Instagram Goodies: Marlon, Natalie, Faye, Dancer in the Dark

Just some yummies spotted on Instagram we thought you might enjoy...

Marlon Brando wardrobe reference for "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1962).

A photo posted by The Academy (@theacademy) on Nov 25, 2016 at 12:48pm PST

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The Method Is No Longer Worth the Madness

If you haven't yet caught the latest essay from Angelica Jade Bastién (who has written here a few times) check it out at the Atlantic. It's called "Hollywood Ruined Method Acting" and it goes at the increasingly torturous PR campaigns that surround modern "accomplishments" of screen acting. As as usual Angelica is quite insightful about acting and sexism. Bless her for citing Montgomery Clift's contribution to acting, non-method styles that are just as valuable (see Brad Pitt) and the various incredible female actors (like Gena Rowlands) who are pushed aside due to the obsession with masculinity. Marlon Brando gets all the credit and don't think it's not because of the machismo and swagger.

I'd quote the article but instead I'll quote Jason's reaction which made me giggle:

I was nodding my head in agreement so furiously I was spitting out vertebrae by its end

Same. Same.

The Furniture: Decorating Madness in A Streetcar Named Desire

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber...

The 70th Tony Awards are in just a few days. I certainly can't be trusted with predictions, but I’ll make one guess. The award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play probably won’t be split three ways. That sort of near-impossible result has only occurred once, all the way back in 1948. The 2nd Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play was shared by Judith Anderson, Katharine Cornell, and Jessica Tandy. Tandy won for the original broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

Of course, she didn’t get to be in the movie and so we will leave her behind. Elia Kazan’s film of Tennessee Williams’s masterpiece premiered less than two years after its Broadway run ended. Its success was that instant. It won four Oscars, though all but one was for acting. That fourth prize, of course, was for production design. [More...]

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Happy 100th: Why Doesn't Movita Have a Biopic?

Today is the Centennial of the Mexican American actress Movita, who was born as Maria Luisa Castaneda but renamed Movita by MGM because the name sounded Polynesian to them. Well maybe it's her centennial. She claims the studio fudged with her age to make her older for legal reasons. She's surely best remembered today as "Tehani" one of two young island beauties (the other being "Maimiti" played by Mamo Clark) that got entangled in all that Mutinous Best Picture business on the Bounty back in 1935 (if you know what I mean).

Movita went on to international fame and married two famous masculine hunks, first the boxer Jack Doyle and then superstar Marlon Brando (quite atypically she was an "older woman" marrying a young superstar) so we're guessing she had a type...

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Amy, Marlon, Janis and Kurt's Documentaries Raise Ethical Questions

Glenn here. As the world of documentary filmmaking grows and grows, biography docs are among the most popular and easiest to sell. This pre-sold name-brand familiarity makes them more desirable to financiers, producers, directors, distributors, exhibitors, festivals, and ultimately audiences. It’s hardly surprising that of the Academy’s 124-strong long-list (to be narrowed to 15 any day now) at least 20 cover the life of a famous person in the public eye. And if you want to stretch the parameters to include institutions such as National Lampoon, Saturday Night Live, Tower Records, The Black Panthers, The Bolshoi Theatre etc, the number balloons. They are also among the highest profile submissions, too, with names like Nina Simone, Evel Kenievel and Chris Farley simply standing out more than geo-politics, homophobia in the Middle East, or Cambodian rock and roll.

This sub-category of documentary were once considered more frivolous and less serious, but have recently begun to win Oscar attention with titles such as Exit through the Gift Shop, Man on Wire, and even Wim Wenders’ Pina and Salt of the Earth. As a result, ethical questions about this kind of documentary filmmaking are rising up. I know it doesn't sound sexy, but bear with me for Amy Winehouse, Marlon Brando, and other luminaries after the jump....

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