March 7: All Film Oscar Night Edition

Just finished a little while ago with my friends' annual Oscar party in Chicago, which I attended virtually this year on a Skype video call. It worked out very nicely. I was quite happy for everyone concerned with The Hurt Locker, although I must say that the low point (or camp highlight, take your pick) of the evening was also related to that film -- the big number dedicated to the nominated scores, which included a dance interpretation of roadside bombing!

After I made a reference to John Sayles yesterday, I had a comment from an associate of his drawing my attention to the blog following the production of his upcoming film, Baryo, currently on location in the Philippines:

http://johnsaylesbaryo.blogspot.com/

How could I fail to like this blog, since it uses the same Blogger template as PMD? Seriously, John Sayles is a major hero of mine, and this comment made my day.

Another favorite director of mine is David Cronenberg, who gets stronger as he goes, and continually expands his range without losing his very distinctive individuality.Tim Robey has published a sharp essay on "David Cronenberg's Disembodied Cinema" in The Point:

http://www.thepointmag.com/archive/disembodied-cinema/

Limitless Cinema ran a couple of posts and a poll celebrating darkness in the movies and included descriptions of, and beautiful shots from, some exceedingly obscure films (how does he see all of these?):

http://celinejulie.blogspot.com/2010/02/poll-71-darkness-and-dim-light.html

http://celinejulie.blogspot.com/2010/03/bangkok-bourgeois-party-is-winner.html

The Auteurs identifies what is indeed a "superb...poster" for a new movie by Aaron Katz, Cold Weather, which is premiering at SXSW in Austin this month. I like how the poster is stylistically related to "Penguin paperback covers of the 1960s":

http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/1559

The Rap Sheet compares the great film noir Out of the Past to its source novel, Geoffrey Homes's Build My Gallows High:

http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2010/03/book-you-have-to-read-build-my-gallows.html

Christopher Borrelli at the Chicago Tribune explains how George Clooney works effectively within a narrow acting range (as compared to, say, Russell Crowe, who deliberately works one of the widest ranges of any film actor in history). The opening line of the piece is dandy:

Being George Clooney in a George Clooney movie is a wise place to start if you are George Clooney.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/sc-mov-0302-art-of-playing-yourself-20100305,0,7902200.story

An all-cinematic edition seems appropriate here on Oscar night!

Among notables born on this date are actors Anna Magnani, Daniel J. Travanti, Peter Sarsgaard, Rachel Weisz, Donna Murphy, John Heard, and Bryan Cranston, composer Maurice Ravel, painters Piet Mondrian and Milton Avery, botanist Luther Burbank, singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt, and novelists Bret Easton Ellis and Alessandro Manzoni (Italy). Sarsgaard was at the Academy Awards tonight, introducing the nomination of his An Education co-star Carey Mulligan, and those of us at the party were agreed that we've never seen him give a bad performance. He was memorably excellent as New Republic editor Charles Lane in the underrated Shattered Glass, for which he won Best Supporting Actor from the National Society of Film Critics.