1978--The Year in Review

Perhaps this is not the best year of the 1970s, but it's not a mediocre one at all. The top 20 films here scream out joyously and fantastically to the Earth. And the top choice, battered as it may now be, still stands as a prime example of world cinema. It shook me to my core then, and it still does today. And I cannot fail to hail my top director, who really establishes his lyrical voice here. Plus, nearly the best music documentary of all time, and terrific horror, comedy, thrillers, spoofs, war movies, documentaries, rock n’ roll (great year for that!), UK and US television, and the first notable comic book movie (though that now seems like a execrable curse, even as this one set the template). By the way, please check out Special Delivery, the seven-minute choice for Best Animated Short--you will NOT be sorry. Treat yourself! It’s marvelous. And, yes…also…I love Scorsese's The Last Waltz. A masterpiece, that! It makes me cry with utter ecstasy. But so does, ever so slightly more importantly, Michael Cimino's heartbreaking wartime story. NOTE: These are MY choices for each category, and are only occasionally reflective of the selections made by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (aka The Oscars). When available, the nominee that actually won the Oscar will be highlighted in bold. 

PICTURE: THE DEER HUNTER (US, Michael Cimino)
(2nd: The Last Waltz (US, Martin Scorsese)
followed by: Days of Heaven (US, Terrence Malick)
Interiors (US, Woody Allen)
Straight Time (US, Ulu Grosbard)
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Italy, Ermanno Olmi)
An Unmarried Woman (US, Paul Mazursky)
Who’ll Stop The Rain (US, Karel Reisz)
Blue Collar (US, Paul Schrader)
Halloween (US, John Carpenter)
Gates of Heaven (US, Errol Morris)
The Silent Partner (Canada, Darryl Duke)
Midnight Express (UK, Alan Parker)
Coming Home (US, Hal Ashby)
The End (US, Burt Reynolds)
An Enemy of the People (US, George Schaefer)
Superman (US, Richard Donner)
National Lampoon’s Animal House (US, John Landis)
The Rutles: All You Need is Cash (US, Eric Idle and Gary Weis)
I Wanna Hold Your Hand (US, Robert Zemeckis)
Dawn of the Dead (US, George A. Romero)
Killer of Sheep (US, Charles Barnett)
Girlfriends (US, Claudia Weill)
Autumn Sonata (Sweden, Ingmar Bergman)
Koko: A Talking Gorilla (West Germany, Barbet Schroeder)
Watership Down (US, Martin Rosen)
Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (France, Bertrand Blier)
Scared Straight! (US, Arnold Shapiro)
Martin (US, George A. Romero)
Magic (UK, Richard Attenborough)
The Buddy Holly Story (US, Steve Rash)
A Wedding (US, Robert Altman)
Heaven Can Wait (US, Warren Beatty and Buck Henry)
American Boy (US, Martin Scorsese)
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (Australia, Fred Schepisi)
Pretty Baby (US, Louis Malle)
Go Tell the Spartans (US, Ted Post)
The Brink's Job (US, William Friedkin)
Fingers (US, James Toback)
Summer of My German Soldier (US, Michael Tuchner)
La Cage aux Folles (France, Edouard Molinaro)
Big Wednesday (US, John Milius)
China 9, Liberty 37 (Italy, Monte Hellman)
Drunken Master (Hong Kong, Woo-Ping Yuen)
American Hot Wax (US, Floyd Mutrux)
Coma (US, Michael Crichton)
The Fury (US, Brian De Palma)
Up in Smoke (US, Lou Adler)
Death on the Nile (UK, John Guillermin)
The Lord of the Rings (US, Ralph Bakshi)
Stevie (UK, Robert Enders)
Foul Play (US, Colin Higgins)
Despair (West Germany, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
The Legacy (UK, Richard Marquand)
The Boys From Brazil US, Franklin J. Schaffner)
Grease (US, Randall Kleiser)
Sextette (US, Ken Hughes))

ACTOR: Dustin Hoffman, STRAIGHT TIME (2nd: Anthony Hopkins, Magic, followed by: Robert De Niro, The Deer Hunter; Christopher Reeve, Superman; Richard Pryor, Blue Collar; Jon Voight, Coming Home; Gary Busey, The Buddy Holly Story; Elliott Gould, The Silent Partner)

ACTRESS: Jill Clayburgh, AN UNMARRIED WOMAN (2nd: Geraldine Page, Interiors, followed by: Jane Fonda, Coming Home; Ingrid Bergman, Autumn Sonata; Tuesday Weld, Who’ll Stop The Rain; Genevieve Bujold, Coma; Melanie Mayron, Girlfriends; Glenda Jackson, Stevie) 

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christopher Walken, THE DEER HUNTER (2nd: John Cazale, The Deer Hunter, followed by: Yaphet Kotto, Blue Collar; Christopher Plummer, The Silent Partner; Dom Deluise, The End; Harry Dean Stanton, Straight Time; Bruce Dern, Coming Home; John Hurt, Midnight Express)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Maureen Stapleton, INTERIORS (2nd: Mary Beth Hurt, Interiors, followed by: Linda Manz, Days of Heaven; Theresa Russell, Straight Time; Meryl Streep, The Deer Hunter; Diane Keaton, Interiors; Maggie Smith California Suite; Wendy Jo Sperber, I Wanna Hold Your Hand)



DIRECTOR: Michael Cimino, THE DEER HUNTER (2nd: Terrence Malick, Days of Heaven, followed by: Martin Scorsese, The Last Waltz; Woody Allen, Interiors; John Carpenter, Halloween; Paul Mazursky, An Unmarried Woman; Alan Parker, Midnight Express; Paul Schrader, Blue Collar)



NON-ENGLISH-LANGUAGE FILM: THE TREE OF WOODEN CLOGS (Italy, Ermanno Olmi) (2nd: Autumn Sonata (Sweden, Ingmar Bergman), followed by: Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (France, Bertrand Blier); La Cage aux Folles (France, Edouard Molinaro); Drunken Master (Hong Kong, Woo-Ping Yuen))



DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: THE LAST WALTZ (US, Martin Scorsese) (2nd: Gates of Heaven (US, Errol Morris), followed by: Koko: A Talking Gorilla (West Germany, Barbet Schroeder); Scared Straight! (US, Arnold Shapiro); American Boy (US, Martin Scorsese))



ANIMATED FEATURE: WATERSHIP DOWN (US, Martin Rosen) (2nd: The Lord of the Rings (US, Ralph Bakshi)


 
ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Michael Cimino, Derek Washburn, Quinn Redeker and Louis Garfinkle, THE DEER HUNTER (2nd: Paul Schrader and Leonard Schrader, Blue Collar, followed by: Paul Mazursky, An Unmarried Woman; Woody Allen, Interiors; Jerry Belson, The End)



ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Alvin Sargent, Edward Bunker and Jeffery Boam, STRAIGHT TIME (2nd: Judith Rascoe and Robert Stone, Who'll Stop the Rain?, followed by: Alexander Jacobs and Arthur Miller, An Enemy of the People; Curtis Hanson, The Silent Partner; Oliver Stone, Midnight Express)



ANIMATED SHORT: SPECIAL DELIVERY (Canada, Eunice Macauley and John Weldon) (2nd: Rip Van Winkle (US, Will Vinton), followed by: The Small One (US, Don Bluth); The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa (Canada, Caroline Leaf); Afterlife (Canada, Ishu Patel))

LIVE ACTION SHORT: HARDWARE WARS (US, Ernie Fossellus) (2nd: Within the Woods (US, Sam Raimi), followed by: Teenage Father (US, Taylor Hackford); Xenogenesis (US, James Cameron and Randall Frakes)

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Nestor Almendros and Haskell Wexler, DAYS OF HEAVEN (2nd: Michael Chapman, Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond, The Last Waltz, followed by Vilmos Zsigmond, The Deer Hunter; Gordon Willis, Interiors; Dean Cundey, Halloween)

ART DIRECTION: INTERIORS, The Wiz, The Brink’s Job, Heaven Can Wait, Days of Heaven

COSTUME DESIGN: THE WIZ, Death on the Nile, Days of Heaven, Pretty Baby, Interiors



FILM EDITING: THE DEER HUNTER, The Last Waltz, Midnight Express, Straight Time, National Lampoon’s Animal House

SOUND: THE DEER HUNTER, The Last Waltz, Days of Heaven, Midnight Express, Superman



ORIGINAL SCORE: John Carpenter, HALLOWEEN (2nd: Giorgio Moroder, Midnight Express, followed by: John Williams, Superman; Jerry Goldsmith, The Boys from Brazil; Jerry Goldsmith, Magic)



SCORING OF A MUSICAL/ADAPTATION SCORING: Joe Renzetti, THE BUDDY HOLLY STORY (2nd: Neil Innes, The Rutles: All You Need is Cash, followed by: Louis St. Louis, Grease)



ORIGINAL SONG: “Hopelessly Devoted to You” from GREASE (Music and lyrics by John Farrar) (2nd: “Can You Read My Mind” from Superman (Music by John Williams, lyrics by Leslie Bricusse), followed by: “FM (No Static at All)” from FM (Music and lyrics by Donald Fagan and Walter Becker); “Last Dance” from Thank God It’s Friday (Music and lyrics by Paul Jabara); "Grease" from Grease (Music and lyrics by Barry Gibb); “Another Fine Mess” from The End (Music and lyrics by Paul Williams); “Ready to Take a Chance Again” from Foul Play (Music by Charles Fox, lyrics by Norman Gimbel); "Through the Eyes of Love" from Ice Castles (Music by Marvin Hamlisch, lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager))

SPECIAL EFFECTS: SUPERMAN

MAKEUP: THE WIZ, Dawn of the Dead, Superman

More answers for the Good Professor

I'm a little late on the uptake, but PROFESSOR HUBERT FARNSWORTH'S ONLY SLIGHTLY FUTURISTIC HOLIDAY MOVIE QUIZ went up over at Dennis Cozzulio's Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule on December 23rd. filmicability participated in this sort of stunt back at the beginning of fall in September 2010, and is excited to throw in again (and is even more excited to hear it's a turn-of-the-season tradition). The professor's questions are alternately expected, surprising and occasionally inscrutable, but always fun. I decided to become more terse with my answers, as you'll see. Here we go:

1) Best Movie of 2010
Greenberg

2) Second-favorite Roman Polanski Movie
Tess

3) Jason Statham or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
Jason Statham


4) Favorite movie that could be classified as a genre hybridThe Wicker Man (1973) (horror/mystery/musical)

5) How important is foreknowledge of a film’s production history? Should it factor into one’s reaction to a film?
Production histories can be interesting if we're talking about older titles. Interest in them should never overtake the movie itself, though; it's the movie that's the important thing, right? Following a film from production to completion via the press is a dicey, pricey proposition. Sometimes troubled production histories stand in the way of enjoying a really great movie (like Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate). Sometimes, production histories make us think a so-so movie is cleverer than it is, simply because it was financed and made in a chancy way (say, Kevin Smith's Clerks). On and on it goes. Astounding, actually, are the myriad of ways your moviegoing could be fudged up by too much foreknowledge of all aspects of any film. So, day to day, I try to stay away from stories about a film's production, again, unless it's an older title.

6) William Powell & Myrna Loy or Cary Grant & Irene Dunne
Cary Grant and Irene Dunne were sexier, if not as witty.

7) Best Actor of 2010
I wish I could say it was Edgar Ramirez in Carlos. But it was Ben Stiller in Greenberg.

8) Most important lesson learned from the past decade of watching movies
CGI looks just as fakey as the worst stop-motion out there.

9) Last movie seen (DVD/Blu-ray/theater)
On DVD, it was Clint Eastwood's Blood Work. On VHS, it was Marvin and Tige with John Cassavetes. On computer, it was The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash. And in the theater it was The Fighter.



10) Most appropriate punishment for director Tom Six
Without recognizing his name at first (he's the guy that's responsible for The Human Centipede series): complete moviegoing indifference.

11) Best under-the-radar movie almost no one else has had the chance to see
Tuesday, After Christmas from Romania, about the dissolution of a marriage. Brave and straightforward drama, with no outlandishness whatsoever.

12) Sheree North or Angie Dickinson
Angie Dickinson! I ain't crazy, yo!


13) Favorite nakedly autobiographical movie
All That Jazz

14) Movie which best evokes a specific real-life place
A late 1970s southern high school in Dazed and Confused

15) Best Director of 2010
Apitchapong Weerasethakul for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives

16) Second-favorite Farrelly Brothers Movie
Kingpin

17) Favorite holiday movie
A Charlie Brown Christmas and It's A Wonderful Life

18) Best Actress of 2010
Greta Gerwig in Greenberg


19) Joe Don Baker or Bo Svenson
Joe Don Baker

20) Of those notable figures in the world of the movies who died in 2010, name the one you’ll miss the most
Overall, I'll miss Harvey Pekar the most. But his dip into movies was a slight one. Jill Clayburgh, Dennis Hopper, Sally Menke, Arthur Penn, and Dino De Laurentiis would top my list, really. And Maury Chaykin...does anybody out there know who Maury Chaykin was? Only the best character actor to come out of Canada in the last 30 years.

21) Think of a movie with a notable musical score and describe what it might feel like without that accompaniment.
Lawrence of Arabia without Jarre's music would be like thirstily visiting a well devoid of water.

22) Best Screenplay of 2010
Aaron Sorkin for The Social Network

23) Movie You Feel Most Evangelistic About Right Now
Greenberg, of course! Can't you tell?

24) Worst/funniest movie accent ever
Worst accent might be Matthew Broderick's on/off again British accent in Richard Donner's Ladyhawke. What makes that worse than, say, Kevin Costner's multitude of bad tongues in things like JFK, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and Thirteen Days is that we expect MORE of Broderick, even at that young age. He had, after all, come from an acting family and a smart start on Broadway. I notice Broderick has never tried to do accents since. Funniest movie accent is John Cleese's "outrageous French accent" in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (he also, as the sorcerer near the end, does a funny Scottish one in it, too).

25) Best Cinematography of 2010
Best that I saw: Mikhail Krichman's work in the Russian film Silent Souls. Best that you might have seen: Adam Kimmel's lensing of Never Let Me Go.

26) Olivia Wilde or Gemma ArtertonGemma Arterton, though this is only based on looks alone.

27) Name the three best movies you saw for the first time in 2010 A Matter of Life and Death, Los Angeles Plays Itself, and Edvard Munch

28) Best romantic movie couple of 2010J.R. Ackerly and Tulip in My Dog Tulip. Two humans? Okay...well, I could go with Stiller and Gerwig in Greenberg again, and I have good reason to. But instead I think I'll cite Ellen Burstyn and Martin Landau in Lovely, Still.

29) Favorite shock/surprise endingThe last 10 seconds of Takeshi Miike's Dead or Alive.



30) Best cinematic reason to have stayed home and read a book in 2011Scott Pilgrim excepted, all movies with superheroes in them.

31) Movies in 2011 could make me much happier if they’d only......keep paying attention to examining the lives of real, everyday people.

R.I.P. Jill Clayburgh (1944-2010)

God, I loved this woman. And I do mean WOMAN. Every time the camera mapped her face, perfect as it was, I was enthralled. Yesterday, Ms. Clayburgh died of leukemia, from which she had suffered for more than two decades. And I am so sad about it. It's difficult to scan all of the movie-related deaths out there, and I try not to focus on them. But this one is a bear, and I cannot let it pass without comment.

Her run in films was short--only from the mid 70s to the early 80s--but starting with Darryl Duke's terrific 1976 TV movie Griffin and Phoenix: A Love Story, she was a gem. Appearing aside Peter Falk as a man dying of cancer, she blew the TV screen apart with her energy. She was obviously strong from the get go. She put forth a spirited intelligence that was beyond what I can express. If I can be less intellectual and more personal here, I have to say I could look at her face for a thousand years--her penetrating eyes, exquisite nose, pointed chin, marvelous smile, apple cheeks, auburn hair and athletic body: she was simply, utterly ravishing.



Nothing put forward Clayburgh's singular presence more than her signature role in Paul Mazursky's An Unmarried Woman, in which she played Erica Benton, a happily married Manhattan lady surprised by her husband (the forever after hateful Michael Murphy) when he admits he's fallen for another woman (HOOWWW??). Just look at her face as she hears the bad news; it, and the whole scene, is really remarkable:


Mazursky's movie (possibly his best, for which he was lionized by the Los Angeles Film Critics in '78) staunchly maps Erica's growth from victim to heroine and as such An Unmarried Woman stands powerfully as a prime document for the independence, sans man, of the American female. I'll never forget seeing her in the film, after her first romantic dalliance following her divorce, dancing lithely through her New York apartment. It's a moment that, even as a 13-year-old kid, made me wonder and marvel at what a woman could be:



Though earlier I'd seen her movies like Hustling, The Terminal Man, and 1976's Silver Streak (as the steadfast female counterpart to confident co-stars Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor), she hadn't made her mark for me. But then she appeared opposite Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson in Michael Richie's excellent Semi-Tough, where she played an open-minded love interest for both leads. Following the Mazursky film (for which she earned Best Actress at Cannes; Jane Fonda stole the Oscar away from her that year, though), Clayburgh scored again in Alan J. Pakula's profound romantic comedy Starting Over.

Written and co-produced by James L. Brooks (it could be said that this was his debut film, as it seems more like a Brooks production than a politically-minded Pakula affair), Starting Over featured Clayburgh as a shaky single diving back into the dating scene, with Burt Reynolds an equally cautious, newly-divorced teacher as her rocky match. Clayburgh's performance here compliments her star-making turn in An Unmarried Woman, because it seamlessly interplays with both Reynolds (who was never better) and Candice Bergen (as Reynolds' showy ex-wife). Here, you could really feel how a man would want to spend his life with the lovely, troubled, funny, mouthy, bashful, brave Clayburgh. Boy, her patient and then explosively angry moments in that dunking booth scene are completely astonishing (she'd get her second Oscar nod for this one):



She was beautiful, still, in Claudia Weill's It's My Turn, opposite Michael Douglas. And her performance as a mother too into her heroin-addicted son in Bernardo Bertolucci's Luna was stunning. She was the lead in Costa Gavras' controversial Israli/Palestinian conflict drama Hanna K (which I've yet to see, but after checking this trailer out, I soon will):



Then she made yet another now forgotten mark of brilliance as a TV journalist hooked on Valium in I'm Dancing as Fast As I Can, and as the first female Supreme Court nominee, opposite Walter Matthau, in the excellent, intelligent Ronald Neame film First Monday in October. But after that, she seemed to disappear from theaters (maybe as a victim of the 40-year-old actress curse). As many movie actresses do, she kept working on television, ultimately landing a prime parts in Nip/Tuck and the recent Dirty Sexy Money. She still has a final movie swan song in the can with the upcoming Edward Zwick comedy Love and Other Drugs (reason enough to see that film). Her final film appearance seems to be in Paul Feig's Bridesmaids, where she joins a spectacular crew of actresses, playing lead Kristen Wiig's quirky mother.

I'll always wonder, though, what she seemed like (angelic, I'm sure) singing "Love Song" alongside John Rubenstein on Broadway in Bob Fosse's Pippin. "Love Song" is a gorgeous Broadway melody, and to have seen it sung partly by Clayburgh, well into her career on Broadway, would have been sublime. Here's the big scene, performed by John Rubenstein and Miss Clayburgh.



And two of her gentle yet forceful solo numbers from the same show:





I have rarely seen a lasy on screen I wanted to kiss, listen to, and converse with more than Jill Clayburgh. I will truly miss her, and will always adore her.