All the President’s Men revisited: Robert Redford & Ben Bradlee + Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward
The Washington Post and American journalism in general may be only a shadow of what they once were – and most of the U.S. press was never really all that great (or even borderline trustworthy) to begin with – but Robert Redford remains Robert Redford, glimpsed here with Watergate journo-investigator Carl Bernstein, former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, and Watergate journo-investigator Bob Woodward as seen through the lenses of Annie Leibovitz.
The four men got together to promote the Discovery Channel documentary All the President’s Men Revisited, about the 40th anniversary of Watergate. With Redford as one of its executive producers, All the President’s Men Revisited airs this month.
The movie
Robert Redford played Bob Woodward opposite Dustin Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein in Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men, a 1976 box office and critical hit that earned eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actress (Jane Alexander).
Jason Robards won his first Best Supporting Actor Academy Award that year for bringing Ben Bradlee to screen life, while the other All the President’s Men Oscar winners were George Jenkins and George Gaines for Best Art Direction, William Goldman for Best Adapted Screenplay, and the film’s sound-recording personnel for, you guessed it, Best Sound. (Jason Robards, by the way, would win his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar the following year, once again for playing a real-life character, Dashiell Hammett, in Fred Zinnemann’s Julia.)
Curiously, Redford and Hoffman went nominationless.
All the President’s Men cast
Besides heroes Robert Redford (as Bob Woodward) and Dustin Hoffman (as Carl Bernstein), All the President’s Men features Hal Holbrook (as “Deep Throat,” later revealed to be Mark Felt), Jack Warden, Martin Balsam, Meredith Baxter, Ned Beatty (a Best Supporting Oscar nominee that year, but for Sidney Lumet’s Network), and Stephen Collins.
Now, if the newsroom seen in the picture above looks familiar, that’s because you get to see it – or rather, a true-to-life recreation of it – in Pakula’s movie. That helps to explain George Jenkins and George Gaines’ Oscar victory.
Robert Redford movies
Robert Redford has earned one Academy Award nomination for acting: for his performance in George Roy Hill’s Oscar-winning 1973 blockbuster The Sting, co-starring Paul Newman and Robert Shaw. Additionally, Redford won a Best Director for the 1980 family drama Ordinary People, starring Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Timothy Hutton, Judd Hirsch, and Elizabeth McGovern; and was nominated in that same category for the 1994 socio-psychological drama Quiz Show, starring Ralph Fiennes and Paul Scofield.
More recently, Redford directed and co-starred opposite Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep in the domestic box office flop Lions for Lambs; directed James McAvoy and Robin Wright in another box office underperformer, The Conspirator; and can currently be seen on North American screens in The Company You Keep, which he also directed. Redford’s costars are Shia LaBeouf, Susan Sarandon, Julie Christie, Nick Nolte, Chris Cooper, Terrence Howard, Richard Jenkins, Anna Kendrick, Stanley Tucci, Brendan Gleeson, Brit Marling, Sam Elliott, Stephen Root, and Jackie Evancho.
Robert Redford, Carl Bernstein, Ben Bradlee, Bob Woodward photo via Vanity Fair.
Banned movie in Australia: Horror short ‘Morgue Street’ is latest Australian Classification Board casualty
Alberto Viavattene’s horror short film Morgue Street was slated for Sydney’s A Night of Horror Film Festival, which runs until April 21. However, two days prior to the screening, the Australian Classification Board, the same group of morally upright citizens who rejected Travis Mathews’ (homo)sexually charged I Want Your Love earlier this year (thus irking James Franco to no end), sliced Morgue Street‘s throat with an RC (“Refused Classification”) rating due to “material that is considered to offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults.” Left bleeding by the censors, Morgue Street cannot be screened or sold anywhere in Australia.
Morgue Street has been previously screened in several international film festivals, including Berlin’s “Avant Hard” 7. Porn, Slash, TromaDance, San Sebastian Horror and Fantasy, and Another Hole in the Head.
‘Morgue Street’ plot
Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Morgue Street was directed and edited by Alberto Viavattene, from a screenplay by Viavattene and Emiliano Ranzani (who also shot the movie). The plot is a family tale of sorts, about mother and daughter, both of whom happen to be sex workers, attempting to fend off a menacing creature that has broken into their home.
In an email, Viavattene described Morgue Street as “a tale of cruelty and desperation set in a violent, ferocious microcosmos [sic] where the weak will always succumb and redemption is ungainable [not sure if this word exists, but its meaning is clear].” The film stars Désirée Giorgetti, whose previous credits are the non-PG Morituris and Ritual: A Psychomagic Story, and adult film actress Federica Tommasi (Mi Padre, Tinto Brass’ Do it! / Fallo!).
Previous movie versions of Poe’s story include Robert Florey’s Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), starring Bela Lugosi as a mad scientist and Sidney Fox as his potential victim (plus a pre-King Kong building-climbing gorilla), and Roy Del Ruth’s Phantom of the Rue Morgue (1954), with Karl Malden and Patricia Medina.
‘Morgue Street’: But is it art?
Now, in case you’re wondering whether Morgue Street is torture porn or art, well, the, ahem, renowned Uwe Boll calls it “harsh and sexy.” And in case that doesn’t answer your question, then ask yourself if, whether Morgue Street is torture porn or art, a group of people should have the right to tell adults which movies they can and cannot watch, which songs they can or cannot listen to, which books they can or cannot read, and so on. Yes? No? Maybe?
You can check out the Morgue Street teaser trailer below.
Morgue Street image via www.viavattene.com.
‘Life of Pi’ evening at the Academy: ‘Deconstructing Pi’
The Life of Pi creative team will get together to discuss the 3D and visual-effects work employed on the Ang Lee-directed fantasy adventure on Monday, May 6, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. “Deconstructing Pi” will be hosted by Academy governor Bill Kroyer (The Green Mile, The Monkey King), and will feature film sequences and “making-of” clips, in addition to an onstage chat with Academy Award-winning visual-effects artists Bill Westenhofer, Erik-Jan De Boer, and Donald R. Elliott; Oscar-winning cinematographer Claudio Miranda; previsualization supervisor Brad Alexander; and Oscar-nominated film editor Tim Squyres.
“Thinking in 3D really helped me make this movie,” Ang Lee is quoted as saying on the Academy’s website. “…I think that put me in a position to conceive and make this movie somehow differently.”
Well, Lee’s “different” way of thinking apparently worked. Life of Pi has earned $608.56 million worldwide (nearly 80 percent of that figure outside North America), and is the winner of four Academy Awards: Best Director (Ang Lee), Best Cinematography (Claudio Miranda), Best Original Score (Mychael Danna), and Best Visual Effects (Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik-Jan De Boer and Donald R. Elliott).
Adapted by David Magee (Finding Neverland, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day) from Yann Martel’s novel, whose basic setting was inspired by Moacyr Scliar’s Max and the Cats, Life of Pi tells the story of a young Indian man (Suraj Sharma) adrift at sea. Keeping him company in a small lifeboat is – no, not Tallulah Bankhead in a fur coat, but another sort of furry creature: a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
‘Life of Pi’ Oscar nominations
Besides its four wins, Life of Pi was nominated for Oscars in the following categories: Best Picture (Gil Netter, Ang Lee and David Womark, producers), Best Adapted Screenplay (David Magee), Best Film Editing (Tim Squyres), Best Original Song (“Pi’s Lullaby,” Music by Mychael Danna; Lyric by Bombay Jayashri), Best Production Design (David Gropman; Set Decoration: Anna Pinnock), Best Sound Editing (Eugene Gearty and Philip Stockton), and Best Sound Mixing (Ron Bartlett, D.M. Hemphill and Drew Kunin).
‘Life of Pi’ cast
Along with Suraj Sharma, the Life of Pi cast includes Irrfan Khan, Rafe Spall, Adil Hussain, Gautam Belur, Gérard Depardieu, and Andrea Di Stefano.
For more information on the Academy’s Life of Pi evening, click here.
Life of Pi tiger photo: 20th Century Fox.