Film Reviews, News, Casting Updates and Analysis: The Silver Screening Room: The 1990 Retro Hollmann Awards: Part One

This is the first of three posts this week, each dedicated to the 1990 Retro Hollmann Awards. No, I did not make a separate nominations announcement, all will be revealed as we go category by category. Get familiar with my Top Ten of this year, come back, and enjoy.

The first six categories:

Best Production Design

1. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

Ben Van Os / Jan Roelfs, production designers

Every room is the largest thing you've seen in your life, whether it's the main dining room (oh, so extravagant and red, velvet and overlarge artworks, a monument to expense!), the bathroom (pure white with a glow of pink, porcelain, polished - and an inventive urinal!), or a dusty flat above a bookstore (dark, wooden, intimate). And I haven't even gotten into the food, all prepared in a cavernous kitchen with walk-in pantries and freezers stuffed to bursting with fowl, produce, and, uh, food.

2. Edward Scissorhands

Bo Welch, production design

Tom Duffield, art direction

Cheryl Carasik, set decoration

The story of a man-made man in a Gothic castle coming to pastel suburbia could be told with its sets alone. The castle is almost impossibly bare: he is all alone in the world. But the suburban homes, while unique to each family and homeowner, are sterile, not truly lived in (I think of the Boggs' untouched carpet in the den) or impractical (Esmeralda's many votive candles). They are immediately at odds.

3. Vincent & Theo

Stephen Altman / Jan Roelfs, production design

So detailed in its recreations of old Europe, its artists' hovels, its embarrassingly posher galleries, and the scenes that inspired some of the best-known, most-lauded works of art in history, one almost mistakes it for just good location work. That, too, but the lived-in-ness of each set - especially the apartments of slightly better-off Theo and chronically destitute Vincent - reflect documentary veracity and emotional upheaval.

4. Akira Kurosawa's Dreams

Yoshirô Muraki / Akira Sakuragi, production design

Kôichi Hamamura, set decoration

Captures the ethereal familiarity of a dream. Enchanted forests, a tiered orchard bereft of its trees, a snow-covered mountain maze, a post-nuclear desert of mutations, a serene village, and more. They are grounded for the most part but, at the same time...not. In a way you know without having to explain.

5. Total Recall

William Sandell, production design

José Rodríguez Granada / James E. Tocci, art direction

Robert Gould, set decoration

The completely enclosed city feels like a city, full of seedy neighborhoods and subterranean secrets, all powered by a structure that recalls a similar setup in Forbidden Planet. It's cheeky, referential, never hiding that it's a set but taking advantage of the fun that comes with that.

Best Sound

1. Edward Scissorhands

Richard L. Anderson / David E. Stone, supervising sound editors

Petur Hliddal, sound mixer

Stanley Kastner / Steve Maslow, rerecording mixers

John Pospisil, special sound effects

Those scissors, of course, snipping away, the blades tinging off each other; they get the snips just right, you can hear the difference between thick hair, thin hair, dog hair, and topiary; the swing of a blade through the air, cutting, ripping into flesh. The next most obvious thing, of course, is the mixing in of Danny Elfman's beautiful score, always apparent but always complementing, not overpowering. I also love the way everyone whispers in this movie.

2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Richard Shorr, sound effects / supervising sound editor

Michael P. Redbourn, supervising sound editor

Michael Herbick / Gregg Landaker / Steve Maslow, rerecording mixers

Every environment is correct: the drip of the sewers, the loud overstimulation of the teen-dominated Foot hideout, the surprisingly muted focus of a news set versus the activity of the newsroom. The swish-swish-swish of arms and nunchucks and staffs flying in combat, sometimes even comically. But one sound is so perfect that every boy, once he sees it, must imitate it even through adulthood: the metallic growl of The Shredder.

3. Mo' Better Blues

Skip Lievsay, sound designer

Kevin Lee / Philip Stockton, sound editors

Tom Fleischman, rerecording mixer

Great music and performances and, honestly, if I can hear that and watch those scenes and bask in the beauty of it all, that's enough sometimes, especially if that's the movie's whole focus. But I also love the scene where the women in Denzel's life overlap each other, I think the way their dialogue is edited and mixed together is wittily done.

4. Misery

Charles L. Campbell / Donald J. Malouf, supervising sound editors

Robert Eber, sound mixer

Rick Kline / Gregg Landaker / Kevin O'Connell, rerecording mixers

Kathy Bates' performance is amplified by the mixing: her voice alone becomes a horror, grating, menacing. Think, too, of what we hear from James Caan's POV: the confusing sound of a pig, the louder-than-possible key in the lock, the crunch of a broken bone. And, of course: type-type-type-TING!

5. Days of Thunder

Cecelia Hall / George Watters II, supervising sound editors

Charles M. Wilborn, production sound mixer

Rick Kline / Donald O. Mitchell / Kevin O'Connell, rerecording mixers

Vroom, vroom, baby. A movie that never loses the dialogue, never lets up on the wall of noise that the racing community lives within, all set to a bobbing soundtrack and a Hans Zimmer score.

Best Adapted Screenplay

1. GoodFellas

Nicholas Pileggi & Martin Scorsese

from the book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi

Distills a lot of information, snappily. In the rhythm of the dialogue is everything you need to know about these people: a lot of talk, a lot of decorative conversation, but little of value. On paper, one gets a sense of the tone from the dry description of places of Sonny Bunz's lounge ("No matter when you walk into the Bunz Lounge it's always the middle of the night.") or its frank observation of wiseguy manners ("Henry is strangling the owner of a bridal shop with his own tie while Tommy and James laugh.").

2. Postcards from the Edge

Carrie Fisher

from her novel

What you remember from the movie is the great, great dialogue. Every scene with the mother-daughter scraps hits: great actresses, sure, but working from some fine sheet music to play an exquisite duet ("It twirled up!" "And you weren't wearing any underwear." "...well!"). On the page, it's dialogue-heavy, Fisher allowing the characters to, well, speak for themselves, but she sets them up so well - like getting into Suzanne's discomfort on a new set by simply describing her dressing room trailer ("INT. LITTLE ROOM The little room is very little") or how close one comes to relapsing ("Suzanne drives; she is extremely upset. What's the use? Fuck it.")

3. Awakenings

Steven Zaillian

from the book by Oliver Sacks

It must be hard to fuck up a Zaillian screenplay: perfectly structured with an arc for our Dr. Sayer about connection that isn't too mawkish while paying proper respect to the central story of the "awakened" patients under his care; distinct characters who don't always sound like characters; and, on the page, economical directions to get at the heart of a scene ("[Mrs. Lowe] pictures the moment in her mind, and waits, it seems, for young Leonard to speak.") or even a brief sketch of a character we'll never see again ("the idea of Sayer working with living people...is inconceivable to him."). Study the man!

4. Reversal of Fortune

Nicholas Kazan

from the book by Alan Dershowitz

Hell of an opener. Hell of a closer. The right amount of scandalous and funny, good gossip that closes on an uncomfortable note: you'll never know it all...and Claus von Bülow is shameless!

5. Mermaids

June Roberts

from the novel by Patty Dann

Authentic teenage point-of-view, with all the self-serious neuroses that implies. Fair play to the free-spirited momma, wrong in some ways and right in others. Complex adult relationships, complex parent-child relationships, natural humor: great writing!

Best Film Editing

1. GoodFellas

James Y. Kwei / Thelma Schoonmaker

Anger with each cut in the Billy Batts scene (you know the one I mean, the one where we cut from Tommy to Henry to Jimmy and back and you know what's about to happen). Increasing terror with the pacing of Karen's solo visit to Jimmy...and the walk right after. Mania as Henry attempts arms deals while high on coke and trying to get the sauce right and there's a helicopter overhead boom boom boom. This is where the movie's famous energy comes from.

2. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover

John Wilson

Eroticism - the editor cuts from glance to glance, secret exchanges, silent agreements made. Maintains long takes until the turn - Georgina talking about her miscarriages, an act of violence, a shrewd come-on - upends the scene, the cut is necessary to catch every moment. Maintains the illusion of continuous tracking, even as sets, costumes, makeup change.

3. Edward Scissorhands

Colleen Halsey / Richard Halsey

Yes, yes, of course Scissorhands is a well-edited film. The speed of the makeovers, the overlaying of frames to suggest inhumanly rapid scissor movements, and the finale cutting just before certain moments so that (a) they can save on makeup effects but also (b) making Edward just terrifying enough, even if he doesn't mean to be, so that we can understand how things spiral out of control.

4. Metropolitan

Christopher Tellefsen

The way it establishes the "parties" at Sandra Fowler's: little intimacies and group conversations, getting out of each one just as we react to a punchline, the passage of time marked by those who appear suddenly tired...or suddenly more animated. The pacing of the long weekend that ends up in the Hamptons is great, a lot of false starts and circling back, and oh, suddenly we're in conversation with this older guy and oh, now we're determinedly on the road and oh, now... Maintains the illusion of an all-nighter: full and never dull.

5. Cinema Paradiso

Mario Morra

The transition that takes us from young Salvatore to teen Salvatore is seamless but clear. The village's class system, the evolution of various relationships, the passage of time: all of it is communicated through the editor's navigating its way through the matinees and evening shows. The final montage of cut kisses...oh, the very thought brings tears to my eyes.

Best Cinematography