25 September, 2021
21 August, 2021
28 July, 2020
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. (more…)
22 July, 2020
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.
27 May, 2020
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. (more…)
19 April, 2020
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
Most Surprising Omission: The Two Popes
Best Eligible Film Not Nominated: Pain and Glory
Rank (out of 92) Among Best Picture Years: #21 (more…)
10 April, 2020
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.
These are all **** films and they are all the **** films for the year (though I haven’t seen Les Miserables). (more…)
13 January, 2020
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. (more…)
4 January, 2020
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.
note: A great Top 5 and very good Top 10. My list continues down at the bottom.
16 November, 2019
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.
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). (more…)
This is the 12th part of the countdown of the Top 1000 Films of the first Century of Film (1912-2011). The introduction can be found 
This is the 11th part of the countdown of the Top 1000 Films of the first Century of Film (1912-2011). The introduction can be found 