Fellini @ 100: "Amarcord"

A few volunteers from Team Experience are revisiting Federico Fellini classics for his centennial. Here's Eric Blume...

 

Federico Fellini’s 1975 film Amarcord is considered the culmination of his style and artistry, the “most Fellini” of Fellini films, the one that won him his last (of four) Best Foreign Film Oscar, as well as prizes from the New York Film Critics and National Board of Review as director of the year.  And he never made a film afterwards that rivaled its success or connection with audiences... 

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Star Wars and the Oscars, a History.

Get away from Natalie Wood, Darth Vader, we're warning you!

Over at Vulture this weekend, yours truly has a piece up about the history of Oscar's affection (and lack thereof) for the Star Wars saga. I'm glad they liked my Diane Keaton / Annie Hall intro (though they added the Woody Allen bits -- I left him out as I didn't want to distract people) because I couldn't get the image of Diane callously "la-di-da"ing while wielding the Death Star out of my head. Anyway, it was great fun to write so I hope you enjoy. It was also a trip to source the FYC ads -- if only more of them were available online. I couldn't find a single FYC ad for The Empire Strikes Back or The Phantom Menace (among other films).

One thing I didn't have space for  that I could have written much more on was the individual categories over the years -- isn't it strange that Star Wars (1977) is the only time the series has ever been up for Costume Design?!? -- and the individual presentations. Look how excited Farrah Fawcett was to find out who won Best Editing!

And why did Oscar producers pair her with Marcello Mastroianni for a prize that was clearly going to Star Wars? The mysteries that emerge from history... even history as well documented as pop culture.  

Lina Wertmüller's History-Making "Seven Beauties"

The Governors Awards (Honorary Oscars) will be held on October 27th, 2019 with director Lina Wertmüller, actress Geena Davis, director David Lynch, and actor Wes Studi celebrated. We'll be discussing each of them before then.

by new contributor Camila Henriques

In Seven Beauties, Lina Wertmüller is not interested in sparing the audience. That becomes clear in the first minutes of the film, when we’re presented with a myriad of images of the Second World War: Hitler, explosions, destruction. In the background, a voice over speaks with a hint of melancholy and irony about “the ones who keep going and going just to see how it will end”... 

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Love & Anarchy: Lina Wertmüller's unruly tragedy

The Governors Awards (Honorary Oscars) will be held on October 27th, 2019 with director Lina Wertmüller, actress Geena Davis, director David Lynch, and actor Wes Studi celebrated. We'll be discussing each of them before then.

by Cláudio Alves

Lina Wertmüller's films always feature great faces. They're not classically beautiful, but rather interesting to look at, like the visages sculpted by shadow in Caravaggio's paintings. In Love & Anarchy, Giancarlo Giannini is a storm of freckles, his green eyes lighthouses guiding us through the waves into his soul. Contrastingly, Mariangela Melato is a spectacle of powdered pallor, a vampiric Jean Harlow or perhaps a tarted-up marble statue, gorgeous and obscene in equal measure...

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How had I never seen... "Three Days of the Condor" or "The Parallax View"?

In this new series, members of Team Film Experience watch and share their reactions to classic films they’ve never seen. 

by Lynn Lee

The 1970s may have been a great era for cinema, but they were a pretty lousy time for faith in the great American experiment.  Between the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers, the Church Committee reports, and of course Watergate, there were seemingly endless reasons to suspect the U.S. government and other institutions meant to serve and protect the public were instead covering up all manner of malfeasance—and that they might be watching you if they thought you were a threat.  This generalized paranoia found fertile ground in Hollywood, leading to a spate of conspiracy thrillers of varying quality and goofiness.

Until last month, the only one of these films I’d seen was All the President’s Men (unless you count Chinatown and Network, which I’d argue you could).  But something about the social and political tensions of today made these movies seem especially current again.  So it seemed like a good occasion to watch two of the most famous examples of the genre: Three Days of the Condor (1975) and A Parallax View (1974)...

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