Oscar Vault Monday – L.A. Confidential, 1997 (dir. Curtis Hanson)
This film is one of the all-time great ensembles out there. It features stellar performances from so many great actors. It also is so wonderfully stylized, from the costumes to the sets to Jerry Goldsmith’s phenomenal score. The film was nominated for 9 Academy Awards in 1997. Although it lost Best Picture to Titanic, Kim Basinger walked away with the Best Supporting Actress award as did the Adapted Screenplay by Brian Helgeland and Curtis Hanson.
Oscar Vault Monday – The Color Purple, 1985 (dir. Steven Spielberg)
This movie is absolutely fantastic. I’ve seen it numerous times and I am moved by it every time. It’s full of wonderful performances and delivers a powerful message. It was nominated for a whopping 11 Oscars and went home completely empty handed, losing Best Picture to Sydney Pollack’s Out of Africa.
Oscar Vault Monday – Quiz Show, 1994 (dir. Robert Redford)
I’m going to try to discuss one past Oscar nominated and/or winning film each Monday. For my inaugural edition of this feature, I bring you the 1994 historical drama Quiz Show.
Buy CinemaFanatic!
I’ve got a new Amazon Affiliate store set up: http://astore.amazon.com/cinefana-20
If you plan on buying any of the movies I’ve got listed, howsabout buying em from my store? It’lll be a win-win.
I have a page, which you can see on the sidebar, set up with the link to the store – so you can reference it from any of my posts.
I also plan on setting up special sections for certain posts that feature many films. I’ve already done this with all of my 20 years of ___ nominees series. Each page has a link to a store that features the films I discussed in the posts.
An Ode to TCM
Sorry I’ve been m.i.a. since the Oscars. I’ve been having some problems at work. Long story short work’s no longer a problem, so I’m back. I’ve got a few posts related to film in 2010 that I want to post, but I’ve got to flesh them out a little before I post them.
However, today I spent quite a bit of time watching Turner Classic Movies. They had an amazing line-up today. I’d recommend all four of the films I watched today, but each one for very different reasons.
The first film I watched was Some Like It Hot. I’ve seen this film numerous times. It is definitely one of the absolute funniest films of all time. Billy Wilder truly is a genius.
The Oscar Locker – The Results of the 82nd Academy Awards Are In
I ended up getting 18/24 categories right, which is one of my best years of predicting in awhile. For the most part I am very happy with the results of tonight’s ceremony. Really the biggest disappointment for me was Sandy over Meryl. Someday will be Meryl’s day again, I just know it.
But boy was it Kathryn Bigelow’s night. Two Oscars in five minutes and one glass ceiling shattered forever.
2009 Academy Awards – Final Predictions
Alright you guys, I’m sorry I haven’t updated in awhile, life’s gotten a bit stressful. That being said THE OSCARS are tomorrow. This has been one of the most stressful awards seasons since I started following the Oscars all those years ago. These are my final predictions and, as always, I’ll be live-blogging the show on my tumblr. So here goes nothing.
Let’s Not Forget About Lee Daniels
With all this talk about Kathryn Bigelow being only the 4th woman to be nominated for Best Director and the first woman to win at the DGA, I think we’ve forgotten that Lee Daniels has been making history, too. I watched an interview with him today on KTLA, wherein he said he sobbed when he heard he was nominated for the DGA. Apparently, he is the first black man to be up for the honor. He’s also only the second black man to be nominated for Best Director (John Singleton was up for the honor for 1991’s Boyz n the Hood). He is also only the third black producer up for the Best Picture award (this year, there are two black nominees, the only previous nominee was Quincy Jones for The Color Purple in 1985) Also, this is the first time a film directed by a black man has been nominated for Best Picture.
(500) Days of Summer and 9 Other Great Films the Academy Completely Ignored This Decade
I was really shocked that (500) Days of Summer was completely ignored by the Academy this year. It was on several critic’s top ten lists. It had won several critic awards for its screenplay. I really thought, at the very least, it would get nods for Original Screenplay and Editing (hello, that Expectations vs. Reality scene was fucking awesome). I even had it on my predictions for Best Picture.
Alas, this was not the case and was probably, for me, the biggest disappoint of Tuesday’s announcements. However, this is not the first time an amazing piece of cinema has gone completely un-lauded by the Academy. I’ve picked one film from each year of this past decade that also has zero Oscar nominations to its name.
Jeremy Renner and the Best Actor Race
I’ve yet to see A Single Man or Crazy Heart, mostly due to living in the middle of nowhere, and thus can only comment on the three performances I have seen. I enjoyed George Clooney in Up In The Air, but he was better in Michael Clayton. My opinion on Morgan Freeman in Invictus will come up later on in this post. That leaves Jeremy Renner in The Hurt Locker. And of the three I’ve seen, he has my vote. It’ll be a difficult race for him, but I think he has a chance of pulling it off. He had perhaps my favorite reaction to his nomination when interviewed on Good Morning America yesterday. When asked about his competition, he replied, “I’ve gotta break some serious legs.”
the diary of a film history fanatic 