THE PENGUIN AWARDS THAT NEVER WERE: 1983! 
Yet another in our series of nominations for Penguin Awards that were never given. These from the year when I got my first job at Rustler Steak House.
SONG OF THE YEAR:
Yet another in our series of nominations for Penguin Awards that were never given. These from the year when I got my first job at Rustler Steak House.
****
Drop the Pilot - Joan Armatrading
Cruel Summer - Bananarama
Modern Love - David Bowie
Photograph - Def Leppard
The Farmyard Connection - Fun Boy Three
White Lines (Don't Do It) - Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel
White Wedding - Billy Idol
I'm Still Standing - Elton John
Send Her My Love - Journey
Din Daa Daa - George Krantz
Pink Houses - John Mellencamp
I Love L.A. - Randy Newman
Stand Back - Stevie Nicks
Synchronicity II - The Police
Love My Way - The Psychedelic Furs
Message To My Girl - Split Enz
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ALBUM OF THE YEAR:
LET'S DANCE - David Bowie
ESCAPADE - Tim Finn
WAITING - Fun Boy Three
TOO LOW FOR ZERO - Elton John
CONFLICTING EMOTIONS - Split Enz
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COVER SONG OF THE YEAR:
Our Lips Are Sealed - Fun Boy Three
Young at Heart - Wild Man Fischer
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DUET OF THE YEAR:
Lisanga Ya Ba Nganga - Franco & Rochereau
White Lines (Don't Do It) - Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel
Big Brother is watching . . . and reading the Rustler newsletter. Remember this penguin symbol appeared at the end of every newsletter? Is there anyone still alive who remembers? Anyway, now we have the nominees for 1984:
H'ienyiew H'ienyiew H'ienyiew!!! Step right up to the greeter box for the next installment of the nominees. If I plaque your order, will you vote? Or will you just date on the salad bar? 
Part 4 of our nominations. Give us a vote.
which no doubt ensured his getting the gig of next year's Greek god-fest DAWN OF WAR or WAR OF THE GODS (the much better title) or whatever they're going to call it. He was also responsible for 2000's abortion called THE CELL but the less said about that the better. Here in THE FALL the director completely redeems himself for that Jenny-From-The -Blockhead production. THE FALL is a glorious feast for the eyes which also has a serious emotional underpinning. It's not all froth and cake frosting but instead a deeply felt storytelling extravaganza. It is like nothing you've seen before but at the same time reminiscent of everything from The Arabian Knights, Jet Li's HERO and THE WIZARD OF OZ; the latter film in the way that all the fantastic lyrical events are parallelled by characters in the real life of the main actors. The film has the feeling of an epic while simultaneously its a very small film about personal relationships and emotions.
This is when the colour bursts forth; the deepest blue sky like a cloth canopy over the deep orange sand dunes, the gleaming gold of Alexander's armour, etc. Little Alexandra is intrigued by ultimately unsatisfied with this story so Roy tells her to come back and visit him tomorrow so he can tell her a true epic adventure based in India. This she does and the tale he spins takes up the rest of the movie. 
A small group of heroes are stranded on a desert island (Butterfly Reef) by the evil Governor Odious: ex-slave Otta Benga (Marcus Wesley), the Indian (Jeetu Verma), explosives expert Luigi (Robin Smith), naturalist Charles Darwin (Leo Bill) and his monkey Wallace and the Masked Black Bandit (Lee Pace). Their backstories are presented efficiently and we learn they have all sworn to kill the evil Odious. 
They escape from the island thanks to a kindly swimming elephant and next encounter the Mystic (Julian Bleach) who emerges out of a tree. The group vow 
Constantly throughout the adventure, we cut back to the real world in which Roy is relating the story to a captivated Alexandria. However, Roy soon cajoles the little girl to steal some morphine for him out of the hospital
I really can't say enough about the acting job done by both Lee Pace and Catinca Untaru. Pace is hauntingly convincing and real in his deep pain and self-loathing while Untaru is startlingly good in her performance as well bringing a wicked naughtiness and a heartbreaking vulnerability to her role. The rest of the cast is quite adequate in their deliberately theatrical performances quite appropriate for the operatic fairy story in which they're involved. All of the "fantasy" characters in the story have real-life counterparts in the hospital: Otta Benga is the ice delivery man, the princess is a nurse, Luigi is a one-legged actor in the silent movie, the Mystic is an elderly patient, the Indian is an orange picker and the slick movie star is Governor Odious. However, we're really only interested in Roy and Alexandria and it is the performance of Lee Pace and Catinca Untaru which sets the film's feet firmly on solid dramatic ground. It's also quite fun to realize that, while Roy is telling the story, what we are seeing are images that must be conjured by Alexandria as she is listening. A key to this opinion is that Roy talks about "The Indian" as if he is a native American (he refers to the Indian's wife as a "squaw" and his house as a "teepee"); however what we see in the film is a "real" Indian whose backstory takes place in a gorgeous Indian palace. 
It's also quite nice (and telling) that halfway through the story, Alexandria manages to insert herself into the fairy tale as the daughter of the Masked Bandit (complete with an identical mini-costume)! The roles of storyteller and listener are blurred and combined before the film is finished. There is, in fact, yet another blurring of the line between reality and fantasy: apparently the director convinced actor Lee Pace to pretend to be actually paralyzed. During the entire filming of the hospital scenes (which were filmed before the fantasy sequences), Pace confined himself to a wheelchair and was lifted into his bed for the day's shooting. In the DVD documentary on the film, we get to see the moment when Pace reveals to his 5 year old co-star (and the entire assembled cast and crew) that he can actually walk after all! 
This is truly a movie you have to see and preferably on a large screen HDTV because it's truly a sumptuous film experience. Tarsem Singh's direction is note perfect and this bodes well for the Greek God/Theseus blockbuster which awaits us in 2011. Seeing THE FALL, I now have the highest hopes for it. Tarsem's grasp of the visual is without peer in the current cinematic landscape, I think. It's quite fitting that THE FALL begins with the shooting of a silent film since there is a touch of silent film imagery as well in the composition of some scenes. Also remarkable is the scene in which the priest's face turns into a desert landscape as well as a "Quay Brothers"-like stop-motion animation dream sequence. THE FALL, while a sumptuous fantasy film, also deals with real emotional pain and I'm not sure if I would recommend it for very young children; the final third of the film is actually quite harrowing and throughout there is occasional quite realistic violence and mild gore. 
This film, in fact, plays like the original fairy stories of the Brothers Grimm before Hollywood cleaned them up. That's probably why such a fanciful-looking film packs such an emotional impact. For a quick taste, I've provided the movie trailer immediately following this post. Enjoy. 
S'up! Here we have the next installment of the nominees for neverwere awards: 
Part 2 of a continuing specious. For the full skinny, see the first part immediately preceding this post. Now we're going to present the nominees that would've been nominated for a Penguin Award if the Penguin Awards existed in 1988. Remember, leave your votes in the comment section. You may be the one who breaks a tie!
In a spirit of celebration and just for fun we thought we'd do some honorary Penguin Awards for that junk which came out before the dawn of official Penguin Awards in 1990. Therefore, we're going to be doing the 80's; presenting those songs and albums which would've been nominated at the time and then choosing the winners. What I'm going to do is put up the nominees and, if'n you're so inclined you can place YOUR votes in the comment section. Then, after a suitably decent amount of time has gone by, I will post the actual winners. Or, more correctly, the virtual winners since this is virtual reality we're dealing with here. So now, without further fondue, we present the nominees for the Penguin Awards That Never Were of 1989:
Thomson, of course, is the London born but US based film critic whose "BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY OF FILM" is one of the best books on movies you can grab. The fairly recent updating of that classic 1975 tome is now accompanied by this brand-new 1000-pager (who is nutty enough to write TWO 1000 page books on movies in one life-time?!?). Now the really nice thing about a book like this is that it's completely fun and not dry scholarship; it's as if an extremely witty film fan is taking you by the hand and asking you the title question "Have you seen THIS one????" There's an enthusiasm there which is quite refreshing; especially from a nearly 70 year old film fanatic like Thomson. He is quick to point out that these are not the "best" 1000 films ever made -- in fact, he writes about quite a few which he is not too fond of -- but just posing the question "Have you seen these rather interesting or important movies?" 
Back to our combined tastes. It's also quite nice to hear Mr. Thomson dislikes some movies which I dislike. Case in point: my perennial beaten dead horse FORREST GUMP about which Thomson writes: " 
The film is based on Jack Davies' novel "Esther, Ruth & Jennifer" and he also wrote the screenplay. These three names represent the three boats/oil rigs the baddies hold for ransom. Roger Moore stars as the bewhiskered Rufus Excalibur ffolkes: a sort of commando/anti-terror ninja warrior who likes cats and hate women (not necessarily in that order). He also drinks scotch the way it was meant to be drunk: neat! Oh and he does needlepoint. I believe Roger Moore has commented that he thought he was miscast in the role but I strongly disagree. In fact, this is probably my favourite Roger Moore film (I never quite fancied him as 007). Roger Moore's ffolkes is cranky, surly, opinionated and downright rude. The actor pulls it off much more successfully than he did James Bond, I think.
Nice location shooting abounds. The coastal castle in which ffolkes trains his ffusilliers is beautiful and there is a lot of footage shot on actual boats at sea. There is one particularly good explosive effect as well. While the film probably didn't have a monumental budget, it certainly doesn't look like a shoestring production and comes off looking quite respectable. For modern audiences (the film was made in 1979), the action might not start quite soon enough for the attention-deficit generation. However, 
This is a tribute to two great cinematic duos: Tom & Jerry . . . and Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger. Now that might sound daffy but I lay it all at the feet of David Thomson who, in his newish book "Have You Seen...?: A Personal Introduction to 1000 Films" tosses off the remark that the classic Tom & Jerry cartoon "HEAVENLY PUSS" from 1949 is a remake of The Archers' 
The cartoon HEAVENLY PUSS opens with the traditional chase scene during which Tom gets flattened by a grand piano. Unlike every other Tom & Jerry cartoon, however, this actually kills da cat and he finds his spirit self ascending a golden staircase through the clouds and glorious light (a shot definitely inspired by the Powell & Pressburger film) to be dropped off in heaven. 
A kitty St. Peter/railroad conductor figure is checking the credentials of several dead kitties to see if they are entitled to enter the heavenly gates. An incredibly shocking moment occurs when a soaking-wet bag containing three little kittens - the cutest kittens you're likely to see - bounces up and St. Peter tsk-tsks "What some people won't do!" 
You got it. Somebody DROWNED these three adorable kittens!!! Are you likely to see anything that dark sneaking by in a cartoon made in the last 25 years?!?!? I doubt it. 
Well, of course, when Tom tries to sneak in, St. Peter stops him and reads how he spent his life basically tormenting a poor little mouse (Jerry) so he's gonna end up in H.E.Double.Hockey.Sticks. But there IS a way out! The "Heavenly Express" doesn't leave for heaven for another hour. If, in that time, Tom can go back to earth and get Jerry to sign a "forgiveness" document, Tom can enter into heaven. 
If not. . .well. . .a little heavenly closed circuit TV shows the scene in a fiery hell in which the Devil (played by Butch the bulldog) is waiting for Tom.
Tom returns to earth and the clock is ticking. He brings Jerry a nice cake and presents the forgiveness document to the mouse. Jerry is not in a forgiving mood and squirts ink in Tom's face before ripping the document to shreds. Tom gets ticked and lapses back into his Jerry-bashing ways but the devil bulldog appears and eggs him on. 
Tom repents and pleads with Jerry to sign. 
Jerry, who after all is a kind mouse, finally relents -- if for no other reason than to get this pestering cat out of his hair. Jerry signs. But before Tom can race back up the heavenly staircase, the clock strikes an hour and Tom falls through a fiery hole into hell where he splashes into a boiling cauldron while the Devil sticks him with a pitchfork. 
But wait! In true Hollywood cop-out fashion, Tom wakes up and discovers it's all been a dream. However, he is so thankful that he grabs Jerry, smooches him and hugs him close. A bewildered Jerry breaks the third wall as he looks at the camera. Fade out.
The entire cartoon seems to rocket by before you know it and I would've liked a couple more minutes since it all seems rather rushed. However, after the initial Tom & Jerry cartoons, the studio shaved a minute or two off the running times of subsequent cartoons and we're left with only 8 minutes; good as they are. William Hanna and Joe Barbera directed while the great Fred Quimby produced. All in all, a fun cartoon with a different storyline than the usual T&J situation. Warner Bros. did a similar cartoon