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10 random things that happened on this day, January 29th, in showbiz history
1937The Good Earth has its world premiere in Los Angeles though it won't really be playing for the general public until the summer. It later receives five Oscar nominations including Best Picture. Luise Rainer in "yellow face" (sigh) becomes the first actor, male or female, to win consecutive Oscars.
1951 Elizabeth Taylor divorces her first husband, hotel heir Conrad Hilton Jr, after 8 months of marriage. She would marry 7 more times in her much gawked-at life but the first was her shortest marriage...
Today marks the 100th birthday of famed illustrator Eyvinde Earle (1916-2000) who has a special connection to the cinema having logged time with Walt Disney Studios, most famously helping to shape the aesthetic of the studio's greatest looking traditional classic, Sleeping Beauty (1959). The artist passed away sixteen years ago but his work lives on. Take a look...
People say such strange things when they're talking about Oscars • Bwin predicts Leo will lose the Oscar. One especially weird bit of reasoning is that all of the Actor nominees are playing good guys. Um, did they watch Steve Jobs? • The Guardian says a "conservative" estimate is that Australians will win 10 Oscars tomorrow. Conservative? Have they not heard of The Revenant? • /Film Stunt people want their own Oscar and recently protested again. Unfortunately they also felt the need to belittle other industry talents saying:
People love action; that’s why people go to the movies. No disrespect, but who goes to the movies to see the hairstyles?”
*raises hand*
More Oscar Mania • Vanity Fair fun interview with nominated Jenny Beavan, Mad Max Fury Road costume designer, with a choice Charlize Theron quote • Boston Globe really interesting piece from Ty Burr on "what if the Oscars didn't exist..." and it takes you to place I personally wasn't expecting • Psychology Today on why we're obsessed with the Oscars. STOP PSYCHOANALYZING ME! • IndieWire Ira Deutchman suggests changes to make the Academy more diverse. "First film" would be interesting and skew young but I am adamantly opposed to breakthrough since that is too easily gamed -- see the "breakthrough" prizes Charlize Theron won for Monster after several years of stardom. We'd have a whole new category fraud problem with that. • The Guardian has an interesting take on the Short Film categories -- why don't people watch them when they're increasingly available -- and why do they feel like commercials for features? • Variety beautiful reminiscence from Alfre Woodard on her earliest theatrical success and her 80s Oscar nomination • Tim Brayton's Oscar Predictions • Movie Motorbreath's Oscar Predictions
General Film • Interview ZOMG Julianne Moore interviewing Christina Vachon! • Instagram The Sleeping Beauty dragon via LEGOs! • i09 JJ Abrams is claiming Star Wars will feature gay characters. I'll believe that when I see it (but until then it's fun that Oscar Isaac winked to queer fans with Poe Dameron. And also the Star Wars Saga is largely asexual anyway so...
Off Cinema • Pajiba nails Marco Rubio with a great Turing Test joke • i09 Bram Stoker Awards -- for horror fiction. Which of these will end up as movies? • /Film Tom McCarthy is going to follow up Spotlight with a Netflix series called 13 Reasons Why... it's based on a bestseller but honestly the suicidal premise sounds atrocious / reductive. Already worried! • Jeanne the Fangirl amazing find - a letter to Marvel from 1974 complaining about Iron Fist's whitewashing. Here we are in 2016 and Marvel is STILL planning a white Iron Fist even though the story is Asian by origin • Playbill.com has a badly needed redesign. Check it out if you love Broadway
Today's Watch A Cat predicting the Oscars. (Monty, TFE's Oscar predicting cat, wouldn't cooperate this year but he's always been temperamental about his psychic duties. Also: he's very very old now and only wants to sleep.) So anyway here is some random cat who thinks he can do it. Rampling, eh?
The Podcast didn't help. The more I linger on How To Train Your Dragon 2 the less love I realize I have for it. This is not to say that it's not worth seeing -- it's good. I just wanted it to be great since I hold the original in such high esteem. The animation is truly impressive and some sequences provoke awe in a way that nothing else in the theater does at the moment outside of a few scenes in Godzilla. But plotwise the third act just doesn't work for me. I don't like the alpha-male 'you have no choice to obey' conceit... which feels like a betrayal of the first movie's very particular and atypical action movie triumphs. But I still want to see it again for reasons of DRAGONS!!!
So for today's list...
THE TEN BEST DRAGONS IN THE MOVIES (Disclaimer: I did not see The Desolation of Smaug and have no plans to)
10 The Eborsisk in Willow (1988) Around the web you can find a few references to this two-headed dragon (which was done with puppetry - puppets are the best) that label it a 'homage' to Siskel & Ebert, then very much the power duo of film critics. But that's rewriting history. At the time it was a diss since George Lucas was no fan of theirs. Willow is a lot of fun across the board except those stupid thumbelina sized people, the 'comic relief'.
09 Falkor in The Never Ending Story (1984) I don't remember this movie well at all. In fact, just about the only thing I remember was thatI was really in love with it when I was much younger. But now I don't remember why. But it brought me joy then so I figured I owed it to him. And to whoever thought up a dog-like "luckdragon", more cuddly than fearsome, long before the cat-like Toothless, I salute you.
Tim here. We’ve all had a few days for the recent trailer for Disney’s upcoming pillaging of former glories live-action Sleeping Beauty riff Maleficent to sink in (full disclosure: all I get is a big rotten whiff of Snow White and the Huntsman with a bigger role for its face-saving Prima Donna as the villain). So I’d like to take a moment to rewind 55 years back to the first Maleficent, for no better – and certainly, no worse – reason than that she’s one of the very best villains not only in the Disney canon, but in cinema as a whole. And while it’s never the wrong time to pay attention to one of the finest pieces of draftsmanship in the whole of American character animation, it’s nice to have an excuse.
The question, “Why is Maleficent so damn awesome?” has many answers, but here’s the easy one: black.
Friday, January 29, 2021 at 8:00AM 
