News from the San Diego Becks

30 MARCH 2019 NOTE:  If all goes well with Netflix sending me the right movies on the 9th of April, I will have seen every film that earned more than 1 nomination from the awards I track and will put up the Year in Film sometime on the 10th or 11th followed a few days later by the Best Picture post.  If they don’t, it will probably be soon after that point anyway.

NOTE:  IF YOU WANT TO COMMENT ON THE 91ST OSCARS, PLEASE COMMENT ON THIS POST

I honestly don’t know how much I will add here.  Time and money aren’t at high availability right now and I don’t know how much I’ll be able to see in the theater over the next month or so.  I’m struggling just to get some regular posts completed.  This definitely won’t have the kind of updates I did last year.  I will try to put things in here as they come up if I can.

But, I wanted to especially provide a forum for those who comment on the awards season so they have a place to put their comments and have a discussion so that they don’t have to throw them up among comments on other (less relevant posts).

At this point, I honestly haven’t quite decided my current #1 for the year between First Man, A Star is Born or BlacKkKlansman, all three of which are quite equal in my mind.  The only categories (of the 20) which I have a clear #1 at this point are Actress (Lady Gaga), Supporting Actress (Claire Foy), Song (“Shallow”) and Animated Film (Incredibles 2).

So, feel free to make any comments about anything for the awards season.  Most comments made during the day (PST) won’t post until I get home (late evening PST) but I will approve them. (more…)

A Century of Film

Actress

Lead actresses, of course, have been a part of film since its history began and certainly since feature films began.  Indeed, Lilian Gish was the big star of D.W. Griffith, the first director who focused on American feature films.  She had already proven that while there was a definite market for sex appeal (dating all the way book to Theda Bara and continuing on through to any number of sex symbols such as Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and any number of others, with variable rates of acting return with their sexuality.  But Gish, quite distinct looking, was not particularly sexual and there was always a market for those who were not as traditionally beautiful but could act like Bette Davis or actresses who aged out of their explicit sexuality like Rosalind Russell, Katharine Hepburn, Anne Bancroft or Meryl Streep. (more…)

Surprisingly enough, there are no Knights Who Say Ni in the original Malory. Neither is there a Black Knight who says “It’s only a flesh wound”, a witch being weighed against a duck, a holy hand grenade or a killer rabbit.

My Top 10

1. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
3. Barry Lyndon
4. The Man Who Would Be King
5. Three Days of the Condor
6. Jaws
7. The Sunshine Boys
8. Hester Street
9. The Story of Adele H.
10. The Day of the Locust

note:  Originally, Hester Street was reviewed as a WGA nominee.  But, my reaction to the film bumped it up the list and it displaced French Connection II (which still gets reviewed because it was also a WGA nominee).

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