I WANT TO LIVE!: And I want to believe!

Susan Hayward picked up the Best Actress Oscar at the 1959 awards for playing real life convicted murderer Barbara Graham.

Graham had been executed 4 years earlier in the gas chamber at San Quentin for the killing of a crippled woman during a robbery, and her case became something of a cause celebre as lawyers and journalists battled in vain to save her, arguing an innocent woman was being put to death.
Barbara Graham wanted to live!
And I wanted to believe! Oh god how I wanted to believe in Hayward's portrayal.
But I couldn't. I just couldn't.
I can understand how the part caught the attention of Academy voters. All the histrionics, the wailing and the beating of fists against the wall which proceeded the out-of-control partying, drinking and petty crime simply scream Oscar nomination.
Any self respecting actress would grab at the chance to play this sleazy, slutty, amoral, good-time girl rushing headlong from one bad decision to the next and unleashing a full range of emotions. It just shrieks "LOOK AT ME!! I'M PLAYING AGAINST TYPE! SEE MY RANGE!! I'M A REAL AC-TRESS!!!
So why do Oscar and me part ways?
Because despite all the histrionics and the gusto with which Miss Hayward dives into the part, I didn't find her convincing in the least.
It's not so much that she struggles to force her facial muscles to convey any kind of genuine emotion, nor is it the fact that she doesn't age at all despite the passage of time and the ordeal she undergoes (which are enough to drop a few pounds and add a few wrinkles on any normal human being).
It's her hair that ruined the illusion for me.
Her hair does not change or move at all for the entire duration of the movie. It's the same style and length at the start, when she's living it up with sailors on leave at a party in San Francisco, as it is at the very end when she's living three feet from the door of the gas chamber.
She has a lot of hair so it's impossible not to notice it. 
To convincingly play a part like Barbara Graham there has to be a few concessions to the ravages of time and the United States legal system. The thing with their hair says to me, here is an actress who didn't want it enough to mess up her hairdo, to cut it short or colour it or even wear a wig.
This is an actress who believed she could persuade us by sheer force of personality.
And she was right.
The Academy bought it. They believed Miss Hayward gave a better performance than Elizabeth Taylor ("Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"), Deborah Kerr (in "Separate Tables"), Shirley MacLaine (in "Some Came Running") or Rosalind Russell (in "Auntie Mame").
That's the real crime committed in I WANT TO LIVE! And unlike the evidence against Graham, which the film would have us believe was shaky at best, the proof is indisputable, sitting right in front of us on Susan Hayward's head!

THIS IS IT: the way he made me feel

I must beg to differ with Dame Elizabeth Taylor's tweeted review of THIS IS IT. It is not "the single most brilliant piece of filmmaking" I have ever seen. Nor is it worthy of Oscar nominations "in every conceivable category." It is however an engrossing and entertaining tribute to Michael Jackson's incredible talent as a performer.
THIS IS IT is the show we never got to see. Culled from more than a hundred hours of video footage of the Los Angeles rehearsals earlier this year for his planned farewell show in London, it portrays Jackson as an entertainer still at the top of game despite having turning fifty and endured years of ridicule for his off-stage behaviour. Rightly or wrongly those lurid stories of his private life suddenly seem small and irrelevant when watching him on stage breathing new life into classics like "Billie Jean", "I Just Can't Stop Loving You", "The Way You Make Me Feel", "Black or White", "Beat It" and, of course, "Thriller." It's impossible to top the John Landis directed 1983 video for the latter and wisely Jackson and show director Kenny Ortega don't try, opting instead for a reimagining which combines 3D video with live action.
Lavish though the new "Thriller" routine is, for me the highlight of THIS IS IT is "Smooth Criminal" which blends a film noir mini-movie starring Jackson alongside Rita Hayworth, Humphrey Bogart and Edward G Robinson with punchy on-stage choreography.
Cut through all of the speculation about Jackson's motivations for his comeback and whether he was fit enough to handle the demands of a 50 show run and one thing is very clear; "This Is It" (the show) certainly wouldn't have been a cynical minimum effort maximum profit stroll through Jackson's greatest hits. THIS IS IT (the film) proves that Jackson intended it to be bigger and more spectacular than anything he'd done before and that he was completely involved in aspect of the production, and the music in particular. He's polite but demanding with the musicians as he directs them to create exactly the same sounds that he's imagining.
Much has been written since Jackson's death about the state of his health during these rehearsals with some claiming he was obviously unwell and others countering that he was in excellent health. From the evidence presented in THIS IS IT he looks thin, particularly when compared with the lithe and muscular dancers surrounding him, most of whom are 25 - 30 years younger, but he doesn't display any problems in matching them move for move. Admittedly he doesn't participate in their pirouettes and backflips but that's not his job. He sings and dances his way through numerous routines without appearing out of breath which is considerably more than most 50 year old men can manage.
It would be wrong to suggest that THIS IS IT offers irrefutable evidence that all the bad things that have been said about Jackson's final days are wrong. This is a carefully crafted tribute to a recently departed superstar by those who were working with him at the very end and who very obviously revered him. It is not a warts n'all or fly on the wall documentary. Jackson is always "on" and, consequently, there's nothing which even approaches an unguarded moment. It's not a concert movie either but rather a valuable record of a work-in-progress. It's fascinating to watch Jackson and Ortega putting together the routines and I enjoyed the opportunity to hear the songs performed live without interruption from screaming fans, and without endless shots of besotted fans waving their arms in the air and singing along.

I admit that Jackson's death in June left me largely unmoved. I liked his music and I'd been lucky enough to see him live in concert in London in 1997, but I found the outpouring of grief overblown and hysterical. People seem to have lost all sense of proportion and forgotten all the bad stuff, I thought. THIS IS IT reminded me of just how much great music he created, and in the long run, that is what we will remember when we think of Michael Jackson.