And the Honorary Oscar Goes To...

Jason from MNPP here -- the four fine movie folks being given Honorary Oscars this year have been announced and they are (drumroll please) the actor Donald Sutherland, the directors Charles Burnett (Killer of Sheep) and Agnès Varda (Cleo from 5 to 7), and the cinematographer Owen Roizman (The Exorcist). You can read the statement from the Academy right here, which dives into each of this exemplary quartet's many many accomplishments...

... but can I just get a rowdy huzzah for Donald Sutherland in particular, who has long been the recipient one of my fiercest "HOW HAS HE NEVER BEEN NOMINATED BEFORE" battle cries? (I mean Six Degrees of Seperation alone.) And heck the 82 year-old actor is still turning in fine work, so perhaps he's still got a shot. Somebody give this truly grand actor a truly great role again, please. (And now that he's off the checklist maybe next year they'll get around to Mia Farrow?)

So what do we think of this foursome?

Honorary Oscars - The Acceptance Speeches

The General Election really threw off coverage here but we're back on our feet (if a bit wobbly) and we hope you are, too! The annual Governor's Awards where the Honorary Oscars are handed out were held this past weekend with basically everyone in attendance. Here are the four honorees giving their very sweet speeches from the event. They're so moved as well they should be by this historica honor.

Enjoy if you haven't yet seen them...

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Cecil B DeMille 4 Meryl Streep

by Nathaniel R

For those craving their dose of La Streep this awards season, rest easy: even if she isn't Oscar nominated for Florence Foster Jenkins in an already highly competitive Best Actress race, she'll at least grace the Golden Globes. She's a shoo-in for a Best Actress in a Comedy or Musical category for her off-key diva and she'll also be this year's Cecil B DeMille Honoree. Remember that every year at some point during the broadcast they stop handing out awards and celebrate a whole career with clips and speeches. On Sunday January 8th, 2017, that section of the night belongs to Meryl...

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Honorary Oscars to Jackie Chan, Frederick Wiseman, Lynn Stalmaster, and Anne V Coates

The Board of Governors from AMPAS have finally announced their selections for this year's Honorary Oscars. This year they're not giving out the Thalberg (for Producing) or the Hersholt (for Huminatarian efforts) but just the regular ol' Honorary Oscars. If such a thing can be deemed "regular" since they're so hard to come by. Consider that James Ivory still doesn't have one despite being a masterful oft imitated but never duplicated director behind three major Best Picture contenders (and many other beautiful films) and never having won an an Oscar and being 88 years old. Nathaniel wept. Oscar remains remarkably stingy with the gays but at least they've noticed the need for diversity in other ways.

Congratulations to this year's esteemed recipients! 

Jackie Chan's starmaking hit The Legend of Drunken Master (1978)

SUPERSTAR JACKIE CHAN
He's a famous actor, producer, and director and his filmography is just enormous with well over 100 films under his belt. What's more he's a major figure in Asian cinema which is about the last place Oscar ever looks to hand honors so good on them. He's only 62 which is young for an Honorary prize but Spike Lee got his while still in his late 50s recently so they appear to be loosening up with their age restrictions. 

EDITOR ANNE V COATES
Though The Film Experience is against Oscar's strange practice of giving Honorary Statues to people who've already won (like Coates) there's no denying that she's one of the best editors the cinema has ever seen. And in truth they've been a bit stingy with her with only 5 nominations and a win (Out of Sight, In the Line of Fire, The Elephant Man, Becket, and her winning film Lawrence of Arabia when she was still in her 30s). I was personally horrified when she was not nominated for her vigorous artful editing on Erin Brockovich (2000). At 91 she doesn't work much anymore but she did edit Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) recently. 

DOCUMENTARIAN FREDERICK WISEMAN
The Academy has been egregiously stingy with this 86 year old. He's never been nominated despite being considered one of the all time greatest documentarians. He has made nearly 40 documentaries including such well regarded titles as Titicut Follies (1967), High School (1968), Hospital (1970), Welfare (1975), Domestic Violence (2001), and At Berkeley (2013)

Lynn Stalmaster at the TCM FestivalCASTING DIRECTOR LYNN STALMASTER
Since AMPAS does not have a category for casting this is a great use of the Honorary award. Lynn Stalmaster is 88 years old and a legend in his field. Within his first three years as a casting director he already had a Best Actress winning film under his belt (I Want to Live!, 1958). Among his many films there are quite a few examples of situations where the perfect actors for that particular project where chosen including: In the Heat of the Night (1967), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), They Shoot Horses Don't They (1969), Harold and Maude (1971), Deliverance (1972), Tootsie (1982), The Right Stuff (1983), Nine and a Half Weeks (1986) and many more. I adore that he had such a thing for Faye Dunaway though maybe she regrets how frequently he cast her since Mommie Dearest (1981) and Supergirl (1984) were towards the end of it. 

The non-televised Governors Awards will be held on November 12th. As usual we'll be doing some posting on these four careers in the lead up to their honors so we have quite a range of films to choose from. Any requests?

Marni Nixon (1930-2016)

It is with a heavy heart that I share the news that Marni Nixon, beloved voice of Hollywood's supersized musicals of the 50s and 60s has died of breast cancer at 86. It was a long and good and musical life, if never celebrated enough by the culture she gave so much to. It had been our long held dream to see her given an Honorary Oscar which must now be a dream unfulfilled. Because I don't have the words today, I thought I'd share a piece I wrote ten years ago on how special Marni Nixon was to me, a baby cinephile growing up with musicals as my favorite form of cinematic bliss.

Marni Nixon is my Kathy Selden
by Nathaniel R 

Toward the end of Singin' in the Rain (1952), which chronicles Hollywood's seismic shift from silent films to sound production, a hilariously dim and screechy movie star Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) gets her comeuppance. She has cruelly locked the sweet voiced Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) into a contract to provide her a suitable movie voice. Lamont is after self-preservation: she can't make sound movies with her own unappealing voice, but she also cruelly takes pleasure in preventing Kathy from pursuing stardom. At a live performance Kathy stands behind a curtain, her dreams in tatters, as she sings for Lina. But Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) pulls the curtain on the act in progress, rescuing his new girl from obscurity and dooming his former co-star to a fast fade.

Singin' in the Rain is many things: a true musical masterpiece, a stellar romantic comedy, and the best movie Hollywood ever made about Hollywood (give or take Sunset Blvd). It's a completely absorbing viewing experience but for this: Every time I see it my mind drifts away to Marni Nixon during this particular scene. Kathy's story isn't exactly Marni's. Marni wasn't forced into submission as the silents were dying. But she was the songbird woman behind the curtain for beloved movie musicals and she was born in 1930 as the silents were emitting their death rattle (Hollywood studios had halted silent film production by 1929. Only a few emerged in movie houses of 30s). Marni Nixon was to be a famous voice but not a famous face ...just like the almost-fate of the fictional Kathy Selden.

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