Streaming Roulette: Mister Tibbs, Maria Braun, Alfred Kinsey

by Nathaniel R

If you're new to the site this is how we share new streaming offerings for the month. We select a handful (or two) of titles and just randomly hit a place on the scroll bar to see what the film looks like - no cheating. Sadly despite the so-called "streaming wars" there just isn't much out there to suggest that any of the channels (barring the must-have Criterion Channel) want any viewers who are obsessed with anything other than decent to lame movies made between 2002-2019. Even the 1990s are getting fairly uncommon to see on streaming services. Ready? Let's play...

I think we should go very soon... like... RIGHT NOW."

Outbreak (1995) on Netflix
What better time to watch this oldie but right now in the midst of another massive global health scare. (In truth I barely remember this picture other than finding it ridiculous at the time. But then, I was younger and it's a truth that young people dont scare as easily as older people when it comes to their mortality.)

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Beauty vs Beast: Home is Where the Hearts Are

Jason from MNPP here with the last "Beauty vs Beast" before the Oscars. This week's poll doesn't have anything to do with the Oscars though because let's face it - the Academy, bless their shiny hearts, is never going to be as cool and adventurous as our host Nathaniel is. Nathaniel dropped his Top Ten of 2017 over the weekend and at #9 was a movie AMPAS was never going to go anywhere near - Darren Aronofsky's spectacularly divisive mother! starring Jennifer Lawrence (who's got Red Sparrow out this weekend) as a sink-bracing Suzy Homemaker under, uh, extreme duress. But we're never going to forget mother!, and we doubt you will either - even if it's just to picture Michelle Pfeiffer whenever you slip a little extra something into your lemonade...

survey service

PREVIOUSLY We wished Sidney Poitier a happy birthday last Monday, wondering why he wasn't the one who got AMPAS' attention in 1967's In the Heat of the Night - he certainly got our attention, rounding up 85% of your vote from his co-star (and statue-snatcher) Rod Steiger. Said Red:

"Watching Sydney Poitier reassured me that I could grow up into the kind of adult I wanted to be. He still had what we kids had and adults had lost. He was honest, honourable, brave and full of joy."

Beauty vs Beast: They Call Him Mr. Poitier

Jason from MNPP here - Sidney Poitier is turning 91 years old tomorrow, and so let's devote this week's episode of "Beauty vs Beast" to Norman Jewison's 1967 classic police drama In the Heat of the Night, which won five Oscars including ones for Best Picture, for Rod Steiger as Best Actor, and for Hal Ashby for Editing. Shockingly Poitier wasn't even nominated for the film, but he did already have his 1963 statue for Lilies in the Field at that point.

ITHOTN is nominally a film about a murder in a small town, but it's the tension between the Mississippian police chief Gillespie (Steiger) and the usurping fancy-man Philadelphian detective Virgil Tibbs (Poitier) that gives the film its drama, as we watch their animosity give way to something like respect. Still it's very much of its time, up to and including those Oscar nominations - imagine Steiger winning the statue while Poitier's not even nominated today...

polls & surveys

PREVIOUSLY To borrow a turn of phrase from Denzel Washington, last week's Creed contest wasn't close and the winner, by an arm, was Michael B. Jordan as Adonis. He took just under 70%. Said Emma:

"I cried like a baby in the final act of CREED. My crying was so audible that someone in front of me turned around and said to my friend, 'let's hope she never sees SCHINDLER'S LIST!'.   Oh, and Michael B. Jordan's guns, obviously."

The Furniture: Matte Paintings at the End of an Era

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.

Over the course of the past year, I’ve done an informal retrospective series on the Best Production Design nominees of 1967. It isn’t an especially “New Hollywood” lineup, despite being the year of “Pictures at a Revolution.” Four of the nominees are lush period pieces, three of them lengthy musicals. They often feel like extravagantly-designed chaos, whirlwinds of sets and props that spin out of control. This is true of both the hilarious brawls of The Taming of the Shrew and the dated, stereotype-laden adventures of Thoroughly Modern Millie. Camelot, the winner, manages to split the difference between Old Hollywood excess and New Hollywood sexuality.

The final two films, both Best Picture nominees, are a bit less of a thrill. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and Doctor Dolittle are, respectively, the most realistic and most fantastical of the five nominees. However, despite their differences, they both underline the inadequate end-point of old-school studio design.

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Sneakers Turns 25

by Lynn Lee

Sneakers turns 25 today, and until last week I’d never seen it.   Although it came out when I was of moviegoing age, it was barely on my radar.  All I remembered of it later was that it was about hackers and maybe also spies and the NSA, and I tended to confuse it with Hackers (which I’d never seen either).  My husband was amazed to learn this, having seen Sneakers more times than he could count, and said I had to see it.  But wouldn’t it be awfully dated now, I wondered?  He insisted it still held up, despite admitting he hadn’t seen it in a while.  There was only one way to find out…

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