BTV: Halloween Special – Poltergeist; The Omen; The Addams Family

Halloween.  Boring innit.  Dressing up as the most recently deceased/shamed celebrity.  Lots o’ Jimmy Saviles this year no doubt.  Jangle jangle pedo jewellery.

The pumpkins are good though.  Not so much the carving, as the eating.  Soups.  Ravioli.  Pies, if you’re that way inclined (i.e. American) too.

Also it means that the tele man throws on a bunch of horror films.

That said, for an Oscar fan, there isn’t much fodder.  They say that The Silence of the Lambs (1991, 5 wins, 7 noms) was a horror film, though I would venture that despite the blood, moidering, what-ever-verb-means-that-thing-that-Hannibal-Lecter-does-with-his-teeth-and-lips, unpleasantness and general horror, it isn’t a horror film.

The Sixth Sense (1999, 0 wins, 6 noms) picked up a few nominations too, including for Best Picture.  And a year later, Nosferatu-inspired Shadow of the Vampire (2000, 0 wins, 2 noms) earned Willem Defoe a Best Supporting Actor nod.  But since, there’s been less success than for a Trick-or-Treater dressed as a werewolf who’s had a back, sack and crack.

But there was a time when the Academy didn’t spend the running time of ghoulish films cowering behind their La-Z-Boys.  In those days, they invited the folks behind them for a trip down the famous blood-red carpet.

Poltergeist (1982) 23.05 TCM (0 wins from 3 noms)

Potentially, poltergeists could be as dull as Halloween itself.  An invisible specter moving household items from – and this is the good bit – one side of the room………….to the other.

But Poltergeist is a splendidly enjoyable film.

Steven Spielberg’s presence among the production and writing credits is tangible.  The first twenty minutes of the film is a simple portrait of a regular family.  The parents fool around (and also smoke pot which, for some reason in this wonderfully liberal decade of ours, came as rather a shock), the kids are a charming and annoying in equal measure and they all live as harmoniously as a regular nuclear family do in their classic American home.

But like all classic American homes, this one was built on an old cemetery.  Ah-oh.

Cue lightning storms, paranormal activity and more skeletons than you can shake a decomposing fibular at.

The effects – both visual and audible – make the film, and that is where two of its Academy Award nominations were garnered.  The visual side is particularly striking.  Although it is a trope used by many cinefiles these days, it is true to say that expertly crafted effects, as opposed to plagues of CGI, are a far more effective way of creating terrifying set-pieces.  Watching domestic fixtures and fittings genuinely flying across a room, seemingly on their own accord, is truly impressive.

Unexpectedly, Poltergeist also benefits from a script that is not laden with horror cliche.  In particular, I refer to the ‘ghostbusters’ who visit the home to find an explanation of the peculiar goings on.  Rather than a gang of fearless crackpots who talk in esoteric jargon, the trio are written as a group of interested amateurs who’s extra-curricular interests may be of some use to the terrified family.  Beatrice Straight (who  had been Oscar nominated six years earlier for her supporting role in Network), is particular convincing as a parapsychologist who is just as frightened by poltergeist as those people she has been brought in to help.

And, like all great horror films (as the aficionados will tell you), there appears to be at least one moral message at the centre of the film.  I spotted a treatise on the dangers of television and metaphor on the fears of motherhood too.

Also, at one point (rather than at 25 points as suggested) this happens…

The Omen (1976) 20.00 Sky Movies Sci-Fi & Horror (1 wins from 2 noms)

The Omen, on the other hand, is on the eerier end of the horror spectrum.  Played strictly to creep the viewer out, the only laughs to be had here are inadvertent (a spinning decapitated head being the sole example).

Unlike Poltergeist, it doesn’t embrace visual effects for striking visceral scares.  It is far more cerebral, relying substantially on Jerry Goldsmith’s nominated score (he was, by the way, also nominated in the same category for Poltergeist) and the horrifying notion that one could raise as their own an ostensibly harmless – and, let’s face it, charisma-less – five-year-old boy who then develops into something altogether otherly (in this case, and we’ve all been there, be the spawn of the devil).

Some of the techniques used by Richard Donner are truly disturbing.  The first death scene, for example, is particularly affecting.  The dialogue used, specifically by members of the church, is highly stylised – a pyschological tool to unnerve the viewer who would naturally look to the clergy to comfort rather than confuse further.  And Jerry Goldsmith’s Best Original Song winner, Ave Satani (see below). with it’s brooding tempo, foreboding death knolls and sinister choral chanting is the perfect accompaniment to a picture that is so sacred that it will never be subject to the danger of being shoddily remade for a cheap cash in on the 6th June 2006.

Oh.

The Addams Family (1991) 19.05 Film 4 (0 wins from 1 nom)

The Addams Family.  Ok, not strictly a horror, but a rather wonderful family film to enjoy during the season.  And yes, it is as good as you remember it being (I’ve taken rather a large leap of faith there and assumed you liked it.  A safe gamble though, I reckon).  The jokes and visual gags come thick and fast.

The cast is excellent.  Whoever cast Raul Julia as Gomez is a true genius (I’ll requisition a copy of Barry Sonnenfeld’s MENSA membership card later).  He revels in a role that, now, it is difficult to picture anybody else in.  The same goes for Anjelica Huston as Morticia, and their chemistry is extraodinary.  That said, how long before we see Depp and Bonham Carter reprising the roles in a Tim Burton remake.  Surely only a matter of time.

Christopher Lloyd is also stand-out in full glorious gurning, nutty mode as Uncle Fester (and I really don’t want to hear any “Spoiler” cries for that one).  It leaves one wondering whether Jim Carrey should pay close attention to Lloyd’s work from the 80s onwards.  Carrey could be a natural successor as the go-to guy for offbeat avuncular roles that result in perpetual scene-stealing.  A notion worth considering for Carrey’s fast approaching twilight.

The Oscar nomination came for Ruth Myers‘s’s’s Best Costume Design, but was beaten by gangster-flick Bugsy (2 wins, 10 noms) (strong category that year, also including Hook and Barton Fink) and, in a year where Silence of the Lambs, Hopkins and Foster swept the board, it would have been ace to see their antithesis, Julia and Huston, nominated too.

New Country for Gold Men: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

In the indie spirit of not wanting to follow in the grotesque footsteps of the the fickle crowd, in this season – this Oscar season – where award fans like to look ahead to the film awards and which awards will be awarded to which award winning filmmakers to be, I’ve decided to take a look back back, deep deep into the eyes eyes of the Ghost of Oscars past.

This semi-regular feature is called ‘New Country for Gold Men’, which is a self-admittedly phenomenal drop of punnage.

And first up…

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

Wins: 0

Nominations 2

Best Supporting Actor: Casey Affleck (lost to Javier Bardem for No Country for Old Men)

Best Cinematography: Roger Deakins (lost to Robert Elswit for There Will Be Blood)

The plot

A great film with an excellent, yet tough to recall, title, The Assimilation of Jimmy Jim by the Idiot Bobby Whashisname is the account of Jesse James’s’s last year and a half.  The legendary wild west outlaw (soberingly played by Brad Pitt)  is no longer the man that carved a cult from his train robbing, moidering antics.  In his mid-thirties – but looking double that, with unhealed bullet wounds and gammy eyes – he knows that he and his infamous gang are coming to the end of the dusty road.

Time to settle down with his family perhaps, but not before plucky, fresh-faced peckerwood Robert Ford (Affleck) begs and nuisances his way into the mob.  Having grown up hero-worshiping James, he worms his way into his idol’s affections, before becoming disillusioned with the outlaw and his ways which are, primarily yet not exclusively, outside of the realms of the law.  The temptation of the law enforcement dollar soon becomes too appealing to resist and the titular cowardly assassinating soon kicks in.

The nominations

First things first, Casey Affleck’s performance is utterly splendid. In his thirties when he played the role, he captures the bewilderment, vulnerability and reckless ambition of a nineteen-year-old entering an overwhelming community, with bags of believability.  When he whines like a recalcitrant toddler, you want to give him a clip round the ear and send him to bed without any gruel.  When he pines, with misty eyes, about his dream to be James’s heir-apparent, one swells with pride.  And he has a look in his eyes, when being humiliated at the expense of the older gang members,  that makes you want to give him a big old hug and tell him that everything will be all right and that he’s double the man that they’ll ever be.

(Spoilers, man)

This is Affleck’s opus, and it is difficult to imagine him making such a significant impact in a film again, for he is in virtually every scene.

And therein lies my issue with his nomination…how can one possibly suggest even for a minute that he is a supporting actor.  This film is about Robert Ford, pure and simple.  His name’s in the title, for cripes sake.  It’s an injustice to Affleck and to all other potential nominees for the studio to suggest that his role is anything but a lead one, and I am delighted that his happened to coincide with one cinema’s iconic performances, Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh.

This isn’t the first time this has happened (see Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain for a recent parallel) and it won’t be the last.  It’s a blatant grasp at awards that, in this instance, saw the likes of Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood), Max Von Sydow (Diving Bell and the Butterfly), J.K. Simmons (Juno) and Sacha Baron Cohen (Sweeney Todd) miss out.  True supporting roles, each more deserving of a spot in the category than Affleck.

Roger Deakins, on the other hand, fully deserved his nomination.  TAOJJBTCRF is a remarkably good looking film.  While the  sweeping Missouri landscapes are breathtaking, the low-lit night scenes (see below) amplify the paranoia of the characters.  That said, for me, the choice to switch randomly between gorgeous ochre palettes and black-and-white was inexplicable and jarring.

2008 saw Deakins pick up his sixth and seventh Oscar nominations (he now has nine, somehow without a single win), as his similarly impressive work on No Country for Old Men also garnered a nomination.  In any other year, either one of these films would surely have been sufficient for the award, but Robert Elswit’s incredible looking work for Paul Thomas Anderon’s There Will Be Blood was deemed better.

And the presence of the two behemoths No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood are probably the reason why TAOJJBTCRF failed to get any further recognition.  There is an argument that it should have found a spot in the top-five as a Best Picture nominee, a suggestion that I’m sympathetic to on the basis that the stink-fest Michael Clayton was included and, despite the weight of NCFOM and TWBB, 2007 was a fairly weak year.  Only The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Gone Baby Gone would have been its only other contenders, and under the new rules I imagine all three would have qualified.

A quick word for Brad Pitt too.  After winning the prize for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival, he may well have considered himself worthy of a Best Actor in a Lead Role nod (and I am not suggesting that his role was a supporting one).  Although his depiction of James – as a decaying has-been swinging between cool control and mania – would never have got close to touching Daniel Day-Lewis’s winning turn in TWBB, I do not think that Sweeney Todd  was really a performance for which Johnny Depp needed a nomination.

Cannes of New York: What the Gotham Independent Film Awards means for the 2013 Oscar Race

I know what you’re thinking.  I honestly do.  But it’s not only because of the psychic powers that I possess.  Of course it isn’t that nonsensical baloney is clearly nonsensical baloney.  No, the reason I know precisely what you’re thinking is because of my arch arrogance.

Now you’re thinking something different.  Now you’re thinking: “Go on then, prove it, poindexter”.

Firstly, maybe you should join the rest of us in 2012.  Nobody’s used the insult ‘poindexter‘ since 1950’s (except if you count films set in the 1950s like Grease).

Secondly, I will prove it then.  I will.  You were thinking: “What the what?  Why the hell is this poindexter bashing on about the Gotham Awards when the winner of the London Film Festival’s Best Film award was announced last night in…you know…London, which is…you know…where he lives?  At best it’s perverse.  At worst, it’s a prurient indulgence of anti-jingoism gone mad”.

On a side note, you were also thinking about what a devilishly clever pun I came up with in this post’s title, but that’s another compliment for another day.

And now you’re thinking: “Hold tight, I didn’t even know I knew the words ‘prurient’ and ‘jingoism.”  But of course you did; it’s within all of us to be so grandiloquent.  You just need a poindexter like me me to help you discover that.

The answer to your subconscious query, by the way,  is that the LFF still hasn’t shown itself to be a sayer of any seuths with regard to the Oscars (Best Film winners of the last two years being How I Ended This Summer and We Need To Talk About Kevin).  Furthermore, this year’s winner, Rust and Bone, is unlikely to crack the canard, being a French language film that has been pipped as France’s Best Foreign language entry by Untouchable.

Bank on me commenting at some point in this post on the irony that The Dark Knight Rises hasn’t been nominated

Conversely, the Gotham Awards have earned a reputation for throwing erstwhile unlikely films straight into the Academy mixer.

Following a big double win at both ceremonies for The Hurt Locker, in 2010 Winter’s Bone built on its momentum from Berlin and Sundance to take the top prize.  It would go on to be included as one of the Academy’s ten Best Picture nominees.  Black Swan and The Kids Are All Right were also among both Gotham’s and Oscar’s top clutch, and Blue Valentine, too nominated in New York, scored Michelle Williams a Best Actress nomination.

>Something amusing about Debra Granik Winter’s Boning the rest of the competition<

Last year, The Tree of Life and Beginners shared Gotham’s top prize; the former being in Oscar’s top nine while the latter allowed Christopher Plummer to become the Academy’s most elderly acting winner.  Gotham also favoured Alexandra Payne’s The Descendants, while Margin Call, which featured in one of Gotham’s other categories, was a surprise Best Original Screenplay nominee this February in Los Angeles.

So which of  this year’s Gotham nominees will be a joker (gerrit?) in the pack come next year’s ceremony?

Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master for one.  A sprawling look at Scientology-but-is-it-really-about-Scientology-yes-it-is-no-it-isn’t, the film made waves at Venice Film Festival and has had critics falling over themselves to hero-worship Mr Anderson as if he were the second coming of Dirk Diggler.  Despite the fact that it has already been subject to the inevitable backlash, there is little doubt that The Master will be one of the favourites to take the big prize, especially after the incredible There Will Be Blood lost out to No Country for Old Men in 2007.

Wes Anderson (no relation to my knowledge but, if I’m wrong, Ander must feel so proud of his boys) will also feel buoyed by Moonrise Kingdom’s inclusion.  Of course there will be the mandatory Best Original Screenplay nod to look forward to, but Anderson has never had a film nominated for Best Picture.  Although heralded as a return to form after the apparent flops of The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited, I actually think that Moonrise Kingdom is weaker than the aforementioned duo.  Further, its release date (back in May) doesn’t bode well for an Oscars push, but I would welcome Wes Anderson’s name to be bandied around during the awards season.

It’s been nearly 10 years since Richard Linklater has knocked on the Academy’s door, when Before Sunset saw him nominated for his screenplay.  Bernie is a black comedy about the murder of a Texan millionaire by her gay employee, which is immediately some way off the ideal Oscar palate.  But in a year when Seth MacFarlane is set to host and one of Bernie’s stars, Matthew McConaughey, is the talk of Tinseltown, it will be interesting to see if it will tickle the arthritic funny bones of the Academy high command.

The Loneliest Planet comes from Russian-born director Julia Loktev and has performed well at Toronto, London, Gran Canaria and Istanbul festivals.  It stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Hani Furstenberg as betrothed backpackers who embark on a nightmarish trip through a Georgian mountain-range.  Loktev has formally enjoyed Cannes buzz with her previous feature Day Night Day Night and there may be a similarities drawn with Winter’s Bone.  However, it seems that the film’s theatrical release came in 2011 and so there may be doubt over the film’s eligibility anyway.

Perhaps most unlikely of the nominees is Middle of Nowhere, a story from Ava DuVernay about a wife of an imprisoned man, who drops out of medical school in order to campaign for his release.  Precious, Winter’s Bone, True Grit, and The Help are examples of recent Best Picture nominees with determined, heroic women at their centre and to which comparisons could be derived.  DuVernay was also honoured with the U.S. Directing award at this year’s Sundance, but that has not formally been benchmark for success at the Oscars.

So the current list of those movies throwing their hat in to the ring for 24th February is emerging nicely:

The Master

Moonrise Kingdom

Bernie

The Loneliest Planet (release date permitting)

Middle of Nowhere

Silver Linings Playbook (which topped them all at Toronto eh, and also picked up a lesser nomination at Gotham)

The Dark Knight Rises (because…well…you know, although it’s ironic that it didn’t feature at Gotham)

Lincoln (see above, except for the irony comment)

Quahog Vadis: MacFarlane will be the Oscars Guy

Once again reaffirming that Bloscars brings you all the hot Academy Awards news within 48 hours guaranteed, we can confirm that it has been confirmed that Seth MacFarlane will be the host of next year’s ceremony.

Don’t panic, MacFarlane hasn’t time travelled. This is a shot from an awards show not sanctioned by this site. (Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

After yet another staid year with Billy Crystal at the helm last February, the Academy has clearly decided that Family Guy’s MacFarlane will boost their viewing figures with a younger audience.

Of course this doesn’t always work, James Franco’s appearance two years ago was a baffling flop, but it does at least give us a superfluous excuse to enjoy possibly the best ever Family Guy clip again and again and again and again…

And, just for the record, Bloscars gives this decision…………….the thumbs up.  Huzzah.