Showbiz History: Taxi Driver, Grammy Openers, and Globe Switcheroos

5 random things that happened on this day, February 8th, in showbiz history...

Julie Andrews in her infamous 'kill them with kindness' Globes speech in which she thanked the producer of... wait for it... My Fair Lady.

1921 One hundred years ago movie star Lana Turner was born. More on her later.

1965 The 22nd annual Golden Globe awards honoring the films of 1964 were held. Becket (drama) and My Fair Lady (comedy/musical) took the Best Picture prizes. And at the peak of the popularity of gigantic big screen musicals, it was the "comedy/musical" winners for acting that repeated on Oscar night with Rex Harrison (My Fair Lady) and Julie Andrews (Mary Poppins) both winning here first...

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Stunt Ensemble SAG Nominations - How should they be decided?

One of the reasons we'll never see a Casting Oscar is how invisible that art is. Like editing, only even more hidden, you dont know what the person in charge was working with at all. What did they have to choose from to help create that movie magic? The fact that there's still no "Stunt" Oscar is infinitely weirder, though, because you can actually SEE stuntwork onscreen. And in some movies a lot of it. So thankfully we at least have Stunt prizes from the Screen Actors Guild. 

How should the Stunt Ensemble winners be decided at SAG #SAGAwards

— Nathaniel Rogers (@nathanielr) February 4, 2021

I was joking on twitter about them, but at the same time, all awards categories should be taken seriously. It's an art form. What do you think of their nominations and how would you determine the winners... 

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Captain America vs. Captain America

Can Marvel Studio's finally win the Best Visual Effects Oscar at the Oscars via Avengers: Endgame? Or will The Lion King's photo-realism or something as yet unseen take the prize? Here's a video of the making of the Captain America vs Captain America fight.

That fight was definitely the highlight of the movie for us, especially given its perfect punchline...

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The New Classics: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

by Michael Cusumano

Scene: Scaling the Burj Khalifa
In the course of writing this column, I eventually got around to asking myself the inevitable question:  “What is the 21st century scene I’ve watched the most times?” 

I knew with certainty that the answer was the Burj Khalifa scene from Brad Bird’s Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, even if I couldn’t immediately account for the why. Of course you could simply say ”Why not?” It’s already firmly established in the pantheon of great action scenes. But it’s not like the past two decades have seen a dearth of great action filmmaking. Why not “Ship’s Mast” from Death Proof or the centerpiece car chase from Drive? What exactly is it about Tom Cruise pawing his way up the side of the world’s tallest building? 

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Links: Madame X, King Richard, and Book Club 2?

• IndieWire the problem of too much television for Emmy voters
• Vanity Fair Book Club is getting a sequel with its quartet of stars returning. VF wants Andy Garcia back as well and we concur.
• Variety an ouch ouch pan review of Nicolas Winding Refn's new TV series (which he keeps saying is a movie)
• Variety this seems like a bad-omen move. Amazon is only giving their chief Oscar hopeful The Report (starring Adam Driver and Annette Bening) a two week theatrical window before it streams...

[More after the jump including Madonna's Madame X, Daredevil's longshot fight sequences, news on King Richard, and Catherine O'Hara visiting Broadway...]

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