Expectations ran high for The Soloist throughout 2008. Then the film was pulled by Paramount at the last minute and bumped to an April 2009 release date giving the impression there was something wrong with the film. There isn’t. What’s wrong is the proliferation of Oscar prognosticators on the internet who build up expectations for…
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1958 was an interesting year at the Oscars. The two films now regarded as the greatest of the year, Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil were not on Oscar’s short list. Nevertheless some very good films were. Oscar chose to embrace instead, Morton Da Costa’s film of the irrepressible stage hit, Auntie…
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It’s been well over a decade since director Henry Selick enthralled audiences with The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. He’s back stronger than ever with his most ambitious project to date: Coraline. Coraline is a 3-D stop-motion animated film about a young girl who crawls through a secret door in her…
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Big was still in in 1957, but a transposed TV drama a la Marty managed to sneak in amongst the five nominees for Best Picture. Joining The Bridge on the River Kwai; Witness for the Prosecution; Peyton Place and Sayonara in the Best Picture race was Sidney Lumet’s first feature film, Twelve Angry Men based…
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If 1955’s Oscar wins for Marty flew in the face of industry moguls, 1956 was right up their alley. All five Best Picture nominees were major productions: Around the World in 80 Days; Friendly Persuasion; Giant; The King and I and The Ten Commandments. The anticipated winner was, of course, Around the World in 80…
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When motion picture exhibitors first started tracking the box office draw of movie stars in 1930, the first performer to be crowned No. 1 was not one of Hollywood’s powerful leading men or glamorous leading ladies, but a dowdy old lady with the face of a bulldog, an unlikely has-been with enormous talent and a…
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For several years Hollywood had been doing everything it could to entice customers away from their TV sets and into theatres. By 1955, films shot on location in widescreen processes and glorious Technicolor and films with mature themes that wouldn’t play on TV were commonplace. How ironic, then, that a little film shot in 35MM…
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The quality of film released in 1954 was extremely high. Even so, the Best Director and Picture Oscar and races seemed open and shut cases for Elia Kazan and On the Waterfront, and indeed the film became the first to sweep the National Board of Review, The New York Film Critics, the Golden Globes and…
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Generally regarded as one of the greatest films ever made, if not the single greatest film of all time, Yasujiro Ozu’s 1953 masterpiece, Tokyo Story, about an elderly Japanese couple making an exhausting railroad journey to visit their faraway children for the last time, met the fate of all of Ozu’s other films in the…
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There are four films eligible for Best Picture consideration in 1952 that are still highly regarded today. Two of them, The Quiet Man and High Noon, were indeed nominated. The other two, Singin’ in the Rain and Rashomon were not. The Quiet Man was John Ford’s labor of love that he tried to make for…
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It hardly seems like it’s been 35 years since Irwin Allen’s The Towering Inferno was released. The sparkling look of the film on Blu-ray makes it look like it finished filming yesterday. Only the aged visages of some of the actors in the accompanying documentaries draw attention to the passage of time, and all nine…
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The 1951 Oscar race was expected to be between two critically acclaimed dramatic films, Elia Kazan’s film of Tennessee Williams’ stage sensation, A Streetcar Named Desire with its twelve nominations and George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun, the second screen version of Theodore Dreiser’s acclaimed 1925 novel. Ultimately, however, Vincente Minnelli’s celebration of the…
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Two films about show business dominated the 1950 Oscars. Joseph L. Mankiewicz’ All About Eve, which was set in the theatre world, and Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, which was set in the film world, were both fascinating films that have endured through the years. Though both films are greatly identified with their female stars, Bette…
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Several themes dominant in the films of 1949 were recognized in year-end awards. War films, which were anathema after the war, re-emerged with a new maturity in Twelve O’Clock High; Battleground; Home of the Brave and Sands of Iwo Jima. Children in peril in The Boy With Green Hair, The Fallen Idol, The Bicycle Thief,…
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Have you always wondered how many Oscar winners had the first name James or thought to yourself you’d like to know what the first color film to win an Oscar was? Now’s your chance. While I may not have all the answers, I have many. And every week, in the Oscar Trivia posts, I will…
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