Why Marty Supreme should win the best picture Oscar

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Despite being set in the 50s, the film masterfully reflects modern-day anxieties, disconnection and obsession with nostalgia, all while reigniting interest in an unsung sport First things first: the best picture Oscar should go to Marty Supreme for the incredible job it has done in bringing new eyes to ping pong. A declining sport that has to be propped up by subsidy, this movie has single-handedly kept wiff waff alive even though no one cares about it any more. Kudos. Next, a confession. I watched this film the day it came out and haven’t seen it since*. That day also happened to be my birthday, a big birthday, and I wasn’t entirely steady when I entered the cinema that evening. I have sketchy recollections of the middle section – the bit between the bath collapsing and the plane to Japan. I also didn’t really like it much; I found it inconsequential and a bit amoral and I instantly resolved to forget the words to 4 Raws Remix (sample lyric: “my life is an opera”) as a result. Cont...
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Hugh Hudson: smash-hit pop classic Chariots of Fire director was a hero of British film

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Hudson brought an ad-man’s eye to the brilliant 1981 drama about athletics and bigotry, as well as directing the hilarious Cinzano commercials

As the 1980s dawned, British ad director Hugh Hudson took on his first feature film and made it a legendary hit: an inspirational story which supplied a sugar-rush of patriotism and a swoon of nostalgia which hit the spot both sides of the Atlantic. It somehow brought off the trick of being about the underdog and the victim of bigotry and religious discrimination – and yet also being a resounding endorsement of the status quo which could, on grounds of decency and meritocracy, always accommodate the outsider. This was the era of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and the ethos of success for the hardworking and the deserving.

The film of course was Chariots of Fire, the true story of the 1924 Olympic runners Harold Abrahams (played by Ben Cross), a Jew who ran to defy prejudice, and Eric Liddell (Ian Charleson), a devout Christian who found a creationist glory in his speed. It was the destiny of so many involved to be forever associated chiefly, or solely, with this smash-hit pop classic: certainly Cross and Charleson never again found roles to match Abrahams and Liddell. And maybe Hudson himself never again had a triumph like it: though he was no one-hit wonder, later directing the Oscar-winning Tarzan drama Greystoke, and later Revolution, an epic about the American revolution starring Al Pacino which was derided but then grew in acclaim, giving his Hudson his own misunderstood masterpiece moment.

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