By a nose...

by Cláudio Alves

When presenting the Best Actress Oscar during the 75th Academy Awards, Denzel Washington famously said "by a nose" before announcing Nicole Kidman as that year's winner for her work in The Hours. It was a reference to the way that, throughout that awards season, the actress's prosthetic enhanced transformation into Virginia Woolf had caused much controversy. Some people appreciated how Kidman left vanity at the door and allowed herself to be made unrecognizable, while many others found it to be distracting. In any case, it was a good booster to her Oscar campaign. The quality of a performance notwithstanding, there are few things that the Academy loves more than beautiful celebrities de-glamming.

Unfortunately, as it sometimes happens, while the performer was showered in gold, the team of makeup artists that made the physical transformation possible was left unrecognized. In the case of The Hours, they were even made ineligible…

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The Furniture: On Frida's Mirrors and Diego's Walls

Daniel Walber's series on Production Design. Click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Nearly 20 years on, Julie Taymor’s Frida remains both breathtaking (those Quay Brothers puppets!) and befuddling (why isn’t it in Spanish?). It holds up better as a visual experiment than as a biopic, despite the richness of Salma Hayek’s performance. Filmmakers have long struggled to bring the lives of visual artists to the screen in dynamic, resonant ways. Some fail.

When Frida does succeed, it’s largely due to its Oscar-nominated team of art director Felipe Fernández del Paso and set decorator Hania Robledo. Their work doesn’t simply represent the art of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, but interprets it. By transforming Kahlo’s paintings into the stuff of cinema, they directly engage with their meaning - or, rather, Taymor’s own interpretation of those meanings. The result is a film with a lot to say about materiality and identity, the value of brick and the value of life.

We begin with Frida’s bedridden journey to her first solo show in Mexico City. She is carried out of the house aloft, head resting on an embroidered pillow that reads “Amor” and “Tesoro Mio.” But then we see her through her eyes, as she looks up to the mirror into the canopy of her bed, the flowers reflected back at her.

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The New Classics: Gosford Park

Hey everyone. Michael Cusumano here. If you've got to be trapped inside, why not be trapped inside with thirty or so of the greatest British actors ever? 18-year-old mystery spoilers ahead!

 

Scene: The Murder of Willam McCordle 
I don’t think you count yourself as having seen a Robert Altman film unless you’ve seen it three times, minimum. All great films expand on rewatch, but Altman movies transform, accumulating power as additional dimensions come into focus. In no film is this more apparent than his late-period masterwork, Gosford Park...

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Almost There: Uma Thurman in "Kill Bill"

by Cláudio Alves

To this day, I am shocked at how poorly the Kill Bill movies did with AMPAS. Both pictures conquered precursor support, including Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Guild nominations, but failed to secure a single Oscar nod. I consider this duo to be Quentin Tarantino's magnum opus, so the outrage is particularly intense when it comes to its awards run. It's a couple of perfect movies, from Robert Richardson's cinematography to Sally Menke's immaculate editing. However, no matter how great those elements might be, this is the Almost There series, so our focus today is the work of an actress who is only matched by Samuel L. Jackson when it comes to her ability to embody Tarantino's vision onscreen.

She's Uma Thurman and she's never been better than here, playing Beatrix Kiddo aka The Bride aka Black Mamba aka Mommy…

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Almost There: Ben Affleck in "Hollywoodland"

by Cláudio Alves

Ben Affleck may be one of Hollywood's A-listers, but he's not quite respected as an artist. More precisely, he's not often celebrated for being a performer, having otherwise received plenty of acclaim for his work as a director and producer. Just look at his awards history. He's gotten very little love for his acting skills but won two Academy Awards, for writing Good Will Hunting and for producing Argo. Had he been nominated for directing the latter, as it was widely expected, he'd probably have added another little golden man to his collection. It's difficult to feel bad for the fellow, but, at the same time, Affleck's reputation as a subpar actor isn't completely warranted. 

While it's true his range is narrow, when cast in the right role, Ben Affleck can be quite impressive. You'll find no better example of that than 2006's Hollywoodland…

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