HBO’s LGBT History: The Normal Heart (2014)

Last week we swooned over Dane DeHaan’s pitch perfect portrayal of a self-serious gay NYC teen in In Treatment and this week we’re returning to what continues to be HBO’s most cherished LGBT theme: the AIDS crisis. We’ve talked about it here, there, and here, here, and yep, here again… Much of this project has been about discovery, but The Normal Heart is still relatively recent and so below find some words I’d dispatched when I first saw it close to two years ago.

“And every gay man who refuses to come forward now and fight to save his own life is truly helping to kill the rest of us.” — Ned Weeks

Anger fuels much of The Normal Heart and the play/film’s ability to showcase such raw and seemingly useless feeling is one of the more extraordinary things to come out of Kramer’s life and work. Curmudgeoney as Kramer and Ned Weeks may come off, their anger is not only justified but necessary. It makes for a tacit and probably unintentional meta-nod to have the Hulk himself play him. [More...]

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Personal Ballots Continued: Editing, Makeup, Visual FX

I promised daily Film Bitch Award nominations and I aim to deliver since we were supposed to technically be done by now. The best laid plans. Yesterday I shared male acting choices and jazzed up two Oscar charts. Today half of the visual categories have gone up and I've updated the correlative three Oscar charts, too.

FILM EDITING
I'm so disappointed that Academy voters skipped Sicario's Joe Walker in this category so I've rectified that obvious error. Talk about sustaining the tension masterfully for two hours. He's best known for his work with director Steve McQueen and was Oscar-nominated a couple of years ago for 12 Years a Slave. He had a good year since he also edited Blackhat which people found lacking in the emotion and story department but which was quite fine on a craft level. Two editors we interviewed here Nathan Nugent (Room) and Affonso Gonçalves (Carol) are also honored. 

VISUAL FX
Look I get that people didn't love The Avengers: Age of Ultron but passing on its visual effects strikes me as pettiness for feeling disappointed and getting Marvel fatigue. This is state of the art superheroics. Looking over my nominees now I'm realizing it was a very good year for robots: Ultron, The Vision, Ex Machina's Ava, and even Tomorrowland's Athena 

MAKEUP & HAIR
I mostly adhere to Oscar rules with my traditional categories but not here as I am adamantly opposed to this category being ghettoized the way it is with the Academy. The makeup artists are the ONLY artists with an oscar category that are allowed only 3 nominations. Everyone else gets 5 and that is just messed up since every single film uses a hair and makeup team. With five spots, I have room for both of the high profile Oscar nominees because who can forget Leo's horrific zombie face in The Revenant or smoky eyes reaching their gonzo apotheosis in Mad Max Fury Road. For the other spots I've embraced maximum beauty (Carol), stylish comedy (Spy), and the world's most famous detective (Mr Holmes). Read the writeups here.

*If any makeup artists are reading I'd love a better education on how these departments work on film sets. It's one of the behind the scenes jobs where credits dont feel very consistent from film to film in terms of titles of the players.

Retro Sundance: 2000's You Can Count on Me

Team Experience is looking back on past Sundance winners since we aren't attending this year. Here's Kieran on Kenneth Lonergan's directorial debut

In many of the write-ups about Kenneth Lonergan's delicate and perceptive character study, the one aspect people seem to be on the same page about is the believable sibling dynamic between Sammy (Laura Linney) and Terry Prescott (Mark Ruffalo). Watching Sammy and Terry's first face-to-face interactions, I thought "Yes! This is how brothers and sisters behave!" It's such a tricky thing to depict, and it's often done poorly. How does a writer/director effectively convey a relationship between two adults whose shared histories are such a constant, inescapable presence? It's a subtle tightrope to walk.

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César Noms: Mustang, Marguerite, Melanie, and More...

Kristen Stewart's César win last year for Clouds of Sils Maria was historicThis year's César nominations (i.e. The French Oscars) have been announced. Due to the oddities of release schedules statesides, especially when it comes to subtitled pictures, many of the French films we've been discussing as "best ofs" like Girlhood, Saint Laurent, and Clouds of Sils Maria were 2014 features in France and honored accordingly. The only real crossovers with our current awards season are Denis Gamze Erguven's Oscar nominated Mustang (now playing in very limited release in the States) which is all over their nominations and two of their "Foreign Film Nominees" Hungary's Son of Saul and Italy's Youth which will compete with last year's US Best Picture winner Birdman.

Their nominations were led by the prestige vehicle Marguerite (which is "loosely based" on the story of Florence Foster Jenkins who is getting her own American biopic starring Meryl Streep this year) and Arnaud Desplechin's My Golden Days which are both expected to receive US theatrical releases in 2016. (If you see a link, it goes to our review of the picture, or past articles about the actor or director)

BEST FILM 

• Dheepan, Jacques Audiard
• Fatima, Philippe Faucon
• The Measure of a Man, Stephane Brize
• Marguerite, Xavier Giannoli
• Mon Roi, Maïwenn
• Mustang, Deniz Gamze Erguven
• Standing Tall, Emmanuelle Bercot
• My Golden Days, Arnaud Desplechin

Let's discuss their nominations and various beautiful Frenchies after the jump. 

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Judy by the Numbers: "Dear Mr. Gable"

Anne Marie is charting Judy Garland's career through musical numbers...

In 1936, 14 year old Judy was selected to perform at Clark Gable's birthday party. Gable, the biggest MGM star at that time, was to have an all out bash. For Judy's performance, Roger Edens wrote an intro lyric to an old MGM property, "You Made Me Love You," which directed the 1917 song specifically at Gable. At the party, Judy jumped out of a cake and sang the star his song, charming not only the birthday boy, but also his boss, Louis B. Mayer.

The Movie: Broadway Melody of 1938 (MGM, 1937)
The Songwriter: James V. Monaco (music), Joseph McCarthy (lyrics), Roger Edens (new title & intro)
The Players: Eleanor Powell, Robert Taylor, Judy Garland, Clark Gable's photo, directed by Roy del Ruth

The Story: The result of her hit at the birthday party was that Judy Garland was cast singing her new song in  Broadway Melody of 1938. The Broadway Melody series was designed for MGM to try out up-and-coming talent; Buddy Ebsen made his debut there, and it helped make Eleanor Powell a star. Judy was no exception. All of the reviews raved about her: NYT called out her "amazing precocity" while The Hollywood Reporter asked why she'd been kept under wraps so long. "Dear Mr. Gable" would become her first single, too. Judy Garland was an overnight hit, but it would take her 2 more years and 5 more movies to become a star.