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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Echoes from Oscars Past

by Cláudio Alves

The past always returns, one way or the other. It haunts the present and prophesizes our uncertain futures. That's why History is a cycle of recurring nightmares and dreams, one overtaking the other in ruthless combat.

Anyway, we're here to talk about the Academy Awards. The ghosts of Oscars past always come to haunt the current races, helping shape narratives, setting records to be broken and announcing patterns of cyclical discontent. Regarding the Best Picture nominees of 2019, here are some of the Oscar champions of the past that haunt them… 

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Did Scorsese actually score five nominations?

by Cláudio Alves

Officially, Martin Scorsese received two nominations for this year's Oscars. He's a contender for Best Picture, as a producer, and the Best Director statuette for his long-gestating epic The Irishman. However, there's a fellow nominee whose movie is noticeably indebted to the old master's filmography. So much so, that some would go as far as to say that these other project's nominations are due to nostalgia for the Scorsese of yore as much as they are to this new movie's actual quality.

We're talking about Todd Phillips and his triple nomination for the Joker…

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You talkin' about De Niro? You talkin' about De Niro?

It's a performance episode of "Contrarian Corner". Here's Ben Miller...

The narrative has been pushed.  Robert De Niro is back! Al Pacino is back! Scorsese and Netflix are a match made in heaven! The Irishman is the Best Picture frontrunner.  I'm not here to disagre with the critical acclaim.  But, we need to have a talk about what is going on with Robert De Niro.  

There are three main problems...

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Parasite's loot and other Palme d'Or winner returns

Let's marvel again at the success of Parasite in US release, but this time in the context of Palme d'Or winners. Parasite is just one notch away from being the 10 highest grossing Cannes winner of all time (at least as far as contemporary box office reporting goes). It's already the most successful Palme d'Or winner of all time among the non-English language winners. 

Box office figures aren't readily available before the 1970s so we started in 1970 -- there are a few winners since then with no US box office results which means they either weren't ever released in the US or were somehow not reported. It's also worth noting that these numbers are not adjusted for inflation so we're assuming that either MASH or Apocalypse Now which bookended the 1970s would actually top the list as the highest grossing Palme d'Or winner ever. Figures are only domestic (USA) totals.

TOP GROSSING PALME D'OR WINNERS IN THE U.S.
figures as of January 26th, 2020

1. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) $119.1
2. Pulp Fiction (1994) $107.9
3. Apocalypse Now (1979) $83.4
4. MASH (1970) $81.6...

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