Thursday, July 1, 2021

TMP Oscar Winners Edition: Best Cinematography and Best Visual Effects

Wanderer at Wandering Through the Shelves has designated the first Thursday of each month the time to talk Oscar winners. To be specific, this week, we're talking movies that have won for either Best Cinematography or Best Visual Effects. That's just fine for me since I'm a guy that is into the spectacle of Hollywood blockbusters. Don't get me wrong, I love plenty of smaller, more intimate films I love. Truth told, the older I get, the more those smaller movies dominate my best of the year lists. Still, they don't get my blood pumping like seeing a giant something or other overrun humanity, or a overpowered being perform superhuman feats, or just supposedly regular people defy the laws of physics. Let's file my picks under giant something or others.


King Kong

1933

You might be saying, "Dell, this didn't win the Oscar for either of those categories." You'd be right. In fact, this now classic did not receive a single nomination. However, there was a strong push to get this film nominated for Best Visual Effects. The problem is the category didn't actually exist, and the Academy didn't want to add it, so they declined. I hold that this is one of the most important cinematic technical achievements of the first half century of film. I know some of you are sticklers, so I'll give you three more "official" picks.  


Mighty Joe Young

Best Special Effects, 1949

The creative team behind the original King Kong came up with this movie about a much smaller, but still oversized ape. Sixteen years after Kong, the advances in technology are clear. Not only did stop-motion animation get better, the way humans and other things (including both stop-motion and real lions) interacted with it also improved. A number of movies made even a quarter century later, during the heyday of giant animals run amok, don't look as good.


King Kong

Best Visual Effects, 1976

So here we are, a little more than a quarter century after Mighty Joe Young, and we get the least technically (and narratively) accomplished  movie in the Kongdom. It wasn't for lack of effort, as many critics and, of course, the Academy lauded the film for its effects work. To be honest, I think it has as much to do with the lack of spectacle type movies that year. The best effect in the movie was making sure there were no bras in Jessica Lange's wardrobe. The big issue is summed up by a few seconds of the movie, though. Shortly after our first sighting of Kong, Jeff Bridges says, "Who do you think went through there, some guy in an ape suit?" Why yes, actually.


King Kong

Best Visual Effects, 2005

By the 21st century, stop-motion animation, animatronics, monkey suits, and miniatures had been almost completely replaced by cgi. Director Peter Jackson pushed the technology to it's limits, as they were in 2005. Sitting in the theater, even back then, I could see seams in some of his team's stitching. That's because he was trying to do a little more than was possible at the time. However, the one thing they absolutely nailed was the thing that won the Oscar. Kong looked every bit like a real gorilla. Him scaling the Empire State Building and swatting away fighter jets was never easier to believe.


Sidenotes:

In 2017, Kong: Skull Island was deservingly nominated for Best Visual Effects. It was up against another beautifully rendered ape flick, War for the Planet of the Apes. Both lost to Blade Runner 2049.


When the next Academy Awards roll around, the ones happening in early 2022 if you're reading from the future (or the past, Doc Brown) I suspect Godzilla vs. Kong will have earned at least a nomination, and quite possibly a win depending on what the summer slate of films looks like in 2021.


Every one of these movies has major racial undertones, and tries to mask them in various ways. This has been and should continued to be examined as important passages and, hopefully, learning points in cinematic history. I've only shied away from it here to keep the focus on the technical aspects.


Click here for more Thursday Movie Picks.


12 comments:

  1. I like these picks and what they did as I have seen the original King Kong, the 1976 remake, and the 2005 version. The original I think is the definitive while I have a soft spot for Peter Jackson's version mainly due to Naomi Watts' performance and the 1976 version is OK.

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    1. I love the original, but truth told, I like Jackson's version better.

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  2. I love your theme! I've only seen the 2005 version (which I remember liking so much at the theatre I ended up buying the DVD) but the others look pretty impressive from their age, especially the first King Kong. It's a shame the category didn't exist back then because it's seen bits and pieces of the movie on tv and it looks so good for such an old film.

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    1. Thanks! The first King Kong is miles ahead of every other movie of that era from a special fx standpoint, with the possible exception of Metropolis from six years prior.

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  3. I love where you took this! I was thinking about the 2005 version of this the other day. The visuals were great, but I don't think Naomi Watts gets enough credit for her acting in this. She was basically in front of a green screen with nothing for half the film and made it so convincing.

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    1. Thanks! Naomi Watts was amazing, you get no argument from me.

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  4. A theme within the theme! I LOVE those!!! I've seen all of these at least once. The original Kong a couple of times, Mighty Joe Young use to play all the time on the UHF channels when I was a kid, I thought the 70's King Kong was the worst version until I saw the 2005 one and then it was no contest. What a piece of trash-except for those visual effects which were excellent. If only the rest had come anywhere close.

    I almost had a theme with two of mine set in the wide open spaces of Montana but my other is far, far away from there.

    The Black Swan (1942)-Florid swashbuckler with Tyrone Power as reformed privateer Jamie Waring. Commissioned by the newly pardoned master pirate Henry Morgan (Laird Cregar) now governor of Jamaica to offer amnesty to the other bandits of the sea he sets off on the task along with his trusty sidekick Tommy Blue (Thomas Mitchell) but runs afoul of renegade picaroon Billy Leech (George Sanders-buried under a red wig and beard) and his henchman Wogan (Anthony Quinn) who refuse to give up their thieving ways. Much swordplay ensues. All the while Waring romances the fiery beauty Lady Margaret Denby (Maureen O’Hara). This all unfurls in lush sumptuously rich Technicolor provided by Leon Shamroy who won the Best Color Cinematography Oscar, at the time the category was divided between color and black and white.

    A River Runs Through It (1992)-Mediative drama of two Montana brothers Norman and Paul Maclean (Paul Sheffer and Brad Pitt) and the divergent paths their lives take with their shared love of fly-fishing serving as a metaphor for the vagaries of life. While the story is solid and the acting by the entire cast superior it’s the breathtaking vistas as well as the more intimate scenes shot by Oscar winner Phillipe Rousselot that truly dazzle the eye.

    Legends of the Fall (1994)-Brothers Tristan, Alfred and Samuel Ludlow (Brad Pitt, Aidan Quinn and Henry Thomas) all love the same woman, Susannah Fincannon (Julia Ormond) in the wide-open spaces of their father William’s (Anthony Hopkins) sprawling ranch leading to sorrow for all. Sweeping family melodrama once again set in Montana but a quite different one than A River Runs Through It. This is the Montana of vast spaces and operatic happenings and emotions. Venturing farther afield to other continents and the majesty of the ocean cinematographer John Toll earned his award by using his keen eye to lend a strong chiaroscuro element to the picture.

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    1. You cut me deep, Joel. I actually like the '05 remake better than the original. It's admittedly too long, but the Naomi Watts performance really sells it for me. She brings across much more emotion than Fay Wray who spent the entire film screaming.

      I've not seen any of your picks. I have been meaning to see A River Runs Through It and Legends of the Fall back when they came out, but never got around to either.

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  5. Oooh! I love the King Kong theme of this week's prompt! I need to rewatch some King Kong films!

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  6. Love your theme!! One of my earliest memories was when my dad told us and my mom that we must all sit together and watch the 1933 King Kong that was on Movies for A Sunday Afternoon. It started at noon and I remember my dad being quite excited for us to see it. I remember the big ape coming for Fay Wray, the dinosaurs and the spiders and bugs at the bottom of the Ravine which scared the hell out of me. Years later, I read that that scene was “lost” and I couldn’t understand it because I remember seeing it. I was even told I must have read it and assumed I saw it but I know I saw it. I didn’t think until just this past year, my dad now a distant memory having died in 1988 when he was 75 and I was not yet 24, that he was 20 yrs old when he saw this movie in the theatre. This was HIS Star Wars! This stop motion was relatively new and never done to such an extent (not counting The Lost World) and it must have wowed him back in 1933. How I wish I could ask him about this movie. I love Mighty Joe Young which, like Joel, I watched on the UHF channel back in the 1970s. I saw the 70s Shlock and, yes, her braless look deserved an Oscar. I do love the Peter Jackson King Kong which I thought was excellent and so sad that I cry every time. I still have to see the 2nd film plus the latest one with Godzilla but I do love the Original which is priceless.

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    1. Love that this brought back such great memories for you. I have no idea about the ravine scene, though I definitely take your word for it. That stop motion in the original really is miles ahead of anything else from that era, so I could imagine your dad being blown away.

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