Best Pictures Done!

Uh, long time no entry, right? Well, I've been thinking about just deleting this blog, actually. I don't seem to ever have the desire to post here anymore, so why keep it online? I don't know. I haven't made any firm decision on that yet, though, so here it stays for now.

But I did have to post today, just to announce a 101 in 1001 update. I finally finished watching all of the Best Picture Oscar winning movies! Woo! That took me months, and I enjoyed almost all of them, and only found one stinker in the whole bunch - really, why did Annie Hall even get nominated? It was so stinking boring! Ugh.

Anyway, I found some movies that I really love, including the Lord of the Rings movies. I tried watching the first one when it first came out on DVD, and I was bored and did other things the whole time it was on. This time, however, for some reason I really got into it, and into the two that came after it (it was the third one that won Best Picture). I kind of want to own them, and to watch them again.

Oh, and to be completely honest, I do have one movie on my DVR at home to finish watching. It's Tom Jones, and it's not a bad movie, but it is kind of boring, and I have an hour left to watch, and I haven't been able to force myself to do it yet. I will soon, though, so I can delete it and make space on the DVR for the new season's shows.

I also have three movies to watch that aren't on DVD yet - Wings from 1927, Cavalcade from 1932 and Rebecca from 1940. I have them on my Netflix queue, though, so if they ever come out on DVD, I'll get them and watch them. But since they aren't available right now and I have no way of watching them (unless I happen to catch them on TV), I am marking this item as done! Woo!

Annie Halzzzzzzz

Oh, oops. Did I fall asleep while writing that title? I guess it must be because writing the name Annie Hall reminded me of watching it last night. That movie is so boring! I have to admit, I've never liked Woody Allen - I just don't get why people think he is funny. But this movie won the Best Picture Oscar in 1977, so it was on my Netflix list, and last night was when J and I sat down to watch it.

Three minutes in, I was ready to shut it off and have this be the one winning movie that I didn't bother to watch. If I had been watching it alone, instead of with J, I would have done just that (or played the Sims while it was on, and barely paid attention).

Why do people like this humor? Why did this movie win? I like Diane Keaton a lot, and even she couldn't save it! Neither could seeing Paul Simon, Jeff Goldblum and Christopher Walken in it! Wow, the boredom. The DVD messed up near the end and sent us directly to the credits - I was relieved to be done! And then when J figured out that we had missed some scenes, I just couldn't believe that I had to sit there and watch more. Groan.

There were good movies nominated that year, too. Of the four other nominated movies, I had seen two - The Goodbye Girl and, of course, Star Wars. I would have been happy for either of those to win.

So glad that's over. Stupid Woody Allen. (And if you're a fan and you're reading this, I apologize for insulting him, but he just bores me to tears.)

Warning: Super Long Movie Post Ahead

I watched three more Best Picture winners over the last week! I'm speeding through this list, which is good, but I'm kind of sad, because it won't be long before I'll be done with this! It's been a lot of fun watching all of these movies, it really has.

Anyway, on to the movies I've seen lately!

We'll go in the order I watched them. First up:
Gentleman's Agreement
1947
Gregory Peck
Dorothy McGuire

It was kind of odd watching this movie, because I don't think the subject matter is all that relevant today. Maybe I'm wrong, and if I am, you can tell me (I tend to live in my own little world sometimes, and my world doesn't always resemble the real world much). This movie is about a reporter (played by Gregory Peck) who goes undercover in New York City as a Jew, to blow the lid off anti-semitism.

Is that still relevant? It would never occur to me that people were still anti-semitic, but I also know how horrible people can be, so maybe they are, and I just don't know.

Anyway, he tells everyone he is Jewish, and feels the effects of it. His kid gets beaten up, he is denied jobs and apartments based on it, and is basically just made way more away of how horrible people can be. And this includes his fiance, who is in on the story, but who still manages to say and do things that come off as bigoted. Throughout the movie, I actually thought he was with the wrong woman - why marry the woman who has to tell herself to be open and not go along with everyone else on this issue, when there is a beautiful woman at the magazine he is working for, who is NOT in on the secret, and couldn't care less that he's supposedly Jewish? But no, he sticks with the other woman instead. It's his fiance who explains the title of the movie - a "Gentleman's Agreement," in which people who don't agree with the anti-semitism just stand back, go along and ignore it, instead of speaking up about it.

It was a good movie - I enjoyed it. I gave it 4 stars out of 5. It made you think, and made me hope that this problem really is in the past.

Up next:
The Greatest Show on Earth
1952
Charlton Heston
Betty Hutton
Jimmy Stewart
Dorothy Lamour
Cornel Wilde

This was a really entertaining movie. It followed the Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey circus as it traveled the country putting on shows for the masses. Brad (Charlton Heston) is the manager of the circus, Holly (Betty Hutton) is a trapeze artist who is in a relationship with Brad (but he's more in love with the show than he is with her), The Great Sebastian (Cornel Wilde) is a famous trapeze artist who swoops in and takes the center ring away from Betty's character, and lots of other characters fill out the cast.

The main story lines in this little drama are a love triangle between Brad, Holly and Sebastian, and oh yeah - Jimmy Stewart plays a clown named Buttons, who never takes off his face paint. Why? Because he's a doctor who is on the run from the law - he's wanted for murder.

Along the way, Brad puts an end to a cheating scheme put on by one of the midway booths, which puts him under fire by the thug behind the crooked guy. This leads to a hold-up of the train carrying the take from the shows, and also leads to a train wreck.

All in all, this was a very entertaining movie, but it could have been a lot shorter - if you took the scenes that just showed the circus acts out of the movie, it would be probably an hour shorter.

Oh, and probably no one reading this has ever watched a Road movie (Road to Singapore, for example), but those movies starred Dorothy Lamour (a secondary character in this movie), Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. They must have shot them at about the same time as this movie, because in one scene where Dorothy is singing, they scan the crowd to show Bing and Bob sitting there eating popcorn and watching her sing. Ha! I think that was my favorite part of the whole movie. I love the Road movies.

I gave this one 4 out of 5 stars.

Last but not least is my favorite of the three:
Marty
1955
Ernest Borgnine
Betsy Blair

I LOVED this movie. And why wouldn't I? It's a romance! Ernest Borgnine plays the title character, a 34 year old Italian man who still lives at home with his mother. His younger siblings have all married and are having kids of their own, and Marty is still single and taking all kinds of heat from the women in the neighborhood because of it.

But he doesn't want to be single! He wants to find love! But he has been shot down and had his feelings hurt so many times that he's given up hope.

Enter a Saturday night, which he plans on spending at home alone, until his Mother convinces him to go out to a dance club. She wants him to find a woman, too! So out he goes, with his single friend.

They get to the club, and they're just standing around watching people dance. Marty asks one woman to dance, but gets shot down. But then it starts to get interesting. A woman comes in with her sister and two men. Her name is Clara. She's a 29 year old school teacher, who is single and has been set up on a date with her sister's husband's friend. One problem - the friend is a sleaze.

Unhappy with the "dog" he had been set up with, this friends proceeds to approach Marty and offer him $5 if he'll take this dog off his hands and escort her home, leaving the sleaze free to go off with some other woman he's seen there. Oy. Marty, being a gentleman, is offended by this man's offer, and tells him no. But his interest is piqued, and he watches as this guy approaches another man, who accepts the $5. But Clara rejects the invitation to have a strange man take her home, and is left alone.

And what do you know, Marty approaches Clara and starts to talk to her, and they actually hit it off! They bond over being dogs and rejected so many times throughout their lives. They're having a great time, and spend hours together that night, and leave promising to see each other the next day.

These plans start to be derailed by Marty's friends and family, and I was really afraid that he was going to do the wrong thing, but he came through in the end. I'm a sap, I know this, but I love romantic movies, and this one was great. I want to own it on DVD someday.

I gave this movie 5 out of 5 stars.

There, I'm all done with movie posts for the day. Aren't you happy? And the length of this surely makes up for me not posting yesterday, right? :) Thanks for reading! (And go rent Marty, you'll love it.)

Hormooooones

Every month I have one day a week where I feel the need to eat everything that isn't freaking nailed down. Today, in case you were wondering, is one of those days.

My period is due in a week. This is not a coincidence.

Gah.

***
So, yesterday while we were at J's parents' house, his Dad turned on Turner Classic Movies, which was just starting a showing of Ben Hur. So I watched it, saving myself getting that one from Netflix.

Ben-Hur
1959
Charlton Heston
Jack Hawkins
Haya Harareet

What didn't I know about Ben-Hur? Just about everything! When I thought of this movie, I thought chariot races, I thought Rome. That's about all. I had no idea it took place at the time that Jesus was growing up and getting crucified. I had no idea there was religion in it at all.

Yes, I knew almost nothing about this movie. I liked it, though. Charlton Heston, younger than I think I had ever seen him (to me he will always be an old man, I guess), played Judah Ben-Hur, a Jew who was arrested and enslaved for something he didn't do. He was sentenced to working as a rower for ships of the times. He spent over three years as a slave in these ships, chained to the boat, rowing. This lasted until the ship he was in got involved in a battle, the ship was sunk, and he saved the life of an important man.

This man takes him under his wing, and even adopts him, but Judah wants nothing more than to return home - you see, his mother and sister were arrested at the same time as he was. He wants to find them.

So he returns home in search of them, and finds his home a wreck, but with some familiar faces around.

And I don't want to give away the whole movie, in case you might ever watch it, so I'll stop there.

It is worth watching. Just be prepared, because it is four hours long. My butt was tired from sitting on J's parents' couch by the time it was over. I would recommend it to anyone to watch once, although I don't think I'll ever feel the need to watch it a second time.

I give this movie 4 out of 5 stars. A very good movie, but SO LONG. Oy.

***

Okay, that's all for today. I'm going to get back to work, and try to avoid eating anything else until dinner time. Stupid hormones. :)

Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire
2009
Dev Patel
Anil Kapoor
Saurabh Shukla
Freida Pinto
Irrfan Khan

Yesterday J and I watched Slumdog Millionaire. I think this is a movie that would have been better watched in the theater, but I hardly ever see any of the Oscar nominees that way, so DVD will have to do.

First problem - there are a decent amount of subtitles, and they're sized very small - they were almost impossible to read on my small bedroom TV. But we managed to get the gist of what was happening, anyway.

But despite that, I got into the movie, and the two hours went by pretty quickly. I won't say too much about the plot of the movie, because this is one I'm sure most of you probably will see, unlike the ones from the 30s and 40s, and I don't want to spoil it for you. I will say that I liked the way it was set up, and that there was a story to go along with most of the questions Jamal was asked on Millionaire. It was fun to watch.

Was it worthy of winning best picture? I don't know. It didn't knock my socks off. It didn't haunt me when it was over, making me think about what happened. It was just a good movie. I haven't seen all of the nominees yet, but so far, I doubt this would have been my choice. Then again, if I had seen it on the big screen, or even on a much larger TV, maybe I would have felt differently.

I gave this movie 4 out of 5 stars.

And a small update on the state of my quest to watch all of the Best Picture Academy Award winners - I only have 29 to go! Woo! I am loving this whole project, too. I've seen some great movies that I may never have seen otherwise. I'm glad I'm doing this.

Next up - Gentleman's Agreement, from 1947.

All about Eve

All about Eve
1950
Bette Davis
Anne Baxter
George Sanders
Celeste Holm


I watched All about Eve this morning. I can't remember if I've ever watched a movie with Bette Davis in it before! I had that song in my head the whole time I was watching it. You know, "She's got! Bette Davis eyes!" There, now it's in your head, too.

I really liked this movie! In it, Bette Davis plays Margo, a middle aged famous stage actress, who is dating her director, and is good friends with her playwright and his wife. Anne Baxter plays the title character of Eve, a young woman who idolizes Margo and worms her way into her life. She acts as assistant to her, basically, and pretty soon is fully into Margo's life, handling things for her and taking care of as much as she can.

Which is when her true colors come out. I won't tell you more, because this is a movie worth watching, and I don't want to spoil it for anyone who may watch it. And if you like old movies at all, you should watch it!

I give this movie 4 out of 5 stars.

Two More Movies

Over the last two days, I watched two more Academy Award Best Picture winners.

You Can't Take It with You
1938
Jimmy Stewart
Jean Arthur
Lionel Barrymore
Edward Arnold

I LOVED this movie. Loved it. Not that my loving it was a huge surprise. It's a Frank Capra movie, and has a theme very similar to that of It's a Wonderful Life.

Basically, the story is this. Jimmy Stewart's character, Tony Kirby, is the son of a very wealthy business man, who is buying up all of the property on 12 city blocks in New York, in order to build some huge money making building. Tony holds the office of Vice President in his father's company, but since he is a wealthy man's son, it's mostly just a title. Tony has an office and a desk, but doesn't really do much. He does, however, have a secretary - Alice Sycamore, played by Jean Arthur.

Naturally, he falls for Alice, and wants to marry her. Alice is not only from a poor family - she's from the only family on that 12 block section of NYC that has said no to selling their house. For most of the movie, though, Tony's parents aren't aware of this fact.

Tony's parents are uptight rich people who look down on all below them (especially his mother). Alice's family is fun loving and is lead by her grandfather, who quit working 35 years before because he wasn't having any fun. Naturally, the two families clash quite a bit, even before you bring the property thing into it.

What I especially loved about this movie, is that Lionel Barrymore got to play a good guy, in direct contrast to a bad guy who was written very much like Mr. Potter from It's a Wonderful Life (who he played), so it was like seeing Mr. Potter in an alternate life, where he wasn't such an ass. I liked him much more in this one, needless to say.

And I'm explaining it horribly, but this is a very fun, feel good movie that made me say, "I loved that" out loud when it ended. (It doesn't hurt that I always loved Jimmy Stewart anyway.) (Oh, and not only was Lionel Barrymore, who played Mr. Potter in It's a Wonderful Life in this, but also the man who plays Alice's father? Also played Peter Bailey, George's Dad from It's a Wonderful Life. That was fun to spot.)

I gave this movie 5 out of 5 stars. :)

The Lost Weekend
1945
Ray Milland
Jane Wyman
Phillip Terry

This one is the story of an alcoholic, 10 days sober, left alone by his caretaker brother and his girlfriend for a whole weekend. Naturally, as soon as they leave him, he's off finding ways to secure the only thing he can think of - rye whiskey. And he proceeds to spend the entire weekend drinking. He has various misadventures over the course of the time his brother is gone, including being locked into an alcoholics ward in a hospital after a fall down a flight of stairs. He sees a disturbing hallucination, and basically goes through the typical ups and downs of a man with this kind of problem. During this time, he had to face himself and his problem, putting his girlfriend through hell in the process.

It's not exactly a fun movie, like the other one in this post, but it sure does show the bad sides of alcoholism. I found myself relating to it a lot as the family member of various people who have/had this problem. Mostly what I felt during it, though, was amazement that this man had been putting his brother and girlfriend through hell for so long, and yet they stuck with him. Not many people would. I found myself telling the girl to hit the road, because people like this don't change very often, in my experience, and when they do, it has to be their decision, not yours.

But, mostly, it just made me grateful that I have never even liked the taste of alcohol enough to drink more than a few sips. I can't imagine having to try to quit something that is this addictive.

This was a very good movie. Like I said, not a fun one, but a good one, with a good story to tell. I gave it 4 out of 5 stars.

Movie and Book Catch-Up

I haven't been very good about writing in here about my progress on watching the Academy Award Best Picture winners and on reading 10 Pulitzer Prize winners. At this point, knowing myself as I do, I won't be writing an update about the ones I never wrote about, so just know that I've watched a couple more movies than I've written about, and I've read one more book than I've written about. :)

In an effort to be better about this, though, I will say that my next Pulitzer Prize winning book is on hold for me at the library, so I'll be starting that soon. I chose Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides, which won in 2003. It looks like an interesting book, and I look forward to reading it.

As for the movies, Netflix is sending me All Quiet on the Western Front, so I'll have that tomorrow. And J and I watched Milk the other night. That's not a winner, but it is a current nominee, and I'm going to watch all the current movies that are nominated for Best Picture until my 1001 days are over.

Milk was a very interesting movie. Sean Penn did a great job, I can see why he won the Oscar for Best Actor. What surprised me is that this fight for gay rights has been going on for this long. I was only a small child for most of the time that this movie was set in, so I had no idea of the fight that was going on even back in the early 70s. It was interesting, though, to see some of the same arguments used from people who were trying to keep gay people from getting equal rights back then and in the present. Those arguments didn't make sense in 1972, and they don't make sense now, and yet they're still being spouted by people who think letting gay people get married and be equal in every way is going to hurt heterosexuals, or that it will go against their idea of God. Ugh. People just make me sick, they really do.

Anyway, I'm not going to get into that here, I just wanted to say that I was surprised by the fact that this fight was going on back then, and is still going on now. It seems like we'd have wisened up by now, you know?

This was a very good movie. I enjoyed watching it. It's not one I feel the need to own, but I enjoyed it. I give it 4 stars out of 5.

I had taken a break from reading the Pulitzer Prize winners, and watching the Oscar winners. It feels good to get back to them. I really can't wait, especially, to catch up on all the movies, and to be able to say that I have watched them all. Well, all except the ones that aren't on DVD (there are still a couple of the early ones).

Boring movie/book entry over. Resume normal activities. :)

To Thine Own Self Be True

Over the last two nights I watched Hamlet.

Hamlet
1948
Laurence Olivier
Basil Sydney
Eileen Herlie
Norman Wooland

I can't remember for sure, but I probably watched this in high school or even junior high school at some point. Everyone reads Hamlet and then watches the movie in school, right? But it had been so long that I couldn't say for sure that I had seen this, and shoot, I couldn't even remember all of what happened in it. So I'm glad I put this back on my list.

I won't really go into details about the plot - like I said, we all read this in high school. I will say that I had forgotten how good Shakespeare's stories were - I started knitting while watching the movie, but I ended up putting the knitting down and just watching, because it sucked me right in.

I'll also say that if I had ever become a writer, like I always wanted to, I would NOT have been able to write tragedies. I'm far too kind hearted for that. I went to bed thinking about the movie last night, and it all could have been so happy! If only Claudius hadn't killed his brother. If only Hamlet hadn't killed Polonius. If only...well, if only it had been a whole different play. That's my problem, really - I want everyone to be happy, but it's a far more interesting story when they're miserable.

Anyway, I really enjoyed watching this, and I think for the first time since I started watching these old Oscar winning movies, I'm giving it 5 stars. It deserves all five of them.

Two Best Picture Winners

I have two Best Picture Oscar winners to update about, so that's what this post is going to be. I think I have about 37 movies left to watch (not counting a few that aren't on DVD yet), so I could be finished with this in two or three months, woo! It's been fun, though. Anyway, here we go.

Going My Way
1944
Bing Crosby
Barry Fitzgerald

This is the story of a church that is in financial trouble, and the priest who comes in to fix things. Bing Crosby is the priest who comes in to save things, and of course he croons his way through the job. From saving a young girl who is in trouble, to keeping a group of trouble making boys off the streets by having them form a choir, he has a song for everything.

Just like all Bing Crosby movies, it was an enjoyable movie to watch. I'm not sure if it deserved to win the best picture Oscar, but then, different types of movies tended to win back then. It's worth watching if you see it on when you're flipping through channels someday. I don't feel the need to own it, though.

I give it 3.5 stars out of 5.

Mutiny on the Bounty
1935
Clark Gable
Charles Laughton

J and I watched this one together - he loves Navy movies (even though this was the British Navy, it was still Navy, so it doesn't matter). I didn't understand some of the Navy stuff, but it was still very enjoyable for me to watch.

First - Captain Bligh is a horrible, horrible man. I can see why Clark Gable's character mutinied and set him (and his supporters on ship) adrift in a lifeboat. Did you know what keelhauling was? I didn't. He did it to someone, though, so I got to see it. A person is tied to a line, dropped into the water, and then dragged down the length of the bottom of the boat, drowning in the process. Horrible! Can you tell I hated Captain Bligh? What did this poor unfortunate person do to deserve this? He asked for water for his knees, which were being torn and burned to shreds as he was kneeled on the deck, cleaning it. Talk about the punishment not fitting the crime.

Captain Bligh also cut food and water rations to a point that almost killed the men who worked under him, all while eating and drinking like a king at his own table. Horrible man!

Anyway, I don't want to give too much away, because this movie is definitely worth watching. Just be prepared to hate Captain Bligh, okay?

I give this movie 4.5 stars out of 5.

Mrs. Miniver

I watched Mrs. Miniver yesterday morning, while I was home knitting a scarf and trying not to feel the cold I'm catching.

Mrs. Miniver
1942
Greer Garson
Walter Pidgeon
Teresa Wright
Richard Ney

I popped this into the DVD player on my laptop, and then went to the kitchen to make myself a cup of hot cocoa - I didn't have any orange juice, and the cocoa seemed like the next best thing to make the cold feel better. Or that was my justification - really, it just sounded like a good idea on a cold winter day.

So I get my cocoa nice and hot and come back out to the living room, and the movie is already playing on my laptop (it started itself automatically). And who do I see on my screen? Clarence, the angel from It's a Wonderful Life! Which I had just finished watching before putting this DVD in, by the way. So I was all, "Hey Clarence! Congratulations on your wings! I didn't know you were in this movie, too!"

I like Clarence. I always have bells on my Christmas trees now, because of that movie.

Anyway, back to Mrs. Miniver. It's the story of a family in England during WWII. (Okay, I just wrote that, and then doubted myself, because the movie came out in 1942, so WWII wasn't exactly a long ago historical event at the time, but I remember them mentioning Nazis, and buying a car that was from the late 30s or early 40s, so it had to be WWII. Okay, doubting moment over.)

Mrs. Miniver and her husband go through the war years, their oldest son enlisting in the RAF (Royal Air Force) and fighting in the war, as they stay home and spend nights in a bomb shelter with their younger kids and their son's cat, Napoleon. It was a very enjoyable movie, that I feel like I'm doing a bad job talking about. It's hard to talk about a movie without giving too much away!

But I can tell this much more. The son falls in love with a girl from town, and her grandmother is a nasty old woman, but Mrs. Miniver and her son totally win her over. And there is a flower show every year, and Clarence, whose name is something else in this movie, but I'm still calling him Clarence, grew a red rose that he named after Mrs. Miniver, because she was so nice to him all the time. He entered this rose in the flower show, against the old lady's rose. And this is a competition that the old lady has never lost. Ooh! Exciting. :) It was sweet, though, actually. It gave the old lady's character room to grow in a nice, heart warming way.

And there are bombs and people getting shot, and a wounded German ending up in the Miniver's kitchen, and just all kinds of excitement. It was a very good movie, and an enjoyable one to watch while I was sitting home knitting on a snowy Sunday. I give it 4 out of 5 stars.

How Green Was My Valley

How Green Was My Valley
1941
Starring:
Walter Pidgeon
Maureen O'Hara
Anna Lee
Donald Crisp
Roddy McDowall

I loved this movie. Okay. My hormones might be a bit messed up. Am I PMSing? I have no idea. My body has no idea. But I don't think the hormones are the only reason I loved this movie, even though I did almost cry at the end (teared up, but the tears didn't fall).

This is the story of a family in a small coal mining town in Wales. They're a large family, full of men who work in the mines, plus a daughter and a young son. It follows their stories as the miners strike for a union, and then as the mine starts laying them off. It follows the daughter as she falls for the new preacher. It follows the young son as he and the mother recover from an accident, and then as he goes to school.

It's a story of relationships, of love, and of circumstance that change their lives. By the end of the movie, I loved them all. I laughed with them, I cheered them on, I cried with them. I'm so glad this was a Best Picture winner. Otherwise I might never have seen it! I highly recommend it, and I give it 5 out of 5 stars.

The Life of Emile Zola

A quick explanation for anyone who's coming here from holidailies and isn't a regular reader: I'm watching all of the Best Picture Academy Award winning movies (well, all that are available on DVD - there are a couple that aren't). When I watch one, I post a bit of a review here, which is what this entry is.

And without further ado:

The Life of Emile Zola
1937
Starring:
Paul Muni
Joseph Schildkraut
Vladimir Sokoloff

This is a movie about Emile Zola, a writer and political activist from the 1800s (who also happens to be best friends with Paul Cezanne). It starts out when he and Cezanne are young and poor, sharing a small apartment with holes in the windows. He sees injustices and writes books about them, which actually get printed, and he becomes rather famous for these. After a while he has gotten so rich and famous (and older) that he feels like he has done his time as an activist, and wants no more to do with it. Until...

Captain Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason (this all takes place in France, by the way), but he's innocent. The French government needed someone to take the fall for the crime, and he was the one chosen. He was sentenced to an isolated island, trapped in a one room cell, with hardly even the necessities to stay alive (ha! I'm listening to Staying Alive as I write that. Funny, yes? :). Even after proof comes to light that shows his innocence and another man's guilt, they refuse to set him free, because if they admit they were wrong, it will look bad for them.

So Emile ends up fighting for him - landing him in trouble with the government, and ending up on trial himself for slander.

This movie started our really slowly, and I was afraid this was going to be the first Oscar winning movie that I wouldn't like at all. But of course, it got better. I mean, all of these movies won Best Picture, it's not like they're going to suck. Once the things started happening with Dreyfus, it got much better.

I won't give away the whole ending, in case you want to watch it for yourselves. :)

I give this movie 4 stars out of 5. It could have started off less boring, but otherwise it was very good.

(By the way - I love old movies, I really do, but I'm thinking I'm going to need to watch some newer movies soon, because I'm kind of wearing thin on the black and white movies full of actors who are now dead. It's a good thing we have the new Hulk movie at home to watch.)

(Also, on a non-movie related note, it's freaking cold here today (3 degrees when I got to work), and it's very cold in my office, and I'm sick of being cold. It either needs to be spring now, or I need to move south again.)

(Asides over. Thanks. :)

Movie and Book Update

Two of the items on my 101 list are to watch all the Best Picture Academy Award winners and to read 10 Pulitzer Prize winning novels. I knocked one of each off my list this weekend.

The Movie

The Great Ziegfeld
1936
William Powell
Myrna Loy
Frank Morgan
Luise Rainer

This was the story of Florenz Ziegfeld, Jr., a famous Broadway producer. You've heard of Ziegfeld's Follies, right? That's the guy. It showcased his personal and professional life, from when he was managing a "world's strongest man" exhibit at the world's fare to his death.

It was an enjoyable movie. The only real fault I had with it was that they showed too much of the stage shows he put on. It was over 3 hours long, and could have been a lot shorter if they had cut that. Which they could have, without hurting the story at all. But then, it was 1936, so audiences were very different. Maybe they liked watching that stuff then.

The other exciting thing about it were that the Wizard from the Wizard of Oz was in it, and so was the scarecrow! Well, that excited me, anyway.

So. Very good performances by all involved, and very enjoyable if you like classic movies and you have three hours free. You might want to go to the bathroom or go get snacks during the show scenes, though.

I gave this movie 4 out of 5 stars.

The Book

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
by Junot Diaz
2008 Pulitzer Prize Winner (Fiction)

This book tells the tale of the life of Oscar Wao, a true blue geek. He's fat, he loves sci-fi, comic books and role playing games. He has never been kissed, and may just die a virgin. But he loves women, and yearns to have one of his own. His story is told through the eyes of a friend, and covers not only Oscar's story, but also his mother's and some of his sister's, as well. The story is very engaging, and once I got into it, I couldn't put it down. I sat at home yesterday and read probably the last half of the book, not going to bed until I finished.

My only complaint about this book isn't really a complaint, it's just something that made it hard for me to get into the book at first. Oscar and his family are Dominican, and that culture is basically a character in the story. I come from a world very different from that, so it was hard at first for me to get involved in it, or to understand it. Of course, it might have been easier if the author didn't keep using Spanish phrases without giving a translation for those of us who don't speak Spanish.

Still, once I got used to the language, and learned a bit more about the culture that was so important to the story, it was very easy to get involved in Oscar's life, and it really was an engaging read. I gave it 4 out of 5 stars.

Grand Hotel

Yesterday I watched another of the Academy Award Best Picture winners.

Grand Hotel
1932
Greta Garbo
John Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore
Joan Crawford
Wallace Beery

This is my favorite of the old Best Picture winners that I've seen so far, so I'm not going to give you a whole synopsis. I feel that, if you like old movies, you should watch this one for yourself, and I don't want to spoil it for you. So.

I really liked this movie a lot. It takes place in Grand Hotel, a posh hotel for affluent people. Our cast of characters includes: Grusinskaya (Greta Garbo), a famous ballet dancer; The Baron (John Barrymore), a down on his luck Baron who owes money for gambling debts and is at the hotel to steal a string of pearls from Grusinskaya; Flaemmchen (Joan Crawford - the character name is pronounced Flem-chen), a stenographer who will do just about anything for money; Preysing (Wallace Beery), a business owner whose business is falling apart around him (Flaemmchen is working for him, and he likes her for more than her stenographer talents, if you get my drift); Otto Kringelein (Lionel Barrymore), an accountant for Preysing's company, who is dying, and has come to Grand Hotel to live the rest of his life in style, spending all of his life savings on fun.

My favorite character is the Baron (shown to the right, with Garbo as Grusinskaya). He may be there to act as a thief, but he is a true gentleman, and a very bad thief. He's just a sweetheart, and super nice to poor Kringelein, who hasn't had many people be nice to him in his lifetime. Oh, and he's a dog lover, and has a pet Dachsund. :) You know I've got to love a dog lover.

Anyway, the movie revolves around the stories of these main characters, plus some secondary characters as well. It's masterfully done, and it definitely deserved the Oscar. I would watch this again if I saw it on TV.

I give this movie 4.5 stars out of 5.

Best Picture Update - Cimarron

The other night I watched the next Best Picture winner on my Netflix list.

Cimarron
1931
Starring Richard Dix and Irene Dunne

This was the first Western to win Best Picture, and I guess I can see why. It tells the sweeping tale of a man, Yancey Cravat, on the search for adventure, who moves his wife and toddler son to the Oklahoma territory, looking to put his mark on this developing part of the country. When they arrive in Osage, his wife, played by Irene Dunne, is overwhelmed, and wants to move back to Kansas. But they stay, and they settle down, and he starts a newspaper. He settles into life as a prominent figure in the town, as his wife starts to get involved in the area through women's groups, while raising their son and a daughter who comes along a year after they move to Osage. After four years in town, life has become a little too routine for adventure seeker Yancey, and he leaves his wife and kids at home and goes off for new adventures in an area of land that the government is just opening for settlement. She does just fine without him, running the paper and raising their kids. He does eventually come back, and she takes him back for some reason I couldn't quite figure out, but he is nothing if not predictable, and soon takes off again. She ends up living most of her married life alone. Ironically, she ends up being the most influential of the two, and actually ends up as the first female Congress person at the end of the movie (I think it was Congress - it's been a few days since I watched it, and now I'm doubting myself on that). She never gave up on loving Yancey, though, and in fact kept his name on the masthead of the paper as the editor for the whole 40 year span of the movie.

And see, here is where my problem with this movie comes in. Despite the fact that I agree with Yancey's views on civil rights - he was an advocate of giving Native Americans the vote and treting them the same as anyone else (and yet he ignored the black boy living with them calling him "Massa" (Master, with the stereotypical accent of the time), and working for them much as he would have in slave times, which had only ended about 20 years before this movie takes place) - I didn't like Yancey Cravat at all.

I don't know if it's the way he was written, or the way Richard Dix played him, but I hated him from the moment I first saw him, and that never changed. It makes it really hard to like a movie, when you hate one of the main characters. I'm not even really sure what it was about him that I hated. It could be his arrogance, his disregard for his family (anyone who cared about his family wouldn't leave them for five years at a time, especially in the 1880s and 1890s, when he couldn't exactly pick up a cell phone and call every day). Oh, it could also be the fact that he seemed to become a self-appointed judge and jury for Osage, killing a man who he suspected of murdering the last person who had tried to run a paper in the new town, without benefit of any real proof (he was even shown carving notches into his gun barrel at one point). Or it could be all of these things together. But really, it was just a gut reaction. He wasn't to be trusted, even if he was the "hero" of the movie. (That's in quotes because I think he was really the furthest thing from a hero.)

Anyway, it was worth watching, and like I said, I can see why it won the Oscar in 1931. It just wasn't for me.

Next up on my Oscar list is a movie from 1932 called Grand Hotel, with Greta Garbo, John Barrymore and Joan Crawford. Here's hoping I like it better.

Oh, and I should institute some sort of rating system for these movies, don't you think? I'll do a 1-5 star rating, with 1 being I hated it, and 5 being I loved it and want to own it.

Cimarron gets 2 1/2 stars from me. I liked Irene Dunne, hated Richard Dix (or his character, anyway), and I don't really like Westerns to begin with.

Best Picture 101 Update

Last night I watched the oldest Best Picture winner that I had on my Netflix list:

Broadway Melody of 1929
1929
Starring Charles King, Anita Page and Bessie Love

This was an okay movie - the first musical to win Best Picture, and at a time when talkies were still pretty new. The movie opened with a song, which was nice, but I was sitting there wondering if I was going to get any story during this movie, or if the people of 1929 thought singing and dancing were enough. Well, I did finally get a story, I'm happy to say.

The movie turns out to be about two sisters who move to New York City to pursue a career as song and dance girls on Broadway. They moved into a hotel suite, which I'm sure any aspiring actor/singer/dancer moving to New York today would die to live in, but it was the movies, and who knows - maybe NYC was easier to live in back then.

Anyway, it turns out that the boyfriend of one of the girls (Eddie was the boyfriend, Hank was the girl - weird, but yes, she was named Hank) was already in the city, and had a job as a song writer, and was doing really well for himself. So he got the girls an audition for a show. The "pretty" sister (Queenie) got in, but the "manager" sister (Hank) didn't, but Queenie talked to the producer and managed to convince him to take both girls.

Okay, long story short. Eddie falls for Queenie, but Queenie doesn't want to hurt Hank, so she starts seeing some rich guy who wants to make her a kept woman - you know, give her an aparment in the city, keep her in furs and jewels, and get some nookie anytime he wants. Hank is devastated at what Queenie is doing, but has no idea she's doing it for her sake. Finally, after witnessing a scene between Eddie and Queenie, Hank realizes what's happening, and is hurt, but she turns self-sacrificing and tells Eddie that she never loved him anyway (lie), and tells him to go save Queenie from this rich guy. Which he does. Eddie and Queenie get married, and Hank goes back to the vaudeville circuit that the girls came from, playing a tour of 30 cities. And for some reason everyone is happy.

Personally, I think Hank got the shaft.

Also, as soon as Queenie and Eddie got married, Queenie quit trying to be a star to be a wife. Which is to be expected from a movie made in 1929, I guess. Women weren't supposed to be anything other than housewives and mothers back then anyway.

So, one more Best Picture winner done, and I gave it 3 stars out of 5 on Netflix. I'm glad I saw it, but I don't suppose I'll ever want to see it again. Once was enough.

Best Picture Update

J and I knocked two more movies off my Oscar winner list recently. First up:

The Sting
1974
Starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman

I enjoyed this a lot! I kind of feel like I need to watch it again, though, because I didn't quite understand everything they were doing as part of the sting. I've already sent the DVD back, but due to the wonders of Netflix, I believe I can watch it online (and if I'm remembering wrong, I can always get the DVD again). I was surprised watching this how much older Paul Newman was than Robert Redford - I thought they were pretty much the same age, but Redford looked way younger in this. Anyway, I would obviously be a very easy mark for a conman, since they lost me so easily, but I could see why this won Best Picture. It was very well done.

Next up was:

On the Waterfront
1954
Starring Marlon Brando, Karl Malden and introducing Eva Marie Saint.

I really liked this one a lot! What isn't to like - it's the story of a man who stands up to the injustices being handed down to longshoremen, beating them and getting justice for his fellow workers. Also a young, thin Marlon Brando, which I don't think I've ever seen in a movie before. To me he's always been the fat old man he was in The Godfather, so this was kind of weird. It was nice to see him that way, though. And of course I loved hearing the famous lines - "I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody." And one I didn't know came from that movie, about a "one way ticket to palookaville."

Two very enjoyable movies, and two more done on the list of ones I have to watch. Next up is a movie from 1929 - The Broadway Melody of 1929, which was the first musical to win the Best Picture Oscar. I'm going to go chronologically from here on out (probably), so I'll be working my way through the decades. This was a fun thing to put on my 101 list. :)