Matt vs. the Academy

Well, I've set yet another record for a single year of review on this blog. At almost twice as long as the previous record, this one took almost four years to complete! Granted, this was one of only two Best Picture contests that consisted of 12 nominees, but that still means that, on average, I only watched one film every four months. In any case, they've all been viewed now, so let's get to the business of crowning a winner. The nominees for Best Picture of 1935 are: Alice Adams Broadway Melody of 1936 Captain Blood David Copperfield The Informer Les Misérables The Lives of a Bengal Lancer A Midsummer Night's Dream Mutiny on the Bounty Naughty Marietta Ruggles of Red Gap Top Hat As mentioned, this is the equal largest crop of Best Picture nominees in Academy history, so as one would expect, there's something for everyone - dramas, musicals, adventures, and almost every combination thereof. With such a variety of genres, separating them is no easy ...

Despite my lack of confidence, my Oscar predictions this year (20 correct out of 23 categories) turned out to be my best ever. (Well, I once correctly picked 21 categories, but that was when there were 24 categories total, so as a percentage, this year was better.) I'd like to say it was all skill, but in the end, it turns out all the favourites and slight favourites came out on top, so there really weren't any major surprises... (I mean, there was obviously one big surprise on the night, but that's not what I meant.) The two main categories that I missed (Picture and Original Screenplay) were also gettable, to be honest, but for whatever reason, I ignored the late rise of CODA and Belfast, respectively, and stuck to my guns with The Power of the Dog and Licorice Pizza. If I'd gone ahead and chosen the slight favourites in those two categories, then Animated Short would have been the sole mistake. Now, here's the final nominee in 1935's Best Picture competition....

Happy New Year! Awards season is beginning to ramp up and there are a lot of exciting titles in the running, barely any of which I've seen as yet. I did get the chance to watch Encanto  with my family the other night and thoroughly enjoyed it. No doubt we'll be hearing its name mentioned when the Best Animated Film nominations are announced. And with new films from Oscar-bait directors Anderson, Branagh, Campion, McKay, Scott and Spielberg, among many others, I'm looking forward to potentially adding some new favourites to my all-time list. For now, let's begin the new year with one more of 1935's Best Picture contenders... The Informer Director : John Ford Screenplay : Dudley Nichols (based on the novel by Liam O'Flaherty) Starring : Victor McLaglen, Heather Angel, Preston Foster, Margot Grahame, Wallace Ford, Una O'Connor Academy Awards : 6 nominations 4 wins, including Best Director and Best Actor (McLaglen) It's 1922 in Dublin during the Iris...

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...

I've managed to squeak in one more review before the end of the year, which is somewhat surprising since we're well and truly in the midst of the school holidays here in Australia. It's also usually about the time of year that awards season would be heating up, but with the delay of the Oscars ceremony by a couple of months, there's a strange feeling of limbo. Still, lots of Oscar bait movies have already been released with more to come, so I'll try to cover some of that in the coming weeks. For now, here's the next Best Picture contender from 1935... Captain Blood Director : Michael Curtiz Screenplay : Casey Robinson (based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini) Starring : Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Lionel Atwill, Basil Rathbone, Ross Alexander, Guy Kibbee, Henry Stephenson Academy Awards : 2 nominations 0 wins 17th-century physician Peter Blood (Flynn) is arrested for treating an enemy of the crown, bundled up with other rebels, and shipped to the...

2020 is almost over and, boy, has it been a doozy. Australia is handling the pandemic considerably well at this moment in time, though I realise that's not the case in a lot of other places around the world, so it really gives new meaning to the phrase " the lucky country ". It's all the more poignant considering the fact that up until just a few months prior to the outbreak, I was a resident of California, a region that sadly does not seem to be faring as well. But with vaccines beginning to be rolled out in a few countries, let's hope that 2021 will allow us to return to some semblance of normal. In the meantime, I've checked out another nominee from the 1935 Best Picture contest... David Copperfield Director : George Cukor Screenplay : Hugh Walpole, Howard Estabrook, Lenore J. Coffee (based on the novel by Charles Dickens) Starring : Frank Lawton, Freddie Bartholomew, W.C. Fields, Lionel Barrymore, Madge Evans, Maureen O'Sullivan, Edna May Oli...

With so much going on in the world right now, this silly little movie blog seems somewhat insignificant (even more insignificant than it did before, if that's possible), but maybe it'll be a welcome distraction for somebody. And with all the big film releases getting delayed again and again, next year's Oscars may be a little light on eligible content if things don't pick up soon, so maybe reading about Oscar history will be all that's left. In any case, with the next Academy Awards ceremony shifted back a couple of months, I'll see if I can catch up a bit by getting a few more of these reviews done before then. So, here are my thoughts on the eventual Best Picture winner from 1935... Mutiny on the Bounty Director : Frank Lloyd Screenplay : Talbot Jennings, Jules Furthman, Carey Wilson (based on the novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall) Starring : Charles Laughton, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone, Herbert Mundin, Eddie Quillan, Dudley Digges...

I'm ba-aack! First, let me gloat about my Oscar predictions from this year. I correctly picked 21 of the 24 winners, the best result I've ever achieved in the more than two decades I've been making predictions. I only missed Sound Editing and the two big ones, Director and Picture. Perhaps the most miraculous part, though, is that I managed to ace all the short film categories! Now, after the longest period of inactivity (not counting Oscar predictions) in this blog's history, I've returned with a new review. And a lot has happened since my last post almost two years ago. The biggest of those happenings is that I said goodbye to Los Angeles late last year and moved the family back to Sydney. Though, as a dual Australian-US citizen, I'll still travel back to LA a couple of times a year for my career, so it's not a permanent goodbye. In fact, I was there a couple of weeks ago right before everything got serious in the world. Within a few days, the entert...

From the chill of Sydney's winter back to the oppressive heat of another Los Angeles summer, I've returned to my adopted home without blogging about the last film I watched before leaving L.A. in the first place. The three weeks in Australia was a nice holiday, but now it's time to get back to business. Next up, we take a look at another musical entry into 1935's Best Picture contest... Broadway Melody of 1936 Director : Roy Del Ruth Screenplay : Jack McGowan, Sid Silvers, Moss Hart, Harry W. Conn Starring : Jack Benny, Eleanor Powell, Robert Taylor, Una Merkel, Sid Silvers, Buddy Ebsen, June Knight, Vilma Ebsen Academy Awards : 3 nominations 1 win, for Best Dance Direction After his boss orders him to make his column more sensational, Broadway gossip columnist Bert Keeler (Benny) stumbles upon a potentially sleazy relationship between producer Bob Gordon (Taylor) and wealthy widow Lillian Brent (Knight). She is investing in his show on the ...

Greetings from wintry Sydney, Australia. I'm back in my home town for a few weeks visiting family and friends, so I may not get much of a chance to watch more of the current crop of nominees, but I had already watched two more of them before I left L.A., so I hope to at least find a little time to blog about them while I'm here. And indeed, here are my thoughts on one of those films, another Best Picture nominee from 1935... Naughty Marietta Director : Robert Z. Leonard, W.S. Van Dyke Screenplay : Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, John Lee Mahin (based on the operetta by Victor Herbert [music] and Rida Johnson Young [book & lyrics]) Starring : Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan, Elsa Lanchester, Douglas Dumbrille, Joseph Cawthorne, Cecilia Parker, Walter Kingsford, Greta Meyer, Akim Tamiroff Academy Awards : 2 nominations 1 win, for Best Sound In order to escape an arranged marriage, a French princess (MacDonald) adopts the identity of a ...

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending an Academy event which, for this Oscars freak, was a giddy experience, despite it being a fairly low-key affair, open to the public. In any case, I'm grateful to be living in a city that affords me the opportunity to attend such things. As you can see from the program (pictured to the right), this was a George Stevens Lecture, the Academy's long-running series of screenings/lectures celebrating the cinematic arts (and, if I'm not mistaken, I believe the point is that it's always a George Stevens film). While waiting for the event to begin, the audience was treated to some archival footage of interviews with legendary director George Stevens and producer Pandro S. Berman , discussing some behind-the-scenes tidbits about the movie we were about to see. Then, after a brief introduction by Academy President John Bailey, we heard from the director's own son, George Stevens Jr. , also a filmmaker and an important figure in ...