now -- given her years in franchiseland and her recent missteps in interviews -- that she might even qualify as a "I didn't know she had that in her" surprise type player... even if that's a case of willful amnesia about her talent...

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