Oscar Vault Monday – Sounder, 1972 (dir. Martin Ritt)
1972 is a hard year to discuss a film that was nominated but didn’t win Best Picture considering the winner that year was The Godfather. I decided to go with Martin Ritt’s Sounder because it is almost as opposite a film from The Godfather among the other nominees. Yet, in a way it’s very similar. Both films are about the lengths one will go for family. Sounder is a drama, but in the end it’s also one of the most uplifting films I’ve ever seen. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress Cicely Tyson, Best Actor Paul Winfield and Best Picture. The other films nominated that year were Cabaret, Deliverance, The Emigrants and winner The Godfather.
Movie Quote of the Day – Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, 1980 (dir. Irvin Kershner)
Princess Leia: I love you.
Han Solo: I know.
Movie Quote of the Day – Fight Club, 1999 (dir. David Fincher)
Narrator: You met me at a very strange time in my life.
Movie Quote of the Day – Big Fish, 2003 (dir. Tim Burton)
Young Ed Bloom: Sandra Templeton, I love you and I WILL marry you.
Movie Quote of the Day – Buffy The Vampire Slayer, 1992 (dir. Fran Rubel Kuzui)
Buffy: All I want to do is graduate from high school, go to Europe, marry Christian Slater, and die. Now it may not sound too great to a sconehead like you, but I think it’s swell. And you come along and tell me I’m a member of the hairy mole club so you can throw things at me?
Movie Quote of the Day – The Shawshank Redemption, 1994 (dir. Frank Darabont)
Andy Dufresne: Get busy living, or get busy dying.
Auteur of the Week: Hiatus
The Holidays are over hectic and I am behind in full filmographies (I like to have seen all of a director’s work before I write about them), so the Auteur of the Week feature is going on hiatus for a while. It will hopefully be back in time for the New Year. You can always look through the archives here. Oscar Vault Monday, however, will continue to be posted every Monday. If you’re interested at looking at those archives, you can here. I also want to remind you that if you’re doing any shopping on Amazon for the Holidays, I’d be ever so grateful if you went through my aStore. I’ve got several categories set up (including for Auteur of the Week and Oscar Vault Monday), but you can also access your own WishList through my aStore, it’ll just give me referral credit. If you like what you read, going through my aStore is one way to show you gratitude, without costing you any extra than you already planned on spending. I hope everyone has a wonder Thanksgiving! I’ve got a Movie Quote of the Day queued up for each day that I’m gone, so check back to see what they are!
Movie Quote of the Day – Inglourious Basterds, 2009 (dir. Quentin Tarantino)
Lt. Aldo Raine: You know somethin’, Utivich? I think this just might be my masterpiece.
Movie Quote of the Day – Adventureland, 2009 (dir. Greg Mottola)
James Brenna: I’m not even qualified for manual labor. I majored in Comparative Literature and Renaissance Studies. Unless someone needs help restoring a fresco, I’m practically useless.
Oscar Vault Monday – The Red Shoes, 1948 (dir. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)
There is just so much to say about 1948’s The Red Shoes, that I just can’t cover it all. I saw this for the first time last week and I absolutely fell in love with it. I think it’s one of those films that has aged splendidly because it was so ahead of its time when it was first released. It’s about obsession and love and desire and artistic drive and feminism and just so many other things. It also contains some of the greatest art direction and cinematography of all time. It was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (won), Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (won), Oscar Best Film Editing, Best Writing – Motion Picture Story and Best Picture. It was up against Johnny Belinda, The Snake Pit, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and winner Hamlet.
the diary of a film history fanatic 