Project on Summer Break

As you have noticed, there haven’t been many recent posts here.  We didn’t forget about this project—we’re just holding off until the fall or winter to start it back up.  The summer months are difficult because we want to watch the Twins every night, leaving us no time for four-hour movies.  We’re finding it’s easier to get into new TV shows in the summer with their shorter run times.  We recently finished The Wire and now we’re getting into How I Met Your Mother. 

I’m sure this project will resume come October or November.  Check back, though, you never know!  We do have The Sound of Music from Netflix just sitting on the table, waiting to be watched.

1962 • Lawrence of Arabia

Very long, mixed feelings.

5.18.09
Watched with Lauren

Over the course of the third week of May, Lauren and I found the time to make it through 1962’s Best Picture winner, Lawrence of Arabia.

The project has taken a break during the nice spring months, but mostly because we now have Twins baseball to watch at nights after work.  The Best Picture project certainly is better suited for the off-season, but I’m sure we’ll peck away at the 1960s throughout the summer.

Lawrence of Arabia is based on the true life story of T. E. Lawrence, an English solider who became well-known for his liaison role in the Arab Revolt of 1916-1918.

Knowing nothing about this movie going in, both Lauren and I assumed it was based in biblical times.  So when the movie started out with Lawrence scooting down the road on a motorcycle, we were in for a bit of a surprise!

Since the movie was so long, plus the fact that we watched it over three sittings, it caused me to once again have a difficult time following the plot.  Unfortunately for me, this seems to be a recurring theme with this project.  If I’m not immediately intrigued, I’m kinda screwed for the remainder of the movie.  I kinda understood what was going on, but not the specifics.  Yay, a review of a movie by someone who didn’t know what he just watched!

There were some great scenes in the desert and some great cinematography.  And then whenever they were in battle or serious war conversation, I basically tuned out.  Some of those desert scenes were very memorable, like when Lawrence risked his life and went back to rescue a fallen comrade.  And later, Lawrence was forced to execute a man, only to discover that it was ironically the very man he had rescued from the desert.  The quicksand scene was another memorable one.  Compelling stuff.

Peter O’Toole, Anthony Quinn, and Alec Guinness highlighted an all-star cast, and director David Lean earned his second Best Picture in a short period of time (Bridge on the River Kwai). I understand it was a great film achievement and many people think it’s among the best of the Best Picture winners, but for me it was nothing more than middle-of-the-pack on the rankings.

1961 • West Side Story

I think the live performance is better.

4.12.09
Watched with Lauren

Sunday evening, Lauren and I returned home from a weekend at the Glanzer farm in South Dakota.  Since the Twins played a day game, we had ample time at night to watch the next Best Picture available to us from Netflix, 1961’s West Side Story. As I may have mentioned, 1960’s The Apartment was not available.  Once we see all the DVDs available from Netflix, we’ll go back and find the other movies in some other medium.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the plot of West Side Story. New York, 1960s, Sharks, Jets, gangs, dancing, singing, fighting, Americans, Peurto Ricans…  It’s well-known.

I at first thought it was funny.  Street-toughs prancing down the street, stealing basketballs from kids, all while dancing and snapping their fingers.  But I got used to it pretty quickly.

The movie obviously has lots of singing and dancing.  Only one song from the entire movie, “Tonight, Tonight,” stuck out to me.  And the reprises throughout.  The choreography of almost every scene must have been quite the project.  Whether the characters were dancing or not, they were still moving in some sort of choreographed patterns.  That was probably the movie’s strongest point.

The cinematography was very good.  The movie was very colorful and the sets were very authentic looking, considering it was a movie about New York being filmed in Los Angeles.

Other than that, I wasn’t that impressed.  I thought the movie was way too long (2 hours, 32 minutes).  The acting wasn’t anything special.  I think some of the supposed Peurto Ricans were really white Americans in makeup.    I found it hard to concentrate on the movie.  I never was very interested right from the get-go, probably because I knew the story and was never really enthralled with it to begin with.

I had seen the stage version at least once.  I saw it at the Chanhassen Dinner Theater in the last couple years.  I can’t remember if it was a company Christmas party one of the other times I’d been there, but I remember liking the stage version much better.  It’s the type of movie with limited sets and lavish costumes and stuff that is perfect for the stage and a little underwhelming on screen.

Overall, I appreciate the music of Lenny Bernstein and the look of the film, but it was one of the weakest movies on the list so far.

1959 • Ben-Hur

Charlton Heston went from the big top to the days of Jesus in the 50s.

“If they hadn’t knocked that rock off the roof, they could have avoided this whole [ugly mess]!”  That’s what I said as the 212-minute epic Ben-Hur came to a close Sunday, shortly after 12:45pm.

Saturday night around 11pm, Lauren and I were feeling extra awake, so we sat down to watch the next Best Picture on our list, and perhaps our final movie before the baseball season starts tomorrow and takes up our evenings basically every day.  We managed to watch the first disc before going to bed, then finished the movie this morning.

Ben-Hur is of course the epic tale of Judah Ben-Hur, who is sent to the “galleys” after accidentally knocking a piece of rock off his roof when new officer of the Roman cavalry Messala passes by, startling his horse and nearly killing him.  Though Messala knows this is on accident, he sends Ben-Hur, his sister, and mother away.

I guess I could ramble on and on about the twists and turns of this very long movie, but chances are you would be very bored reading about the plot.  Instead I’ll do it a little differently this time and point out my five most interesting point of the production as a whole.

1. William Wyler directed this movie, along with my two favorite movies in the Best Picture project so far, The Best Years of Our Lives and Mrs. Miniver. But I never would have guessed that.  Wyler is an obviously accomplished director, and though I admittedly know very little about the subject, is probably considered one of the all-time greats.  While the first two movies I mentioned feature war as somewhat of a subplot, Ben-Hur features battle scenes every few minutes, from the battles at sea to the famous chariot race.  Wyler’s gotta be my favorite director of this project so far.

2. Widescreen has never been so wide.  I mean, if we were watching this movie on my old 19″ TV, we would have seen mostly black strips on the top and bottom and a 3″ slit of movie in the middle.  Thankfully, our 42″ HD TV allowed for a more pleasurable viewing experience.  I looked it up and it’s true, this was one of the widest shots ever with an aspect ratio of 2.76:1.  That was unheard of then and is still considered extreme now.

3. It was long. It seemed less long because, a) I was drinking moderately heavily while we watched the first 2.5 hours and b) we watched it spanning two days.  But it was three and a half hours long.  Gone With the Wind and Titanic may be the only others of such length, but I am basing that on no actual facts.  I just checked, and um, this movie is nowhere close to the longets ever.  The Burning of the Red Lotus Temple, made in 1928, is 27 hours long.

4. The chariot race scene was very, very well-done.  It was the only time in the movie I was on the edge of my seat.  Apparently the race scene took three months to film and required 8,000 extras, and to this day is the largest set ever constructed for a movie.  MGM shelled out a whopping $15M to produce the film, hoping to avoid bankruptcy, and I guess it worked.  The film grossed over $75M.  The scenes of some of the chariot drivers falling off their carts and being trampled by the horses were very realistic.  That was the best part of the movie.

5. The Simpsons spoofs are numerous.  I didn’t realize The Simpsons did a couple episodes with Ben-Hur spoofs.  Mr. Burns’ entry in the Springfield Film Festival features him in the role of Jesus, giving water to an ailing Ben-Hur, who says “You truly are king of kings!”  In another episode with the soapbox racers, Nelson has the drills on his wheels, hoping to destroy his opponents’ cars if they get too close, just like the chariot driver who busts some wheels off others’ chariots with this jagged metal drill device attached to his wheel.

Overall Ben-Hur was pretty good, I thought.  I have to break it down into scenes since the movie was so long.  The chariot race?  Classic.  The ship scenes?  Great.  The Jesus in the desert scene?  Good.  The leprocy scenes?  Meh.  It likely falls in the top six or seven, but Wyler certainly won’t be getting the top three movies on my list!

Next up, the 1960s with West Side Story. We were disappointed to find out Netflix doesn’t have three of the movies from the 60s in stock, including 1960’s The Apartment and 1969’s Midnight Cowboy. We will have to go back and watch those later in some other fashion.

1958 • Gigi

Thank heaven for little girls under seven!

3.31.09
Watched with Lauren

Tuesday night, after another stimulating workout, Lauren and I returned home to watch our DVR’d American Idol while eating stir fry.  At 9pm, we felt we still had ample time left in the evening to watch the 1958 Best Picture winner, Gigi.

Here are some key plot words used to describe Gigi.  French.  Turn-of-the-century.  Musical.  Romance.  Based on that, I went into Gigi very hesitant.  Didn’t sound like my type of movie.  We already had one lavish romantic French musical in the 1950s with An American in Paris, after all.

Gigi started out with a fairly bizarre musical number, quickly gaining my attention.  It opens with an older man named Honorè singing a song about how he loves little girls, aged six to seven.  “Thank heaven for little girls!” he cries.  That probably wouldn’t have come off so pedophile-like in 1958, but in today’s movies a grown man dancing in a park singing that song may come off differently.

We soon meet Gigi, a young woman in her twenties, who is being taught how to be a proper lady by her aunt Alicia.  Gigi doesn’t seem terribly interested in learning proper etiquette and just wants to spend time with her grandmother’s much younger friend Gaston, the richest chap in all the land.

A musical number here and there and, you get the idea, Gaston falls for Gigi.  Gaston initially only wants Gigi to be his mistress, to take her to parties and give her lavish gifts.  But he soon discovers Gigi deserves better and asks for her hand in marriage.

The movie then ends with Honorè singing in the park once more, this time about how he loves watching little girls grow up into women.  Oh, okay, that seems less creepy.

In comparison to the other musicals of this time (An American in Paris, Going My Way), I thought the songs were catchier and more memorable and the acting was comparable, but the story was a little weaker.  The woman who played the role of Gigi, Leslie Caron, was excellent—very attractive and likable.

I think overall I liked Gigi more than expected, but it still wasn’t great.  Vincente Minelli was the master of these screen musicals.  At the same time, it was rather predictable and a little drawn out.  I originally thought it was an hour, 47 minutes long.  But when I realized I was wrong and it was actually nine more minutes, I was very disappointed.  I just wanted it to end so I could go to bed!  I would describe this movie as “charming but boring.”  Gigi is almost certainly in the bottom half of the list.

Next up, 1959’s Ben-Hur.

1957 • The Bridge on the River Kwai

3.30.09
Watched with Lauren

Sunday, Lauren and I went to Ikea and picked up a new stand for our new TV… one that actually is large enough to support it.  I realized that we now have a bed frame, two dressers, coffee table, TV stand, four kitchen chairs, and a variety of dishes from Ikea in our apartment now.  Mom would be proud!  Anyway, we returned home and spent over an hour putting it together while watching the 1957 Best Picture winner, The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Kwai was a movie about a POW camp in WWII.  British soliders are under the direction of Japanese ruler Saito.  While being held in the jungle, they are instruced to build a bridge over the Kwai River which will connect the railroad between Rangoon and Bangkok.  At first the British do a crappy job of it, but they are soon persuaded by their commander to do a great job so people who cross the  bridge in the future remember the Brits for their solid work no matter what the circumstances.

As is the case with me quite often, I have a tough time following movies if I miss any little thing.  I had to read along with the plot line on Wikipedia to keep up with what was happening on screen.  I’m glad I did or I would have been really lost.  The story takes a turn when one of the prisoners of war successfully escapes and is being held at a hospital in Ceylan (Sri Lanka).  But this solider is blackmailed into going right back to the Kwai River as part of a British mission to blow up the new bridge.

I had a difficult time remembering what the characters’ names were, but these guys sneak into the area and wire the bridge with explosives.  They stake out and plan to blow up the bridge when the first train passes the next day.  All goes according to plan until literally minutes before the train is about to pass, when the proud British commander notices the cords in the river after the levels went way down overnight.

For the last ten minutes of the movie I was on the edge of my seat for one of the most intense scenes to this point in any of the Best Picture winners.  Would they be able to stop the explosion of the bridge in time before the train crossed?

This movie was interesting in many ways.  While it was a serious subject matter, there seemed to be a very slight underlying comedic tone throughout much of it, probably because of the happy tune the prisoners whistled while they worked.  I would say of all the movies to this point, this had the most exciting ending, which really went a long way in ranking it fourth to this point.

1956 • Around the World in 80 Days

3.28.09
Watched with Lauren

Saturday evening, I returned home after spending the day at the office finishing work on my first of two freelance websites.  What should I find when I returned home but Lauren preparing a romantic dinner for two by candlelight!  Dinner was tasty, as expected.  Then we got the great idea to sit down and watch the 3-hour 1956 Best Picture winner, Around the World in 80 Days.

Based on the novel by Jules Verne, it has been said by a variety of experts that this movie is amongst the weakest Best Picture winners, but I didn’t agree.  It was one of the very few comedies on the list to this point, possibly in a category alone with You Can’t Take It with You, and I found it both interesting and whimsical.

80 Days is just as you’d expect.  It’s 1872, and a wealthy English industrialist named Phileas Fogg makes a wager with fellow members of the Gentlemen’s Club that he can make it around the world in eighty days, a most preposterous wager indeed!  He takes with him his servant, Passepartout, and take off in a hot air balloon the very next day.

Along their journey, they run into trouble time and time again.  Between bull fighting in Spain, rescuing an Indian woman from her death in India, narrowly escaping a collapsing bridge on a train, being hunted down by the native Sioux Indians, and managing to escape from detectives who believe Phileas is a robber, they certainly see their share of adventures.  That, and Passepartout keeps getting wildly separated from Phileas but magically they manage to find each other rather quickly.

I think I liked the movie because it was so borderline over-the-top ridiculous and so unlike anything else we’ve seen to this point.  I agree that it will never land in the same category of being a true classic like Casablanca and Gone With the Wind, but it certainly has its charm.  Every scene was actually filmed on location, so there were no pitiful sets.  The whole cast and crew actually went to Bombay, Hong Kong, San Francisco, etc.  Also, this was the first movie to be filmed using a new kind of color process, devised by producer Michael Todd himself.

Some other interesting facts include the 128 miles of film shot.  It was cut down to about 5 miles in the end, but still, wow.  Michael Todd made just one film ever, this one, and he won Best Picture.  Not a bad average.  The racial/cultural stereotypes in this movie would never fly today, but back in the 50s apparently it was okay to make the Sioux out to be cannibals.

Overall, a fun, lively, entertaining movie with some memorable visual scenes, though three hours was overkill.  I would rank it in the middle of the list somewhere.  I’d have to think about it.  Next time I might re-rank everything up to date.

Next up, 1957’s classic The Bridge on the River Kwai. I’ve heard very good things.

1955 ● Marty

Before this, I only knew of Ernest Borgnine from his Simpsons cameo.

3.24.09
Watched with Lauren

Yep, we’re really tearing through these Best Picture winners here in March!  This was already the eleventh so far this month.  Tuesday night after another grueling workout, which was somewhat nullified by ordering Vietnamese takeout immediately afterwards, we sat down to watch 1955’s Best Picture winner, Marty.

I’d heard excellent things about Marty.  I believe Rotten Tomatoes listed it in their top ten countdown of the best Best Picture winners, and Jason LaPlant even gave it high marks.

Marty stars Ernest Borgnine as a single 34-year old butcher living at home with his widow mother in New York.  All his younger brothers and sisters married before him (hmm… sounds familiar) and he has no prospects and has all but given up on ever finding a wife.  Back in those days, you were ridiculed mercilessly for being a single 34-year old.  All the old ladies at the butcher shop kept telling Marty “you should be ashamed of yourself!”

So, at Marty’s mother’s reccomendation, he goes out to the Stardust Ballroom one Saturday night to try picking up a young lass.  A man approaches Marty and asks him to take his ugly blind date home.  Marty refuses, but after seeing how lonely and sad she is, he approaches her and they wind up hitting it off… but will it last?  I shan’t say.

Marty was one of two movies ever to win both Best Picture and Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.  It was nominated for eight Oscars and won four, including Borgnine for Best Actor.  All around great reviews for Marty, though it was still a bit of a surprise when it won its awards.

I was pretty impressed as well.  It’s a bit of a sad story as Marty and this new girl, Clara, are both made out to be such losers.  It is repeated over and over about how fat and disgusting Marty is, and everyone keeps mentioning what a “dog” Clara is.  Well, it turns out Marty’s arrogant friends are the real losers, trying to tear him away from Clara.  The guy just brought a girl home for the first time in 34 years, I don’t think he should pass her up and try for better at this point!

I also think it’s funny how many movies in the 50s feature heavy smoking.  It’s so common for every single character, aside from perhaps a priest, to have cigarettes on them at all times.  Were the tobacco companies paying big money to have all these big name actors smoke?  I’ll have to look into that.

As of this particular moment I’m unsure where on the list to rank Marty.  I liked it quite a bit… it was a real charmer.  I don’t think it can crack the top five.  Maybe the top ten.

Next up, 1956’s Around the World in Eighty Days.

1954 • On the Waterfront

3.23.09
Watched with Lauren

Monday night, after setting up our router, making dinner, and a quick workout, I sat down with Lauren to watch 1954’s Best Picture winner, On the Waterfront, which by many accounts is considered to be one of the best movies on the list.

On the Waterfront is an Elia Kazan production.  Kazan was the director of another recent Best Picture winner, Gentleman’s Agreement, which I thought was one of the weaker movies on the list.  But Kazan certainly outdid himself with this movie about the mob in Manhattan.

On the Waterfront stars Marlon Brando, who at the time was somewhat of a male sex symbol, and co-starred the attractive young Eva Marie Saint, a relative newcomer to the screen.

I’m not sure if I’ve seen anything Marlon Brando is in before.  I knew he was in the Godfather movies, but we are still 20 years away from getting to those.  So despite knowing the name so well, I think this may have been my first Brando experience.  Also, on a side note, it’s nice to finally be at a point in the Best Picture countdown where some of the stars from these movies are actually still alive, like Saint, who still looks reasonably good at 85!

On the Waterfront is about crime on the docks of Manhattan, where Johnny Friendly (he’s not that friendly) is in charge.  He’s obviously behind some murders, and anyone who knows anything is likewise put down.  Terry Malloy (Brando) was tricked into assisting in a recent killing, and has to decide whether to play “deaf and dumb” or testify against Friendly, which of course will likely result in him being killed.  The murder victim’s sister, Edie, who Terry soon falls in love with, and local priest, Father Barry, persuade Terry to testify.  I won’t ruin the ending for those who haven’t seen it.

This is one of the best movies so far on the list.  One aspect that I think shouldn’t be overlooked is the great music arrangements that really added to the suspense, composed by Leonard Bernstein.  And although it is stupid to say, because it is the most modern of the movies we’ve seen so far, but it far-and-away felt like the most modern yet, well ahead of other movies from the 50s.

1953 • From Here to Eternity

3.18.09
Watched with Lauren

Lauren and I have really been plowing through the Best Picture winners lately.  March has been our busiest month yet, and it’s only the 19th.  This of course is mostly because we have nothing else to watch as we wait for Comcast to come install our cable.  We also know our movie project is going to drop off considerably as soon as the baseball season starts and the Twins are playing.

So, as soon as we finished The Greatest Show on Earth Wednesday night, we immediately popped in 1953’s From Here to Eternity.

From Here to Eternity takes place in the days leading up to December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, and centers around Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift), who has just transferred to Pearl Harbor after being booted from first chair bugle at wherever he was before.  He is renown for his boxing skills, but outright refuses to box for the dastardly Captain Dana Holmes.  Thus, Holmes and his henchmen make life a living hell for Prewitt, whose only friend is Private Angelo Maggio (Frank Sinatra).

Throughout the movie we watch as Prewitt and Maggio endure hardships one after the other.   Prewitt is severely punished for virtually any little thing he does wrong, and Maggio winds up being detained in solitary confinement after a drunken night on the town.  Also in the spotlight is an affair between Capt. Holmes’ wife Karen and 1st Sergeant Milton Warden.  You may remember this famous scene of the two getting down and dirty on the beach.

Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr

Time for spoilers!  Maggio escapes from the stockade and dies after being thrown from a truck in the process, but before he dies, he tells Prewitt of the bastard guard who repeatedly beats him.  So Robert E. Lee Prewitt tracks down the guard named Fatso and kills him.  Meanwhile, Prewitt has fallen in love with a woman named Lorraine.  When the Japanese attack, Prewitt leaves Lorraine to rush back to camp to fight, but is gunned down by one of his own men before he even arrives.

I liked From Here to Eternity quite a bit.  For some reason that I can’t pinpoint, it reminds me of the movie Pearl Harbor, only the attack scenes don’t even start until there’s ten minutes left.  The attacks were a very small part of the movie.  This was a movie with a lot of different characters and several different storylines, some of which intertwined, as the days before the attack numbered.

I thought the acting and script were strong.  The fighting scenes were pretty realistic and the war scenes were as good as any up to this point.  The love scenes were a little PG, but then again, it was 1952.  And the characters loved to drink a lot… not like the guy from The Lost Weekend, but they got drunk as often as possible.

There weren’t many negatives, other than going back to black-and-white after two straight colored films.  The ending was kinda abrupt, and it seemed like some loose ends were left hanging.