THE PRE-OSCAR DEATHWATCH.....R.I.P. TO A TRIO OF CINEMA NOTABLES....

         I wanted to bid farewell to these recently passed, major figures in film history since the chances of them making it into  this Sunday night's Oscar "In Memoriam" segment is slim to none..... 

          And already pointed out in a previous post about the upcoming awards ceremony, come Monday morning, the Academy can count on catching hell about all the iconic, key people they leave out.

          BERT I. GORDON (1922-2023 (100)   The Amazing Colossal Special Effects Guy....or as I sometimes jokingly referred to him, the Notorious B.I.G..........

           His films constitute a major chunk of any Baby Boomer's afternoons at the Saturday Matinee. A prolific writer-director of ultra low budget, cheesy sci-fi-fantasy films, Gordon also created their vivid, but laughably unconvincing special effects.  Giant people and creatures were his favorite go-to subjects...."Village Of The Giants", "Food Of The Gods", "Empire Of The Ants", "The Amazing Colossal Man" , "King Dinosaur", "Earth Vs. The Spider" ( a big-ass arachnid), "The Magic Sword" (a big ass dragon) and of course "The Beginning Of The End" (his giant grasshopper epic)   Sure, the effects were painfully crummy, but damn the movies reveled in them ......so did us Saturday Matinee kids......

TOPOL (1935-2023 (87)   The genial avuncular Israeli actor, forever known for his portrayal of Tevye in Norman Jewison's large scale version of the musical "Fiddler On The Roof"

          On stage, the larger-than-life theatricality of the role encouraged actors to shamelessly ham it up, no one more so than the role's originator, the grand comedic Zero Mostel.

           But Jewison took a realistic approach to bringing the play to the screen and Topol adjusted the performance to turn the expansive, ranting Tevye into a more universal, recognizable human being. 

           He never racked up a long filmography, but you never forgot him in anything he appeared in....most memorably in his major supporting role as one of Roger Moore's roughish allies in the Bond film "For Your Eyes Only"

Robert Blake (1933 - 2023 (89)    What a long, turbulent and troubled life this ionic actor led.....in a career that stretched to almost the entirety of cinema history.......starting at age 5, when he joined 'The Little Rascals', continuing through his childhood (yes, that's him as the little Mexican boy hanging around Humphrey Bogart at the start of "Treasure Of Sierra Madre"). He toiled on in episodic television until snagging his breakthrough role as as one of the killers in "In Cold Blood".

           And from there, an up-and-down career film career. Blake found few roles to take advantage of his natural raw, charismatic intensity.....until TV came calling again with "Baretta", a gritty cop series he enjoyed as a star for 3 years. 

              After his last film role in David Lynch's "Lost Highway", Blake resurfaced in the worst way imaginable, put on trial for his wife's murder and then later acquitted, leaving a mountain of unanswered questions and theories. (and then later a conviction against him in a civil court).

             Memorable work amid a chaotic life......no film buff's likely to forget him.....

'THE 5000 FINGERS OF DR. T'....A "SEUSSICAL"..... LONG BEFORE THE ONE ON BROADWAY......

 The 5000 Fingers Of Dr. T. (1953)    What can I say about a movie that began life as a 1000 page script from the immortal children's book author Dr. Seuss?

            To put it mildly, nothing like 1950's movie audiences had ever laid eyes on before.......and nothing they'd ever likely see again.....at least not until Tim Burton's flights of fantasy came along......

            The sheer amount of creative ambition on display here staggered me.  Visually it's an all-out, eye-popping rendition of a typical Dr. Seuss-ian universe......a warped. multi-colored landscape of wobbly structures, stairs leading to nowhere, a fractured dreamscape dominated by twisting trails of an endless piano with an equally infinite keyboard. 

             But it's a tyrannical kingdom, ruled by the preening arrogant piano teacher Dr. Terwilliker (the great, glorious and prolific theatrical ham Hans Conried). Dr. T.'s master plan - forcing 500 boys to simultaneously play on his miles long piano...(hence the astounding sight of 5000 little fingers pounding away...)

             Stuck in this cartoonish, but cheerfully nightmare world is Bartholomew Collins (Tommy Rettig, soon to co-star with Marilyn Monroe in "River Of No Return" and then become Lassie's first TV pal). His single mom (Mary Healy) labors in evening dresses as Dr. T.'s hypnotized prisoner.  To rescue her and escape Terwilliker's clutches, Bart enlists the aid of easy-going plumber Mr. Zabladowski (Peter Lind Hayes, who with his wife Mary Healy performed as a musical duo on stage, films and TV)

            What follows here resembles a something of a cross between "The Wizard Of Oz", "Alice In Wonderland" and "Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"......frequently laced with catchy songs featuring Dr. Seuss's lyrics,  filled to the brim with the same kind of rhythmic intricate  wordplay of that kids so love to read aloud in his books. 

            And I don't want to finish this review without mentioning the absolute show stopping, bring-the-house-down dance number in the middle of the film. Within Dr. T.'s dungeon, he incarcerates all the musicians and instruments he cannot tolerate ("Scratchy violins, screechy piccolos, nauseating trumpets, et cetera, et cetera!" )   In a brilliant, whimsical display of choreography and production design, the musicians break out of their cells in defiance.......furiously playing  instruments exaggerated to extravagant, brilliant  Dr. Seuss-ian proportions.   Legendary stuff., the kind of sequence I'd love to come back to and watch all by itself, whenever I need a spirit-lifting moment. 

            Too much ahead of its time and far from any family film that 1950's audiences were used to, '5000 Fingers' found little favor amount parents and kids of the era.  Returning to it now, it remains as audaciously weird, stunning and visually out-of-this-world as any recently produced family fantasy........and those original Dr. Seuss songs are exactly that.......funny, adroit, hummable , they could've only sprung from the mind of Dr. Seuss. 

              A spaced out odyssey for kids and adults alike.....and a must see for all cinema buffs....4 Seussical stars (****).

             

'THE OSCAR'.....THE HEEL GOOD MOVIE OF 1966

 The Oscar (1966)    In BQ's neverending quest for Guilty Pleasures so abysmal they leave an audience collapsed with derisive laughter.......I present you a Treasure Of Treasures.....

              After I calmed down from 2 hours of convulsive giggles, I still cannot solve the most puzzling mystery surrounding this movie.....

              What in the name of holy hell possessed the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to grant this film permission to use the Academy Awards (the ceremony and the statuettes) as a backdrop?

               I only ask because "The Oscar" rolls out the most hilariously overdone, overripe, overacted depiction of Hollywood as a circus of greed, depravity, backstabbing and amorality. Or as they like to call it in tinseltown.....Monday.

                Unintentionally funny from beginning to end, the film resembles an epic-length Saturday Night Live skit, spoofing the well-worn tale of a showbiz heel's rise and fall......liberally seasoned with cartoonish faux-melodramatic dialogue, heated up to volcanic temperatures.....,. 

                Incredibly, the script was co-written by legendary sci-fi master Harlan Ellison. I can only assume Ellison viewed this project as a golden opportunity to shred the film and TV industries for their mistreatment and handling of his scripts.  

                But just like everyone else who got a look at the final results, he could only stare at film, appalled and disgusted, yet another example of Hollywood screwing him over.......

               For the rest of us seekers of truly terrible movies, though, "The Oscar" remains the Holy Grail of gloriously catastrophic disasters.........demeaning, degrading and humiliating every single person unlucky enough to participate in its production. 

                Oh where oh where to begin?  Let's start with the film's lead character.....the cruel, rapacious, heartless shark Frankie Fane.....a one note, unrepentant bastard, performed as a single-minded, monotone monster by Stephen Boyd. (mostly famous for his villainous turn in "Ben Hur")

                Frankie's a toxic spill in human form and his only friend (and parasitic minion) is Hymie Kelly, his whimpering, simpering, groveling boyhood friend.  And prepare yourselves....the role of .Hymie, a ludicrous character to begin with, fell to.....Tony Bennett.

                Poor poor Bennett. Relatively new to acting, the film forces Bennett into some hysterically over-the-top raving and ranting at Boyd...... you can't help feeling sorry for him when he gamely launches into hand-wringing monologues that would test the skill and range of even trained, talented actors, let alone a rank novice. (Mortified and demolished by the experience, Bennett wisely restricted all his subsequent film and TV work to making cameo appearances only as himself...)

               Moving right along, the ambitious but ever obnoxious Frankie hooks up with a fading, aging actress (Eleanor Parker), leading him to a screen test and a rapid rise up the ranks of Hollywood stardom. But soon moviegoers detecting what a creep he is, avoid his films, making him box office poison.  With his career on the skids and broke from his lavish spending, Frankie's one stop away from  begging for a TV pilot when he's nominated for Best Actor Of The Year. 

               And here's where the movie, already bubbling up to full boil, flies even further off the rails. Frankie, believing sympathetic Academy voters would  rally around him with an Oscar win, , deliberately plants a scandalous story in the press about his younger days touring bars to promote a stripper. (Jill St. John)  

               By this time (and not until the very end of a long, long 2 hours) the rest of the cast of characters finally come to realize that Frankie's a man-sized turd who walks upright.......thereby making the final scene, steeped in supposed irony, the least surprising climax you could imagine. 

               All the primary fun here (apart from Boyd's stiff impression of a jerk and Bennett's woeful stabs at theatrics) comes from the florid, wildly overwritten dialogue, most of which sound like lame, hopelessly clumsy attempts to duplicate the classics lines of "Sweet Smell Of Success")  (whines Frankie, "Why.....why...why do I always try to destroy the people I love?")

               (And as a bonus, you don't want to miss the random appearances of gossip queen Hedda Hopper and costume designer Edith Head)

                As I've done in the past, I feel like I need to issue two separate ratings for a  movie like "The Oscar"......so here goes.....may we have the envelopes, please.....

                 On the basis of artistic merit - Zero stars (0)

                 But on the scale of joyfully cheesy Guilty Pleasure......5 stars (*****)....for all of us who adore trainwrecks that'll make you laugh louder than any comedy you've ever seen, it's a FIND OF FINDS.   

                

'EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE'.....WILL WE LIVE TO REGRET AWARDING THIS?

 Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)     I promise you I will not, under any circumstances, spend a lot of time describing this movie in detail.....

           Except to maybe mention the hot dog fingers scenes, which everyone likes to throw in to their blogs for some quick chuckles. Who am I to rise above that?  No getting around it, hot dog fingers are ****in' hilarious.....

            That's enough detail for now.  After all, you can jump on Google and read 10 million reviews, overviews and random articles about this movie.......(that's what happens when a film comes along and floods the pop culture zeitgeist like a tsunami.....)

             Here's what I do want to talk about....the subtitle of this post.....will we live to regret awarding this....

            Well?  Will we?

            Let's time travel back a few years to some past Oscar races and awards season favorites.....

            Particularly the ones that brought us to a re-evaluation and new perspectives.......or to put it bluntly.....WHAT THE HELL WERE WE THINKING?  WHAT THE HELL WAS ANYBODY THINKING GIVING THIS LAME-ASS MOVIE SO MANY AWARDS?  DID WE ALL GO TEMPORARILY INSANE?

              Random example # 1:  The Artist (2011)  Remember this cutsie-wootsie little black-and-white French silent film?  It arrived like a tiny adorable French poodle that we all couldn't wait to cuddle....12 years later, does a single soul remember this movie? Or ever watch it again?  Of why anybody thought it was worthy of Best Picture Of The Year?  

              Random example # 2: Life Is Beautiful (1997)   Even as this maudlin, Holocaust comedy-drama reaped its undeserved awards, deep down, we all knew better didn't we?  Even as the film seized public attention, we all felt guilty beholding the dumb, unfunny public antics of its director and star, the yapping little troll Roberto Benigni.  And again I ask, is there anyone who holds even a shred of memory about this movie?  Didn't think so. 

   

\         Random Examples # 3 & # 4 - Shakespeare In Love (1998) and The King's Speech (2010) Even though they've blocked it from their collective memories, let us remember when the film community worshipped, bowed before and otherwise smooched the massive ass of Harvey Weinstein. Only Jabba The Weinstein's overwhelming influence and power could propel his culture-vulture, pseudo arthouse movies past their far better competitors. Years later, non-person Harvey rots in jail while his Best Picture Oscar winners......uh.....what were they again?

               I could go on and on with these examples, but I think you get the idea........

                Which begs the question......is way too much praise (and various statuettes) being lavished on "Everything Everywhere All At Once?"   A decade of so from now, will film pundit and moviegoers shake their head in shared disbelief at the accolades afforded this movie?  Will we all sigh together, muttering "what the hell were we thinking?" under our breath?  

                 At the risk of hating myself in ten years or so, here's the immediate BQ review as of right this very minute in time, in March of 2023.

                  Yes, like many who've seen it, I'm in awe of the film's imagination and audacity of its visual presentation. No question.....it's a sight to behold and quite unlike anything that's come before it. Film directors have tried every so often to create a movie existing as a white hot fever dream.....but it's a feat rarely pulled off. 

                   On the downside, the 'Daniels' (Kwan and Scheinert), don't know when to stop. In their efforts to beat you over the head with their brilliance, they render their film tiresome.....repetitive.....exhausting to sit through. 

                   Boring. That's right, boring. I've watched the film twice now and both times its overall effect wore me out, simply exhausted me. I struggled to keep from dozing.....

                    And let me say it now......everybody stop with the multiverses. They're toxic.......just look at how they've turned the Marvel movies into laborious, unwatchable gibberish. 

                    I'm perfectly fine with the actors though. Michelle Yeoh more than earned all the awards she's collecting. As superb as Cate Blanchett is, she couldn't possibly pull off Yeoh's work here....a performance brilliant in both emotion and physicality. And I've no real problem with Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis nailing the supporting role Oscars. 

                    (And bless this movie for giving the immortal icon James Hong his (I kid you not) his Four Hundred and Fifty First acting credit.....)

                     But the film itself?  Dazzling....infuriating.....all at once. So we're back to the key question. Will EEAAO stand the test of time if it walks away with Best Picture Of The Year?  Years from now, will we still fondly hold it in esteem, come back to it for repeated viewings and let it take a still honored place among Oscar winners like "The Godfather", "Silence Of The Lambs" and "Titanic"?

                    Or will we all scratch our heads, pondering "we thought that was a Best Picture?"

                    You tell me.  For right now and for all the good ,bad and ugly in the film  2 & 1.2 stars (**1.2)

'TRIANGLE OF SADNESS'...BARFING ON THE CLASS STRUGGLE AS THE SHIP HITS THE FAN

 Triangle Of Sadness (2022)   Breaking news. Rich people suck. And anything bad that befalls those pampered, arrogant bastards and bitches can't happen soon enough......

           What?  You've heard this news before?  Really?  

          Oh wait....come to think of it....this may not be the first movie I've ever seen where the working stiffs turn the tables on all the rich, entitled, spoiled pricks who tyrannize and humiliate them.....

           Now that I recall, the Brits, bless their cheeky, subtle little hearts, tackled this topic in 1957's "The Admirable Chrichton", about a wealthy family ruled over  by their butler after they're all marooned on a tropical island -( see the BQ post of 4/2/21)

            And let's not forget art-house icon Lina Wertmuller, who shook the cinema world to its very foundations with her 1974 "Swept Away".....where another remote island served as a oopsie-daisy reversal of fortune locale - for a hot-tempered rich diva and the equally volcanic deckhand she's stranded with. 

            Oops, I almost forgot about the much awarded 2019 Korean "Parasite", where a poor family conspires to literally infiltrate themselves into an uppercrust household....

            But at long last a new generation of filmmakers now adds something that's been sorely missed from class struggle movies........social media influencers, rivers of cascading vomit and toilets overflowing with explosive diarrhea....

           "Triangle Of Sadness", given its separate self-contained chapters and 2 and a half hour running time, has far loftier ambitions and more up-to-date targets than either of those films. 

            We start out with pair of young sculpted, vacuous fashion model influencers (Harris Dickinson, Charibi Dean), squabbling their way through an up-and-down relationship.   When not on their eternal quest for more instagram clicks and followers, they bicker incessantly over gender identity issues like who should pick up the check when they dine out. 

            In pursuit of more hot social media posts, these self-absorbed infants sign up a luxury cruise aboard a hotel-sized super-yacht, along with a bunch of the world's wealthiest, most imperious assholes.

             What could possibly go wrong?   Heh, heh, heh, heh............

              Which brings us the film's most notorious, outrageous and, whether you admit it or not, riotously funny middle section.....

             At dinner, in the midst of a ship-tossing storm, the captain, a genial drunkard (Woody Harrelson) safely feasts on a burger and fries. Everyone else consumes the chef's barely cooked seafood, spoiled when a capricious passenger ordered the entire staff away from their tasks to cavort on the water slide. 

               What follows is a spectacular carnival of nausea as the passengers projectile vomit while they navigate the funhouse tilting of the storm stricken boat. And the storm clears just in time for the ship to encounter even bigger disasters in the morning.......

                At long last the filmmakers (and what's left of the cast) arrive where we knew they'd end up to lay out their main thesis.......the remote deserted island, where the leisure class falls at the mercy of the minimum wage workhorse they used to demean.

                In this case the two influencer cutie pies and a few surviving billionaires become utterly dependent on the enforced matriarchy of the ship's maid (Dolly De Leon), the only one capable of hunting and cooking food for them.  By this time, you start to realize how overlong, obvious and overbearing this film has become, waving its satirical irony around like a flag.

                  Not a bad ironic finale twist, but the film quickly ruins it with its last bit of stupid, film-festival culture vulture ambivalence.  When the credits roll, I realized I could've gotten the entire gist of this film just watching the shipboard vomitorium sequence.....2 stars (**)......and I doubt anyone's holding their breath waiting for this to snag a Best Picture Oscar.....

WEEKEND MADNESS WRAP-UP....SPECIAL "WHAT THE FOX IS GOING ON HERE?" EDITION....

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 Ron DeSantis declares himself 'Official Prince" of Walt Disney World, planning to move from the Florida Governor's Mansion and into Sleeping Beauty's Castle.....also proclaiming that as of the start of the new school year in September,  all Florida public schools will only go up to 6th grade....stated the Governor, "Think of the money we'll save on teachers' salaries and there's really no need for kids to know any more beyond that grade....

Rupert Murdoch let his Fox News opinion anchors continue to push Trump's Big Lie about a rigged election......even though all of them knew Trump's accusations were complete and total bullshit....Murdoch stated he's taken immediate steps to correct the problem...."We just hired an exciting new host to join our stellar line-up. 'The George Santos Pants-On-Fire Hour' will kick off our new primetime schedule......rest assured, you needn't worry about anybody believing George...."

Comic strip 'Dilbert' loses its media outlets due to creator Scott Adams racist remarks.......remarked Adams, "Another perfect example of the ongoing oppression of white people....just ask Donald Trump...."

'SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH'.....THE PRODUCTION CODE LETS PAUL ESCAPE WITH HIS BALLS....

 Sweet Bird Of Youth (1962)   Hollywood always saw hot properties in Tennessee Williams' overheated, sexually charged and often daringly perverse plays.......

             But what a challenge the studios faced in adapting these plays for the screen while still laboring under the antiquated, G-rated moral guidelines of the Production Code. 

              Always rising to the challenge was Richard Brooks, the most literary-minded of writer-directors, who'd written, produced and directed versions of "Cat On A Hot Tine Roof", "The Brothers Karamozov"", "Elmer Gantry" and "The Blackboard Jungle"

             As skilled at handling actors as he was at crafting screenplays, Brooks' films featured the biggest stars tearing into the meatiest roles they'd ever gotten their hands on. For "Sweet Bird Of Youth" he took no chances on the roster, importing most of the original Broadway cast. 

              Regardless of how much the play required Production Code sanitation, the actors still deliver all the fiery intensity of an uncut, unedited stage presentation.  And nothing grabs an audience's attention like Tennessee Williams tortured sous haranguing each other at the top of their lungs.

              Chance Wayne (Paul Newman), a prettyboy professional Gigolo, returns to the Gulf Coast town he fled in disgrace. And he's toting along drunk, drug-addled Alexandra Del Lago (Geraldine Page),  the latest washed up Hollywood star whom he chauffeurs and screws as a way to break into the movies.  

              His most unwelcome return stirs up the usual melodramatic Tennessee Williams Sharknado of passions........Chance desperately hopes to make amends to Heavenly Finley (Shirley Knight), the love of his life, and daughter of his nemesis , Boss Tom Finley (Ed Begley), a powerful, corrupt Huey Long-type politico.

             Boss Finlay, a cornpone fascist rabble-rouser, despises Chance as a lowlife opportunist who defiled Finlay before fleeing town to pursue his pathetic life as a boy-toy Hollywood hopeful. And along with Tom's  violent, sycophantic son Tom Jr. (Rip Torn) he warns Chance to hit the road in a hurry.....or else risk castration.......ouch!

             The conflicted, tormented Chance has his hands full beyond all measure. . He, tries to repair his severely damaged romance of  Heavenly while he alternately soothes, services and even attempts blackmail on the mercurial Alexandra, given to multiple mood swings per minute. 

               Everyone in this cast acts at the very top of their craft.....particularly Page, really going to town as the diva on the downslide and Begley in full top-of-his-lungs bluster as the garrulous,  overpoweringly evil Southern Fried tyrant.  

              But even as writers and directors were chipping away at the carved-in-stone commandments of the Production Code, the play's original ending (Chance dragged off  for castrating) was still a bridge too far for mainstream studio movies.  And so Richard Brooks devised a much lesser punishment for Chance and even something approximating a crowd pleasing ending......(and no doubt mollified countless girls and women who'd faint dead away at the mere thought of Paul Newman separated from his manhood. )

              Still worth seeing for the highest level of its stellar performances, "Sweet Bird Of Youth", though sanitized and softened for your protection, still packs an entertaining punch. 4 stars (****)