Best Picture: A History of Violence
Best Actor: tie—Jeff Daniels (The Squid and the Whale) & Bill Murray – Broken Flowers
Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon – Walk the Line
Best Supporting Actor: George Clooney—Good Night, and Good Luck
Best Supporting Actress: tie—Amy Adams (Junebug) & Maria Bello (A History of Violence)
Best Director: David Cronenberg (A History of Violence)
Best Original Screenplay: Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale)
Best Adapted Screenplay: Josh Olsen (A History of Violence)
Best Foreign Film: 2046
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
One Man Film Festival: Future Dystopias
Metropolis (1927)
Things to Come (1936)
Alphaville (1965)
Planet of the Apes (1968)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
The Omega Man (1971)
THX 1138 (1971)
Soylent Green (1973)
The Road Warrior (1981)
Blade Runner (1982)
The Terminator (1984)
Robocop (1987)
12 Monkeys (1995)
Gattaca (1995)
Dark City (1998)
Code 46 (2003)
Things to Come (1936)
Alphaville (1965)
Planet of the Apes (1968)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
The Omega Man (1971)
THX 1138 (1971)
Soylent Green (1973)
The Road Warrior (1981)
Blade Runner (1982)
The Terminator (1984)
Robocop (1987)
12 Monkeys (1995)
Gattaca (1995)
Dark City (1998)
Code 46 (2003)
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Introduction: 2006 One Man Film Festival
Now is the winter of movie lovers’ discontent. The studios, still trying to shake off their post-Oscar hangovers, dump last year’s bad decisions—Failure to Launch—into the multiplexes. Meanwhile, erstwhile distributor of indie and foreign films Wellspring Media has been swallowed whole by hype-and-cash-bloated mini-studio The Weinstein Company:
http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0609,kaufman,72356,20.html
It’s already too late to catch most of the Oscar-nominated films in theaters (how did I not see Munich?), yet still too early to see them on DVD.
So what’s a movie fan to do? Join me here. Over the next few weeks I’ll be programming a little virtual film festival I’ve dubbed “The 2006 One Man Film Festival,” offering up a list of 10 or so exemplary films from a variety of genres, more of a sampler of the riches of cinema than a series of proverbial top 10 lists.
http://www.villagevoice.com/film/0609,kaufman,72356,20.html
It’s already too late to catch most of the Oscar-nominated films in theaters (how did I not see Munich?), yet still too early to see them on DVD.
So what’s a movie fan to do? Join me here. Over the next few weeks I’ll be programming a little virtual film festival I’ve dubbed “The 2006 One Man Film Festival,” offering up a list of 10 or so exemplary films from a variety of genres, more of a sampler of the riches of cinema than a series of proverbial top 10 lists.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
One Man Film Festival: 12 Westerns
One-Man Film Festival: 12 Westerns
1. Stagecoach (1939)
2. Red River (1948)
3. The Naked Spur (1953)
4. The Searchers (1956)
5. Seven Men From Now (1956)
6. Rio Bravo (1959)
7. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
8. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
9. The Wild Bunch (1969)
10. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
11. Unforgiven (1992)
12. Dead Man (1995)
1. Stagecoach (1939)
2. Red River (1948)
3. The Naked Spur (1953)
4. The Searchers (1956)
5. Seven Men From Now (1956)
6. Rio Bravo (1959)
7. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
8. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)
9. The Wild Bunch (1969)
10. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)
11. Unforgiven (1992)
12. Dead Man (1995)
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Review: The Three Burials of Melquides Estrada
Tommy Lee Jones on Westerns:
“The idea of making Westerns means nothing to me. The idea of working at home and dealing with the history and the present time of where I live and where I’m from is the only thing I’m interested in.”
Tommy Lee Jones on the desert:
“It makes people who they are. You have to tell your right name.”
I had high expectations for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. The film was the result of the combined talents of actor/director Tommy Lee Jones, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (Amores perros, 21 Grams), and two-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer Chris Menges. The film had done well at last year’s Cannes festival, with Jones’ performance and Arriaga’s screenplay winning awards. So I was expecting good things. I was not disappointed.
The film’s title makes plain the dramatic arc of the movies three-act plot: following his death, the body of a man named Melquidas Estrada receives, under various circumstances, three different burials.
Melquidas Estrada (Julio Cedillo) is a Mexican vaquero hired and befriended by ranch foreman Pete Perkins (Jones) after immigrating illegally. Estrada is accidentally shot and killed by newly-assigned border patrolman Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), who then—rather than report the incident as an accidental shooting—hastily buries Estrada’s body in a shallow grave. The grave is soon discovered and the body exhumed, only to be hastily reburied by the local sheriff (Dwight Yoakam) in hopes of avoiding any trouble with Perkins.
When Perkins finally finds out what happened, he abducts Norton at gunpoint and forces him to dig up Estrada’s body. The two men then embark on a journey to Estrada’s remote Mexican village (we learn via flashback that Perkins promised Estrada that if Estrada died in the U.S., Perkins would take him “back home”).
Like Arriaga’s previous screenplays, the film’s first two acts are presented achronologically, shifting to a more conventional chronological narrative for the journey of the final act. Brutal, darkly melancholic, and macabrely funny, Three Burials is immediately reminiscent of Arriaga’s 21 Grams and Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, though ultimately it’s more nuanced than either.
The movie was shot in Queretaro, Mexico, Big Bend National Park, Odessa, Van Horn, and Shafter, Texas, and on Jones’ own West Texas ranch. Jones and Menges handling of the landscapes is particularly impressive, capturing its grandness and sweep and somehow matching it to the grandeur of Jones’ face, and to that of human character in general.
“The idea of making Westerns means nothing to me. The idea of working at home and dealing with the history and the present time of where I live and where I’m from is the only thing I’m interested in.”
Tommy Lee Jones on the desert:
“It makes people who they are. You have to tell your right name.”
I had high expectations for The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. The film was the result of the combined talents of actor/director Tommy Lee Jones, screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (Amores perros, 21 Grams), and two-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer Chris Menges. The film had done well at last year’s Cannes festival, with Jones’ performance and Arriaga’s screenplay winning awards. So I was expecting good things. I was not disappointed.
The film’s title makes plain the dramatic arc of the movies three-act plot: following his death, the body of a man named Melquidas Estrada receives, under various circumstances, three different burials.
Melquidas Estrada (Julio Cedillo) is a Mexican vaquero hired and befriended by ranch foreman Pete Perkins (Jones) after immigrating illegally. Estrada is accidentally shot and killed by newly-assigned border patrolman Mike Norton (Barry Pepper), who then—rather than report the incident as an accidental shooting—hastily buries Estrada’s body in a shallow grave. The grave is soon discovered and the body exhumed, only to be hastily reburied by the local sheriff (Dwight Yoakam) in hopes of avoiding any trouble with Perkins.
When Perkins finally finds out what happened, he abducts Norton at gunpoint and forces him to dig up Estrada’s body. The two men then embark on a journey to Estrada’s remote Mexican village (we learn via flashback that Perkins promised Estrada that if Estrada died in the U.S., Perkins would take him “back home”).
Like Arriaga’s previous screenplays, the film’s first two acts are presented achronologically, shifting to a more conventional chronological narrative for the journey of the final act. Brutal, darkly melancholic, and macabrely funny, Three Burials is immediately reminiscent of Arriaga’s 21 Grams and Sam Peckinpah’s Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, though ultimately it’s more nuanced than either.
The movie was shot in Queretaro, Mexico, Big Bend National Park, Odessa, Van Horn, and Shafter, Texas, and on Jones’ own West Texas ranch. Jones and Menges handling of the landscapes is particularly impressive, capturing its grandness and sweep and somehow matching it to the grandeur of Jones’ face, and to that of human character in general.
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