83rd Academy Awards Live Blog

A full transcript of a very forgettable night is below. Read bottom to top.

Watch Me Grow: The Day I Became a Woman

[This is a contribution to the Iranian Film Blogathon, hosted by Sheila O’Malley of The Sheila Variations, which is meant to honor the imprisoned Iranian director Jafar Panahi by raising awareness about Iranian cinema.]

As the title implies, Marzieh Makhmalbaf’s The Day I Became a Woman (2000) is about transitions. Made up of three short stories that are linked by theme more than by narrative, the film is about a 9-year-old girl who wants to play, a 20-something wife on a bicycle who wants to ride and an elderly woman being pushed around in a cart who wants to buy. What these women have in common is that their existence at the end of the day will be different than when it began, or at least it could be. One of the characters has change forced upon her, one of the characters wills change into her life and one of these characters is granted change as a reward for survival. Together their stories form a triptych depicting the unfortunate lifecycle of the Iranian woman, who between two too-short lives of relative free will is confined by dress and cultural expectations.

Littler Big Man: The Cowboys

An actor’s voice is like an athlete’s legs. Once it goes, the magic tends to go with it. That’s why Sean Connery remained an arresting on-screen presence into his 60s and why Harrison Ford hasn’t been able to do the same. The former retained his foghorn-like voice, while the latter has sounded for years like wheezing fireplace bellows. Actors can grow gray and wrinkled, they can become hunched and rigid in their movements, but nothing reveals an actor’s age quite like a fading voice. That’s why it’s difficult to watch John Wayne in The Cowboys without feeling tinges of sadness, because by 1972 the iconic drawl that was once as thick and smooth as honey was growing thin and rough, reminding us of his mortality. (Indeed, seven years later Wayne died of stomach cancer.) And yet within the film Wayne’s raspy voice is something of a gift, first because it’s appropriate for the portrayal of an over-the-hill cattleman, and more importantly because it frees us up to appreciate Wayne’s acting.

If Wayne’s oft-imitated baritone was part of what made him so charming and so singular, it was also a handicap, preventing him from disappearing into his roles when the occasion called for it. Wayne’s booming voice often made him bigger than the character he was playing, and sometimes even bigger than the scene itself. It shook the walls and became part of the set decoration. It was the perfect voice for shooting in locations like Monument Valley, as John Ford liked to do, but in intimate scenes it could overwhelm. And so when I point out that Wayne’s Wil Anderson always seems smaller that room he’s standing in, that’s what I mean, and the relative softness of Wayne’s voice is the reason why. When Anderson has a drink with his buddy Anse (Slim Pickens), or sits in the classroom of Miss Price (Allyn Ann McLerie), or has a quiet conversation with his adoring wife (Sarah Cunningham) – great moments, all of them – he’s the most imposing figure in the room, as Wayne’s characters always were, but he doesn’t hover over them like a Western titan, which makes his performance here pleasantly unusual. In The Cowboys, Wayne does some of the best listening of his career, and the fact that his voice isn’t echoing off the walls when someone else is talking might have a little to do with that. Regardless, Wayne is something in this film that he almost never was over his distinguished career, possibly because we wouldn’t allow it: vulnerable.

The Times They Are a-Changin’: Chisum

The opening titles sequence of Andrew V. McLaglen’s Chisum could stand alone as a modest yet effective short film. Constructing a loose narrative about the trials of a Western cattle drive through a series of static, painted-canvas images brought to life via quick cuts, whip pans and zooms, the sequence plays like a collaboration between C.M. Russell and Ken Burns. Its purpose is to serve as both prelude and reflection – showing how the film’s titular character came to be a man of wealth and reputation – but it entertains on its own merits: evoking the tumult of the cattle drive, the chaos of a lightning storm on the prairie and the perilousness of a clash with Indians. It’s set to the “Ballad of John Chisum,” which combines the score of Dominic Frontiere with the vocals of Merle Haggard, who sings – more like Vincent-Price-raps – about a guy who rode toward the Pecos to find out where he belonged, and it ends with an image of that man on horseback, standing proudly atop a hill and looking down on his New Mexico estate. At that point, the canvas dissolves into the celluloid image, and the painted figure who previously had resembled John Wayne now actually is John Wayne – as John Chisum, of course.

It’s a romantic introduction, one that conjures up nostalgia for Western history and for the Western itself. The initial shot of Wayne, framed in profile and facing to the left, nods at his supremacy – king of the Western hill – while suggesting a man looking into his vast past, contemplating all that it took to rise to the top. Chisum isn’t about a man at a crossroads. It’s about a man who long ago charted his course and now feels the rest of the world catching up, trying to unseat him. “Thinking about the beginning?” asks Ben Johnson’s James Pepper, riding up to Wayne’s Chisum. “And before,” Chisum answers back. Wayne and Johnson are in character, but they might as well be talking as actors – two men who helped blaze a cinematic trail that inspired others to follow in their boot prints; two men who from their elevated position can see that their way of life can’t last much longer. Chisum (1970) was made in the aftermath of Sergio Leone’s “Man with No Name” trilogy (1964-66) and was released a year after Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, films that redefined the Western genre, and it’s clear McLaglen and screenwriter Andrew J. Fenady know which way the wind is blowing. “Everything’s different now,” Pepper says. “Not everything,” responds Chisum, gesturing to some grazing deer, although the line seems designed as a nod toward Wayne’s staying power. “Most everything,” Pepper corrects. “Well,” Chisum says, puffing on a cigar, “things usually change for the better,” and although he sounds sincere, he also comes across like a man who knows that resistance is futile.

Celebrating Three Years of The Cooler

So it’s been three years of doing this blogging thing. And, wow, this past year went by too quickly. Glancing back at 2010’s anniversary post, I see that last February, too, I made reference to a busy day job keeping me from my (healthy) movie obsession, and here we are again. The good news this time is that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and so I feel safe predicting that 2011 will include a noticeable increase in activity around these here parts, which is great because too often this past year I felt frustratingly disconnected -- from the blog and even from cinema (I think those things are related).

And yet, now that I look back, I have to say that given the significant time constraints – and, as always, let me make it clear that I’m grateful to have a cool and demanding day job that rewards all of the time I put into it – I’m quite pleased with what I was able to do in this space over the past 365 days. I didn’t write as often as I would like – or, more to the point, I didn’t get as much time to ruminate and create as I would like – but somehow there was time enough to continue The Conversations series with Ed Howard, and to finish off my coverage of ESPN’s 30 for 30 series, and to pay tribute to the King of Cool (with the help of various talented bloggers from the cyberhood) with the Steve McQueen Blog-a-thon. I also got to meet some fellow bloggers face-to-face for the first time – Ali Arikan and the Olsons (Kevin and Troy). And in online form I got to hang out in Dennis Cozzalio’s Tree House with Dennis, Sheila O’Malley and Jim Emerson, which was fun. All things considered, it was a good year.

North by Northwest Didn't Always Have Direction

“There are 20 different ways of doing a movie, but if you know you’re doing a film for Hitchcock, the villains should all be suave, there’s very little violence, [and] there should be some wit, even when you’re killing somebody.”

Those are the words of screenwriter Ernest Lehman, reflecting on his experiences creating North by Northwest, as anthologized in Conversations With the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute – an unfailingly satisfying read that I pick up off the bookshelf every few months to savor just a few pages at a time. Regular readers probably know this isn’t the first time I’ve quoted that anthology here at The Cooler, and it almost certainly won’t be the last. Page after page I find something enlightening: sometimes it’s a bit of trivia, sometimes it’s a well-told anecdote, but usually it’s a needed dose of perspective.

And that said, I turn it over to Ernest Lehman, circa 1976, discussing the creation of his only original screenplay, North by Northwest (emphasis mine):

The Conversations: True Grit

As many if not most of you already know, the latest edition of The Conversations has been posted to The House Next Door -- several days ago, actually. In this month's edition, Ed Howard and I discuss the Coens' True Grit, and also Henry Hathaway's 1969 version, famously starring John Wayne. Both films are based, to some degree or another, on a Clinton Portis novel that neither Ed nor I has read. Thankfully, some readers of our discussion have read the novel, and so the benefit of being tardy in posting this link is that I can tell you that the comments section is very much worth reading. Also, for what it's worth, if you ever avoid The Conversations due to their length, this edition is relatively short. You'll still kill a tree printing it out, but a smaller tree. Anyway, my delayed posting here isn't indicative of a lack of enthusiasm, so if you haven't yet, get on over to The House Next Door and dive into the discussion.

Some Scandals Are More Memorable Than Others: Notes on a Scandal

[Apropos of nothing (other than being busy), The Cooler offers the following review, written upon the film’s release in the author’s pre-blog era.]

If Lon Chaney was the man of 1,000 faces, Judi Dench is his polar opposite: the woman of one expression. Though a powerful actress almost beyond measure, Dench’s sourpuss scowl is such a constant that were she a bit younger (or at least younger-looking) we’d have to wonder if her frown had been Botoxed into place. Then again, given her penchant for playing crusty old birds, Dench has as much need for sweetness as Keanu Reeves has for an Oscar acceptance speech, and in the end Dench’s default expression suits her niche as perfectly as big red shoes fit a clown.

Thus it’s no shock whatsoever to see Dench playing a “battleaxe” teacher in Richard Eyre’s Notes on a Scandal; Battleaxe, I believe, really is Dench’s middle name. What is surprising, however, is the range of emotion the septuagenarian gets out of that tight-lipped visage. If not for Hugo Weaving’s impressive demonstration behind the face of Guy Fawkes in V For Vendetta it wouldn’t be a stretch to call Dench’s turn the best masked performance of the year. That may sound like a backhanded compliment – and in most cases it would be – but in this case that’s genuine praise.