Vintage 1979: Kramer vs. Kramer, Sweeney Todd, Chris Pratt, Rosamund Pike, and More...

1979 is our "Year of the Month" and this post was way way too much fun to research. Before the main course of the Supporting Actress Smackdown (pushed to June 7th), let's marinate a little in the year that was. 

original print ad for Kramer vs. Kramer (available on eBay)

Jackie Earle Haley, Dennis Quaid, Dennis Christopher, and Daniel Stern broke out via "Breaking Away"

BEST MOVIES ACCORDING TO...

Oscar: Kramer vs Kramer*, All That Jazz, Apocalypse Now, Breaking Away, and Norma Rae were the best pictures nominees but they also loved La Cage Aux Folles, The China Syndrome, Manhattan, Being There and The Black Stallion

Golden Globe: (drama) Kramer vs Kramer*, Apocalypse Now, The China Syndrome, Manhattan and Norma Rae (comedy)  Breaking Away*, Being There, Hair, The Rose, and 10

Cannes: Apocalypse Now AND All That Jazz (Glenn discussed this odd consecutive Oscar-adjacent business)

Box Office: 1) Kramer vs. Kramer 2) The Amityville Horror 3) Rocky II 4) Apocalypse Now 5) Star Trek: The Motion Picture 6) Alien 7) "10" 8) The Jerk 9) Moonraker 10) The Muppet Movie

 Gene Siskel: 1) Hair 2) Kramer vs Kramer 3) The Deer Hunter 4) Breaking Away 5) Manhattan 6) The Marriage of Maria Braun 7) Nosferatu 8) The Onion Field 9) Time After Time 10) The China Syndrome

Roger Ebert: 1) Apocalypse Now 2) Breaking Away 3) The Deer Hunter 4) The Marriage of Maria Braun 5) Hair 6) Saint Jack 7) Kramer vs Kramer 8) The China Syndrome 9) Nosferatu 10) "10"

List-Mania continues with music hits, debut characters, new toys, and adorable "born in '79" people & things after the jump...  

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Breaking: Cara Seymour to Guest Blog!

Sister Harriett. Hellcat Maggie. Pat Archer. Linda Houston. Mrs. Contie. Amelia Kavan. Marjorie Mellor. And 'Christie'...

One of the screen's best character actresses is taking over The Film Experience on June 9th. You've seen her in Gangs of New York, Hotel Rwanda, Dancer in the Dark, Birth, Adaptation, An Education, and American Psycho, among others. 

She wowed again as the unconventional nun "Sister Harriet" in Steven Soderbergh's Emmy hopeful "The Knick" (which just finished shooting Season 2). Now meet the actress behind the indelible characters.

Have any question for this fine talent?

HBO’s LGBT History: Common Threads (1989)

Manuel is working his way through all the LGBT-themed films & miniseries produced and distributed by HBO.

Last week we looked at the quietly touching film Tidy Endings (1988), written and starring Harvey Fierstein and a must-see for Stockard Channing completists. We’re not going far this week, since much of HBO’s early LGBT output tried to grapple with the AIDS epidemic that had dominated the cultural conversation about gay men in the 1980s.

Did you know that films produced by HBO have won over 20 Oscars? This past year alone, HBO dominated both documentary categories with Citizenfour and Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1 emerging victorious. It has been a stealth awards run which Sheila Nevins (currently the president of HBO Documentary Films but her involvement stretches back to 1979) has all but nurtured herself. 

Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989)
Written & Directed by: Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman (based on the book, The Quilt: Stories From The NAMES Project by Cindy Ruskin)
Narrated by: Dustin Hoffman (who'd just won his 2nd Oscar)

HBO’s commitment to strong documentary storytelling goes back to the late 1980s; their first Oscar win came in 1985 when the American Undercover special Soldiers in Hiding won the Best Documentary Feature award, the first time it was bestowed to a pay cable service. Having hosted the then-surgeon general in their 1987 informative special, AIDS: Everything You and Your Family Need to Know…But Were Afraid to Ask, it’s not surprising HBO would help produce Epstein and Friedman’s Common Threads which won Best Documentary Feature at the 62nd Academy Awards, the year Driving Miss Daisy took Best Picture (how’s that for a double feature?). Common Threads continued the network’s commitment to mining urgent and contemporary social issues in their documentaries...

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Review: Far From The Madding Crowd

In Far From the Madding Crowd, a new film adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel, every eligible man wants Carey Mulligan’s winsome Bathsheba. But she cannot be tamed! (Funny how commitment phobia reads as strength in a female protagonist and weakness in a male protagonist). Or at least she won’t “settle” for less than what she’s already planned for herself. Nevertheless the wanting continues and the camera, observes her, often at a distance as with a memorable shot of Bathsheba laying back from her saddle, as if enjoying the tactile and visual sensations of the powerful creature beneath her and the vibrant foliage and sky above her.

(This review contains a general trajectory ending spoiler but it is based on a 151 year-old classic novel.)

Three bachelors and Bathsheba's issues after the jump... 

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Beauty Break: "Cinema Without People"

My favorite tumblr of the moment is called Cinema Without People which collects images from movies without the characters in them. Sometimes it's a perfect reminder of the skill of production designers, art directors, and set decorators such as the Goldfinger set.

(One of my favorite awards stats is the different ways that BAFTA and Oscar treat James Bond films and BAFTA rightly nominated this one for Art Direction.)

Other times it reminds you of great storytelling, auteur quirks, or the characters themselves through their very absence. It's nearly always haunting and beautiful. The very shy "about" portion of the tumblr simply declares that it was made with love for introvert film fans. I am not an introvert but I can still feel the love.

After the jump 10 more images that caught my eye that I just loved...

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