There's a fowl owl on the prowl!

Wednesday evening, Lauren and I sat down to watch the 1967 Best Picture winner, In the Heat of the Night. We’re really cruising through these movies now!  Best to keep watching them one right after the other when we get on a hot streak like this, because when we lose interest the project goes on hiatus for six months.

In the Heat of the Night stars Rod Steiger as Gillespie, the chief of police in the racist town of Sparta, Mississippi.  When a Chicago man is found murdered on the street of Sparta, the police immediately suspect Virgil Tibbs, a black man from Philadelphia who’s passing through town. Turns out Tibbs is actually Philly’s top homicide detective and is released, and after some racist treatment from the Sparta police, he reluctantly sticks around town to help solve the crime.

In the Heat of the Night, Lauren and I agreed, was a pretty good movie. Nothing earth-shattering, certainly not the greatest crime drama ever, but a solid 1 hour, 50 minute watch.  Obviously, this is the most recently produced movie on our list, but it was the first that actually felt contemporary and started to feel something like a modern day setting.  So many of the movies from this list are based in different time periods, especially recently.

Some of the best parts of this movie included the acting of Poitier and Steiger, who won Best Actor for his role.  I read that Steiger is actually the most linkable Hollywood actor ever, not Kevin Bacon.  You can connect him with any other actor in 2.69 moves!

The soundtrack by Quincy Jones was also excellent.  The song at the beginning of the movie by Ray Charles immediately set the mood.  Later, a haunting tune called “Fowl Owl on the Prowl” continued with setting the tone.  Apparently that song was written on the spot by Jones after it was determined the “Little Red Riding Hood” song would cost too much to use in the film.

One of the most famous quotes in Hollywood history, according to AFI’s 100 Years 100 Quotes, is Tibbs’ response to Gillespie questioning what they call him in Philadelphia.  ”They call me mister Tibbs!”  This quote became the title of the sequel in 1971.  The movie also spawned a TV series by the same name starring Carroll O’Connor.

Overall, high accolades to In the Heat of the Night, which I give 8/10.  Next up, the classic musical Oliver!

Especially summer and fall...

Sunday night, Lauren and I settled in to watch the 1966 Best Picture winner, A Man For All Seasons, the 35th movie we’ve seen from the list so far.  Coming off a few very solid movies before it (The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, and The Apartment), it would have a lot to live up to in order to continue the success of the 1960s.

This movie is exactly two hours long.  I say it can be divided into two unequal halves: the half that was both boring and confusing, if that’s possible; and the half that kinda started to make sense of everything and was fairly tolerable.  Unfortunately, the tolerable part of the movie was at best 35 minutes.

A Man For All Seasons stars Paul Scofield as Sir Thomas More, a 15th century English Chancellor who is loved and admired by all.  One day, the King of England, Henry VIII, decides he wants to have a son, but his wife can’t successfully bear children, so he wants the marriage annulled so he can marry someone who can give him his son.  In order for the Pope to make it official, Thomas More must give his permission, but he refuses.

Why does he refuse?  We don’t really learn the truth until the very end of the movie, which made the rest of the movie difficult to follow.  Why was Sir Thomas More so opposed to agreeing to this that he would risk literally everything—his family, his friends, his position as Chancellor, his life—to keep Henry VIII from having a son?  To me, More just seemed like a stubborn jerk who was merely exploiting his own power.  Later, when we learn his reasons, it begins to make more sense.

What I also didn’t understand was why everyone cared so much that More wouldn’t agree to this annulment.  He was stricken from his role of Chancellor, so who cares what he thinks anymore?  Apparently this is a true story, so I can’t fault the movie, but why is one man imprisoned and sentenced to death for disagreeing with the king on a particular matter?  The whole thing just went way over my head.

I didn’t much care for A Man for All Seasons, despite some great acting performances from Scofield and Wendy Hiller.  It’s not my idea of an entertaining movie.  It kinda reminded me of Doubt, how a whole movie could revolve around something so trivial as one person’s opinion on a particular matter.  Any movie based in the 15th century dealing with foreign royalty sounds terrible to me, so I admittedly did not go in open-minded.

This was originally a play and I feel it would best be suited for the stage, much like My Fair Lady.  Clearly this is one movie that will not stand out to me once this project is over.  If there’s anything positive to take away from it, perhaps it’s the history lesson.  I give it a 4/10, and a ranking in the bottom third.

Next up, 1967’s In the Heat of the Night with Sidney Poitier.

It cracked my top 5!

Friday night, Lauren and I continued our revived Best Picture project with one of the all-time most popular films, The Sound of Music.

Lauren had seen it many times before, but I amazingly (or not amazingly, considering my knack for somehow never seeing famous movies) had never seen it.  I expected long, slow, boring, better for the stage.  Instead, I ended up liking it so much that I debated putting it at #1 in my rankings to this point.  (I settled on #2.)

The first 20 seconds were enough to pull me in.  That first helicopter shot of Julie Andrews running through the Austian Alps was one of the best cinematographic moments of this entire project so far, if not the single best.

As was the case with My Fair Lady, Going My Way, and so many other movies, some of the songs and lines from The Sound of Music have been spoofed or referenced in so many TV shows, and I never realized it because I hadn’t seen the movie.

Early on during our viewing, I started doing some reading up on the movie on Wikipedia and IMDB and discovered that this movie was based on a true story.  That didn’t seem possible.  A movie about a woman coming to watch after seven mischievous kids and teaching them to sing seemed very made up, but shockingly that part was fairly factual.  While a lot of the events and characteristics of certain people in the film were blatant lies and extreme exaggerations, the story really doesn’t deviate that far from the real story.

Julie Andrews was excellent in the lead role, and Christopher Plummer was equally good in his supporting role.  The kids were all decent actors, though very few of them went on to acting careers of any substance.  The songs are mostly all classics.  The cinematography was top-notch, especially compared to My Fair Lady.  The story was engaging and touching and later suspenseful.

I give it a perfect 10/10, and put it behind only 1946’s The Best Years of Our Lives on the rankings to this point.  The three hours went by quickly and left me wanting slightly more.

Next up, 1966’s A Man for All Seasons!

1960 Best Picture, The Apartment

For the next movie in our Best Picture project, Lauren and I backtracked from 1964 to 1960 to watch The Apartment, which apparently just became available on Netflix. I am happy to say I managed to stay awake for the entire movie this time!

The Apartment stars Jack Lemmon as CC Baxter, a regular dude at a huge insurance firm in New York who lets four colleagues from upper management use his apartment for their extra-marital affairs. In exchange, he is given excellent reviews and is quickly promoted to an executive position. All the while, Baxter has his eye on the elevator lady, Miss Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), who just so happens to be dating Baxter’s new boss, Mr. Sheldrake—who has now taken on the exclusive right to Baxter’s apartment for his mischievous behavior. In The Apartment, we see how Baxter juggles his own romance while dealing with his cheating boss.

At the time, this movie was thought to be very controversial with its adultery theme. Star Fred MacMurray was hit by a woman on the street with a purse for his role in such a filthy production. Despite some negative reviews, it quickly won over the critics on its way to ten Oscar nominations.

I very much enjoyed The Apartment. I thought it was a very unique story with suspense, drama, and comedy. Jack Lemmon, who I know best as one of the Grumpy Old Men, was excellent in his lead role. Shirely MacLaine was also good, and reminded me and Lauren of the waitress from It’s Always Sunny. (See my composite image below!)

Look-a-Likes: Shirley MacLaine and Mary Elizabeth Ellis

I found lead character Baxter to be a sympathetic fellow, trying hard to make a name for himself at his insurance company with 32,000 employees while being bullied by his superiors. Baxter takes the blame for all the commotion in his apartment, and as far as his neighbors are concerned, he’s quite the playboy with different women every night.

An unsung star in this movie is Jack Kruschen, who plays the neighbor, Dr. Dreyfus. I oftentimes find some of these smaller roles to be some of the most authentic displays of acting in a movie, much like I did yesterday with My Fair Lady co-star Stanley Holloway.

One of the stranger moments in this movie is a scene where Baxter gets punched in the face and falls down. I laughed and remarked how fake that punch scene looked, but upon further research discovered that the punch was, in fact, accidentally a real punch that knocked Lemmon out cold. If you’ve got a shot that authentic, might as well leave it in the movie!

I have nothing bad to say about The Apartment. It was one of the best overall movies we’ve seen so far. I’d give it a solid 9/10!

For a much better review of this movie, check out our friends Eitan and Shira who recently watched this as they too attempt to complete the Best Picture project.

About time I see it!

Lauren and I are back to the Best Picture project after taking the summer months (and some fall months) off to concentrate on watching baseball and TV series on DVD like Six Feet Under and House.

But on Monday night, we popped in the next movie from our queue, My Fair Lady, the popular stage musical-turned-movie starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison.  As is the case with anything we start watching after 9pm, I fell asleep halfway through and had to finish it on my own Tuesday.

My Fair Lady is the story of Eliza Doolittle, a young flower selling girl from the slums of London with a thick Cockney accent.  She becomes the subject of a bet between a pair of phonetics professors.  Henry Higgins bets Hugh Pickering that he can turn her into a presentable lady with a proper English accent.

The movie is packed with catchy memorable musical numbers, many of which I had heard before but didn’t realize where they were from.  Throughout the movie, I kept recognizing scenes that were spoofed or mentioned in other shows, specifically Family Guy and Seinfeld.

I’m not very good at giving in-depth reviews of movies as I don’t particularly watch a great number of movies.  But I can compare it to the other musicals we’ve seen to this point in the project (An American in Paris, Gigi, West Side Story) and say it blew them away!  My Fair Lady very easily transitioned from speaking to singing.  The story flowed well for the most part and I was rarely confused (which itself is rare as I often find myself confused with some older movies).  The costumes were lavish and authentic looking, but the set had a stage-like appearance, as if they had a fixed amount of space to work with.  And the acting was all-around top-notch, especially from Harrison and Stanley Holloway.

This is one of those movies that remains very popular to this day and seems to be referenced all the time in pop culture.  My biggest gripe is the length (just shy of three hours), and some scenes that seemed to drag on.  I think I would have rather seen this as a stage production than watching the movie.

In the end, I’d give My Fair Lady a score around 7 or 8/10.  Next up, we backtrack to 1960 for The Apartment, which just became available on Netflix.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.