Picture Predictions 2007

In my humble opinion, so far there have not been too many films this year that have hit the theaters that are Oscar worthy. We’ve had our share of blockbusters so far, with Spiderman 3, Pirates of the Carribean 3 and the unlikely money maker, Knocked up (Which I can’t wait to see!) But they are not what I’d call Oscar material. However there are quite a few that sound like they hit the mark, and of those here are my earliest predictions for this years Oscar nominated films;

CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR:

A drama based on a George Crile’s book of the same name about Texas congressman Charlie Wilson’s covert dealings in Afghanistan, where his efforts to assist rebels in their war with the Soviets have some unforeseen and long-reaching effects. It stars 3 Oscar winners, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. It also stars a former star from the Fox show, Roswell, Shari Appleby.

Sweeney Todd, The Demon Barber of Fleet Street:

Based on the hit Broadway musical which tells the infamous story of Benjamin Barker, a.k.a Sweeney Todd, who sets up a barber shop down in London which is the basis for a sinister partnership with his fellow tenant, Mrs. Lovett. Starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.

Lions for Lambs:

A Robert Redford directed film, which he also stars with Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep. Who knows this may finally gain Tom another Oscar nod as well, not likely but stranger things have happened. Injuries sustained by two Army ranger behind enemy lines in Afghanistan set off a sequence of events involving a congressman (Cruise), a journalist (Streep) and a professor (Redford).

Reservation Road:

This film is quietly moving into the top running, starring Academy Award winner, Jennifer Connelly, and Academy nominated Joaquin Phoniex with a great fresh talented face, Mark Ruffulo. This powerful drama revolves around two fathers whose families and lives tragically converge with the death of a child. In the aftermath, Ethan (Joaquin Phoenix) and Dwight (Mark Ruffalo) each react in unexpected ways as their families struggle to cope and an emotional reckoning looms. Jennifer Connelly plays Grace, Ethan’s wife; Mira Sorvino plays Ruth, Dwight’s ex-wife.

Michael Clayton:

A film that critics are saying is George Clooney’s vehicle to a leading role Oscar, Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is an in-house “fixer” at one of the largest corporate law firms in New York. A former criminal prosecutor, Clayton takes care of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen’s dirtiest work at the behest of the firm’s co-founder Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack). Though burned out and hardly content with his job as a fixer, his divorce, a failed business venture and mounting debt have left Clayton inextricably tied to the firm. At U/North, meanwhile, the career of litigator Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) rests on the multi-million dollar settlement of a class action suit that Clayton’s firm is leading to a seemingly successful conclusion. But when Kenner Bach’s brilliant and guilt-ridden attorney Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) sabotages the U/North case, Clayton faces the biggest challenge of his career and his life

First Best Director ~ Frank Borzage

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah. At 13 went to work in a silver mine but soon latched on to a touring stage company as a group boy and eventually an actor. In 1912 he arrived in Hollywood and began playing bit parts in Ince films. Before long, he was playing heavies and leads in dozens of Ince Westerns and Mutual comedies. By 1916 he was directing films for Universal. Most of his early efforts were quickie melodramas and Westerns in which he also starred. His first important film, HUMORESQUE (1920), contained many of the elements that would characterize his work in years to come. Along with Clarence Brown, Borzage was Hollywood’s great romanticist, an unabashed sentimentalist who told some of the screen’s most beautiful love stories with warm, lyrical tenderness. He pioneered in the use of the soft focus, and the gauzed photography of his films, combined with a fluid, caressing camera movement, gave his lovers an idealized halo that contrasted sharply with the selfish, unfeeling world around them. Dismissed by some film historians as a “gushy sentimentalist,” Borzage was one of Hollywood’s most original artists and one of the most consistent in style. His reputation reached its peak in the late silent and early sound era. With several exceptions, Borzage’s films of the 40s and 50s were the least interesting of his illustrious career.

Borzage died of cancer in 1962 at the age of 68, and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. For his contributions to film, Borzage was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Mary Pickford the Queen of the Academy

Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Mabel Normand, before her career was ruined by scandal, responded to an interviewer who asked her hobby as follows: “Say anything you like, but don’t say I like to work. That sounds too much like Mary Pickford, that prissy bitch.”
The pretty little blonde who inspired this remark had led a hard life by the time she became “America’s Sweetheart.” Born Gladys Smith into genteel poverty (her childhood was much like Lillian Gish’s), her mother had been widowed by the time she became four. But the family income was saved when the child began acting in a local stock company. Years later, when the fanzines asked likes and dislikes, Pickford invaribly listed crimson as the color she detested. The color reminded her of the train seats smelling of coal dust on which she and her family spent hundreds of long hours, barnstorming the country up until 1907.
In New York, Pickford cornered producer David Belasco, who gave her touring and Broadway parts until 1909, when her family’s fortunes went bust (by this time mother and brother were trying to act as well). Mary went to Biograph where Griffith interviewed her, made her up and ushered her onto her first set. At the end of the day he asked her to return the next day for $5 per day. She asked for $10, and got it.
Thus was launched Mary Pickford — if popularity were all, the greatest star there has ever been. Her first big hit, THE LITTLE TEACHER (1910), identified her as “Little Mary” in the sub-titles, and audiences began referring to her likewise. Little Mary became the industry’s chief focus and biggest asset, as well as the draw of draws — bigger, even, than Chaplin — and was the subject of the first cinematic close-up in FRIENDS (1912). Some titles in her filmography speak for themselves: A LITTLE PRINCESS (1917), REBECCA OF SUNNYBROOK FARM (1917), POLLYANNA (1920), LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY (1921), TESS OF THE STORM COUNTRY (1922), LITTLE ANNIE ROONEY (1925). But in all fairness to Pickford, she played her heroines with idealism and spunk, with subtle suggestions of the nymphet. While other actors used the Delsartan “French School of pantomime,” Mary’s expressions were restrained, her gestures small and drawn-out, and therefore all the more expressive. She moved only when movement was called for, and her stillness drew audience attention. Griffith said, “She never stopped listening and learning.” Soon she was telling Adolph Zukor (after moving to Famous Players), “I can’t afford to work for only ten thousand dollars a week.”
Pickford was not overestimating the power of her box-office draw. The quality of her films was, in a sense, immaterial; for millions of people who had never been to a theater it was an entirely new experience to see a “star,” someone to identify with and love from a distance.
United Artists was formed in 1919 by Pickford, D.W. Griffith, Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks (to whom she was married that year); it was rumored this was in reaction against industry word that moguls were going to put a ceiling on star salaries (“It took longer to make one of Mary’s contracts than it did to make one of Mary’s pictures,” said Sam Goldwyn). Pickford, now endowed with creative control, found herself saddled by her “glad girl” image. By the mid-20s, she was hiding a defiantly bobbed head of hair under the required wig of golden curls.
With the coming of sound Pickford wisely chose George Abbot’s COQUETTE (1929) (from a Broadway hit starring Helen Hayes) and gained a best actress Academy Award. But in playing a flapper, Pickford put herself into competition with the likes of Clara Bow and Joan Crawford; the uniqueness of Little Mary was gone for good.
Perhaps a crossover success made her over-confident. At any rate, fans had clamored for years for King Doug and Queen Mary to star together. They did, in THE TAMING OF THE SHREW (1929), a disaster of monstrous proportions. Two more costly failures followed, and Mary Pickford allowed the curtain to fall for good.
In the 1930s Pickford made a vaudeville appearance, published two books (a novel and something called Why Not Try God?) and frequently broadcast on radio. After her marriage to Fairbanks fell apart in 1935 she wed actor Charles “Buddy” Rogers, by all accounts a happy union. Chaplin and Pickford bought out (and eventually outlived) Griffith and Fairbanks, and sold UA (also 1935). In the 1950s, she was set to appear in STORM CENTER (1956), but changed her mind and was replaced by Bette Davis.
Mary Pickford was honored with a special Academy Award in 1976 and died peacefully at Pickfair in 1979. The appeal of her ever-childlike, spirited moppet image may not be well understood today, but Pickford’s mere presence entranced the world. Spoiled by riches she may have been, but underneath the romantic golden vision of youth’s innocence lurked a critical faculty reminiscent of a steel trap: “I never liked one of my pictures in its entirety.”

Biography from Baseline’s Encyclopedia of Film

Janet Gaynor the First Best Actress

Born Laura Gainor in Philadelphia, PA. After graduating from a San Francisco high school, she went to Los Angeles, hoping to get into films. She worked briefly as a bookkeeper in a shoe store and an usherette in a local theater, then began appearing as an extra in movies. She gradually worked her way to to bit parts in Hal Roach comedy shorts and a led in a two-reel Western. Her first substantial part, under contract to Fox, came in THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD (1926). Within a year, she was the most important star on the Fox lot on the strength of her appeal in Murnau’s masterpiece SUNRISE and Borzage’s box-office hit SEVENTH HEAVEN. She won the first Academy Award ever given in the best actress category, for her performances (early Oscars were often awarded for cumulative work) in SUNRISE, SEVENTH HEAVEN (both 1927) and STREET ANGEL (1928).
Diminuitive, dimpled and sweetly wholesome, her appeal lay in her ability to project vulnerability and naïveté, even when playing prostitutes or misguided women. She often co-starred with equally wholesome Charles Farrell. At the height of their popularity as a team, in the early 1930s, they were known as “America’s favorite lovebirds.” In 1934, she was Hollywood’s top box-office attraction.
After getting out of her Fox contract, Miss Gaynor scored handsomely in two successful Selznick films, A STAR IS BORN (1937, Oscar nomination) and THE YOUNG IN HEART (1938), then announced her retirement from the screen. Having married and divorced (1932-34) Lydell Peck, an attorney, in 1939 she married Gilbert Adrian, Hollywood’s most famous costume designer. She emerged from retirement (much of it spent on a Brazilian ranch) occasionally in the 50s for radio and TV work and a mother part in the film BERNADINE (1957). She was widowed in 1959, and in 1964 she married Paul Gregory, a producer. In 1976 her still-life paintings were exhibited in a New York gallery. In 1978 she was honored with a special plaque from the Motion Picture Academy for “her truly immeasurable contributions to the art of motion pictures and for the pleasure and entertainment her unique artistry has brought to millions of film fans around the globe.” Her final appearances came in 1980, in the short-lived Broadway stage adaptation of HAROLD AND MAUDE and in an episode of the TV series “Love Boat.” In 1982 she was critically injured in a traffic accident, in which her husband and actress-singer Mary Martin were also hurt. She sustained 11 broken ribs, a broken pelvis and collarbone, and various internal injuries from which she never fully recovered. Her death of pneumonia two years later was directly attributed by the coroner to these injuries.

Lionel Barrymore in A Free Soul

Eldest of the famed Barrymore siblings. Unlike his brother John and sister Ethel, Lionel did little acting for the theater. He made his stage debut as an infant as part of his parents’ [Herbert Blythe (Maurice Barrymore) and Georgia Drew] act and was a leading player by age 22. His first film roles were in D.W. Griffith shorts, beginning with THE BATTLE (1911), and he worked primarily with MGM from 1926; he continued to act despite being confined to a wheelchair for the last 15 years of his life due to crippling arthritis and a serious leg injury. Barrymore gave one of his finest performances as a dying aristocrat in DINNER AT EIGHT (1933) and is also fondly remembered for CAMILLE (1937), YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938) and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946), among others.
Barrymore was a writer of both fiction and non-fiction, an accomplished painter and a capable film director, earning an Oscar® as an alcoholic lawyer in A FREE SOUL (1931), based on the memoirs of reporter Adela Rogers St. Johns.

George Arliss in Disraeli

Arliss began his acting career on the stage. He began his film career with The Devil (1921), followed by Disraeli. He remade Disraeli (1929) (and won the Academy Award for Best Actor, the first Ebglish actor to do so), converting successfully, especially for his age, from a star of silent films to the talkies, many of which were pre-Code, although none of the movies seem particularly racy or violent in nature, and would probably not have required much censorship even had they been made “post-Code”.
One of these movies was The Man Who Played God, which was Bette Davis’ first leading role. Until the end of Davis’ life she would credit Arliss, for personally insisting upon her as his leading lady, giving her a chance to show her mettle.
He appeared in several historical films, such as Alexander Hamilton, Voltaire and Cardinal Richelieu.
He often appeared with his wife, Florence Arliss (1871 – 1950), to whom he was married from 16 September 1899 until his death; they had a son, Leslie Arliss, who became a prolific producer-director for Gainsborough Studios, with such films as Love Story (1944) and The Wicked Lady (1945). Arliss died in London.

Warner Baxter as the Cisco Kid in "In Old Arizona"

Warner Baxter was one of the most debonair actors of the twenties through the forties, who was also the recipient of the second Oscar Actor Award in history.

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Warner Baxter moved to San Francisco, California when he was nine. Following the 1906 earthquake, he and his family lived in a tent for two weeks. By 1910 Baxter was in vaudeville, and from there began acting on the stage. He worked as a farm implement salesmen in his late teens before turning his hobby of amateur theatricals into a lifelong profession. Alternating between stock-company assignments and “civilian” jobs during the World War I years, Baxter reportedly made his first film in 1914.

Warner Baxter began as an extra in 1918 and quickly rose to become a star. He had his first starring role in 1921, in a film called Sheltered Daughters and he quickly became one of the most popular actors of the decade. A matinee idol in the silents, he came to prominence as the Cisco Kid with In Old Arizona the first all-talking western, for which he won the second Academy Award for Best Actor. He went on to star with ‘Myrna Loy’ in – Penthouse and to what many consider his best role, that of the doctor who treated Lincoln’s assassin, in The Prisoner of Shark Island. That year his $284,000 income topped the industry.

In 1943, after slipping into a string of B-pictures, he began his Dr. Ordway Crime Doctor series. He had suffered a nervous breakdown, and these pictures were easy on him (studio sets for one month, two films a year). He starred in forty-eight features during the 1920s. He also starred in Broadway Bill and in Kidnapped.
Baxter made over a hundred films between 1914 and 1950.
Suffering the pain of arthritis, Baxter had a lobotomy to ease the pain. He died shortly after of pneumonia and was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Emil Jannings ~ Best Actor 1927-28

Emil Jannings was born as Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz in Rorschach, Switzerland. In 1900 he came in touch with the theater for the first time, where he worked as a unpaid trainee. Later he acted for touring companies. In the following years he worked his way constantly up und played in Nuremberg, Darmstadt, Bremen and finally for Max Reinhardt in Berlin. Bigger roles in the theater followed in 1917.
He made his debut in 1914 for the film “Im Schützengraben/Der 12jährige Kriegsheld”, but his real career started in 1916. In the following four years he acted in “Aus Mangel an Beweisen”, “Nächte des Grauens” “Die Ehe der Luise Rohrbach” , “Lulu” , “Die Augen der Mumie Ma” , “Vendetta” and “Rose Bernd” .
When played the role of Ludwig IV in the movie “Madame Dubarry” , directed by Ernst Lubitsch, it became his great breaktthrough in his film career. In the next ten years he went down in film history with his silent movies. He played in the successful productions “Kohlhiesels Töchter” , “Die Brüder Karamasoff” , “Algol” , “Anna Boleyn” , “Danton” , “Das Weib des Pharao” , “Peter der Grosse” and “Tragödie der Liebe” .
In the middle of the 20’s nearly all ways led to Emil Jannings. He personified the leading roles in international successful productions “Quo Vadis” , “Nju” , “Der letzte Mann” “Tartüff” , “Varieté” and “Faust” . Because of his huge successes of his last movies he got a three-year contract with Paramount. In the USA he shot up fast among others in the movies “The Way of All Flesh – Der Weg allen Fleisches” , “The Last Command – Sein letzter Befehl”, “The Patriot – Der Patriot” and “Betrayal – Verrat” . For his performance in “The Way of All Fleshs” and “The Last Command” he achieved the first actor oscar in film history.
When the sound film rang in a new era, Emil Jannings’ “stardom” began to wane because of his knowledge of English, and his strong German accent and soon he went back to Germany.
His first film in Germany also caused a sensation and counts to the best movies of the 30’s. The leading actress Marlene Dietrich lauchned her Hollywood career with this film. We are talking about “”The Blue Angel” , where Emil Jannings played professor Unrat.
But in the next years he wasn’t able to go on from his earlier successes, only in the National Socialist Germany he became again a great star. In these years he played often historical personalities and worked for the National Socialism.
After the war he was denazified in 1946 and got the Austrian nationality one year later.

The Oscars

“The Academy is the League of Nations of the Motion Picture Industry. It is our open forum where all branches can meet and discuss constructive solutions to problems with which each is confronted. In the past, we have never been able to get together on a common ground and in making this possible the Academy has conferred a great service. The producer, star, featured player, cinematographer—in fact, every individual can come into the Academy with any problem or proposal and feel that all barriers are leveled, that in this open court his voice carries the same weight as that of any other person, regardless of position and standing. There is no greater force for coordination, no greater avenue for constructive and intelligent coopera tion for advancement than that offered by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.” (Mary Pickford, April 2, 1928)

Beginning May 21 I will begin starting something a little different here on OSCARMANIA! I will begin listing the winners, year by year, with a small bio on the actors and actresses and a review of the winning pictures. This iwll be a lot of work and research, but hopefully it will be as interesting for, my blog readers as it is for me.

Best Actress 2007

Early predictions for the 2007 Oscars, here are my picks for the Best Actress:

Cate Blanchett; The Golden Age

Jodie Foster; The Brave One

Nicole Kidman; Margot at the Wedding

Vanessa Redgrave; Evening

Angelina Jolie; A Mighty Heart

Alternates:

Jennifer Connelly; Reservation Road

Meryl Streep; Lions for Lambs

Natalie Portman: The Other Boylen

Catherine Keener; An American Crime

Sarah Jessica Parker; Spinning Butter

Reese Witherspoon; Rendition