BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "The Hurt Locker" (2009)

Guess what blog it is??? It's HUMP BLOG!!!

Indeed, we've reached the midway point of this 2014 blog series. 86 Best Pictures to blog about, and here we are at blog #43. Today's subject is the 2009 winner The Hurt Locker, which is actually a film that was finished and initially released in 2008, but on a limited basis internationally, not in the U.S., which made it unavailable to qualify for Oscar classification that year. There have been countless films over the years set during war, whether it be a real war such as World War II or Vietnam, or just a fictional war somewhere. For whatever reason, the war in Iraq was always a hard sell at theaters. A number of films were made in the 2000's dealing with the subject, but none of them went anywhere commercially. Some believe it's due to the war being unpopular with the general public. There's probably some truth to that. Some believe it's because families didn't want reminders of their loved ones overseas in Iraq and elsewhere right now potentially battling as what would be on screen. There's probably some truth to that too. As far as box office goes, The Hurt Locker didn't break any new ground either. With a roughly then-$12M total gross, it's the lowest box office total for a Best Picture winner in history. It was out of theaters completely by the time awards season rolled around and didn't return for a second go-round despite all the nominations. An even bigger awards obstacle? Only the highest-grossing film of all time also being nominated for Best Picture. We'll talk more about that after the synopsis.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "In the Heat of the Night" (1967)

Sidney Poitier is a Hollywood icon. It's not just because he was an outstanding actor, but it just so happens that he was the first African-American to truly become a Hollywood A-lister. He dealt with prejudices and struggled just as anyone else did, but Sidney was the one who broke that glass ceiling and opened up the doors for countless others, and he did during the period of history where the Civil Rights Movement simultaneously took place. Right place, right time, but most importantly, right person. He was classy. He was talented. He didn't win his Oscar as part of today's blog subject, In the Heat of the Night, but he has stated on several occasions that his all-time favorite work of his is this film. Directed by Norman Jewison, In the Heat of the Night is based on John Ball's 1965 book of the same name. It is often called a film that deals with the subject of racism. I'm not sure I'd quite say that. It's a film set in the south during a time when racism was rampant, and Poitier's character deals with it, but I wouldn't say that the end result really was that the problem got solved. No matter, though. Times now have changed, fortunately, for the better. And at heart, this is a murder mystery, a whodunit. So let's take a look.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "Dances With Wolves" (1990)

86 Best Picture Academy Awards have been given out over the years, and some genres have found better success in winning them than others. 1991's The Silence of the Lambs is the only "horror" movie to win, and you could argue that it's not even really a horror flick. Westerns have only won three times. 1931's Cimarron, 1992's Unforgiven and today's blog subject, 1990's Dances With Wolves. As you can see from the last sentence, this was the first western to win top honors in nearly 60 years although many westerns had been nominated over that period of time. It doesn't seem on the surface like the type of film that would be as successful as it was. First off, it's a western, which in 1990 was practically a genre on life support, with few good westerns being made at that point anymore. Secondly, much of the dialogue was subtitled, spoken in the Lakota Native American dialect. Finally, and sorry to say this, but this was what gets billed in Hollywood as a vanity project. Kevin Costner produced it, directed it and starred in it. Knowing Costner as we now do, this is nothing new. He's the man-of-many-hats on a lot of projects. This was his first one, and it worked. He's tried others since then, and they've crashed and burned. Waterworld. Open Range. The Postman. That last one was an especially titanic bust. The funny part is, I've seen those three films and they're really not that bad. He's given up on directing over the last decade, but at least he struck gold first. Let's dive in.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "The Godfather" (1972)

So we're halfway through 2014. I'm not quite halfway through my list of 86 movies to blog about though. Fell a bit behind in late May and June. Not to worry, I'll catch up. This is blog #40, and the movie this blog is about is in the eyes of some perhaps the best of the best: The Godfather. Based on Mario Puzo's 1969 book, this movie is, for what it's worth, #2 on IMDB's user ratings scale for all time. It spawned two sequels which also garnered Best Picture nominations (the only other films to achieve that were the Lord of the Rings trilogy a decade-plus ago). It made Al Pacino a star. It contains some of pop culture's favorite movie quotes. It remains the measuring stick today for all movies about the mob. It was 1972's biggest box office success, and for a time was the biggest box office draw ever. Yet at the 45th Annual Academy Awards ceremony, a sexually-charged musical set in a German nightclub nearly made this movie just another contender. We'll go more into that later. Right now, we've got a 3-hour film to turn into a synopsis of reasonable length, so let's get to it.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "Grand Hotel" (1931-32)

Time to cover one of those early Best Picture winners where the eligibility period wasn't as simple as today, where it runs from January 1 to December 31 of a given year. The eligibility periods varied for the first six ceremonies (this was the fifth), and this one had the range of August 1, 1931 to July 31, 1932. This film was released on April 12, 1932, and it was really the first to successfully use the formula of throwing a large number of major names into the film, giving them all storylines and having the stories all intertwine throughout the film. Some believed that the 2014 movie The Grand Budapest Hotel may have been a remake or re-imagining of this original film, Grand Hotel. That is not the case, but you can definitely find a few similarities although they're purely coincidental. Grand Hotel's screenplay was written by William A. Drake and Béla Balázs, and was based on Drake's 1930 play of the same title, which was in turn adapted from Vicki Baum's Austrian 1929 novel Menschen im Hotel. Drake and Balázs did not win an Oscar. The film was directed by Edmund Goulding. He didn't win either. I already mentioned this film had lots of star power, but none of the actors won Oscars. Nor did the cinematographer, art director or sound company. And you know what? Outside of Best Picture and short films, those were all the categories that existed at the 5th Annual Academy Awards. Yes, Grand Hotel is the record-holder, and probably forever will be, as being the Best Picture winner to win the least overall Oscars: One. This is more stunning when you discover that Grand Hotel DIDN'T EVEN HAVE ANY OTHER NOMINATIONS AT ALL. So how in the hell did this win the top prize? Maybe the synopsis will help us figure that out...

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "12 Years a Slave" (2013)

When I started this blog series at the start of 2014, there were 85 Best Picture winners to blog. With the 2013 Oscars having come and gone a few months ago, that brings the count to 86. I wondered when I should cover the newest member of the Best Picture family. I didn't want to do it right after it won the Oscar, because within these blogs is a film synopsis that tells the story and gives away spoilers, so I wanted people to be able to see the film before I blabbed about it. I didn't want to do it as #86 because I've known since the beginning of this project what the final Best Picture Showcase blog was and is going to be. We're coming up on the halfway point, and it's been on DVD for a few months by now. So the time is right. The 2013 Best Picture was 12 Years a Slave, directed by Steve McQueen and based on Solomon Northup's 1853 memoir of the same name, which was retraced and validated in 1968 as historically accurate. This isn't the most comfortable movie to watch, but that's kind of the point. The movie isn't out there to scold or shock, it's to teach a history lesson of a true figure from a shameful period of time in our nation's history, and to tone down the story would belittle the purpose. With that said, there will be some disturbing language in this blog, which will be present only for the purposes of quoting from and/or explaining the film. Buckle up.

BEST PICTURE SHOWCASE: "Forrest Gump" (1994)

About a week ago I learned, and posted on Facebook, that 1994's Best Picture winner Forrest Gump was going to be re-released into theaters for a short time to commemorate the film's 20th Anniversary. In doing so, I commented that I felt 1994 had the best crop of Best Picture nominees in history because I actually think this film is only the FOURTH best of the five, and that's saying something because this film is really good. As the years have passed I found myself calling this film "overrated". That's an unfair statement. It's not overrated. What happened is that over time the screenwriter's future works annoyed me so much that it caused me to retroactively discount this movie. Having just seen Gump again for the first time in many years, I actually had forgotten how good this one is. I still think it's fourth-best, but that's not at all a knock on this movie's quality. It's Eric Roth's fault.