My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.
I started to write an essay on movie-going but ran out of time ...
Between 1977, when I got my driver's license, and 1983, when I started law school, I went to the movies all the time. I'd watch anything, anytime, with no clue was I was about to see, the equivalent of channel surfing at the multiplex. I think a matinee in those days was about $2 and the student center at college was even cheaper. My favorites of 1983 were The Right Stuff, High Road to China, Trading Places and A Christmas Story. Terms of Endearment left me cold, Fanny and Alexander — Ingmar Bergman's last great film, released in America in 1983 — baffled me (and still does) in a way his other films never did. I still see a lot of movies (although not necessarily at the multiplex, and not without prior vetting).
I have a long novel's worth of essays I've started for this blog and never finished. That's in addition to the five novels worth of essays I have posted.
As of 2012, I was up to a half-million words devoted to this blog (580,179 to be exact). After that, I stopped counting.
As I once noted, this blog is like chopping down an oak tree with a butter knife. A patently insane endeavor to be sure, but it's my oak tree and my butter knife. As Albert Camus put it, "One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
And here are 12 year old notes for another essay I intended to write about 1983:
Eddie Murphy (Trading Places)
Trivia: ... way back in the early days of this blog, I wrote about silent movies ... One I saw but didn't write about was Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, a 1922 ... There's a scene early on where Mabuse manipulates the stock market by creating a false report ... that then half an hour later, he himself debunks ... calmly standing in the middle of the frenzy of sellers saying "buy." ... don't know if ... ripped off Dr. Mabuse directly or they ripped off someone who ripped off Dr. Mabuse (or maybe this idea is so old, Lang ripped it off from someone else).
Doesn't mean the scene doesn't work in Trading Places. If anything, it's better. I'm just throwing a little information your way.
Can’t. Ring yourself to even talk about this year, can ya.
ReplyDeleteSimians know better . . . .
I started to write an essay on movie-going but ran out of time ...
ReplyDeleteBetween 1977, when I got my driver's license, and 1983, when I started law school, I went to the movies all the time. I'd watch anything, anytime, with no clue was I was about to see, the equivalent of channel surfing at the multiplex. I think a matinee in those days was about $2 and the student center at college was even cheaper. My favorites of 1983 were The Right Stuff, High Road to China, Trading Places and A Christmas Story. Terms of Endearment left me cold, Fanny and Alexander — Ingmar Bergman's last great film, released in America in 1983 — baffled me (and still does) in a way his other films never did. I still see a lot of movies (although not necessarily at the multiplex, and not without prior vetting).
I have a long novel's worth of essays I've started for this blog and never finished. That's in addition to the five novels worth of essays I have posted.
ReplyDeleteAs of 2012, I was up to a half-million words devoted to this blog (580,179 to be exact). After that, I stopped counting.
As I once noted, this blog is like chopping down an oak tree with a butter knife. A patently insane endeavor to be sure, but it's my oak tree and my butter knife. As Albert Camus put it, "One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
I view it as “nothing matters, so who gives a shit?”
ReplyDeleteI view it as “nothing matters, so who gives a shit?”
ReplyDeleteThe traditional "one must imagine Sisyphus miserable" approach ...
I kid.
And here are 12 year old notes for another essay I intended to write about 1983:
ReplyDeleteEddie Murphy (Trading Places)
Trivia: ... way back in the early days of this blog, I wrote about silent movies ... One I saw but didn't write about was Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, a 1922 ... There's a scene early on where Mabuse manipulates the stock market by creating a false report ... that then half an hour later, he himself debunks ... calmly standing in the middle of the frenzy of sellers saying "buy." ... don't know if ... ripped off Dr. Mabuse directly or they ripped off someone who ripped off Dr. Mabuse (or maybe this idea is so old, Lang ripped it off from someone else).
Doesn't mean the scene doesn't work in Trading Places. If anything, it's better. I'm just throwing a little information your way.