The move returned Crystal, arguably the best Oscar host of the modern era, back where he belongs. And the imbroglio following former show producer Brett Ratner’s vile anti-gay comments seemed forgotten, if but for a moment.

Turns out the public may not be eager to forget that the dust up ever happened.

A new poll commissioned by The Hollywood Reporter reveals viewers wish Murphy were still hosting the event.

Market research firm Penn Schoen Berland surveyed 510 awards-show viewers aged 13 to 59 and compared the results against similar surveys about Murphy and 2011 hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway.

In head-to-head competition, Murphy is the choice of 58 percent of viewers, compared with Crystal’s 42 percent … and African-Americans are more than 2½ times less likely to watch Crystal.

One note of consequence from the pollster – Crystal’s appeal “is significantly older, female and conservative.”

Crystal is no Charlton Heston, or even Jon Voight. The comedian doesn’t insult conservatives or their values while hosting the Oscar telecast. He simply puts on a grand show and lets the movies share the spotlight.

Brian Grazer to Produce, Billy Crystal to Host Academy Awards

Oh, how I love me some Eddie Murphy for sticking it to the Academy.

But you have to hand it to them; they rallied and fast. Brian Grazer is a very respected and accomplished producer, and the only possible guest host that could’ve bailed these nitwits out of this mess is the universally beloved Billy Crystal. So in just one day the Oscar telecast went from the rock-n-roll promised in the team of Ratner and Murphy to the old-school class promised by Grazer and Crystal.

Quite stupidly, for years now, the Academy has been trying to skew “young” in order to prop up their cratering ratings. But this is the very reason why the telecast has been so dismal. Anne Hathaway and James Franco? Let’s hope that the return of Crystal proves through the ratings that class is the real key to a successful telecast.

After all, we all love Billy Crystal; he’s very much the Bob Hope of our time. On the other hand, Jon Stewart, David Letterman, Whoopi Goldberg and Alec Baldwin are divisive partisans over 50% of the country can’t stand.

We win.

Opening Tomorrow With Predictions

Weekend Forecast (Nov. 11-13)
1. Jack and Jill – $25.5 million
2. Puss in Boots – $22.1 million (-33%)
3. Immortals – $20.5 million
4. Tower Heist – $14 million (-42%)
5. J. Edgar – $11.5 million

I don’t make predictions because I suck at them, but “J. Edgar” opening that low on over 1900 screens does not bode well.

Anyway, like the rest of America, I love Adam Sandler, and I really love Adam Sandler when he teams up with director Dennis Dugan… but I don’t know about this one. This is one of those trailers I watch and just know it’s either going to be a complete miss or a minor comedic masterpiece. The Pacino scenes do look as though they might become the stuff of legend and quoted down through the ages.

—–

—–

SCOTTD’S EPIC LINK-TACULAR

FLASHBACK: GLAAD VS. KEVIN SMITH

MGM PURCHASES SCRIPT ADAPTATION OF YOUNG ADULT NOVEL ‘KILLER PIZZA‘

AN EARLY LOOK AT RIAN JOHNSON’S ‘LOOPER,’ STARRING BRUCE WILLIS

‘SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE’ ACTOR ANIL KAPOOR TO STAR IN AND PRODUCE INDIAN VERSION OF ‘24‘

JENNIFER SAUNDERS TO WRITE ‘ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS’ MOVIE

CELEBRATING 30 YEARS OF ‘AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON’…

…AND CELEBRATING 60 YEARS OF ‘A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE‘

14 VARIATIONS ON MARILYN MONROE

CABLE COMPANIES TO OFFER $9.99 BROADBAND TO LOW-INCOME HOUSEHOLDS

20 OF TELEVISION’S BEST ONE-SEASON VILLAINS

THE 10 WORST MOVIES ABOUT GREEK MYTHOLOGY

25 FACTS ABOUT ‘BLUE VELVET‘

—–

—–

LAST NIGHT’S SCREENING

West Side Story (1961) -- Going to write a proper review of the Blu-ray, but for now let’s just leave it at… wow.

—–

—–

CLASSIC PICK FOR FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 11

TCM:

10pm EST: The Americanization of Emily (1964) – A British war widow falls for an opportunistic American sailor during World War II. D: Arthur Hiller. Starring: James Garner, Julie Andrews, James Coburn.

I’m currently about 20 pages away from finishing James Garner’s just-released and superb autobiography “The Garner Files,” and I wasn’t surprised at all to learn that the role of proud coward Charles Madison is his favorite. Written by three-time Oscar winner Paddy Chayefsky –”Marty” (1955), “The Hospital” (1971), and “Network” (1976) — this brilliant and brilliantly complicated anti-war film (which is beautifully filmed to boot) offers Garner one fantastic scene after another — my personal favorite (and Garner’s) being this unforgettable explanation of his personal manifesto.

The tension Chayefsky adds to the scene with the mentioning of the wife is the work of a genius.

You can argue with the politics of the film (though I don’t think it’s as simple of an anti-war film as even Garner makes it out to be) but not the brilliance. If memory serves, William Holden was the first choice for the role but for some reason it didn’t work out. Of course, Holden would’ve been good, but not as good as Garner. Holden’s entire persona is one of cynicism, and those words wouldn’t have been so shocking coming out of his mouth. Clean-cut, amiable, Garner is a different story.

--Please send tips/suggestions/requests/complaints to jnolte@breitbart.com

Crystal agreed to host the annual Oscars telecast today, making it the ninth time he’ll emcee film’s biggest night.

Hosting the Oscars may be the toughest gig in Hollywood – next to doing PR for Charlie Sheen – but Crystal makes it look easy. He even accepted the assignment in style, Tweeting a funny line about why he said yes:

“Am doing the Oscars so the young woman in the pharmacy will stop asking my name when I pick up my prescriptions,” Crystal said in a tweet, confirmed by an Academy spokeswoman. “Looking forward to the show,” he said.

Good start, indeed. Maybe if he’s on his game we’ll forget all about why he got the job in the first place.

The problems with last night’s show were legion, and much of the media agrees that what we might’ve witnessed could well rate as the worst  Oscar telecast ever.  My memory isn’t good enough to say that for sure, but that the show was dreadful isn’t in dispute and while a post-mortem isn’t what this write-up is about, I will say that James Franco’s arrogant, sleepy, cooler-than-thou attitude that forced the usually delightful Anne Hathaway to over-compensate with the cute factor, was only half the problem. The other half was in the producing (and writing). This was a horribly produced three-plus hours. But rather than complain further, I’m going to offer constructive suggestions. No one cares what I think. I get that. But I’m going to offer them anyway.

1. The Host

The host is crucial, not only to the success of the overall show but also to the ratings. The cynical grab of Franco and Hathaway in an effort to attract younger voters was beyond stupid. Neither is a standalone box office draw, neither has captured America’s imagination, and both are inter-changeable as a dozen or so other actors in that same age range. I hate to tell Hollywood this, but (and the ratings back me up) young people aren’t stupid. They really don’t want to “watch people their own age” host the Oscars. Like the rest of us, they want to watch a good show. Upon hearing Franco and Hathaway were hosting this year, even the squealiest of teenagers was likely as confused  by that choice as the rest of us.

There’s two ways to go with a host.

 You make the Oscar telecast the host’s show —  The Billy Crystal Show or the The Johnny Carson Show or The Whoever Show. Whoever the host is, the Oscars should become their program. When Johnny Carson or Crystal hosted, our affection for them was one of the main reasons we tuned in and kept watching. We couldn’t wait for them to return to the podium between awards and quip on what just happened or extend a running joke. Now it seems as though we have a host for the first half hour before the program dissolves into a structure-less hodgepodge of famous faces and various awards. It actually feels more and more out of place when the hosts appear closer to the end of the show.  

Or…

Find an Ed Sullivan to take us through the evening. Instead of a bad variety show with truly awful comedy writing and musical numbers, have a steady, warm, familiar, charismatic figure glide us through the evening. Ed Sullivan wasn’t an entertainer and yet Americans young and old tuned in because Americans young and old liked Ed. Rather than demand our host perform (and risk the ever-increasing likelihood of a flop), have him or her serve as our guide for the night, walking us through the various awards. Morgan Freeman would be perfect for this. America loves him, he’s classy,  has a wry sense of humor, a warm presence, and who wouldn’t want to spend a few hours with Morgan Freeman?

How about TCM’s Robert Osbourne? Or Ellen Degeneres?

2. Structure

A well-structured show that actually feels like it’s building towards something will solve a ton of problems. There might well be some sort of structure in place now, but we in the audience can’t sense or feel it. As it stands now, the show feels episodic, messy and plodding. There’s no rhyme or reason as to how the three-plus hours unfold: a big award! an obscure award! a song! Celine Dion sings for the dead! What the hell is that about? Structure is KEY to making a successful film or television show, to telling any kind of story, and someone needs to grab all the disparate elements involved in the yearly Oscar giveaway and turn them into a cohesive whole that gives the audience a sense of momentum.

3. Pacing

For years, and for good reason, people complained about the length of the telecast and the pacing. But from where I sit, the remedy applied to this problem has been exactly the wrong one. Speeches are truncated, songs are shortened, and the show feels hurried in too many places. Cutting and trimming is not an instant cure for pacing. “Gone With the Wind” is nearly four hours long but if you cut an hour out of it, you’ll hurt the pacing because the story is so well-told and perfectly — here comes that word again — structured.

The Academy Awards don’t lag because the show is too long, the Academy Awards lag because the show sucks. Stop worrying about time and worry more about compartmentalizing each segment of the telecast and making them better. Last night no one spoke longer than Kirk Douglas and yet no one was bored. We couldn’t get enough of him. He was charming and funny and we adore the guy. I would’ve also liked to have seen a longer and more dignified tribute to Lena Horne. With an eye towards allowing the audience to make an emotional connection to Ms. Horne, to miss her and appreciate her and feel the loss of this great talent — as opposed to rushing Halle Berry off the stage — the moment could’ve been a truly memorable one.

Shorter isn’t better. Better produced segments is better. Making each segment an individual gem is better. Lena Horne deserved a gem.  

4. Suspense

I’m not sure what the Academy can do about this but the biggest bummer, the biggest drag on the show every year, is a numbing lack of suspense. Who wins should not be a foregone conclusion, and this is a problem that only feels like it’s getting worse.  What we have now are favorites always emerging from the abundance of awards shows that come before the Oscars and an avalanche of media prognosticators in the entertainment press who know a lot of people in Hollywood and can get the lay of the land as far as who’s voting for whom.

Sitting through a poorly paced, poorly structured show awaiting the inevitable is never fun.

Maybe people just need to shut up about who they’re voting for?

5. Watch the Super Bowl

Year after year, ratings for the Super Bowl embarrass the Academy Awards. Over 100 million people tune in to watch a game involving teams other than their own. There’s a reason for this. Watch and figure out what that reason is. Structure and suspense certainly helps, but there’s more to it than that. People love football. People love the movies. The Academy Awards shouldn’t get less than half the viewership the Super Bowl does. Crack that code.

6. Create Traditions

What the Oscars need most are a few traditions, four or five can’t-miss annual events that we can count on during each and every telecast. The Super Bowl is brilliant at this, from their opening reading of the Declaration of Independence to the big deal made out of the half-time show to the awarding of the Lombardi Trophy. Create some beloved traditions and your audience will come.

Perhaps…

7. More Magic Through the Use of Nostalgia

Hollywood needs to honor its past more. Right now that happens during the program in spots, but again the structure is such a mess and the pace so hurried that these moments always feel shoehorned and  perfunctory — like the Academy can’t wait to get them out of the way. Slow down! Take us back, move us, make us cry, remind us why we fell in love with the movies in the first place. Last night, one of the most memorable moments was simply hearing the “Star Wars” theme. But again, by the time I turned my head to watch it was over.

Furthermore, and no one wants to admit this, it’s just a fact that today’s movie stars are lacking in all the qualities that made The Greats great. There’s a reason a 95 year-old Kirk Douglas can steal the show and the sight of a digital Bob Hope puts a smile on our face James Franco never could. The Academy can make up for the lack of star-power today and our lack of affection for most of today’s stars by mining the rich legacy of their past.

8. A Smart Producer

The Oscars need a producer familiar with taking nothing and creating a story or at least a crafting some sort of narrative with some kind of momentum. Reality show producer Mark Burnett would be an excellent choice. His entire career has been built around crafting narratives and a sense of momentum from practically nothing. I appreciate that you want “A SHOW!” so let Burnett be the Executive Producer who crafts the structure and let him hire the Bob Fosse needed to bring the pizazz.

9. Bring Back Billy Crystal

Just do it already.

10. Start with Class and Stop Thinking Outside the Box

Go back and watch the best reviewed and most beloved telecasts.

Rinse, wash, repeat…

The world hasn’t changed all that much. You have.

Because I think I don’t have a dog in the hunt, I check out what people are wearing. Eyeing the men crowding the streets of Cairo, I realize what Goodwill did with Billy Crystal’s old sweaters.

Look, I can’t tell if these events are a good thing. And I’m inherently suspicious of any stateside protests that erupt so quickly with ready-made signs. I also don’t embrace revolution for the sake of revolution. I assume Mubarak is far from a great guy, but I’m not sure his replacement will be any better. And I can’t help getting spooked by the name, “Muslim Brotherhood.” It sounds like a prison gang from Oz.

(I have a feeling they don’t like Israel. Or us, either.)

And some of the commentary kills me. We have climate change alarmists linking unrest to global warming, which makes me want to throw up repeatedly, on climate change alarmists.

But they’re half right. Rising food prices do make people angry. And food prices are going up – since we’re turning corn into ethanol, instead of chowder. That’s surely the fault of climate change, or more precisely, climate change alarmists.

But my guess is, this revolution arrived via four things: Mubarak fatigue, a crummy way of life, an ever present radicalism waiting in the wings, a timid west.

But like you I want a quick, peaceful resolution to this. I’m old enough to remember Iran in 1979, and I’m still ticked off by the Iran of two years ago. In the former, Carter watched a Shah get replaced by a psycho. And in 2009, Obama watched a golden moment for real change slip by. If we had done something about that uprising, maybe this one might be different.

Or at least better than the Pro Bowl.

Tonight:

Mike Baker!

Mary Katherine Hamm!

Ryan Reiss!

will replay the entire B block from Friday, at end of this show!

Treated most dismissively most of all are the men, whose every move is scrutinized by what can only be described as bitchy women. It’s the logical corollary of feminism. If women must rule, then men must suck. Men cannot be seen as nurturing. Working men cannot be seen as liking anything more than guns or beer.

And so, then, it is refreshing that Pixar chooses to depict everyday workers as they really are – human – even if it is as lovable one-eyed green and big, blue furry monsters. The working stiffs of Monsters City have soft hearts and pursue love and friendship, with each other.

These monsters populate a city that looks very much New York circa 1920 and work in a power plant that looks an awful lot like Homer Simpson’s. You see, their city, like Hartford, CT, the insurance capital of America, is a city built on fear – specifically the fear of children, whose screams power their city. Those screams have become dimmer and less powerful because children have become tougher and tougher to scare, culminating in a veritable energy crisis for the monsters.

Enter Sulley and Mike, two professional scarers and best friends, who seek to beat arch-rival, Randall, as the all-time scarer of children.

But Randall doesn’t want to win fairly. He’s in league with the boss, Mr. Waternoose, to kidnap children, who, they can presumably scare forever. One such child is Boo, a human child, who Randall winds up losing, and who quickly befriends Sulley. Far from contaminating the monsters’ world as was feared, Boo gives Sulley the gift of a child’s love, providing the drama: Will Sulley choose his career with the company over a child he just met?

It says a lot about Sulley that he chooses the child over his profession and takes responsibility for protecting her. Indeed, he and friend, Mike, go out and expose the company for its sinister practices. In turn, they are rewarded, with ownership of the company, suggesting that there is a kind of justice to doing what it is right.

Conservatives, quick to ignore any film that is ostensibly anti-business, should delve a bit deeper into this one. The film never indulges in the kind of quasi-Marxist “power to the works,” nor does it denigrate hard work. Sulley, the best worker, is portrayed as doing anything and everything for his company, so long as it squares with the moral order. His boss, admitting that he would steal thousands of children to meet his energy quotas, betrays Sulley and his company, and so, loses his claim to keeping it.

The company turns over to Sulley and Mike, who learn from Boo that laughter, nor fear, is the best source of energy. The innovators are rewarded; the cheaters are defeated. And rather than dwell on conservation or some such other environmental nonsense, the film suggests that we should preserve our way of life and that we can preserve it if we keep our humanity by choosing what is right.

Pixar has promised a sequel, slated for 2011. Here’s hoping it lives up to the first. This being Pixar, it might actually happen.

Looking back at The Karate Kid (1984), which turned twenty-five years old this week, a thought keeps recurring.

Wow. . . Avildsen made it work twice.

John G. Avildsen is, in some ways, a director of little distinction when compared with well-known marquee names like Spielberg, Scorsese, Nolan, and Tarantino. The vast majority of his movies are utterly forgotten by the average filmgoer — indeed, he’s been nominated for Worst Director at The Razzies three times. And yet, like Victor Fleming decades earlier with his twin successes The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind (both 1939 — read a great recent article on Fleming here), Avildsen has twice punched way above his weight, netting himself an Oscar for Best Director and giving birth to some of the most memorable moments in motion picture history.

His first triumph, made on a shoestring budget and a scant few weeks of shooting time, was a little picture called Rocky (1976). He had no money, no stars, no amazing effects, and yet Avildsen used camera, music, and editing to craft scenes of immense power and impact. Has there ever been a film, before or since, that ends on a more rousing wave of uplift? That takes such pains to create identification and empathy with its wide array of characters? That more patiently or expertly builds up to its cataclysmic swell of emotion? That has the guts and sense of timing to fade to black at the exact peak, frustrating our desire to know what happens next even as it leaves us too blissful to care?

Rocky did all of that and much more, and despite its fight scenes now looking like slow-mo hokum compared to the MMA-style mayhem that now rules on TV, it remains the most memorable and effective boxing film ever made. That’s really saying something, given the immense amount of solid competition the genre boasts.

But as other directors began ineptly looting and mimicking Avildsen’s style and innovations, it looked as if everything that made Rocky great would quickly become so cliché as to make a repeat impossible. We all know that sinking feeling when we begin perceiving the clunky wheels of the typical “Hollywood sports plot” turning — that excruciatingly slow crawl towards the utterly predictable final showdown, where the very last seconds of a contest are shamelessly milked until the hero finally hits the last shot/punch/goal/basket. Even the Rocky sequels couldn’t escape these pitfalls, and it would be hard to blame an audience for glumly concluding that Avildsen’s 1976 artistic triumph had spoiled the sports movie for all time.

So who would have guessed that, eight years later, Avildsen would essentially pull off the same trick again? How on earth did he once again make a Rocky-style plot arc work, without the end result becoming a pale pastiche?

He achieved this feat in large part by turning everything we remember from Rocky on its head. Ralph Macchio’s Daniel Larusso is played not as a thickheaded lummox, but as a fast-thinking, bone-skinny teen whose nasal Jersey whine sounds more like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer than Sylvester Stallone. He’s neither a down-and-out fighter with his best years behind him, nor is he looking to “go the limit” to prove something profound to himself. He’s just a kid at the very beginning of his adult life, who for most of the film limits his ambition to simply not getting beat up. Similarly, Elizabeth Shue’s Ali Mills is light years away from Talia Shire’s Adrian Pennino: rich instead of poor, charming rather than an ugly duckling, sociable not shy. And Pat Morita’s unforgettable Mr. Miyagi isn’t washed up or pathetically ambitious like Burgess Meredith’s Mickey Goldmill — he’s the very epitome of contentment and balance and wisdom.

Rocky achieved its verisimilitude with generous dollops of grime, rust, blood and profanity, whereas The Karate Kid is notable for its relative wholesomeness (note how Elizabeth Shue even wears a one-piece swimsuit to the beach instead of the obligatory teen-movie bikini). The music marks yet another telling departure. Rocky’s iconic score, by Bill Conti, was a mix of 1970s funk, heroic brass, and a choir acting as a Greek chorus, all combined into a sonic brew that still ranks as one of the most recognizable and rousing in film history. For The Karate Kid, Conti was once again brought in as the composer. But this time, in between pop songs like Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer,” he chose a light mix of delicate strings, only occasionally allowing them to burst forth into full orchestral splendor. For the training montage, Conti completely eschews Rocky’s reliance on trumpeting brass and instead opts for the lonely skirling of Gheorghe Zamfir’s pan flute, creating a more spiritual and intimate vibe.

Avildsen’s camera, for its part, is probing and observant, often making excellent use of telephoto lenses to highlight what would otherwise be a missed reaction or expression. He achieves true poetry in the training scenes: on the beach among the circling cranes, on the lake amidst glittering golden waters, and even in the fights and strategies that pulse through the climactic tournament. He also warred with the studio when necessary to protect certain crucial scenes, such as the one where a drunken Miyagi reveals his service in WWII to Daniel. That one adds a whole new layer of depth to what was already a touching and authentic relationship, and yet the studio wanted it cut, deeming it superfluous.

On top of all that, the excellent screenplay by Robert Mark Kamen (who distinguished himself more recently by penning the immensely satisfying kidnap flick Taken) consistently leads Avildsen down novel paths. The teen villains of the story (portrayed by, among others, Steve McQueen’s son Chad and Elizabeth Shue’s brother Andrew) are refreshingly human, at times even gaining our sympathy. Unlike the usual faceless, gormless teens in Hollywood fare, this group is delineated exceedingly well, and remain recognizable as individuals even when hiding behind Ray Harryhausen-esque skeleton makeup in a genuinely chilling night scene. Kamen fleshed out his bad guys so well that the Cobra Kais, led outside the dojo by actor William Zabka’s smirking blond-haired bad boy Johnny Lawrence, now have a sizable fan following among Karate Kid aficionados. One admirer even made a clever YouTube re-edit of the final fight so that Johnny wins:

Meanwhile, a band called No More Kings has made a song about the redemption of Johnny called “Sweep the Leg,” with a fun “Karate Kid continuation” music video written and directed by Zabka himself:

In interviews, Zabka has expressed pleasant surprise that The Karate Kid remains so alive in the popular culture, calling it a “sacred film” and noting that there are even Cobra Kai bowling teams out there. It’s enough to convince me that The Karate Kid II should have been all about Miyagi reforming the Cobra Kais, slowly rehabilitating them into good guys.

In so many ways, Avildsen’s 1984 film is courageous in the way it deviates from the instantly recognizable Rocky formula. How strong must the pressure have been on Avildsen to make the easy, safe choices, mimicking his earlier masterpiece in every detail? His resistance to those impulses does him credit, and hence to dismiss The Karate Kid as a mere Rocky clone is to do it an injustice.

But if there is one overriding secret to the success of The Karate Kid, it is the transcendent performance of Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi. In 1984, most Americans still conceived of the East, at least in cinematic terms, as a mystical wonderland of Kung-Fu magic and swordplay. Hong Kong directors like Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, John Woo, Tsui Hark, and Ringo Lam were only beginning to create the explosion of masterful, modernized pictures that would eventually change the entire way the world looked at Asians on film. It’s hard to remember how utterly fresh a character like Mr. Miyagi was to 1984 audiences, completely unexposed as they were to the renaissance happening in Hong Kong. Fully fleshed out, with a compelling backstory and potent motivations, he was written as charmingly colloquial and disheveled, a character who could consistently shatter the stereotype of the “magic Asian” to raucously humorous effect.

Almost always in American cinema — to this day — Asian protagonists are depicted as cardboard caricatures at best and laughingstocks at worst. Avildsen rejected the initial front-runner for the part of Miyagi — the great Japanese actor Toshirô Mifune — and instead bet his entire film on the talents of a thoroughly Americanized stand-up comedian, one who in his salad days used to bill himself in comedy clubs as “the Hip Nip.” Comedians have a strangely robust record of shining in good dramatic roles — think Robin Williams, Bill Murray, Jim Carrey, Tom Hanks, Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, et al. — and they often manage to strike a solid balance between laughs and drama. Morita did exactly that in The Karate Kid: affecting just the right Japanese accent, leavening his character’s power and seriousness with just enough comedy, and always figuring out ways to make you laugh with Miyagi instead of at him.

If you haven’t seen The Karate Kid in awhile, you’re in for a treat — Mr. Miyagi was no fluke, he remains one of the most winning characters in the history of cinema. It was the role of a lifetime for Morita, who garnered a well-deserved Oscar nomination (as it happened, he lost that year to Haing S. Ngor in The Killing Fields, who himself became the first Asian to win an acting Oscar). Any number of others would have played Miyagi as either an embarrassing joke or an irremediably grim Samurai grandmaster. But in his every glare, mannerism, and pose, Morita elevates the character into a veritable Gandalf. Look closely at the scene when he bows gravely to a shocked Daniel (who has just discovered that his hated chores were actually important lessons), or when towards the end he smacks his hands together with such orchestra-enhanced thunder that the audience jumps. In those moments The Karate Kid — so often seen as an also-ran and afterthought to Rocky — breaks away from that film’s orbit and soars free all on its own.

So Avildsen pulled it off not once, but twice — I still can’t believe it. And if he never makes another great movie, he can still sit back and rest easy, secure in the knowledge that two of the very best fight pictures ever made have his name on them. That he did both of them on such low budgets should give hope to conservative filmmakers who assume liberal Hollywood will never give them a chance. There is nothing in The Karate Kid that couldn’t be accomplished on a micro-budget — all you would need is the gumption to dream up the script.

But will anyone take on the challenge, as Avildsen did those many years ago? Only time will tell. Until then: wax on, wax off. . . wax on, wax off. . . .