Updated Silent Oscars

You'd never know it, but I've been busy updating my stand-alone Silent Oscars page (here)—it now comes complete with nominees in each category as well as winners all the way through July 31, 1927, the last day of the "pre-Oscar" era.

I've also expanded the best picture category, starting with 1914, to name the best drama, comedy and foreign language film of each year. If nothing else, the exercise underscored for me just how much the Big Three of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd dominated comedy in the silent era—with three exceptions, they swap the award for best comedy back and forth from Chaplin's debut in 1914 to the beginning of the sound era.

As you look at my choices (you will look at my choices, right?), keep in mind the point of the Silent Oscars is not to prove that I'm right and you're wrong, or that I'm smarter than you are or have better taste than you do or have seen more obscure movies than you have, but to point you toward the kinds of movies and performances that may spark in you a love of silent movies equal to the one I've developed over the last three-plus years.

At the very least, if you skim the top off these awards, watching, say, just the best picture winners, you'd still wind up with a pretty good feel for the silent era. That's worth something, isn't it?

Now back to "writing the great American novel ..."