New Zealand screenwriter and director Jane Campion.
Credit: © Kathy Hutchins, Shutterstock

Jane Campion, a New Zealand motion-picture screenwriter and director, won the best director for The Power of the Dog (2021) at the 2022 Academy Awards hosted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Awards on Sunday. The Power of the Dog (2021) is a psychological western set in Montana in 1925. The awards are better known as the Oscars. Campion’s win made history as the first time women have won best director two years in a row. Last year, Chinese filmmaker Chloé Zhao became the first Asian woman to win an Academy Award for best director, for the motion picture Nomadland (2020).

Campion is also the only woman to be nominated for best director twice. She was first nominated for best director for the film The Piano in 1993, which she wrote and directed. It tells the story of a mute young Scottish woman who is sent to colonial New Zealand to marry a stranger. The Piano won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes International Film Festival in France. Campion was the first woman ever to receive this prestigious award. She also won an Academy Award for writing the screenplay for The Piano.

Campion was born on April 30, 1955, in Wellington, New Zealand. During the 1970′s, she earned a degree in anthropology at the Victoria University of Wellington, and an arts degree at the Sydney College of the Arts in Sydney, Australia, where she majored in painting. Campion began making short films in the late 1970′s. One of the films, the dark comedy Tissues, resulted in her being accepted in the Australian Film and Television School in 1981. Campion’s first notable short film, Peel (1982), won the Short Film Palme d’Or award at Cannes in 1986.

Campion’s first feature film was Sweetie (1989), which she co-wrote and directed. A sharp comedy about family discord, it won several international prizes. Campion’s next film, An Angel at My Table (1990), won awards at the Toronto International Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival. It is a drama based on the autobiography of the New Zealand writer Janet Frame.

Campion’s other films include Portrait of a Lady (1996), based on a novel by the American author Henry James; Holy Smoke (1999); In the Cut (2003); Bright Star (2009), about the English poet John Keats; and The Power of the Dog (2021), for which she won a Golden Globe Award. Campion also co-wrote and co-directed the television miniseries Top of the Lake (2013).

October 27, 2015

Maureen O’Hara, one of the most glamorous movie stars of the mid 1900’s, died Saturday, October 24, at the age of 95. O’Hara was sometimes called the “Queen of Technicolor” after the patented process for making motion pictures in color. After decades of black-and-white films, O’Hara’s flaming red hair, green eyes, and flawless pale skin dazzled audiences in color films. Her on-screen presence was enhanced by the passionate, independent characters she so often portrayed. Despite the nickname, many of O’Hara’s greatest roles were in black-and-white movies.

Irish-American actress Maureen O’Hara
Credit: Kate Gabrielle (licensed under cc by 2.0)

O’Hara appeared in about 50 Hollywood films from the 1940’s through 1971, but she was never nominated for an Academy Award. She played a few more screen and television roles later in life, and, in 2014, O’Hara received an honorary Oscar in recognition of performances that “glowed with passion, warmth, and strength.”

O’Hara was born Maureen FitzSimons on Aug. 17, 1920, in Ranelagh, a suburb of Dublin, Ireland. At the age of 14, she was accepted into the acting school of the famous Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Three years later, she traveled to London to make a screen test. The test caught the attention of actor, director, and producer Charles Laughton, who cast her in the 1939 film Jamaica Inn, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Laughton also encouraged Maureen to change her name from FitzSimons to O’Hara.

After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, O’Hara moved to Hollywood. Playing alongside Laughton, she established herself as a star in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. For the next three decades, O’Hara split her career between escapist films and a few more substantial motion pictures. She became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1946, but retained her Irish citizenship.

O’Hara co-starred with John Wayne in five movies, becoming a close friend of “the Duke.” Wayne commented, “I’ve had many friends, and I prefer the company of men, except for Maureen O’Hara. She’s a great guy.” Perhaps their best-known pairing came in the romantic film The Quiet Man (1952), set in Ireland. It was one of several films she made with director John Ford, starting with the classic How Green Was My Valley (1941), set in a coal mining area of Wales. She starred with John Wayne in her last movie for Ford, The Wings of Eagles (1957).

O’Hara may be best remembered for starring in a Christmas classic replayed every season: Miracle on 34th Street, a 1947 film directed by George Seaton that “proved” the existence of Santa Claus. O’Hara retired from films in 1971, but returned to the screen in Only the Lonely (1991).

O’Hara’s autobiography ‘Tis Herself was published in 2004. In 2005, she moved back to Ireland, settling on an estate in County Cork. O’Hara returned to the United States in 2012 as her health began to fail. She died at her home in Boise, Idaho.

October 21, 2015

Today, October 21, 2015, is the future—or so it was way back when in the old days of 1989. Late in that now distant year, a movie directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Michael J. Fox captured people’s imagination: Back to the Future Part II. The first half hour of the film, which is a sequel the 1985 hit Back to the Future, features a leap forward into the year 2015—October 21, to be exact. Today. As science fiction movies have always done, Back to the Future Part II made bold (if tongue-in-cheek) predictions on what the future would look like—what we would wear, what we would eat, what we would drive. The film made a lot of other wild guesses about the future, too—or perhaps, “II”. Did any of their predictions come true?

Canadian actor Michael J. Fox portrayed time-traveling teenager Marty McFly in the Back to the Future films. © Robert Pitts, Landov

What they got right: drones walked dogs in Back to the Future Part II. Drones (or UAV‘s) are beginning to do just about everything, so that seems plausible. There are cameras everywhere in the movie, following nearly everything people do. Got that right. The film also features alternative fuel cars and large, flat-screen televisions showing multiple channels; there are video chat systems, motion sensor video games, and wearable technology—all that sound familiar?

There were some obvious swings and misses, however. Flying cars, every sci-fi movie’s favorite future thing, do not exist. They could exist, but they would be impractical. Instead, we have Google and other companies developing cars that drive themselves. That’s futuristic, right? Disappointingly, there are no hoverboards (excepting one or two concepts) in today’s world of 2015. For better or worse, lawyers have not been banished, either. Telephone booths still stand on street corners, and fax machines are stacked around the house and mounted on mailboxes in the movie. Big misses. Hardly could the film creators have imagined how the Internet and smartphones would change nearly every aspect of communication. The movie also predicted the long-suffering Chicago Cubs would win baseball’s World Series in 2015. Tantalizingly close, this too seems like a long shot at best in the real 2015. The Cubs are down 3 games to 0 to the New York Mets in the National League Championship Series. Barring a miraculous comeback, this will also be a failed prediction.

1989 was 26 years ago. How well could you predict 26 years into the future? In the year 2041, what will you be wearing? How will you get to work? Will you even need to leave home to work? What will you eat or drink, how will you communicate or play? What will your hair look like? Will you have any? There are a lot of things to think about…