News from the Boston Becks

The five Best Picture nominees for 1967: The Graduate, In the Heat of the Night, Bonnie and Clyde, Doctor Dolittle and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

The 40th Academy Awards for the film year 1967.  The nominations were announced on February 19, 1968 and the awards were held on April 10, 1968.

Best Picture:  In the Heat of the Night

• Bonnie and Clyde
• The Graduate
• Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
• Doctor Dolittle

Most Surprising Omission:  In Cold Blood

Best Eligible Film Not Nominated:  Chimes at Midnight

Rank (out of 82) of Best Picture Years:  #53 (more…)

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty as Bonnie and Clyde: They're young, they're in love and they kill people.

My Top 20:

1. Bonnie and Clyde
2. Chimes at Midnight
3. Persona
4. In the Heat of the Night
5. The Graduate
6. In Cold Blood
7. Point Blank
8. Cool Hand Luke
9. Two for the Road
10. The Exterminating Angel
11. A Fistful of Dollars
12. Elvira Madigan
13. La Guerre est Finie
14. I Live in Fear
15. The Comedians
16. The Whisperers
17. Deadly Affair
18. Barefoot in the Park
19. The Burmese Harp
20. Wait Until Dark (more…)

Note:  With me in a new job and trying to finish several posts, I am throwing up the piece I read at the Booksmith employee reading last night.  This is actually a shorter version of a longer piece.  I won’t put it in context like I did at the reading, but just put it up.  I might put up the whole piece later, but it’s much longer.

winter light

I

You must remember this.

A kiss is so much more than a kiss, everything and nothing all at once, time slipping into your soul and through your hands.  A kiss is a hope, a possibility, a step, a dream, a gift, a reach, a death, everything and nothing.  A kiss is just a kiss or so the song would have us believe.

You must remember this. (more…)

the stark blank cover used for the U.S. version of Disgrace (1999) by J.M. Coetzee published by Penguin

Disgrace

• Author:  J.M. Coetzee  (b. 1940)
• Rank:  #64
• Published:  1999
• Publisher:  Martin Secker & Warburg
• Pages:  220
• First Line:  “For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problems of sex rather well.”
• Last Line:  ” ‘Yes, I am giving him up.’ “
• ML Edition:  none
• Acclaim:  Booker Prize; The Observer “Best English-Language Novel of the Past 25 Years Outside the United States”
• Film:  2008
• First Read:  Fall, 2001 (more…)

Henry VIII (Robert Shaw) and Thomas More (Paul Scofield) discuss whether king or god comes first in A Man for All Seasons (1966)

The 39th annual Academy Awards, for the film year 1966.  The nominations were announced on February 20, 1967 and the awards were held on April 10, 1967.

Best Picture:  A Man for All Seasons

• Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
• The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming
• Alfie
• The Sand Pebbles

Most Surprising Omission:  The Professionals

Best Eligible Film Not Nominated:  The Professionals

Rank (out of 82) Among Best Picture Years:  #41 (more…)

Elizabeth Taylor and Sandy Dennis won Oscars. Richard Burton and George Segal were nominated. They all win Nighthawk Awards for the best film of 1966: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf

My Top 20:

1. Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
2. A Man for All Seasons
3. The Professionals
4. Morgan
5. Red Beard
6. Hamlet
7. The Fortune Cookie
8. Alfie
9. The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming
10. Loves of a Blonde
11. You’re a Big Boy Now
12. The Shop on Main Street
13. Cul-de-Sac
14. Blow-Up
15. Georgy Girl
16. Le Bonheur
17. A Man and a Woman
18. A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
19. 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
20. The Sleeping Car Murders (more…)

The crazy summer is finally over, and we are hopeful that life will be slowing down and falling into place over the next couple of weeks.

The biggest challenge of the summer comes from Thomas being out of school. Unfortunately I found a wonderful camp for him after it was already full. He ended up attending the Arlington Summer Session, but that was only six weeks, three hours a day, four days a week. So we had several weeks at the front and back end of summer to fill. The person we had lined up to watch him just didn’t work out, so Erik ended up rearranging his work schedule significantly and I took a few days off as well. Thankfully school is started up again, and Thomas is adjusting to being a 1st grader. He is currently placed in a Supported Learning Center classroom, but he’s had integration into a mainstream classroom everyday so far and he will be receiving the mainstream classroom’s homework assignments. Another new feature of this year is that he will be taking the bus one day a week. (more…)

the Penguin 20th Century Classics cover of Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter (1948)

The Heart of the Matter

• Author:  Graham Greene  (1904  -  1991)
• Rank:  #65
• Published:  1948
• Publisher:  William Heinemann
• Pages:  272
• First Line:  “Wilson sat on the balcony of the Bedford Hotel with bald pink knees thrust against the ironwork.”
• Last Lines:  “Father Rank said, ‘It may seem an odd thing to say – when a man’s as wrong as he was – but I think, from what I saw of him, that he really loved God.’  She had denied just now that she felt any bitterness, but a little more of it drained out now like tears from exhausted ducts.  ‘He certainly loved no one else,’ she said.  ‘And you may be in the right of it there too,’ Father Rank replied.”
• ML Edition:  none
• Acclaim:  James Tait Black Memorial Prize, All-TIME List, Modern Library Top 100 English Language Novels of the 20th Century – #40
• Film:  1953  (***.5)
• First Read:  Fall, 1999 (more…)

Julie Andrews singing one of the few songs in The Sound of Music (1965) that doesn't make me want to slam my head into a wall

The 38th annual Academy Awards, for the film year 1965.  The nominations were announced on February 21, 1966 and the awards were held on April 18, 1966.

Best Picture:  The Sound of Music

• Doctor Zhivago
• Darling
• A Thousand Clowns
• Ship of Fools

Most Surprising Omission:  The Collector

Best Eligible Film Not Nominated:  The Pawnbroker

Rank (out of 82) Among Best Picture Years:  #63 (more…)

Omar Sharif and Alec Guinness as the half-brothers in David Lean's Doctor Zhivago (1965)

My Top 20:

1. Doctor Zhivago
2. The Pawnbroker
3. Repulsion
4. The Collector
5. Darling
6. King Rat
7. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
8. Othello
9. Thunderball
10. Simon of the Desert
11. A Thousand Clowns
12. Major Dundee
13. Kwaidan
14. The Hill
15. Viva Maria
16. The Train
17. Help
18. The Ipcress File
19. Red Desert
20. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (more…)