My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ.
Four Western heroes and a couple of midnight cowpokes up for best actor this year. I nominated Redford and Newman as a pair because (1) they were so often mentioned together in the same breath, and because (2) it's my blog and there's nothing you can do about it.
In the supporting category, Sergio Leone cast Henry Fonda against type in Once Upon a Time in the West and the result was one of the greatest villains in movie history. But I've already handed Fonda an alternate Oscar for The Grapes of Wrath, the best performance of his career, so I opted instead for Jason Robards' wonderful comedic bandit, Cheyenne, in the same movie.
Lot of juggling in the alternate Oscar business.
1969 was maybe the last great year for Westerns. Some really good Westerns still to come, for sure, most of them starring Clint Eastwood, but as a whole the genre crests the hill in 1969. Or maybe when you have a year with The Wild Bunch, Once Upon a Time in the West, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, True Grit, Support Your Local Sheriff! and literally a hundred more, it only seems that way.
My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. (Note: Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand tied for best actress.)
I saw the road show presentation of 2001: A Space Odyssey back in 1968 and it opened up my seven-year-old head like a can opener. Into that space flowed the Beatles, Batman, Laugh-In, the Smothers Brothers, Apollo 8, Mad Magazine, Captain Kangaroo, Charlie Brown, Richard Nixon, Billy Graham, Viet Nam, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, reruns of Bugs Bunny, Bullwinkle, Jonny Quest, my college-aged brother's record collection, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King — heady stuff at an impressionable age.
I didn't understand the culture of 1968 back in 1968, but I absorbed it like a sponge. No wonder I am the way I am.
P.S. Little known fact: Sondra Locke, who like your faithful correspondent was born in middle Tennessee, once hitched a ride with my parents ...
My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔.
Hollywood had been sneaking out of the Production Code's bathroom window for a while now but in 1967, it kicked the entire rotting edifice to the ground and defiantly announced, "Dad, I'm pregnant!"
Or something like that.
In any event, the look and feel of Hollywood movies changed radically in 1967, which was both good and bad, depending on who was making the movie. Not everyone knows what to do with their freedom, but them that do — whoa, Nellie!
My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔.
I would tell you that I'd rather watch a spaghetti Western over an art film any day, or possibly vice versa, but The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is both — a masterpiece that stands alongside Ford's The Searchers and Hawks' Rio Bravo as one of the greatest Westerns ever made. And you know the Monkey loves him a good Western.
My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ.
"Half of this probably belongs to a horse out in the Valley somewhere," said Lee Marvin upon winning the Oscar for his performance in Cat Ballou. Sounds about right. Thus, Smoky's half-nomination for best actor.
Chimes at Midnight — the tragedy of Shakespeare's greatest comic figure, Falstaff — is, in my book, second only to Citizen Kane as the best movie Orson Welles ever made. Dismissed upon its initial release and largely unseen since, it's now available in a restored, remastered edition from Criterion. Highly recommended.
As for the Academy's choice for best picture of 1965, The Sound of Music, it's not the worst movie to ever win the Oscar for best picture, but thanks to the weakness of its competition, it may be the worst movie to nevertheless deserve to win for best picture.
On the other hand, Julie Andrews is sublime. It might be the best performance by an actress in a musical ever. At least I can't think of a better one.
If in fifty years Chimes at Midnight has developed an audience to rival that of The Sound of Music, I'll change my vote. Until then, I'm sticking with the people's choice.
On a more serious note, I've been debating whether to share some rather personal news — I generally prefer to reveal the personal through my insights into movies rather than through the autobiographical — but I think the autobiographical is already beginning to affect the work so I might as well explain myself.
About six weeks ago, I found out I have cancer, stage 2 esophageal adenocarcinoma (read about it here). The doctors — some of the best in the world — caught it relatively early and I'm otherwise in good health, so they are able to pursue an aggressive form of treatment that includes chemo, radiation and surgery. As my thoracic surgeon put it, the prognosis is "realistically optimistic."
By June, or so they hope, I should be right as rain. Knock on wood.
As you might have guessed if you've been following this blog for any length of time, Katie-Bar-The-Door has been extraordinary, and my friends and family have come through like champs. To quote Lou Gehrig, "I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."
In the meantime, I will keep plugging along with my alternate Oscar polls as long as I am up to it. I'm two weeks into the treatments and I'm just now beginning to feel the side effects, including fatigue. We'll hope for the best.
But for those of you who, like me, prefer to let the movies do the talking, I offer up some thoughts on life, death, love and life as expressed though a handful of select reviews: here, here and here.
My choices are noted with a ★. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔.
In case you're interested, my top five movies of 1964 are, in order, Dr. Strangelove, A Hard Day's Night, Mary Poppins, Goldfinger and the Academy's choice for best picture, My Fair Lady — which is a little like ranking your top five Picasso's or your top five snowflakes. Each is a unique treasure.
Named for Katie-Bar-The-Door, the Katies are "alternate Oscars"—who should have been nominated, who should have won—but really they're just an excuse to write a history of the movies from the Silent Era to the present day.
To see a list of nominees and winners by decade, as well as links to my essays about them, click the highlighted links:
Remember: There are no wrong answers, only movies you haven't seen yet.
The Silent Oscars
And don't forget to check out the Silent Oscars—my year-by-year choices for best picture, director and all four acting categories for the pre-Oscar years, 1902-1927.
Look at me—Joe College, with a touch of arthritis. Are my eyes really brown? Uh, no, they're green. Would we have the nerve to dive into the icy water and save a person from drowning? That's a key question. I, of course, can't swim, so I never have to face it. Say, haven't you anything better to do than to keep popping in here early every morning and asking a lot of fool questions?
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