moving

Our move is mostly done.  It’s mostly little crap, but with daylight gone by the time we’re done with work, it is going slow.  But I hope to have a new post up by the end of the weekend.

 

still dealing with heat and other issues

So, I am almost ready for the next post.  But my trip to Philadelphia, family visits, a trip to DC that ended up with Thomas throwing up, a return that has brought a couple of rough days for Thomas, a bad cold for me and a fever for Veronica, combined with heat that is crushing enough that I moved our mattress to the floor of the living room so we could all sleep near the air conditioner means that it is not quite ready yet.  We’ll see what the next couple of days bring, but they keep raising the high for tomorrow – it now says 100 with a heat index of 110, so I’m guessing tomorrow will not be it.

 

Christmas pictures, 2010

Christmas!

A plate all his own

 

brief delay

Bit of a backup with getting stuff done between Thomas’ birthday, Veronica’s birthday and my sister having visited for a couple of days.  More posts soon.

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture – 1941

The mining family in How Green Was My Valley (1941)

The 14th Academy Awards, for the film year 1941.  The nominations were announced on February 3, 1942 and the awards were held on February 26, 1942.

Best Picture:  How Green Was My Valley

• Citizen Kane
• The Maltese Falcon
• The Little Foxes
• Here Comes Mr. Jordan
• Suspicion
  
• Hold Back the Dawn
• One Foot in Heaven
• Sergeant York
• Blossoms in the Dust

Most Surprising Omission:  Ball of Fire

Best Eligible Film Not Nominated:  Fantasia

Rank (out of 82) Among Best Picture Years:  #57

 

Family Update

While I am dealing with a bout of the flu and haven’t been able to be at the computer long enough to post anything new, I’ll throw up a family update.

I have the flu.  Getting better.  Still not well.  The last time I had a fever this high (102) was when I had pneumonia at Thanksgiving, 1995.

Veronica is doing fine.  Her department has finished their move and she now has her own office.

We had the meeting for Thomas’ IEP.  It looks he will be staying at the same school next year, which pleases us.  It looks like he will still be a in separate classroom, but a bigger one and he will be doing a lot more mainstreaming, which, again, pleases us.

He is also doing very well at swimming lessons (one unfortunately got cut short when one of the kids pooped in the pool).  He has started singing more songs including “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and, much to Veronica’s annoyance, “The Final Countdown.”

In a couple of weeks, Thomas will be getting some cavities filled.  Because of fears of how he would react to the drilling, he will actually be put under, which fills us with apprehension, as you can imagine.  That’s on June 4, so we’ll let people know after he’s out and awake.

 

The Year in Film: 1941

My Top 10:

A perfect example of Gregg Toland's deep-focus cinematography in Citizen Kane, keeping both Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten in focus.

1. Citizen Kane
2. The Maltese Falcon
3. Fantasia
4. The Lady Eve
5. Suspicion
6. High Sierra
7. Ball of Fire
8. How Green Was My Valley
9. The Little Foxes
10. Pepe le Moko

 

Great Director #26: Sergei Eisenstein

Sergei Eisenstein

The Odessa Steps sequence of Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin (1925)

• Born: 1898
• Died: 1948
• Rank: 26
• Score: 660.10
• Feature Films: 7
• Best: The Battleship Potemkin
• Least: The General Line

Feature Films (in rank order):

1. The Battleship Potemkin – 1925
2. Ivan the Terrible Part I – 1945
3. Ivan the Terrible Part II – 1958
4. October - 1927
5. Alexander Nevsky – 1938
6. The Strike – 1924
7. The General Line – 1930

Top 10 Director Finishes (Nighthawk Awards):

• pre-1926 – 1st – The Battleship Potemkin
• 1928-1929 – 2nd – October
• 1929-1930 – 5th – The General Line
• 1939 – 6th – Alexander Nevsky
• 1947 – 4th – Ivan the Terrible Part I
• 1959 – 7th – Ivan the Terrible Part II

 

Great Director #60: Laurence Olivier

Laurence Olivier as Hamlet (1948)

Laurence Olivier

• Born: 1907
• Died: 1989
• Rank: 60
• Score: 560.00
• Awards: none for directing but countless for acting
• Nominations: Oscar (just one for directing – 11 overall and two honorary awards)
• Feature Films: 5
• Best: Henry V
• Worst: The Prince and the Showgirl

Films (in rank order):

1. Henry V – 1944
2. Hamlet – 1948
3. Richard III – 1955
4. Three Sisters – 1970
5. The Prince and the Showgirl – 1957

Top 10 Best Director finishes (Nighthawk Awards):

• 1946 – 6th – Henry V
• 1948 – 2nd – Hamlet
• 1956 – 5th – Richard III

 

Thesis

There has been some interest in reading my thesis, so here is a link to it. Thanks to my brother-in-law John for hosting it on his site. It opens as a pdf.

http://www.beck.org/erik/veronica-masters-thesis.pdf

Christmas morning pictures to follow soon.