George Sidney Centennial: Anchors Aweigh

It's George Sidney Centennial Week!

Dancin' Dan here to begin our mini-celebration of one of Hollywood's more undersung directors.

George Sidney was an MGM workhorse who got his start on Our Gang shorts. Though he was nominated for the DGA Award four times between 1952-1957, he never received an Oscar nomination. No, not even for 1945's Best Picture nominee Anchors Aweigh. And really, you could make a very persuasive argument that he was robbed.

Anchors Aweigh is a strange picture, one that feels more like a fantasy than anything else, and to the extent that it is remembered today, it is remembered for one thing:

You would be forgiven, of course, for thinking that the film really was a fantasy based on that one number...

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The Scene at NYFF with Naomie Harris and Kenneth Lonergan

Murtada reporting from a weekend at the NYFF.

The New York Film Festival enables local cinephiles to catch a finely curated collection of films that have screened at other festivals earlier in the year. It is also a veritable hotbed of casual sightings of the New York film crowd: there’s Todd Haynes entering the Alice Tully Hall animatedly chatting with his Carol editor Alfonso Gonçalves (who has two films in the festival: Gimme Danger and Paterson). Here's Mikhail Baryshnikov posing with his daughter Anna who’s in Manchester by the Sea; I see Bob Balaban making his way through the security line. And, look, Edie Falco introducing herself to Casey Affleck after the Q and A for his movie.

Lonergan in conversation with Jones

Most interesting though are the stories filmmakers tell as they screen their films...

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Beauty vs Beast: They Make Everything... Groovy

Jason from MNPP here wishing our favorite 90s scream queen Neve Campbell a very happy 43rd birthday today! Since we've already done a Scream themed "Beauty vs Beast" we've decided to celebrate with another choice Neve-fest, and it don't get no choicer than John McNaughton's spectacularly sleazy 1998 thriller Wild Things. Coming as it did in the middle of Party of Five and after the first two Scream films it was a bit of a shock to watch Neve let loose with some seriously indecent behavior; it was a little less surprising coming from her co-star, the boisterously indecent Denise Richards, but no less entertaining for it. But which Wild Thing makes your heart sing...

PREVIOUSLY Last week Grease was the word, and that word was spelled S-A-N-D-Y. Why? Because Olivia Newton-John, people. She was, as the saying goes, the one that we wanted, to the tune of 77%. Said Derreck:

"Team Sandy for Hopelessly Devoted to You and that outfit at the end but I have a soft spot for John Travolta's final note in Summer Nights because I can actually hit it when my drunk ass does karaoke."

Still Blissing Out Over "La La Land"

Over the weekend I wrote up an Oscar preview for Towleroad - which you can consider a companion to our current Best Picture Chart and updated Oscar predictions. Here's what I wrote about La La Land, which I realize I didn't capsule review for you at TIFF: 

This musical from the young writer/director Damien Chazelle (Whiplash) won the coveted "Audience Award" at Toronto. That prize nearly always aligns with a Best Picture nomination in January. But the nomination will be the least of it - it has "winner" written all over it. La La Land is a total bliss-out, a colorful two hour romance with song and dance numbers about an aspiring actress and her jazz musician boyfriend. This is the third movie to co-star Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling and their onscreen chemistry is even better this go around and it was tremendous to begin with in Crazy Stupid Love five years back.

Here's a shocking statistic for trivia buffs: If La La Land is nominated for Best Picture it will be the first original live-action musical to do so since All That Jazz (1979). The musical nominees inbetween them were either animated  (Beauty & The Beast), adaptations of pre-existing shows (Chicago) or used pre-existing music for their songs (Moulin Rouge!). If La La Land wins it will be the first original movie musical to win the Oscar since Gigi (1958).

In addition to these general notes here are a few slighter more specific ones...

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The Furniture: A Warm Welcome in Hunt for the Wilderpeople

"The Furniture" our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber

Hunt for the Wilderpeople, the year’s most heart-warming comedy, may not seem like an obvious example of unique production design. It takes place entirely in the backwoods of New Zealand, much of it deep in the bush. It’s a showcase for the tremendous beauty of the land, not opulent sets.

Yet while the design team may not contribute to the film’s breathtaking vistas, their work is crucial to its narrative arc. Before young Ricky (Julian Dennison) and his ornery foster uncle Hec (Sam Neill) are forced by circumstance to run from the law, they don’t like each other very much. It’s Bella (Rima Te Wiata), Hec’s wife, who welcomes Ricky into their lives. Her love and her house serve as an emotional foundation, and her sudden death sparks the adventure to come.

Were it not for her memory, Ricky and Hec would run away, each to his own wilderness.

Their love for her keeps them together, or at least the guilt it inspires...

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