Happy Birthday Peter Jackson!

In seems fitting yet not too obvious that Peter Jackson's birthday would be on Halloween. Imagine the costume fun one could cull from his films alone? 

Since today is his half century mark, we couldn't not tip our pointy Gandalf hats to the man. Whether you're counting down the days until he returns to The Shire with The Hobbit films or wishing he'd move away from Tolkien and on to greener other pastures, it's worth checking in on the official Hobbit blog from month to month (though they sadly haven't had a production video since July and those were fun.) 

Do you think The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) and The Hobbit: There and Back Again (2013) will continue the Rings Oscar streak? Perhaps you're more doubtful like me... even if The Hobbit films are great won't AMPAS voters feel that 11 Oscars in February 2004 was more than enough?

I would rank his films like so.

1. Heavenly Creatures (1994) -check out Melanie Lynskey's memoirs and our "Hit Me..." blog party if you're a fan of this brilliant hysteria.
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
3. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
5. King Kong (2005)
6. The Frighteners (1996) ...a revisit is definitely in order. Would I like it more or less?)
7. Meet the Feebles (1989)
8. Forgotten Silver (1995)
9. The Lovely Bones (2009)
   
   P.S. I have not seen Bad Taste (1987) or Dead Alive (1992) but I'm quite certain I'd prefer them to The Lovely Bones.

You?

Oscar Horrors: I've Written a Letter to Bette

HERE LIES... Bette Davis's Best Actress nomination for What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, sent to an early grave by Anne Bancroft's more Oscar-friendly work in The Miracle Worker. 

Andreas from Pussy Goes Grrr here. In 1962, Bette Davis had a good three decades of acting ahead of her—what endurance!—but her disturbing, self-deprecating performance as Baby Jane Hudson sure feels like a go-for-broke swan song. It builds on all her tics and trademarks (bitchiness, powerful voice, melodramatic intensity) and exaggerates them almost beyond recognition. Following in the footsteps of Norma Desmond, Baby Jane's a quintessential star-as-monster. Try as you might, you just can't look away.

Granted, Joan Crawford does co-star as Baby Jane's paraplegic sister Blanche. But this is unmistakably Bette's show all the way: she dominates every second of screen time, whether by snarling and squawking with an alcohol-induced slur, or through a mere flutter of her eyelashes. She plays the role broader than broad with gargoyle makeup and coarse body language, often standing akimbo like a pissed-off teenager. But she leaves space for smaller gestures, like the sudden, wicked curling of her lips, that give us a vision of Baby Jane's sick, sad inner life.

Because she's not all monstrous. If only she was, she'd be so much easier to watch. Instead Bette plays her with a nagging core of pathos, of innocence lost. Occasionally her underlying tragedy (and implicit Electra complex) breach the surface, like when she sings her old vaudeville hit "I've Written a Letter to Daddy." It's the film's great can't-look-away set-piece, a pitiful song and dance rooted in Baby Jane's hideous regression to childhood, and Bette performs the hell out of it. No shame, no holding back, nothing but raw chutzpah.

Egged on by Victor Buono's ghoulish pianist, she hoarsely belts out the mawkish melody, and the resulting incongruity is a nauseating mix of horror and morbid comedy. It's a boozy, psychotic siren song that, to their credit, the Academy's members were unable to resist. It's an artifact of poisoned camp, a sour recapitulation of Bette's Hollywood career, and an indelible piece of horror history.

And if you want a real surprise, watch Baby Jane back to back with Bette's foray into Hammer horror, The Nanny. There, she's equally chilling, but all of Baby Jane's grand flourishes have been replaced with stoicism and restraint. It's black-and-white proof that Bette's performances didn't just have magnitude; they had range.

Previously on Oscar Horrors
The Fly, Death Becomes Her, The Exorcist, The Birds, Carrie and more....
Top 100 Most Memorable Best Actress "Characters" 

3 Notes on New Photos of "Frankenweenie"

My beloved cat has had some health issues this weekend so time has been short and I've been majorly occupied (hence Oscar chart update/ column delay). But here's a quick bit about a beloved fictional pet, "Sparky".

• Tim Burton's Frankenweenie, due in theaters less than a year from now, is a remake of sorts. That's all Burton does these days but at least this time he's reworking something from his own imagination. Frankenweenie was originally a short in 1984 and if you ever get a chance to see that one, do so. It was from the time frame when Burton was THE young director to watch, making magic every time... or every other time. Damn. Whatever. From 1982 through 1994 it was all spellbinding. I'd even throw 1996 in there but I realize Mars Attacks! isn't for everyone. ACK!
• I'm so pleased this will be a black and white stop-motion picture. With so many animated films debuting each year, it's good to have some variety. 
• Is there any other director who has never changed his hairstyle? 

• Speaking of awesome short films, Tim's Sparky looks just like Brad Bird's "Amazing Stories: Family Dog", doesn't he?
• Little Known Fact: Films about beloved animated pooches require awesome actresses in the soundbooth:Frankweenie (1984) had Shelley Duvall; Family Dog had Annie Potts; Wallace and Gromit and The Curse of the Were-Rabbit had Helena Bonham Carter; Bolt had Miley Cyrus;  the new Frankenweenie gets Winona Ryder and Catherine O'Hara !
• Are you a cat person or a dog person? And if so do you think your pet is fairly represented on film? 

Oscar Horrors: Be Impressed. Be Very Impressed with The Fly's makeup

Team Film Experience is celebrating the rare Oscar nominated and winning contributions to horror films. Today Craig buzzes in with the latest edition of Oscar Horrors.

Here Lies... the remnants of the Brundlefly that Chris Walas and Stephen Dupuis (who went on to win the Best Makeup Oscar) lovingly crafted for David Cronenberg’s 1986 re-masterpiece The Fly. I don’t think they were there at the ceremony to collect it but they had it teleported to them within seconds of their names being read out.

As we know from the film, Jeff Goldblum becomes attached to a pesky, common housefly at a genetic level: he metamorphoses in a major way. Like, bummer. It was Walas and Dupuis’ job to make this as grotesquely memorable as possible. It’s fair to say they succeeded.

Walas – whose company, ‘Chris Walas, Inc.’, received first credit at the end of the film – went on to direct the sequel (which Dupuis also worked on) three years later. The makeup was definitely on par – dare I suggest slightly better – with other 1980s horror face- and game-changers The Thing, The Elephant Man and An American Werewolf in London. It was designed backwards – from full-on diseased Brundlemess at the end to light touch-up with some Max Factor at the start – and roughly created in eight stages. In accordance with this, and Goldblum’s fate, I’ll stage my Fly makeup celebration in bits, beginning from just after Goldblum teleported...

Stage One: Jeff has some increased strength thanks to the insect genes fused irreversibly with his cells. He’s full of beans and nigh-on always up for a spot of sexytime with a curiously indifferent Geena Davis. His idea of foreplay is to strip down and perform a few snazzy gymnastic moves on a horizontal bar like he’s trying out for the Olympics. Geena looks bored but straddles Jeff anyway.

Brundle-to-fly count: Jeff is roughly, I’d say, between 79 and 99% pure Brundle.

Makeup Check: There’s some light sweating from all the showing off/, so Jeff’s probably been given a once-over with a gentle covering of antiperspirant foundation; Geena has an emergency rouging because she looked a peaky. Measle-like blemishes and some protruding prickles on the shoulder blades mean a de-glistening and a bristle snip for Jeff.

Stages Two through Five after the jump. [Spoiler: He's fucked!]

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A History of.... Winona Ryder

We haven't done a new edition of "A History of..." in so long! So herewith a new episode of our exhaustively researched 100% true* constantly on "hiatus" series... today's subject is Winona Ryder who turned 40 this weekend.

1971 Near Lake Winona in Minnesota an immaculately beautiful girl child "Winona Laura Horowitz" is born to Cynthia Palmer and Michael Horowitz. Three wise men, family friends, attend the birth: poet Allen Ginsberg gifts her with angel-headed hispterism and non-conformity (the things she'll say in early interviews!), scifi author Philip K Dick gifts her with the ability to question reality itself (her onscreen eye-rolling will become legendary!), and her godfather LSD guru Timothy Leary will gift her wi ---- so much history to get through! We'd better keep moving.

1978 The Horowitzes move from Minnesota to a ranch commune in California and live with 7 other families so that young "Noni" will not feel alone... utterly alone.

1983 Little Noni nearly drowns and fears water from that point forward. (She will later be frequently to compared to Natalie Wood but not for this reason.) She also takes her first acting class inciting immediate debate among her teachers and class members as to whether or not she has any aptitude for it at all. Their heated arguments will soon spread to critics and moviegoers and rage on ever after. No consensus has ever formed twenty-eight years later. (Early comparisons to Natalie Wood involve her youthful peak, and raven beauty but this, too, applies.)

1986 Winona gets her first film role in Lucas after a failed audition for the director's previous film. This is her entrance into the cinema.

[Historians should remain unobtrusive objective observers but here, we must pause to travel from Noni's history to our own. In this very moment, little Nathaniel sitting in the theater wonders why none of his classmates are this bewitching and what the hell is wrong with Corey Haim for not noticing her perfection and tells everyone "she is going to be a big star!" and ends the movie praying that he can marry her someday when they both grow up! He doesn't know it yet but this makes him an actressexual.]

Noni on the night she met Johnny Depp1988 Beetlejuice gives Noni her first hit and endears her to the Goth community forever. Or at least for the time being. She feels 'so alone... so utterly alone.'

1989 Winona plays her signature part "Veronica Sawyer" in Heathers and immediately thereafter begins to sell the press the loud worrying prophetic notion that she's peaked at 17. Stop it Noni, do not feed the trolls! She also plays the child bride of Dennis Quaid's Jerry Lee Lewis in Great Balls of Fire. She meets 26 year old Johnny Depp at her premiere. He wants her for his own child bride; they're engaged by the following summer.

1990-2012 AFTER THE JUMP

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