1981 - Chariots of Fire

The poll for Matt vs. the Academy's next year of review is ready, itching for your input. There it is just to the right.

An amusing anecdote: Tonight, in my capacity as an usher for an off-Broadway theatre, I was compelled to inform a chocolate-eating patron that we do not allow food or drink inside the theatre. Evidently, she was aware of this policy since she didn't dispute it. Her response, rather, was that she didn't think that chocolate was considered food. If only...

Yesterday, I had the chance to view a classic sports-themed Best Picture nominee from 1981...

Chariots of Fire

Director:

Hugh Hudson

Screenplay:

Colin Welland

Starring:

Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Nigel Havers, Ian Holm, John Gielgud

Academy Awards:

7 nominations

4 wins, including Best Picture

The film that launched a thousand running-in-slow-motion parodies, Chariots of Fire follows the career progression of a bunch of young British runners, culminating in their performance at the 1924 Paris Olympic Games. The story mainly focuses on two rival British athletes - Eric Liddell (Charleson), a devout Christian, and Harold Abrahams (Cross), the son of a Jewish immigrant. Liddell, an ex-Rugby star and naturally talented runner, struggles to balance his love of athletics with his commitment to his family's mission, while Abrahams, the star of Cambridge university's track team, deals with his intense fear of losing.

If Chariots of Fire were an ice cream flavour, I imagine it would most likely be vanilla. Not French Vanilla, either. Just vanilla. Not the most exciting or innovative flavour, but a safe, solid choice to satisfy the large majority of taste buds. There is no particular aspect of this film that is specifically poorly realised and yet I am nonetheless disinclined to pronounce any great love of it. Nor do I wish to criticise it, either, unless, of course, labeling it plain is a criticism. Which I suppose it is. Which is unfortunate because I don't mean it to be.

The script, based loosely on real events, is well-crafted. It's almost inspiring. Everything is in place for an incredibly inspiring story - passion, ambition, tests of character. Perhaps its greatest flaw, however, is that there lacks a true antagonist. Liddell and Abrahams are initially pitted as rivals, yet when they finally reach the Olympics, not only do they compete for the same team, but they don't even run the same race.

At just over two hours long, Chariots of Fire is by no means a lengthy film but neither does it seem short, possibly due to its healthy use of slow motion. The oft-used effect is spellbinding, made all the more so by Vangelis' evocative and memorable score. Plus, there is the added bonus of witnessing in fine detail the humorous action of Liddell's running style - head back, mouth open, arms flailing about (pictured).

The cast are strong, led by Cross and Charleson. I particularly enjoyed Nigel Havers' portrayal of the cheeky Lord Andrew Lindsay. Also delivering an impressive performance as Abrahams' idiosyncratic trainer is Ian Holm, better known to modern audiences as Bilbo Baggins. And from that other epic fantasy franchise from the '00s, Richard Griffiths, before he was Harry Potter's uncle, appears here as Harry Abrahams' head porter.

1981 - Atlantic City

The Oscar nominations have finally been announced without any major surprises. I suppose The Blind Side's nod for Best Picture was not expected by most (except for Roger Ebert), but other than that, only a few minor upsets. My predictions stood up fairly well, especially the ones I discussed in detail here. 9 out of 10 Pictures, all the lead Actors and Actresses, and 4 out of 5 for the Supporting, Director, Screenplay and Animated Film categories. A total of 44 out of 50 correct. I should have stopped there and held off from linking to my complete predictions because my performance in the minor categories was a little shameful. Although, I pegged all three Visual Effects nominees.

A few trivia tid-bits about this year's nominees: Lee Daniels becomes only the second black director to be nominated, with Kathryn Bigelow the fourth woman acknowledged in the same category. Up is just the second animated film to be cited for Best Picture after 1990's Beauty and the Beast.

Meanwhile, today I began my review of the Best Picture contest from 1981 with a viewing of...

Atlantic City

Director:

Louis Malle

Screenplay:

John Guare

Starring:

Burt Lancaster, Susan Sarandon, Kate Reid, Robert Joy, Hollis McLaren

Academy Awards:

5 nominations

0 wins

Trying to make a life for herself in Atlantic City's up and coming gambling scene, Sally Matthews (Sarandon) takes croupier classes while working in the seafood section of the casino's eatery. When her deadbeat husband Dave (Joy) shows up to sell drugs he stole from some mobsters, he manages to persuade Sally's next-door neighbour, Lou (Lancaster), to make some deliveries. Past his prime, Lou imagines he was once a gangster to be reckoned with, although he now seems to be little more than an errand boy. Sally and Lou strike up an unlikely relationship, both dreaming of success.

Atlantic City opens with the rather strange image of Susan Sarandon rubbing lemon juice over her breasts while Burt Lancaster spies on her from across the way, and that's just the beginning of a bucketload of strange. I recently pointed out the incomprehensibility of Zorba the Greek, which I now see has competition from Atlantic City in the incoherency stakes. It reaches its surreal heights in a scene in which singer Robert Goulet croons a song to an oblivious Sally while in a phone booth in the middle of a hospital.

The story loses some of its vagueness halfway through the picture as the narrative comes together. Even the lemon juice incident receives an explanation - Sally was just trying to wash off the fishy smell from work. A totally normal thing to do ... in front of the kitchen window.

The characters in this film are dysfunctional, to say the least. But even so, I just didn't connect with them on any real emotional level. They all behave in such a stiflingly staged manner, with little semblance to actual human behaviour. I understand that this is a different world but I ought to still relate to the characters in some vaguely meaningful way, and these characters just felt so foreign to me. Lou almost seems mentally disturbed by the end of the film, proudly confessing his criminal activity to all who will listen.

It doesn't help that the script and direction are somewhat reminiscent of soap opera. For instance, in one scene, while Lou is packing a small suitcase, he picks up a gun and decides not to pack it, throwing it on the bed. He heads for the door, stops dramatically, walks back to the bed, flings the suitcase down, picks up the gun and walks out the door with determination. Then, there are the contrivances, including one sequence which sees Sally inexplicably shove a tape player into her handbag, allowing her to conveniently pull it out when she is later offered a cassette on the boardwalk.

Most of the performances, too, are a little plastic. However, Burt Lancaster manages to retain his casual charm considering the words he is asked to deliver. In fact, the entire cast could easily be forgiven for a script that contains such enigmatic lines as the one Dave utters when Lou explains that Atlantic City used to be called the lungs of Philadelphia: "If we stay here long enough, we could be the nose of Philadelphia." What the...?

Best Picture of 1964

Tomorrow morning, bright and early, the Oscar nominations will be announced. Over the last few posts, I've offered my thoughts on who will be recognised in the major categories. I have also toiled away behind the scenes to predict all the other categories as well (except for the Short Film awards), so for those who are interested in that sort of thing, I present to you my complete 2009 Oscar nominations prediction list. The most sure thing of all the categories: Best Visual Effects will be won by Avatar.

As a new year of titles vie for the top award, I am delivering a verdict on the 1964 race. I have previously commented on the absurdity of comparing family films to period dramas, so it boils down to personal preference, which made this decision relatively easy.

The nominees for Best Picture of 1964 are:

• Becket
• Dr. Strangelove
• Mary Poppins
• My Fair Lady
• Zorba the Greek

Two family friendly musicals, a biting political satire, an intense period drama and one film that defies genre categorisation. If I were my wife, there is no doubt that I would be choosing between Mary Poppins and My Fair Lady, both superb examples of the musical genre that she adores. As it happens, though, I am unsurprisingly not my wife, and therefore, my appreciation of their worth notwithstanding, my affections lie in another direction.

Zorba the Greek, though gripping in sections, suffers from a lack of cohesion, so it is easy for me to strike that from the list, which leaves us with two films that I enjoyed immensely: the provocative Becket and the incisive Dr. Strangelove. Again, two films of incredible merit, yet clearly with different approaches. The intimately emotional exploration in Becket is extremely engaging (no alliteration intended), but I find it difficult to go past a well-made satire. It is that mixture of humour and depth that gets me every time, especially when its treated with such subtle precision as in Dr. Strangelove. So, the Academy may have lauded My Fair Lady but I will be giving my honours to Stanley Kubrick's cold-war black comedy Dr. Strangelove.

Best Picture of 1964
Academy's choice: My Fair Lady	Matt's choice: Dr. Strangelove

Your choice:

Vote for your own favourite with the poll above. For the next year of focus in Matt vs. the Academy, you have made your voice clear, by choosing 1981, another eclectic year of nominees. (But, really, is there a year that isn't eclectic?) I will honour that collective decision and so we shall tackle the following films over the next couple of weeks.

And the nominees for Best Picture of 1981 are:

• Atlantic City
• Chariots of Fire
• On Golden Pond
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Reds

And I will again let you decide on the next year of review, so look out for that poll coming soon.

1964 - My Fair Lady

Okay, let's get down to the nitty-gritty. My predictions for the Best Actor and Best Actress categories, followed by the big one, Best Picture.

Up In The Air's George Clooney had the edge up until recently, but now it seems that the Best Actor Oscar will probably end up in the hands of Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart. I expect Colin Firth to also receive a nomination for his role in A Single Man, and Morgan Freeman should pick up a nod for portraying Nelson Mandela in Invictus. Barring any upsets, the fifth spot will most likely go to The Hurt Locker's Jeremy Renner.

Best Actress was almost wide open until a couple of weeks ago when Sandra Bullock seemed to take the edge for The Blind Side. The woman with the most acting nominations of all time, Meryl Streep, is looking fairly certain to add to her collection for Julie & Julia. Two newcomers should also pick up nominations, Gabourey Sidibe for Precious and Carey Mulligan for An Education, leaving one oldcomer to take the final slot, Helen Mirren for The Last Station.

Despite a fair amount of discontent with the Academy's decision to raise the number of Best Picture nominees to ten, I actually like the idea. For one thing, it certainly makes this predicting game a lot more interesting. If there were only five nominees, this year would be quite simple. Avatar, The Hurt Locker and Up In The Air (one of which will win), joined by Precious and Inglourious Basterds. Up will now have the chance to become the second animated film to be nominated for the top prize. The last four positions are a little vague, but let's go with Invictus, An Education, A Serious Man and District 9. As with most of the other categories, I have several alternatives, but I'll stand by these predictions for now.

In a rather exciting coincidence, I was notified this week of my success at being cast as Col. Pickering in My Fair Lady, one of two productions in which I will be performing at the Allenberry Playhouse for their summer season. How I'm going to keep up this project while I'm in Pennsylvania for two and a half months, I'm not sure. But that's another story. Last night, I completed the list of Best Picture nominees from 1964 by watching My Fair Lady with a slightly different perspective...

My Fair Lady

Director:

George Cukor

Screenplay:

Alan Jay Lerner

(based on the stage musical by Lerner & Loewe, and the play "Pygmalion" by George Bernard Shaw)

Starring:

Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White

Academy Awards:

12 nominations

8 wins, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor (Harrison)

A classic film adapted from a classic stage musical adapted from a classic play, My Fair Lady is indeed a classic tale. Professor Henry Higgins (Harrison) is a pompous and elitist phonetics expert, able to pinpoint a speaker's geographical background based on their dialect. Disgusted by the way in which Eliza Doolittle (Hepburn), a Cockney flower girl, butchers the English language, Higgins makes a bet with fellow linguist Colonel Pickering (Hyde-White) that he can transform her into a refined lady with an eloquent upper-class accent within six months.

My Fair Lady is jam packed with oodles of familiar songs to get your toes tapping - Wouldn't It Be Loverly?, The Rain in Spain, Get Me To The Church on Time - to name a few. And although these numbers are a lot less gratuitous than those from Mary Poppins, the story is still a little slow to progress, the whole film coming in at a tad under three hours. Most of the drag is near the beginning, giving way to a more entertaining latter half.

As with any musical, the contrived convention of characters bursting into song for no apparent reason is taken for granted, but there a few instances in My Fair Lady that seem to take that practice one step further. The opening of the Ascot scene is particularly surreal. And in more than one scene, the extras freeze mid-motion in unison, a pretension that probably looks fabulous on stage, but seemed somehow odd here.

Nonetheless, both cast and script combine to create some wonderfully witty moments. Rex Harrison, despite his renowned speaking style of singing, is charmingly cheeky as Higgins. Such a perfectly dry sense of comic timing. And the lyrics he gets to deliver are sublimely clever. Who thinks to rhyme 'Budapest' with 'ruder pest'? The exquisite Audrey Hepburn is quite simply a delight as Eliza, even if her singing voice is dubbed. She's so magnificently annoying before her transformation, eliciting from me an involuntary cringe each time she screeched, "I'm a good girl, I am!" And even though I know less than nothing about fashion, her gown at the Ascot (pictured) is absolutely stunning. And that hat! Later, in the ball scene, her hair seems to defy gravity. The hair and make-up and costume departments really went to town on Ms. Hepburn.

1964 - Mary Poppins

Don't forget to vote for which year you would like Matt vs. the Academy to look at next. The poll is on the right.

Meanwhile, less than a week to go before the Oscar nominations are announced. Clearly, I'm not going to have a chance to discuss every category, so let me speed up the process by opining about a few categories today.

Firstly, the Supporting Actress award. Here's another category with a clear frontrunner, and that is Mo'Nique for her powerful portrayal of a very troubled mother in Precious. Also expect citations for two ladies from Up In The Air, namely Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga. The final two spots are a little trickier, but I'm pegging Julianne Moore to be recognised for A Single Man and fresh from her win in this category last year, Penelope Cruz should get a nomination for her role in Nine. I have about four or five other names that could take the place of either Moore or Cruz, but I'll hold my tongue for the moment.

Now, for the men. The leading contender in the Best Supporting Actor race is Christoph Waltz for his fine performance in Inglourious Basterds. After that, it's all a bit murky. My best guesses are Stanley Tucci for The Lovely Bones, along with Alfred Molina for An Education and Matt Damon and his South African accent for Invictus. For the final spot, I'll predict Woody Harrelson for The Messenger, but again, there are a handful of actors waiting in the wings to take that spot.

To finish off today's fortune-telling endeavour, let's take a look at Best Director. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I would have said that Kathryn Bigelow would become the first woman to ever win the trophy for The Hurt Locker. Now, I'm not so sure. She will certainly get nominated, though, making her only the fourth woman to have that honour. Her biggest competition, however, seems to be her ex-husband, James Cameron, for a little film called Avatar. Also expecting nominations are Jason Reitman for Up In The Air and Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds. The fifth slot could go to any number of directors but I think it will most likely be either Lee Daniels for Precious or Clint Eastwood for Invictus. I'll put my money on Eastwood.

Phew! In the meantime, today I watched another classic from the Best Picture contest of 1964...

Mary Poppins

Director:

Robert Stevenson

Screenplay:

Bill Walsh & Don DaGradi

(based on the books by P.L. Travers)

Starring:

Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke, David Tomlinson, Glynis Johns

Academy Awards:

13 nominations

5 wins, including Best Actress (Andrews)

Considering its immense popularity, including a current Broadway musical incarnation, it seems almost redundant to offer a synopsis for Mary Poppins. Still, the story is exceedingly simple, so it won't take long anyway. Perennially naughty children Jane and Michael Banks have gone through nanny after nanny, seemingly to get the attention of their workaholic father (Tomlinson). When a mysterious woman named Mary Poppins (Andrews) literally blows in, she takes on the job of sorting the little tykes out. With the aid of jack-of-all-trades Bert (Van Dyke), they take the kids on some magical adventures, while attempting to get Mr. Banks to reconnect with his children.

This beloved family film is certainly magical, bringing out the kid in all of us. Sequence after sequence, we are treated to visual and musical delights. The songs and adventures may not move the story forward in any meaningful way, but the gratuitous entertainment is just downright fun, especially the cleverly choreographed chimney sweep dance routine. Although the story takes place in early 20th century London, it's a magical world with talking umbrellas, Tardis-like carpet bags and merry-go-round horses that can fly on their own. In fact, there's a whole lot of flying by everybody in this picture. Mary flies with an umbrella, the kids fly up the chimney and everybody flies when they have a good belly laugh.

The Oscar-winning special effects must have been rather awe-inspiring in pre-Avatar times, particularly all the interaction with animated characters. It is quite a novelty to see Bert dance with penguin waiters (pictured), all of whom are in perfect time with him. And considering all that flying, I didn't see the strings once.

Dick Van Dyke is charming as the lovable chimney sweep despite his atrocious attempt at a Cockney dialect. And Julie Andrews transferred her success as a Broadway star to make her film debut, winning a Best Actress trophy to boot. She infuses Mary with heart and determination while also retaining the character's mystery. And Mary Poppins is definitely a mysterious character. With all that telekinesis and levitation, it would be easy to imagine the children being totally terrified of her (as this spoof demonstrates).

Of course, being a pleasant family film makes it almost impossible to compare it to some of its fellow Best Picture nominees. It's less like comparing apples and oranges than it is like comparing apples and spaceships. How on earth do you sit Mary Poppins and Becket side by side?