The 31 Days of Oscar Blogathon is an event coinciding with Turner Classic Movies' "31 Days of Oscar" month-long celebration, in observance of the Academy Awards. In both events, the theme is the same: recognition of Oscar-nominated films throughout history. The blogathon is hosted by Once Upon a Screen, Outspoken & Freckled, and Paula's Cinema Club. See the links above for a list of participating blogs.
Alright, alright, youse mugs, gather 'round! Hey! You two in the back! Quit playin' pool and get over here! Whaddya think this is, a country club? Alright, now listen up, 'cause I ain't gonna tell ya twice! Some o' youse know what this is all about - Muggsy, Rocco, Jimmy, Tony, you guys been in on it from the start. But as for the rest o' you mutts, here it is: we're gonna pull off a heist, see? An' this ain't gonna be no ordinary score, neither. This is more important than money. Pack yer bags, boys - we're goin' to Hollywood!
See this? This is a map o' the vault for the Academy o' Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This is where they keep the Oscars, see? Those Academy guys been runnin' the Oscar racket a long time, givin' all them little gold men to them mooks in the picture shows. But they messed up, see? There's one guy they never gave an Oscar to. Never even nominated him for one! So we're gonna do what shoulda been done a long time ago!
We're gonna steal the Oscars for Edward G. Robinson!
What? O' course I know he's dead, ya friggin' mutt! He's been dead for years! That ain't the point! The point is those Academy bums ripped him off, see? Yeah! Those guys think they're such big shots. Every year, they hand out them Oscars like candy canes to whoever they think are the best, an' yet they never even nominated one o' the greatest actors who ever stepped in front of a camera! And don't tell me about that honorary Oscar they gave him, either! Nobody remembers rinky-dink awards like that!
What's the big deal? Rocco, all of a sudden I don't trust these mugs youse guys put together for this job! Anybody that don't know what makes Eddie G such a great actor don't belong in my crew - or for that matter, in life! But I'll explain it to youse bums, 'cause I need every man I can get!
Everybody knew Eddie G as the gangster's gangster: Little Caesar and movies like that. They helped put him on top. They made him big! But there was more t' him than that, see? Yeah! He could do comedy, he could do romance! He did film noir, sci-fi, even Westerns! Yeah, he could mix it up with other tough guys like Bogey, but he could give ya the soft soap too, when he wanted to! And he worked with great directors: Ford, Lang, Wilder, DeMille, big shots! I'm tellin' ya, he could do it all, and it didn't even matter than he wasn't a pretty boy like friggin' Cary Grant or somethin'!
He was one of us, boys! An' that's why we gotta steal the Oscars for him - 'cause they stole from him first!
Now my guys here been arguin' 'bout which o' Eddie's performances deserves the Oscar the most. Muggsy thinks he shoulda won for Key Largo. And why not? It's the best movie he and Bogey ever made together! In the 30s, Eddie was the star and Bogey was the second fiddle, but then Bogey became a star too. But it sure didn't change what the two o' them had together on screen! I tell ya, boys, I could watch this one all day. That part at the end, when they're on the boat - forget about it!
And then Rocco keeps sayin' he shoulda won for Double Indemnity. I can see that, too. He's a tough-talkin' mug in that one, but he's also the good guy! I know, I know, but it's okay, see, 'cause in that one he's real smart - I mean razor-friggin'-sharp - and he keeps that sexy broad and her sap of a boyfriend on their toes! They don't know if they can get away with their murder job or not, and that's what makes the whole thing great to watch!
But Tony here, he likes pictures like The Woman in the Window. That's where you get Eddie the romantic. He falls for a broad who was in a painting, and yeah, there's some sappy, lovey-dovey stuff, but he kills a man in it too! And there's blackmail and other good stuff like that in it too! I'm tellin' ya, boys, when ya see him in a movie like this, it's like he's a different fella altogether! It's unbelievable!
And then there's Jimmy. He likes Eddie in comedies, like The Whole Town's Talking. This is one I really go for 'cause he plays two different people in the same friggin' movie! One o' them's a mug, but the other's a wimpy regular guy - and he gets took for the mug 'cause they look alike, see? Yeah, I know, what are the odds o' two mugs lookin' like Eddie G, but so what? I laugh my head off every time I see this one!
Me, I don't care either way. There are lotsa movies he coulda won the Oscar for. That's why I'm in this for as many o' them little gold men as I can get my hands on, see? Yeah! We're gonna teach them Academy bums a lesson they'll never forget once this job is through! Any questions?
Huh?
No, ya friggin' mook, them Bugs Bunny cartoons don't count!
Next: Rita Moreno
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Movies by Edward G. Robinson:
Double Indemnity
Scarlet Street
Previously in this series:
Jack Lemmon
Jean Arthur
The Buster Keaton Blogathon is an event saluting the silent film superstar, hosted by Silent-ology. For a list of participating bloggers, visit the link to the site.
Steamboat Bill Jr.
seen online via YouTube
In the spirit of this blogathon devoted to silent film, I'm going to attempt to make this a "silent" post, i.e., images only, intercutting stills from the film with pictures that will more or less represent my thoughts on it. To sum it up, I didn't think the film was that great until the final act. Hope this works...
No fancy introduction this year; let's just get right down to it...
So far, the new format seems to be going over well. The pageview numbers are roughly comparable with what they were before the Switch, and the announcement of the CinemaScope Blogathon generated a whole lot of interest. Thanks once again on behalf of Becky and myself to everyone who's joining us for that next month.
Among the stuff to look forward to this month will include another venture into the hullaballoo that is the #TCMparty on Twitter, only this time I'll devote a post exclusively to my experience with it, which will be a first. I have a tentative idea which film to watch. It's one that I'm quite familiar with, so dividing my time between my TV and my cellphone shouldn't be much of a problem. As I've talked about before in this space, I'm still not convinced that live-tweeting a film is a habit I'd want to obtain, but I can't deny its popularity, and it certainly can be fun - in the absence of watching with real live people.
The Top 10 for 2014 should be ready, if not this week, then next week. At this point, the only movies I still haven't seen which could affect my selection (and that I wanna see, of course) are Still Alice and A Most Violent Year. I hope to get to the latter, at the very least. Also, I'll post my Oscar predictions and a brief post-Oscar recap.
I've already started sharing excerpts from my novel with my writing group and I'd say they like it. One guy said, in all seriousness, that I should start thinking about getting an agent because he's convinced it's marketable. I don't know about that. It's a sports novel, and from what I've read, sports novels are a rare and tiny niche. But it's also a tragic love story, so there's that too.
Regardless, I'm well over 40,000 words at this stage and it's a slow, uphill climb. I'm impatient about it because I want the writing part to end so I can start revising, and a lot of times, I'm paralyzed by the lack of words coming to mind. What I'll do - something I learned during NaNoWriMo but didn't apply to my own writing until now - is that I'll write a generic description of what it is that's supposed to go in a certain paragraph and highlight it in red. Then, when it comes time to revise, I can go back and fill it in with the necessary detail. That has helped me a lot.
Your links for this month:
Speaking of Bill Murray, did you know about the other sci-fi film he made in 1984 - the one that never got released? Allow Will to elucidate.
Raquel reflects on the death of a loved one through a Lionel Barrymore film.
The Lady Eve saw The Godfather with a live orchestra.
Monstergirl has a really weird-sounding Gothic horror flick about a girl school with some funny business going on.
Don't think I've ever mentioned The Hollywood Revue before, so I'll do so now. Here, Angela reviews a new book about epic filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille.
My new favorite movie blog title is Cary Grant Won't Eat You. And the blog is pretty good, too. Here, the author laments that comedic acting remains unappreciated at the Oscars, using The Grand Budapest Hotel's Ralph Fiennes as a case study.
In last week's new release roundup, I linked to my report on a second-run Forest Hills theater that gambled on American Sniper to save them from extinction. I'm proud to say that they gambled and won.
Great article about the Loew's Wonder Theaters (including the Loew's Jersey City), then and now.
Are kids' adventure movies on the wane?
Finally, the issue of Newtown Literary with my short story "Airplanes" is now available for the Kindle.
Throughout 2015, I'll confine my posts about new releases to a once-a-month roundup. These will be shorter, and will read more like reviews for the most part than usual.
- Big Eyes. Before the Japanese anime and manga craze made big-eyed art popular to a new generation, there were Walter and Margaret Keane. The latest from Tim Burton tells the bizarre true story of how Walter used Margaret's paintings of big-eyed waifs to make a name for himself and how she found the strength to break away from him and reclaim her artwork. I liked it, but Christoph Waltz as Walter seemed way too over-the-top to me, to the point where it seemed like he was in a different movie, though Vija, whom I saw this with, was willing to concede that maybe he really was like that. Hard to believe, though, if true. Amy Adams was terrific, as usual.
I found it fascinating that the big-eyes art was thought of, even in its day, as "kitsch" by critics, yet the movie makes it clear that it meant something significant to Margaret, even if she couldn't put her finger on what - and it meant something to all the people who ate it up. Once again, like in Birdman and Top Five, we see this disconnect between art and criticism playing out in recent movies.
- Mr. Turner. I remember learning about the late 18th-early 19th century English painter J.M.W. Turner in art school, and liking his work, but I never knew anything about the man himself. Mike Leigh's film about him gives me an idea, but I'm not entirely sure how much is fact and how much is the result of Leigh's unique improvisational method of crafting a screenplay.
I suppose it shouldn't matter in the long run, but I felt more emotionally detached from this movie than others that he's done. Beautiful cinematography, nice set design and period costumes, and a rather... unique and immersive performance from Timothy Spall, but the whole thing left me cold in the end. One big difference between this and Big Eyes is that Spall, an actual visual artist, actually looks like he's painting for real and is filmed accordingly, as opposed to Amy Adams, who you can tell is only pretending for the camera. Well, I can tell, anyway.
I was supposed to see this with Vija too, but she was sick that day. She saw it on her own and later, she told me that she saw the film as a metaphor for the British Empire during that period, which I thought was a remarkable interpretation.
- American Sniper. Yet another 11th-hour surprise from Clint Eastwood, this movie is really touching a nerve in America. How else to explain its jaw-dropping $105.3 million four-day weekend? I'm thinking this movie might win Best Picture.
You know the story by now: Chris Kyle, allegedly the most prolific sniper in US military history; four tours in Iraq; killed by an ex-soldier with PTSD that he was trying to help. I think it's finally time for me to stop underestimating Bradley Cooper, because he was quite good in the role. That said, I didn't think this movie had anything that new or different to say about the undeclared war in Iraq or the military, at least nothing that would garner all the success that it has enjoyed. It's a true story, I know, but it relies on familiar war cliches: the training sequence, the revenge killing for a fallen comrade, the long-suffering wife (who has very little to do here other than be a long-suffering wife). Plus, I found it difficult to look at this and not think of The Hurt Locker, which was a work of fiction, but was a better told story. And then there's the matter of how much the movie version of Kyle deviates from the real thing. It's not bad, but it doesn't scream Best Picture to me at all.
Check out my Tumblr page to read about my experience seeing Sniper at a local theater gambling on this movie in order to survive.
- Two Days, One Night. In this flick about corporate downsizing, Oscar nominee Marion Cotillard needs to convince her co-workers to support her in getting her job back. Guess how long she has to do it in. Belgian auteurs Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne shot this "Dogme 95" style, meaning handheld cameras, location shooting, no score (though I don't think they're officially part of the Dogme movement). Cotillard is very good, looking about as un-glamorous and ordinary as an international movie star can look and still be believable. I'm glad she got nominated, though I think I liked her a little bit better in her other 2014 film, The Immigrant. I don't think Vija was as sold on the premise as I was. She seemed lukewarm about the movie as a whole. I admit it didn't blow me away either, but I think it's worth watching.
Thoughts?
The Miriam Hopkins Blogathon is an event devoted to the actress, hosted by Silver Screenings and A Small Press Life. For a complete list of participating bloggers, visit the links at either site.
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A bit of explanation for the newbies: City Mouse is a cartoon character I created in 2008 when I was living in Ohio and have since brought over to WSW more or less intact. Click on the label "cartoons" over in the sidebar if you wanna see more.
I wasn't planning on taking this approach for this post, but the truth is that I wasn't able to get a hold of The Smiling Lieutenant. Someone on Netflix had checked it out (I know, right?) and I couldn't wait for it to return, so I put this together two days ago, based on the one scene from the movie available on YouTube.
Donna and Sophie are supporting characters in the strip who like old movies too. This is their solo debut.
