Streaming Roulette, July: Angels, Witches, Hamilton, and the Czech New Wave

If you're new to the site this is how we share new streaming offerings for the month. We select a handful or two of titles and just randomly hit a place on the scroll bar to see what the film looks like - no cheating.  Ready? Let's play...

[Eavesdropping]
Mum: Look at the lovely sunshine all the other boys are out their playing in the water.
Dad: Pick up your knife.
Mum: You're just like your father.

The Witches (1990) on Netflix
The Grand High Witch watches a young child eating. She hates children! Has any actor had as genius a double feature as Anjelica Huston did in 1990 with The Witches and The Grifters? (Besides Kidman in 2001, of course!) Good lord she was on fire in the late 80s and early 90s. If you've never seen this you should watch it before the remake with Anne Hathaway starts filming. 

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100 Oldest Living Oscar Winners & Nominees

We thought it was time to update our Oldest Living Oscar People list. Pick a few of these giants in 2021 and watch a couple of their movies to appreciate their gift or learn about it for the first time. Our very best wishes of good health and happiness to the following actors, directors and craftsmen who nabbed at least one Oscar honor in their career...

100 OLDEST LIVING OSCAR NOMINEES/WINNERS
LIST LAST UPDATED ON 02/02/21
To see a less Oscar-specific list, here's a bigger 'oldest living actors' list 

99 YEARS OLD

Bill Butler (4/7/21) Oscar stats: 1 nomination
The cinematographer's only nomination was for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), which he shared with Haskell Wexler but '75 also featured a gig as Director of Photography on a tiny picture called Jaws ... maybe you've heard of it? Other Key Works: He later swerved into less prestigious fare like the wildly popular Grease (1978) and multiple Rocky sequels.

Walter Mirisch (11/8/21) Oscar stats: 2 Honoraries | 1 nomination | 1 win
This producer won the Oscar for In the Heat of the Night.  Other key works: The Magnificent Seven, Dracula, Two for the Seesaw, The Hawaiians

98 YEARS OLD

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Pride Month Doc Corner: Keith Haring, Curve magazine and Intersex

Doc Corner is celebrating Pride Month where every week we focus on documentaries with queer themes. For the final edition (albeit on the 1st of July, sshhh), we are putting a brief spotlight on a few films that I have watched recently that should hopefully their way to audience’s over the coming months through queer film festivals (virtual or otherwise) and streaming.

by Glenn Dunks

Just by pure virtue of his being a central figure in New York City’s modern art scene of the 1980s, Keith Haring’s name comes up often in the films about the era. There are probably a dozen movies about him either as the central figure, or one of a whole scene that is easy to rhapsodize nostalgic about.

Perhaps after Ben Anthony’s Keith Haring: Street Art Boy, which is screening as a part of Sheffield Doc/Fest and streaming soon, there won’t be a need for that...

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The New Classics: It Follows

By Michael Cusumano

Scene: Explaining The Rules
Every movie with a supernatural horror needs the 'rules' scene. The one where we lay out for the hero exactly what it is they’re up against and why they are in deep, deep trouble. These scenes require the film to strike a tricky balance. You want enough info so we can get a firm grasp on the dynamic, without getting bogged down in minutiae. Share the tape in seven days or die. Got it! Too much and you end up like the heroes of Inception, shouting explanations at each other well into the film’s second hour. Not enough and the threat ends up too vague to be scary. Pennywise the Clown can do anything at any time, and kill kids sometimes but not others based on nothing. Whatever. 

The best modern example of this scene, the one that hits the balance exactly right, is the post-coital explanation scene from David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows (2015)...

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The Furniture: Funny Face, France, Fashion and Failure

"The Furniture" is our series on Production Design by Daniel Walber. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Funny Face (1957) is not really a complicated movie, visually or otherwise. Its production design doesn’t express inner turmoil or repressive social structures, nor does it take the characters on any sort of elaborate journey. And in some scenes it’s downright boring, director Stanley Donen essentially stepping back to allow Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn room to dance.

But production design doesn’t have to be profound to be good, or even Oscar-worthy. And while I wouldn’t have voted for Funny Face for the Academy Awards, I do think it’s worth a look. Besides, its design does sort of have a message: that the opposite of fashion is books, and that any attempt to combine the two will lead to utter chaos. Is it serious? No, of course not, but it manages to be fun and chic at the same time.

It all starts with a gorgeous opening sequence designed by legendary photographer Richard Avedon, who also served as “Special Visual Consultant”...

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