The Disney Channel began broadcasting;
Sally Ride became the first American woman in space;
Dragon’s Lair was released in arcades;
The Famicom (known in the United States as the Nintendo Entertainment System) was released;
Vanessa Williams became the first African-American Miss America;
Brunei and Saint Kitts and Nevis became independent states;
Microsoft Word was released;
Martin Luther King Day became a US federal holiday;
Michael Jackson’s video for Thriller debuted on MTV;
The DeLorean Motor Company went out of business;
Kate Bosworth, Kerry Condon, Asiz Ansari, Emily Blunt, Lupita Nyong’o, Rafe Spall, Carrie Underwood, Miguel Cabrera, Joe Mauer, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Jay Cutler, Henry Cavill, Adrienne Palicki, Gabourey Sidibe, Matt Leinart, Domhnall Gleason, Amber Tamblyn, Vince Young, Derek Anderson, Macklemore, Edward Snowden, Jussie Smollett, Mamie Gummer, Greta Gerwig, Chris Hemsworth, Mila Kunis, Dustin Pedroia, Andrew Garfield, Brody Jenner, Larry Fitzgerald, Amy Winehouse, Maggie Grace, Donald Glover, Tessa Thompson, Jesse Eisenberg, Felicity Jones, Brian Vickers, Adam Devine, Christopher Paolini, Adam Driver, Aaron Rodgers, Andy Grammer, Jonah Hill, and Steve Yeun were born;
While George Cukor, Paul “Bear” Bryant, Karen Carpenter, Eubie Blake, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Godfrey, Gloria Swanson, Buster Crabbe, George Balanchine, Norm Van Brocklin, Jack Dempsey, Norma Shearer, Mary Livingstone, Buckminster Fuller, Harry James, Luis Buñuel, Raymond Massey, David Niven, Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Ralph Richardson, Pat O’Brien, George S. Halas, Slim Pickens, Joan Miro, William Demarest, Dennis Wilson, and Jimmy Demaret died.
The following is my list of the top ten films released in 1983:
William S. Burroughs came from enormous wealth. Educated at Harvard, he lived an avant garde life during the middle of the era of American history frequently referenced by conservative ideology as idyllic. He drunkenly murdered his then-wife Joan Vollmer in Mexico City. He was libertarian leaning politically and a libertine in his personal life. He had an affinity for magic and the occult. A seminal figure of the Beat Generation, he was friends with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsburg, Patti Smith, Lucien Carr, and Francis Bacon amongst others.
His novel, Naked Lunch, is a moving work which manages to climb inside the experience of addiction.
He created new literary techniques, including the cut-up and some critics and contemporaries consider him one of the most consequential authors of the twentieth century.
This documentary, directed by Howard Brookner, had unprecedented access to Burroughs and his associates. Filmed over five years, it’s a beautiful portrait of a tortured, complicated genius.
9) National Lampoon’s Vacation
In an effort to spend quality time with his family, Clark Griswold takes them on a cross country road trip to the ultimate amusement park. What follows is a series of misadventures involving a dead dog, stolen credit cards, a dead aunt, ill-advised skinny-dipping, and a hostile takeover of Wally World.
Written by John Hughes, directed by Harold Ramis, and starring Chevy Chase in his most endearing performance, this is a certified comedy classic. For Generation Xers it’s a cultural touchstone, an inextricable part of their childhood.
Eminently quotable, it’s probably the most accessible film produced by National Lampoon’s, although Animal House certainly gives it a run for its money.
In this small Japanese village, when a person turns seventy, they travel to the top of Narayama to die. Orin is the 69 year old matriarch of one of the most prominent families in the village. She spends what she knows will be the final year of her life preparing her sons for her departure.
In her position within the village, Orin is responsible for the punishment of a family whose patriarch is caught stealing: she buries the family alive. She’s not a woman prone to acts of mercy and shows no mercy to herself. At the end of the year, even though she is healthy, she forces her oldest son to carry her to the mountaintop where death awaits.
This adaptation of the Shichirō Fukazawa book is more stark and pessimistic than the 1958 film adaptation. It’s a brutal film, with no sentimentality or romanticism. There is no great insight or catharsis. There is only inevitable death.
We’re all living in the long shadow of our mortality, awaiting our turn to go up the mountain. Many will get less than seventy years and die wishing they’d had spent their time more productively. At least Orin decided her fate, something akin to a victory over the randomness of life.
Everyone has a nostalgia influenced affection for the original Star Wars.
Everyone rightfully believes Empire is the crown jewel of the series.
And everyone believes this is the weakest entry in the first trilogy. This is a misjudgment.
Things I love about this movie:
The confrontation between Luke and Vader.
Vader’s redemption (which post-prequels seems the inevitable conclusion).
Our first look at the power of the Emperor.
Yoda’s death / Ghost Yoda.
Han and Leia together.
C3PO’s most consequential role in any film.
Jabba the Hutt.
Leia’s slave costume.
Lando as a full on bad ass.
Racing through the moon of Endor.
I even love the Ewoks
People assume the Ewoks were a crass marketing gimmick. I don’t know the inner machinations of Lucasfilm in the early 80s, but if the monetization of its characters was important to the company, why unceremoniously dump Bobba Fett into the Sarlacc?
Based on Larry McMurtry’s novel, this is a beautiful film about the complicated relationship between Aurora Greenway (Shirley Maclaine) and her daughter Emma (Debra Winger).
Aurora is domineering and unrelenting, Emma is rebellious and stubborn, but their relationship is the sole constant in their lives.
The chemistry between Jack Nicholson (as Aurora’s lover, retired astronaut Garrett Breedlove) and MacLaine is electric. While Nicholson’s character does not appear in the source novel, he’s an integral part of the film. The image of the pair driving in a convertible on the beaches of Houston is delectable and has become a romanticized view of what all middle age Americans want from their partners.
Jeff Daniels (as Emma’s despicable, philandering husband Flap) and John Lithgow (as her lover Sam) give commendable, overlooked performances. Danny Devito has a fascinating cameo as a potential suitor for Aurora.
While the source novel was more focused on Houston and Texas culture (McMurtry is one of the major chroniclers of the modern American west), James Brooks’ film largely eschews this and wisely highlights the mother-daughter relationship; their constant phone calls to complain and kvetch about their sordid problems are oddly comforting, as if this is what parenthood and family in late twentieth century America is supposed to be.
Both women give career defining performances, but while Winger’s role (particularly her painful deathbed farewell to her children) is meatier, Maclaine’s is the more difficult part. She has to alternate between the screwball sexual comedy with Breedlove and the resentful, dependence of her relationship with Emma. With a lesser actress, Aurora would have been become a pseudo-villain. Maclaine grounds her performance, reflecting many of our own anxieties about parenting and aging.
Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall) is a famous country singer whose personal demons (primarily alcoholism) destroyed his career and relationship with his first wife, fellow country singer, Dixie Scott.
After he marries a widowed owner of a motel, he briefly reconnects with an unforgiving Dixie and meets his teenage daughter Sue Anne (Ellen Barkin). Sadly, she’s killed in a car accident shortly after their meeting.
Robert Duvall has always been a phenomenal supporting player in movies like The Godfather and To Kill a Mockingbird. Given a rare chance to take center stage, he proves more than up to the task in this wonderful movie about the pathways to grace, the opportunity for second (and third and fourth) chances and the ephemeral nature of our existence.
A Polish theater on the eve of World War II is the setting for a madcap romp starring Anne Bancroft and her husband Mel Brooks.
Brooks is Frederick Bronski, the lead actor in the troupe, Bancroft is his wife Anna, a fellow actor who may be cheating on him.
Eventually the ensemble is forced into international affairs: they have to protect a list of secret resistance fighters, using their training to pose as SS officers and key leaders of the Nazi party.
A dash of Hogan’s Heroes, a pinch of Blazing Saddles. Featuring all in performances from Charles Durning (Oscar nominated for his effort), Jose Ferrer, Christopher Lloyd, and George Gaynes.
This was one of the few times Brooks didn’t direct himself, instead letting his longtime choreographer, Alan Johnson take the reins. The Lubitsch original is slightly better because it was made in the moment while Hitler was still in power and a threat to the world, but this is a criminally underappreciated part of Brooks oeuvre, and a great example of how comedy can satirize even the darkest of subjects.
3) The Dresser
Sir (Albert Finney) is a renowned Shakespearean actor in the twilight of his career. Norman (Tom Courtenay) is his faithful dresser / companion, responsible for shuffling Sir from performance to performance, making sure he’s ready for the night’s show.
As he travels to his next location to recreate Lear, his most famous role, Sir’s numerous health and mental problems make Norman’s job increasingly difficult.
Norman desperately tries to prevent the inevitable, but only succeeds in giving Sir one last feather in his cap: another successful performance.
This adaptation echoes its theatrical origins, it’s intimate and dialogue heavy, with minimal locations and characters.
Finney gives one of his best performances as the unnamed star who’s lost himself in his stardom. Courtenay is brilliant as the beleaguered assistant who’s lost his identity in his work. Norman mistakes the closeness of the work as intimacy, leading to the heartbreaking realization his years of dedication have gone unnoticed and unappreciated.
In the end, the two men who have relied on each other for years discover the depths of their solitude on the way to the promis’d end.
Since 1997, Jean Shepherd’s childhood recollection has aired as a cable television marathon on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day; for many it’s become a beloved Christmas tradition, a sort of background music to the holidays.
Key words evoke vivid memories.
Fragile.
Leg lamp.
Fudge.
You’ll shoot your eye out.
Triple dog dare.
Ovaltine.
Although it’s difficult to measure, there aren’t many films more permanently ensconced in popular culture.
1) Zelig
Leonard Zelig (Woody Allen) possesses a chameleon-like ability to assume the characteristics of the people around him. When he’s in Harlem, he’s a black man; when he’s in Mexico, he’s a Mexican; when he’s in a jazz club, he’s a jazz musician. During a hospitalization to cure his condition, he falls in love with his nurse (Mia Farrow).
The movie is styled like a documentary; contemporary intellectuals such as Susan Sontag and Saul Bellow offer their analysis of Zelig’s life while we view “archival” footage of him with the rich and powerful of the 1920s, including Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth, Carole Lombard, and Adolf Hitler.
Eleven years before Robert Zemeckis wowed audiences with Forrest Gump, Allen and cinematographer Gordon Willis covered a lot of the same ground without the benefit of sophisticated computer technology.
In this existential comedy, the story of Leonard Zelig becomes an allegory for the nature of identity: do we define ourselves or are we defined by others?