"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail. Here's Daniel Walber...
My Gal Sal is a pack of lies. The 1942 musical, ostensibly a biopic of songwriter Paul Dresser, is almost entirely fabricated. Of course, that hardly matters. Accuracy is no prerequisite for the Best Production Design Oscar, which Richard Day, Joseph C. Wright and Thomas Little won for the picture. No one will be mad if some details are fudged in musical numbers like “Me and My Fella and a Big Umbrella.”
That said, My Gal Sal is interesting because it’s all nonsense. It’s a window into the way Hollywood projects itself onto the past, a compendium of historical kitsch.
Dresser (Victor Mature) begins the film in a strict, Indiana home. His minister father objects to his music, so he runs away and gets a job with a medicine show.
My Gal Sal is a pack of lies. The 1942 musical, ostensibly a biopic of songwriter Paul Dresser, is almost entirely fabricated. Of course, that hardly matters. Accuracy is no prerequisite for the Best Production Design Oscar, which Richard Day, Joseph C. Wright and Thomas Little won for the picture. No one will be mad if some details are fudged in musical numbers like “Me and My Fella and a Big Umbrella.”
That said, My Gal Sal is interesting because it’s all nonsense. It’s a window into the way Hollywood projects itself onto the past, a compendium of historical kitsch.
Dresser (Victor Mature) begins the film in a strict, Indiana home. His minister father objects to his music, so he runs away and gets a job with a medicine show.
- 5/1/2017
- by Daniel Walber
- FilmExperience
The Academy Awards are a night of prestige and honor that Hollywood takes very seriously. How seriously, you may ask? Well, in addition to being considered the guardians of quality in film, they have some extremely strict bylaws and guidelines for the entire process. Everything from nominations to what you can do with your Oscar once you've won is governed by their ruling hand. If anyone needed a reminder of The Academy's power, they've certainly got one in a recent court ruling involving the coveted statuette itself. The Guardian reported on the legal battle between the Academy and the family of previous honoree Joseph Wright. Wright won the Oscar for best color art direction, earned through his work in "My Gal Sal" in 1942, and his nephew auctioned the statue off for a cool sum of $79,200 to buyer Nate D. Sanders. The sale was challenged by the Academy Of Motion Pictures...
- 7/25/2015
- cinemablend.com
Oscar winners must offer statuettes to the Academy for $10 before attempting to sell on the open market, rules Us judge
A California judge has upheld the legal right of Oscars organisers to ban victors or their heirs from selling priceless statuettes on the open market, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
In a blow to collectors and auctioneers, Los Angeles superior court judge Gail Ruderman Feuer handed victory to the Us Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in a legal wrangle over Joseph Wright’s 1943 Oscar for colour art direction, received for his work on the film My Gal Sal.
Continue reading...
A California judge has upheld the legal right of Oscars organisers to ban victors or their heirs from selling priceless statuettes on the open market, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
In a blow to collectors and auctioneers, Los Angeles superior court judge Gail Ruderman Feuer handed victory to the Us Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in a legal wrangle over Joseph Wright’s 1943 Oscar for colour art direction, received for his work on the film My Gal Sal.
Continue reading...
- 7/22/2015
- by Ben Child
- The Guardian - Film News
Producer Albert Berger, sound editor Mark Mangini, executive Daniel Fellman, documentary editor Kate Amend and short filmmaker Bob Rogers have been elected to the Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Academy announced on Friday. The five are first-time governors. The elections also returned eight sitting governors to office, including Annette Bening, writer Phil Robinson and Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs, and brought back four former governors, including cinematographer Caleb Deschanel and director Edward Zwick, who defeated sitting governor Lisa Cholodenko. Also read: Academy Sues Joseph Wright's Heirs for Auctioning His Oscar With Zwick replacing Cholodenko.
- 7/18/2014
- by Steve Pond
- The Wrap
The New Yorker on Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice by Paul Mazursky. I love that movie so much
Nyt Rip the influential filmmaker Paul Mazursky (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, An Unmarried Woman, Enemies: A Love Story)
THR The Academy sues the estate of art director Joseph Wright. His family auctioned off his Oscar for My Gal Sal (1942) for $79,200. (God, imagine how much an Oscar for a famous movie or actor would get!) But auctioning off Oscars is a big big no-no. AMPAS freaks out every time.
Bryan Singer tweets a treament of X-Men: Apocalypse
Daily Mail Johnny Depp on the set of Black Mass. Lots of old age makeup
X-Finity Matt Bomer implies that his Montgomery Clift biopic is on indefinite delay
The Wire Joe talks that Eric/Jason sex scene on True Blood and what a failure the show has been in terms of the gay. Co-sign every word.
The...
Nyt Rip the influential filmmaker Paul Mazursky (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, An Unmarried Woman, Enemies: A Love Story)
THR The Academy sues the estate of art director Joseph Wright. His family auctioned off his Oscar for My Gal Sal (1942) for $79,200. (God, imagine how much an Oscar for a famous movie or actor would get!) But auctioning off Oscars is a big big no-no. AMPAS freaks out every time.
Bryan Singer tweets a treament of X-Men: Apocalypse
Daily Mail Johnny Depp on the set of Black Mass. Lots of old age makeup
X-Finity Matt Bomer implies that his Montgomery Clift biopic is on indefinite delay
The Wire Joe talks that Eric/Jason sex scene on True Blood and what a failure the show has been in terms of the gay. Co-sign every word.
The...
- 7/2/2014
- by NATHANIEL R
- FilmExperience
Note to actors desperate to own an Oscar: You can’t just buy one.
This week, people discovered that the Academy is quite serious about this rule. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is suing Briarbrook Auction Services for auctioning off Joseph Wright’s 1942 Oscar he was awarded for color and art direction on My Gal Sal. (Wright died in 1985.) The Academy’s by-laws state neither the recipients of the awards nor their successors can sell the statuettes without first offering them to the Academy, according to Deadline, which first reported news of the lawsuit.
Despite this rule,...
This week, people discovered that the Academy is quite serious about this rule. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is suing Briarbrook Auction Services for auctioning off Joseph Wright’s 1942 Oscar he was awarded for color and art direction on My Gal Sal. (Wright died in 1985.) The Academy’s by-laws state neither the recipients of the awards nor their successors can sell the statuettes without first offering them to the Academy, according to Deadline, which first reported news of the lawsuit.
Despite this rule,...
- 7/2/2014
- by Erin Strecker
- EW - Inside Movies
The heirs of late Oscar-winner Joseph Wright sold his 1942 statuette at auction for $79,200. Now, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has filed suit against the Wright heirs for violating its bylaws that prohibit its members from selling their Oscars without first offering the Academy right of first refusal to purchase them for $10. Also read: Marlon Brando's Little Black Book and Other Hollywood Memorabilia Up for Auction The suit says that the rule also applies to anyone who inherits an Oscar. The Academy has named Wright's heirs, the auction house, and the unknown buyers of the statuette as.
- 7/2/2014
- by Jason Hughes
- The Wrap
As it has dozens of times before, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has sued in response to someone trying to make a buck hawking an Oscar. This time the case involves a statuette sold to an unknown buyer for nearly $80,000 just one week ago. In a suit filed today in Los Angeles Superior Court (read it here), the Academy takes umbrage to Briarbrook Auction Services auctioning off the Oscar awarded to Joseph Wright in 1942 for his color and art direction on My Gal Sal. The Academy’s bylaws strictly spell out that neither the recipients of […]...
- 7/2/2014
- Deadline
A Oscar statuette awarded in 1942 is at the center of a new lawsuit against the heirs of late Oscar-winner Joseph Wright and the auction house which allegedly sold his award. List The Hollywood Reporter Reveals Hollywood's 100 Favorite Films In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences alleges that Wright's heirs allowed Briarbrook Auctions to auction the statuette last month for $79,200. Read the complaint here. The suit says the sale to the unknown buyers violated the Academy's bylaws, which prohibit its members from selling their Oscars
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- 7/2/2014
- by Aaron Couch
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Danny Boyle and co's open letter might have saved a £20m Moore sculpture, but other works are being lost to public view thanks to money-minded local officialdom
I was at the Pre-Raphaelites exhibition in Tate Britain last night. Its star is undoubtedly John Everett Millais. His eerie, sexy surrealist masterpiece Ophelia is the best painting in the show.
Bolton council couldn't give a monkey's. Millais is, in this council's eyes, not a national treasure to be safeguarded for future generations but an asset to be sold off.
Don't bother writing a letter to the Observer. This week, art lovers including Danny Boyle and the director of the Tate signed a letter to the Sunday paper protesting against plans by Tower Hamlets council to sell a sculpture by Henry Moore that might fetch £20m in today's booming art market. Now the Museum of London is offering to give it a home.
I was at the Pre-Raphaelites exhibition in Tate Britain last night. Its star is undoubtedly John Everett Millais. His eerie, sexy surrealist masterpiece Ophelia is the best painting in the show.
Bolton council couldn't give a monkey's. Millais is, in this council's eyes, not a national treasure to be safeguarded for future generations but an asset to be sold off.
Don't bother writing a letter to the Observer. This week, art lovers including Danny Boyle and the director of the Tate signed a letter to the Sunday paper protesting against plans by Tower Hamlets council to sell a sculpture by Henry Moore that might fetch £20m in today's booming art market. Now the Museum of London is offering to give it a home.
- 11/6/2012
- by Jonathan Jones
- The Guardian - Film News
Peter Strickland's thriller about a home counties sound engineer hired by a 70s Italian horror studio is one of the films of the year
One of the most remarkable British movies of the past couple of years, Berberian Sound Studio is a psychological thriller set entirely in the Kafkaesque offices of a sleazy Italian film company in the 1970s. It brings together a gifted trio of independent British film-makers: producer Keith Griffiths, who has been behind a dozen or more daring, offbeat pictures, including most recently the Cannes Palme d'Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives; the cinematographer Nic Knowland, whose numerous credits since the late 1970s include Tony Palmer's Shostakovich biography Testimony and the Quay brothers' Institute Benjamenta; and writer-director Peter Strickland, a truly European director who made his feature debut in Hungary three years ago with Katalin Varga.
The low-budget Katalin Varga,...
One of the most remarkable British movies of the past couple of years, Berberian Sound Studio is a psychological thriller set entirely in the Kafkaesque offices of a sleazy Italian film company in the 1970s. It brings together a gifted trio of independent British film-makers: producer Keith Griffiths, who has been behind a dozen or more daring, offbeat pictures, including most recently the Cannes Palme d'Or winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives; the cinematographer Nic Knowland, whose numerous credits since the late 1970s include Tony Palmer's Shostakovich biography Testimony and the Quay brothers' Institute Benjamenta; and writer-director Peter Strickland, a truly European director who made his feature debut in Hungary three years ago with Katalin Varga.
The low-budget Katalin Varga,...
- 9/1/2012
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
One of the most authentic and important artists of modern Britain opens at the Hayward, while Donatello's awe-inspiring power of illusion is unleashed at the V&A – all in your weekly roundup
Exhibition of the Week: Jeremy Deller
Art is alchemy. Who can say why one work of art lives and another dies? Why one artist can create images that take flight while another works assiduously at producing entropic stuff? Or why art that once seemed magical suddenly seems gross? Like I say – it's an alchemical process that defies logic.
The most alchemical British artist of my generation is Jeremy Deller. This curator of social happenings has none of the conventional attributes of an artist at all. He does nothing by the book – this is, for instance, the first proper gallery exhibition of his works. His most famous creations are events and performances that involved large numbers of people: a...
Exhibition of the Week: Jeremy Deller
Art is alchemy. Who can say why one work of art lives and another dies? Why one artist can create images that take flight while another works assiduously at producing entropic stuff? Or why art that once seemed magical suddenly seems gross? Like I say – it's an alchemical process that defies logic.
The most alchemical British artist of my generation is Jeremy Deller. This curator of social happenings has none of the conventional attributes of an artist at all. He does nothing by the book – this is, for instance, the first proper gallery exhibition of his works. His most famous creations are events and performances that involved large numbers of people: a...
- 2/17/2012
- The Guardian - Film News
That the world's population is cramming into cities at a rapid pace has countless environmental benefits. A big one is that as people urbanize, we chop down fewer trees.
The world’s forests double as the planet’s lungs. So when it comes to a natural solution to sequestering carbon emissions, a pressing question is exactly how much air those lungs can hold. The answer is better than expected--and the unlikely reason may have to do with our increased urban living.
Last month, Science published a study led by U.S. Forest Service researcher Yude Pan that found the world’s established forests absorb 2.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, or about a third of the total released by burning fossil fuels. This carbon sink was not only higher than expected, but actually increased between 1990 and 2007. Tropical deforestation in places like Indonesia and Brazil appears to be the only...
The world’s forests double as the planet’s lungs. So when it comes to a natural solution to sequestering carbon emissions, a pressing question is exactly how much air those lungs can hold. The answer is better than expected--and the unlikely reason may have to do with our increased urban living.
Last month, Science published a study led by U.S. Forest Service researcher Yude Pan that found the world’s established forests absorb 2.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year, or about a third of the total released by burning fossil fuels. This carbon sink was not only higher than expected, but actually increased between 1990 and 2007. Tropical deforestation in places like Indonesia and Brazil appears to be the only...
- 8/5/2011
- by Greg Lindsay
- Fast Company
Whirrr, whirr, whirr... That is the sound of back-pedalling, readers. Pretend you never heard anything about a My Fair Lady remake. We certainly never reported that Joseph Wright was directing, and that Keira Knightley was definitely in it. No, you are mistaken. This is the first time this story has surfaced. It is entirely new.So... Wouldn't it be luvverly! etc. A new version of My Fair Lady, in which Professor Enry Iggins takes on the ladification of the cockerny Eliza Doolittle for a bet, but ends up growing accustomed to her face, is in the works. It will retain the Lerner and Loewe original's songs and score, but at the same time return more to its roots in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.Keira Knightley has long been named in connection with the Eliza role, and it was previously reported that she'd beaten off competition from Scarlett Johansson, but...
- 12/1/2009
- EmpireOnline
While Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans is currently putting the eternal battle between vampires and werewolves onto screens worldwide, another film spotlighting a similar clash is nearing completion in Melbourne, Australia. The independently produced Darkfall Resurrection is actually a prequel to a movie called Darkfall, which puts bloodsuckers, lycanthropes and humans in space sometime in the near future.
Director William Goldwyn, who provided the pair of images seen here, tells Fango, “The creator of Darkfall is a guy from Alabama, Joseph Wright, who came up with the whole concept for a film series around 2000. The first film was going to be made for a budget of $3-4 million. Unfortunately, what happened was that the financiers were in the Twin Towers on September 11, where the main investor died. I had been hired for that project as a visual effects guy, because that’s my background, but naturally, it was put on hold.
Director William Goldwyn, who provided the pair of images seen here, tells Fango, “The creator of Darkfall is a guy from Alabama, Joseph Wright, who came up with the whole concept for a film series around 2000. The first film was going to be made for a budget of $3-4 million. Unfortunately, what happened was that the financiers were in the Twin Towers on September 11, where the main investor died. I had been hired for that project as a visual effects guy, because that’s my background, but naturally, it was put on hold.
- 1/19/2009
- Fangoria
While Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans is currently putting the eternal battle between vampires and werewolves onto screens worldwide, another film spotlighting a similar clash is nearing completion in Melbourne, Australia. The independently produced Darkfall Resurrection is actually a prequel to a movie called Darkfall, which puts bloodsuckers, lycanthropes and humans in space sometime in the near future.
Director William Goldwyn, who provided the pair of images seen here, tells Fango, “The creator of Darkfall is a guy from Alabama, Joseph Wright, who came up with the whole concept for a film series around 2000. The first film was going to be made for a budget of $3-4 million. Unfortunately, what happened was that the financiers were in the Twin Towers on September 11, where the main investor died. I had been hired for that project as a visual effects guy, because that’s my background, but naturally, it was put on hold.
Director William Goldwyn, who provided the pair of images seen here, tells Fango, “The creator of Darkfall is a guy from Alabama, Joseph Wright, who came up with the whole concept for a film series around 2000. The first film was going to be made for a budget of $3-4 million. Unfortunately, what happened was that the financiers were in the Twin Towers on September 11, where the main investor died. I had been hired for that project as a visual effects guy, because that’s my background, but naturally, it was put on hold.
- 1/19/2009
- Fangoria
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