Fight the Power!

I'm planning to channel Rosie Perez all weekend. You?

And The Honorary Oscars Go To... Debbie Reynolds, Gena Rowlands, and Spike Lee.

No sooner had I published a list of speculation / suggestions for November's Honorary Oscars then the actual awards were announced. (I  must have misread the date on the Academy's meeting about this so we've unpublished and will revisit that topic at a more appropriate time.) For now, a hearty congratulations to a satisfying trio of recipients with very different appeals. We're throwing streamers and popping out of (okay eating) cakes this afternoon to celebrate!

Our Oscar Theme Song

All I do... is dream of you... the whole night through
with the dawn... i still go on... and dream of you
you're every thought... you're every thing
you're every song i ever sing
Summer. Winter.... Autumn and Spring 

DEBBIE REYNOLDS, "America's Sweetheart" back in her heyday (roughly speaking the 50s through the mid 60s), is your populist choice, not unlike Maureen O'Hara last year. Well liked showbiz legends that were never really critics darlings or in the Oscar hunt competitively can win Honorary Oscars if they stick around long enough. So here's to longevity! Reynolds, who is 83, made her first credited movie appearance in 1950, received her sole Best Actress nomination for the musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)... and has literally never stopped working. This is a true showbiz trouper.

OF NOTE # 1: Carrie Fisher is going to be much in demand for the next several months given a) her mom's Honorary Oscar victory lap, publicity for her new memoir, and her own return to her signature Princess Leia this December in Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

OF NOTE # 2: Postcards from the Edge, the thinly veiled Carrie Fisher/Debbie Reynolds comic biopic starring Meryl Streep and Shirley Maclaine hits its 25th anniversary in a couple of weeks and we'll be celebrating that too.

GENA ROWLANDS was a regular Oscar player in her heyday (roughly speaking the late 60s through the early 80s) and is easily your aesthete's choice this year. She's a hugely influential actor and cinephiles have been bemoaning her Oscar losses for years, due in large part to her groundbreaking early indie work with her husband John Cassavettes. She's also worshipped by discerning film buff actors. Consider Tilda Swinton's quote on her film Julia, which was a loose remake of Gena's earlier film Gloria.

One's always downloading one's heroes, I suppose, all the time.  I remember being asked whether I thought about Gena Rowlands for "Julia" and thinking 'well, I think about Gena Rowlands all the time!' Not just for 'Julia'.

SPIKE LEE you could safely and cynically call this point in the 2015 honorary triangle their diversity choice but he's also entirely deserving so bless the media for putting so much pressure on Oscar voters to diversify! There's more to cinema than old white men (many of them are worth celebrating, too, but Oscar amply covers that without prodding). What's more, unlike Debbie Reynolds and Gena Rowlands, who couldn't really be called mistreated by the Academy for various reasons, AMPAS truly owes this maverick auteur. His indisputable classic Do The Right Thing (1989), his biopic epic Malcolm X (1992), his late career best 25th Hour (2002), and his biggest hit Inside Man (2006) have a measly 4 Oscar nominations between them with no wins. His only nominations to date were for his documentary 4 Little Girls (1997) and the screenplay of Do The Right Thing which, insane as it may sound, both lost. 

AND HERE'S WHERE YOU COME IN DEAR READER...

Last year we did mini-retrospectives on the Honorary winners when we noticed a dearth of coverage on movie sites (for shame) beyond obligatory news posts of the names and the later ceremony. Which films from each of their filmographies would you most like to revisit or discover for the first time with us before the ceremony on November 14th? 

Black History Month: Do The Right Thing (1989)

Our Black History Month celebration (through an Oscar lens) continues with Matthew Eng on Do The Right Thing's Screenplay

Whenever I think about Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, and I’ve thought about it with depressing frequency this past year as I’m sure many cinephiles and non-cinephiles alike have, I often think about one of two things. One is inarguably the greatest opening credits sequence of all time because it’s still such a resilient, red-hot act of hip-hop aggression and because the under-heralded national treasure that is Rosie Perez is never too far from my mind.

The second is a tiny, wordless connection that plays out at the end of a mid-film scene between Ossie Davis’ elderly, self-appointed voice of the community Da Mayor and Christa Rivers’ Ella, the lone girl within the comedic teenage foursome that we see running around throughout the course of the movie. In the scene, Ella’s friend Ahmad (Steve White) has just lambasted Da Mayor for daring to criticize the behavior of he and his friends since he himself is a drunk and irresponsible vagrant whose infamous reputation is old news within their Bed-Stuy neighborhood. 

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So Linky Together

Such Moving Pictures Clayton picks his top 11 of the year
The Film Doctor and his wife discuss Birdman and crisis of identity
The Backlot does a readers poll of the greatest gay movies but YIKES some of the titles and their rankings. It's also very very American movie centric. No Happy Together on a list of 100 greatest gay movies? THAT'S A DEAL BREAKER, LADIES.
20 Weeks to Oscar - David Poland wonders if it's wide open due to preferential balloting which he hates (and explains why)

NY Times Colleen McCullough author of the Thorn Birds dies at 77. My mom was obsessed with that miniseries when I was a little kid so I vaguely remember it.
Variety reviews Lila & Eve starring Viola Davis & Jennifer Lopez. Yes, I realize they're billed the other way round but let's be real, okay? I really wanted to see this one but it did not screen during the first five days when I was there. I'm hoping Michael saw it.
Film School Rejects talks about release / distribution for Sundance films. Sadly some of the biggest hits will undoubtely wait until the fall or winter to try to get Oscar traction. But a few will open before that like Dope (due in June). 
Salon "I was an American Sniper, and Chris Kyle's war was not my war."
Art of the Title Sequence takes on Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing (1989)
The New Yorker Richard Brody thinks critics have failed female auteurs
/Film whoa. Martin Starr from Freaks & Greeks is all grown up and is playing a romantic lead in Amira & Sam
THR Oooh, a new leading role for Octavia Spencer in Seacole, a biopic of a Jamaican doctor
/Film Ezra Miller interviewed about The Flash on the street with Billy Crudup his Stanford Prison Experiment co-star. Nobody asks Billy Crudup about the time he turned down the Hulk in the early Aughts
Variety ooh Glenn Close & Frances McDormand are both going to be in a new drama called The Wife (Close is the lead who leaves her literary giant husband (Jonathan Pryce) just as he's about to be presented with the Nobel prize). Co-starring: Logan Lerman, Brit Marling, and Christian Slate
THR Megan Ellison saves Vidiots from closure
The Carpetbagger Clothes and character in The Theory of Everything and more 

Allow me to be weirded out for a moment.

Did you know that Kirk (Sean Gunn) from Gilmore Girls played Rocket Raccoon on the set of Guardians of the Galaxy. I am dumbfounded. Perhaps this is common knowledge but I am only just realizing it. That Kirk was always trying new careers on for size in Stars Hollow but who knew he would ever end up like this!?

Thin Skins and The Art of Being Snubbed

I've been sitting on half formed think pieces about this one for a couple of weeks deciding whether to publish but here goes...

A very recent article at Wired about journalist behavior at Sundance made a lot of journalists angry. I agree that a lot of movie journalists are jaded (I think that about other Oscar bloggers all the time who don't see to love it like I do). The piece isn't really fair because there are a lot of terribly behaved people of all types of badges at festivals. The type of badge you wear does not influence your behavior, your character influences your behavior. Still there's so much online response and twitter uproar about this that it reminded me of all the potshots taken at Birdman's depiction of a critic (in a movie that is not meant to be taken literally at that). In short: a lot of media writers have thin skins. I'd include myself here I must say but I think it's better to take your lumps quietly than protest too much. (Movies.com had a similarly themed piece on bad movie etiquette but it was more generous and didn't point too specific a finger.)

The uproar over these pieces reminded me of my own discomfort about the way people react to Oscar snubs (or omissions if the "s" word offends you). This season in particular, the Selma situation has provoked a lot of criticism,...

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