BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "A Beautiful Mind" (2001)

Back when I started this Best Picture Showcase, I remarked on how there were "x" number of films that I'd either not seen, or only seen parts of.  Being as ridiculously-obsessed with movies and the Oscars as I am, I've made it a point to see every Best Picture nominee before each year's Academy Awards.  This started in about 1994, and in those first several years I probably only caught two or three of the nominees at best until somewhere into the new century.  Today's blog topic is to my knowledge the last movie that won Best Picture before I'd seen it, the Ron Howard-directed A Beautiful Mind.  When I rented it some time after it had won Best Picture, I remember being bored and confused by it.  I didn't even finish watching the film.  Maybe that was a mistake?  Maybe I just couldn't grasp the story 14 years ago?  I may as well just fess up now and say both of those "maybes" can be switched to "yes".  Upon viewing it yesterday, I did understand it, thanks in great part to watching it with my wife, who helped explain a lot of the psychological aspects.  So what we'll have within the synopsis is a combination of mine and her notes, both summarizing the film and delivering observations, and I'll thank her in advance for having the keen eye she did on catching a lot of plot elements I missed!  Let's dive in.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "The Godfather Part II" (1974)

This will be a blog like no other in this series, because it is for a Best Picture winner that is a sequel to an earlier Best Picture winner (The Godfather, 1972).  Coming just two years after the first film, Godfather fever was still raging across moviegoing America, and fortunately the film continued the high quality of its predecessor.  Many even feel the second film is better, but everyone agrees that both films remain to this day the measuring stick for any movies about the Mafia.  Paramount gave director Francis Ford Coppola complete control over the making of the film, but star Al Pacino nearly derailed the entire thing in preproduction because he was unsatisfied with the script.  Coppola rewrote it overnight and sent Pacino a copy.  As you can probably surmise, he liked the revised version.  Most of the story in this sequel was written specifically for the movie, but some elements were adapted from Mario Puzo's original novel.  At 200 minutes, this is the fifth-longest Best Picture winner in history, so this blog means we'll have half of the 10 longest Best Picture winners taken care of.  Let's dive in!

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "Ben-Hur" (1959)

So...yeah, it's been awhile.

This Best Picture Showcase was supposed to be completed in 2014, but due to a variety of reasons (including that I just got lazy with it), that didn't happen.  Sorry about that.

When this started, there were a planned 86 blogs to come covering all the winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture.  That number has now become 87.  And yes, we'll be covering the newest member of the club down the line.

So with 27 movies left to finish the BPS...I say it's about damn time we got back into it.  Shall we?

Blogman: 87th Annual Academy Awards Predictions (Part 3 of 3)

Time to cover the final 8 categories in this year's Oscars predictions.  With the ceremony less than 72 hours away, I spent a lot of time thinking over some of these final categories, most notably Best Picture and Best Director, but I've come to my decisions on them all at this point.  Keep in mind with each category I'm providing who I think will win, but also providing who I personally would vote for, even if I pretty realistically know that person or film has no shot.  Let's wrap things up!

Blogman: 87th Annual Academy Awards Predictions (Part 2 of 3)

We covered 8 categories yesterday, we'll cover 8 more today and again tomorrow.  One pick I made yesterday I'm now regretting a bit, as the more I thought about Best Production Design, I probably should have voted for Into the Woods.  With that said, I'm standing by the original post.  Once I make a pick, I stick with it.  So that's that.  Let's not waste any more time, here come some more picks!

Blogman: 87th Annual Academy Awards Predictions (Part 1 of 3)

So here we are, four days before the 87th Annual Academy Awards.  I've checked out as many films, documentaries, performances, shorts, featurettes and images as I can, and it's now time for me to try and equal or better last year's pretty awesome result of 21 out of 24 correct.  In fairness, it seemed like quite a number of Oscars prognosticators scored well, so maybe last year's show was more predictable than we realized at the time.  Best Picture was certainly no given though, and here for the second straight year, that is again the case, and even moreso.  It is very likely a two-horse race for Best Picture and Best Director, and no one really has a clue which option has the better odds.  We'll get to those later.

There are 24 competitive Oscars to be handed out on Sunday.  Today and for the next two days, I'll present 8 of those categories, listing the nominees along with who I think will win.  Separately within each category, I'll state who I would vote for personally as well.

Let's roll.

Oscar Nominations: What We Learned

There's always some surprise and maybe even some anger when the Oscar nominations come out.

"______ got robbed!"

"How could ______ get nominated and ______ not?"

"Meryl Streep again?!?!"

This year, there's a lot of disbelief that borderlines on aggravation, and I think the argument is ridiculous.  For only the second time in 20 years, there is an almost-complete absence of non-Caucasian nominees in the major categories.  The actors, actresses, screenwriters and even the cinematographers are all white, and most of them are also male.  Everyone is flexing their Twitter muscles today calling the Academy old and out-of-touch.  But let me repeat a sentence fragment from earlier:  FOR ONLY THE SECOND TIME IN 20 YEARS.  That means 2 out of 20.  Is this a pattern?  Is this an epidemic?  No, for Christ's sake, it's just the way it fell this year.  Diversity is not an Academy requirement.  No one cares if you're white, black, blue, green or orange.  No one cares what genitalia you're sporting.  Apparently everyone's already forgotten last year's ceremony.

Yeah, all this vitriol that's popped up in response to the nominations has me a bit pissed off, and I'm sure there's going to be people bitching and moaning all the way up to February 22 when the Oscars are handed out, but fuck 'em.  Get over it, people.  The ball bounces where it's gonna bounce.  When this happens 18 years out of 20 instead of 2 years out of 20, THEN you'll have a valid argument.

Enough about that.  What ELSE did we learn this morning?