Q&A: Artists in Movies and Uninspiring Best Pic Lineups

For this weeks Q&A I asked for an art theme to celebrate the joint birthday of Vincent Van Gogh and Francisco de Goya on this very day! So we'll start with a few art-focused topics before venturing to rando questions.

TOM: Which film about an artist (in any field of the Arts) that you were not particularly knowledgeable about made you want to see/hear the real work by that artist? 

I vastly prefer non-traditional biopics so I'm susceptible to stuff that piques curiosity rather than gives you a greatest hits. So I like bios like Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993). I have some problems with I'm Not There (2007) which is my least favorite Todd Haynes film but I respect the hell out of it conceptually. In terms of movies about painters I definitely became more interested in Francis Bacon after Love is the Devil (1998) and not just because of Daniel Craig in the bathtub! I already cared about Caravaggio before seeing Derek Jarman's Caravaggio but I hope people see that one, too. 

BRIAN: If you had to recommend a budding Cinephile a movie based on an artist, a work of art, or has artistic themes what would it be?

Hmmm. A lot of movies about painting aren't very good (Watching someone paint being only a notch more interesting than watching someone write). So let's do "artistic" theme and the answer there is easily Amadeus (1984). It's such a useful movie to reference in ways both commonplace ("too many notes!") and contemplative (what makes the difference between competent journeyman skill and true genius?). One of my other favorite "art" movies is High Art (1998)...

8 more questions after the jump

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Q&A: Iconic Couples, Vote Counts, Favorite Kurosawas

There were so many good questions this week for the Q&A that we had to do this twice. Here are more questions asked of your host Nathaniel, and now answered. Thanks for being engaged readers!

Nicole & Ewan at MTV Movie Awards 2002Since there's been talk of how sweet it would be to see Leo and Kate both win Oscars this year, I've been thinking about recent screen couples that have captured audiences' imaginations in that way, that people would love to see win Oscars at the same time and I couldn't think of any quite on that level. Are there any post-Titanic screen couples you think of as legendary pop culture pairings? -EDWIN

Had Nicole Kidman & Ewan McGregor ever reteamed post Moulin Rouge! I think they might have become a screen couple like that. The fact that they haven't is a tragedy since we will love them until their dying day. You could argue that Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling (The Notebook) qualify. I think if Heath Ledger were still alive this might have happened with him and Jake Gyllenhaal since they're both such tremendous actors and liked each other quite a lot. It would have been fascinating to see them co-star in a second film in a totally different genre. 

The Film Experience is 1000% behind today's Hollywood realizing that reteaming stars who had insane chemistry is one of the best traditions of Old Hollywood. It's not only fun for fans, it's also marketable! Wouldn't you be so excited if Kate & Leo made a comedy together in 2018?

What's your favorite performance given by an animal actor? -TYLER

Asta as "Mr Smith" from The Awful Truth (1937) which is my first or second or third* favorite screwball comedy of all time. (It's hard to decide because they're so many great ones)

If it was up to you to decide, would you release the official vote counts from old Oscar ceremonies? Or would that take away the fun of endless speculating? is there a particular race you would want to know the official tally? - MARCELO

The answer and more after the jump...

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Her Royal Majesty, The Queen of Link

This collection was meant to publish some 24 hours ago. Enjoy these links you might well have seen already!

Decider tracks Channing Tatum's expanding neck 
MNPP Jason calls a Happy Hobbit Ending for Lee Pace within six months. I think this is optimistic. 
Pajiba thoughtfully creates an anti-superhero-movie-diversity Bingo board. Love it!
AV Club Jeff Goldblum participated in a Jurassic Park themed wedding photo. It's great
The Dissolve Epix is airing a color version of Alexander Payne's Nebraska. What the hell?

Arts Beat Helen Mirren to play the Queen again on Broadway. Will the third time be the charm for a first Tony? If she wins she will have won the Oscar, Emmy and Tony all for playing Queen Elizabeths I & II. Quite a specific niche, eh?
The Wire a very bad day for the creator of True Detective Nic Pizzolatto who doesn't handle criticism very well and is now accused of plagiarism as the Emmys approach
The Film Stage shares Akira Kurosawa's 100 favorite films list (originally published in a book from 1999 apparently). Like me his favorite Scorsese is King of Comedy!
The Wrap DC has adjusted its Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice schedule to avoid Captain America 3. That sentence would have unthinkable years ago but Marvel has really made it work.
MNPP "Gratuitous Teddy Sears" I 100% approve and I would like to point out that I raved about him all the way back during his very tiny role on Dollhouse and so glad he got such a plum gig on Masters of Sex 

Ooh look, Jeff Bridges and Beau Bridges (Emmy nominated for Masters of Sex) talking about their acting process at an event in LA. (There's also a clip of them talking about The Fabulous Baker Boys but it's not about Michelle Pfeiffer at all - sacrilege - so I lost interest)

There's no point in even linking to a story about this but how terrible is it that they've opted to call the next Terminator film, a needless reboot when time-travel narratives can reboot themselves while also not stupidly pretending that other films didn't exist, Terminator Genisys. That's the actual title, people, purposeful mispelling and all. 

Finally, i09 shares ten lessons we can learn from the surprising success of Guardians of the Galaxy. Even though I think the movie has really pulled off a conjob on critics (it's winning rapturous ignore-the-obvious-flaws praise I think because it gets a couple of important things very right), most of these are bullet points are true. But I have to shake my head and roll my eyes hard at this bit about its cross-gender appeal at the box office:

How can a movie appeal to both of these groups? Because they both want the same thing, more or less — fun adventures in which both the male and female characters are fully realized.

Oy. If Gamora is our new standard for "fully realized female characters" in blockbuster cinema our standards have hit rock bottom and the future is going to be BLEAK. The ongoing gender problems in mainstream cinema have really taken a toll on people's expectations. 

Coven: Throne of Blood

Team Experience is assembling our own coven of preferred witches for Halloween. Here's Michael C on Kurosawa's eery old ghost woman

The Japanese title of Kurosawa’s noh-inspired adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth Throne of Blood is literally “Spider Web Castle”. So in keeping with the films pervasive arachnid imagery, Kurosawa ditches the cauldron and transforms the play’s famous trio of future predicting witches (“Double, double toil and trouble”) into a single, demonic hag, who sits out in the forest like an eerily still, deadly spider, spinning her silk and waiting for prey like Toshiro Mifune’s Macbeth equivalent, Washizu, to stumble into her web.

It’s a stretch to call her evil, seeing as she only sets the stage for her prey’s downfall. The victim still has to do all the heavy lifting. On the other hand the unexplained piles of skulls around her lair do rate a raised eyebrow!

Broom: No. The witch in question punctuates her prophecies by floating straight into the air and vanishing in a blinding white light. The broom business might qualify as overkill, don’t you think?

Favored Spell: This lovely lady’s go-to move is providing misleading, selectively edited predictions of the future. Other pastimes include cackling in your face after you’ve been foolish enough to act according to her predictions and shape shifting into ones enemies so as to goad you into make an even greater mess of things.

Chieko Naniwa in "Throne of Blood"Pointy Hat: You don’t hide witch hair of this magnitude under a hat.

Familiar: She works alone but spider imagery is pervasive. 

"Only bad witches are ugly": How to be diplomatic about this. On a scale from Glinda to Elphaba she’s definitely not going to travel by bubble, if you catch my drift. That said, if you can get over her creepy, disconcertingly masculine voice she does lack all the traditional ugly witch traits like warts and a long pointy nose, so she might have a shot with guys who find themselves strangely attracted to the ghost from The Grudge. 

Burning Questions: Undelivered Speeches?

Michael C. here. I would never back the idea of awarding an Oscar based on anything other than quality of the work. No award for being a beloved old-timer overdue for a win, or because your film sends an admirable message, and definitely no trophy to make up for a past lost that everyone agrees was a blunder. I think most people agree with me that once you start down the road the whole enterprise of presenting awards for artistic achievement – which is shaky enough to begin with – falls apart.

Having said that, there is one criterion beyond merit which I will guiltily admit often plays a big part in who it is I root for on the big night: the possible entertainment value of the winners.  And hey, voters so often make their choices based on questionable reasoning, why shouldn’t the promise of a lively and memorable show enter into it? 

OK, maybe I don’t really mean it. I wouldn't begrudge The Coen brothers any of their Oscars even if they deliver acceptance speeches like someone has a gun to their back.  But it is still an interesting question to ponder:  If you could go back and hear the Oscar speech that someone never got to give whose would it be? Here are three of the possible speeches I would be most eager to hear if I could borrow Futurama’s What-If Machine for an hour:

Spike Lee - Best Original Screenplay (1989) – The big controversy of the 1990 Oscar’ was the lack of nods for Lee’s Do the Right Thing in picture and director while the much more conventional race relations drama Driving Miss Daisy grabbed most of the night’s big prizes. Lee did manage to grab a well-deserved nod in screenplay only to lose to the schmaltz of Dead Poet’s Society (cue sad trombone). Kim Basinger is still remembered for the moment she went off script and called out the snubbing, so I have little doubt presenting Spike with a microphone and a worldwide audience would have been one of the most discussed moments in recent Oscar history.

Mickey Rourke rises again and he is my brother."
-Sean Penn during his Oscar speech for Milk.

Bill Murray and Mickey Rourke – Best Actor 2003 & 2008 – I lump these two guys together because they were both unlikely Best Actor contenders who had a great chance of winning only to be beaten out by Sean Penn. I recall Penn giving heartfelt speeches, especially for Milk, but Murray and Rourke both brought the house down at the Globes and subsequent awards shows and their Oscar wins would have made for much more special and thrilling scenes.

Akira Kurosawa – Best Director 1985 – When it comes to memorable moments there are those that involve unpredictable stars acting out, like Brando sending an actress dressed as a Native American to accept his Oscar for The Godfather, and then there are those rare perfect moments when a legend receives a lifetime’s worth of acclaim all at once - think Chaplin’s lifetime achievement award. The Academy missed such a moment when they awarded Sydney Pollack best director for Out of Africa over Kurosawa’s work on Ran. Pollack himself lead a campaign to see Kurosawa nominated in director after he was shamefully excluded from the foreign category, so I suspect he would have been one of those cheering loudest if the living legend had been given a chance to take his bow.

I just noticed I have picked only people I think deserved to win their categories. I guess even in hypotheticals I can’t get away from the idea of merit winning the day.

So if you could go all Sliding Doors on Oscar and witness an amazing moment that never happened which would it be? I'm curious to hear your answers and the reasoning for them in the comments. 

You can follow Michael C. on Twitter at @SeriousFilm or read his blog Serious Film. Previous Burning Questions...