BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "The King's Speech" (2010)

If you're going to release a film about British royalty, you're probably best behooved to have this film be written by a British screenwriter, directed by a British director, star British actors and be distributed by British distributors.  Hey, novel concept, isn't it?  Lord knows Hollywood would turn it into special effects and love triangles.  2010's The King's Speech was written by David Siedler (British), directed by Tom Hooper (British), starred Colin Firth (British) and was distributed by...well, several companies, but most were British.  For the U.S. distribution, the Weinstein Company got on board.  Good call, as they netted their first Oscar since leaving Miramax and founding their own company in 2005.  What The King's Speech did was take a story that would perhaps on the surface seem stuffy and dull, then present it in an outstanding and interesting fashion, sprinkled with some humor and sentiment, just enough of each.  The story in question is that of King George VI, who had a horrible stutter, yet was expected to rule the empire and give speeches on this new technology called radio.  Siedler discovered how the King began to work with a speech therapist and began writing a screenplay for this in the 1980's, but at the request of the Queen Mother (King George VI's widow), postponed working on this until after her death.  When she passed in 2002, Siedler eventually went back to the project.  Eventually, through excellent casting and execution, this film was somewhat-quietly released in the autumn of 2010 and wound up riding a wave of popularity all the way to the Kodak Theater on Oscar night.  Let's dive in.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "Rocky" (1976)

Yet another boxing movie to cover here in the Best Picture Showcase, and this one turns out to probably be the most famous boxing movie of them all.  In 1976, a little film written by and starring an up-and-coming virtual unknown named Sylvester Stallone was released to the public.  Entitled Rocky, it told the story of an up-and-coming virtual unknown named Rocky Balboa.  Stallone had no problem selling the script, but producers wanted an established star to play the title role.  Stallone eventually was able to convince the studio to let him give it a try, if for no other reason than it would be a much cheaper hiring for him to play the role than someone like Redford or whoever.  The resounding success of this film led to multiple sequels, and depending on who you ask, the sequels either held up well enough on their own or got progressively worse with each release.  It can be stated clearly though, only the first Rocky got such resounding love from the Academy.  Of the five sequels, only Rocky III got any Oscar nominations, one for the "Eye of the Tiger" theme song.  Personally, I only dislike Rocky IV.  And holy shit, do I dislike it.  The one most people hate seems to be Rocky V, and I gotta tell ya, I think that film is pretty damn good.  I won't delve into why I like this and don't like that...we can do that in a future blog.  Today, it's about the first one.  Maybe the best one.  1976 Best Picture winner Rocky.  Ring the bell.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "Schindler's List" (1993)

So yeah...why another 2-month hiatus in getting this series finished?  Who the hell knows.  June was busy, I guess.  But we're back now with entry #70 out of 87 in the Best Picture Showcase, and here we may have legitimately one of the most important movies ever put to film, Schindler's List.  Directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Steven Zaillian, the film is an adaptation of Thomas Keneally's 1982 novel Schindler's Ark.  It is based on the life of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved the lives of more than a thousand Jewish refugees from Poland during the Holocaust by employing them in his factories.  99% of the film is presented in black-and-white, a deliberate choice so this could be presented as a documentary as much as a motion picture.  Spielberg was amazed by the story when he was given a copy of Keneally's book, but he didn't feel he was "mature" enough to direct such a film, so he tried to hire many top directors such as Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski, but ultimately Spielberg wound up taking on the project himself, even though he fully expected the film to be a box-office flop.  He even forewent a salary, calling it "blood money".  There were too many Holocaust deniers making inroads into the mass media, so the project became very important to Spielberg.  The end result is truly amazing.  Let's take a look.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE "The Greatest Show on Earth" (1952)

I've seen a lot of lists and heard a lot of opinions over the years as to what people consider to be the Best and Worst of all time as far as movies that have won the Best Picture Academy Award.  The films that most often seem to get mentioned in the Worst argument are a couple that we've covered here in the blog series already, as well as today's featured film, 1952's The Greatest Show on Earth.  This isn't people necessarily saying it's a bad movie (although many do say that), but looking at other nominees for Best Picture, it's people wondering what the Academy was thinking giving this one the nod over those others.  The IMDB website has this with the fourth-lowest average user rating (6.7 out of 10.0).  It's a film I never had a yearning to see, so I hadn't done so until now.  I went in with an open mind and hoped for the best.  It certainly isn't lacking for star power, and this isn't even taking into account the many uncredited cameo appearances.  The question is, should it have won Best Picture?

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1929-30)

We haven't done one of the very early Best Picture winners for awhile, so let's tackle one today.  All Quiet on the Western Front was the winner of the third top Oscar in its history, becoming in fact the second war-themed film to do so.  Whereas many of the earliest Best Picture winners don't necessarily still resonate in modern times, this film does.  There isn't a war film that's been made in the last 85 years that isn't influenced by this one.  Based on Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel of the same name, All Quiet was directed by Lewis Milestone and produced by Carl Laemmle Jr. for Universal Studios.  Part of what makes this movie so memorable is that it was released in the Pre-Code era, prior to the censorship guidelines often referred to as the Hays Production Code.  The characters are all German, and since this was set during World War I, we know from our history books that this was the losing side.  Milestone made the characters seem as American as possible so the audience can relate (for instance, they don't speak German, they speak English).  This worked, as you feel absolute sympathy and empathy for the characters.  The only people that didn't seem to enjoy the movie were...well, Germany's Nazi Party.  They would storm theaters and ultimately got the film banned in that country.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "How Green Was My Valley" (1941)

1941 saw the release of a film considered today one of the greatest of all time.  It ranks at or near #1 of many lists by guilds, bloggers, magazines...you name it, they love it.  Iconic images and lines from the movie are still today often influential, quoted, even lampooned.  Giant facial posters.  Evil media magnates.  Rosebud.  I speak, of course, about Citizen Kane, and if you were to ask most people today, from the everyday movie fan to some renowned national movie critics, that's the film I should be blogging about in regards to 1941 and the Best Picture Showcase.  Yet we aren't.  We're discussing How Green Was My Valley, which in besting Kane is looked back on as either the biggest Best Picture surprise in history or the most egregious Best Picture snubbing (to Kane) in history.  Probably both, actually.  Perhaps Hollywood voted with their hearts instead of their heads.  Perhaps Hollywood was tired of Kane director Orson Welles proverbially biting the hand that fed him.  Or, perhaps, just maybe How Green Was My Valley really is that good a film to deserve the Oscar after all.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "Terms of Endearment" (1983)

Today, many of them are called "chick flicks", but the old term was "tearjerker", a sad movie meant to bring out the tissues.  The 1980's and early 1990's were full of them, and they all pretty much employed the same ingredients to create the tearjerker formula:

* family, usually mother-daughter, often tenuous or estranged
* tragic and/or forbidden romance
* divorce
* death of major character, almost always female
* bittersweet humor

Hey, whatever works, right?  In fairness, a lot of these films are actually still pretty good today, but one in particular reached the ultimate plateau in winning Best Picture.  That would be 1983's Terms of Endearment, adapted from Larry McMurtry's book of the same name.  The screen version was written, directed and produced by James L. Brooks, and was well-liked by just about everyone including Bette Davis, who was often critical of modern films in her later years.  Grab the tissues, here we go!

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "The Sound of Music" (1965)

This is one of those movies that everybody has heard of, whether or not they've actually seen it. But everyone can picture Julie Andrews spinning in circles, and everyone's heard of the opening song line, "The hills are alive with the sound of music." That may be literally all that some people know about the film, but so be it. That means it left an impression on pop culture. We're celebrating this year the 50th Anniversary of The Sound of Music. A super new Blu-Ray release with hours of extras, both new and old. A special segment that aired during this year's Oscars telecast. The film just a couple weeks ago played in theaters. I'm sure there will be several TV airings to come later in the year as well. It's a film beloved by many, including my wife and my parents. And it took many revisions over a period of nearly 20 years for the movie to hit theaters for the first time...

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?

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "The Life of Emile Zola" (1937)

One of the things I've enjoyed most in doing this blog series is learning about and watching the Best Picture winners in history that I know very little, if anything, about.  Today, we have one of those films.  1937's The Life of Emile Zola is a biographical motion picture, or biopic, about the French author and activist Zola, practitioner of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism.  He also did not shy away from controversial topics, calling out the government and society when he felt it was necessary.  He was usually right, because Zola was a major figure in the political liberalization of France from the Nazis.  His biggest success, if you will, probably was being greatly responsible for the exoneration of a falsely accused and convicted army officer named Alfred Dreyfus.  The film's title would seem to indicate it's about Zola's entire life, but that's not quite the case.  It does not cover any of Zola's childhood, but instead starts up in 1862 when Zola was in his early 20's.  Let's take a look at the first film to score 10 Oscar nominations.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "Braveheart" (1995)

It's been said that history will teach us nothing, or that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  In the case of 1995 Best Picture winner Braveheart, it can also be said that history doesn't have to get in the way of Hollywood storytelling.  There has perhaps never been a more historically-inaccurate Best Picture than this one, and I'm not saying that just to nitpick.  Randall Wallace wrote the screenplay with heavy influence from Blind Harry's 15th century epic poem The Acts and Deeds of Sir William Wallace, Knight of Elderslie, which has long been considered in and of itself quite historically inaccurate.  However, in writing about William Wallace, Randall Wallace (no relation, by the way) based very little of the screenplay on either actual history or Blind Harry's poem.  Hell, even the title of Braveheart refers in the film to William Wallace when in reality, it was a nickname for Robert the Bruce.  The movie depicts an affair between Wallace and France's Princess Isabelle, which surely did not happen since in the depicted time period of actuality, Isabelle was about 3 years old.  Scotsmen also did not wear kilts, much less plaid with belts, in this era.  Historian Sharon Krossa pretty much summed it up in a 2001 essay by saying, "The events aren't accurate, the dates aren't accurate, the characters aren't accurate, the names aren't accurate, the clothes aren't accurate—in short, just about nothing is accurate."

Evidently, history isn't important here.  Just entertainment.  So in that regard, I suppose Braveheart is a success.  Let's take a look.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "Patton" (1970)

General George S. Patton was a decorated war hero who came from a military family.  He was a major player in both World Wars I and II, helping especially in the latter lead the Allied Forces to victory with his strategies and brilliance.  He pulled very few punches and often spoke his mind without fear or saying the "right" thing.  He was also confrontational and controversial, getting into trouble with his superiors because of his actions, including statements to the media that would at times criticize U.S. war strategy.  It seems fitting that the 1970 film biography of the man was portrayed by a unique actor the likes of George C. Scott, who also had a reputation at times for being a bit against-the-grain, prone to moodiness on movie sets and having a complete disdain for the competitiveness of Hollywood when it came to such things as the Oscars.  A perfect storm of circumstances, no?  Patton winds up highly successful and racks up a slew of Oscar nominations, including for that of Scott's performance, which he requested to not be nominated for but was anyway.  Scott wins the Best Lead Actor award and doesn't attend the ceremony.  The award was never claimed by him either.  He requested that the Academy donate the award to the George Patton museum in Kentucky, but he only made the request verbally.  Since it was not in writing, it was never donated.  To the best of my knowledge the award is currently on display at the Virginia Military Institute Museum, a military school that the real Patton attended.  With all that said, Patton clocks in at nearly three hours but never drags.  The film and Scott's performance are engaging, and the battle scenes are incredibly well done.  I had planned on writing this blog during a recent trip to Seattle, as I had a laptop and my notes all ready.  Unfortunately, my notes wound up misplaced, so I'll do the best I can on a synopsis from memory.  Let's take a look at what was President Nixon's all-time favorite film, 1970 Best Picture Patton.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "Gladiator" (2000)

"Swords and sandals" was a term that developed in the 1950's and 1960's in relation to Hollywood films that tackled Ancient Rome and Greece.  Those movies had common elements such as chariots and the feudal system and, of course, gladiators.  Those types of movies died out a long time ago, even becoming a punchline (a Leslie Neilsen quote in the movie Airplane actually makes you laugh about pedophilia and then subsequently hate yourself for it).  It seemed quite a ballsy task for director Ridley Scott to attempt to resurrect that style of movie, but he did so with Gladiator.  The film is loosely based on historical events, and Scott wanted to portray the Roman culture more accurately than past films had done.  For example, no one's eating grapes and drinking wine and having raucous orgies.  Maybe the porn parody of this movie went there, but Scott didn't.  Several historians were hired as advisors for the film, although obviously some dramatic license still took place, causing at least one of those historians to refuse an on-screen credit.  The actual Marcus Aurelius was not murdered, he died of the plague.  Commodus was not reviled from the start, he actually was a popular emperor at first.  Such details can always be nitpicked.  What ultimately matters here is that Gladiator tells a pliable story.  Let's take a look at the first Best Picture of the 21st century.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "Going My Way" (1944)

Bing Crosby is probably best remembered for his crooning musical style, but he was also a very accomplished actor.  Most of his early acting roles were for musical comedy or just comedy in general, such as the Road to... series with Bob Hope.  When producer/director Leo McCarey told Paramount that he wanted Crosby to play the lead role in his upcoming film, Paramount wasn't sold on the idea, as Crosby had never previously shown any dramatic acting chops.  However, McCarey got his wish, and Going My Way wound up the biggest box-office draw of the year, garnering much acclaim for its star as well, who wound up thriving for many years to follow in films of all genres.  Watching the film as I did for the first time recently, 70 years after its initial release, I found it a nice movie but rather slow at times, especially for a musical.  (For instance, it's much less grandiose in comparison to the MGM musicals of later years.)  Sizing this up with several other Best Picture nominees that year, I was actually quite flabbergasted as to how this one took home the top prize in addition to many other Oscars.  Maybe we'll learn how that happened in the synopsis.