Martin Scorsese: Top Oscar Directors for Actors

Unless things change dramatically (and no, I’m not referring only to environmental chaos and apocalyptic wars), 30 or 40 years from now Martin Scorsese is going to be the best remembered name of the current top-five Oscar directors for actors. (The others being William Wyler, Elia Kazan, George Cukor, and Fred Zinnemann.)
In addition to having the most recent career — cultural amnesia is invariably a factor — Scorsese is the single director among the top five whose films can been categorized as belonging to a particular genre. Better yet, Scorsese’s forte is that much-revered tough-guy cinema.
And ain’t Scorsese’s men tough.
His first male muse, Robert De Niro, becomes a hero after slaughtering unsavory figures from the New York underworld in [...]

by Andre Soares | January 28, 2007   
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National Society of Film Critics Awards 2007

2007 National Society of Film Critics Awards
2007 National Society of Film Critics award winners: New York City on January 6, 2007
There was no "Best Foreign-Language Film" award this year because the NSFC’s top choice was a non-English-language film — and so were the two runners-up in that category.
 

Ivana Baquero in Pan’s Labyrinth
 

BEST FILM
Pan’s Labyrinth directed by Guillermo del Toro (34)
Runners-up: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu directed by Cristi Puiu (31); Letters from Iwo Jima directed by Clint Eastwood (29); also, The Queen and Army of Shadows
BEST DIRECTOR
Paul Greengrass, United 93 (21)
Runners-up (tie): Martin Scorsese, The Departed (15) and Guillermo del Toro, Pan’s Labyrinth (15)
BEST NONFICTION FILM
An Inconvenient Truth directed by Davis Guggenheim (26)
Runners-up: Deliver Us from [...]

by Andre Soares | January 6, 2007   
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Boston Society of Film Critics Awards 2006

2006 Boston Society of Film Critics Awards
2006 Boston Society of Film Critics Award winners: December 10, 2006
 

Perhaps hoping to lure more major Hollywood productions to their hometown, the Boston Society of Film Critics picked Martin Scorsese’s Warner Bros. gangster thriller The Departed as the best film of the year. This inane tale of moles and rats in both the Boston police force and that city’s underworld, was adapted by William Monahan from Wai Keung Lau and Siu Fai Mak’s 2002 Hong Kong thriller Infernal Affairs. The Departed also (undeservedly) won in the best director, best screenplay, and best supporting actor (Mark Wahlberg) categories, but at least the Boston critics had enough sense to keep Jack Nicholson’s horrendous caricature (above, [...]

by Andre Soares | December 12, 2006   
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I HEART HUCKABEES – Jason Schwartzman, Lily Tomlin

i ♥ huckabees / I Heart Huckabees (2004)
Director: David O. Russell
Screenplay: David O. Russell and Jeff Baena
Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Dustin Hoffman, Isabelle Huppert, Jude Law, Lily Tomlin, Mark Wahlberg, Naomi Watts, Tippi Hedren, Talia Shire
 

 
SPANKING THE NIETZSCHE
Beginning with Spanking the Monkey (not a film about animal abuse), David O. Russell has made a reputation as a director of quirky comedies. I Heart Huckabees is no exception. Not that the comedy works — the film is as funny as a funeral mass — but simply because in this age of formulaic filmmaking, I was flabbergasted to be watching a Hollywood movie that is so abrasively unconventional both in form and content.
The storyline — if the film’s meandering thread [...]

by Andre Soares | October 13, 2004   
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