Celeste Holm (1917-2012)

The oldest living Best Supporting Actress winner has now, unfortunately, left us. And to think we were just talking about the divinely appealing Celeste Holm. Holm died earlier today at 95 years of age in her Manhattan home with her husband at her side. She'd recently been hospitalized for dehydration and suffered a heart attack.

Celeste celebrating her Oscar at an anniversary screening in '12 and on Oscar nite in '48

Today's she's best remembered for her work in All About Eve (1950) and Gentlemen's Agreement (1947) for which she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar, but her successful career also included Broadway stardom (she was the original Ado Annie in Oklahoma!) and her own television series "Honestly Celeste". She will most definitely be missed. 

In the last completed episode of Best Pictures from the Outside In (a series y'all bring up with regularity), we talked about Gentlemen's Agreement in which I found Holm fully deserving of her Oscar, writing:

In all seriousness Celeste Holm is tremendously good in this movie as a sassy career gal with a big but slightly lonely social life. At first I was worried it was one of those cases where you latch on to and overvalue a charismatic performance because it saves you from its dull surroundings (too many examples to name) but by the movie's end I was convinced that I would have found her sensational even if she hadn't been surrounded by so much dead air; the portrait was so vivid I could project a whole sequel with her character as the star.

Mike remarked that he wanted to meet her to thank her for being the best thing in so many movies.

Celeste and her husband at her 90th birthday party in 2007Celeste had been recently troubled by bitter family divisions and legal complications involving her depleted fortune, her much younger husband (from her fifth marriage in 2004) and her two sons. Our condolescences go out to all of them -- we hope everyone resolved their differences towards the end and hangs on to the good memories.

Program yourself a mini-Celeste fest in her honor soon. There are wonderful and/or storied films to choose from: All About Eve, Come to the Stable, Gentleman's Agreement, High Society, The Tender Trap, and the television musical Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella among them.

Box Office Quickie

There's not much to report with this weekend's box office. It's more of the same as every studio, shaking from fear of the Bat, avoiding getting anywhere near opening weekend of The Dark Knight Rises.  Ice Age #8 (No, seriously I have no idea how many there have been now. No wait, I do: Too Many.) had the weekend to itself but for Spider-Man holdover and Ted's word of mouth.

Top five chart adapted from Box Office Mojo...

Of this week's top five Ted and Magic Mike are the most profitable on account of their lower than average budgets. But once you count in merchandising I suppose Brave, despite a budget nearly the size of its domestic gross (thus far), will be the winner... eventually. Disney Princesses = Profits Happily Ever After. 

What did you see this weekend? I stayed in and watched Jeff, Who Lives At Home as you commanded. More on that one soon.

Men of Steel 'n' Spandex

My eyes are beginning to glaze over from the Hype-a-Thon that is the interwebs around Comic Con time. The Earth is so overrun with superheroes that it's remarkable that crime still exists at all. I went to get coffee this morning and the street in front of my favorite deli was cordoned off as a crime scene. Not joking. The heroes are all trapped in airconditioned movie theaters our moviegoing fates having been long since sealed.

See, the grosses for every superhero movie that's arrived, yes even notorious "flops" like Green Lantern, divisive films like Watchmen, or the ones that would've been 'Straight to Video' in other decades like Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, have had little trouble breaking $100-200 million globally so the only logical thing is to greenlight as many as possible with tighter budgets. Superheroes are the new Horror Flicks -- you'll always make a profit if you control your budgets.

Man of Steel teaser poster

If Hollywood had any cold feet at all about greenlighting every superhero they own the rights to, this summer's one-two-three KO that is Avengers + Spidey + Batman (a trio that will obviously clear $3 billion globally) will surely doom us to one superhero movie a month or more by 2015. Soon superhero movies will be as ubiquitous as horror flicks. Especially if Warner Bros ever gets its act together. They own ALL DC characters -- unlike Marvel Studios/Disney which has to work from a deck with several key cards missing -- and yet, apart from Batman regularly and Superman every once in awhile they can't seem to get anything working properly.

So, what's next?

Next Weekend
The Dark Knight Rises - this is the last we'll see of Bruce Wayne for awhile though Nolan is already suggesting that Anne Hathaway deserves a Catwoman movie. Careful what you wish for *cough* Halle Berry

The massively spandexed release schedule as it currently stands after the jump...

Click to read more ...

Linkland Express

The Onion "Katie Holmes Glad She Can Finally Practice Scientology in Peace." Hee!
The Advocate has a historical interview piece on the making of the gay drama Making Love (1982) a landmark movie for Hollywood. I had NO idea that Kate Jackson was originally set to play Meryl Streep's role in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). Crazy huh?
My New Plaid Pants Gratuitous Harrison Ford. I totally forgot to celebrate Mr. Indiana Jones while the rest of the internet was doing so. Like most people who were alive during the 70s and 80s I kind of love him. JA's post has some really fun young Harrison photos. How have I never seen Frantic?
First Showing Daniel Radcliffe will star in Horns, adapted from Joe Hill's novel 

EW has a gallery of the "50 best movies you've never seen" but I've seen 20 of them so they lie! That said some of those are awfully good pictures like the two Lukas Moodyson films Together (2000) and Lilja 4Ever (2002) and the recent Fish Tank (2009). My 30 unseen do include a few I've always meant to watch.
PopWatch The Eisner Awards, aka the comic book Oscars were given out in San Diego. A big day for Marvel's blind superhero Daredevil who was always pretty great in the comics but was pretty terrible when he hit the big screen...
Battle Pug was the winner for best digital comic so that one is easy to check out.
Salon Andrew O'Hehir revisits Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, two films he had issues with, on the eve of the release of, well, you know...

Spielberg and Zanuck on the set of JAWSFinally, RIP to legendary film producer Richard D. Zanuck who died on Friday at the age of 77. I can't even remotely say that I love his filmography given that Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and Alice in Wonderland (2010) -- two pictures which caused me great personal pain via their Oscar and Box Office might -- are chief among his hits. But I have to tip my hat for his efforts to champion a then unknown Steven Spielberg in the 1970s. Perhaps it was Spielberg's destiny to become the world's most popular filmmaker and no one person could have changed that. But if anyone could be thanked for getting Spielberg started beyond the man himself, it would be Zanuck. He basically launched the young filmmaker with the one two punch of Sugarland Express (1974) and mega-hit Jaws (1975), Spielberg's first two theatrical releases.

Oscar Trivia Confusion: According to the New York Times, Zanuch also holds a peculiar Oscar record. He's reportedly the only son of a Best Picture Oscar winner (his father was legendary film producer Darryl F. Zanuck) to win Best Picture himself (for Driving Miss Daisy). But according to the IMDb, Zanuck Sr. never won the Best Picture Oscar though his AMPAS track record is nothing to dismiss given that he has three Irving Thalbergs.