"The Dead" and the end of John Huston

by Cláudio Alves

Few cineastes can count their last film among their greatest works. Fewer still finish a career, a life, with their best cinematic effort. As much as I admire such gems as Ophüls' carnivalesque Lola Montès, the amorous musings of Dreyer's Gertrud, the bittersweet self-reflections of Akerman's No Home Movie and Varda's Varda by Agnès, I wouldn't classify any of those pictures as their director's crown jewels. John Huston's a whole different matter. 

The American filmmaker, whose career spanned six decades, finished his last picture in 1987. Faithfully adapted from a short story by James Joyce, The Dead may not be as influential as The Maltese Falcon, as exciting as The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, nor as tragic as The Misfits, but, as far as I'm concerned, it's Huston's most ravishing creation…

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Showbiz History: Brooke's jeans, Cuckoo's statues, Aishwarya's crown

8 random things that happened on this day, November 19th, in showbiz history...

1916 Goldwyn Pictures Corporations was established in Hollywood by Samuel Goldwyn. It's actually here and not with MGM (Metro Goldwyn Mayer) that the 'Leo the Lion' trademark began... though of course in the silent films you didn't hear the lion's roar. The company was defunct by 1924 but it has lived on in many formed, merging with Metro to become MGM and the Goldwyn family is still in business with Samuel Goldwyn Films. They're next releases are the Andrea Riseborough indie Luxor and Denmark's Oscar submission Another Round starring Mads Mikkelsen. 

1975 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is released. The following March it becomes only the second film in history to win the "Big Five" Oscar categories...

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Links

• THR Malcolm & Marie, that COVID-filmed two-hander with John David Washington and Zendaya, is now joining Netflix's stable of current Oscar contenders with a February release; as if they didn't have enough already!
• Deadline Spike Lee keeps us guessing. He's doing a Viagra musical next. WTF?
• The Verge Wonder Woman 1984 is now going direct to streaming on Christmas day (the same day it opens in theaters). It'll be on HBOMax at no additional cost for one month after which it will only be in theaters. We haven't believed the worst premonitions about the future of movie theaters up till now. But if the big studios are now willing to give up their surest billion dollar theatrical titles to streaming (where those same titles can't earn them any additional revenue other then arguably more subscribers -- but how many are required to make those regular $200 million budgets for superflicks affordable? --  then all bets are off.  *cries hysterically* 

1987: Carmen Maura in "Law of Desire"

Each month before the Smackdown, Nick Taylor considers alternates to Oscar's ballot...

I bet Pedro Almodóvar's filmography would be a fun one to watch in order. His visual ideas and narrative fascinations recur throughout his films, yet his deployment and examination of them take on different textures at different points. Murder, art, cinema, romantic passion, heartbreaking yet inextricably devoted family ties, queerness, as filtered through the generic keys of farce, melodrama, and thriller, it’s all there from his earliest works to last year’s tremendously moving Pain and Glory, each film recognizably guided by the same hand. There’s great fun to be had in watching different stylists and performers interpret Almodóvar’s very tricky vision, and no collaboration largely specific to the earliest stages of his career is quite as gratifying as Carmen Maura’s heroic work with him throughout the ‘80s. 

Granted, I’ve only seen three of their six collaborations in this era - What Have I Done to Deserve This?, Law of Desire, and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown - so if the first few aren’t up to snuff I’ll amend this. But those films are colorful, highwire efforts whose successes are as much the result of Almodóvar’s inspired writing and direction as Maura’s brilliant acting. Law of Desire provides her the least farcical, most dramatic role of this trio, as well as the only instance where she’s not the main character...

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Brazil and Oscar

by Nathaniel R

In today's big "international feature" news, Denmark has selected EFA frontrunner Another Round for its submission but we already covered Denmark so let's move southwest to a country that also just announced. They've struggled to return to the Oscar lineup since their golden heyday, the late 1990s, when they had three nominees in a four year span. Brazil has selected Babenco: Tell Me When I Die for its Oscar submission this year. It's a documentary about the last years of Hector Babenco's life, directed by his widow Barbara Paz. Oscar voters are already familiar with Babenco, of course, since he made quite an international splash in the 1980s with films like Pixote, Ironweed, and the Oscar-nominated Kiss of the Spider-Woman. It's an interesting choice for a submission though it's not likely to be nominated given Oscar's general resistance to documentaries about film (strange that, since they love narrative features about filmmaking). Still, we're eager to see it.

The Film Experience has always enjoyed a surprisingly robust Brazilian following, so we feel affection. Let's look at films and stats and key submissions.

BRAZIL'S OSCAR STATS

Submitting since 1960 
49 Total Submissions 
4 Nominations (and 1 Additional Finalist)
0 Wins 

<--- Special case: The classic Black Orpheus, a French/Brazilian co-production won the 1959 Oscar. But that was before Brazil was submitting and so it's officially a French winner even though it's set in Brazil and in Portugueuse...

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