BTV: Life is a Cabaret, old chum

It has come to my astonished realisation that the reason Sky Movies can continue to constantly saturate its myriad of channels is because they repeat the same films week in and, indeed, week out.  8 Mile, Double Indemnity, The Silence of the Lambs, The Messenger and The Last Picture Show are all available to watch again this week (and you really should).

This has a genuine and detrimental effect on BTV.  It means that there is but slim pickings to choose from.  So, today, I have chosen just one, old chum…

Cabaret (1972) Tonight 22.35 BBC2 (8 wins from 10 noms)

Like Liza Minnelli herself, Cabaret is a curious old beast and I have decided to resort to my good buddies, bullet points, to explain why:

1. Musicals were the toast of the Oscars in the 50s and 60s.  Among the dozens, probably hundreds, of nominations, 30% of all Best Picture winners over the course of the two decades went to musicals (namely An American in Paris in 1951, Gigi, West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music and Oliver! in 1968.  Despite winning 8 statues, Cabaret didn’t quite manage to pick up the big one and no musical would until Chicago inexplicably managed to overcome The Pianist in 2002.
2. Although The Godfather won Best Picture, Cabaret dominated the other awards.  It seems difficult to believe that Bob Fosse was able to pip Francis Ford Coppola to the Best Director award.  But to be fair to Fosse, Cabaret shows a true master of his craft at work.  Fosse’s grasp of how to make song and dance work on screen is palpable and to compare this film to the aforementioned winners would be like comparing the Cha-cha-cha to the Pasodoble (perhaps).  Although a musical, Cabaret doesn’t witness its protagonists bursting into song in the middle of every day life – instead the songs are set in a smoky basement cabaret bar called the Kit Kat Klub where the performers sing numbers that ingeniously elucidate the plot.
3. Joel Grey beat off The Godfather’s James Caan, Robert Duvall and Al Pacino (possibly literally) for Best Supporting Actor.  The latter two actors would go on to win Oscars for Tender Mercies and Scent of a Woman (HOO-HA) respectively, while the former would appear in Mickey Blue Eyes.  But was well deserved – Grey’s ‘Emcee’ is strange and creepy and a great foil to the beautiful Minnelli.

Enjoy

Bloscars

BTV: Bank Holiday special

Why watch every episode of your Mad Men season 2 box set, tolerate a chilly swim at the lido, bore yourself silly at a National Trust stately home, wave enthusiastically at pensionable boaters on the canal, eat cod and chips twice on a pebbly beach while wrapped head to toe in acrylic ‘knit’, wear false smiles while pitching a tent in a drizzly campsite, see to your ailing daisies in the back yard, pay remarkable prices to bowl a dangerously overweight orbs at 10 erect pins, update your 50 inch LCD, listen to your gran drone on about how she spent Mayday fifty odd hundred years ago, browse wallpaper that you’ll never end up eventually buying in B&Q, spend dozens of pounds on a butcher counter full of meat for the BBQ that you’ve optimistically invited everybody over for, when you could spend the bank holiday watching old films that you probably won’t like…

The Last Picture Show (1971) 14.10 Sky Movies Indie (2 wins from 8 noms)

Peter Bogdanovich’s black-and-white masterpiece is a nostalgic picture of 1950s small town America.  Its blurred focus is pointed towards a quintessential group of high school graduates; macho jocks overflowing with posturing testosterone; a beautiful prom queen with a privileged but damaging family home; awkward baby-faced teenagers encountering sex, responsibility and the unexpected shackles of adulthood; and a spectrum of ‘grown ups’, as confused and bewildered by life as the youngsters who look to them for guidance.

Or, as my dad described it, “the one where the backward young, lad gets a prostitute in the movie drive-in”.

Either way it is highly recommended, with the crumbling picture-house symbolising the inevitable loss of innocence and a post-war America changing beyond all recognition.

Jeff Bridges earned his first nomination of six (eventually culminating in a lifetime achievement style victory for Crazy Heart), but lost out to Ben Johnson as cinema owner Sam the Lion, a relic in a town that has moved on.

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) 17.35 Sky Movies Showcase (5 noms)

Matt Damon is a master of mimicry in this cool drama from 1999.  As an anonymous nobody, Tom Ripley creates his own past and present, hoping that it will give him a future bristling with success, money and Gwyneth Paltrow.

The story is muddled at times and the narrative occasionally can’t decide whether Ripley’s motivations are sympathetic or underhanded, but it is an intriguing and diverting drama boasting splendid performances.  Two years after being nominated for his performance in Good Will Hunting, Damon continues to show why he is one of Hollywood’s safest pairs of hands.  Jude Law clearly revels as charismatic posh sod Dickie, who’s performance isn’t as good as the unsettlingly creepy Philip Seymour Hoffman or as Michael Caine who beat him for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar in The Cider House Rules.

Hugo (2011) 21.00 Sky Box Office 2 (5 wins from 11 noms)

In my opinion, this was the pick of last year’s Best Picture nominees.  Marty’s first soiree into the divisive world of 3D, it is the story of a young boy living in a Paris train station.  Fascinated by cogs and automata and the suffering the kind of social difficulties that would probably eventually result in him to getting a prostitute in a movie drive-in, a young girl (Chloë Moretz with an English Accent that Anne Hathaway would do well to observe) takes him under her wing on a quest to find the key (literally) to his past.

Eventually beaten by the SBAWF mastodonte The Artist, Hugo is a charming celebration of the art of cinema and an indulgent opportunity for Scorsese to demonstrate his passion for its history.  Its 5 wins were mainly technical and the biggest omission was the surprising failure to recognise perennial Oscar-favourite Sir Ben Kingsley’s masterclass as an old man who is as intimidating as he is heart breaking.

Enjoy

Bloscars