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theshadowbastard · 4 years ago

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The Top 8 Frankenstein Movies

8. Victor Frankenstein (2015)

This movie got a pasting from critics upon release, but I couldn’t care less, because I had a ball watching this. Mainly designed as a showcase for the stars Daniel Radcliffe and James McAvoy, the result isn’t exactly highbrow cinema but if you’re looking for a fun trip filled with hammy acting, overwrought (and overwritten) dialogue, and some pretty neat special effects, you could do a lot worse.

7. Son of Frankenstein (1939)

Of the 7 movies made by Universal Studios featuring the Frankenstein monster between 1931 and 1948, only the first three are really worth your time, and of those the third film, Son of Frankenstein, is easily the weakest, but it’s not without its strengths, mostly in the form of the performances of Basil Rathbone as the titular sire and especially Bela Lugosi as the malignant Ygor. The infamous star of Dracula is all but unrecognizable under a brilliant makeup design, and gives a magical performance that’s about as far removed from Dracula as anything he ever did. The big downside of Son is the monster himself, who is barely in the film and spends most of it lying motionless on a table. Boris Karloff turned 50 while shooting, and decided to never play the creature he made famous again after this flawed but fun film.

6. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)

As the title implies, this is a (fairly) faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s original novel, and while a lot of the subtext of the story is lost beneath the weight of director and star Kenneth Branaugh’s ego and abs, the movie has a captivating quality and is gorgeously shot, and Robert DeNiro turns in a surprisingly nuanced and emotional performance as Victor’s patchwork creation. It’s a little oversexed and too self-consciously operatic at times, but it’s still one of the better stabs at bringing the actual text to the screen, even with the ridiculous electric eels.

5. Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)

Hammer studios made a bunch of Frankenstein movies throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, and while none of them ever quite managed to capture the spirit of their first, they came up with some clever ideas, and none more so than the bizarre, inspirational, ingenious and insane Frankenstein Created Woman, a film that dares to ask the question “So you figured out how to bring the dead back to life--what next?” The answers this film explores are chilling, awe-inspiring, horrific and at times borderline blasphemous in their implications. And while it’s not a perfect film (two minds/souls in the same body gets kind of confusing), it’s compelling ideas and strong performances more than compensate.

4. Young Frankenstein (1974)

Mel Brooks’ loving tribute to the Universal Frankenstein films might be in it for the laughs (”SAID-A-GIVE?!”), but at it’s heart is a keen understanding of the themes of the Frankenstein story and why they’ve worked so well for so long. The cast is perfect, with each character instantly hilarious and iconic, from Marty Feldman’s endlessly-quotable Igor to Gene Wilder’s over-the-top Frederick Fronkonsteen to Cloris Leechman’s masterclass in comedic timing as Frau Blucher, but the real standout is Peter Boyle as the monster, who is quite possibly second only to Boris Karloff as the most effective Frankenstein monster we’ve ever seen.

3. Frankenstein (1931)

It was not the first Frankenstein movie (there were a couple of silent shorts), but it was the first that mattered; the one that change the whole game. Crackling electrical lab equipment, thunderstorms, grave robbing, grisly murders, blasphemous implications and truly inspired performances--audiences of the time had never seen anything like this, and the movie was a box office sensation that led to a whole slew of horror and gothic-themed movies in the early 1930s. James Whale’s direction is clever, creative and just unusual enough to make the movie still a lot of fun to watch today. Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein is superb, giving us a nuanced and relatable Frankenstein that gets to speak what is arguably the most famous line in horror movie history (”IT’S ALIVE!”). The sets and cinematography are stunning, cementing the “Hollywood Gothic” style that would dominate horror cinema for the next three decades, and the special effects were striking for their time. But standing above it all was Boris Karloff’s shocking, heartbreaking, horrifying, unparalleled performance as the Monster. Overnight the heretofore little-known actor became a star and, with the help of a once-in-a-generation makeup job from the legendary Jack Pierce, set in stone the image of the Frankenstein monster that would stick in the public consciousness for all time.

2. Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

Legend has it that Universal Studios sent a letter to the heads of Hammer Films that essentially said, “If you do ANYTHING that even remotely resembles our Frankenstein movie, we’ll see you Brits in court.” But Hammer had entirely different ambitions, choosing to ditch the look, style, and structure of the Universal movies entirely in favor of something much darker, more disturbing, and infinitely more violent. While the classic Frankenstein movies of the 30s and 40s focused on the misadventures of the monster, Hammer chose to focus on the titular mad doctor. This might have seemed like strange choice at the time, considering the rather bland parade of various Dr. Frankensteins we’d seen in the Universal films, but actor writer Jimmy Sangster, director Terrence Fischer, and especially actor Peter Cushing went for something completely different. Cushing’s Victor Frankenstein is nothing less than a vile, contemptible bastard, remorselessly murdering people for spare parts for his pathetic monster; a monster who is killed and brought back to life several times over, and used by the villainous doctor as a tool to dispatch his enemies and those who threaten his work. This film took the conventions of the Frankenstein story audiences were then used to and knifed them in the face, and the result was a spectacular success with people lining up around the block to see this new level of ghoulish and bloody horror. Throw out everything you think you know about the Frankenstein story and give this one a spin, if you’ve got the stomach for it.

1. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

Seriously, what else was it gonna be? Let’s be honest here--horror sequels are usually crap. Quickly churned out to make an even quicker buck, they’re rarely worth the film they’re shot on and very few are anywhere near as good as the original. However, the only one that actually might be better that the original is the simply unique Bride of Frankenstein. Whole books have been written about this movie, and to be honest there’s simply too much to talk about. The themes of blasphemy. The homosexual overtones. The Faustian narrative about death and damnation. The incredible performance of Ernest Thesiger as Doctor Pretorious. The monster’s dialogue (”Friend...good!”) The design of the titular Bride that kicked off a fashion craze. Franz Waxman’s angelic soundtrack. Any one of these topics is worth an essay all by themselves, but for me what really makes Bride a masterpiece is simply its heart. No other film has explored the tragedy of the Frankenstein story as effectively as this, and no other film gets its moral message through as clearly: it’s the simpler things in life, like love and friendship that are truly important, and while the pursuit of knowledge may be a worth endeavor, those who pursue it to whatever evil and horrifying end are far more monstrous than any stitched-together being they shock into life.

#frankenstein #movies #horror #halloween #boris karloff #peter cushing

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haydennation · 7 years ago

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A party animal whose best friends go 'oink'

He's among the hottest actors in Hollywood, but the star of Jumper is happiest when poking around his old Ontario farm. Hayden Christensen has been cozying up in the winter wonderland of his Ontario farm, playing with his snowmobiles, his tractor that turns into a snowplow and his pet pigs. There is drilling and banging going on in his house; he is overseeing construction work. He had wanted to do it all himself, but somehow that never happened, because he's been constantly on the move - two days in New York, four days in the Bahamas, two days in Dubai.

"Yes, I am aware that I can be difficult to get hold of," he concedes sweetly over the telephone. No wonder his latest movie, Jumper, all about teleporting, held great appeal for him.

Christensen is a strange mixture of shyness and machismo. He seems both old and young for his 26 years. "Actually, I don't really like travelling, I mean the act of it. It took 20 hours to get to Dubai. But I just wanted to go and see it.

"If I could teleport myself right now, it would probably be to here, an old farmhouse north of Toronto. Or maybe to a beach in the Bahamas. The beaches are very nice there. I also like London. I had a great time when I did This Is Our Youth in the West End. And I'd like to do something else there." It is clear that, for him, it's all about the destination, not the journey.

After roles in some smaller films (The Virgin Suicides, Life as a House) Christensen became a household name overnight as Jedi bad boy Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars prequels. At the time, he was overwhelmed by his huge celebrity - and by screaming teenage girls. When the last instalment wrapped, he lay low for two years, and then was back opposite Jessica Alba in Awake (the thriller that did for surgery what Jaws did for fishing) and with Factory Girl, in which he played a character based on Bob Dylan.

Now, he's embracing blockbuster life again. "My Star Wars experience, which was amazing in all aspects ... was completely overwhelming in how it related to my personal life. It was a big deal, you know. Afterwards, I was more inclined to do smaller films that were more about the character, and which were more of a means of self-expression and the reasons I initially got into acting.”

"When Jumper came up, I was still in that head space, [and this was] a big movie and possibly a franchise, and big science-fiction. It didn't necessarily get my attention at first, but then I found out that Doug Liman was directing it. I'm a fan of his work," he says of the man behind The Bourne Identity and Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

"He was at the Toronto film festival doing preproduction, and I met him. We cut a bond. It was instantly clear to me that I could have the best of both worlds. ... Doug cares about his characters and his process as an artist. It was also going to be a movie that reached a broad audience, that had commercial value. Very few people can make that work."

Christensen enjoys talking about the male actors he has worked with. He likes to show you that side - the guy's guy. But he is perhaps most famous for being his current leading lady's man. Not a film goes by without some kind of rumour of an off-screen romance. His co-star in Jumper is Rachel Bilson, best known as Summer Roberts from The O.C.

"Rachel," he says falteringly, "I became very fond of. She's quite special." He avoids, however, direct questions about the fact that they've been seen and photographed together acting like a couple. "Umm, I don't really talk about that stuff much, I'm sorry. People speculate all of the time. ... I do understand why people who work together, especially on film sets, it can lead to that because you are in intense situations for a period of time and sometimes in a unique situation, and it's its own world."

Christensen's world, for the moment, revolves around his farm, and today he's especially focused on his pot-bellied pigs, Petunia and Buddy.

"She's very much a girlie girl," he says of Petunia, "and he's rambunctious, curious and oinking. I have more fun with the boy, but I feel closer to the girl actually." He tells me they are very intelligent. They became litter trained in two days.

So has he stopped eating bacon? "It's a big dilemma for me now," he concedes. "I'm not a vegetarian ... [but] these pigs are starting to mess with my head. I had my family over yesterday, and I went to the market to buy a bunch of food, and I would usually buy pork ribs. I had this whole dilemma at the counter as to whether I should get them, and in the end, I didn't."

His tractor is another distraction at the moment. "I just got this new one and I spent the morning figuring out how to use it. Cool tractor, top-of-the-line. Enclosed cabin, really monstrous, you know, six-foot wheels. I spoke to my dad on the phone and he told me how to turn it on, and I was able to figure it out from there. It has a snow plow on it and I've got a few other fun boy toys.”

"I like my dirt bikes, my building equipment. I've also got an excavator, a dump truck and a Bobcat."

About other guilty pleasures, though, he is less forthcoming. "The really guilty ones," he says with a dirty grin, "I can't tell you about." Such a guy's guy.

#interview is from the globe and mail #hayden christensen #Interviews

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

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Like a martini, or a bowl of chili, A Star Is Born is a staple that welcomes reinvention. All iterations of the film — including the latest, directed by Bradley Cooper and starring Cooper and Lady Gaga — sing the same tune, but each version has new variations on the theme, flourishes and inversions that reinterpret the old story.

Spoilers for the basic plot of A Star Is Born, in all its iterations, follow.

Simultaneously a romance, a tragedy, and a rags-to-riches story with a magnetic young woman at its center, A Star is Born follows an essential arc that has, thus far, stayed the same: An aging male celebrity, hamstrung by his addictions, meets a talented, younger woman with whom he is instantly smitten.

He connects her to the platform and contacts she needed, and she becomes a sensation almost overnight; meanwhile, his career is bottoming out. The two fall in love and marry, and her success then becomes a problem for him.

In every version of the film, he meets the same end. There are also a few repeated lines in each version, and always a scene in which the rising star’s first major awards win (at the Oscars in two versions and the Grammys in later ones) is ruined by her dissipated husband.

Janet Gaynor in the first A Star Is Born. United Artists

But looking beyond specific plot beats, it’s always, at heart, a story about what it takes to be a celebrity in America, as well as what addiction does to close relationships. The faces, details, settings, and character motivation may all vary, but A Star Is Born keeps getting remade for a reason: It’s a story of romance and mortality, with a swooning arc that borders on epic. It feels so familiar, so archetypal, that it seems almost as if someone must also have carved it into cave walls in prehistoric France, or drawn it in cuneiform on some Sumerian scroll.

But of course, it’s not an ancient story — it’s one that depends on the unique machinations of the American celebrity-making machine. No wonder it’s proven so attractive to the filmmakers and actors who keep retelling the story, retooling it for another generation.

There are actually five Hollywood versions of the story — the first one is just a little different, and doesn’t have the same title. And while they each shift focus and change certain details, the allure remains the same, particularly to Academy Awards voters, who nominated the first four films in multiple categories and seem likely to do the same with the newest version.

So if you want to understand what’s most interesting about the 2018 A Star Is Born — and why the story keeps being reinvented — it’s worth looking at each of its predecessors, which intersect in dramatic and even tragic ways with the lives of the people who made them.

Director: George Cukor

Writer: Gene Fowler and Rowland Brown, adapted from a story by Adela Rogers St. Johns

Starring: Constance Bennett and Lowell Sherman

Oscars: One nomination for Best Story

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The legend: Some film buffs call 1932’s What Price Hollywood? the true first version of A Star Is Born, because the basic arc strongly resembles the later films. The stories are similar enough that when What Price Hollywood? director George Cukor was asked to direct the first A Star Is Born five years later, he refused. The similarities were so pronounced that RKO even considered suing, though they ultimately decided not to.

The theme: What Price Hollywood? is the story of a young waitress and aspiring actress named Mary (Constance Bennett) who encounters a drunk, famous movie director Max (Lowell Sherman) one night at work. He brings her to a movie premiere and promises her a screen test, but doesn’t remember any of it the next morning.

She does finally get her chance and, after some failed attempts, becomes an Academy Award-winning success. At the same time, Max’s career tanks, and he avoids a relationship with Mary to keep from dragging her down with him. In the end, Max — after ruining Mary’s acceptance speech and embarrassing her in front of the Academy — finally takes a hard look at himself. He decides his dissipated self is a disgrace to his former glory days. And he shoots himself in the chest.

The variations: The film’s plot isn’t exactly the same as the classic plot of A Star Is Born, in which the ingenue and the aging star always end up together. Mary and Max never end up together: She marries another man, who grows jealous of her time and her career, and becomes pregnant by him — a fact she discovers just after their divorce is finalized. And after Max’s death by suicide, Mary follows her ex-husband to London, where they reconcile.

But the marked similarities between What Price Hollywood? and the subsequent A Star Is Born show something key: a story like this has always been in Hollywood’s DNA. How stars get made has captured imaginations since the beginning — and how they fade has always felt like a tragedy. Put the two together in the same film, and the sparks fly.

What Price Hollywood? is available on DVD and is currently playing intermittently on Turner Classic Movies.

Director: William A. Wellman

Writer: William A. Wellman, Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker, and Alan Campbell

Starring: Janet Gaynor and Fredric March

Oscars: Seven nominations; one win for Best Writing (Original Story)

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The legend: The first A Star Is Born was directed by William A. Wellman, whose 1927 film Wings won the first Academy Award for Best Picture. One of his co-writers was critic and satirist Dorothy Parker, for whom A Star Is Born represented one of her two Academy Award nominations before her left-wing politics landed her on the Hollywood Blacklist.

The movie stars Janet Gaynor as Esther Blodgett, a fresh-faced young woman who moves to Hollywood with stars in her eyes, and Fredric March as Norman Maine, a stumbling drunk whose career as a screen star is already on the wane when he meets Esther at a party where she’s working as a caterer.

He promises to get her a screen test and, eventually, she’s signed to a studio contract and renamed Vickie Lester by studio executives, who find her real name off-putting. Esther and Norman fall in love and elope; he struggles with her rising fame and spoils her Academy Awards speech; eventually, he kills himself by walking into the sea.

This was a comeback moment for Gaynor, who was no rising star: She had been a popular actress and huge box-office draw in the 1920s and early 1930s, beginning in silent films and transitioning successfully to sound. She was the first actress to win an Academy Award, and she won for three films in the same year, 1929: 7th Heaven, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, and Street Angel. (She’s the only actress to ever win for more than one role.)

But by the middle of the 1930s, amid shifts and mergers among movie studios, her career started to flag — especially with younger stars like Loretta Young and Shirley Temple gaining prominence.

Then she landed the role of Esther Blodgett (incidentally, the same year she starred in a film with What Price Hollywood? star Constance Bennett). The film was a huge success and revitalized her career, earning her a second Academy Award nomination, though she lost to Luise Rainer.

Is the price for stardom a broken heart? United Artists

A Star Is Born was Gaynor’s only Technicolor film, and the first Technicolor film for March, who originated the role of the alcoholic falling star and earned his third Oscar nomination for the film. (He’d won one previously, in 1931, and would go on to win an additional Oscar and two Tonys in the 1940s and 1950s.)

And while both March and Gaynor were among cinema’s most recognizable faces, Gaynor’s recent misfortunes meant that it was easy to root for her as she portrayed a young woman on the rise.

The theme: As the first real iteration of A Star Is Born, this one’s plot exemplifies a lot of the things that would mark future versions of the story.

To modern eyes, A Star Is Born’s gender politics can feel a little creepy, particularly Esther’s declaration at the end of the film — repeated in each successive film, but in different configurations — that she will be known by her late husband’s name, “Mrs. Norman Maine.”

Since her (older) husband has both helped her reach success and acted in ways that intentionally or unintentionally will sabotage that success, her dependence on him can feel frustrating at times. And though the gender politics change a little with each iteration, the gap in age and questions about men’s and women’s routes to fame remain.

Yet there’s an authenticity to the relationship between the two characters, and the jealousy between them, that feels as if it could have been drawn from life. In fact, it was rumored that the marriage of screen legend Barbara Stanwyck and Frank Fay was the film’s real-life inspiration.

Another aspect of A Star Is Born that would be repeated in future versions is the centrality of the female character, and, perhaps most importantly, the way that the role was seen as a way for an actress to breathe new life into her career. The Norman character is an important one in A Star Is Born, but there’s a reason that the Esther character has always been played by an icon, and that reason, most likely, is that Janet Gaynor played her first.

The variations: Gaynor and March’s version is the only non-musical version of A Star Is Born. Instead, it’s framed as a screenplay; the first and last frames of the film are images of a script page. And so the whole thing takes on a kind of mythical quality, a story of Hollywood fame, written and produced by the Hollywood famous.

Norman and Esther struggle to maintain control of their own star images, eloping in order to avoid the prying eyes of celebrity journalists. The film is particularly clear-eyed about how the fan magazines of early Hollywood and the tightly controlled images the studios created for its contracted stars affect the real people off screen — something that feels a little startling, given that those same studios responsible for this movie. That adds a layer of meta-commentary to the entire endeavor that is mostly absent from other versions.

The 1932 version of A Star Is Born is currently streaming on Filmstruck.

Director: George Cukor

Writer: Moss Hart

Starring: Judy Garland and James Mason

Oscars: Six nominations; zero wins

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The legend: In 1954, George Cukor — who had directed What Price Hollywood? almost a quarter century before but turned down the Gaynor/March A Star Is Born — was finally ready to take another crack at this story. The studio brought in Moss Hart, the wildly successful playwright and theatre director, to adapt the 1937 screenplay into a movie-musical, with songs by Harold Arden and Ira Gershwin. They cast James Mason, the British actor who had made his transition to Hollywood five years earlier, as Norman Maine.

And, most importantly, they cast Judy Garland as Esther.

Garland was, by most accounts, not entirely stable while shooting the film. It had been 15 years since her most famous role, as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. In the intervening years, her life had grown more tumultuous; she’d experienced breakdowns and addiction and several suicide attempts. In 1950, she negotiated a release from her contract at MGM. She hadn’t made a film since.

A Star Is Born was promoted as her comeback film. Production was reportedly difficult, having to contend with Garland’s addictions, weight fluctuations, and illnesses. Executives at Warner Bros. also decided, after a significant portion of the film had been completed, to reshoot so that it could be the first of the studio’s films in widescreen CinemaScope. Some sequences, including the lengthy “Born in a Trunk” musical sequence, were shot after Cukor had already departed the production for another project.

And after test screenings, it was cut drastically in length by executives without Cukor’s input, down to 154 minutes. Cukor called it “very painful” to watch. A number of the cut scenes and musical numbers were re-added in a nearly three-hour “reconstructed” version of the film, released in theaters and on home video. Some of the scenes had to be added using production stills and audio instead of moving footage. (This is the version you can watch today on Filmstruck.)

The theme: In this A Star Is Born, Esther is a singer whom Norman encounters one night as she sings in a club with her band after hours. (The song Garland sings, “The Man That Got Away,” was ranked No. 11 on AFI’s list of 100 top songs in films, and is often re-recorded.)

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The contours of the movie are much the same as the first one; Esther still becomes a Hollywood star — this time via a movie musical, Garland’s signature genre — and is signed to a studio contract, and Norman’s mental health deteriorates as he watches her become more successful. He ruins her Academy Awards speech, and he kills himself, as in the previous version, by walking into the sea. And after his death, at a tribute event, Esther introduces herself to the crowd as “Mrs. Norman Maine.”

The variations: Yet the film feels different than the 1937 version, and is among the best big-studio movie-musicals of the form’s mid-century heyday. Garland owns the screen, her powerful voice unforgettable even though you visibly can see fluctuations in her physical health throughout the film.

Garland’s magnetism accounts for much of what distinguishes this Star is Born from the prior one — and makes Esther’s talents clear pretty much right from the start. When she’s called in to substitute for the lead in a movie-musical who has to withdraw, it’s no surprise that she nails it. It was hard for someone like Judy Garland to not seem like a star.

Among the movie’s six Academy Award nominations was one for Garland, who was in a hospital room recovering from the birth of her son during the ceremony. NBC sent a camera crew to her hospital room, but she lost to Grace Kelly for The Country Girl.

Though this version of A Star Is Born delivered the highly lauded comeback performance from a beloved star, Garland’s screen career never really recovered. She would perform on TV specials and as a musical entertainer, but illness plagued her. Garland wouldn’t be in another film until 1961’s Judgement at Nuremberg, and she only made five films total after A Star Is Born. She died, in 1969, from a barbiturate overdose at age 47.

The 1954 version of A Star Is Born is currently streaming on Filmstruck.

Director: Frank Pierson

Writers: John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion, and Frank Pierson

Starring: Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson

Oscars: Four nominations; one win for Best Original Song (“Evergreen”)

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The legend: Garland’s performance in the 1954 version was truly iconic, but about 20 years later, another legend decided it was time for another version of the story — this time, a much different version. Barbra Streisand executive-produced the film alongside her then-partner Jon Peters; she also wrote some of the songs and starred in it, playing Esther (who acquires a new surname, Hoffman, here). That makes it the first version in which one of its stars took an active role in its production — something that would be echoed in the 2018 version.

Unlike her predecessors in the role of Esther, Streisand was in no need of a comeback in 1976. She was at the top of her game, and A Star Is Born would be her 10th film. Married screenwriting duo John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, along with director Frank Pierson, wrote the new screenplay.

And by now, with the Star Is Born story firmly rooted in Hollywood’s iconography, the casting was extremely important as well. Streisand and Peters considered Neil Diamond and Marlon Brando for the male lead. At one point, they wanted Elvis, but his manager’s demands proved too much. Eventually country musician Kris Kristofferson was cast in the Norman role, his character rechristened as John Norman Howard.

The theme: In this version of the movie, the young, aspiring talent — played by Streisand — is discovered by a drunk, aging star as she’s performing in a nightclub. He trails her back to her apartment, sleeps outside in his car, and then meets her for breakfast, where he falls in love with her and gives her a big break. She falls for him, too, and they marry.

But while she becomes more successful, he becomes a jealous wreck in thrall to his drug and alcohol addictions — even after they move to a remote desert home. She inspires him to create some great work, and he loves her. But he eventually, in the end, drives his car off the road in what we’re meant to understand is suicide. At his memorial service, she sings a song he wrote for her that she found on a cassette tape after his death. And she introduces herself as “Esther Hoffman Howard.”

Kristoffersen and Streisand in A Star Is Born. Warner Bros.

The variations: This version of the story deviates significantly from its predecessors in one huge way: Instead of being set within the star-making machinery of Hollywood, Dunne, Didion, and Pierson moved the tale to the music industry. And so A Star Is Born became the tale of an aging rocker and a young crooner, and shifted its awards-show sequence from the Oscars to the Grammys.

It also became an obvious artifact of the 1970s. This version of A Star Is Born is more sexually explicit than previous ones — it was 1976, after all — and John Norman Howard’s decline feels steeper than those of his predecessors. Esther’s reclamation of her husband’s name feels more influenced by the feminist movement of the era: she adds his last name to her full maiden name, rather than calling herself “Mrs. John Norman Howard.” And just stylistically, it feels like a product of its time — in contrast to the controlled and tightly produced nature of its Hollywood predecessor, it feels loose, with more kinetic camera movement.

The response to this version of the film was mixed; you can find people who hate it, and others who declare it’s the best of the bunch. It was generally disliked by critics, but it was a massive hit, becoming the third highest grossing film of 1976 — probably owing to both Streisand’s and, to a lesser degree, Kristofferson’s fame, as well as to high interest in seeing Streisand in a role that most iconically belonged to Judy Garland.

Among the film’s Oscar nominations was one for the song “Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born),” which Streisand composed and performed with lyrics from Paul Williams. When it won, Streisand became the first woman to win an Oscar for composing. And it was a massive hit, spending three weeks at No. 1 in the United States and becoming one of Streisand’s biggest hits.

And while opinions are mixed on this version of A Star Is Born compared to its predecessors, there’s no doubt that it’s a star turn for Streisand — though the fact that she hardly needed it may have hampered its chances overall. It also served as the primary inspiration for the newest version of the film.

The 1976 version of A Star Is Born is streaming on Amazon Prime and available for digital rental on Amazon, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, and Vudu.

Director: Bradley Cooper

Writers: Eric Roth, Bradley Cooper, and Will Fetters

Starring: Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper

Oscars: To be determined

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The legend: This remake of A Star Is Born is Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, but there were lots of other ways this movie could have gone. At one point, Clint Eastwood was supposed to direct the film. Jennifer Lopez, Alicia Keys, Rihanna, and Beyoncé were all floated as possible female stars, with a host of leading men attached as well — Will Smith, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, Christian Bale.

But finally, in 2016, Cooper was signed on not just as co-star but director, and Lady Gaga was added soon after. The movie started shooting in 2017 at Coachella. Scenes were later shot at Glastonbury as well, where the 1976 film’s star, Kris Kristofferson, gave four minutes of his set to Gaga for her performance. The film finally premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2018.

The theme: Bradley Cooper’s version of A Star Is Born draws most clearly from Streisand’s in a number of ways. As in that film, the 2018 version is set in the music industry; it’s about a blues-rocker whose star is falling due to his addictions and a woman with undeniable talent as a pop star; and there’s a scene set at the Grammys.

Also as in Streisand’s version, this is a true passion project for Cooper, who went through extensive vocal and musical coaching. He’s kept his personal connection to the film’s material private, but with his fingers in the film’s directing, writing, songwriting, and performing, it’s clearly something about which he feels strongly.

Like both the 1954 and 1976 versions of the film, this A Star Is Born seems poised to nab, at minimum, an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song, this time for the power ballad “Shallow,” which Cooper and Gaga perform at a pivotal moment in the film. But it seems to be a likely candidate for a few other nominations as well — including for Sam Elliott, who plays Jackson’s older brother and manager, and on whom Cooper modeled his own performance.

Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born. Warner Bros.

The variations: But there are differences, too. Now, the male star is named Jackson Maine (Cooper), a nod to the Norman Maines of earlier films, and the female star (Lady Gaga) has shed the name “Esther” entirely, for “Ally.”

It’s also the first version that seems to have almost entirely kicked the male jealousy trope, or at least considered it unjustified. Jackson experiences a bit of envy that Ally is experiencing success, and in some cases it causes him to lash out. But Ally calls him on it, and they handle it like any couple would. It’s not his jealousy that ultimately does Jackson in; it’s his addictions — partly his reaction, it turns out, to a very troubled childhood — that ultimately are his biggest problem.

As such, this version of A Star Is Born is most interested not in the machinations of celebrity, but in the way relationships between successful, creative people can both spawn and hamper that creativity — and how addiction can play into that. That distinction feels natural and authentic in 2018, perhaps because stardom feels less mysterious in a world of Instagram influencers and YouTube stars than it did in the past. The bigger question has become whether and how people who attain fame can remain grounded.

Will this be the final A Star Is Born? It seems unlikely. As long as there is Hollywood, there will probably be more versions of the same old story. The shape they take and the details will morph with the times, but the core story — a love story, a melodrama, and a tragedy all wrapped into one — seems to hold unending appeal.

The 2018 version of A Star Is Born opens in theaters on October 5.

Original Source -> How — and why — A Star Is Born became one of Hollywood’s most remade stories

via The Conservative Brief

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6 Hilariously Improbable Events That Resulted In Huge Movies

Hey, remember that Final Destination franchise from all the way back in 2011? You know, it’s the one where a clowder of hapless teens get hunted by Death through a series of overly elaborate, Rube Goldberg-style horrors. Well, it turns out that sometimes this same over-the-top domino effect can be applied to how films get made (including Final Destination, which started as an X-Files spec script). A butterfly flaps its wings in Beijing, and Jeff Goldblum ends up shirtless on a table in Hollywood, basically.

Some films end up creating a gigantic ripple of success and artistic inspiration … all from a single unassuming start. Here are such times when the road to the cinematic immortality was paved with random nobodies, stupid coincidences, and just plain dumb luck…

The Alien Franchise Exists Because Of Literal Nightmares

From the creature design to the directing, the first Alien has always been a poster child for the unspeakable horrors you can accomplish through collaborative effort. With that in mind, none of it would have been possible without writers Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett first coming up with the story. They are the face-huggers to Alien‘s uh… alien. This was O’Bannon’s second film as a screenwriter, one that would have never existed without the frustrating failure of his first.

Dark Star was a John Carpenter sci-fi comedy about people exploding planets in space, and O’Bannon hadn’t simply written it, but also designed and supervised the special effects. It was this (not his writing) that got the attention of weirdo director Alejandro Jodorowsky, who at the time was working on an ultimately shelved Dune film. O’Bannon was brought on Dune‘s production where he met a creepy Swiss artist working on the film’s set and character design. His name was H.R. Giger, and you might find his work on Dune a bit familiar.

To put this guy in perspective — upon their initial introduction, H.R. Giger immediately offered O’Bannon opium. And when asked why he himself took it, Giger bleakly responded “I am afraid of my visions.” If Werner Herzog had night terrors, it would be personified in H.R. Giger’s ghastly Scandinavian gaze. His paintings are what Satan uses to get an erection.

Dune was sci-fi failure #2, and after production was closed down O’Bannon found himself running out of work, and consequently money (which is commonly a thing you get in exchange for work). In what was no doubt an act of pre-hooking desperation, he and Shusett dug up yet another old failure — a story about monsters attacking a WWII bomber (which later became a segment in the 1981 animated “film” Heavy Metal — a series of events we’ve previously discussed).

Like some kind of mad scientist, O’Bannon spliced this story with another failed horror script about bug monsters, added a re-written scene from Dark Star, and somehow churned out Alien. Meanwhile, H.R. Giger was developing a terrifying artistic portfolio based on his childhood nightmares — one example being a painting called “Necronom IV.”

That’s one of two nightmares that will come into play, this first fruition appearing in an H.R. Giger art book that O’Bannon gave to Ridley Scott while developing Alien. Nightmare number two came from Shusett who, after a day of writing, woke up in the middle of the night with the idea that the alien could impregnate a crew member through their throat — meaning that nearly every aspect of these creatures was quite literally the stuff of nightmares.

You Can Thank The 2003 California Gubernatorial Recall Election For HBO’s Westworld

In the early 2000s, California underwent an energy crisis, presumably after everyone left their tanning bed on overnight. As bills tripled and the anger grew, a representative named Darrell Issa donated two million dollars to a small group collecting signatures for a gubernatorial recall. It was this money that boosted their efforts in a historic moment for the United States: a new Westworld TV show.

We should probably explain.

HBO “Yes, please. I don’t know what the fuck’s going on in this show.” — Anthony Hopkins

See, after successfully reaching enough signatures, it was the actually historic recall of Governor Gray Davis that sparked one of the weirdest elections ever — eventually boiling down to this veiny cup of whatever Austrians drink instead of water:

Playboy And by “ever” we mean “before 2016,” of course.

Arnold Schwarzenegger threw his hat into the governor ring and came out with a whopping 48.6 percent of the vote. This was in October of 2003, and along with shaping the future of California, it panicked a butt-ton of producers who had previously attached the hulky destroyer to upcoming films. One such producer was Jerry Weintraub, who had cast Arnold as the Yul Brynner role in an upcoming remake of that enduring ’70s sci-fi cowboy classic, Westworld. As we’re sure you can guess, this did not end up happening, and the project was shelved indefinitely — or in producer-speak, “until someone big enough shows interest in it.” That took two years.

Variety “We’ll begin shooting in 2008 with Heath Ledger, Bernie Mac, Anna Nicole Smith, and President Gerald Ford.”

In 2005, Weintraub once again set his sights on this ridiculous film — this time with the director of The Cell attached. This, unsurprisingly, did not make Westworld the exciting filmmaking opportunity that studios were scrambling over, and so Jerry moved on to another project while letting his baby degrade on the back burner. That project was a little TV movie about Liberace starring Michael Douglas, Matt Damon, and Matt Damon’s glittery thong.

In the biggest plot twist yet, the HBO-made Douglas/Damon smooch-fest was a hit… causing Weintraub to turn to the network for a Westworld series. The rest is excessively naked history. And hey, Schwarzenegger is finally available now, so maybe they can throw him a bone and cast him as a background extra or something.

We Wouldn’t Have The Entire Marvel Cinematic Universe If It Wasn’t For Superman: The Movie

It turns out a DC Comics movie is responsible for Marvel’s current cinematic dominance, but not in the way you’re probably thinking. This long goddamn journey starts with a producer named Lauren Shuler Donner, whose husband you might recognize as Richard Donner — director of such insanely diverse hits as The Goonies, The Omen, and of course, 1978’s Superman: The Movie.

Superman was a hit, but this didn’t instantly result in every single over-pantsed defender getting his own movie — remember, it would take over a decade for even Batman to get one. However, the Donner flick did nab the attention of a five-year-old named Kevin who, like five-year-olds tend to do, became enamored with this genre of mighty punchers. His fandom eventually turned into a job at the Donners’ Company as Lauren’s assistant. As she puts it, “one of the main reasons Kevin managed to get himself an intern position at our company was because of Superman: The Movie, [that freaking nerd].”

Lauren went on to make a few disaster films, like Volcano and the harrowing You’ve Got Mail, before becoming inspired by her husband’s action background and buying the rights to the X-Men franchise in 1994. Feeling his intense ray of nerdiness, she gave her then-assistant Kevin a producing role on the first X-film, where he instantly became “a walking encyclopedia of Marvel.” Usually that just makes you very good at internet message board arguments, but in Kevin’s case, it led him to this:

That’s right. It’s Kevin Feige — not Bacon as you were all no doubt guessing. Having been inspired by that first Superman film, Feige beelined directly to the Donners before getting thrown into X-Men and scooped up by Marvel. It was there that he continued to read an endless number of comics and work closely with directors making Spider-Man, X2, and Daredevil until 2005, when Marvel decided to make their own studio. In 2007, Kevin was named the chief of that studio and began to develop what would go on to be this jumbled mess of media:

The Marvel Cinematic Universe gave way to an entirely new method for making movies, now being applied to Star Wars, Lego, and even the goddamn The Mummy. It’s completely changed franchises and made a once-bankrupt Marvel Studios the hottest goddamn game in town… all ironically thanks to a fucking DC Comics movie. Thanks a bunch, you sulky jerks!

A Mailing Error By A Fresno Librarian Kicked Off The “Brat Pack” Era

All you Val-speaking, Atari-playing, AIDS-epidemic-ignoring ’80s kids no doubt perk up at the mention of the “Brat Pack,” but in case you’re scratching your supple 20-something heads, we’re referring to a group of young actors who swarmed Hollywood around the early 1980s. Luminaries like Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Demi Moore, and all those The Breakfast Club motherfuckers were birthed from this era. The phrase “Brat Pack” was coined in a New York article, and became the soil in which a lot of pretty careers were cultivated.

Also, it was started by this lady:

Her name is Jo Ellen Misakian, and back in 1972 she was hired as a librarian aide at the Lone Star School in Fresno, California. While there, she noticed that the naturally reading-averse students all loved the same book, so she helped them start a petition to turn it into a movie. After attempting (and failing) to contact the author, Jo Ellen decided to just take a shot in the dark and mail the book to a known director instead. The book, by the way, was The Outsiders — the basis for the very first of the Brat Pack films, which kicked off the stellar careers of actors like Cruise, Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Patrick Swayze, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, that other guy, and that other other guy.

And this never would have existed as a film if it wasn’t for Mrs. Misakian, her plucky kid pals, and the fact that she totally fucked up mailing their petition.

You see, after deciding Francis Ford Coppola should direct the movie, Misakian found his New York address in the reference section of the Fresno library and mailed a copy of the petition there — but Coppola was living in Los Angeles at the time. The New York address was outdated and unused… and, consequently, got very little mail. However, it just so happened that Coppola was in New York that week, and was able to personally see the letter for that reason.

According to a producer there at the time, “It was lucky for the kids that we were in New York when it was sent over.” Eventually, Coppola read the attached book, optioned it, and then began production on the film, all while maintaining a correspondence with the librarian who first sent it to him.

In the end, the film was attributed to Misakian and her class — the closing credits saying, “The film The Outsiders is dedicated to the people who first suggested that it be made — librarian Jo Ellen Misakian and the students of The Lone Star School in Fresno, California.” The Brat Pack was born, and like a thousand careers started… all because a librarian sucked at tracking down someone’s more-current address.

Jurassic World And The New Star Wars Got Their Director From A Silly ’90s Magazine Ad

After culturally blue-balling us with talking raptors, the Jurassic Park franchise re-exploded the box office with Jurassic World‘s $1.6 billion dollars in ticket sales. World will go on to get a sequel (obviously), and the director is now working on Episode IX of Star Wars. And oddly enough, it was back in the decade when the first Jurassic Park became a hit (and we all thought Star Wars prequels would be, like, the raddest shit ever) that an author named John Silveira was inadvertently shaping all these events, like a secret John Hammond.

Back in the ’90s, Silveira would occasionally submit content for Backwoods Home Magazine. His job was to fill in gaps of the magazine’s classified section with whatever joke bullshit that came into his head. It was a fun gig with a specific and sparse readership, by definition.

Then, one day in 1997, Silveira was asked to contribute right before a deadline (what kind of backwoods magazi– oh, right). Without any prepared jokes, he remembered the opening lines to an old unfinished novel he had been working on years back. With the clock ticking, John spun the words into a fake classified ad and submitted the following:

Yes. That ad. Silveira had created what would later become a meme that would inspire Colin Trevorrow to make an indie film called Safety Not Guaranteed, about a dude looking for a time-travel partner. Not long after, director Brad Bird was being approached by Disney and Lucasfilm to direct the next Star Wars film — and in turning it down for Tomorrowland (yikes), Bird recommended they watch Trevorrow’s little movie.

In short, two major sci-fi franchises ended up being completely dependent on an indie comedy director who was inspired by some joke-writing weirdo in Southern California. And speaking of stuff Spielberg once touched…

Like Schindler’s List And The Coen Brothers? You Can Thank The Evil Dead For That

It’s not exactly controversial to say that the Coen Brothers are two of the most influential and iconic directors of this era. We also probably won’t get any hate mail for praising Liam Neeson’s performance in Schindler’s List, or really any of his subsequent roles. What will sound insane, however, is that all of these things are of direct result of the 1981 horror film The Evil Dead. You know, the one where a woman gets fucked by trees before turning into a Kandarian basement demon.

It was on this film that a young Joel Coen was working as an assistant editor while trying to make his debut with a script he co-wrote with his brother. While there, director Sam Raimi convinced the Coens to shoot a fake trailer for their script, which subsequently led to them finding investors for the movie — eventually called Blood Simple. You might recognize this as the pivotal moment leading to decades of amazing films like The Big Lebowski, No Country For Old Men, The Hudsucker Proxy, and certainly not Garfield (common mistake).

Meanwhile, while casting Blood Simple, the brothers went to see a play called Crimes Of The Heart. It featured Holly Hunter, who they immediately wanted to cast… but couldn’t, for scheduling reasons. However, Hunter went home from the audition and mentioned the film to her roommate: Frances McDormand. Frances, of course, would go on to kick ass in the role, marry Joel Coen, and play one of the most badass baby-ovens to ever point a gun at Peter Stormare.

And it gets weirder. Because while Holly didn’t get the role in Blood Simple, she would later move into a Silverlake home with both Coen brothers, McDormand, and Raimi — who at the time was writing Evil Dead II on the porch. Cut to a few years later, and a young actor named Bill Paxton got a phone call from his friend James Cameron asking if he had heard of Evil Dead II. When Paxton said no, Mr. Titanic rushed him to a local showing, as any loyal friend would. After falling in love with Raimi’s slapstick horror style, B-Pax auditioned for the director’s follow-up, Darkman. You with us so far?

According to Paxton (who later worked with Raimi on A Simple Plan), while he got super close to landing the role, he “made the mistake” of informing another friend about the movie as well. It was Liam Neeson.

Neeson got the role and killed it as the titular rubber-faced rage goon in Darkman, which was then seen by a stage actress named Natasha Richardson. At the time, Richardson was putting together a production of Anna Christie, and thanks to Darkman, she pursued Neeson to play a role. Not only would his performance in the show end in a marriage with Richardson, but it would grab the attention of a director in the audience… who at the time was casting an upcoming film called Schindler‘s Fucking List.

YEP. Liam Neeson’s entire career exploded because Bill Paxton was dragged to a screening of Evil Dead II and fell in love. Consider this yet another reason he’s going to be deeply missed. RIP, you ultimate badass.

David is an editor and columnist for Cracked. Please direct all your goddamn “hellos” to his Twitter account.

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