My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔.
The 1950s was a wonderful decade for movies — but a lousy decade for Oscars. I tried to hang with Marty as a top ten picture for longer than it deserved and then finally gave it up. Marty is a nice film but for the life of me, I can't figure out how it won best picture.
The Academy goes through stretches like this — the early 30s, the 1950s, the last ten years — when their Oscar choices are so disconnected from what their audience is actually watching, you wonder if they even know what movies they've made.
Other notes: The best performance of the year was by Hollywood's greatest singing-dancing amphibian, Michigan J. Frog (One Froggy Evening), but even I draw the line at nominating a cartoon toad for best actor.
On the other hand, nominating One Froggy Evening for best picture and Chuck Jones for best director? Not a problem. As somebody put it, "Chuck Jones did in seven minutes what Erich von Stroheim couldn't do in seven hours," i.e., show the devastating and corrosive effects of greed on the human spirit. I'd say maybe only The Treasure of the Sierra Madre did it better. Maybe.
In case you're wondering, a Los Angeles nightclub entertainer named William Roberts did the frog's singing. He also had some small parts in Lady in the Lake and The Yanks Are Coming, among other things. (William Roberts, that is, not the frog.)
October 17, 2018 — On a personal note, Katie-Bar-The-Door and I had to say goodbye to our beloved dog Angie today. I work from home so the dog and I spent 23 1/2 hours of every day together for eleven years. She was an old dog and a good dog and as we walked, she listened politely to drafts of nearly every word I've written in the last decade.
Dogs are funny creatures. They ask for nothing but to love us, and in the end we fall in love with them. She will be missed.
I'm so sorry to hear about your loss of Angie. What a beautiful dog! I also work from home, so am with my dog most of the day, and I wouldn't trade that time for anything.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'm fascinated at how all over the board the votes are for this year so far. :-D
Thank you for your kind words about Angie. I've been living on her schedule for so long that I've spent the last few days rattling around the house, thinking isn't there something I'm supposed to be doing?
ReplyDeleteI think I even miss her waking me up at three in the morning, sticking her nose in my face and wapping her tail against the bed until I opened my eyes -- often for no real reason, just to say hello.
As for the voting, some years the winners seem obvious (Casablanca in 1943) and other years, like this one, there are too many good choices. I'll be interested to see how the voting finally winds up.