Doc Corner: Wiseman and McQueen's duelling 4-hour epics

By Glenn Charlie Dunks

Like any sane and rational person, I devoted eight precious hours of my festive season to watching the two (yes, two) four-hour documentaries that have been offered up by famous directors. Length notwithstanding, the very idea of new films by Frederick Wiseman and Steve McQueen should be hard to pass up most of the time and so we have Menus Plaisirs – Les Troisgros and Occupied City, two very different movies that use their epic lengths to differing effect. Some better than others.

Although Wiseman’s familiarity with such a runtime makes his film the perhaps more naturally more successful, McQueen at least has enough ideas to make his latest work of non-fiction to (somewhat) keep up with the pace set by the chefs of three supreme eateries in France. Although it becomes quite clear that length, in this case, is not equal.

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The wonderful world of Adam Stockhausen

by Cláudio Alves

Over the past decade, Adam Stockhausen has become one of Hollywood's most formidable production designers. Working his way up as an art director, the first movies he got to design weren't the most prestigious fair. Indeed, Wes Craven's late-career horrors didn't give him much opportunity to show off. That all changed when Wes Anderson, Steve McQueen, and Steven Spielberg all started to go to him as their preferred designer, relying on Stockhausen to create whole worlds from scratch, whether within a realistic milieu or total fantasy. Back in 2014, Grand Budapest Hotel earned him an Oscar, and Stockhausen is back on the hunt for more gold. Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch just arrived in American theaters, and the new West Side Story is on the horizon. Could he even nab an elusive double nomination?

Here are some highlights from Adam Stockhausen's filmography as production designer, from Anderson's whimsy to Spielberg's glitz…

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Emmy FYC: The cast of "Small Axe"

by Cláudio Alves

As Christopher James mentioned in his overview of the Limited Series Emmy race, much of the discourse surrounding Small Axe has focused on categorization. Is it TV or cinema? To be perfectly blunt, I don't care. Indeed, it's been pretty disheartening to see how so much energy was spent debating this matter instead of simply appreciating the work. To me, the five Small Axe films are a miracle of audiovisual expression and historical narrative, perchance Steve McQueen's most important masterpiece. When it came time to write these Emmy FYCs, I jumped at the chance of singing the anthology's praise. Honestly, the only problem was singling out just one element to promote.

While I could just as happily have written about Shabier Kirchner's luminous cinematography or the sensuous textures of Jacqueline Durran's costumes, I've decided to focus on the actors…

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King McQueen On Every Screen

by Jason Adams

Steve McQueen, the man who directed five, count 'em, five of last year's best films with his Small Axe series, is about to confound everybody fixated on old-fashioned definitions of Art all over again with a new three-part thingamajig for the BBC called Uprising.  THR is calling it a "docuseries" and this one, on paper, does admittedly sound more like a proper old-fashioned series than the Small Axe anthology ended up seeming (to me). We'll  wait and see how McQueen confounds our expectations, since he does always love to do that, and to stunning effect. And hey if awards voting bodies can't keep up with where and how the art is happening that's their fault, not the artists.

Uprising will focus in closer on the 1981 events that formed the backdrop of Axe's fourth chapter "Alex Wheatle" -- namely the New Cross Fire which killed 13 young people, and the Black People's Day of Action and then the Brixton Riots which followed right on its heels. It's not entirely clear if this will be entirely a documentary -- McQueen's quoted as saying it will be drawn from "testimonials" of the people involved -- or if there will be a hybrid project with a fictionalized mix of recreations. Not that McQueen needs help but I'm hoping he draws some inspiration from Raoul Peck's recent HBO series Exterminate All the Brutes, which threw absolutely everything at us all at once and blew my socks straight off in the process.

Showbiz History: Hamlet vs Johnny Belinda and A Beautiful Mind vs. four brilliant films

Today, March 24th, in Oscar history only. Four ceremonies have held on this day.

1949 The 21st Academy Awards are held honoring the films of 1948. We discussed this race a handful of years ago on the Smackdown.  Johnny Belinda led the nominations with 12 but it was Laurence Olivier's Hamlet that emerged as the Best Picture winner and took home 3 other Oscars as well. It's actually a fairly interesting Oscar year given the variety of genres in the Best Picture shortlist...

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