DVR Alert! Monty Clift Day on TCM

Clift's Big LiftIt's been too long since I preached the good news: Montgomery Clift made movies. That's it. Easy holy words to remember. Pass them on. Amen.

Saturday August 20th (tomorrow!) on TCM
6:00 am Raintree County (1957)
His troubled southern epic with bestie (and best co-star) La Liz. 
9:00 am Lonelyhearts (1958)
A minor curiousity for a number of reasons (Myrna Loy!) but mostly important for being Maureen Stapleton's debut. She was Oscar nominated as a lonely wife chasing some Monty tail on the side.

11:00 am The Big Lift (1950)
Love this one (pictured left). There's something so relaxed about him here not a quality one tends to associate with his work. 
1:00 pm Red River (1948)
Must- see entertaining Howard Hawks western with awesome gay coding and Monty at his all time prettiest. John Wayne don't like pretty! 
3:30 pm From Here to Eternity (1953)
1953's Best Picture. A star-powered soap opera in war film's clothing. The star wattage is so bright it's visible across the entire Pacific: Clift, Kerr, Lancaster, Sinatra, Reed. 

5:45 pm The Misfits (1961)
Appropriately elegaic given that it's the last film for both Clark Gable and (a fantastic) Marilyn Monroe. Monty is wonderfully broken, too.
8:00 pm A Place in the Sun (1951)
Stone cold classic. 
10:15 pm The Heiress (1949)
Olivia de Havilland ♥ Montgomery Clift. But what does Clift  ♥ ? 

Monty watching himself in The Heiress

12:15 am The Search (1948)
His Oscar-nominated debut performance. That doesn't happen often for male actors but he was an instant sensation at 27.
2:15 am I Confess (1953)
His only Hitchcock. He plays a priest because you know, that buttoned up guilty quality of Clift always added great friction to his übersexiness.
4:00 am The Defector (1966)
His last movie, released just months after his death, in which he plays a physicist mixed up with the shady plans of one Roddy McDowall.  

And if I just typed all that up about my all time favorite actor and none of you watch any of them, you deserve all the opening weekends of Conan versus Spy Kids that come your way*.

*That was uncalled for. I apologize. No one deserves that.

Leo vs. Ryan: Oscar's Golden Young Men?

If this year's Best Actress competition is the race of the sixty-somethings (Close vs. Streep) that most people are predicting with the films still sight unseen, what kind of shape will the corresponding male category take? Could we see a race between 30-somethings in a sort of reverse age scenario of what normally occurs with actresses winning young and actors winning as soon as they have a gray hair or fifty.

Leo frets. It's not always good news to be the early unarguable frontrunner.

As an Oscar pundit I'm always trying to roll different scenarios on my tongue to see how they taste. How about this: What if this year's race is between Leonardo DiCaprio in J Edgar who will draw strength both from his past Oscar history and from AMPAS Official Favorite Genre (the biopic) and Ryan Gosling in The Ides of March? Gosling will be propped up by last year's Blue Valentine snub, his sure to be iconic character in Drive, and his general quickly achieved status as THE best of his generation...on this side of the Atlantic at least. I assume Michael Fassbender is just warming up. And what if the vote siphoning ingredient is not Clooney or Fassbender or whomever but Cannes Best Actor winner Jean DuJardin in The Artist?

I know most people have called this one for Leo despite  J Edgar being sight unseen and Clint Eastwood's Oscar appeal slightly faded. On paper (Oscar weight paper), yes he looks unstoppable. That's especially true because if Gosling proves his main competition, well, Gosling is very young still for Oscar votes being only one year older at this writing as the youngest Best Actor winner ever (Adrien Brody, The Pianist). But I always hesitate to assume that we know winners before we have seen virtually any of the competitive work. I mean, would fans of other young movie giants of their day ever assume that Paul Newman or Al Pacino or Peter O'Toole or whomever would have to wait as long as they did or are? Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt, both as big as Leo, are still waiting, too.

Nothing is certain until it's already happened.

As for Supporting Actor, The Ides of March is the big reigning question mark in the same way that The Help (previous posts) is for the ladies with multiple appealing choices for voters. The political drama has three former Oscar nominees, two of them winners, all circling 'round and talking at Ryan Gosling in the actor friendly piece. Who will voters favor: showy Philip Seymour Hoffman, subtle (at least in comparison) Paul Giamatti, or charismatic George Clooney?

Make your wild guesses now! Soon the movies are upon us. Wheeee

UPDATED PREDICTIONS: Index | Picture | Director | Actor | Supporting Actor 

Beauty Break: The Cast of "Magic Mike"

Channing Tatum: The Early YearsSteven Soderbergh's Magic Mike, must be nearing cameras, since casting news is dropping regularly now. No one can ever claim that Soderbergh dawdles... though wasn't he supposed to be retiring? He seems awfully busy for someone winding down. The film is a pet project of Channing Tatum's and loosely based on his experience as a stripper at 19. He had never hidden his body as cash machine past (see also: much modelling) so the surfacing of that video a couple years back was more novelty than scandal. 2012 is going to be a huge year for Tatum as he has not one not two but five movies that'll be hitting theaters.

Channing plays the title character of Magic Mike and will school rising star Alex Pettyfer (of I Am Number Four)  on the fine art of hustling. Earlier this week we heard that Matthew McConaughey had joined the film as their pimp boss and just last night news came that White Collar's Matt Bomer has also signed on. I've never watched an episode of White Collar but I've watched several episodes of Bomer photographs (His fans be feverish with the posting of them, you know). TWO MORE ANNOUNCED: True Blood's Joseph Mangianello also added to the cast as "Big Dick Richie" and now Cuban model/actor William Levy update again (08/29) Levy has turned down the role. Bad move. He's not famous and this is a major director we're talking about with a starry cast.

Other rumored members of the cast include Shiloh Fernandez and Demi Moore (!!!) who, well, ⇒⇒⇒

I'm not sure I believe either rumor -- especially the Demi one. But if it's true, I guess Soderbergh isn't superstitious about invoking the ghost of infamous bad-movie Striptease (1996)!

Care to help Soderbergh out with the rest of the casting? Who should join Pettyfer, Bomer, Levy, Manganiello, McConaughey and Tatum in bum-shaking and tip-taking?

Poor Johnathon Schaech. Anyone remember him from the 90s? Wasn't he supposed to star in (or wanted to star in) a Chippendales movie? It never happened but he's still working and still beautiful at 42. So come on Soderbergh, isn't there room for a middle manager or a McConaughey rival?

Tatum, Pettyfer, McConaughey, Bomer, Fernandez

Striptastic photos of the cast after the jump... (if you're into that. if you aren't don't go clicking)

Click to read more ...

Happy 75th Robert Redford

Just wanted to get this out there before the day is up. It's the 75th birthday of Robert Redford, actor/director/producer/film festival icon. Though his work as an actor and movie star isn't as obsessed over these days as his contemporaries from 60s and 70s cinema like past costars Paul Newman, Barbra Streisand, Faye Dunaway, Natalie Wood or Dustin Hoffman, that doesn't mean his star has faded. Movie stars of yore fall in and out of fashion. Who knows which 60s and 70s giants will be beloved in 2036 for example when Redford turns 100!?

Fact: The movies wouldn't be the same without him.

 Without Robert Redford there's no Sundance Festival, no Sundance Institute and without those, so many young unproven talents would not have been boosted or introduced to us in the way they were... and some probably not at all. And without Robert Redford what would have become of The Way We Were, The Sting, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,  All The President's Men, Out of Africa, A River Runs Through It, Quiz Show, or Ordinary People?  The list goes on. Some of his best films wouldn't even exist without him given how difficult it is to get any film made; pull one string out and things unravel.

So this week in his honor, watch your favorite Redford film, or the one you've always been meaning to get to. At the very least, brush your hand across your significant other's forehead and hair and do your best wistful Barbra Streisand.

Your girl is lovely, Hubbell."

Prediction Updates: Lead and Supporting Actress

Oscar obsessives around the web, including myself, have been hung up on the Glenn Close vs. Meryl Streep Best Actress '80s Rematch! narrative for quite awhile now with Albert Nobbs and The Iron Lady still without real movie trailers to give the already popular media angle extra flavor. Less often discussed, and it's been nagging me for awhile now, is which young actress the Oscars will glom onto this year. Best Actress is often, statistically speaking, a beauty pageant who's who of hot 20 and 30something stars. This is not to say that the main race can't be between two 60-something ladies (it can if their names are Close & Streep) but we already know that that won't be the whole story even if it does turn out to be The Story.

There are three more slots to consider and more than that if you include the possibility that Close or Streep might not happen, if you include the precursor awards (which have room for more players) and the Supporting Actress category which has slightly more diverse preferences but which is still a sucker for a new "it" girl.

Which young beauties will be competing for gold? There isn't room for all of them.

Fresh Faces.
Which will Oscar get a Mulligan / Lawrence style insta-crush on?
ROONEY MARA, 26, with sociopathic edge and punk styling in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.
FELICITY JONES, 27, doing young romance drama in Sundance hit Like Crazy.
ELIZABETH OLSEN, 22, winning acclaim as cult member in Martha Marcy May Marlene and probably winning credit for being talented younger sibling of the gajillionaire Olsen twin sisters.
MIA WASIKOWSKA, 21, proving she can carry a film and also be excellent while doing so in Jane Eyre.
ANDREA RISEBOROUGH, 29, soon to be winning "best in show" attention for W.E. 
JESSICA CHASTAIN, 30, seemingly in every other movie released in 2011 and hardly recognizable from one to the next.  

Already Stars.
Oscar's sweet spot for Best Actress wins is late 20s to early 30s. 
KEIRA KNIGHTLEY, 26, serving mental patient realness in A Dangerous Method.
KIRSTEN DUNST, 29, undoubtedly memorably victimized in Von Trier's Melancholia.
MICHELLE WILLIAMS, 30, doing biopic iconography for My Week With Marilyn and romance for Take This Waltz 
EMMA STONE, 22, who won't get nominated for The Help but the enthusiasm about her career this year is totally hogging some of the spotlight that the other hopefuls are going to need. 

Who do you think will be showered with love and media attention 'round the holidays this year? Who will come up wanting? Which of the newbies will ever have careers as big as the "already stars"? Share your projections / wild prophesies in the comments.

Best Actress chart | Best Supporting Actress chart