Matt vs. the Academy

The Emmys, television's equivalent to the Oscars, begins voting today to select its nominees. One of the perks of all the (tiny) parts I played  on American TV shows over the last few years is that I got to join the Television Academy, allowing me to vote in the Emmys. And oof, I thought it was difficult finding time to watch movies. The sheer volume of Emmy-eligible content is entirely overwhelming. It would be literally impossible to watch every episode of every show vying for a nomination, so if you have any recommendations of shows that I absolutely shouldn't miss, please help me whittle down my shortlist. Meanwhile, here's another picture in contention for the 1935 Best Picture Oscar... The Lives of a Bengal Lancer Director : Henry Hathaway Screenplay : Waldemar Young, John L. Balderston, Achmed Abdullah, Grover Jones, William Slavens McNutt (suggested by the novel by Francis Yeats-Brown) Starring : Gary Cooper, Franchot Tone, Richard Cromwell, Guy Standing, C. Aub...

One of the things I miss about living in L.A. (and New York, for that matter) is the prevalence of revival cinemas. Being the home of Hollywood, there was never a shortage of film events to attend and I particularly loved going to see classic movies at the New Beverly and the Egyptian , among many others. The options in Sydney for this type of thing are limited at best, though with new movies relatively scarce in the last 12 months, many mainstream cinemas here have been adding older classics to their rosters, so there's perhaps a larger selection than usual right now. In my younger days, however, I lived near the spectacular  Orpheum , where I managed to see 70mm prints of Ben-Hur and Lawrence of Arabia. I also saw midnight screenings of the original Star Wars trilogy at the Randwick Ritz , which, along with their current prolonged retrospectives of Charlie Chaplin, Pedro Almodovar and Nicole Kidman films, have several Bette Davis vehicles scheduled in the upcoming week...

This year's extended Oscar season finally wrapped up at the end of April and, while my prediction result was fairly average for me (17 correct out of 23 categories), my prediction about my predictions was pretty spot on. I figured I'd struggle with a few up-in-the-air categories and, indeed, I didn't succeed in the crap shoot that was the Best Actress race. I did, however, peg the similarly unpredictable Best Film Editing category, but that was essentially my only success from those unsettled races. On the other hand, I surmised that this might be the first time in six years I correctly identify the Best Picture winner, and that prophecy was indeed fulfilled, thanks to Nomadland. While we wait (a slightly shorter amount of time than usual) for the next Oscar season, let's take a look at another nominee from the Best Picture race of 1935... Les Misérables Director : Richard Boleslawski Screenplay : W.P. Lipscomb (based on the novel by Victor Hugo) Starring : Fredr...