Matt vs. the Academy

Yes, I'm still alive. Obviously, I've had a lot going on these last few months. The play I mentioned in my last post (over four months ago - yikes!) has come and gone. The Club was our theatre company's final show in New York City (read about it here ) before Kat, Charlie and I packed up and moved out west to Los Angeles. It's been a couple of months already so we're settled in now and are not even remotely missing the New York weather. I figured I should try to squeeze one more review in before the end of the year, so yesterday I watched the film that would take the top prize in the 1987 Best Picture competition... The Last Emperor Director : Bernardo Bertolucci Screenplay : Mark Peploe and Bernardo Bertolucci (based on Henry Pu-yi's autobiography "From Emperor to Citizen") Starring : John Lone, Joan Chen, Peter O'Toole, Ying Ruocheng, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Maggie Han, Ric Young, Vivien Wu Academy Awards : 9 ...

Who'd have thought raising a baby would take up so much time? Between looking after Charlie and getting things together for our theatre company's next play (more on that soon), movie-watching opportunities have been negligible. On top of that, we're also organising our imminent move to Los Angeles, so things are busy, to say the least. I finally found a spare couple of hours to look at another 1987 Best Picture contender... Fatal Attraction Director : Adrian Lyne Screenplay : James Dearden Starring : Michael Douglas, Glenn Close, Anne Archer, Ellen Hamilton Latzen, Stuart Pankin, Ellen Foley, Fred Gwynne Academy Awards : 6 nominations 0 wins Dan (Douglas), Beth (Archer) and their six-year-old daughter Ellen (Latzen) are the picture of a perfect family. But when Beth and Ellen take a weekend trip to the country to scope out the new family house, Dan throws matrimonial bliss out the window and shamefully has a brief affair with a work acquaintance, Alex (C...

This past Sunday was Father's Day here in the United States and, indeed, most other countries around the world. Obviously, it held particular significance for me since it was the first Father's Day in which I was actually a father. Interestingly, however, Father's Day is celebrated in September in Australia - another one of those odd differences between our nations. Even more interestingly, Mother's Day is celebrated on the same day in May in both countries, so since our now international family will do things both the American and the Australian way, Kat will only get one day of honour every year, while I will cheekily receive two. Let's take a look now at one of the contenders in the Academy's race for Best Picture of 1987... Moonstruck Director : Norman Jewison Screenplay : John Patrick Shanley Starring : Cher, Nicolas Cage, Vincent Gardenia, Olympia Dukakis, Danny Aiello, Julie Bovasso, John Mahoney, Louis Guss Academy Awards : 6 nominations ...

I can't seem to find an explanation as to why the Academy decided to increase the nominee count to 12 for the 1934 Best Picture category. It's an odd number (well, it's an even number, but you know what I mean), and not at all warranted when you look at the list of films that received those nominations. There are certainly a small handful that could easily have been left off the list and nobody would have complained. The nominees for Best Picture of 1934 are: The Barretts of Wimpole Street Cleopatra Flirtation Walk The Gay Divorcee Here Comes the Navy The House of Rothschild Imitation of Life It Happened One Night One Night of Love The Thin Man Viva Villa! The White Parade In a time before the Academy shied away from romantic comedies, the genre was well represented among this dozen. For that matter, so were romance films in general. In fact, every nominee features some sort of love story, whether it be the main focus or a supporting character...

Milestone time! The following review represents the 200th film I have screened for this project. It's sobering to think the 100th film ( Pulp Fiction ) was reviewed just a touch over one year after the project's commencement, yet the subsequent 100 films took over three times as long to get through. But who's quibbling? And now we close off 1934's record-setting 12-way Best Picture race with... The House of Rothschild Director : Alfred L. Werker Screenplay : Nunnally Johnson (based on the play by George Hembert Westley) Starring : George Arliss, Boris Karloff, Loretta Young, Robert Young, C. Aubrey Smith Academy Awards : 1 nomination 0 wins As an old Jewish money changer in 18th century Prussia, Mayer Rothschild (Arliss) is forced to deal with many injustices from the government. After being gouged by the tax collector, his dying request to his five sons is to head up a bank in each of the major cities across Europe. Thirty years later, Nathan (also A...

Every now and then during this project, particularly while reviewing years prior to 1940, there is a movie that proves a tad elusive to get my hands on. I've visited the UCLA Film Archive twice (once for this current year of review, as it happens) to view three separate films and have had to find some "creative" ways (*cough* YouTube *cough*) to view others. When I began the current year of review (five months ago, shamefully), this next film had been given no home video release. It was also nowhere to be seen via my usual illicit channels, so I simply threw caution to the wind and hoped that TCM would schedule it soon. As luck would have it, they have indeed scheduled it ... for July. As more luck would have it, the Warner Archive Collection added the film to its list of distributed titles just a couple of months ago, making it available to order . Serendipitous, indeed. Considering I only have two films left in this current year of review, it seemed silly to wait an...

As I mentioned in the last post, I'm now officially a published author. Well, an e-published author. A handful of reviews from Matt vs. the Academy have made their way into the Take2 Guide to Steven Spielberg . And now, the good people at Take2 Publishing are offering a discount to Matt vs. the Academy readers. So, if you want to read what dozens of bloggers and reviewers have to say about Spielberg movies, you can now get 20% off the regular price by  visiting this link and applying the discount code mva2020 during checkout. Enjoy! Let's take a look now at another contender for 1934's Best Picture prize... The Gay Divorcee Director : Mark Sandrich Screenplay : George Marion Jr., Dorothy Yost and Edward Kaufman (based on the Broadway musical "Gay Divorce" by Dwight Taylor, Kenneth Webb and Samuel Hoffenstein) Starring : Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Alice Brady, Edward Everett Horton, Erik Rhodes, Eric Blore Academy Awards : 5 nominations 1 win,...