Elizabethan Theatre

Written and directed by Sofia Coppola, Lost in Translation is about an encounter between a washed-up actor going through a mid-life crisis and a 20-something woman struggling to find fulfillment in her life and marriage.

While I enjoyed this movie well enough, it’s certainly not for your average moviegoer. It is essentially a character study and not much more. Nothing really happens; lives are not radically changed. And yet, it’s those very things that make this film feel very real.

One gets the feeling while watching that Lost in Translation would have been a complete and utter failure without the casting of Bill Murray as actor Bob Harris. His dry delivery and nuanced expression are key in a film with such little dialog. The subtle humor he manages to bring to an otherwise bleak film without overwhelming it is its saving grace.

I would have enjoyed more interaction between Scarlett Johansson’s bordering-on-brooding Charlotte and Anna Faris’ bubbleheaded actress, Kelly. Throw Bob into the mix, and I think there was some missed potential there.

Overall, I’m a little surprised this movie won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar. Then again, looking at the competition for 2003, nothing else jumps out at me as something that should have beat it. Either way, it’s a good study in how to put together a story about nothing more than two people struggling in life without making it boring.

Favorite line: During a phone call between Bob and his wife, Lydia, that dissolves into a marital spat.
Lydia: Do I need to worry about you, Bob?
Bob: Only if you want to.

Sunset Boulevard is the story struggling screenwriter who is hired to edit a screenplay by a silent film star trying to make her grand return to film after years of obscurity.

Penned by D.M. Marshman Jr., Charles Brackett (who produced), and Billy Wilder (who directed), Sunset Boulevard is a deservedly classic film noir that paints a brutally honest picture of the film industry’s transition from silent to talkies.

Some of silent film’s most popular stars make cameos in the movie, including Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nillson, and H.B. Warner. Gloria Swanson herself, who plays the deluded Norma Desmond, hadn’t had a feature film release in nine years when Sunset Boulevard was released. Erich von Stroheim, who plays the butler, Max, who had discovered Norma, directed many of her films and had been her first husband, had directed Swanson in real life in one of her last silent film flops, Queen Kelly (which happens to be the film screened in Norma’s private movie theatre in the film).

I particularly enjoyed the parallels between Norma’s derailment and the story of Salomé, which was the film she was hoping to make with Cecil B. deMille, who also cameos in the movie as himself. While Norma is in many ways the antagonist of the film, she’s also its most tragic character. Put on a pedestal as a young woman and then having that pedestal yanked from beneath her once silent film gave way to talkies, it’s hard not to feel for this forgotten star.

At the same time, you can’t help but feel she’s being a bit melodramatic about the whole thing. As Joe tells Norma toward the end, “There’s nothing tragic about being fifty. Not unless you’re trying to be twenty-five.” But with the knowledge that her butler Max has been feeding her delusions, convincing her that the audience still thirsts for her by writing fake fan mail, hiding the industry’s lack of interest from her, you come to the conclusion that Norma stood little chance in a place as brutal and crazy as Hollywood.

And yet, Sunset Boulevard, while indicting some of the tactics, also shines light on the heart of Hollywood in the form of young Betty Schaefer, played by Nancy Olson, as an aspiring screenwriter who reminds Joe what it’s like to work on something that’s about more than just a paycheck.

There are a number of good bits of dialog in this movie, but I’m going to have to go with perhaps the most famous as my favorite.

Favorite Line: “You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark! All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

Tom Schulman’s screenplay for Dead Poets Society won the 1989 Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Starring Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard and Ethan Hawke, among others, Dead Poets Society tells the story of a group of students at a staunch prep school and the effect a non-traditional teacher has on their approach to life.

I first saw this movie the summer before my junior year of high school, and I was completely affected by it. This was the first time I’d seen it since that summer, and I was just as captivated and moved by it, if not more so, the second time around.

Robin Williams as Professor John Keating is spot on, and it’s movies like this that remind me what a treasure he actually is when he chooses quality projects. Robert Sean Leonard looks practically the same as he does now as Dr. Wilson on House, minus about twenty-five pounds of muscle. He is funny, charming and heartbreaking, much like he is in his current role, come to think of it.

One thing that struck me this time around was the cinematography. There are some simply beautiful shots in this film. The dialog is so entrancing and the characters so deftly developed that it’s easy to forget to pay attention to the visually artistic elements of the film, but they’re there to observe if you can remember. Perhaps it speaks to the artistry that the cinematography doesn’t distract but adds another layer to an already brilliant film.

Honestly, I could gush about this film for hours. Many of the lines are entrenched in my brain, and the themes of the movie have goaded me to escape my comfort zone on more than one occasion. In fact, the movie was the catalyst for one of the most defining moments in my life. So, it’s possible I’m a little bit biased simply because I attach so much in my life to this film. But the fact that I can do that means something, I think.

I’d just copy and paste the entire screenplay for my favorite line if I could, but instead I’ll leave you with the one I come back to again and again.

Favorite Line: “Carpe diem! Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.”

Courtesy of Wordle

1948’s Oscar winner for Best Original Screenplay comes in the form of The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, written by Sidney Sheldon.

Starring Cary Grant, Myrna Loy and Shirley Temple, the movie follows Margaret and Susan Turner, sisters living together with a mother-daughter sort of relationship. Margaret is an uptight, emotion-avoiding judge, while Susan is an emotion-driven, precocious 17-year-old high-school student. Their relationship is summed up well in the first five minutes when Margaret says to Susan, “You know I’d die for you, but sometimes it’s very hard living with you.”

We have two meet-cutes right away, when Margaret lets Richard Nugent, a playboy artist, off the hook for a brawl in which he played a part. That one is quickly followed by Susan falling for Richard as he gives a speech on art at her high school. Susan quickly decides Richard is her knight in shining armor, and she schemes herself into his apartment unbeknownst to him. Chaos, of course, ensues. Richard is arrested, but they decide to drop the charges if he agrees to pretend to date Susan in order to let her outgrow her little fantasy without scarring her for life.

Got all that? OK. What follows is an enjoyable if predictable romantic comedy with amusing performances from all parties. I believe this may have been my first Cary Grant film, and I understood Margaret’s point when she told Richard, “I’ve never been subjected to such charm before.”

The dinner scene where the strings of everyone’s schemes unravel is very well-done, and it’s always fun to see refined men doing unrefined things like the potato sack race, three-legged race and obstacle course during the picnic sequence. Additionally, the last scene went for a great bit of bookend dialog instead of the typical rom-com cheese ending, which I appreciated.

The movie’s not phenomenal, but, thanks for the clever and sharply delivered dialog, it’s the first chronologically in the project that’s been consistently enjoyable.

Favorite Line:
Set-up: Richard has just complimented Margaret on her dress.
Margaret: “You said that gracefully. Perhaps the result of practice?”
Richard: “You said that ungraciously. Perhaps the result of practice, hm?”

The default favorite movie of critics everywhere, Citizen Kane stars Orson Welles in the title role as a famous newspaper baron. When he utters a single word, “Rosebud…” with his dying breath, a reporter is assigned the task of finding out what the heck he meant.

What follows is a stunningly filmed, wonderfully acted journey through the life of Kane. The use of light and silhouette is striking, the sets are gorgeous, and the make-up is fantastic. It’s easy to see why Citizen Kane is hailed as such a technical pioneer in the industry.

That being said, I wasn’t blown away by the story. I was impressed by just about everything except it, in fact. The script, penned by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz, is greatly aided by Welles’ direction. It’s not bad; it’s not even weak. It’s perfectly solid. But it’s just not… well, spectacular. When the most remembered line from your movie is a single word, it seems perhaps an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay might be a win in the wrong category. Amazingly, it lost out in the eight other categories in which it was nominated, including Best Actor, Best Film and Best Cinematography (Black & White).

Nonetheless, it’s certainly a film worth watching for anyone interested in film, even if your only motivation is to have an opinion on it when it inevitably comes up in movie buff conversation.

Favorite line: “Rosebud. Dead or Alive. It’ll probably turn out to be a very simple thing.”

EDIT: I forgot to mention that my first knowledge of the whole Rosebud legend came from this episode of The Real Ghostbusters. I’m equally amused and annoyed by this. On one hand, I appreciate the somewhat clever tribute. On the other, I’ve known since the age of 8 or 9 that Rosebud is simply a sled, which kind of ruins the mystique.

Penned and directed by Preston Sturges, The Great McGinty tells the story of a man who, after impressing a mob boss with his audacity and charm, is set up as a puppet mayor. All goes well until he falls in love with his politically-arranged wife, who encourages him to be a better man.

Let’s start with the bad.

The story is framed by scenes in which McGinty, now a bartender, tells his story to a drunk patron and a dancer. Whether or not this enhances or takes away from the story is open to interpretation. Personally, I was a fan of the technique but not the execution. When done well, it can enhance the poignancy of a story. Unfortunately, all it seemed to do here was give away the ending.

Overall, I was left unsatisfied because McGinty’s arc didn’t stick. We see him start as a bum, move to a bum in a suit, and finally (via the love and encouragement of his wife) become a man who deserves to wear that suit. Right as he’s finally become the man he should be, he’s carted off to prison for prior nefarious deeds. He escapes with the mob boss, moves to a foreign country, and does more or less nothing with his life despite this transformation he supposedly had. The last scene was humorous, but it was also hollow.

And now for the good. The movie had a surprisingly modern feel to it. Most classic films I’ve seen feel classic. They meander, and the dialog feels sluggish somehow. This didn’t seem to be the case with McGinty. I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly the difference is. Without actually taking out a stopwatch and doing some comparison, I’d venture that the typical dialog length in McGinty was shorter than the average film in the ’30s and ’40s. There was more back-and-forth than soliloquy, and I think that must have added to the modern feel.

There was also a particularly defined shift in the tone of McGinty’s dialog from the beginning to the middle and to the end. In the beginning, McGinty as the bum speaks with a lot of slang and a slight drawl. He strikes a happy medium between educated and down on his luck.

As the puppet mayor, his drawl increases and his speech becomes less concerned with appearing educated, which, of course, is kind of the opposite of what you’d expect for a man going from bum to mayor. At first it bothered me. But when I gave it some thought, what it really represented is McGinty shutting off a part of himself that cared what other people thought of him. To do what he was doing (which was making money for the wrong people and ignoring the plight of his constituents), he had to shut off a part of himself that cared about anything. His lack of careful speech represents this.

Once he falls in love with Catherine, the woman he married for purely political reasons, he starts to care again. Before he’s carted off to prison, he’s carrying himself like a governor should. He speaks carefully, with obvious thought behind what he’s saying. When we see him as bartender, he’s reverted back to his original happy medium.

The shift was clever, though whether via the writing or the delivery, at times it was overdone. Nonetheless, it gives me food for thought when watching my own characters go through an arc.

Overall, I wasn’t blown away, but it was a solid film. There aren’t many films of that era where I think a remake would improve the material, but I think this story is ripe for an update.

Favorite line: “Do you want to go upstairs and have your fortune told?”

Despite (because of) the lack of suggestions for a Netflix movie project, I’ve come up with one of my own. I’ve decided to work my way through the list of Oscar winners for Best Original Screenplay since 1940.

Why 1940? Mostly because that’s where the Wikipedia entry starts. The history of the award is a little muddled, with name changes, combinations and divisions with other awards, etc. I needed a logical starting point, and Wikipedia chose for me, so there you have it.

In case you’re curious, here’s the list from which I’m working:
1940: The Great McGinty (Preston Sturges)
1941: Citizen Kane (Herman Mankiewicz, Orson Welles)
1942: Woman of the Year (Michael Kanin, Ring Lardner, Jr.)
1943: Princess O’Rourke (Norman Krasna)
1944: Wilson (Lamar Trotti)
1945: Marie-Louise (Richard Schweizer)
1946: The Seventh Veil (Muriel Box, Sydney Box)
1947: The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (Sydney Sheldon)
1949: Battleground (Robert Pirosh)
1950: Sunset Boulevard (Charles Brackett, D.M. Marshman, Jr., Billy Wilder)
1951: An American in Paris (Alan Jay Lerner)
1952: The Lavender Hill Mob (T.E.B. Clarke)
1953: Titanic (Charles Brackett, Richard Breen, Walter Reisch)
1954: On the Waterfront (Budd Schulberg)
1955: Interrupted Melody (Sonya Levien, William Ludwig)
1956: The Red Balloon (Albert Lamorisse)
1957: Designing Woman (George Wells)
1958: The Defiant Ones (Nathan E. Douglas, Harold Jacob Smith)
1959: Pillow Talk (Clarence Greene, Maurice Richlin, Russell Rouse, Stanley Shapiro)
1960: The Apartment (I.A.L. Diamond, Billy Wilder)
1961: Splendor in the Grass (William Inge)
1962: Divorce, Italian Style (Ennio de Concini, Pietro Germi, Alfredo Giannetti)
1963: How the West Was Won (James Webb)
1964: Father Goose (Peter Stone, Frank Tarloff)
1965: Darling (Frederic Raphael)
1966: A Man and a Woman (Claude Lelouch [story]; Claude Lelouch, Pierre Uytterhoeven [screenplay])
1967: Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (William Rose)
1968: The Producers (Mel Brooks)
1969: Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid (William Goldman)
1970: Patton (Francis Ford Coppola, Edmund H. North)
1971: The Hospital (Paddy Chayefsky)
1972: The Candidate (Jerry Larner)
1973: The Sting (David S. Ward)
1974: Chinatown (Robert Towne)
1975: Dog Day Afternoon (Frank Pierson)
1976: Network (Paddy Chayefsky)
1977: Annie Hall (Woody Allen, Marshall Brickman)
1978: Coming Home (Robert C. Jones, Waldo Salt [screenplay]; Nancy Dowd [story])
1979: Breaking Away (Steve Tesich)
1980: Melvin and Howard (Bo Goldman)
1981: Chariots of Fire (Colin Welland)
1982: Gandhi (John Briley)
1983: Tender Mercies (Horton Foote)
1984: Places in the Heart (Robert Benton)
1985: Witness (William Kelley, Earl Wallace [screenplay]; William Kelley, Pamela Wallace, Earl Wallace [story])
1986: Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen)
1987: Moonstruck (John Patrick Shanley)
1988: Rain Man (Ronald Bass, Barry Morrow)
1989: Dead Poets Society (Tom Schulman)
1990: Ghost (Bruce Joel Rubin)
1991: Thelma and Louise (Callie Khouri)
1992: The Crying Game (Neil Jordan)
1993: The Piano (Jane Campion)
1994: Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino [story and screenplay] and Roger Avary [story])
1995: The Usual Suspects (Christopher McQuarrie)
1996: Fargo (Ethan and Joel Coen)
1997: Good Will Hunting (Ben Affleck, Matt Damon)
1998: Shakespeare in Love (Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard)
1999: American Beauty (Alan Ball)
2000: Almost Famous (Cameron Crowe)
2001: Gosford Park (Julian Fellowes)
2002: Talk to Her/Habla con Ella (Pedro Almodóvar)
2003: Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola)
2004: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Charlie Kaufman, Michel Gondry, and Pierre Bismuth)
2005: Crash (Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco)
2006: Little Miss Sunshine (Michael Arndt)
2007: Juno (Diablo Cody)

I’m going to try to get through at least one of these a week, and I’m also going to try to post some sort of analysis of each film. I figure this will force me to actively analyze these movies as opposed to just sitting back and watching them without any critical thought. Should be a good academic experience, and hopefully I’ll be able to use some of what I learn to improve my own writing.