HBO Documentary 'Saving Face'

I saw a full-page ad in the New York Times for the HBO doc 'Saving Face' and had to post it.

Arresting

Here's a trailer



















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Movie Minutiae: 'Crimson Tide', Lipizzaner Horses, Garbled Communications, and Narrowly Averted Nuclear War

Remember this encounter between Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington in 'Crimson Tide'?



Plays almost quaint. Not sure you could do it that way today, but I always loved that scene.

Here's the Lipizzaner and, yes, they are born black and turn white as they mature:

The plot, if you've never seen 'Crimson Tide', revolves around a dispute between a submarine captain (Gene Hackman) and his executive officer (Denzel Washington) over whether they should launch a nuclear strike, and the conflicted officers and crew who must decide which commander to follow. Hackman wants to launch based on orders that were received while Washington wants to confirm orders that may have countermanded the first order but, as the radio transmission was interrupted, the second message was incomplete and open to interpretation. Here's the critical moment:



What a pleasure. Great blocking and direction by Tony Scott. Click click editing by Chris Lebenzo (who also worked with Scott on 'Deja Vu', 'The Taking of Pelham 123', and 'Unstoppable'. A great editor for high energy stuff. He was nominated for an Oscar for best editing for both 'Top Gun' and 'Crimson Tide'.) makes the clip spool out in a single breath despite its 5-minute runtime. Writer Michael Schiffer crafted the dialogue just so. And, what a performance from Hackman and Washington. One of my all-time favorite scenes.

Scoping out the movie's Wikipedia page, I see this blurb at the bottom:

See also:


Vasili Arkhipov, a Soviet naval officer who during the Cuban Missile Crisis disagreed with his submarine captain and political officer and prevented the launch of a nuclear torpedo from a Soviet submarine.

No kidding... I click the link and find:

Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov (Russian: Василий Александрович Архипов) (30 January 1926 – 1999) was a Soviet naval officer. During the Cuban Missile Crisis he prevented the launch of a nuclear torpedo and therefore a possible nuclear war. His story is to this day unknown to the wider public, although some believe that Thomas Blanton (then director of the National Security Archive) expressed it in 2002, "a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world."[1]

and

On October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a group of eleven United States Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph trapped a nuclear-armed Soviet Foxtrot class submarine B-59 near Cuba and started dropping practice depth charges, explosives intended to force the submarine to come to the surface for identification. The captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believing that a war might already have started, wanted to launch a nuclear-tipped torpedo, despite the Soviets' being informed that practice depth charges were being used.[3]


Three officers on board the submarine — Savitsky, the Political Officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and the second in command Arkhipov — were authorized to launch the torpedo if agreeing unanimously in favor of doing so. An argument broke out among the three, in which only Arkhipov was against the launch,[4] eventually persuading Savitsky to surface the submarine and await orders from Moscow. The nuclear warfare which presumably would have ensued was thus averted.[5] Arkhipov's actions served, in part, as the inspiration for the American film Crimson Tide.

along with...

At the conference commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis held in Havana on 13 October 2002, Robert McNamara admitted that nuclear war had come much closer than people had thought.[citation needed] 

In Aleksandr Mozgovoy's 2002 book, Kubinskaya Samba Kvarteta Fokstrotov (Cuban Samba of the Foxtrot Quartet), retired Commander Vadim Pavlovich Orlov, a participant in the events, presents them less dramatically, saying the captain lost his temper, but eventually calmed down.

Who knew.

























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The Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films

AMPAS - Animated Shorts. Watch more top selected videos about: Academy Award, Animation

Anne Thompson Goes On The Record

Anne Thompson gives her perspective on movies and the Digital Revolution. Here is On The Record's set up:

Anne Thompson goes On the Record...Online with host Eric Schwartzman to reveal how movies secure Oscar nominations, how films win Oscar campaigns and whether or not online buzz influences which movies get nominated.

The deputy film editor of The Hollywood Reporter, Anne Thompson writes the weekly film industry column "Risky Business," which is globally syndicated by Reuters. She also contributes to Premiere, Wired, Filmmaker, New York Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The London Observer. From 1996 to 2002, she headed Premiere's Los Angeles bureau as West Coast Editor. Before joining Premiere, she tracked behind-the-scenes Hollywood as a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly and as West Coast Editor at Film Comment Magazine. From 1985 to 1993, she wrote the first iteration of "Risky Business" for L.A. Weekly and The Los Angeles Times Syndicate. A graduate of the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University, Thompson teaches the fall semester of Sneak Previews at UCLA Extension.

On The Record is a weekly podcast that usually covers the tech-revolution in journalism and entertainment.

Tracking Oscar

The Washington Post has put together a nice Academy Awards tracking site that is one of the best kept secrets in the blogosphere. Awards Show Central is running a series of videocasts featuring WP movie critics Stephen Hunter, Ann Hornaday, and Desson Thompson, hosted by the movie critic for WP online, Jen Cheney. This week's show covers the Best Actor/Actress category. Last week it was Best Supporting (still available). The next shows will feature Director, followed by Picture. Videocasts are every Monday.

Rule Of Three

If a movie wins the Oscar for Best Picture only a maximum of three producers may accept the award. This, of course, means that if a movie is nominated for an Oscar a maximum of three people will be listed as producers. If there are four or more people who produced the movie, too bad -- their names will not be listed. Gregg Kilday reports on how this arbitrary rule affects movies like "Little Miss Sunshine" and "The Departed" at THR.