Podcast: Boyhood & Lucy

The gangs back together! It's a Joe, Nick, Katey & Nathaniel reunion. We rarely get all four of us together anymore but this week we're discussing Luc Besson's Lucy and Richard Linklater's Boyhood, and, super briefly: tree frogs, forever bangs, green lantern, Interior Leather Bar and Guardians of the Galaxy.

You can listen at the bottom of the post or download the conversation on iTunes. Continue the conversation in the comments. We'll continue this particular conversation again tomorrow. We just kept talking (not about these two movies) so there's a bit more to come.

Lucy & Boyhood

A Year with Kate: Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)

Episode 33 of 52: In which Katharine Hepburn is like the Goddess from the Machine.

I want to write about Katharine Hepburn, but the movie keeps getting in the way! Reading last night’s contributions to Hit Me With Your Best Shot, I was struck by how many bloggers described Suddenly, Last Summer as “camp,” “wildly expressive,” or “absolutely batshit gonzo crazy.” This is a film that will not be ignored. It’s garish and shocking. The psycho-babble hasn’t aged well--as Nathaniel points out, such things rarely do. The themes of cannibalism, sexual deviance, and monstrous madness creep like kudzu vines hanging in Violet Venable’s garden, blocking the light and threatening to squeeze the resistance out of unwary viewers who venture into the film unwarned.

This unsettling excess had been, up to that point, unusual for director Joseph L. Mankiewicz--best known for character dramas--but can be easily traced to his collaborators. Gore Vidal adapted Tennessee Williams’s short lyric play about a rich widow’s attempts to hide her dead sons secrets by lobotomizing her niece into a Southern Gothic by way of Freaks. There are scenes with sanitariums and gardens, and many things are said. In fact, you might overlook how talkative the film is thanks to Jack Hilyard’s beautiful black and white cinematography. Elizabeth Taylor and Katharine Hepburn (both Oscar nominated) battle over and between Montgomery Clift against the lurid Louisiana locations created by Oliver Messel and William Kellner (also nominated). In short, this film is sensory overload.

But I digress. This series is about Katharine Hepburn, not censorship or deviance or strong production design. One shot stands out to me as the definitive Best Shot when discussing Kate’s turn as Violet Venable: an empty chasm in the ceiling into which Dr. Cukrowicz gazes as the elevator whirs to life. You hear Violet Venable before you see her...

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Say What, Arnold & Abigail

Amuse us by adding dialogue or a caption to this image of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Abigail Breslin in the forthcoming zombie movie Maggie which will apparently premiere at TIFF

The winner will pick the next banner theme. You may have noticed the banner uptop recently changed to a "stankface" theme courtesy of recent winner JoFo

Lauren Bacall (1924-2014)

Lauren Bacall receiving her Honorary OscarShe arrived on the scene fully formed, the most womanly, not girlish, teenager you ever did see. In truth Lauren Bacall was newly 20 when To Have and Have Not premiered but it's tough to imagine that she made it at 19. The enormous age gap with co-star Humphrey Bogart (a full quarter century) who she'd marry offscreen almost instantly was mitigated by her steely maturity. There'd be faint echoes of Lauren later, arguably, in the great Kathleen Turner's throaty sensuality and Scarlett Johansson's uncommonly early self-possession, but like all true stars Lauren Bacall was an original and remained her own inimitable thing.

2014 has been unusually cruel in the taking of key giants from Hollywood's golden age but we'll always have their films to remember them by. And in Bacall's case the filmography stretches and stretches and stretches across the eras of cinema. Bacall died yesterday at 89 in Manhattan, bringing her unusually enduring career to an end. She might not have been the most gifted or versatile actress from her peer group, but she had real onscreen fire. Perhaps it was her agelessness - she always seemed 40ish to me, whether she was a teenager or an old woman -- that helped her age so naturally onscreen. She worked consistently right until the end, finding key roles in every decade. That's something to celebrate in and of itself, in an industry so obsessed with youth.

After the jump, 10 essentials covering every decade of her career:

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Visual Index ~ Suddenly Last Summer (1959)

This week's Hit Me With Your Best Shot episode is devoted to the film adaptation of Tennessee William's Suddenly Last Summer (1959) in which a brain surgeon (Montgomery Clift) whose hospital is in dire need of cash is enlisted by a filthy rich woman (Katharine Hepburn) to perform a lobotomy on her niece (Elizabeth Taylor) because that niece keeps telling lies about her dead gay son. Got that? That's just the kick-off to the crazy.

This sensationalistic film, which was the third and final onscreen pairing of bosom buddies and immortal stars Taylor and Clift, was nominated for three Oscars: Two Best Actress nominations and Art Direction.

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER (1959)
Cinematography by Jack Hildyard
Shots are displayed in their rough chronological order. Click on the shot to read the corresponding article.
11 Shots Selected By 12 Participants

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