Showbiz History: An Unmarried Woman, Oscar Balloting, and Hula Hoops

7 random things that happened on this day, March 5th, in showbiz history...

Best Actor and Best Actress, Victor McLaglen & Bette Davis

1936 The 8th Academy Awards are held honoring the best of 1935. Victor McLaglen (The Informer) and Bette Davis (Dangerous) take the acting Oscars. Mutiny on the Bounty wins Best Picture (and nothing else). That happened three times in the first eight years of Oscar history and has literally never happened since. That same night John Ford wins the first of his four Best Director prizes (the all time record) for The Informer. Curiously only one of his Best Director wins, How Green Was My Valley, came with a companion Best Picture win. (So he's like if you combined Alfonso Cuaron and Ang Lee's records, both of whom have won twice without a companion Best Picture win, and rewrote history -- which we'd sure like to *cough Brokeback* -- to add in 1 random Best Picture win.) The four wins without much help from Best Picture frontrunner status is such a crazy record if you think on it for even half a second. It's hard to imagine that it will ever be broken...

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Lunchtime Poll: When was the last time a movie or show gave you whiplash?

by Nathaniel R

- Tell me who you are!
- I'm the worst mistake you'll ever mistake.

Watching I Don't Care (reviewed by Christopher) was a whiplash experience. I was absolutely loving it until I suddenly wasn't. Thirty-six minutes into the movie Dean (Chris Messina) arrives into Marla's (Rosamund Pike) office, to start what is essentially act two of a three act. Two sharks begin speaking in human voices, their teeth gleaming imagining fleshy bites and blood in the water. It's a superb scene. A few minutes later another violent verbal duet with Dianne Wiest.  All three actors are on absolute fire with impeccably judged reaction shots, expressive body language, and nastily imaginative line-readings. I Care A Lot felt, in that ten minute stretch, like it was taking off into the stratosphere. This is an "A" grade pitch-black comedy! The movie throws everything at you thereafter -- incidents, twists, more verbal duels, violence, and a score so aggressively present you want to remind it that Rosamund Pike has top billing-- but it's a case of either too much or rapidly dimishing returns.  I was actively annoyed and disappointed for the entire third act. 

When was the last time this happened to you? Love and hate in almost equal measure while watching a movie?

Streaming Review: "I Care A Lot" (Netflix)

by Christopher James

Rosamund Pike cares a lot, not about her elderly wards, but about winning.Music and The Mauritanian weren’t the only movies that showed up at the Golden Globes without people having seen the film. Rosamund Pike nabbed a nomination in the Best Actress in a Musical/Comedy for the Netflix film I Care A Lot, which some critics saw during the Toronto International Film Festival. The Globes have long loved Rosamund Pike, even nominating her for A Private War in 2018. Is this latest nomination a case of the Globes being goofy, or is Pike awards worthy in this new black comedy?

The answer is yes and no on both fronts. Pike uses “Amazing Amy” ability to establish a horrifying, gleefully bloodthirsty businesswoman who fleeces the elderly. Unfortunately, she does so in a vehicle that points that talent in the exact wrong directions...

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Review: "Let Them All Talk"

by Christopher James

Imagine a cruise ship movie starring Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, Dianne Wiest and Lucas Hedges. With five Oscars, 26 Oscar nominations and 10 Emmy wins between them, Let Them All Talk was poised for greatness just on its logline alone. The new HBO Max film may sound like the perfect fluff while at home, but that would ignore the film’s not-so-secret ingredient. With director Steven Soderbergh at the helm, he steers the film away from madcap and into more contemplative, but far less calm, waters. Let Them All Talk may move more glacially than expected. Yet, what we’re left with is a thornier and more interesting look at a decades long friendship filled with fractures.

A renowned author, Alice (Meryl Streep) learns that she is receiving a prestigious award in England (“it’s not even given out every year,” she reminds everyone she encounters). Ever the diva, Alice wants to travel by style and not by plane...

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The first Oscars I lived through

by Cláudio Alves

Throughout my life, I've always had trouble remembering numerical data, be it phone numbers or birthdays. Curiously enough, that never stopped me from being able to memorize movie's release years or various tidbits of Oscar trivia. That's why I started associating Best Picture winners to people's ages, to remember them. Some people have astrology; I have the Oscars. For instance, my sisters are Terms of Endearment, Dances with Wolves and Gladiator and my parents are West Side Story and The Sound of Music.

Although, maybe I shouldn't have chosen such a systemsince I've always detested my Best Picture, which won the Oscar precisely 25 years ago today. It was none other than 1994's maudlin hymn to political passivity and dumb luck known as Forrest Gump…

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