Casting Coup: Tess

NOMINATIONS

Best Picture, Claude Berri/Timothy Burrill

Best Director, Roman Polanski

Best Music - Original Score, Philippe Sarde
Best Cinematography, Geoffrey Unsworth/Ghislain Cloquet - WON

Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Pierre Guffroy/Jack Stephens - WON

Best Costume Design, Anthony Powell - WON

It's the last day of Casting Coup Week! Starting Monday, we start wrapping up 1980 with a Top Ten, Retro Hollmann Awards Nominations, then two days of the awards proper.

Before we get into all that, though, let's talk about Tess, baby. It's only the third cinematic adaptation of the Thomas Hardy novel, the previous two going back to the silent era. Even TV versions are scarce - one in 1960 for ITV (with Geraldine McEwan!), one in 1998 for LWT (with Justine Waddell!), and one in 2008 for BBC (with Gemma Arterton!).

Perhaps it's the subject matter: Hardy's story takes to task the rich for exploiting the poor, religious institutions for their hypocrisy, patriarchal society for its subjugation of women, and the justice system for its treatment of domestic abuse and rape victims. Now that I've written it all out, I'm surprised there isn't a new version of Tess in the works right now - it is, unfortunately, timeless.

And if they were to make a new version right now - who might they hire to fill the many roles? I have a few suggestions....

Casting Coup Month: Barry Lyndon

NOMINATIONS

Best Picture

Best Director - Stanley Kubrick

Best Adapted Screenplay - Stanley Kubrick

Best Cinematography - John Alcott (WON)

Best Art Direction-Set Decoration - Ken Adam/Roy Walker/Vernon Dixon (WON)

Best Costume Design - Ulla-Britt Soderlund/Milena Canonero (WON)

Best Music, Adaptation and/or Song Score - Leonard Rosenman (WON)

My last Retrospective was a direct result of Barry Lyndon. Last May, my place of employment -- the ArcLight Hollywood, home to the world-famous Cinerama Dome -- was snubbed for the releases of The Avengers and Dark Shadows. With this two-week drought, we brought out the big guns: classic films screening in our biggest theater: Doctor Zhivago (missed it), 2001: A Space Odyssey (missed it), Gone with the Wind, The Shining, a lot of others...and this. I caught Barry Lyndon with a friend after we screened Gone with the Wind, which was really quite risky considering one's three hours and the other four. But it mattered not: while I already was firmly in the Gone with the Wind, I found another great love in Barry Lyndon.