Ennio Morricone (1928-2020)

by Nathaniel R

Confession, dear reader. Two decades of writing about movies later I still feel ill-equipped to write about one of the largest tools in the filmmaking arsenal: scoring. Ennio Morricone once described music as "energy, space, and time" which is a broad and huge and cosmic enough description to explain away how overwhelming a task it is to write about... especially to those of us who are more visually attuned. As you've undoubtedly heard, Morricone, by all accounts of the all time great composers, has passed away at the age of 91 after a fall which hospitalized him. In the course of his spectacular career, which stretches across six decades of cinema, he helped defined an entire genre (the spaghetti western), and composed the scores for over three hundred movies as well as an alarming number of TV shows on the side.

His six Oscar nominations (Days of Heaven, The Mission, The Untouchables, Bugsy, Malena, The Hateful Eight) and two Oscars (one of them an Honorary) don't even begin to cover what he gave to the cinema. He was beloved by auteurs as is amply evident in his filmography. Some of his most famous films and scores outside of those Oscar-honored works include The Good The Bad and the Ugly, La Cage Aux Folles, Lady of the Camelias, Once Upon a Time in America, Inglorious Basterds, Wolf, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!, For a Few Dollars More, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, and Cinema Paradiso. Do you have a favourite score from that illustrious body of work?

Morricone is survived by his wife of 63 years, Maria Travia, and their four children. He will be missed but his legacy has long since been immortalized.

Almost There: Marlene Dietrich in "Witness for the Prosecution"

by Cláudio Alves

1957 was a fascinating year when it comes to the Oscars' acting categories. Thanks to the stultifying Sayonara, Miyoshi Umeki became the only Asian actress to ever win an Academy Award, while silent era Asian-American sex symbol, Sessue Hayakawa, received his first and only Oscar nomination for The Bridge on the River Kwai. In that same year, the Best Actress race saw Elizabeth Tayor receive her first nomination, and Deborah Kerr coming the closest she ever was to win an Oscar, for Heaven Knows Mr. Alison. She lost, but was, at least, nominated, unlike the cast of Best Picture nominee 12 Angry Men. It seems insane to think so, but none of that picture's astounding performances got any love from AMPAS, not even for Henry Fonda's star turn.

That being said, no snub hurt more than that of an actress so confident she had earned Oscar gold, that there was a prerecorded introduction to her Vegas show that mentioned a 1957 nomination. We're talking about Marlene Dietrich in Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution…

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Review: "Hamilton"

by Eric Blume

Disney+ made a shrewd and smart move by releasing the filmed-stage movie musical Hamilton over the July 4 weekend, at a time when the country really needs it.  The themes and ideas of this Pulitzer Prize-winning theater phenomenon from five years ago seem even more relevant and powerful than they did upon arrival, and the movie version, which debuted this weekend, is a stage capture of the principal original Broadway cast, edited together from three live performances filmed in June 2016.  

Filmed versions of staged material always have their limitations:  one can never capture the visceral pump of energy that’s happening in the Richard Rodgers Theater before and during a performance of this show in particular.  As such, the Hamilton movie ultimately succeeds best in preserving an unbeatable group of actors in the biggest show of this century, exactly as the original creators intended it to play...

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Lana Turner. Because movie stars need love, too.

We've been celebrating 1957 these past few weeks. Please welcome our new contributor Baby Clyde...

Lana turner in "Peyton Place" and the closest she came to Oscar - presenting Red Buttons with his that same year

After nearly two decades as a topflight Hollywood star Lana Turner finally grabbed Oscar’s attention for her performance as the uptight mother Constance Mackenzie in the smash hit 1957 soap opera Peyton Place. It was to be their only serious encounter. Nobody argues that Lana was a great actress but by god was she a great Movie Star. Maybe the greatest of all in my estimation. There is no one in film history who ticks so many boxes or encapsulates so many Hollywood tropes and clichés. 

Young Judy Turner went to Hollywood High School before literally being discovered at a soda counter by the editor of the Hollywood Reporter at age 16 (See how many times I’ve used the word ‘Hollywood’ already).  Now named ‘Lana’ she made one of the most iconic debuts in movie history as the ill-fated murder victim in They Won’t Forget (1937) and was dubbed "The Sweater Girl" for the way her ample charms filled out said item of clothing...

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Halfway Mark Links

A Must Read
• Tom & Lorenzo "One Iconic Costume" a fascinating funny and poignant piece on Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz

More Links
• Paper terrific piece on the new generation of queer comedy: Matt Rogers, Grace Kuhlenschmidt, Alex English, Cole Escola, and many more. 
• Cartoon Brew despite Academy efforts toward gender parity the animation and visual fx industries are still struggling with inclusion of women. (Only 1 in 8 people invited to join the visual effects Academy branch are women this year.)

More after the jump including Hamilton, Netflix hit 365 Days, best of the first haf of the year and more...

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