Cannes 1995: Day 3: May 19

Beyond Rangoon, UK/USA, dir. John Boorman

1995 boasted the largest roster of Competition titles in recent Cannes history—which is all the more surprising given that some of these entries, like Angels and Insects, would have played equally well in the sidebars, and others, like Beyond Rangoon, could have been skipped altogether. But if the Palme contenders hadn't yet yielded much excitement, the sidebars were starting to pop with buzzy titles, hailing from Tinseltown and Tehran...

Updated: For even richer thoughts on many of the films listed below, head over to the first Jury Roundtable, where we all go into more detail about our reactions.
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Best Actress Birthday Party, Week 1

The first week of my sustained birthday party for Best Actress nominees of the past has come to a close, with new full-length reviews posted for movies that I had never previously seen, featuring early-January babies Jane Wyman, Loretta Young, Diane Keaton, and Imelda Staunton, all pictured above. You can click on any of their photos to read the review in which they appear. Based on site stats, the fewest of you have ventured over to the Heroes for Sale piece, but it's by far the best of the movies and a great, 70-minute rental option that I'm sure plenty of people would enjoy—available in the third of TCM's Forbidden Hollywood DVD sets. And can I say it's the review I'm most proud of? Plus, Loretta pretty much wins the beauty pageant in a walk, right? Particularly given that Jane and Diane ruthlessly disqualified themselves on hair alone.

Born January 1–January 9:
Click here for the full list of entries

Jan 5: Jane Wyman (105; died 2007)
New Review: The Glass Menagerie (1950)
Jane's Best Work: All four of her nominated performances were good ones, but my favorite Wyman performance went unrecognized, in the now-classic All That Heaven Allows
I've Also Seen: Lost in the crowds of Gold Diggers of 1933 and My Man Godfrey; flat and underwritten in The Lost Weekend (Best Pictures from the Outside In); bravely stony in The Yearling (performance review), to her real-life daughter's distress; interestingly warm but flinty in the hard-to-find The Blue Veil; warming up for Sirk, and operated on by a shirtless Rock Hudson, in Magnificent Obsession
Where to Go Next: Wyman disliked Stage Fright, her outing with Hitchcock, and loved Miracle in the Rain, for Rudolph Maté

Jan 5: Diane Keaton (66)
New Review: The Little Drummer Girl (1984)
Diane's Best Work: My far-and-away favorites are her Oscar-winning work in Annie Hall, her unrewarded nomination for tip-top drama in Reds, and her blistering, not-even-shortlisted work as a still-furious divorcée in Shoot the Moon
I've Also Seen: Barely registering in Lovers and Other Strangers; likably daffy with Woody in Play It Again, Sam and Love and Death; a quiet linchpin, running on woundedness and later on anger in The Godfather and The Godfather Part II; shirking typecasting, semi-successfully, in Looking for Mr. Goodbar; newly brittle for Allen, coldly in Interiors (my review) and comically in Manhattan); lacking any spark in Crimes of the Heart; returning favors to old friends in The Godfather Part III and Manhattan Murder Mystery; less comfortable than Goldie but more bearable than Bette in The First Wives Club; tender and nominated in Marvin's Room, even if Streep sticks longer in the memory; spirited and fun if a bit overrated in Something's Gotta Give; intriguing when she's tetchy in The Family Stone; squandered in the stillborn Morning Glory
Where to Go Next: I'll pick a drama over a comedy six days out of seven, so for me, Mrs. Soffel will come around sooner than Sleeper

Jan 7: Loretta Young (99; died 2000)
New Review: Heroes for Sale (1933)
Loretta's Best Work: Given how little I've seen, her second-tier but proficiently rendered part in Heroes might take the cake, though I like the soft-touch melancholy she brings to The Bishop's Wife, devout in her faith but shaken in her marriage
I've Also Seen: Decency personified, without just being dull, in The White Parade; duller in Kentucky; weirdly Oscared for The Farmer's Daughter; nominated again in Come to the Stable
Where to Go Next: A bevy of promising destinations: Laugh, Clown, Laugh; up against Harlow in Platinum Blonde; Taxi!; Zoo in Budapest; likely a good fit for Borzage in Man's Castle; a hit in The House of Rothschild, one of her two 1934 Best Picture nominees; neck and neck in a beauty contest with Tyrone Power in Second Honeymoon; challenging herself with Orson Welles in The Stranger; and in Rachel and the Stranger, which is sadly not a sequel to the Welles

Jan 9: Imelda Staunton (56)
New Review: Twelfth Night (1996)
Imelda's Best Work: Can anyone seriously dispute that it's Vera Drake (my review)? Maybe so: she's absolutely devastating in a single sequence you'll never shake in her other collaboration with Leigh, for Another Year
I've Also Seen: A Branagh supernumerary in Peter's Friends and Much Ado About Nothing; still small-scale, but hilarious crossing one room and sprinting out of another in Sense and Sensibility; a small part of the palace of delights in Shakespeare in Love (my review; Best Pictures from the Outside In); funny in voice-over in Chicken Run; telling Swank to buck up in Freedom Writers; a delight to many but a lost memory to me in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, save for her pink suits; taking it big but more affecting than I thought she'd be in the flyaway Taking Woodstock; a face on a stem, which is the most you'd want to be, in Alice in Wonderland
Where to Go Next: TV, I imagine: the Gambon Singing Detective, and Emma's old sketch show Thompson

I got a little breather in the middle of this week, but we've got two-time champ Luise Rainer, unfairly under-employed Faye Dunaway, and current War Horse supporting player Emily Watson blowing out candles before an even bigger party, the Golden Globes, drops on Sunday night. Though, on second thought, if I had the option to go to this year's Golden Globes or go to a party with Jane, Loretta, Diane, Imelda, Luise, Faye, and Emily, I'm pretty sure I'd— oh, wait. Tilda's nominated. All right, well I'd almost pick my own party.

P.S. A fun tidbit for you actressexuals: Jane Wyman tells Rex Reed in a 1968 New York Times interview, on the eve of filming How to Commit Marriage with Bob Hope, that she and Loretta Young were great pals during their studio years. They had offices next door to each other and would swap scripts. Jane's predominant memory was of inheriting all of Loretta's dowdy-girl roles and trading her a bunch of P.Y.T.s in return, laughing, "Loretta, the girls in these are too pretty for me!"

P.P.S. People who wish I'd chime in more often on current releases can at least enjoy some thoughts about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in the Little Drummer Girl piece and my conjectures about Clint Eastwood's enduring appeal for certain critics at the end of the Heroes write-up. The Glass Menagerie and Twelfth Night make good companions for all you theater geeks. See? Value added!

Party Down: 208* Occasions to Celebrate

* Soon to become 210, with Viola and Rooney. Or 211, with Viola, Rooney, and Tilda. Or 210, with Viola and Tilda. Or maybe the Actors Branch was really into Bad Teacher and we just don't know it yet...



I have been deliriously working all through the holiday "break," but it is obvious that the Holy Spirit, in Its infinite wisdom, takes real, genuine vacations. To adduce only the most glaring piece of evidence, no Best Actress nominee has ever been touched with God's thumbprint and dropped into the world any earlier than January 5. That sounds like at least four days of Law & Order from the couch, if you ask me. Of course, once the gifts started coming, they were good ones: Jane Wyman (b. 1917) and Diane Keaton (b. 1946) both celebrate their anniversaries today, though one is still with us and the other, like Sidney J. Mussburger, has already Merged with the Infinite. Still, film history would genuinely look different without either of these gals, and so we honor them.

We're going to keep on honoring them, and 206 other women, and whoever else joins their club on January 24. It ain't over till New Year's Eve baby Sarah Miles sings, or does whatever Sarah Miles does. I've had this calendar posted on my webpage for a couple of years now, as one more manifestation of the ridiculous and the sublime, one more excrescence of what Jane might have called my Magnificent Obsession. You can come and leave a flower any time you like, for anyone you like, provided that on at least one occasion her peers in the business gave her a really, really gold star, or at least urged her to think she was getting one. If your favorite actress is Rita Hayworth or Jennifer Jason Leigh or Alfre Woodard or Taylor Schilling, you're just going to have to wait until she cops that first lead-category nomination. (Based on sabermetric calculations, my money is on Alfre, then Jennifer, then Rita, then Taylor.)

To maintain the festivities, I'll be dropping in on the occasional birthday girl over the year and watching a title from her filmography that I have never seen. In some cases, the thrill of anticipation is through the roof, as I will finally catch up with some Buñuel, some Lang, some Hitchcock, and some Rossellini that I keep missing—or, you know, I'll finally see Kitten with a Whip, or the Village People vehicle Can't Stop the Music, which starred Best Actress nominee Valerie Perrine (emerita of the best-ever roster in the category) and was also directed by Roberto Rossellini. Sometimes I will be in trouble, but I will strive for the best. I shot myself in the foot last year, filling so many holes in order to write career retrospectives on Annette Bening and that young'un Jennifer Lawrence that I'm only left with a few dregs... unless Jennifer puts out a new movie this year, but I haven't heard a single murmur about her doing that.

I'll come up with something. I don't know how you spend your lunch hours, but I have confirmed a surviving and accessible print of a movie I have not seen by each one of these 208 210 209 208* women, even Ida Kaminská. I'm not promising whom I'll get to, and whom I won't. You know how I tend to do on these long-haul projects. I do have a job, and that's why these parties are surprises. I already threw one at midnight for Wyman, an obvious late-night reveler if ever there was one, who is dependably affecting if just a smidge unadventurous in this 1950 version of The Glass Menagerie that few people even seem to know exists. Not a perfect movie but still, on balance, a keeper.

If there's a movie featuring one of Oscar's anointees that you think I'll like or find interesting and that you know I haven't seen, feel free to suggest it down in the Comments. (You can flip through my back pages here, in case you haven't got 182 better things to do.) I won't promise, and I'm going to be stingy with hints about my often-spontaneous plans, but I'm still eager for nudges, even if I wind up saving 'em for later. You can also comment on the reviews I do post in this same space, so I won't be eating cake and lighting sparklers by myself.

Happy 2012, actresses and actressexuals everywhere. Together, let's think of the right gift for the woman who has everything, i.e., two consecutive Academy Awards and the stamina of a Galapagos tortoise, even though most people, hearing her name, would go "Who?" We don't have a lot of time. I'm thinking candlesticks.