The DVD Report #197: March 1, 2011

1977 was the year it all changed. We didn’t know it then, but the youth influenced success of George Lucas’ blockbuster science fiction epic, Star Wars,was to eventually drive movie marketing almost to the exclusion of everything else. I say almost, because there has/will probably always be room for cheaply made horror films and gross-out comedies and hopefully, passionately made independent films. What we don’t get any more are the high class women’s pictures as exemplified by Fred Zinnemann’s Julia and Herbert Ross’ The Turning Point.

Maybe the old-timers voting in the 1977 Oscars had a collective premonition. They nominated both Julia and The Turning Point,in what was essentially a fond farewell to that type of moviemaking, for eleven Oscars. The new guard, on the other hand, supported Star Wars with ten nominations. The other two Best Picture nods went to two New York centric comedies, Woody Allen’s beloved Annie Hall and Herbert Ross’ middling The Goodbye Girl.

Giving lie to the notion that the film with the most nominations wins, Annie Hall took home four Oscars for Best Picture, Actress (Diane Keaton), Director and Screenplay (both to Allen, though the second was shared with Marshall Brickman). Star Wars won six competitive awards in the technical categories as well as a Special Achievement Award for its Sound Effects. Julia won three for Best Supporting Actor (Jason Robards), Supporting Actress (Vanessa Redgrave) and Adapted Screenplay. The Turning Point went home empty-handed, the biggest loser in Oscar history, its record tied by The Color Purple eight years later.

Annie Hall’s triumph is generally attributed to the film’s having been shown incessantly on Los Angeles’ Z Channel during nominations season. The Z Channel was the precursor of the VCR and the current method of supplying voters with screeners. Although the film had won both the New York Film Critics and National Society of Film Critics awards, it had not done well with the other three extant precursors. The National Board of Review went with The Turning Point, while the newly inaugurated Los Angeles Film Critics gave their initial award to Star Wars. The Golden Globes gave their Best Picture – Drama award to The Turning Point and their Best Picture - Comedy award to The Goodbye Girl.

The focus this year, though, was on the Best Actress race. After years of decrying the dearth of decent roles for women, the category was so crowded that there was much speculation pre-nomination announcement, as to which of the year’s seven front-runners would be left off the list. As it turned out, only one, Sophia Loren in A Special Day,failed to be nominated. Vanessa Redgrave, who had the title role in Julia,was relegated to the supporting category where she, of course, won.

Anne Bancroft as an aging ballerina and Shirley MacLaine as the mother of a struggling ballerina were both nominated for The Turning Point; Marsha Mason as a struggling actress was nominated for The Goodbye Girl; Redgrave’s co-star Jane Fonda as writer Lillian Hellman was nominated for Julia and Keaton was nominated for her daffy Annie Hall over her own devastating turn as a murder victim in Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

Films that Oscar liked outside of the Best Picture race included the aforementioned A Special Day and Looking for Mr. Goodbar, as well as Saturday Night Fever; Equus; Close Encounters of the Third Kind; That Obscure Object of Desire and Madame Rosa.

Sophia Loren may not have made the cut playing the wife of a fascist in Ettore Scola’s A Special Day about the day Mussolini met Hitler, but Marcello Mastroianni playing against type as her frightened homosexual neighbor, earned his second career nomination for Best Actor. The film was also nominated for Best Foreign Film.

Mastroianni’s competition included Woody Allen more or less playing himself in Annie Hall; John Travolta as an aspiring dancer in Saturday Night Fever;Richard Burton as a psychiatrist in Equus and Richard Drefuss, who won, as a struggling actor in The Goodbye Girl.

Dreyfuss also had the lead in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, another science fiction blockbuster epic which, along with Star Wars, was seen as the future of the movies. Nominated for eight Os cars, it won for Best Cinematography and like Star Wars, won a Speicial Achievement Oscar for its Sound Effects. Speilberg had been a nominee for Best Director, along with Annie Hall’s Woody Allen; Julia’s Fred Zinnemann; The Turning Point’s Herbert Ross and Star Wars’ George Lucas.

While voters preferred Diane Keaton’s comic daffiness in Annie Hall to her promiscuous schoolteacher in Looking for Mr. Goodbar, they did like Supportign Actress nominee Tuesday Weld as her quirky sister. The film was also nominated for Best Cinematography.

While Vanessa Redgrave’s win for Supporting Actress as the resistance fighter in Julia was a foregone conclusion, the outcome of the Best Supporting race was not. Jason Robards’ portrayal of writer Dashiell Hammett in the same film made him just the fourth consecutive acting winner, following Luise Rainer, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Rainer had played the real life Anna Held in The Great Ziegfeld for which she won her first Oscar; Tracy had played the real life Father Flanagan in Boys Town for which he won his second and Hepburn had played the real life Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter for which she received her second. Robards was the first to win both consecutive Oscars for playing real life people, having won his first as the Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee in the previous year’s All the President’s Men.

Robards’ strongest competition came from former Oscar winner Alec Guinness as the wise Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars and newcomer Peter Firth as the disturbed boy in Equus.

One of world cinema’s most acclaimed writer-directors, Luis Bunuel received his second and final Oscar nomination for his screenplay for That Obscure Object of Desire. The film was also nominated for Best Foreign Film.

The winner of the Best Foreign Film award was Moshe Mizrahi’s Madame Rosa starring Simone Signoret in her last great screen role as a retired prostitute. The film played for almost a year in 1978 when it was officially released in the U.S., but oddly enough did not receive any competitive nominations for which it was eligible under existing rules.

All films discussed except Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Madame Rosa have been released on DVD in the U.S.

This week’s new DVD releases include the latest from this year’s Oscar hosts, nominee James Franco’s 127 Hours and Anne Hathaway’s Love & Other Drugs, as well as the Blu-ray debut of the Disney classic, Bambi.

-Peter J. Patrick (March 1, 2011)

The DVD Report #196: February 22, 2011

It’s a commonly held notion that All the President’s Men; Network and Taxi Driver were the Oscar front-runners and that Rocky came out of nowhere to win the 1976 Oscar for Best Picture. That wasn’t at all the case. Rocky, whose artistic reputation has not held up as well as its stellar competition, was in fact a front-runner from the start of awards season.

Rocky, which had been a box-office phenomenon tied Network to win the Los Angeles Film Critics Award, the first given that year, although Network’s Sidney Lumet was the sole winner of their Best Director award.

The National Board of Review gave its Best Picture award to All the President’s Men, followed on their top ten list by Network and Rocky. President’s Men’s Alan J. Paakula won their Best Director prize. The New York Film Critics then chose the same Best Picture and Director. The National Board of Review went along with All the President’s Men for Best Picture, but named Taxi Driver’s Martin Scorsese as Best Director.

The Golden Globes awarded Rocky its Best Picture – Drama award over All the President’s Men and Network,but named Network’s Lumet as Best Director. The Directors Guild was the first award Rocky’sJohn G. Avildsen won as a Best Director prize.

When the Oscar nominations were announced, Network and Rocky led the pack with ten each, followed by All the President’s Men with eight and Bound for Glory with six. Taxi Driver was the fifth Best Picture nominee with four nominations.

The previously unknown Sylvester Stallone became only the third person to be nominated for writing and acting in the same year. He was following in the footsteps of Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles.

When all was said and done, Rocky, the underdog movie about the underdog prizefighter, had won three Oscars for Best Picture, Director and Editing and spawned five sequels to date.

The prescient expose of the machinations of television executives, Network,and the retelling of the downfall of a U.S. president, All the President’s Men, each took home four awards. Network won for Best Actor (Peter Finch), Actress (Faye Dunaway), Supporting Actress (Beatrice Straight) and Original Screenplay. Former Best Actor winner William Holden and Supporting Actor nominee Ned Beatty had also been in the race. All the President’s Men won for Best Supporting Actor (Jason Robards), Art Direction and Sound.

Hal Ashby’s Bound for Glory, a biographical drama with music of the life of Woody Guthrie, took home Oscars for Cinematography and Adapted Score. Taxi Driver went home empty-handed, but nevertheless made a major star of Best Supporting Actress nominee Jodie Foster as a 12 year-old hooker and a superstar of former Supporting Actor winner Robert De Niro, who was nominated for his first lead Oscar.

Other films Oscar liked this year included Seven Beauties; Face to Face; Cousin, Cousine; Carrie; Obsession; The Omen; Marathon Man; The Front; The Shootist; and remakes of King Kong and A Star Is Born.

Italian director Lina Wertmuller became the first woman to receive an Oscar nomination for directing. She was nominated in both the writing and directing categories for her black comedy, Seven Beauties, in which Best Actor nominee Giancarlo Gianni played a lowlife hood who winds up in a Nazi concentration camp. The film was also nominated for Best Foreign Film.

Swedish master Ingmar Bergman was nominated for the sixth of nine times for his direction of Face to Face,for which Liv Ullmann was nominated for Best Actress as a psychiatrist undergoing a mental breakdown of her own.

The French romantic comedy Cousin, Cousine was nominated for three Oscars including Best Foreign Film, Original Screenplay and Actress, Christine Barrault.

Cult director Brian De Palma hit the big time with two 1976 releases, both of which were Oscar nominated.

The horror classic, Carrie, from Stephen King’s novel received nominations for Best Actress Sissy Spacek, her first, and Best Supporting Actress, Piper Laurie, for whom the film was her first since her last Oscar nomination for 1961’s The Hustler.

The suspense filled Obsession was nominated for its score by Bernard Herrmann. It was one of two posthumous nominations Herrmann, who died in 1975, received that year. The other was for Taxi Driver. Herrmann’s only Oscar had been for 1941’s The Devil and Daniel Webster, the same year he was nominated for Citizen Kane.

Hermann lost to the legendary Jerry Goldsmith who won his only Oscar out of nineteen nominations for his eerie score for Richard Donner’s horror classic, The Omen. He had also been nominated for Best Song, “Ave Satani”, from the same film.

John Schlesinger’s Marathon Man,from William Goldman’s best-selling novel, brought Laurence Olivier his first and only nomination in the Supporting Actor category for his menacing portrayal of the ex-Nazi dentist who terrorizes Dustin Hoffman.

A screenplay nomination went to Martin Ritt’s film about the black list, The Front,featuring Woody Allen in a rare film he did not direct himself.

John Wayne’s final film, Don Siegel’s The Shootist,in which his character is dying of cancer, as was the real life actor, received its only nomination for Art Direction.

Moving the action from the Empire State Building to the World Trade Center, the updated King Kong was nominated for Best Cinematography and Sound and won a Special Achievement Oscar for its visual effects which didn’t yet have a category of their own.

Moving its narrative from the movie business to the music business, the latest incarnation of A Star Is Born was nominated for Best Cinematography, Sound and Original Score and won for Best Song, “Evergreen”.

All films discussed have been released on DVD in the U.S. except Face to Face and Cousin, Cousine.

This week’s new DVD releases include Get Low and Stieg Larson’s Dragon Tattoo Trilogy.

-Peter J. Patrick (February 22, 2011)

The DVD Report #195: February 15, 2011

The on-line prognosticators who seem to spend all their waking hours handicapping current Oscar races act as though the world is coming to an end because early critics’ favorite The Social Network has suddenly been usurped by The King’s Speech at certain Guild Awards presentations. This is not the first time, allowing that they may be right, that the near unanimous critical favorite has come up short at the Oscars. Case in point: the Oscars of 35 years ago when 1975’s Nashville and to some extent, Barry Lyndon, were the critical darlings and Jaws the popular favorite, but Oscar went instead for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, arguably the second most popular film with both critics and audiences.

It wasn’t as if Cuckoo Nest’s big wincame out of nowhere. Jack Nicolson seemed to swoop up every award out there for his lead performance and the film was nominated for nine Oscars as compared to Nashville’s five; Barry Lyndon’s seven; Jaws’ four and Dog Day Afternoon’s six. In the end, they all went home with something. Cuckoo Nest won seven; Barry Lyndon four; Jaws three and Nashvilleand Dog Day Afternoon one each.

Milos Forman’s film of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest had been a Broadway play with Kirk Douglas in the early 1960s. Douglas bought the film rights which he later transferred to his son, Michael, who won his first Oscar as producer of the film. Jack Nicholson assumed the role of the petty criminal whose antics land him in a mental hospital where things go from bad to worse. Louise Fletcher as his nemesis, the dread Nurse Ratched, won the year’s Best Actress Oscar and Brad Dourif was nominated for his portrayal of a sensitive inmate. The film’s wins also included those for Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay, the first time any film had won the top six Oscars since 1934’s It Happened One Night.

Al Pacino as the down and out gay man who pulls a bank robbery to obtain money for his lover’s sex change operation in Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon was Nicholson’s main competition, the third year in a row that both had been nominated. Chris Sarandon as his lover was nominated in support. The other nominees were all fill-ins: Walter Matthau as a grumpy old-time vaudevillian in The Sunshine Boys; Maximilian Schell as a Nazi war criminal on trial in The Man in the Glass Booth and James Whitmore as Harry Truman a in filmed version of his one-man Broadway show, Give ‘em Hell, Harry. Matthau’s co-star, George Burns won the Supporting Actor as Matthau’s former partner in The Sunshine Boys.

Among the actors who were overlooked were Warren Beatty in Shampoo; Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely and Sean Connery and Michael Caine in The Man Who Would Be King, all of them in films that were nominated in other categories.

At least there were choices to be made in the Best Actor category. The Best Actress category was another matter. Louise Fletcher won for what is actually a glorified supporting role. Her chief competition was 21 year-old French actress Isabelle Adjani in a devastating portrayal of Victor Hugo’s mad daughter in Francois Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H., but even in weak year the Academy was not going to give out what would have been only their second award to a foreign language performance.

The other nominees were Carol Kane as an immigrant wife in the barely distributed Hester Street; Glenda Jackson as Ibsen’s Hedda Gabbler in the shrunken titled Hedda and Ann-Margret who was essentially nominated for rolling around in baked beans in Tommy.

There were two luminous performances by women that were nominated, albeit in the Supporting Actress category. Ronee Blakley as a tormented country singer recovering from a nervous breakdown and Lily Tomlin as the mother of two deaf children who sings in an otherwise all-black choir church were two of the three the standouts in Robert Altman’s multi-layered microcosm of life in the country music business in Nashville. Henry Gibson, who was equally fine as an authoritative male singer, was not nominated in support as he was expected to be, but co-star Keith Carradine as Tomlin’s much younger lover won the film’s only Oscar for writing the plaintive Best Song winner, “I’m Easy”.

Blakely and Tomlin lost to Lee Grant, who played one of hairdresser Warren Beatty’s conquests in Hal Ashby’s Shampoo. The other nominees were Svvlia Miles as an early murder victim in Dick Richards’ remake of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely and Brenda Vaccaro as a foulmouthed Hollywood agent in Guy Green’s film of Jacqueline Susann’s notorious Once Is Not Enough.

Burgess Meredith as Karen Black’s alcoholic father in John Schlesinger’s film of Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust and Jack Warden as Lee Grant’s husband in Shampoo competed with Burns, Dourif and Sarandon for the Supporting Actor prize.

Stanley Kubrick won the BAFTA for his direction of Barry Lyndon, and although AMPAS nominated him in three categories for Picture, Director and Screenplay, it was the film’s four technical nominations that resulted in wins for his film about the titled 18th Century Irish rogue. The film’s Oscar winning candlelit cinematography was generally considered the film;s most stunning achievement.

The winner for Best Foreign Film the year before, Federico Fellini received the tenth and eleventh of his twelve Oscar nominations for writing and directing his memory piece, Amarcord, which literally translates as “I Remember”.

The technical awards that Barry Lyndon didn’t win went to Steven Spielberg’s film of Peter Benchley’s Jaws, the summer blockbuster that began the modern trend toward the mass release of films to as many theatres in as quick a time as was possible to make as much money as quickly as its producers could.

One of the most exciting of modern thrillers, Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor from James Grady’s novel, Six Days of the Condor, with Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway, was nominated for its editing.

Barbra Streisand reprised her Oscar winning interpretation of Fanny Brice from Funny Girl in Herbert Ross’ Funny Lady, which was nominated for five Oscars.

All films discussed except Give ‘em Hell, Harry and Hedda have been released on DVD in the U.S.

This week’s new DVD releases include Unstoppable and the Blu-ray releases of Moonstruck and Rain Man.

-Peter J. Patrick (February 15, 2011)

The DVD Report #194: February 8, 2011

Released in June, 1974, Roman Polanski’s modern noir, Chinatown, released by Paramount,was the best reviewed and most talked film released for most of the year. Then in December, Paramount released Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II, the second film in his Godfather trilogy, which became an even bigger hit than Chinatown.

Neither film won the early precursors. The National Board of Review gave that honor to Coppola’s other film of that year, the low budget thriller, The Conversation, released back in April. The New York Film Critics went with Federico Fellini’s memory piece, Amarcord,and the National Society of Film Critics with Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From a Marriage, which had been shown in a longer version on Swedish TV. Neither of the latter two were eligible for Oscar consideration, Amarcord because it hadn’t yet opened in Los Angeles and Marriage because of its prior TV showing, even if no one in the Academy was likely to have seen it unless they happened to be in Sweden when it was being broadcast.

Paramount was sitting pretty with all three of their prestige films, Chinatown; The Godfather Part II and The Conversation nominated for Best Picture at the Golden Globes. Chinatownwon. All three films were subsequently nominated for Oscars for Best Picture. Chinatownand The Godfather Part II were tied for the most nominations, eleven each, while The Conversation received three.

In the end the second entry in The Godfather saga beat the complex Chinatown with Godfather II taking home six Oscars including those for Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay and Supporting Actor (Robert De Niro), and Chinatown taking home just one for Original Screenplay. The paranoid thriller, The Conversation, a long shot at best, went home empty-handed.

The Godfather Part II became the first sequel to win a Best Picture Oscar and Robert De Niro became the first performer to win over two co-stars nominated in the same category. Lee Strasberg and Michael V. Gazzo had also been nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Fred Astaire, nominated for the first time in his long career for the disaster flick, The Towering Inferno, had been the odds-on favorite to win. Jeff Bridges, who filled the fifth slot in the caper film, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, had virtually no chance.

Also nominated for Best Picture were Bob Fosse’s Lenny,a biopic about controversial stand-up comic Lenny Bruce, and Irwin Allen’s all-star cast The Towering Inferno, the first film to be co-produced by two major studios, Twentieth Century-Fox and Warner Bros., both of which had originally intended to produce their own film about a high-rise fire. The Towering Inferno won three of the Oscars it was nominated for, while Lenny lost all six it was nominated for.

Other films lighting Oscar’s fire this year include Murder on the Orient Express; Day for Night; Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore; Blazing Saddles; Harry and Tonto; A Woman Under the Influence; Claudine; The Three Musketeers; Young Frankenstein; Earthquake and Lacombe, Lucien.

Nominated for six Oscars, and winner of one, Lumet’s film of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express was an ingeniously cast film with Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Wendy Hiller, Rachel Roberts, Sean Connery, Vanessa Redgrave, Richard Widmark, Anthony Perkins, Jacqueline Bisset and Michael York among its starry players. Ingrid Bergman’s win for Best Supporting Actress as a mousy missionary was something of a surprise as Bergman’s friend Valentina Cortese was expected to win for her unforgettable turn as the aging actress who keeps forgetting her lines in Francois Trufaut’s Day for Night. Bergman, whose third Oscar win this was, acknowledged Cortese in her acceptance speech, angering the other nominees – Diane Ladd in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore; Talia Shire in The Godfather Part II and Madeline Kahn in Blazing Saddles, who felt slighted by her remarks. Subsequently it has become the norm, when winners single out other performances in their category to acknowledge all the nominees, not just one. Non-winners who are mentioned by gracious winners now, have Bergman’s faux pas to thank for the notice.

If the Astaire loss and the Bergman win were surprises, Art Carney’s win as Best Actor for Paul Mazurksy’s Harry and Tonto was something of a shock. The veteran actor, who was best known for his TV work, was a first time nominee up against four popular previous nominees, all in higher profile roles. Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express and Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce in Lenny weren’t expected to win, but the race was thought to be very close between Chinatown’s private detective, Jack Nicolson and Godfather II’s regining Godfather, Al Pacino.

Carney was excellent as the old man on a road trip in Harry and Tonto, but I’ve always had a sneaky suspicion that he won as a compliment to Best Actress winner Ellen Burstyn in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, whose character also goes on a road trip. Not only that, but Burstyn had played Carney’s daughter in his film and much publicity was made of the fact that she was once a chorus girl on The Jackie Gleason Show on which Carney was a beloved fixture.

Burstyn herself was a late bloomer, both as an actress and as an entrant in this year’s race. With two solid nominations behind her and an iconic role that later spawned a long-running TV series, one would think her Alicewould have been an easy winner, but that wasn’t the case. Early victories were won by Liv Ullmann in the ineligible Scenes From a Marriage and Gena Rowlands in husband John Cassavetes’ latest angst-ridden drama, A Woman Under the Influence. In fact Burstyn’s film didn’t even open in New York where it might have competed in the critics’ awards until late January, 1975.

Burstyn’s Oscar competition consisted of Rowlands; Faye Dunaway in Chinatown;Valerie Perrine in Lenny and Diahann Carroll in Claudine. Rowlands and Dunaway were, of course, threats, but Perrine, who many thought should have been nominated in suppor,t had little chance of winning. Neither did Carroll, whose film was little seen. Although nominated for a Golden Globe in Comedy, she lost to Raquel Welch in The Three Musketeers, that’s how low a profile her film had.

Comedy was really in short supply this year, with only Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles being of particular note. The former was nominated for Adapted Screenplay and Sound, the latter for Supporting Actress; Editing and its title song.

Nominated for four Oscars, Mark Robson’s Earthquake won for Best Sound and picked up a Special Award for Visual Effects.

Amarcord, although it couldn’t compete in the regular Oscar categories, was Italy’s official entrant for consideration for Best Foreign Film, where it was nominated and won over Louis Malle’s Lambe, Lucien, the year’s third high profile foreign language film behind Amarcord and Scenes From a Marriage. Fourth, if you count the previous year’s winner for Best Foreign Film, Day for Night, nominated for three Oscars this year including two for director-writer Francois Truffault in addition to the previously mentioned Valentina Cortese.

All filsm discussed have been released on DVD within the U.S.

This week’s new DVD releases include Life As We Know It and You Again as well as the Blu-ray debuts of Amarcord and Thelma & Louise.

-Peter J. Patrick (February 8, 2011)

The DVD Report #193: February 1, 2011

I’m taking a little break this week from the chronological history of Oscars on DVD to talk about the availability of current Oscar nominees.

It used to be that the year’s best films were distributed throughout the year, with the most prestigious films sometimes being given Oscar qualifying runs in Los Angeles and perhaps New York in December, with their national releases timed to the Oscar nominations in February. Those films that were no longer in theatres were given re-releases after the nominations were announced.

While there are still occasional films that are given Oscar qualifying runs in December, by the time the Oscar nominations are announced in January, those films have expanded nationwide, some of them having already come and gone. Films released earlier in the year are rarely given theatrical re-runs as they have already been made available to the general public on DVD and Blu-ray.

Of the ten films nominated for this year’s Best Picture award, five have already been released on DVD and Blu-ray, and the other five should be released within the next three months.

Already released:

The winner of forty-nine awards and counting, David Fincher’s The Social Network actually seems a more comfortable fit on home video than it did in theatres where you can listen to commentary, pause the film, replay dialogue that goes by so fast you may not have gotten it all, and other things you couldn’t do in the theatre. That’s true of any film on DVD, of course, but it’s especially true of this film which is itself obsessed with another home phenomenon – the personal computer.

You can also more effectively study the nuances of the performances of Best Actor nominee Jesse Eisenberg and cohorts Andrew Garfield, Justin Timberlake, Armie Hammer and the rest of the mostly young and largely unfamiliar cast.

A family friendly comedy about a lesbian couple that get off watching gay male pornmay seem like a contradiction in terms, but it all works in The Kids Are All Right, which has the look and feel of a cable TV special. As such it would probably be the odds-on favorite to win the Emmy. As it stands, its best hope is Best Actress nominee Annette Bening whose tart delivery is a pleasure to watch and listen to. Julianne Moore and Best Supporting Actor nominee Mark Ruffalo aren’t exactly chopped liver, either.

The year’s most unusual nominee, Winter’s Bone, is highly reminiscent of the 1972 Best Picture nominee, Deliverance, in which rural folk were portrayed as Neanderthals. The film’s saving grace is its heroine, played by Best Actress nominee Jennifer Lawrence in a genuinely moving star making performance as a bright, shining light among the dim bulbs.

A sure bet to win the Best Animated Feature trophy, Pixar’s Toy Story 3 follows the formula of the previous two editions, which many found quite wonderful. I found it one story too many, and wouldn’t have wept if the toys really did get thrown in the incinerator. But, that wasn’t going to happen in a Pixar film, was it?

The year’s most innovative film, Inception, is the one nominee better seen on a large screen than a small one, but there are compensations to viewing it at home, notably the many special features including in-depth analyses of dreams and how they work. Joseph Gordon-Levitt explains it all.

Soon to be released:

Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours with Best Ac tor nominee James Franco as the real life climber Aron Ralston is a matter of taste. It’s a story that goes exactly where you expect it to, but Boyle and his star infuse it with panache. As Franco’s grandmother has said, all those people who are afraid to see it are “a bunch of pussies.” It releases on DVD and Blu-ray March 1st.

Even more of a matter of taste, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan provides Best Actress nominee Natalie Portman with the role of her still evolving career as a ballerina going mad. As she has said, she had no idea what Aronfsky was doing, she just acted what he gave her. It’s rumored to be released on March 8th.

Oscar’s most nominated film this year, Tom Hooper’s The King’s Speech, is very suitable to viewing on a small screen where its director has won numerous awards for his previous TV work. The actors, specifically Oscar nominees Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter are splendid in this story which places more of an emphasis on George VI’s stutter than may be historically accurate. It’s rumored to be released in early April.

No strangers to Oscar glory, the Coen Brothers have given us a remake of True Grit that is even more faithful to the 1968 novel than the 1969 film version was, but less exciting. Jeff Bridges is no John Wayne, which can be a good thing, but not here. Hailee Steinfeld gets an A for earnestness, but the more experienced Kim Darby found more humor in Mattie’s character. Good but not great, it’s rumored to be released in either April or May.

No release date rumors yet, but Amazon is accepting pre-orders for David O. Russell’s The Fighter, which may be the best boxing film ever. The film’s four stars, Mark Wahlberg, Oscar nominees Christian Bale, Amy Adams and Melissa Leo are all terrific. While the Oscar race is considered by the pundits to be between The King’s Speech and The Social Network, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if The Fighter pulls a major upset.

Other films that attracted Oscar’s attention beyond the Best Picture nominees, which are already out on DVD and Blu-ray, include Ben Affleck’s terrific sophomore effort, The Town; Tim Burton’s sophomoric reimagining of Alice in Wonderland; the Australian gangster film, Amimal Kingdom; the beautiful to look at I Am Love; the documentaries, Restrepo and Exit Through the Gift Shop; the action films, Iron Man 2 and Salt; the animated How to Train Your Dragon and the horror flick remake, The Wolfman.

This week’s new DVD releases include three films that Oscar overlooked but other awards granters didn’t: the haunting and lovely Never Let Me Go with British Independent Film winner Carey Mulligan and nominees Andrew Garfield and Keira Knightley; Gotham Award nominee, Let Me In, the best horror film in thirty-seven years, with Phoenix Film Critics Society winners Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloe Grace Moretz and the true life Conviction with Screen Actors Guild nominee Hilary Swank and Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association winner Sam Rockwell.

Also new this week, the Blu-ray debuts of two of the best loved films of all time, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s multi-Oscared All About Eve and Leo McCarey’s unforgettable An Affair to Remember.

-Peter J. Patrick (February 1, 2011)