Robert Loggia (1930-2015) ...and 80s Oscar Movies.

Tough guy Italian American actor Robert Loggia, arguably best known for supporting roles in gangster classics, has passed away at age 85. He had been suffering from Alzheimers. Condolences to his family and his fans.

The enduring character actor's career began on the Broadway stage in the 1950s but he quickly began mixing it up on television where he starred in a few short lived TV shows and made numerous guest appearances over the past five decades (!). His first big screen role (uncredited) was as "Frankie Peppo" in the Paul Newman classic Somebody Up There Likes Me but his film career didn't hit its peak until the 1980s with a string of hits including An Officer and a Gentleman, Scarface, Prizzi's Honor, and the comedy Big with Tom Hanks.

Though the earliest Oscar ceremony memory I have is Shirley Maclaine winning (1983), the first Oscar race I actively followed was in 1985, the year Robert Loggia was nominated for the courtroom thriller Jagged Edge. Now in the paleozoic pre-internet era "actively following" the race was much different. It required 1) going to movies that adults thought were great and 2) reading a few articles in weekly and monthly magazines about who might be nominated. That's it! [More...]

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The Animated Feature Contenders: Moomins on the Riviera

Tim here. Every December, Tim's Toons preps for the upcoming Oscar nominations in January by looking at some of the smaller and more easily overlooked films that have thrown their hat in the ring for the Best Animated Feature Oscar. It's a slim list of 16 titles this year, which means that if even one of them fails to meet the eligibility requirements (they don't all appear to have had their qualifying theatrical run yet), we wouldn’t have a year with five nominees. Something to think about as you all work on your nomination predictions.

Let’s turn now to one of those films that almost certainly won't make the cut no matter how many nominees end up happening, through absolutely no fault of its own. Moomins on the Riviera is a slight, charming, and deeply silly comedy adapting an iconic Finnish comic strip and children’s book series, quite obscure in America, about a family of trolls that look rather like hippopotamuses with no mouths. The film itself is a French-Finnish co-production, and it feels like both of those nationalities are in play; the music and coloring feel significantly gallic, the story and designs have a definite Nordic tang (director Xavier Picard and co-director Hanna Hemilä are from the two respective countries, uncoincidentally).

The story, meanwhile, taken from Swedish-speaking Finn Tove Jansson's comics, is pure uncut childish frivolity (the Best Animated Feature category as a whole is distinctly juvenile this year). The Moomins – Moomin (Russell Tovey in the English dub), Moominmamma (Trace Ann Oberman), Moominpappa (Nathaniel Parker), and Moomin’s girlfriend Snorkmaiden (Stephanie Winiecki) – have an extraordinarily low-key run-in with some pirates, after which they rescue the tiny, bratty human girl Little My (Ruth Gibson). With one sea adventure having gone well, the gang agrees to another, and in no time at all they're battling storms and taking a tiny sailboat across the ocean to the Riviera. There, they have run-ins with haughty celebrities, snooty hotel staff, daffy artists and oblivious art collectors, and generally move with gentle, deliberate slowness through one of the kindest fish-out-of-water comedies I have ever seen.

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Relax with "Youth" This Weekend

Chris here. I don't about you, but I could use some rest and relaxation after a long week. How about some zen inspiration from Paolo Sorrentino's Youth, opening today in limited release.

Take some time this weekend to pamper yourself. Spa-in-the-Alps style.

Get in touch with your imagination. Cinema always helps.

Brave the winter chill with a friend! Explore new experiences!

Be a sexy, sweaty Paul Dano. You've earned it.

And Above All Else: Stay fabulous, dammit!

Youth opens today in select cities. Have a splendid weekend!

Pt 1. Oscar Editorials to Make the Blood Boil: on Category Fraud

'I'm not SUPPORTING you. I don't even like you!'I'm not in the habit, as some online pundits are, of dissing articles written by other people but two articles just published enraged me. ...I exaggerate. They made my skin crawl from their indifference and hypocrisy. Let's get the indifference out of our system first.

Variety's "Long and Honorable History of Category Fraud" - Tim Gray
Gray immediately pisses the reasonable Oscar-lover off with the way he begins this defense of Category Fraud, a topic birthed and coined right here at The Film Experience years ago since nobody else was willing to get riled up about it and make it a cause. He introduces the topic in the the context of real world problems with life & death consequences as a way to insure that any complaints about the topic are, in the grand scheme of things, entirely irrelevant. Yes, it's true, Tim. Category Fraud does not lead to car accidents (unless Nathaniel is enraged and driving) and it doesn't threaten the world's natural resources. But this is a cheap argument. Imagine the rage you'd conjure in the reader if you used this same tactic when speaking about the lack of diversity in casting and directing jobs in Hollywood. The same is, in fact, true. Nobody will die and it won't cause starvation or droughts if people of color don't get acting jobs and women aren't considered for directing big budget Hollywood movies. But that is absolutely no reason to not care about these problems!

Every topic will seem small when placed against death and disaster. By this logic the Oscars aren't worth talking about either! But that does not mean that the topics are unimportant within their own "ecosystems." That's Gray's choice of word so let's use it. [More...]

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Women's Pictures - Dee Rees's Pariah

Anne Marie returns after a brief break...

Over the course of this year, the purpose of our weekly "Women's Pictures" has been to explore the vast variety of female filmmakers. We've seen that women are not only present and working, but also highly diverse in their genre, style, and subject matter. Gender has often been a factor, but it has rarely been a focus. For the last month of the year, we're going to be watching films by two directors for whom gender, sexuality, and race are their focus: Dee Rees, and Celine Sciamma. Though both filmmakers have comparatively small filmographies, they have already established themselves as new, strong voices in contemporary cinema.

Dee Rees's 2011 film Pariah, based on the short of the same name, is an empathetic examination of a person usually invisible in cinema: the young black lesbian.

more...

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