Visual Index: Best Shots from "Witness"

Hit Me With Your Best Shot revisited Witness (1985) this week to celebrate the continuing excellence of the Australian cinematographer John Seale. It was such an unexpected treat to see him doing ambitious ravishing and inspired work as a septugenarian (Mad Max Fury Road) that rivals anything he did in his 30s (Careful He Might Hear You), 40s (Rain Man) or 50s (The English Patient, The Talented Mr Ripley) and though he didn't win a second Oscar he did win our renewed ecstatic fandom. Seale's earliest Oscar nomination came for his work lensing the gorgeous moving cop drama Witness (1985).  Here are the results of our "Best Shot" challenge from the participants. The more eyeballs the merrier so join us one of these weeks alright?

WITNESS (1985)
Directed by Peter Weir. Shot by John Seale
Click on any of the 12 images to be directed to the corresponding articles
(Nominated for 8 Academy Awards including Best Cinematography) 

 I really liked how well rounded all the Amish characters are...
-Rachel's Reviews 

How does violence affect a child?
-Film Mix Tape

Christian Bonamusa

He apparently took plenty of inspiration from Flemish and Dutch painters of the 17th century (art history student alert!)
-Magnificent Obsession 

The cinematography in this whole sequence is breathtaking...
-Cinema Cities 

It *is* a crime thriller, but it's more heartfelt and intimate and could very well be categorized as a love story... 
-Sorta That Guy 

The movie isn’t what I expected, but in ways that were very pleasant. 
-Wick's Picks 

In its best moments, Witness is some straight-up Terence Malick magic hour Days of Heaven shit...
-Dancing Dan 

That atypical reserve gives the cop drama a unique contemplative charge within its genre. 
- The Film Experience

I went for a shot that embraces the silence...
-Scopophiliac at the Cinema 

a romantic drama that forgets its supposed to be a thriller until the last 20 minutes
-Drink Your Juice, Shelby 

Perhaps the most impressive moment of Ford's career 
-Cinematic Corner

What is your favorite shot from Witness? When was the last time you'd seen it?

Next week on "Best Shot": Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page in THE BEGUILED (1971) to be remade by Sofia Coppola (!)

Jesse Unleashed. And Other Links

i09 the best critical responses to Safe Haven's batsh*t ending (spoilers, obviously)
Natasha VC the Boogie Nights premiere photos are debilitating. (amen)
Cinematic Corner expresses disatisfaction with The Master. I think the qualms expressed here are very imply put the problem a lot of people have with the second act of Paul Thomas Anderson's career. I wonder if he'll change again?
Awards Daily salutes the hard working Oscar publicists as ballots close
MNPP Judy Garland's A Star is Born even wins over JA! She's just brilliant in that film. One of the worst Oscar losses ever. 

Coming Soon on a new Bruce Lee biopic in the works. I read a few articles on this last night and not one of them mentioned that there already is a Bruce Lee biopic, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story which came out in the 90s and starred the hotness that was Jason Scott Lee (no relation)
Playbill Les Misérables will be returning to Broadway in 2014, just 11 years since the original long running show closed. Meanwhile the show has never closed in London and has now been playing for 27 years
Jesse Williams the actor (the hottie from Cabin in the Woods) doesn't pull punches detailing his issues with Django Unchained's treatment of race and slavery
Advocate Kelly McGillis will reminisce about Top Gun generically but she won't talk about Jodie Foster's coming out!
Lainey Gossip checks in with the pre-Oscar gingers Jessica Chastain & Nicole Kidman
In Contention looks at Sound Mixing which I personally think is terrifically hard to predict this year 

Finally... if you believe that math can predict the Oscars check out Ben's Oscar Forecast. He's a Harvard student who's trying to predict them with formulas. He's predicting the usual suspects that have been winning everything for acting but for best director... Ang Lee (!?!)

Still Top Gun? 25 Years With "Maverick"

Michael C here to commemorate an auspicious occasion. This week marks the 25th anniversary of Tony Scott’s Top Gun (1986). Having managed to navigate this last quarter century having never seen Scott’s slick recruiting poster of a movie, I though it might be interesting to evaluate it with fresh eyes. Up until now my only experience with Top Gun was as an enormously frustrating Nintendo game from the late 80’s.

So I was eager to finally catch up with it. This is a film, after all, that Avatar only just bumped off the all time 100 highest grossers (adjusted for inflation). Surely there was some core entertainment value that held up underneath all the dated Berlin songs and catch phrases.

So I watched it.

Ummm….

Okay, let’s start with the stuff that holds up.  The aerial dog-fighting scenes remain beautifully executed. If anything, with their clarity of action and still-convincing effects they may actually play better in the current age of cartoony CGI and hyperactive film cutting.

And for the record Tom Cruise performance remains as slickly effective as ever. I noticed no evidence that his current cultural infamy intrudes on Maverick. He basically has two poses – smug smirk and jaw-clenched intensity, each in sunglasses on and off varieties – and Cruise executes both about as well as humanly possible.  

Two Poses: Smug Smirk and Jaw-Clenched Intensity

As for the rest of the film, let’s just say it was tough to get involved in. 

Here is an incomplete list of the subsequent pop culture landmarks that intruded on my viewing of Top Gun:

Lethal Weapon (1987) and Die Hard (1988)
Top Gun really suffers when compared with the legacy of its ultra-violent action contemporaries. All these films have been ripped off ad infinitum but Top Gun offers nothing like that the Gibson-Glover chemistry or Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber that holds up despite the familiarity.

Rain Man (1988)
Cruise’s personal life doesn’t detract from the movie but that doesn’t mean Cruise’s other roles don’t haunt Maverick at every moment. I could name any of a dozen talented, yet arrogant wild cards with Daddy issues, but I singled out Rain Man because Levinson’s film has the wherewithal to peg Cruise's character as an insufferable prick in need of redemption from frame one, whereas Top Gun seems to think he’s a charmer.

Speaking of which…

Frank TJ Mackey approves of Maverick's mastery of the muffin

Magnolia (1999)
I couldn’t shake the impression that Cruise's Pete Mitchell had just completed a Frank Mackey seminar. Seriously, he is one of the most unlikable protagonists I’ve encountered outside a Neil LaBute film. Kelly McGillis's character seems to drop 50 IQ points in the process of falling for him. I kept siding with Kilmer’s Iceman and his entirely reasonable requests that Cruise stop showboating before he kills everybody.

Quentin Tarantino
So, yeah, I was never able to forget QT’s notorious monlogue on Top Gun’s gay subtext and it pretty well destroyed the volleyball scene which was ridiculous to start with. If anything it built it up too much for me. Homoerotic, sure, but I was expecting a cross between 300 and a number from Showgirls.

Team America World Police (2004)
You would think Hot Shots would be the one to distract but Parker and Stone were the ones who conclusively eviscerated the action clichés present in every moment of Top Gun. Try to get through Tom’s serious speech about his father’s past without thinking of Team America’s CATS monologue.

And as long as we’re on the subject…

Every Action Movie Ever
From the end of act two crisis of confidence to the evil black-helmeted pilots who flew in from the nearest Bond movie they really do leave no action trope unturned. If you had a drinking game where you took a shot every time someone yelled at Maverick for being too damned awesome you'd be blotto by the thirty minute mark.

Links. Episode #14,001,382

I apologize for my uncharacteristic absence today. The day is just not really working out for me. Enjoy these links while I try to shake the mood off.

Frankly My Dear... Captain Adama Edward James Olmos honored at the Florida Film Festival. He's still very proud of his contributions to Blade Runner and Stand and Deliver.
My New Plaid Pants signs on to the Saoirse Ronan bandwagon post Hanna. People keep asking me if I have seen this. I have not seen this. I need a reason as I'm so not enjoying this teen assassin pop culture craze. It makes me so queasy.
Slash Film Robert Richardson, one of our favorite DPs will shoot Brad Pitt's World War Z movie.
Sunset Gun on an unusual choice in heartbreaking Woody Allen pictures: Take the Money and Run.
The AV Club looks at the new Mike Leigh Topsy-Turvy DVD.
The Wrap the BFCA has a spin off group now BTCA which will host Emmy style awards. Hopefully they'll use their powers for good and not try to predict the Emmys. The Emmys, way more than the Oscars, need pushes towards quality tv when they are often so content to vote for whatever they voted for the year before, even when shows take quality downturns.
Celebrity Blend Kelly McGillis is working at a Rehab Center. Good for her.
Slate with Arthur in the pop culture air again -- albeit sobered up -- here's a piece that looks on artists before and after sobriety including Stephen King and Martin Scorsese.

One of the things that makes The Shining one of the best books ever written about alcoholism is that it doesn't know what it is about. It was an act of urgent self-diagnosis, conducted in the pitch dark.

Finally...
Tribeca Film asks if movie theaters should think more like Netflix. I L-O-V-E this idea. I really think subscription models are the way to go in many business.

Would you buy admission to your favorite movie theater on a subscription basis?