Two more films which a voter didn’t see end up at the bottom with Danton coming in last with 8 points and The Sign of the Cross just above it with 9. Everyone submitted votes on the remaining six with Spartacus and The Scarlet Pimpernel tying in a lowly 5th place with 11 points each. Intolerance‘s 12 points puts it in fourth place three points below The Fourth Feathers. The top two vote-getters were separated by only one point. A Tale of Two Cities came in second with 19 and Gunga Din took the top spot with 20. Gunga Din goes into my queue. I will receive it next week to be watched that subsequent weekend and reviewed in The Morning After to be posted on May 2 (due to a backlog, I may not be able to get the review posted by that time).
Here’s the deal: every week, I will be calling for suggestions of films to be added to my Netflix queue. Each person makes one suggestion and one alternate (in case I have seen one of your suggestions). The next week, when I call for new suggestions, we begin a one-week voting period to select the film to be placed immediately into my Netflix queue to be reviewed the weekend after (because I’ll already have my Netflix queue selections for the coming weekend). Then, you’ll find out what I thought in my weekly Morning After feature on Monday morning.
Sometimes a genre gets stuck in the rotation and it makes for a rough viewing schedule. Starting this week, I’m going to be asking for suggestions that fit a specific genre so each week can be a bit spicy. The genre or event listed each week will be posted at the end of this post.
To help decide what to pick, here is a list of what I’ve seen (or at least that I have personally logged).
Full List of Films I’ve Seen (updated through 3/10/11; a small number of titles may be missing still)
Here’s what you need to post today (and through next Wednesday):
Below, please provide your suggestions to add to my Netflix queue.
Next, please rate each of the following entries in order of preference. Item 1 will be most preferred, 2 next most preferred and so forth.
It’s strange you guys both mention that Best Picture nominees is a broad category. You can toss 83 of the nominees right away since I’ve seen all the winners. And while it’s not that scientific, back when I wasn’t doing categories, I would add a pair of Best Picture nominees from randomly chosen years to the mix and 99% of the time, they weren’t highly recommended, so there can’t be that many Best Picture nominees worth viewing.
It’s not that they aren’t worth viewing, Wesley. It’s that they were in high competition with much better films we all recommended instead. I like the movie Wilson (for example) fine enough, but it was nothing compared to Dog Day Afternoon or The Seven Samurai that were also choices that week. But you’re The Oscar Guy, so you should be watching all of the nominees anyway, without our enthusiasm.
Recommendations:
Born on the 4th of July (1989)
Z (1969)
Preference:
1. Annie Get Your Gun (A-)
2. On the Town (A-)
3. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (B+)
4. The King & I (B+)
5. Damn Yankees (B)
6. South Pacific (D+)
In August of ’09, a friend of mine started a blog called Matt vs. The Academy. His purpose was to watch every film nominated for Best Picture. It started out with 465 films to see that has since grown to 485. I decided to tag along with him and to offer alternative commentary. So far 130 nominees have been watched. It has been a good project for me because there were many older nominees that I either hadn’t seen or had watched a very long time ago.
My point here is that it has reinforced my opinion that The Academy on the whole has nominated some of very fine American films over the years, and I believe there are more worth viewing than you may think.
That said, and not to sound contradictory, there are also many genre films, with little or no Academy credentials that are equally worth seeing.
I know I should be watching, Mike F, but so very little time and right now, I’ve been consumed with a lot of other work, including a stint on the OFCS Governing Committee, so I don’t get more than this film watched each week usually (and a new release also). I do my best and right now, we’re prepping a series on the Supporting Actress winners for the site, so that takes precedence and my goal is really to watch every Oscar winning film (excluding foreign, documentary and short categories) at some point. It takes a very long time admittedly. I’ll never be finished, but this game does help.
Great idea, Mike! Out of the 485 nominated films for best picture, I have yet to see:
The Way of All Flesh (which I believe is unobtainable and lost for good)
The Racket (which I have in my possession)
The Patriot
East Lynne
and The White Parade
All were nominated before 1935. Sometimes I get so jealous that people have so many great movies to look forward to for the first time. I’m only 30 years old and I have seen just under 15,000 films, but I’m not even close to running out of new choices. Thankfully we have so many to chose from.
Thanks, Mike. That is some accomplishment you have made. I’m enjoying the process. There are a good number of old nominees I’ve never seen, and frankly any film more than ten years old that I’ve seen only once, will seem almost like a first viewing for me. The most recent nominee that I’ve never seen is 1972s The Emigrants.
Turner Classic Movies recently aired an archive show called Fragments. There were short pieces of lost films, one of which was The Way of All Flesh. It was fascinating seeing the 10 minutes or so of that film. For one of your missing films, East Lynne, Matt (the guy running the blog) stopped by UCLA’s Film & TV Archives to see it. From what he reported, it was pretty melodramatic. I got to see The Racket from that same Academy year earlier this year.
Wes, you have some catching up to do, and I applaud your efforts. Like you Mike, I’ve probably seen around 15000 films during my 63 years, but I’d venture a guess that Peter’s got us all beat by a hefty margin.
Anyway, I have a copy of East Lynne which is missing the last reel. It’s not very good. I also have The Racket and recently obtained copies of two early acting nominees I thought I’d never see, The Patent Leather Kid (a good one) and A Ship Comes In (a creaky melodrama).
Peter, How does one find copies of The Patent Leather Kid and A Ship Comes In? I’m having trouble locating The Constant Nymph, The Bold and the Brave and so many early acting nominees: The Barker, The Valiant, Berkeley Square, Private Worlds, Escape Me Never, The Big Pond, The Trespasser, The Noose, Sorrell and Son, The Letter (Jeanne Eagels), Condemned, The Rogue Song, Sarah and Son, The Devil’s Holiday and Valiant Is the Word for Carrie.
Mike, I caught Fragments on TCM as well and was very happy to see what they could salvage from The Way of All Flesh. I don’t know what I would do without Turner Classic Movies.
There are companies that specialize in old movies which are thought to be in the pubic domain. I got The Patent Leather Kid and A Ship Comes in from Scooter Movies Shop. I got excellent copies of Private Worlds and Sarah and Son as well as a number of other long missing titles from Vintage Film Buff, which has the best picture quality of these small companies and the fastest service. The Bold and the Brave is available in Region 2 (U.K.) and have everything on your list except The Noose (which hasn;t popped up anywhere); The Barker, Sorrell and Son, The Tresspasser and The Rogue Song, all of which I believe are lost and The Big Pond and Escape Me Never which are avialbale but I just haven’t gotten around to. The copy I have of The Constant Nymph is pretty bad but a restored version from Warner Bros. is supposedly in the works.
I agree with Peter that Best Picture Nominees is a huge category and like he suggested, perhaps should be further narrowed. Another possibility is to revisit this category perhaps once every month.
Since I was the one to suggest On the Town and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, I’ll defend them by suggesting that using Academy Award nominations or wins, or having a Broadway pedigree as a yardstick, sometimes can be a disservice.
Personally, I’ve never had that much enthusiasm for South Pacific (the film or the stage production), despite being a big fan of Rogers and Hammerstein. This doesn’t extend, however, to The King and I, which I would place between my picks. On the Town’s score isn’t really the reason to see it. It’s the innovative way that the singing, dancing and story combined that makes it a must see in my opinion. As for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, it is just unique, and should be seen at some point, if now right now (which really can be said about everyone’s recommendations. At this early stage, the films suggested are pretty much all stellar).
Best Picture Nominees:
1. Great Expectations (1947)
2. All the President’s Men (1976)
For the Queue
1. On the Town
2. The King and I
3. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
4. South Pacific
5. Damn Yankees
6. Annie Get Your Gun
I can’t in all honesty recommend On the Town and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg to someone who has not yet seen what are probably four of the six greatest Broadway musicals of all time, all of which were made into memorable films, and all of which he should make a point of seeing forthwith.
I know you’ve seen My Fair Lady and the definitive 1936 version of Show Boat is not available at Netflix, so in the order in which I would recommend them:
The King and I, which was nominated for nine Academy Awards and won five, is actually more faithful to the real events surroundign Anna Leonowens and King Mongkut than either the Irene Dunne-Rex Harrison Anna and the King of Siam or the Joie Foster-Chow Yun Fat remake, though of course the real life characters didn’t sing their hearts out to Rodgers & Hammerstein’s thrilling score.
South Pacific, which was nominated for a measly three Academy Awards and won just one, had the misforutne to be up against the then much revered Gigi. The film is marred somewhat by the garish color filters Joshua Logan made Leon Shamroy put over the camera during some of the musical numbers but it’s a minor complaint.
Annie Get Your Gun, which was nominated for four Oscars and won one, was held from home video by Irving Berlin’s estate for many years because Berlin didn’t like the film version. It’s a pity, because practically everyone else does.
Damn Yankees, which was nominated for one measly Oscar, had the misfortune of going up against both Gigi and South Pacific, but is a marvelous production nonetheless.
New recommendations for Best Picture nominees:
Previous Best Picture is such a daunting category. Perhaps it should be limited to a particular decade. Anyway, here are two which I previously recommended:
David Copperfield (1935)
A Tale of Two Cities (1936)
Two more films which a voter didn’t see end up at the bottom with Danton coming in last with 8 points and The Sign of the Cross just above it with 9. Everyone submitted votes on the remaining six with Spartacus and The Scarlet Pimpernel tying in a lowly 5th place with 11 points each. Intolerance‘s 12 points puts it in fourth place three points below The Fourth Feathers. The top two vote-getters were separated by only one point. A Tale of Two Cities came in second with 19 and Gunga Din took the top spot with 20. Gunga Din goes into my queue. I will receive it next week to be watched that subsequent weekend and reviewed in The Morning After to be posted on May 2 (due to a backlog, I may not be able to get the review posted by that time).
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