In which Brad Pitt qualifies as a "special effect"

Captain’s Log: 31 January
Last movie watched: Cape Fear (the original, with Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum)
Song currently stuck in head: See below.

Hey mama welcome to the 60s! Oh oh oh oh ohhhohhhohhh.

Well, we’re moving on up the decades, and things like the Screen Actors Guild Awards have been announced (winners are Sean Penn for Milk, Meryl Streep for Doubt, Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight and Kate Winslet for The Reader. It doesn’t help an awful lot, since Winslet was a Supporting Actress in the SAG awards and is nominated for Leading Actress for the Oscars). The Producer’s Guild Awards have given Slumdog Millionaire and Wall*E top honours, while the various critics awards are tending towards Slumdog (though not overwhelmingly), Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married, and a toss-up between Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke for best Actor.

Today’s Oscar topic is the awards relating to Sound, Sound Effects and Visual Effects. As usual, I know very little about the technicalities of these awards, and my expertise is limited to “wow, that looks/sounds cool!” I like the chances for Wall*E on Sound Effects, though, since it actually used junk yard items to create various characters' voices. Nominees for Visual Effects are Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight and Iron Man. Two for explosions and fancy iron suits, and one for making Brad Pitt look like a very tiny, very old man (pictured). Previous winners in this category include Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Doctor Doolittle (one assumes that was for the giant snail, and not Rex Harrison). Basically, something needs to have been created that could not possibly have been filmed. In other words, Brad Pitt himself is not a special effect, but a very small, old Mr Pitt fits the bill.

But back to the swinging 60s – can you believe I’ve seen all but ONE of the Best Picture winners? Today’s sermon will begin with Billy Wilder’s 1960 classic, The Apartment.

(Sidebar, so last omail I forgot to talk about 1956’s The King And I, but then I’m not sure anyone really cares. Does anyone read these? Hello? Bueller? The hell with it. All you need to know is this: Yul Brynner did as he always has done, and kicked ass.)

[Second sidebar: what the heck am I talking about? That movie didn't win Best Picture, which may be why I didn't mention it in the first place. Clearly I shouldn't be putting "attention to detail" on my resume]

So, The Apartment stars Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray (oh yes, that guy, from My Three Sons). It was remade by Amy Heckerling as Loser (although none of the trivia sites say this, I’m sticking to it. I’m probably just smarter than them...or something), but in its originalform it was gorgeously done. A corporate slave lends his apartment to his boss, who uses it as a love nest to “meet up” with his mistress (MacLaine), whom Lemmon is secretly in love with. Jack Lemmon delivers Billy Wilder’s beautiful lines like he was born to (Kevin Spacey, on winning his Oscar for American Beauty, dedicated his award to Jack Lemmon's performance in this film), and though it’s a simple story, it was made back in the day when they did simple stories really well.

The opposite of the simple story is the following winner, set in the good old days of New York, where the graffiti was legible and the gangs danced and whistled. It’s 1961’s West Side Story. Notable in my household as one of only two films that my mother has walked out of (the other being Blazing Saddles, although I can't imagine why). It’s basically Romeo and Juliet with half the deaths and 90% more dancing. But you have to admire the person who thinks “This Shakespeare play...bet I could turn it into modern day New York gang warfare. But you know what would make it better?” Apparently the answer was a lot of clicking and whistling and calling people “Daddy-o”. Nicknames like “Big Deal” and “A-Rab”, described in Wikipedia as “the weary one of the gang”. Here’s B-Side! The diabetic of the gang! Keeping it real, man.

But even bigger than this (seriously? You ask. Bigger than “Daddy-o”?) was the movie that was, while not bigger than Ben Hur (it’s six minutes shorter), was at least sandier. 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia was the sandiest thing to hit the movies until The English Patient came along in the late 90s. Peter O’Toole was the title character who, as Noel Coward said later, if he was any prettier, “would have been called Florence of Arabia”. Gotta give it Noel, though. Look at him there in the poster. He was the 1960s version of the Pretty Boy.

The film also stars Anthony Quinn, Alec Guinness, Claude Rains and renowned master bridge player Omar Sharif, whose entrance is one of the most awesome in movie history. In fact, when they were introduced, O’Toole decided that “No one is called Omar Sharif”, and insisted on calling him “Fred” instead.

So it's about real-life T.E. Lawrence, who led the Arabian army in their battles agains the Turks. The main complaints about the film portrayal seem to centre around the fact that O'Toole was about 9 inches taller than Lawrence. I think some people have missed the point of movies.

We’ll do one more before I let you go. I mentioned it last week as the better example of Pygmalion – better than Gigi, anyway. My Fair Lady, 1964, starred Julie Andrews in the stage version, but the studios (read: source of all evil on earth) decided she wasn’t pretty enough for the movies, and cast Audrey Hepburn instead. Sigh. Nevermind. Andrews went and starred in Mary Poppins instead and won herself an Oscar. So ner. Not that Ms Hepburn is bad. She’s quite good, especially as at one point she has to sport one of the most ridiculous hairstyles I’ve seen. The songs are memorable, Rex Harrison does his speaking-rather-than-singing thing, demanding that he be allowed to record his songs live, rather than dub them over later, marking the first time wireless microphones were used during filming. Woo! Interestingly the ending is completely different from the original play, but I’m not going to spoil it for you.

"Ya know, I used to live like Robinson Crusoe; I mean, shipwrecked among 8 million people. And then one day I saw a footprint in the sand, and there you were."
--- Jack Lemmon - The Apartment ---