26 Days Until Oscar. Sing-along with Sammy Cahn

On this 26th day before Oscar, why not sing along to classic tunes co-written by Sam Cahn who received an incredible 26 Oscar nominations. He was so popular in his time that he even posed for pictures like this! Hee.

Yes, dear reader, there are people with more Oscar nominations than Meryl Streep.  Not many of them, mind you, and the bulk of them seem to be from the sound or music branches...

Click to read more ...

Link Street

Do you know what live streaming is? 

Vanity Fair celebrities react to Fathom Events Woody Harrelson Lost in London Live streaming experiment (which happens this week)
Interview Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things) one of the "Faces of 2017" portfolio
TFE Happy birthday to Betty White and James Earl Jones both among the oldest living screen stars
Vulture in-depth interview with smart funny one of a kind Billy Eichner
This is Not Porn Jim Carrey impersonating celebrities in 1992 
Coming Soon new images from Netflix superhero team series The Defenders
In Contention Thelma Schoonmaker and Janet Ashikaga to be honored by the Editors Guild this year
Mind of a Suspicious Kind a reminder of the amazing cinematography of Wings (1927) with a funny anecdote 
Mike's Movie Projector two movie premieres of 1954: A Star is Born and East of Eden 

ICYMI
If you were away for the weekend... 
Team Experience Awards Moonlight, Arrival, Jackie, The Handmaiden, and more...
Nathaniel's Top 20 Sing Street thru La La
Pfandom Episode 2 Pfeiffer in 1979
Pablo Larraín we spoke with the director of the incredible Jackie about "curiousity, love, and rage"
Podcast in the two most recent conversations we covered Silence, 20th Century Women, Hidden Figures
Toni Erdmann's screenplay. Have you seen it yet? 

What's your favorite Jane Wyman?

It's Jane Wyman's Centennial.  The actress was born on this day in Missouri in 1917 as Sara Jane Mayfield.

Like many major stars her legacy rests on a period that's only about a decade long -- in Wyman's case the mid 40s through the 50s, or more specifically the Best Picture winner The Lost Weekend (1945) through the Douglas Sirk classic All that Heaven Allows (1955) a period in which she specialized in childlike women and their inverse young widows-- but her career was long, stretching from bit parts in the early 30s through TV stardom in the 80s.

Her greatest hits and Oscar triumphs after the jump. Which is your favorite?

Click to read more ...

The Furniture: Design Inspires Van Gogh in Lust for Life

"The Furniture" is our weekly series on Production Design. Here's Daniel Walber...

Kirk Douglas nearly drove himself over the edge while filming Lust for Life, inhabiting the character of Vincent van Gogh with a tenacity akin to the Method. The result was an Oscar nomination, likely the closest he ever came to a win. His emotionally volatile performance lends real weight to the oft-sensationalized biography of history’s most famously mad artist.

But the success of Lust for Life isn’t owed entirely to Douglas. Director Vincente Minnelli was a perfect match for the material, which necessitates a balance between the beauty that Van Gogh saw in the world and the feverish passion that drove him away from it. The Oscar-nominated production design team, led by frequent Minnelli collaborator Cedric Gibbons, offer a rich vision of the French countryside that serves as an essential counterpoint to Douglas’s madness.

Click to read more ...

Oscar Horrors: Patty McCormack is "The Bad Seed"

Boo! It's the "Oscar Horrors" finale with abstew

With her blonde pigtails, pinafore dress, spotless Mary Janes, and armed with an elegant curtsy, little 8-year-old Rhoda Penmark is hardly the most intimidating figure. But beneath that childish visage lies the heart of a cold-blooded killer! One that shocked audiences in the 1950s. The Bad Seed preyed on the idea that evil wasn't some devil or mythical monster, but that it lived next door in the most unassuming of places. And worst of all, that evil was a hereditary trait that could be passed on, with no control over your assigned nature. The evil child has now become a staple of the horror genre, from the towheaded Children of the Corn to the twins from The Shining, but one of the first to make her mark (literally - watch out for those deadly shoes!) was bad seed, Rhoda Penmark, brought to life by Best Supporting Actress nominee, Patty McCormack.

I was about Rhoda's age when I first saw The Bad Seed at my friend Vicky's house...

Click to read more ...