OVP: Babes in Toyland (1961)

Film: Babes in Toyland (1961)

Stars: Ray Bolger, Tommy Sands, Annette Funicello, Ed Wynn, Tommy Kirk

Director: Jack Donahue

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Scoring, Costume Design)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Annette Funicello: click here to learn more about Ms. Funicello (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Disney has long had a way of knowing exactly which stars it needed to keep in its orbit before they left, and Annette Funicello was no different.  After the end of The Mickey Mouse Club, the series' breakout hit was still under contract, and used throughout a variety of Disney properties, including Zorro and Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, as well as today's film Babes in Toyland, her second (of four) theatrical films with Disney.  She also became something of a jukebox star during this time frame, coming out with several hit songs including "Pineapple Princess," "O Dio Mio," and "Tall Paul," the latter a Top 10 hit and the biggest tune of her career.  Babes in Toyland is a pretty good encapsulation, though, of why Funicello would eventually need to escape the Mouse House, given the 19-year-old star wasn't being asked to stretch her abilities much within the Disney universe.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie (tangentially a Christmas movie, which feels nice given today is the day the Hallmark ornaments are announced, a tradition to pour over in my family, so I'm fully Christmas in July) takes place in a land of make believe, one that is still fully capitalistic as we have the villainous Barnaby (Bolger) trying to wed the beautiful Mary Contrary (Funicello) even though she is engaged to Tom Piper (Sands).  The reason he wants to marry her is that she is set to inherit a large fortune, something she is unaware of, and will go to her when she becomes betrothed (and he intends to steal the fortune).  He does this first by trying to have Tom killed (but his henchmen are unsuccessful in doing this), and then in having him shrunk when they reach the Toymaker (Wynn) and his assistant (Kirk) in the forest while looking for Mary's sheep.  Mary & Tom, though, defeat Barnaby, save Christmas (by having enough toys built for the holiday), and end up blissfully wed.

The movie has a lot of plot holes, more than you'd expect even from a live-action Disney film in the 1960's.  We never discover what Mary thinks of being an heiress, what happened to Barnaby, or what happened to the sheep.  The film feels like from scene-to-scene it's a patchwork picture, and I'll be honest-it's not a great movie.  I think it has a lot of heart, and there are warm performances (it's easy watching this to understand why Funicello would take on the role of America's Sweetheart so well-her song "I Can't Do the Sum" is the musical highlight of the picture), and the art direction is lovely (better than the Oscar-nominated costumes, though those also have their moments like Mary's yellow dress), but it's too juvenile.  Your mileage with this movie as an esteemed holiday classic will largely depend on if you had a copy of it on VHS in your parents entertainment center growing up or not...watching it cold as an adult, you see the songs are only okay, and that Tommy Sands as a lead is a bit charmless.

On the flip side, I quite liked Tommy Kirk, who along with Ed Wynn steals most of the picture.  Kirk would work with Funicello eight times in his career, but this is the last of the films we'll track with the two of them this month, so I thought it would be appropriate to discuss his unusual (and sad) career path to end this week.  Kirk is best-known today for his role as the young boy in Old Yeller, but he was a major star for Disney in the late 1950's and early 1960's.  He had mammoth hits in The Shaggy Dog and The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, a movie that was such a big hit that Disney essentially had to unfire him to make the sequel, as Kirk had been caught having gay sex at a Burbank swimming pool, and Walt himself personally fired him after the discretion.  Kirk, though, was gone from Disney after the sequel was also a hit, and while he would work in several of the beach party films (including a couple opposite Annette Funicello), his career was washed up by the end of the decade, and years of drug abuse (and his public sexuality, which was made known in the early-1970's after Disney had initially covered it up in the wake of Merlin Jones success) meant that by the 1970's one of the top box office draws of the 1960's was working as a waiter in Los Angeles.  Thankfully, a successful small business (and access to residuals from his many Disney films being released in syndication and on home video) meant that Kirk eventually got to have a happy ending to his life, and was made a Disney Legend in 2006 from the studio that had once fired him.

OVP: The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)

Film: The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964)

Stars: Debbie Reynolds, Harve Presnell, Ed Begley, Jack Kruschen, Hermione Baddeley

Director: Charlie Walters

Oscar History: 6 nominations (Best Actress-Debbie Reynolds, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Scoring, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Debbie Reynolds: click here to learn more about Ms. Reynolds (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By 1964, Debbie Reynolds had been America's Sweetheart for about a decade, and similar to the two other women that we've talked about this season (Audrey Hepburn & Doris Day) who reigned alongside her with that crown, she was about to have that title (and her position as a box office queen) put into question.  But before that, Reynolds got something that clearly meant a lot to her: an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress.  Reynolds is generally considered to be a really winning screen presence, but I'll be honest-I don't see a lot of people praising her for her acting ability, or at least that's not the leading reason that people talk about her.  She is oftentimes praised as "charming" on the big-screen, or that she is a damned fun celebrity, but save for Singin' in the Rain, none of her movies during this time frame enjoys a really solid critical reputation, and she's far more in Day's ballpark than Hepburn's when it comes to acclaim.  I had seen parts of The Unsinkable Molly Brown years earlier, but had virtually no memory of it (to the point where I decided it should count as a "never seen it" qualifier for this series), and was curious for the one Oscar nomination that Reynolds did get, was the public (and to some degree me, who likes her but doesn't think of her as a "great" actress in the same way as peers like Hepburn or Elizabeth Taylor) underestimating her?

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Molly Brown (Reynolds), a woman who grew up from nothing and then became a fixture in high society at the turn-of-the-century, though it has to be said that this is a highly fictitious telling of her life story.  She starts as a backwoodsman, raised to be a tomboy by her adopted father Seamus (Begley), but she soon falls in love with Johnny Brown (Presnell), a lazy drunk and mining prospector who tries to woo her first on his own terms, and then on her terms (she wants to be a wealthy society woman).  They strike it rich, becoming "new money" but are not accepted by Denver's elite.  To get around this, she befriends multiple royals while galavanting around Europe with Johnny, and comes back with these royals in tow.  She now has the friends to make it in polite society, but Johnny isn't happy, and they grow apart.  While aboard the Titanic, she keeps spirits alive on a lifeboat, and is proclaimed a hero by the town, and comes back to Johnny, their love rekindled, now with them being themselves once more.

The movie is overstuffed, overlong, and far too silly for my tastes.  The beginning of the film is basically just Calamity Jane, complete with the adorable Reynolds with her face covered in dirt and her hair cut short.  But this part, like most of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, lasts too long.  The entire film is basically just a series of mishaps between Molly & Johnny, trying to understand why they won't be accepted in polite society, and changing everything about themselves to get there.  It's not that different than The Beverly Hillbillies, which makes the Oscar nominations feel weird, though they aren't all bad.  The cinematography is oddly good, particularly in the singing scenes (in many ways it recalls some of the outdoor singing shots of Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music), and the costumes & art direction are splendidly colorful and over-the-top (the grand staircase in the mansion is particularly gauche and features heavily into Molly's return from Europe).  But the music isn't strong, either in terms of sound or in terms of it being memorable (I saw it yesterday, and I can't remember one number from it), and Reynolds...she's not great.  Reynolds worked best in MGM musicals because she was spunky and you liked watching her fall in love.  But this film shows her limitations-she can't elevate a bad movie, and she swings for the rafters too much.  This very much feels in the vein of Pillow Talk and The Blind Side, where an actress who had charmed audiences (and the box office) for years gets her thank you from the Academy, even if it isn't earned.

There is one really weird part of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, though, and it's the complete lack of her time on the Titanic.  If you asked any modern audience member, the only thing they'd know about Molly Brown is her surviving the Titanic, and I'll be real-I suspect that would've been the case in 1964 as well.  Yet in the film's 135 minutes, just over two of those minutes take place during the Titanic sinking.  All you see is Reynolds walking the deck during the iceberg hit, one shot of the ship sinking, and Molly keeping everyone on the lifeboat alive.  It's such a tiny part it honestly feels like a joke...as if they ran out of money during production and didn't save anything for the most famous part of her life.  Reynolds is actively bad in the lifeboat scenes as well...trying to shame the women crying on the ship as their husbands are dying just a few hundred meters away.  It's such a strange scene, and worth noting if you're watching this movie because you're an amateur Titanic historian looking for more movies about the subject...because man is it weird & far shorter than it should've been in a movie that otherwise stretches too long.

OVP: Costume (1999)

OVP: Best Costume (1999)

The Nominees Were...

Jenny Beavan, Anna and the King

Colleen Atwood, Sleepy Hollow

Ann Roth & Gary Jones, The Talented Mr. Ripley

Milena Canonero, Titus

Lindy Hemming, Topsy-Turvy

My Thoughts: The Costume and Art Direction branches used to be combined at the Oscars, and as a result, they tended to have a lot of the same tastes.  To a degree this makes sense.  While these are very different art forms, they also tend to compliment each other, and so if one of them is good, the other should follow by proxy.  Four of these films we'll get to later this week (the article's not written yet, so putting that into the universe now in hopes that I finish it on my day off on Wednesday) with Art Direction, and in all four cases, my verdict between then and now is going to be relatively similar, so feel like you've been forewarned.

The one film that isn't going to show up for Art Direction is Titus, getting its sole Academy recognition.  Julie Taymor's movies for years had the distinction of always getting at least one Oscar nomination (The Glorias came close but screwed that streak up), and here it was for the duds being worn by Anthony Hopkins and company.  I liked Titus (better than I usually do Taymor's movies), but the costumes didn't work for me.  Canonero uses too many modern touches that don't really add from the story, something that in general Taymor's doing in this picture, and it yields anachronisms that serve to distract more than enhance the tale in front of us.  This is flashy (and Canonero is an Oscar favorite), so I get it, but I can't subscribe to this nomination.

The same can be said for Anna and the King.  With remakes, I want to see something special happening on the screen.  This is the third live-action version of this movie from a major studio, but it doesn't give us much newness.  The dresses worn by Deborah Kerr were more stylish and memorable, and Foster's versions feel more focused on realism than a sense of wonder (which makes sense...this one isn't a musical).  But I don't go to the movies for realism, and I want a better sense of opulence as I'm wandering through this picture, which I don't get, and lord knows this relatively dull affair needs some life.

Topsy-Turvy gets us much closer to that sense of wonder, while also keeping realism involved.  The gorgeous recreations in this movie from The Mikado are delicious, giving us rich color while also feeling like they really were pulled from the backstage closet of a London stage.  Think of Shirley Henderson in that stuffed-to-the-gills wedding dress...tacky but also some sense of glamour to go with it, exactly what you'd want from something like this.  Yes, there are gowns that feel more like an excuse to shovel décolletage into the viewers eyes (which is questionably anachronistic), but this is period costuming with character, which I can get onboard with.

The same can be said for Colleen Atwood's work in Sleepy Hollow.  Not as discussed today as some of Johnny Depp's other collaborations with Tim Burton, this movie is one of my favorites they've done together, and a lot of that comes from the look of the picture.  Atwood goes overboard with design details.  My favorite is the famous dress worn by Christina Ricci, black-and-white striped with a collar positioned so it almost looks like she's hypnotizing Depp (and the audience).  Add in some of the lusty looks worn by Miranda Richardson, and you've got beautiful costumes that are also aiding the plot of the picture.

There's always one film nominated by Oscar where we turn our gaze away from the beautiful actresses on-display and see some of the gorgeous men get to wear their outfits, and while Cate Blanchett & Gwyneth Paltrow have fine looks in The Talented Mr. Ripley, this nomination is for the mirroring duds of Jude Law & Matt Damon.  It helps that Law looks like he was drawn from Greek marble he's so beautiful in this picture, but putting him effortlessly in period costumes, like his short-sleeved white shirt with grey vertical stripes, or Matt Damon in a neon yellow swimsuit to show him finally starting to standout.  These are the sorts of great touches that I want in costume work (and also, everyone looks scrumptious).

Other Precursor Contenders: The Costume Designer's Guild split its nominations between Contemporary and Period/Fantasy in 1999, and only did four nominations each this year, so we've got eight movies to list.  Contemporary went to American Beauty against Cookie's Fortune, Eyes Wide Shut, and Fight Club while Period/Fantasy went to Sleepy Hollow atop Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, The Matrix, and The Talented Mr. Ripley.  The BAFTA went to Sleepy Hollow as well, here against The End of the Affair, An Ideal Husband, & Tea with Mussolini.  In sixth, I think there's a decent case to be made for The Cider House Rules, the one film cited for Art Direction but not this, but I also think that Star Wars: The Phantom Menace or The Matrix could've been in the hunt, given those were iconic looks even in 1999.

Films I Would Have Nominated: I for sure would've picked The Matrix.  The leather dusters here became the defining costuming choice of 1999, but I liked that there were spins on this design throughout the picture, giving us character detailing on a signature look, which is hard to do.

Oscar's Choice: Precursors pointed to Sleepy Hollow, and at the time Anna and the King had a lot of buzz, but it ended up being Topsy-Turvy that won in the end, a bit of an upset for this category.

My Choice: I'm going to pick Sleepy Hollow here, and pat myself on the back while doing it.  One of the defining traits of the OVP is that I decide each race in a vacuum, so you don't win based on being "overdue" or other outside factors, but just on the work of the five choices Oscar picked that are in front of me.  I was getting a little worried knowing that Colleen Atwood, despite nine previous nominations we've discussed, had yet to actually win.  While you'll have to wait a few weeks to see if she gets her first My Ballot gold medal, the system provided me an out here as she's definitely the best of these five nominees, and so she won't leave without at least one OVP statue from this experiment.  Behind her (in order) are The Talented Mr. Ripley, Topsy-Turvy, Titus, and Anna and the King.

And now, it's your turn. Are you rummaging through the looks of Gilbert & Sullivan, or do you want to join me in Ichabod Crane's closet?  What is your favorite of Colleen Atwood's many film designs?  And was it Star Wars, The Matrix, or The Cider House Rules in sixth place?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 1999: Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously, in 1999

Past Best Costume Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

OVP: How the West Was Won (1963)

Film: How the West Was Won (1963)

Stars: Carroll Baker, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Carolyn Jones, Karl Malden, Gregory Peck, George Peppard, Robert Preston, Debbie Reynolds, James Stewart, Eli Wallach, John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Spencer Tracy, Walter Brennan, Agnes Moorehead, Thelma Ritter, Russ Tamblyn, Raymond Massey, Mickey Shaughnessy

Director: Henry Hathaway, John Ford, & George Marshall

Oscar History: 8 nominations/3 wins (Best Picture, Original Screenplay*, Film Editing*, Sound*, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Debbie Reynolds: click here to learn more about Ms. Reynolds (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We cannot do a month devoted to Debbie Reynolds without talking about one of the most famous scandals of the Classical Hollywood era, her relationship with Eddie Fisher.  Fisher was a major singer at the time, on-par with acts like Fabian and Elvis Presley in terms of his popularity, and even had his own hit television program.  The two were the equivalent of what today we'd think of as Zendaya & Tom Holland (or for you older people, Brad Pitt & Jennifer Aniston)-America's Sweethearts, the boy and girl next door who had married each other.  Their marriage was rocky when it wasn't on the front pages, though, with Fisher a serial philanderer, including an affair with Playboy Playmate Pat Sheehan.  But it was when he had an affair with Elizabeth Taylor, the rare celebrity at the time on-par with Reynolds & Fisher, that the entire world paid attention.  Taylor, who had recently been widowed after the death of producer Mike Todd, was best friends with Reynolds, but still ended up in bed with her husband.  The scandal was sensational, one of the biggest celebrity news stories of the decade, and it had bizarre implications for all involved.  Reynolds, of course, was canonized as the scorned woman, and would have five movies come out in 1959 alone.  Elizabeth Taylor, the mistress, normally would've been the one to pay the price in the public's eye, but she was fine career-wise.  Within a year she was clutching her first Oscar, and a few years later would become the highest-paid actress in film history (and the centerpiece of an equally-famous affair) on the set of Cleopatra.  Instead it was Eddie Fisher who actually paid a career price, with his show being cancelled and his music career largely being destroyed.  It's hard to grasp now, but at the time Fisher was as big of a deal as Reynolds & Taylor were...now, he's nothing but an asterisk compared to the two women, who famously years after they'd both left Fisher reconciled and even starred in a film written by Fisher & Reynolds' daughter Carrie.

(Spoilers Ahead) During the wake of the scandal, Reynolds got a lot of career mileage and a number of hit movies, one of the biggest being today's film How the West Was Won.  The movie is less a cohesive story, and more a series of vignettes that tell the tale of how the American West began as well as how it ended, but the centerpiece around the film is Reynolds, who despite not getting top-billing (it went alphabetically for all of the main stars) is the movie's main character as Lilith Prescott, a woman dragged to the wilderness by her parents (Moorehead & Malden), and then when they die, she ends up making the west her home, marrying a scoundrel (Peck) who ends up making good, and eventually settling in the West with her nephew (Peppard) after most of the rest of her family dies.  In the meantime, we get pirates (led by Walter Brennan), the growth of the railroad, and, oh yeah, the Civil War.  

The movie is BIG, and it's not afraid of it.  There's a reason it has three directors and 17 (not a typo, I counted) Oscar-nominated actors on the call sheet.  But the thing is-it's not very good.  None of the actors are giving particularly good performances, and given who they are, that's a crime.  The best in the cast might be...Wallach, only because he gets to play a villain?  Honestly, even that feels like a stretch to me.  It's more a cavalcade of cameos, each seemingly doing John Ford a favor by appearing in a movie that would be such a big hit it'd be a weird case of it being one of their signature movies of the 1960's despite only Reynolds being in very much of the picture.  It deals a lot with cliche, and trying to shove what would've been a miniseries today into a couple of hours of celluloid.

The film won eight Academy Award nominations, and they're a mixed bag, but definitely not all bad.  The movie's screenplay win is abject silliness (it barely runs together as a plot!), and the same can be said for the editors, who probably got this nomination because it was a novel concept to have unrelated stories start to blend this way, but just because it's unique doesn't mean it's good.  The art direction & costume nominations are better, but less inspired.  The art direction feels more a tribute to the beauty of nature in the film, which is definitely on-display (also, because this is shot in Cinerama there's a lot more art direction than you'd normally expect), and the costumes are fine though nothing stands out in particular.  It's the last three nominations that worked best and felt most-earned.  The film's cinematography, capturing the beauty of the west (lots of this was shot off a studio lot), and it also works really well in conjunction with the stunt and effects teams (the Civil War & river rapids sequences, in particular, are the stuff that makes you wonder why it's taken so long to get a Stunts Oscar).  This also works for the sound work, with a lot of the action set pieces feeling really in-your-face, and it works well with the film's high musical quotient.  And of course Alfred Newman's score, generally considered to be his best work, is spectacularly grand.  All-in-all, there's a lot of elements of a classic here...if only the movie itself were any good.

OVP: Costume (2023)

OVP: Best Costume (2023)

The Nominees Were...

Jacqueline Durran, Barbie

Jacqueline West, Killers of the Flower Moon

Janty Yates & Dave Crossman, Napoleon

Ellen Mirojnick, Oppenheimer

Holly Waddington, Poor Things

My Thoughts: And now we arrive at the real centerpiece-the first of six battles between the "Barbenheimer" rivals Oppenheimer and Barbie.  A true case of strange bedfellows forever linked (similar in spirit to Saving Private Ryan and Shakespeare in Love), the 96th Oscars will forever be known for this amalgamation, one that pitted the frothiest of comedies against a serious biopic made by one of our most celebrated working filmmakers.  The Oscars, though, didn't really give us much of a competition.  This was mocked during the ceremony, but Barbie's only Oscar win came in a category that Oppenheimer didn't get nominated for, and because they don't release the vote totals, we only know that Oppenheimer beat Barbie in two categories (Picture and Supporting Actor) since it won those.  We, though, have the ability to know where they ranked here, so in addition to the ultimate winner (there are, after all, three other nominees to consider in this lineup), we'll also do a running tally to see if I end up Team Barbie or Team Oppenheimer when it comes to their battles in the coming weeks.

Let's begin, since it's our first dance with her (she missed for Editing), with Barbie.  The work done by Jacqueline Durran here is definitely go-the-distance stuff.  She's aided by the production design, but the hyper-glossy, perfectly pressed looks in this film, all monochromatic color that splashily invites pink (even when something is not pink) is fantastic.  Special kudos for a few key looks: the fluorescent yellow-green rollerblades, Ken's gigantic fur coat, and Margot Robbie's opening "wake-up" look.  Truly every scene in this, though, is jam-packed with eye candy.

Oppenheimer does not have the flashy recreation of decades of dolls to rely upon, but I do think that the realism here with a sense of style is fascinating.  Look at the way that Cillian Murphy's wide-brimmed hat makes him more imposing (and taller) against men who are actually taller than him).  I also loved the effortless detailing of Florence Pugh's fashion, always a touch more glamorous and ethereal than Emily Blunt's more demure, respectable Kitty.  This is what I want in a costume design-I want it to inform things that the script can't (or shouldn't) about how the audience should feel about the characters.  

Deprived of his longtime collaborator Sandy Powell, Martin Scorsese's partnership with Jacqueline West in Flower Moon also shows us things about this story that the script is only hinting at.  Look at the vibrancy of Lily Gladstone and the other Osage women's beautiful designs, full of color against a drab skyline, and more importantly, a series of interchangeable suits on men that are trying to rob them of that uniqueness.  I also loved Jesse Plemons, similar to Cillian Murphy, trying on a hat that is way too big for him in hopes of seeming more imposing, and the best costume in the film (seen above) where Lily Gladstone has an air of a drum majorette.

The dramatic looks of Napoleon do not leave enough room for character like the first three (all of which, I'll be honest, would've made fine winners & sadly Oscar picked none of them).  This doesn't mean that we get bad looks here.  The coronation scene, in particular, is dramatically scrumptious with the gigantic gold crowns and Joaquin Phoenix's ten-foot crimson train.  In many ways this is recalling the oil paintings that are the only way modern viewers know Napoleon by.  It just doesn't have enough-in a category where so many films are adding depth and story detailing, historical reconstruction alone is not going to cut it.

Which brings us to Poor Things.  This is a movie that I generally liked (particularly Emma Stone in the lead), but I'll totally own that I think the Costume Design Oscar it won was a cheat.  The looks here are largely boiled to some variation on the hyper-dramatic, canary yellow dress Bella wears in the film's middle where she has gigantic winged shoulder pads.  There is a liberated sexuality coming from the costumes, I guess, but they don't have enough variation and they don't really seem to tell me the same story that Bella's education is bringing to the plot.  I get why people liked them (they are flashy), but I don't think they're substantive in the way the rest of these looks are.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Costume Designer's Guild splits its nominations between Contemporary, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, and Period Films, so we get fifteen names in all.  Period film mirrored Oscar with Poor Things besting Killers of the Flower Moon, Maestro, Napoleon, & Oppenheimer, while Contemporary went with Saltburn against American Fiction, May December, Nyad, & Renfield and Sci-Fi/Fantasy picked Barbie atop Haunted Mansion, Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, and The Little Mermaid (weirdly Colleen Atwood, even though that got no mention all season despite her being an Oscar favorite).  BAFTA also went with Poor Things against the exact Oscar lineup, which makes sixth place a challenge.  I'm thinking Maestro, despite no mention elsewhere, might be the kind of film that gets in here, particularly given the Production Design nominees were also a carbon copy of this lineup, so honestly there's no clue other than these five were really solid.  If you want to make a case for this being a "this would've been their only nomination" citation for The Little Mermaid or Saltburn, I'm not totally opposed, but I'll guess Maestro.

Films I Would Have Nominated: Perhaps the most discussed and polarizing film of the awards season (that Oscar wanted nothing to do with), this would've been a marvelous time to give Saltburn some love, given how well they captured the "chic, unfathomably rich, sometimes tacky" fashions of the obscenely wealthy circa 2006.

Oscar's Choice: In a sign more people should've seen coming, Poor Things carried its precursor wins to a victory over Barbie's best chance at a second statue.

My Choice: Like I said, any of the first three films discussed would've been good choices for a statue, but when it comes down to it I'll give gold/silver/bronze to Barbie, Flower Moon, and Oppenheimer, respectably.  I just can't deny how special Jacqueline Durran's looks were-it's the sort of film that will forever be linked to this category even though it didn't win.  Napoleon is fourth, with Poor Things in last.

And now, it's your turn. Are you fine with me skipping Bella Baxter's many gowns, or do you want to take me to the laboratory for thinking pink?  We're currently 1-0 in favor of Barbie...where do you think we end this run?  And was it Maestro, The Little Mermaid, or Saltburn that nearly made it here?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2023: Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2023

Past Best Costume Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: Costume (2000)

OVP: Best Costume (2000)

The Nominees Were...

Tim Yip, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Rita Ryack, Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas

Janty Yates, Gladiator

Anthony Powell, 102 Dalmatians

Jacqueline West, Quills

My Thoughts: I spoke yesterday about how a lot of the mystery got leaked out when we did five-wide Best Picture nominees, and this is a really good example of that.  We only have two Best Picture nominees, but more importantly-the three films that missed here are here because they have centerpiece costumes, not because they were clear threats for Slots 6-10 (I honestly don't think any of them would've made it, even if one has a lead acting nomination).  The unfortunate thing here is, though, that these costumes aren't all that good.

Like Quills is just your standard-issue corset porn, in this case the term being both figurative and literal given it's about the Marquis de Sade.  The movie's designs are generally not that interesting.  Yes, they all look good (this isn't a case where Jacqueline West, one of my favorites, is phoning it in), but it's rather standard...save for the amazing outfit that Geoffrey Rush wears with his novel.  There's a scene where Rush, bereft of paper, actually writes a novel on his clothing, and it's an amazing touch (and incorporates the costumes into the plot).  More ingenuity like that, and it'd have been far more competitive for a win.

Gladiator is another film where these are works you'd see in a lot of Charlton Heston movies, not striking out enough on its own.  The best look in the film is Joaquin Phoenix's emperor costume.  Here, Yates gives us something slightly too large, slightly off-balance to the way that Crowe seems to have grown into his costumes (that touch of "which one is ready to be a leader?"), while also making the crown feel like the most important part of Phoenix's ensemble (to him, this is just as much about perception as it is about power).  But the rest of the movie lacks this introspection, and this feels sometimes like a "most" nomination rather than a "best."

That's certainly the case for the Grinch.  I talked about how the Makeup nomination left me conflicted-you have this marvelous centerpiece in the title character, and the rest feels gaudy & ridiculous.  That's not the case for the costumes.  The bulk of the outfits in this film are rather routine, to be honest-you could find most of them at a mall Santa's workshop, either on the dais or in the line.  The ones that stand out are the overtly sexual ones worn by Christine Baranski, which are something, but feel more like punchlines to feed to the adults in the audience rather than character-building.  This is a pass for me.

102 Dalmatians is still, years later, such a weird nomination.  The film was a critical disaster, and at the time was considered a box office bomb (it says something about the current state of the movies that a film making $183 million on a $85 million budget would be called a hit today).  The costumes are incorporated into the tale better than the Grinch, even if they're just as gaudy.  I don't mind these in isolation-there are looks, particularly Close in a crimson-red ballgown, that feel decadent...but they don't work as a whole.  There's too much, too many plays on the same theme.  22 years later, Cruella would prove you can do a spin on this while still one-upping yourself, but here...it feels a bit gauche, and not funny enough.

All of this leads to Crouching Tiger, which I'm just going to own is going to win for me here, because how can it not be?  The looks from Tim Yip are extraordinary.  Gorgeous designs, especially those worn by Zhang Ziyi, elevated throughout the film as we also see white battle robes that feel iconic without taking away from the stunt work.  I particularly loved the splashes of florals that are incorporated throughout into Ziyi's costumes, both in her hair and incorporated into almost every outfit that she wears in the picture. 

Other Precursor Contenders: The Costume Designer's Guild was only splitting its nominees between Contemporary and Period/Fantasy in 2000, and they had uneven numbers of nominations so we're only getting nine citations here.  For Period/Fantasy, they went with The Grinch as the winner, besting Almost Famous, Chocolat, & Quills, while the Contemporary designs went with Erin Brockovich against Charlie's Angels, High Fidelity, Traffic, & X-Men (how X-Men isn't fantasy is a genuine question to me...does the CDG know something we don't?).  BAFTA went with Crouching Tiger as their victor, besting Chocolat, Gladiator, The House of Mirth, & Quills.  I'm going to guess for the sixth place it was either Chocolat, which dominated precursors, or Vatel, which got an Art Direction citation (the only film not to also get in for Costume), which in those days was a pretty good indicator that you were getting into Costume (their voters used to be in the same branch).  Of the two...probably Chocolat?  It had to be close in at least one tech category.

Films I Would Have Nominated: I was a bit mean to films going for comedic effect with their costumes, so I'll mention two contemporary designs that worked for me in 2000-Charlie's Angels and Miss Congeniality.  In both cases, the costumes look really good AND are used to great comedic effect, spoofing the original TV series and beauty pageant fashion, respectively.  If you're going to do tongue-in-cheek, the costumes need to add to the joke, and both of these did (also, recognize contemporary fashion!).

Oscar's Choice: Oscar probably came down to Crouching Tiger and Gladiator (which is likely what the Best Picture field also finalized on), and like the top prize, they picked Gladiator.

My Choice: It's Crouching Tiger, no question.  I'll totally confess now (not for the last time) that not only do I not really think a lot of some of the fields Oscar pulled together in 2000, but this was a weaker-than-usual year overall for movies (it happens-axiomatically if there are good years there have to be bad years).  I could've come up with a better field than Oscar (and in the next few weeks will, when we do the My Ballot), but I don't fault them for this list as it's more boring than outright awful.  Following Crouching Tiger is Quills, Gladiator, 102 Dalmatians, and then the Grinch.

And now, it's your turn. Are you staying with Oscar's choice of battle armor, or do you want to go fight in the trees with me?  How exactly did 102 Dalmatians get into this race (still so weird)?  And was it Chocolat or Vatel just missing here?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2000: Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2000

Past Best Costume Contests: 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Film: Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

Stars: Gary Oldman, Winona Ryder, Anthony Hopkins, Keanu Reeves, Richard E. Grant, Cary Elwes, Billy Campbell, Sadie Frost, Tom Waits

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Oscar History: 4 nominations/3 wins (Best Art Direction, Costume*, Sound Editing*, Makeup*) 

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

All October long, The Many Rantings of John is running a marathon dedicated to the Horror classics of the 1960's-90's that I'm seeing for the first time this month.  If you want to take a look at past titles from previous horror marathons (both this and other seasons) check out the links at the bottom of this article.

More than any other film monster, the vampire seems to be always a part of the horror & romance genres on the big-screen.  From Nosferatu to Edward Cullen, vampires have taken up the cinematic imagination for over a century.  But no fictional bloodsucker has gotten quite the press of Count Dracula, Bram Stoker's singular creation based on Vlad the Impaler.  Francis Ford Coppola, as a followup to his Best Picture-nominated (but critically-mixed) The Godfather, Part III decided to go in a totally different direction by taking up a romanticized version of Stoker's novel.  In the process, he gave one of the most Oscar-winning horror films of all-time (three statues in his corner, the same amount that would be won by Coppola's magnum opus The Godfather), and a film that is still parodied on television today, especially for the makeup it uses on Gary Oldman.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film starts with us seeing Vlad the Impaler (Oldman) lose his beloved Elisabeta (Ryder) to suicide after she's informed he is dead.  He blasphemes himself in front of a Priest (Hopkins), and turns himself into a vampire by drinking blood pouring from an alter (he's had a day).  Centuries later, Vlad is now known as Dracula, and is meeting Jonathan Harker (Reeves), a young solicitor who is going to help finish a business transaction started by his former colleague Renfield (Waits), who is now insane.  He meets Dracula, and Dracula summons his wives to trap (and presumably kill) Jonathan, so that Vlad can go to London to seduce Mina (also Ryder), whom he believes to be the reincarnated soul of his lost Elisabeta.  While in London, he also seduces Lucy (Frost), whom he turns into a vampire.  Before Lucy is lost & beheaded, her fiancé (Elwes) calls up Professor Van Helsing (also Hopkins) to cure her, and while he doesn't cure Lucy (she dies and is beheaded), he does save Mina.  Mina is turned into Dracula's bride while they are having sex, but she is eventually saved when Jonathan, Lucy's fiancé, and Van Helsing go to kill Dracula.  Mina finishes the job, and reunites Vlad & Elisabeta in heaven, with her vampirism gone now that she has destroyed the man who turned her.

I think the first thing that you should know about Bram Stoker's Dracula is that there's not a lot of humor in this...and it probably needed some.  Oldman is going for 11 here, and that's not the worst approach for an iconic villain, but it does get hammy, as does the dialogue itself.  The movie also miscasts Reeves, who cannot do a proper English accent (something I suspect he'd own up to), and quite frankly neither can Ryder.  The year before she would win her first of two Oscar nominations for another maligned English-accent role...her Bay Area accent is, well, pretty prominent.  I don't mind a lot of overstuffed plotting & acting, as that's kind of the calling card for horror movies (and lord knows the near constant sex was welcome...you gotta love a movie with a bunch of people constantly on the verge of an orgasm), but Ryder & Reeves are bad enough that I just...I struggled.

That said, I admired the look of the movie.  I get why this was doused in Academy Awards.  The sound work is strong (I love how you heard the spilling of blood...the film is into its bodily fluids), and the sets are fantastic.  The scrumptious gardens, Lucy's elaborate (and ridiculous) white coffin, the horny drawing rooms-the movie is a portrait in every way, and that extends to the oil painting cinematography.  The costumes as well, particularly Sadie Frost's post-vampire look, are on-point.  Best of the bunch is the makeup.  I'm not entirely sure what Gary Oldman's gorgon-mutant look is accomplishing by having him look like a freak during the nighttime as Dracula, but, well, it stands out, and looks realistic-within-the-movie.  I think it works-horror movies are about making moments, and this does.

Past Horror Month Reviews

1920's: The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera

1930's: The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Dracula, Dracula's Daughter, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Invisible Man, Mad Love, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Raven, Son of Frankenstein, Werewolf of London

1940's: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Cat People, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Dracula, The House of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Invisible Man's Revenge, The Invisible Woman, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Curse, The Mummy's Ghost, The Mummy's Hand, The Mummy's Tomb, Phantom of the Opera, She-Wolf of London, Son of Dracula, The Uninvited, The Wolf Man

1950's: Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, The Blob, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, It Came from Outer Space, Revenge of the Creature

1960's: The Devil Rides Out, The Innocents, The Masque of the Red Death, Night of the Living Dead,Village of the Damned

1970's: The Amityville Horror, Black Christmas, Carrie, Dawn of the Dead, Don't Look Now, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes, The Omen, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, When a Stranger Calls, The Wicker Man

1980's: Child's Play, The Evil Dead, The Fly, Friday the 13th, Gremlins, Hellraiser, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Poltergeist, The Thing

1990's-Present: Arachnophobia, The Blair Witch Project, Candyman, Scream

OVP: Costume (2001)

OVP: Best Costume (2001)

The Nominees Were...

Milena Canonero, The Affair of the Necklace

Jenny Beaven, Gosford Park

Judianna Makovsky, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Ngila Dickson & Richard Taylor, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Catherine Martin & Angus Strathie, Moulin Rouge!

My Thoughts: Few years at the Oscars have elicited more Halloween ensembles than the 2001 field for best Costume category.  Especially if you consider that Gosford Park would eventually inspire Downton Abbey, this is rife with looks that have been sported every October (even I, with a relative antipathy toward Halloween, have sported one of these looks).  This makes grading it a bit challenging-when costumes have entered the zeitgeist on this level, how do you grade it specific to the film, and how do you argue on behalf of the one film that didn't have any pop culture impact whatsoever?

Thankfully, The Affair of the Necklace makes that a lot easier on me.  This period drama with a woefully miscast Hilary Swank (Swank, an atypical star in Hollywood, has long-struggled to find her footing in studio films that weren't the ones winning her Oscars) is bizarrely costumed.  The film generally doesn't seem to want to be a sort of Sofia Coppola in Marie Antoinette situation; there's no nods to this being a fusion of modern & period...the script is historically-inclined.  Yet the costuming is done in a way that that is impossible.  Joely Richardson is wearing sunglasses that are far too chic & modern to be believable in this century, and the rest of the costumes are just generic corset work.  This is a bust, and Oscar would've been better off ignoring it entirely.

I feel much better about what's being done in Gosford Park.  Frequently with period movies, you forget that while everyone dressed of a similar nature, it's not just the same designs in slightly different hues-some people wore a different type of style, and that should reflect in the character designs.  Look at the way that Jenny Beavan dresses Kristin Scott Thomas here.  The scene where she's wearing a suit (a clear homage to Nora Gregor's hunting costume in The Rules of the Game) shows the sexual politics in the picture.  She's playing a sexually voracious woman (she's getting laid by a pouty-mouthed Ryan Phillippe, because, well, you would too if it was 2001 & you had the option) who is also dependent on her husband for money.  She's balancing two different worlds-the feminine & masculine, and knows she must succeed in both to get what she wants.  This sort of character detailing runs throughout the film, and is proof that few people costume to the script quite like Beaven.

Lord of the Rings is one of those movies where you kind of have to remember what is and isn't introduced in each installment when judging its technical merits, the movies begin to run together so much after repeated viewings.  For example, you get the iconic Galadriel look here, one of the best costumes in the series, but not Gandalf the White, Theoden, or a number of orc looks.  In general, I think the costumes here are exactly what they're supposed to be-brilliant looks that meld into the world.  With the exception of Galadriel and Gandalf, I don't know that there's something that stands out in a way we usually expect here (usually you can name-check a specific design when grading a film), but that shouldn't be how you grade a film.  After all, the point of the costumes is for them to make sense in the movie and feel entwined to the characters-Taylor & Dickson get an A+ for that.

Harry Potter is a little bit different in that most of its iconic designs happen in Sorcerer's Stone.  There are later characters like Sirius Black, Bellatrix LeStrange, & Dolores Umbridge that come in sequels with great costumes, but this one establishes most of the big characters.  You get plucked-from-the-pages perfect looks like Dumbledore, McGonagall, Hagrid, & Quirrell that look as if they were ripped from the books themselves (listen, giving JK Rowling a compliment in 2023 feels icky, but part of why her series defined a generation was because she was very good at descriptive language).  If you wanted to get super picky, you could point out that the generic Hogwarts robes (which are appropriate to the books, but eventually abandoned by later designers) deprive us of the character-building we'd get in Azkaban and Goblet of Fire for the students, but that's a small quibble-this film continually hits high notes with the costumes.

Moulin Rouge! is a film that, unlike Affair of the Necklace, does imply (through its musical numbers) that we are meant to see this costume work as both a mix of the classical and the modern.  This is why we get Valentino-like designs for some of Nicole Kidman's evening wear, and dresses that could only come in a post-Bob Mackie world.  But every look is scrumptious.  Sure, it's not period-specific and in many cases it probably shouldn't be possible for a 19th Century sex worker to look this good, but it's meant to be a flight of fantasy.  When Kidman, in a thigh-high skirt and top hat, comes out to sing...you know that you're entering a realm of enchantment, and a very special film.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Costume Designer's Guild was only splitting its nominees between Contemporary and Period/Fantasy in 2001, and at that point they were only nominating four films each, so we're seeing only eight contenders.  For Period/Fantasy, they honestly got really out-there with their choices (I miss when precursors used to think outside of the box and were just awards and not, well, precursors), with the Oscar-nominated Harry Potter winning against Blow, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and Planet of the Apes.  For Contemporary, they went with The Royal Tenenbaums atop Legally Blonde, Mulholland Drive, and Ocean's Eleven.  BAFTA picked the exact lineup as Oscar save for The Affair of the Necklace (they also went with Planet of the Apes), with Gosford Park winning.  I have to assume that the mentions from both major guilds, combined with the designer being Oscar favorite Colleen Atwood makes Planet of the Apes the probable sixth place, though I wouldn't count out Amelie as an option here given it was cited for Art Direction (those two categories used to be the same nominating branch, and as a result had a lot of overlap).

Films I Would Have Nominated: Great list from Oscar with one clear problem child, which I'd have replaced with the pencil skirts Maggie Cheung wore while walking to work in In the Mood for Love.

Oscar's Choice: Maybe the best shot the Harry Potter series ever had at winning an Oscar, it still lost to Moulin Rouge! and the power of Catherine Martin.

My Choice: I'm also going to go with Catherine Martin, just barely over Harry Potter.  I think the Harry Potter looks are more iconic, but that's partially to do with the film's box office and book inspiration.  What Martin does is play with a new world and gives us designs I don't think anyone else could've done, and that ingenuity is worth a small inch in her direction (it's close though).  Fellowship, Gosford Park, and Affair of the Necklace come after, in that order.

And now, it's your turn. Is everyone going to swoon over the duds of Harold Zidler's can-can girls, or does someone want to go with the worlds of Rowling or Tolkien?  Was this the closest that Harry Potter ever came to an Oscar victory for the first eight films?  And was it Planet of the Apes or Amelie just missing here?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2001: Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2001

Past Best Costume Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

OVP: Camelot (1967)

Film: Camelot (1967)

Stars: Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero, David Hemmings, Laurence Naismith

Director: Joshua Logan

Oscar History: 5 nominations/3 wins (Best Cinematography, Art Direction*, Scoring*, Costume Design, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Franco Nero: click here to learn more about Mr. Nero (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Franco Nero looked like a Hollywood movie star with his flawless bone structure and ocean-blue eyes, and after the success of Django, he was afforded the opportunity to be one.  But Nero's first language was not English, it was Italian, and when he came to Hollywood to play the role of Lancelot in the big-screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Camelot, he wasn't exactly an obvious choice.  Then again, nothing about Camelot came together easily when it came to casting.  The original intent was to reunite the two original Broadway leads, Richard Burton & Julie Andrews, but Burton priced himself out and Andrews was filming another movie, so director Joshua Logan had to go with backup plans, eventually settling on Richard Harris & Vanessa Redgrave, the latter a future screen-legend doing her only true big-screen musical.  The result was a mixed bag, as we'll discuss today.  The film made a fortune in 1967, the rare studio musical of the era to actually turn a profit, but it was given a lukewarm reception by critics, and reappraising it from decades later, I think the critics might have had the inside track over audiences of the time when it came to assessing Camelot.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is in many ways a bare bones look at the Arthurian legend, though starting largely in Arthur's adulthood.  We get the King (Harris) courting the beautiful Guinevere (Redgrave), a flighty young woman whose beauty & charm show no bound.  We occasionally get glimpses of Arthur's childhood tutelage from Merlin (Naismith), a figure that is so mythical the only person whom he speaks to the whole film is Arthur himself, but the real-world stakes of having a democratic rule of law (albeit one with an anointed king) start to come to a head later in the film when it's clear Guinevere is madly in love with Arthur's most devoted night Lancelot (Nero), something the king's illegitimate son Mordred (Hemmings) wants to take advantage of in hopes of disrupting Camelot (and giving himself a chance at the throne).  The film ends with Camelot as a concept ending, but Arthur bringing its ideals forward through a young boy he makes a knight before his impending death, his principles of justice and right before might carrying onward.

The movie is way too long.  This is true of a lot of musicals of this era, where they needed a full plot and a full set of musical numbers, and weren't able to trim in the way they had in the 1950's (this is probably because there were examples of over-long, highly-successful musicals at the time such as My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music whose box office receipts justified testing an audience's patience).  It is not helped that the score isn't as universally hummable as those two.  Camelot today has two songs that still exist in the lexicon: the title song, sung by Harris, and "If Ever I Would Leave You" (sung here by Gene Merlino, who dubbed Franco Nero's singing though Nero does his own speaking in the film), though it doesn't have the same resonance as Robert Goulet's cast recording does (he was the original Lancelot on Broadway).  The film isn't necessarily bad-bad.  There are moments it kind of works, like when it's trying to wrestle with the complicated legacy of doing right but having people take advantage of it (the Kennedy administration was called "Camelot" in large part due to the politics of this play emulating that of the late president, who was a fan of the show), but the cast is not strong enough to carry it in its weaker moments.  Harris & Redgrave can sing, but they don't have enough chemistry (Harris, in particular, feels miscast...the studio should've sprung for Burton who would've given the film more gravitas).  Nero is hard to judge here.  He seems like the kind of guy you'd risk getting burned at the stake for to have an affair with (he looks divine), but his acting is pretty stilted in English, and he doesn't do his own singing.

The film received five Oscar nominations and won three.  Of the bunch, the Art Direction & Costume Design nominations make the most sense.  The Art Direction, with its towering castles and in particular the very fun forest where Merlin resides, are ornate and while they aren't as spectacular as it might've been with full-on location shooting (they attempted it in Spain, but heat at the time made it impossible), it still works well.  Redgrave looks glorious in the film, particularly her gold-diamond pattern dress that is maybe the film's most recognizable look, and it offsets that most of the maidens-fare in the background all wear the same dress in different colors.  The sound & scoring nominations I'm ehh on...this isn't a great musical, but it's also one of the better ones in a field of bad musicals (i.e. there's a decent chance I give this film the Scoring OVP statue even if I'm in the middle, largely because there's not much else to go with).  And the cinematography nomination feels fine too-again, it's hurt by being too long, and by not having enough location shooting when you're competing against major steps-forward in the field ala Bonnie and Clyde.  All-in-all, one of the bigger musical gaps in my filmography probably was that way for a reason.