Almost There: Angela Lansbury in "Death on the Nile"

by Cláudio Alves

From Gaslight to Glass Onion, Angela Lansbury had one extraordinary career whose sheer grandeur is hard to overstate. For almost 80 years, she entertained people worldwide, be it on the stages of Broadway or on TV as Jessica Fletcher, from roles of unspeakable villainy to cherished nurturers in children's media. So to read news of her death was shocking, even though Lansbury was almost 97 – she passed less than a week before her birthday. It just seemed like she would live forever, a primordial force eternally present in our lives. Lansbury worked to the end, maintaining a last vestige of Old Hollywood alive with her. How can one come close to articulating what a loss this is for show business? There was simply no one else quite like Angela Lansbury.

To honor the star, let's recall one of her most colorful film creations, a foray into Agatha Christie's world of murder mysteries that almost nabbed Lansbury a fourth Oscar nomination – the 1978 Death on the Nile…

Click to read more ...

Was Peter Ustinov the best Poirot?

by Cláudio Alves

Growing up in a house furnished with the complete written works of Agatha Christie made me a fan of the whodunnit genre from a young age. My mum, an unabashed fan of criminal narratives and detective stories, made sure I was familiar with the figure of Hercule Poirot and, eventually, I too became a fan. While we've long spent joyful evenings sharing our love for the adventures of Belgium's most excellent fictional investigator, we don't always agree about this entertainment.

For instance, our idea of who the perfect on-screen Poirot  differs significantly. Her heart belongs to David Suchet's book-faithful incarnation, while I prefer Peter Ustinov's joyful take on the same character. On the centennial of the the two-time Oscar-winning thespian, I thought I could elaborate on why Ustinov is my perfect Poirot…

Click to read more ...

The Furniture: All the World's a Circus in "Topkapi"

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber. (Click on the images for magnified detail)

Last week’s column on Suddenly, Last Summer was a bonus sidebar to our ongoing Montgomery Clift retrospective. Today, I offer a diversion from our wall-to-wall Monty programming, in the form of a tribute to someone else’s centennial: Melina Mercouri. None of this film star's movies were nominated for Best Production Design at the Oscars, but I adore her anyway. And one of her films, made at the peak of her fame, is a perfect fit: Topkapi (1964)

Mercouri’s brand, so to speak, was one of obstinate vitality. In Stella, her film debut, she played a nightclub singer who simply refuses to be married, even at the expense of love. Her character in Never on Sunday, for which she received her only Oscar nomination, insists upon her own chipper versions of the Greek classics. Medea, who didn’t really murder her children, gets her husband back and they all go to the seashore. Mercouri’s signature vivacity is always at odds with her surroundings, defying the rules of both tragedy and society.

But the visual climax of this attitude comes in Topkapi, for which the entire world seems to have been refashioned to fit the expectations of Mercouri’s persona. She even introduces it, casting the world as a funfair even before the opening credits...

Click to read more ...

Tues Top 10: Oscar's All Time Favorite Supporting Actors

by Nathaniel R

Tommy Lee Jones in JFKLet's discuss Oscar hiearchies, again. This one is ultra specific but we're doing it for balance since we did the supporting actresses last week. Who are Oscar's 10 favorite supporting actors of all time? We'll work the ranking like so: Supporting nominations count most, with wins acting like half a nomination to help determine rank. The tiebreaker is the spread of time of nominations which can denote either long term fandom on the Academy's part or shortlived enthusiasms.

In contrast to supporting actress where the leaders were clear and the nomination counts higher but among fewer people, very narrow statistics separated all of the runners up from the top ten. Though if you must know, the unlucky #11 was Tommy Lee Jones, who would have ranked 5th on the top ten had he won the Oscar for Lincoln AS HE SHOULD HAVE. But we'll discuss Tommy and the 7 other working actors who almost made the list after the top ten under "who's next?". But for now a shout out to the departed. They left behind great performances and almost made this list: 

• Gig Young (1951, 1958, 1969*)
• Martin Landau (1988, 1989, 1994*)
• Charles Coburn (1941, 1943*, 1946)
• Melvyn Douglas (1963*, 1979*)
• Philip Seymour Hoffman (2007, 2008, 2012)
• Charles Bickford (1943, 1947, 1948)
• Anthony Quinn (1952*, 1956*)

okay on to the top ten list...

Click to read more ...

Blueprints: "Evil Under the Sun"

In anticipation of the release of Murder on the Orient Express this weekend, Jorge Molina takes a look at a lesser known Agatha Christie adaptation to see how a mystery can introduce its suspects before it even begins.

There are few things that give me more comfort in life than murder mysteries. Clues woven cleverly through a narrative, the slow reveal of hidden motivations, the buildup to a clean and logical resolution. Watching one person inevitably emerge a criminal from a large group of eccentric and enigmatic characters. 

Agatha Christie is still the undeniable queen of the genre. In her novels she perfected the character archetypes for these stories: the charismatic millionaire, the begrudging femme fatale, the quiet foreign girl, the ambitious older lad... to name but a few.

And when her work started to inevitably get cinematic adaptations, with them came a pool of dramatic flair for actors to dive into...

Click to read more ...