A Century of Film: Miramax / The Weinstein Company

A Century of Film

Miramax  /  The Weinstein Company

The Studio

Some forty years ago, long before one brother sank beneath the weight of his other brother’s sexual crimes, there were Bob and Harvey Weinstein.  Though they were from New York City, they had been successful with a rock promotion business in Buffalo during the seventies.  But their passion for films won them over and began a small, independent distribution business that they named after their parents Miriam and Max.

 

A Century of Film: Action Films

A Century of Film

Action Films

The Genre

For a lot of people (and for me when I originally broke things into genres after first starting to track all of my movies back in 1989), this would be considered Action-Adventure.  And if that were the case, there would be a long, complex history going back to the early days of film history and the total numbers would be close to those of Horror or Musicals.  However, that’s not the case.  For me, an Action film centers around the action itself while for the most part Adventure films center around a journey of some sort.  But they crossed paths along the way.  Going forward, by 1959, Action was in dead last as a genre for total films but Adventure was in sixth place.  But, since then, Action is the fourth highest genre and Adventure is among the five lowest.

 

A Century of Film: Best Original Screenplay

A Century of Film

Original Screenplay

It’s a bit difficult to write the history of original screenplays on film.  First of all, it’s been hard to determine, a lot of times, over the years, if a film truly is original or not.  When the old oscars.org site existed they listed films by a source author which was really helpful for determining if something was adapted or not but not perfect as sometimes the “source” was just a screen story or an idea.  There were also occasions where they didn’t list anything, the same way that sometimes the IMDb or Wikipedia don’t list a source material and I end up considering something original until someone points out that it’s not.

 

The History of the Academy Awards: Best Picture – 2019

If this doesn’t look like a fun night with the family you should see what happens to them later in the film.

The 91st annual Academy Awards, for the film year 2019.  The nominations were announced on 13 January 2020 and the awards were held on 16 February 2020.

Best Picture:  Parasite

• Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
• Little Women
• 1917
• Jojo Rabbit
• Marriage Story
• Ford v Ferrari
• The Irishman
• Joker

Most Surprising Omission:  The Two Popes

Best Eligible Film Not Nominated:  Pain and Glory

Rank (out of 92) Among Best Picture Years:  #21

 

The Year in Film: 2019

First of all, it’s the best performance of the year and it’s from the best film of the year. Second of all, as a straight male, I provide enough for the straight males on this site and thought a picture for those who aren’t straight males would be a treat.

My Top 20

1. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
2. Little Women
3. 1917
4. Jojo Rabbit
5. Pain and Glory
6. Parasite
7. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
8. Knives Out
9. Rocketman
10. Marriage Story
11. Toy Story 4
12. Us
13. Avengers: Endgame
14. The Farewell
15. The Irishman
16. Ford v Ferrari
17. Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
18. The Man Who Killed don Quixote
19. Dolemite is My Name
20. Spider-Man: Far From Home

These are all **** films and they are all the **** films for the year (though I haven’t seen Les Miserables).

 

The Academy embraces nihilism (and other assorted Oscar trivia)

Sorry, Greta. Kathryn Bigelow knows how you feel.  Plus, you made history in other ways.

Well, I only got four categories completely correct in my predictions but they were major ones (Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Actress, Supporting Actress).  Sadly, I didn’t get Director, thinking the Academy would embrace Greta Gerwig’s triumph rather than Todd Phillips’ appalling nihilism (to spare questions in the comments, I think Joker is a bad film for reasons that will eventually be posted in the review, so please don’t ask, but have to do with its quality rather than its idiotic use of the Batman mythos and its wholesale nihilism).  Well, this is the same branch of morons who passed over Christopher Nolan when he did Batman right, Nolan again, Kathryn Bigelow when she won the Consensus and Ben Affleck when he won everything else.  So, let’s bypass the quality of the films for now and move on to the trivia.

 

Best Adapted Screenplay: 1997

A primer on great screenwriting: using characters as they existed in the book but doing what you have to do to compress the story and get it to come out right on scene. In other words, there is no scene like this in the book.

My Top 10

1. L.A. Confidential
2. The Sweet Hereafter
3. The Ice Storm
4. Jackie Brown
5. Oscar and Lucinda
6. The Wings of the Dove
7. Wag the Dog
8. Donnie Brasco
9. Absolute Power
10. The Winter Guest

note:  A great Top 5 and very good Top 10.  My list continues down at the bottom.

 

2019 award season notes

PLEASE READ THE NOTE AT THE BOTTOM ABOUT FUTURE POSTS AND COMMENTING AFTER THE OSCARS

This is starting earlier than ever and there are several people to blame for that.

• Me.
• Disney
• F.T.
• MUAHSG
• Comic Book Resources

I’ll get to all of those in a minute.  But I’ll reiterate what I have done the past few years.  This post will go up now and whenever I update it, I will post it “sticky” so that it goes to the top of the blog (though that’s not a repost and I don’t know how that works with notifications).  Anything major that I want to make certain people read (usually having to do with comments or an announcement) I’ll stick in bold at the top.  And a reminder that all comments have to be approved so just sit tight after you post and I’ll get to them (it takes longer on workdays).

 

The Nighthawk Awards: 2009

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 (or Globe, in the Globes section).  Films in blue were nominated.  Films (or directors) in olive are links to earlier posts that I don’t want to have show up in blue and be mistaken for a nominee.  Films with an asterisk (*) were Consensus nominees (a scale I put together based on the various awards) while those with a double asterisk (**) were the Consensus winners.

I’m listing the top 15 in the categories but only the top 5 earn Nighthawk nominations.  I’m only going with the Top 15 because there are 15 **** films and several categories don’t even get that far.  It’s a weak year all around.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. Inglourious Basterds  *
2. The Hurt Locker  **
3. A Serious Man  *
4. Up  *
5. Broken Embraces
6. An Education  *
7. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
8. Up in the Air  *
9. A Single Man
10. District 9  *
11. The White Ribbon
12. The Informant
13. Sin Nombre
14. Coraline
15. Revanche

Analysis:  As mentioned above, I went with 15 films because that’s how many **** films there are in this year.  That the Oscars nominated seven of them (as well as my #16 film, Precious) speaks well of their first year with 10 nominees in 66 years.

 

The Nighthawk Awards: 2004

The DiCaprio side of the DiCaprio-Scorsese collaborations takes a quantum leap.

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 (or Globe, in the Globes section).  Films in blue were nominated.  Films (or directors) in olive are links to earlier posts that I don’t want to have show up in blue and be mistaken for a nominee.  Films with an asterisk (*) were Consensus nominees (a scale I put together based on the various awards) while those with a double asterisk (**) were the Consensus winners.

I’m listing the top 20 in the categories but only the top 5 earn Nighthawk nominations.

Nighthawk Awards:

• Best Picture

1. The Aviator  *
2. A Very Long Engagement
3. Sideways  **
4. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind  *
5. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
6. House of Flying Daggers
7. Closer
8. The Incredibles
9. Kill Bill Volume 2
10. Silver City
11. Hero
12. Hotel Rwanda
13. Million Dollar Baby  *
14. Spider-Man 2
15. Kinsey
16. Bad Education
17. Finding Neverland  *
18. Vera Drake
19. Shrek 2
20. Mar Adentro

Analysis:  Ray and Eternal Sunshine actually tied for the 5th Consensus nominee spot.  Million Dollar Baby, with a third place finish, is the first Oscar winner not to be #1 or #2 at the Consensus Awards since 1995, and no film has finished below 2nd since (through 2016).
All 20 of these films are **** and there are no other **** films.  It’s a magnificent Top 10 and the third best Top 20 to-date.