BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957)

War films, from my completely unscientific experience and research, tend to run closer to 3 hours than 2 hours more than any other film genre.  This can be good as long as the story keeps moving and stays logical and interesting.  This can also be bad.  In 1957, it was very good indeed, as The Bridge on the River Kwai opened late in the year and had such a strong following that it wound up being the biggest box-office draw for 1958.  This was in no small part thanks to the fact that the AMPAS feted the film with 7 Oscars in March of 1958, including the one that made it eligible for discussion in the Best Picture Showcase.  The film is based on Pierre Boulle's 1952 novel of the same name, and while it certainly takes liberties with the history that inspired the story (the Burma Railway was indeed built in the early 1940's but very little of the presentation in the movie matches the actual chain of events as they occurred), it still remains a gripping movie and one that plays today just as well as it did 56 years ago.  The star power is also truly A-list, including one name that today very few have even heard of, but in the early days of Hollywood, that name was the biggest male sex symbol on the silver screen.  Let's take a look.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "My Fair Lady" (1964)

Musicals won a lot of Best Picture awards in the decade of the 1960's, and we're going to look at one of them here today.  Before Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe created Gigi (which won Best Picture in 1958) for theaters, they actually created My Fair Lady for the stage.  There were a few critics who found similarities in the two stories.  Ironically enough, they saw Gigi get released as a movie first and win Best Picture, then some years later saw My Fair Lady get released as a movie and do the same.  To confuse matters a bit more, while Gigi may have been inspired by Lady, the latter wasn't even an original idea in the first place.  Lady was based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, which first hit the stage in 1912.  None of this really matters but it's fun to follow the timeline, and today My Fair Lady is still very beloved by most.  I say "by most" because that means "not by everyone", and I'm specifically singling out yours truly.  Yes, I do not like this musical, and it's one of the few classic musicals that I dislike.  I'll explain why later.  Let's hit the synopsis!

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "Rain Man" (1988)

Autism is very much in the public consciousness today.  This was not always the case.  I must admit to being one who knew nothing of it in 1988.  I was 15 years old and cannot recall having had any knowledge or concept of autism whatsoever.  This changed when the film Rain Man was released, and while I could probably plead to an extent having unintentional ignorance to autism back then due to the fact that I was still "just a kid", it wouldn't surprise me if many more people older than 15 really knew little, if any, about it either.  It was something back then that many families tried to keep as private as possible.  There certainly weren't nearly the level of diagnoses and treatments 26 years ago as there are today.  Rain Man opened our eyes to autism and helped many of us really see and understand it for the first time.  Unfortunately, it also has inadvertently turned some elements of autism into punchlines, as today many of the mannerisms and spoken dialogue from the film are used in jest.  Be that as it may, the comedy moments in this film were not and are not considered to be mean-spirited, and today the film still remains extremely popular.  Let's check out the Barry Levinson-directed Rain Man.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "Cimarron" (1930-31)

Three westerns have won Best Picture in the 86-year history of the Academy Awards.  We've covered two of them already: 1992's Unforgiven and 1990's Dances With Wolves.  They're relatively recent films.  For the only other western to win top honors, we need to go back.  Way back.  Almost ALL the way back.  To be exact, we have to travel back to November 10, 1931, to the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.  That's when the 4th Annual Academy Awards ceremony took place, and Best Picture was awarded to a film called Cimarron, which was based on Edna Ferber's 1929 novel of the same name.  This was an interesting film to research outside of actually seeing the movie, because numerous websites contain some of the most basic synopses of any Best Picture I've ever seen.  Many people sum the film up in one paragraph, and in a few cases, barely even enough text to qualify as a paragraph.  This isn't because the story's simple, because it's not, but for whatever reason, no one has taken the time or the effort to write up a synopsis for the likes of Wikipedia and IMDB.  Fortunately, your faithful blogger here writes up his own notes when viewing each of the movies covered in this blog series, and I took more time than usually is needed to cross-reference my notes with all the information about the movie I could research online.  So I think we're set.  Saddle up!

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "Argo" (2012)

Growing up in New Jersey, I would watch a show on the local public TV station starring Floyd Vivino, AKA Uncle Floyd. It was sketch comedy and pretty no-frills, but still great. He would have a segment each show that saw an audience member play a game where they had to say whether or not a strange piece of trivia was true or false. The game was called Ridiculous But Real. One day he may have asked a question something along the lines of this:

"True or False. Six Americans escaped the country of Iran during the hostage crisis of 1979-1980 by posing as a movie crew filming a science-fiction saga in Iran called Argo."

Sounds ridiculous. But it was very real. Truth be told though, Floyd would not have asked that question then because according to the U.S. government, that never happened. It was classified. The escape really did happen but all credit was given to the Canadian government. President Bill Clinton declassified the operation in 1997, and the world learned of what really happened. That story is told here in director Ben Affleck's tremendous work, which was adapted from several sources including Tony Mendez's book The Master of Disguise. Mendez was the CIA operative who Affleck plays in the film, and watching the story unfold one can only wonder how something so ludicrous could have been believed by just about everyone in Iran. Simply put, those executing the operation really did cover all their bases. In fact, Mendez claimed that after the phony studio was shut down upon completion of the rescue, the phony studio address still received about two dozen scripts, including one from Steven Spielberg.

Let us dive into Argo.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "Casablanca" (1943)

There was a time a decade or so ago when the American Film Institute was celebrating 100 years of movies with a series of "100 ____s" countdowns. They were a lot of fun and they sparked a lot of debate amongst movie fans. Today's blog subject, Casablanca, made a lot of appearances within those lists. The AFI said that the film itself was the #3 best movie of all time, "As Time Goes By" was the #2 movie song of all time, and "Here's looking at you, kid" was the #5 movie line of all time. Naturally, that's all subjective, but anyone who knows anything about movies at least knows that Casablanca is truly revered as one of the absolute all-time classics. Based on a then-unproduced stage play entitled Everybody Comes to Rick's by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, the film was produced and released during the height of World War II, including the attack on Pearl Harbor. This likely helped boost its popularity at the time since there is a definite anti-Reich theme to the movie. I'd seen this film probably 15 years ago or so for the first time, and I liked it but didn't love it. Does a second viewing in 2014 see my feelings change towards it? Let's find out...

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "American Beauty" (1999)

Tastes change over time. Look at clothes, for instance. In the 1970's, everyone loved bellbottom pants and giant collars and elevator shoes. Now we look back and wonder what we were all thinking. This happens with movies too. If you do a little online searching you'll find plenty of lists from bloggers and magazines and whatnot of what are considered the most overrated Best Picture winners. Inevitably, you'll find 1999's winner, American Beauty, at or near the top of every list you see. Why is that? Truth be told, I'm not sure there's a clear answer as to why, but as the years have passed since this film won Best Picture, both critics and fans alike have softened on their gushing love for the movie. Even director Sam Mendes agrees somewhat, saying the film was "a little overpraised" during its theatrical run and the subsequent awards season. Personally, I liked the film from the first viewing, and I still do today, but it's far from what I would consider an all-time classic. It's just a well-developed, well-acted, nicely-layered film, and versus the other contenders for Best Picture that year, it probably deserved the win. The movie tagline is "Look Closer". OK, let's do that...