With the 349th Overall pick The All Or Nuttin team is proud to select in the "Pre-60" category, a movie based on Raymond Chandler classic book Farewell, My Lovely, a 1944 film noir starring the true Phil Marlowe - Dick Powell (even Raymond Chandler thought so), femme fatale Claire Trevor and Anne Shirley, Murder, My Sweet.
A big thanks to bmacy from IMDB.com for the write-up:
"Edward Dmytryk's Murder, My Sweet was one of the clutch of American movies finally released in France after World War II that led Nino Frank to coin the phrase "film noir." (And the world hasn't been quite the same ever since.) The term was in startled reaction to the darkened, fatalistic look and sensibility that had crept into America's perpetually sunny cinema. And while less than a perfect recension of Raymond Chandler's more discursive and ruminative novel Farewell, My Lovely, (which had been filmed if butchered the year before, as The Falcon Takes Over), the movie remains, at more than 60 years, a hellishly entertaining thriller and one of the more emblematic titles of the noir cycle which it helped to inaugurate.
Picking up where the (just) pre-war The Maltese Falcon left off, Murder, My Sweet takes us down those mean streets of Los Angeles that were to become, immortally, Chandler's milieu. As opposed to Dashiell Hammett's cynical, hard-as-asphalt gumshoe Sam Spade (the role, along with his Mad Dog Earle in High Sierra of the same year, that made Humphrey Bogart a big star), Chandler's Philip Marlowe was a more sullen, complicated and emotionally involved private eye; while Hammett told Spade's adventures in the third person, Chandler let Marlowe's unfurl, tellingly, in the first – he's plainly the major character in his stories. And in Dick Powell, reborn from '30s light leading man into rough-stubbled tough guy, Marlowe finds an ideal embodiment: Testy, reluctant and often befuddled, Powell intuitively gauges and portrays Marlowe's range and personality more convincingly than his rivals Bogart (in The Big Sleep) or the various Montgomerys (Robert and George, in The Lady in the Lake or The Brasher Doubloon, respectively) came close to doing.
Murder, My Sweet gets narrated almost entirely in flashback. We open in a police station where Marlowe, his eyes bandaged owing to gunpowder burns, undergoes a grilling about a bloodbath. But soon we're back in Marlowe's office at the beginning, where his creep-in client Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) looms up spectrally, reflected in a night-darkened window (the responsive photography is by Harry Wild, whose work would dignify many fine films from The Magnificent Ambersons to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes).
Murder, My Sweet's a bit too short to do full justice to Chandler's rich web of duplicity and dead ends. But it stays closer to the author's vision, and his protagonist's code, than the most popular version of his work, The Big Sleep, where Bogart played the most Hollywoodized of the Marlowes. Here, Powell hews close to Marlowe's ambivalence, even squeamishness, about the messes he's paid to clean up. And Chandler's almost puritanical distaste for the matters he chose to write about surfaces, most notably in Shirley's tirade near the end (she had started out talking about why she hates men, but expertly shifts gears): "I hate their women, too. Especially their big-league blondes, beautiful, expensive babes who know what they've got...but inside, blue steel – cold." At least one of those blondes started out as a redhead, singing at Nick Florian's bar....
Murder, My Sweet revivified the careers of its two stars, Powell and Trevor. And it helped prime the stalled pump of the noir cycle, which would roll along for another 15 years or so. And, as one of its best achievements, it ages well, even into a new millennium."
With the 351th pick to end the 13th round, team Wrapped in Plastic picks in the B&W category: Sunset Blvd. (1950)
"I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille."
This is the #28 movie on the IMDB Top 250. I couldn't ignore it any longer.
Lost a big write-up when my internet went down a couple of hours ago. I'll redo it later.
Starting off round 14 with the 352nd pick, team Wrapped in Plastic picks in the WESTERN category: The Searchers (1956)
Tough category for me as I don't really care for Western movies. If I could pick HBO's "Deadwood", I'd be a lot happier, but that doesn't count here.
Still, John Ford's "The Searchers" is spoken of as one of the great films of his career, and of the genre.
(more to come later. These two picks have made me feel old and I need a nap)
With the 354th Overall pick The All Or Nuttin team is proud to select in the "Foreign" category, a French movie written and directed by Luc Besson, starring Anne Parillaud, stylish, moody, gripping psychological thriller, La Femme Nikita.
Roger Ebert:
"Here is a version of the "Pygmalion" legend for our own violent times - the story of a young woman who is transformed from a killer in the streets to a government assassin.
"La Femme Nikita" is a smart, hard-edged, psycho-romantic thriller by the young French director Luc Besson ("Subway"), who follows a condemned woman as she exchanges one doom for another.
The woman is played by Anne Parillaud, who projects a feral hostility in the opening scenes, as she joins a crowd of drug-addled friends in holding up a drugstore. Cornered by the police, she takes advantage of a cop's momentary lapse of attention to grab his gun and shoot him point-blank in the face."
Last edited by Flame Of Liberty; 10-13-2008 at 01:00 AM.
*This is my (in progress) writeup for a previous pick I PM'ed in to the commish, and didn't do a writeup for.
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The MacGuffins are excited to select, with their 8th team selection and 192nd overall pick, for entry in the Comedy category:
Annie Hall
A relationship is like a shark; it has to keep constantly moving forward or it dies.
Annie Hallis known by many people as the movie that beat out Star Wars for the Best Picture Oscar in 1977. While I won't debate which film should have won, I will say that both are outstanding films, and Annie Hall is deserving of its lofty place in cinema history.
I think Annie Hall could be the most ambitious romantic comedy of all time, at least from a filmmaking perspective. What I mean by that is that director Woody Allen employed A TON of tricky, quirky moviemaking techniques in this one, most of which you expect from independent projects or foreign oddities, and not a film of this genre. Here's a brief rundown:
An animated sequence
Allen's character talking directly to the camera
Characters leaving their bodies and viewing themselves as "spirits"
Characters interacting with "extras" in scenes who answer questions posed rhetorically by one of the actors
Actors in different frames (split-screen) talking to one another
Scenes in which the dialogue spoken by the characters does not match the "speech-bubble" subtitles
The non-linear structure of the storytelling
Scenes in which characters from the present revisit the past
Many waaaaay above average "long takes" of dialogue between characters
Scenes in black and white
I'm sure I'm missing some others, but you get the idea. The style of this movie blew me away the first time I saw it- rarely does a director employ even one of these techniques as well as Allen does here, let alone meshing them all together in one film without seeming pretentious or unnecessary.
But what draws me back to this film over time is the razor-sharp dialogue, and the sad, sweet relationship between Alvy and Annie that we as viewers know right from the opening scenes is a failed one, but one that is worth revisiting. The neurotic nature of their interactions, the growth of Annie's character over the course of the relationship and how Alvy responds to that change, the tender, intimate scenes between the two lovers, the fragility of the bond between Alvy and Annie and the way in which it begins to decompose, the endless string of jokes by Alvy to inject humour in the relationship but also distance himself from the intimacy- it's all so well-done and easy to identify with.
The chemistry between Keaton's Annie and Allen's Alvy is also worth pointing out. It's superb. Keaton became a huge star upon Annie Hall's release, and she is truly fantastic in her role. Charming, innocent, and aloof at first, her personal growth becomes evident over the course of the film. And Allen doesn't get enough credit for his acting in this one either- it's easily his most universal role, and he creates some very poignant moments in front of the camera, possibly because you can believe him in the role moreso than in some of this other films. Behind the lens he is no slouch either, when not wowing the audience with his innovative style, his camera finds solace in the delicate connection between Alvy and Annie in everyday situations (movie dates, late-night talks, bookstores), and is not afraid to seek out the problems a couple can experience even when they are madly in love.
I urge you to see this movie if you haven't. It's a great way to get into Allen's films, and makes for a perfect date movie for even average moviebuffs and/or intellectuals. It's at once brilliantly smart, hilariously funny, and heartbreakingly emotional, and it holds a special place in my list of favorite films. And now, a special place on The MacGuffins!
The MacGuffins proudly select, with their 14th team selection and 357th overall pick, for entry in the War category:
Downfall (Der Untergang)
The war is lost. But if you think that I'll leave Berlin for that, you are sadly mistaken. I'd prefer to put a bullet in my head.
I'm thrilled to able to take this one so late in the draft. I had it pencilled in as one of the top 3 or 4 choices in the War category, and after the others went kinda early, I took a chance that this foreign language selection would slide down a little, perhaps because it's in German or that it's just been overlooked or not seen by many people.
It's a shame, if that's the case, because it's easily one of the best WWII films ever made, and contains what has to be the most accurate (and simply astonishing) portrayal of Hitler ever recorded on film. The film uses the also excellent book Inside Hitler's Bunker as its primary source material, and as such takes place almost entirely underground in the Nazi bunkers in Berlin during the last few days of The Fuhrer's life.
Part of the reason this film has been been so critically acclaimed (and also criticized) since its release is that it depicts the Nazis not as monsters like so many films in the past, but as complex human beings with three dimensional qualities and emotions. Bruno Ganz's Hitler is portrayed as a ruthless and frothing dictator, yes, but also a tortured, quiet black soul, whose irrational idiosyncracies and soft demeanor while espousing the tenets of the Nazi Party are given equal screen time. It is one of many virtuoso performances in the film.
There is a special "never seen before" quality about Downfall that makes it an especially important piece of work. Many scenes are unforgettable, particularily a chilling one in which Magda Goebbels carries out an unthinkable act in the name of The Fuhrer and his party. This is historical fiction at its best- highly accurate and detailed, psychologically complex, and a fully mesmerizing cinematic experience.
Have never heard of it until now Ro. I will definitely be seeing it. Thanks!
__________________ I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love." - John Steinbeck
Have never heard of it until now Ro. I will definitely be seeing it. Thanks!
Same here, hadn't heard of it, so it'll be added to my list of flicks to find.
Also, I am surprised Life is Beautiful wasn't picked sooner. I toyed with picking it up as my foreign pick, but Run Lola Run was just too captivating for me.
Okay, before I make my next pick, I need to make some moves...
First, since it's one of the funniest movies ever made, I'm moving This is Spinal Tap from Musical to Comedy.
Also, because it has a great soundtrack, won Oscars for both Original Score and Original Song (with two other nominations in the same category), as well as the Golden Globe for Best Comedy or Musical, I'm moving Beauty and the Beast from Animation to Musical.
Now, the door is open for my next pick...
"Magic Mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?"
In the 14th Round, Hot Buttery Topping is proud to select the film that created the genre of feature-length animated films...In the Animation category, Walt Disney's original Masterpiece, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
After many years of producing successful and popular animated shorts (which often were bigger draws than the feature films they played before), Walt Disney decided that he needed to stop creating the opening act and make his own main attraction. One of the earliest movies Walt had ever seen was a silent version of Snow White when he was a young boy living in Kansas City and it was a story he felt could be successfully made into the first full-length animated feature.
Initially, Walt was told that he was crazy by pretty much everyone, including his brother and business partner Roy and his wife. People told him that no one would pay to watch an hour-long cartoon, but he stood by his belief that it would be a success, and was proven correct when Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the highest-grossing film of 1938 (and of all-time until Gone With The Wind was released in 1939). After numerous and frequent re-releases, Snow White is still one of the top ten highest grossing films, when adjusted for inflation.
Snow White and Seven Dwarfs set the standard for what a Disney animated film would be...a musical, a comedy, a strong central character (often a young girl/woman) with parental issues, and quirky sidekicks. Disney also pioneered many animation techniques during the production that quickly became industry standards (such as the use of live models for character design and the multiplane camera for creating a sense of depth in the 2 dimensional drawings).
Prior to Disney, no one had ever given the dwarfs names or personalities of their own. This embellishment of classic fairy tales also became a Disney standard.
Songs from the film have become classics that transcend the animated world. In fact, just recently, Ford has started using "Heigh Ho" in its latest truck commercial.
In 1939, Disney was presented with a special honorary Oscar, featuring one regular-sized statuette and seven smaller "Oscars"...
Grumpy: "Angel, ha! She's a female! And all females is poison! They're full of wicked wiles!"
Bashful: "What are wicked wiles?"
Grumpy: "I don't know, but I'm agin' 'em."
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Turn up the good, turn down the suck!
Nice pick getbak. Had I gone with an animation selection, that would've been my pick! Guess we're making it a little easier (if not frustrating) for one another.
Also, for those interested, I've added writeups for Adaptation and Kill Bill Vol. 2 today. If you wanna read them, click on my sig and follow from there. I'll post another update when I complete my remaining unfinished writeups.
And finally, that Brett Favre/Downfall vid was awesome. Thanks for putting that up doozwimp!
