The Nighthawk Awards: 1942

Veronica Lake and Joel McCrea in one of the great comedies of all-time: Sullivan’s Travels.

You can read more about this year in film here.  The Best Picture race is discussed here, with reviews of all the nominees.  First there are the categories, followed by all the films with their nominations, then the Globes, where I split the major awards by Drama and Comedy, followed by a few lists at the very end.  If there’s a film you expected to see and didn’t, check the very bottom – it might be eligible in a different year.  Films in red won the Oscar in that category.  Films in blue were nominated.  The Academy’s only change was to go from Scoring of a Dramatic Picture to Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. Sullivan’s Travels
2. Bambi
3. Yankee Doodle Dandy
4. The Magnificent Ambersons
5. To Be or Not to Be

Analysis:  Just like in 1941, my Top 5 are all **** films and my #6 (in this case The Palm Beach Story) is a ***.5 film.

 

RCM: Battlestar Galactica

This is the poster I remember so well because it was also the cover of the novelization.

Revisiting Childhood Movies Part VII

Battlestar Galactica

• Director:  Richard Colla
• Writer:  Glen A. Larson
• Producer:  John Dykstra  /  Glen A. Larson
• Stars:  Richard Hatch, Dirk Benedict, Lorne Greene, Maren Jensen, Herbert Jefferson Jr, John Colicos
• Studio:  Universal
• Award Nominations:  none from groups I track
• Length:  125 min
• Genre:  Sci-Fi
• MPAA Rating:  PG
• Release Date:  18 May 1979
• Box Office Gross:  unknown
• My Rating:  ***
• My Rank:  #47  (year)
• Nighthawk Nominations:  Best Original Score
• Nighthawk Notable:  Best Guilty Pleasure
• First Watched:  on television
• Number of Times Watched as a Kid:  20+

 

The Nighthawk Awards: 1941

Just read pages 360-62 of Kavalier and Clay and that says it all.

You can read more about this year in film here.  The Best Picture race is discussed here, with reviews of all the nominees.  First there are the categories, followed by all the films with their nominations, then the Globes, where I split the major awards by Drama and Comedy, followed by a few lists at the very end.  If there’s a film you expected to see and didn’t, check the very bottom – it might be eligible in a different year.  Films in red won the Oscar in that category.  Films in blue were nominated.  The Academy made only one change in this year, but it was a needed one – changing the two Score categories from Score and Original Score to Scoring of a Dramatic Picture and Scoring of a Musical Picture.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. Citizen Kane
2. The Maltese Falcon
3. Fantasia
4. The Lady Eve
5. The Little Foxes

Analysis:  This is, in a sense, precisely how it should be – all five of these films are **** films and the next one on the list (High Sierra) isn’t.  It kills me, though, that The Maltese Falcon has to be in the same year as Citizen Kane.  They’ll be more on that down under points.

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture – 2013

What will prove to be stronger? The power of hatred or the will to live?

The 86th annual Academy Awards, for the film year 2013.  The nominations were announced on 16 January 2014 and the awards were held on 2 March 2014.

Best Picture:  12 Years a Slave

• Gravity
• The Wolf of Wall Street
• American Hustle
• Nebraska
• Philomena
• Her
• Captain Phillips
• Dallas Buyers Club

Most Surprising Omission:  Inside Llewyn Davis

Best Eligible Film Not Nominated:  Inside Llewyn Davis

Rank (out of 86) Among Best Picture Years:  #8

note:  If they had nominated Inside Llewyn Davis instead of Dallas Buyers Club, this year would have been #3.

 

The Year in Film: 2013

I always knew Alfonso had this film in him. I never knew Sandra had this performance in her.

My Top 20:

1. Gravity
2. The Wolf of Wall Street
3. Inside Llewyn Davis
4. American Hustle
5. Nebraska
6. Philomena
7. 12 Years a Slave
8. Blue is the Warmest Color
9. Her
10. Blue Jasmine
11. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
12. Frozen
13. Wadjda
14. Prisoners
15. The Hunt
16. August: Osage County
17. The World’s End
18. In a World . . .
19. Captain Phillips
20. I’m So Excited

note:  There are only three films from this year that I haven’t seen that I have any expectation might eventually make it into my Top 20: The Wind Rises, The Past and The Great Beauty.

 

The Nighthawk Awards: 1940

“Joad got out and stood beside the cab window. The vertical exhaust pipe puttered up its barely visible blue smoke. Joad leaned toward the driver. ‘Homicide,’ he said quickly.”

You can read more about this year in film here.  The Best Picture race is discussed here, with reviews of all the nominees.  First there are the categories, followed by all the films with their nominations, then the Globes, where I split the major awards by Drama and Comedy, followed by a few lists at the very end.  If there’s a film you expected to see and didn’t, check the very bottom – it might be eligible in a different year.  Films in red won the Oscar in that category.  Films in blue were nominated.  The Academy added two categories this year.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. The Grapes of Wrath
2. Rebecca
3. The Philadelphia Story
4. The Great Dictator
5. His Girl Friday

 

Great Read: The Great Train Robbery

Sociology, history and a thrilling real crime all wrapped together with pure Crichton entertainment.

The Great Train Robbery

• Author:  Michael Crichton  (1942 – 2008)
• Published:  1975
• Publisher:  Knopf
• Pages:  281
• First Line:  “Forty minutes out of London, passing through the rolling green fields and cherry orchards of Kent, the morning train of the South Eastern Railway attained its maximum speed of fifty-four miles an hour.”
• Last Line:  “The money from The Great Train Robbery was never recovered.”
• Film:  1979  (*** – dir. Michael Crichton)
• First Read:  Spring 1993