1975's Oscar Nominees

Not really clear on this supposed surfeit of "greater" Altman films there are out there, and I'm a huge fan. Sure, there's McCabe & Mrs. Miller and The Long Goodbye and 3 Women, but surely no one's out there suggesting Images or Buffalo Bill or HEALTH are better, right?

No, but the first three are all better than Nashville. And I did say "and after" which means there are MANY post-1970s Altman films I'll take over Nashville and that includes the underrated Prêt-à-Porter and the overrated Gosford Park (kinda think they're the same damn film). And [shameless auteurist alert!] A Prairie Home Companion may be his very best.

California Split is my pick for his most overrated '70s flick.

Yeah it disappointed me even though I'm a sucker for gambling flix.

Well, at least we're in agreement that Gosford Park is overrated.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller and 3 Women are somewhat overrated, and not better than Nashville.

(they do contain maybe Beatty's and Duvall's best performances)

And shameless auteurist alert! A Prairie Home Companion may be his very best

NOw that's the kind of addled contrarianism I like!

Better Altman films than Nashville

McCabe and Mrs Miller
The Long Goodbye
3 Women
Secret Honor
The Player

Ah, the benefits of not throwing in my vote right away.

I only saw Secret Honor once and thought it was one of his worst.

What are the best American films NOT nominated for Best Picture this year? how about Love and Death, The Day of the Locust, and The Man Who Would Be King? (critical consensus wd likely be Shampoo)

Grey Gardens is the only one I can think of, though I guess that didn't really roll out in full release until the next year.

Rollerball maybe.

Definitely Mandingo, one of the most underrated films of the 1970s. Also, Thundercrack!, Mahogany, Supervixens, The Image AKA The Punishment of Anne, and Abigail Lesley Is Back in Town. Oh and Grey Gardens too. Others would say Night Moves and Rancho Deluxe but I didn't get either.

Not clear on the rules but would The Passenger be eligible?

Worst: At Long Last Love

Forgot about Thundercrack!

Swap out Dog Day Afternoon for that and Cuckoo's Nest for Grey Gardens and Jaws for Supervixens and ... you'd have the gayest, greatest best picture lineup of all time.

Some would say Smile.

ok, I was not going to Fantasyland.

xp

were you locked in the basement as children?

No.

My answer would probably be Cuckoo.

Fantasyland is the only place to be when the probable 6th or 7th vote-getter in the real Oscar best picture derby was The Sunshine Boys.

VERY easily Barry Lyndon, a great film, Kubrick's best after his co-directing job on A.I.: Artificial Intelligence

yeesh.

barry lyndon, easily.

but good line up!

what won? cuckoo?

yes, it was a Cuckoo sweep. (Louise Fletcher in wrong category)

Eric: Ask me knock knock knock.

I guess most of you know Louise Fletcher & Lily Tomlin were originally sposed to play the other's Oscar-nominated role.

Went with Dog Day Afternoon without thinking about it. Having thought about it, I stand by that choice.

It's a big-ass rabble-rouser, but I think it fails at conveying its real point, which is that Nurse Ratched is right. These people need their pills, some of them desperately.

Eh? While I can sorta see coming away with this after watching, I can't for a second imagine that this was Milos Forman's "real point." (And it most certainly wasn't Kesey's, for all that Forman switches things up from Kesey's nove.) I mean, maybe if you've never seen another Forman movie, but otherwise I just don't see it.

how great his stories about sharks are for establishing plot and mood

Played like sleepaway-campfire shit

Well, duh.

Never could really get into Altman movies - they strike me as the parent of the quirky indie dreck of this decade - preciousness, overly long, meandering ...

Jaws was actually not a very tight movie, parts of it were actually kinda dull considering it was about a shark attacking people.

Dog Day Afternoon gets my vote.

appallingly, i've never seen barry lyndon, so i can't vote in this. of the other four i guess i'd take dog day over cuckoo's nest and jaws . i think nashville is shallow, mean and hugely overrated, but i've said all that on other threads.

Don't forget that the music is crappy too (but you were probably saying that anyway).

Never could really get into Altman movies - they strike me as the parent of the quirky indie dreck of this decade - preciousness, overly long, meandering ...

I can definitely buy the latter two. But how in the world could Nashville (or Three Women or The Long Goodbye or, esp., McCabe and Mrs. Miller) be accused of preciousness?

Haven't seen the ones you list in parentheses, so I could very well be wrong - but Nashville and Short Cuts definitely felt precious to me, in the sense that they seem too in love with their characters and it's a bit of quirkiness for quirkiness' sake.

man movies - they strike me as the parent of the quirky indie dreck of this decade

maybe those indie filmmakers would say so, but the mumblecore films' attitude toward their characters is way way different.

That's also like blaming Led Zeppelin for 40 years of shit metal.

(tho I don't like Led Zep either)

is there an Altman poll? i want an Altman poll.

That would be preciousness for its own sake.

I find him unpollsuitable. Like Fassbinder, his work is one big film.

and then we get to read dumb "Oh, no love for..." posts cuz no one thinks Brewster McCloud is his best movie.

NO, NO LOVE, YOU'RE NOT #1 IN YOUR FAMILY, EITHER

can't front that it isn't a strong line-up, buuuuut

don't really want to see the two standouts, barry lyndon and nashville, again. maybe on the big screen, but BL is exactly what people always accuse kubo of being, ie inert.

as a 'statement about america on the eve of the bicentennial', i'll take jaws over nashville, which i don't totally 'get'. certainly not as good as a bunch of other 70s altmans.

one flew over the cuckoo's nest hasn't dated too well... i guess dog day hasn't either but of the two acting showcases im going to take pacino over nicholson.

i'd feel wrong voting jaws, but it's kind of going that way.

unpollsuitable

word of the day!

I'll make sure that the next year I poll only features movies I don't, against all Oscar history odds, think are great. Last year, for instance.

against in accordance with Oscar history odds

as a 'statement about america on the eve of the bicentennial', i'll take jaws

you and Fidel Castro, who saw it as an anti-capitalist allegory.

1977's list is even more middlebrow:

Annie Hall
The Goodbye Girl
Julia
Star Wars
The Turning Point

Yes, tho Annie Hall is maybe the best actual winner of the whole decade.

My god, The Turning Point; it's only worth watching for this scene, a masterpiece of camp:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a_wW3sNRPk

... the hell?

well, also to look at Baryshnikov.

Eric, you really need to catch up on yr '70s middlebrow.

I saw The Turning Point in the Little Carnegie theater on 57th Street -- asnd there is a shot of that theater in the film, I think the only time I've had that Sherlock Jr experience. (Also saw Annie Hall there opening weekend)

Hey, I've seen Kramer vs. Kramer, The Sting and at least two Neil Simon productions.

The Goodbye Girl is paaaaainful.

You know what's stinky? The Oscars.

So, I hate to break it to you, is Mahogany. < / Morbs >

I do wanna view Mahogany at some point, to see if Anthony Perkins' hatred of Diana Ross's lack of professionalism comes through.

(btw Eric, they're reviving The Wiz on Broadway)

Maybe needs a theory of conscious vs unconscious camp

in which camp are you

Camp Arawak

Camp is Camp and it belongs to the audience not the klutz making their Art

Is broadly my take

My favorite Altmans are McCabe & Mrs. Miller, California Split, The Long Goodbye, Gosford Park and probably M*A*S*H. Misogyny's definitely there in M*A*S*H, but at the same time it's an honest (albeit unfortunate) reflection of both the military and '60s counterculture. I can't call it one of the film's merits, but it is a sad truth about the way women were treated across the sociopolitical spectrum.

FWIW, like I did with 1970, took a look and quickly came up with ten favorites from 1975 (only two of the Best Picture nominees though that's actually not bad for the Oscars) - pretty amazing year:

Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles [Chantal Akerman]
Mirror [Andrei Tarkovsky]
Barry Lyndon [Stanley Kubrick]
Do Rah-e Hal Bara-ye Yek Mas’aleh (Two Solutions for One Problem) [Abbas Kiarostami]
Dog Day Afternoon [Sidney Lumet]
Welfare [Frederick Wiseman]
India Song [Marguerite Duras]
Manila in the Claws of Light [Lino Brocka]
The Passenger [Michelangelo Antonioni]
Night Moves [Arthur Penn]

Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman)
The Story of Adele H (Francois Truffaut)
Fox and His Friends (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
Love and Death (Woody Allen)
Night Moves (Arthur Penn)
Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick)
The Passenger (Michelangelo Antonioni)
The Man Who Would Be King (John Huston)
Xala (Ousmane Sembene)
Jaws (Steven Spielberg)

Honorable Mentions: Shampoo (Hal Ashby), Mother Küsters' Trip to Heaven (Rainer Werner Fassbinder).

of the ones I've seen in the past few years, I'd go Lyndon > Jaws > Dog Day.

I haven't seen the Nashville or Cuckoo's since the '90s. back then I preferred the former to the latter, but I'd need to see them again to rank them against the other three.

(xposts) I'd probably put Welfare #1 for the year, partly a function of having seen my favourites from the list too many times.

in my high school production the audience roared when he attacked Nurse Ratched

i played mcmurphy last month; audiences invariably cheered billy saying he's not sorry but you could always hear a pin drop in the blackout after i strangled nurse ratched; energy rly seemed to lurch around in an uncomfortable way i enjoyed and made me reappraise a thing i loved in high school but decided in college was Too Schematic. (maybe i was just unsympathetic.) play def the worst of its three incarnations tho: strips away most of the book's hallucinatory subjectivity but without grounding it in naturalism as sturdily as the movie.

woulda voted for whichever of nashville/lyndon i'd last seen. don't rly get mash.