TCM's 31 Days of Oscar *CONTEST*

March is Reader Appreciation Month!

Have any of you been catching up on past Oscar nominees during Turner Classic Movie's annual marathon of Oscar nominated films? They've been doing it for years. The thing we love most about it now that Oscar has left March for February is that it just bleeds over into March to make up for February's abbreviated obstinance. The festival ends Friday in the early AM but TCM is always showing movies and they pack so many in that we still have 15 Oscar nominated movies to look forward to in this particular program. It's kind of a godsend if you have the flu like me. I might just lay on the couch and watch all of them. I'm watching East of Eden (which JA just wrote about) as I type this.

CHECK OUT THE SCHEDULE AT TCM.COM/31DAYS

For you actressexuals out there, the schedule tomorrow features three major screen divas: Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were (1973) one of the greatest romantic dramas Hollywood ever made; Bette Davis in the Hollywood drama The Star (1952); and Maggie Smith in the Neil Simon comedy California Suite (1978). Three films that Nick, Mike and I have discussed in the Best Picture From the Outside In series are also featured tomorrow: Grand Hotel, The Broadway Melody and Mutiny on the Bounty.

So that's it. Once again please visit TCM, it's a great station for movie lovers like us.

THE CONTEST
Last year when we held this contest Sam in Texas won a 5 DVD pack from TCM of my choosing which were: Double Indemnity (1944), A Star is Born (1954), The Umbrellas of Cherbourgh (1964), The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989) and They Shoot Horses Don't They (1969). I got a note from Sam when he received them so I know he enjoyed.  This year, we'll have TWO winners of 5 DVD packs. TCM handles this contest so it's only open to readers in the U.S. and Canada (sorry international readers. You know I usually include you.)

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED FOR ENTRIES

1. Send an email to Nathaniel with "TCM CONTEST" in the subject line by [CLOSED]
   
2. Include your name and shipping address.
3. List the 5 DVDs from the following 31 you'd like if you win: Citizen Kane, Easy Rider, A Streetcar Named Desire, Funny Girl, Gandhi, Birdman of Alcatraz, South Pacific, Glory, The Battle of Algiers, Annie Get Your Gun, The Graduate, Gone With The Wind, Miracle on 34th Street, Casablanca, Kiss of the Spiderwoman, Lawrence of Arabia, American Beauty, Network, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Teh Best Years of Our Lives, Amadeus, Sahara, Doctor Zhivago, On the Waterfront, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Annie Hall, Arthur, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Around the World in 80 Days and North By Northwest.
   
4. Finally click around on TCM's schedule for March 5th-7th and tell me... which of those movie(s) you'd most like to see written about here on The Film Experience and why -- you don't even have to have seen it. Maybe it's a type of film or a time frame or an actor. It doesn't matter. I'll DVR either the most convincing argument made or the movie that shows up on the most entries and I'll write it up next week.

You must have all 4 of those bullet points to win. The two winners will be chosen at random and announced on Sunday March 6th.

My First (Three) Dean(s)

JA from MNPP here with my follow-up to last week's query regarding the fact that I'd never seen a James Dean film and how you all should tell me which one to watch first, by poll. And tell me you did - with 44% of the vote Rebel Without a Cause, his second film with his most iconic performance, came out on top, besting East of Eden (at 37%) and Giant (at 18%). I wasn't exactly surprised by these results.

Most likely when you think Dean, you think this:

That red jacket / white tee / jeans ensemble is Marilyn's white dress flying up on the subway grate; it's Elvis' bedazzled jumpsuit and Audrey Hepburn's little black dress eating a danish in front of Tiffanys. If you're gonna start somewhere with James Dean this seems like the likeliest place to start. Which... well knowing I'd thrown myself at having to write about something so iconic it's sold more stamps than my college education cost, probably squared, was a little intimidating. What is there left to say?

Thankfully the film, while dated, does remain a fascinating, loose, alive thing. Fifty-six years of rebellious teenagers later the movie that crafted the mold somehow manages to remain just enchantingly weird. There is an otherworldly sort of spell it casts over you - there's something very apt about the planetarium setting that the film uses repeatedly. It gives you this epic space - literally all of outer space - with the beginning and the ending of the world exploding around you. But it's a manufactured apocalypse at the same time - you're not under the night sky at all. You're enclosed in a tomb of sound and fury - an echo chamber of gee whizz bang. That sounds a lot like what most of my teenage dramas all turned out to be.

Not that these kids don't have real problems. But the melodramas they play out, coupled with the actors very serious performances, takes the film into a very odd space. It's as heightened as a Douglas Sirk film, only you swap out the acting style of Rock Hudson for James Dean, which... well that's a swap. Having only seen clips of Dean's films before but never a full from-start-to-finish performance from him until now, I've got to say it really and truly was a revelation. I'm sure he was astonishing to watch on stage as well but the man was made to be placed in front of a movie camera. His face is so alive! From every angle - shoot him from the back and you can feel what he is feeling, as if he's shooting pulses of emotion from his scalp.

It seems vulgar to just straight-up gush, but as some of you said would happen in the comments I was so enamored with Dean that as soon as Rebel was finished I put in East of Eden and as soon as East of Eden was finished I put in Giant. And I've now seen them all! (That's why it took me a couple extra days to get this to you - it took me two nights to finish Giant. That is a very long movie.) And now that I've seen them all Dean's legend makes complete sense to me.

I made a joke before having seen the films about the similarity of his characters names - Jim Stark, Cal Trask, and Jet Rink - what seems amazing now, having seen the films is how completely separate these three fellows are to me. It struck me about half-an-hour into East of Eden (what a marvelous film East of Eden is, and how ashamed I feel for having only just seen it) that the Dean I was watching didn't at all seem to be the icon of teenager rebellion that I'd just been confronted with in Rebel and I'd been expecting out of all of Dean's performances. And then you get to Giant and you're watching something completely different still, and yet no less hypnotic, pour out of him.

Oh sure there are the loose similarities that connect the three - young men who seem incapable of fitting in with their surroundings, battling against the forces they see closing in on them, the slights real and imagined, all while maintaining a glorious head of hair - but the details that Dean carves out with body language and with his voice, with Jet's easygoing horse-rider's strut or Jim's tendency to jump around like an extra in West Side Story or the seemingly unwitting cruelty that coils Cal up, it was a surreal and exhilarating experience, watching all in one fell swoop.

So whaddya know? Dean was no fluke, no false advertisement. And when his scenes in Giant came to an end I felt the shadow of sadness that audiences since 1956 must sense, knowing that's all there will ever be. Still, even though the thought of all that could've been is maddening, it feels as if there's so much I'll be able to wring from just these three in repeat viewings. It'll be a pleasure.

My First Dean

JA from MNPP here with my first post in Nathaniel's renovated home. Over at my own, I just asked the simplest of queries about James Dean on this here 80th woulda-been birthday of his - that is, which character of his was the hottest, natch - but I avoided making one terrible admission therein.

See... we've all got holes in our cinematic histories, right? Like I've been in a well-documented Gary Cooper fit lately - how I made it this far into my life without gaping much at him I still haven't wrapped my head around. Every time the light catches his face and he bursts off the screen I boggle anew. Where have you been all my life, Gary Cooper? And it was only a couple of years ago that I finally watched the Godfather films. It seems nuts to me for the longest time that I hadn't plunked down and done then, and then I did, and all was fine. Everybody has such instances. You do! There's an obscure Venezuelan documentary about rice production that you haven't seen, you know it.

So don't judge me when I admit that -- Well, I haven't seen any of James Dean's films. Quelle horreur! Not exactly an obscure Venezuelan documentary about rice production, I know. But before you throw me all the deserved shade I got coming I'm looking to you folk, you kindly cineastes, to help me right my wrong. I'm asking you to tell me which of the three films which his legend rests upon - Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause, Elia Kazan's East of Eden, and George Stevens' Tex-epic Giant - that I need to sit down and watch immediately. 

And then I will go and watch this movie you tell me to go and watch, and then I will report back to you with my impression. Feel free to make your case (and scold me, of course) in the comments!

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poll by twiigs.com

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The poll ends on Saturday, so vote yourselves silly until then, and look for my report back next week.