Oh, Oscar! You Rascal, You!

I must tell you, I love going through the YouTube archives and discovering old footage from the Academy Awards. I wish the Academy would release them or something, I'd die to see them all, but alas. And even the clips on YouTube are a limited breed because the Academy likes to have them taken down - now is a good time to peruse for clips because come February/March/April they all get taken down when the Academy is on high alert.

I gotta say though, I've seen some amazing clips and here are some more!

An amazing movie montage that was used to open the show in 1990. It really is awesome. See how many movies you can pick! There's apparently something like 330.


This one is the presentation for Best Costume Design from the 1990 62nd Academy Awards, introduced by Candice Bergan and, wait for it, featuring choreography by Paula Abdul! I was particularly taken aback during the Valmont segment. There are no words! For Driving Miss Daisy we nearly get to see up Jessica Tandy's skirt and I'm pretty sure they didn't do that sort of dancing in Henry V. At least the Baron Munchausen and Harlem Nights numbers seem in tune to the movie. The winner was Henry V by the way.


This is the performance for Oscar-winning song "Under the Sea" from The Little Mermaid. Again, it's choreographyed by Abdul, but the art direction is amazing for an Oscar performance and, well, the song is still one of the best winners for Best Original Song in Oscar history, so it works on that point. The bit with the men in flippers is particularly annoying though.


This is the performances of "Belle" and "Be Our Guest" from Beauty and the Beast in 1992 (the winner was the song "Beauty and the Beast"). Again, the art direction is really great and the number is well done. Now we get skanking hookers and slo-mo dancing around car wrecks and you just know that they'd get Beyonce or Jennifer Lopez to do the singing. Orbach's "Be Our Guest" is particularly great.


Jodie Foster winning for The Silence of the Lambs. How awesome is it that this is on YouTube? Michael Douglas is rambling though. If you haven't seen For The Boys though, be prepared for the silliest old-person make-up you're ever likely to see in Bette Midler's nomination clip. I like that movie, but my god, that make-up was ridiculous.


Another crazy Best Actress find. This time it's Meryl Streep accepting the award for her role in Sophie's Choice. I do think she's wearing a gold sleeping gown though, so that's... umm... different! By the way, memo to Australian DVD distributers - RELEASE SOPHIE'S CHOICE ON DVD ALREADY! PLEASE!


I'm not sure if you're like me (perhaps I'm perverse) but one of my most anticipated parts of the Oscar show is the In Memoriam. It's fascinating to see all the notable people who have passed in just one year. Everyone's bound to find someone they hadn't heard about. YouTube has a tonne of the Memoriam packages, but I chose this one from 1997, a year that included the deaths of Claudette Colbert (It Happened One Night), Krzysztof Kieslowski (director of Three Colours Trilogy) Jo Van Fleet (East of Eden), Greer Garson (Mrs Miniver), Brigitte Helm (Metropolis), Marcello Mastroianni (8 1/2) and Saul Bass (poster, credit and sequence designer for Vertigo) amongst many others. Crazy year. Imagine what next years' is going to be like.


Oh Bernadette Peters. How I wish I was around when you were creating interprative dance numbers about anything.

Linkabout

I'm not feeling inspired right now, so here's some links.

The New Yorker has a fabulous article by Jeffrey Eugenides about a longlasting summer movie-going experience. It's not Jaws or Star Wars. It's actually the Australian/British film by Nicolas Roeg, Walkabout that starred a young David Gulpilil. It's a fascinating read. I wish I was that articulate.

Friez.com discusses David Lynch's experimental opus INLAND EMPIRE as well as his future plans (he really likes Poland, apparently). The film has had it's June 21 release date vanquished and is, as far as I can tell, in limbo with Australian distribution. I hate the world. I think it's out on DVD in August in America so I may just have to import it. How incredibly depressing.

[It was here where I did a quick link to Dave Poland's Hostel Part II review, but then it spun out of control in my brain and turned into a blog entry all of it's own. Nice how that stuff happens from time to time.]

The other day The Film Experience linked to the trailer for Neil Jordan's new Jodie Foster-starring film The Brave One. I'm glad Jodie is out of the claustrophic-thriller sub-genre (although I still reckon Panic Room is pretty darn amazing). After a bit of searching I found that the (amazing) song used in in the second half of the the trailer is the (amazing) "Auto Rock" by the (sometimes amazing) Mogwai. I didn't mention him for some reason, but he worked on Clint Mansell's score to The Fountain. And we all know how that one turned out. I just have a feeling about this movie that I'm gonna really like it, even if it's not incredibly well-liked by others. I don't know why I have that hunch, but whatever. Jodie's looking feisty in the image below.


Who knew a Franz Ferdinand remix of an LCD Soundsystem track ("All My Friends") could be so good?!

So, I was having a discussion with The Brother last week about Saw and Hostel (a popular topic these days) and when I mentioned that they were making a Saw 4 he said that it'd be even more pointless than the other movies in the franchise **SPOILERbecause the two villains diedEND SPOILER** I joked that there'd be an evil twin or something. Well, that may or may not be the case. Blah yada etc. The vicious cycle of doom continues.

Does this picture (below) of Will Ferrell and Sasha Baron Cohen freakin' anyone else out? It was from the MTV Movie Awards held last week. It's so... :/ I dunno. Is it good or bad that a gay kiss (as in between two men) has won the Best Kiss category two years in a row? Although, I do have the urge to watch Brokeback Mountain again now. Hmmm....



And lastly, as the deathtoll continues to rise the Victorian train disaster, I send my thoughts out. What a terrible accident. Sad.

Happy Birthday Jodie!

Today is the 44th birthday of one of my absolute favourites!! Jodie, you big ol' closet-case. I loves ya heaps. Don't let the naysayers get you down - I loved your Madeleine White (aka "magnificent cunt" (sorry for the language, but it was a quote)) with the killer legs in Inside Man. I'm a huge supporter of you blockbuster-type movies Contact (even the ending!) and Panic Room and, clearly, everyone knows how supremely wonderful those Silence of the Lambs and Taxi Driver things worked out.

And then there's Bugsy Malone, The Accused and it was even wonderful seeing you, albeit briefly, in A Very Long Engagement. I even have a deep softspot for Candleshoe, your 1977 teenage slueth movie. I'm sorry I haven't seen Nell, the movie you say you give your best performance in, but it's hard to track down alright?! Oh, and please - just don't make anything as bad as Flightplan again, please. That one physically hurt me. I made this collage of you because if you lived near me I'd probably do the same thing but with pictures of you walking through the neighbourhood!