In Contention

Tag: The Right Stuff

  • THE LISTS: Top 10 movies I watched with Dad

    (from left) Alec Baldwin and Sean Connery in The Hunt for Red OctoberIn case you’re like me and you happen to forget these things throughout the year, let today’s edition of The Lists serve as a reminder: Father’s Day is this weekend!

    With that in mind, and as a personal tribute of sorts to my pops, who turns 56 today in addition to celebrating his 28th Father’s Day on Sunday, I thought I’d offer up a rundown of the films that remind me of those days in front of the big console television growing up back east.

    My personal movie awakening came in the mid-1990s, when films like Michael Mann’s “Heat” and Bryan Singer’s “The Usual Suspects” made me realize I wanted to have a hand in this crazy business for life.  But I can’t ignore the impact decades of film product had on my youth in the form of my father’s viewing habits.  I didn’t like every film my Dad loved.  But somehow, his taste frequently seemed to either correspond with my own or correspond with how it would eventually evolve.

    There are a number of films that didn’t make the collective that deserve some measure of notice, despite not having a particular impact.  Peter Hyams’s “Capricorn One” comes to mind, for instance, or horror flicks like William Girdler’s “The Manitou” and Stan Winston’s “Pumpkinhead.”  Not to mention more recent efforts like George Tillman Jr.’s “Men of Honor.”  And even though I remember watching “The Godfather” with Dad (and Mom, actually) as a kid, I don’t immediately connect the two when I consider Francis Coppola’s film today.

    The order of the list is a mish-mash of criteria.  I wouldn’t say it’s tiered by quality so much as by how much the films remind me of the old man (though quality certainly figures in here and there).  Mostly, this is just a tip of the hat to one guy’s movie tastes that galvanized his son in some way.  I hope you enjoy.

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  • TORONTO: Ed Harris on ‘Appaloosa,’ acting and film crticism

    Ed HarrisWalking into to interview with any actor/director can be a tad intimidating, even after 20 years of doing it.  They have a tendency to be…difficult.  But 30 minutes into my interview with Ed Harris, he pays me a compliment that could keep wind in my sails for the duration of the fest: “Thank you for your integrity, intelligence and dedication to your job.  This has been a pleasure.”  He smiled as we shook hands and he walked me to the door

    Harris has been an actor I have admired since first seeing him as squeaky clean John Glenn in “The Right Stuff” back in 1983, which he followed with a chilling turn as a mercenary in “Under Fire,” his bright blue eyes windows into hell’s furnace. His career has moved along an interesting trajectory, shifting between supporting roles and leads with ease, often dominating whatever film he takes on with powerhouse acting.

    Oddly enough, he did not receive his first Oscar nomination until 1995 when he gave a sterling performance as Gene Kranz in “Apollo 13,” followed by another brilliant turn in “The Truman Show” as a God-like TV producer. He nurtured his dream project, “Pollock,” through its funding, before taking up the reins as director and grabbing another Oscar nod in front of the camera. And in 2002 he was nominated for a fourth time for his AIDS-afflicted writer in “The Hours,” a critically acclaimed ensemble piece from director Stephen Daldry.

    It is doubtful that “Appaloosa” will see any Oscar attention.  Though it is beautifully shot and the art direction is sublime, the film was something of a letdown, despite strong work from Harris and co-stars Viggo Mortensen and Jeremy Irons.

    “I gave the book to Viggo here at this festival in 2005,” Harris said, “when we were here for ‘A History of Violence.’ There was no one else I really wanted to do the film with, and I certainly never considered anyone else. I just thought he and I would make a strong partnership on screen. We don’t hang out, I mean we’re friends, but we don’t see much of each other. He agreed to do it, and Viggo’s the sort of guy where his word is his bond, so that gave me the start to keep moving on the film. It didn’t really occur to me that the film was a western, what struck me was the relationship between these two men in 1882, that’s what really grabbed me about the film. That it happened to be a western was incidental.”

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  • The 80s yielded one great Best Pic winner: ‘Platoon’

    Ten awards for Best Picture were handed out throughout the 1980s, one of the worst decades for film in history, and I’d wager that only “Platoon,” the Oscar winning giant of 1986, can lay claim to being a great film.

    Oh, that is not to say there were not great films made in the 80s; there were indeed, but nobody went to see them, despite rave reviews. Many of the decade’s very best films were released and abandoned, to be re-discovered on video, at that time a very new addition to the film industry.

    “Raging Bull” ended up being the finest film of the decade, hell one of the five greatest films of all time, yet Oscar did not see it that way. Somehow, Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece lost the Oscar for Best Picture and the New York Film Critics Circle award for Best Film to Robert Redford and “Ordinary People” — a well crafted film, but hardly the raw and angry work of the former.

    That same year would see the releases of “The Empire Strikes Back” — a superior film to the first “Star Wars” installment, yet snubbed for a nomination for Best Picture — and Richard Rush’s “The Stunt Man,” which might have been a strong choice for a nomination as well.

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