Remembering Howard Ashman

by Cláudio Alves

On the morning of February 19th, 1992, the nominations for the 64th Academy Awards were announced. As always, the last category to be revealed was that of Best Picture and, just as Best Director lineup had done, it brought with it a historical event. Disney's Beauty and the Beast became the first animated feature to be nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, a momentous achievement that was applauded by the audience of journalists. It was the only Best Picture nominee to receive such jubilant cheer and it's easy to see why. While some had predicted the cartoon's glorious haul of nominations, the long-lasting prejudices of AMPAS against animation made its success seem impossible. Thankfully, even the Academy can get over itself from time to time, and honor truly deserving cinema. Beauty and the Beast is certainly deserving, being a masterpiece of American animation, as well as one of Disney's crown jewels.

Unfortunately, not everyone involved with its triumph was able to bask in the glory of the Oscar nominations. One of the men most responsible for the wonder of Beauty and the Beast was long gone by the time of the announcement…

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1991: Carina Lau in "Days of Being Wild"

by Nick Taylor

Happy Birthday, Wong Kar-Wai, who turned 62 years old last week, something that surely feels impossible for anyone younger than 61 to really consider for themselves! The celebrated auteur is known for his indefatigable sense of coolness and poise, doing for delicately conjured yet passionately felt romanticism what Ingmar Bergman did for psychological anguish. Especially in certified masterpieces like In the Mood for Love and Happy Together but even in lesser works like My Blueberry Nights, Wong’s sense of style is refreshing to sit with and inimitably his. And so, in celebration of our beloved birthday boy and the many gifts he’s given us across his career, I’m here to discuss Days of Being Wild, and the bewitching, jewel-toned performance of Carina Lau...

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When Bening met Beatty

by Cláudio Alves

Barry Levinson's gangster biopic Bugsy was the most nominated movie at the 1991 Oscars, ten nods in total, including Picture, Director, and Actor. While most of the big categories were won by The Silence of the Lambs, Levinson's picture still took home two statuettes. They were for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration and Best Costume Design, rightful rewards for a glamourous recreation of 1940s Hollywood and the nascent Las Vegas. Unlike Dennis Gassner, Nancy Haigh, and Albert Wolsky, the movie's star left the Academy Awards ceremony with no new little golden man of his own. Nonetheless, Warren Beatty might have gotten a greater reward out of Bugsy than any of the Oscared cineastes.

After all, it was during the shooting of Bugsy that the man once considered to be Hollywood's hottest bachelor finally met his match and future wife, the one and only Annette Bening…

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The many faces of Hannibal Lecter

by Cláudio Alves

1991's The Silence of the Lambs won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, thus becoming the only horror movie to ever conquer that much-coveted prize. Still, overall, the film seems to owe more to the crime thriller, the police procedural and investigative manhunt than it does to the horror genre. However, one element plunges it right into the depths of cinematic nightmares. It's a character so malevolent that it often feels larger than life, like a primordial evil closer to the divine than to the human. We're talking about the monster that tops the AFI's greatest movie villains list, the role that earned Anthony Hopkins his Oscar and made us never look at Fava beans the same way ever again – Hannibal 'The Cannibal' Lecter…

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Almost There: River Phoenix in "My Own Private Idaho"

This article is dedicated to Mark, one of our subscribers (thank you!), who requested a piece on River Phoenix -Editor.

by Cláudio Alves

It's difficult to write, it's difficult to think, about River Phoenix without the tragedy of his premature death casting a dark shadow over all other considerations. His acting is often talked about in terms of wasted potential, another facet of the same mythos that James Dean inhabits in the public consciousness. Sure, his film work is important, but only as far as it adds to the narrative of a flame that burned too bright and died out too soon. That can be a blessing to one's legacy, a promise of cultural immortality. However, it's also a curse that makes a young actor's amazing career into a footnote of a Hollywood tale of doom and gloom. River Phoenix was and is more than the protagonist of a real-life story about dying young. He's a great actor, one whose performances still have the power to amaze and impress, to enlighten and hurt.

This piece is about such a feat of acting, one that takes my breath away every time I gaze upon its magnificence. It's about River Phoenix in Gus van Sant's My Own Private Idaho…

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