It's Virginia Mayo's Centennial

by Nathaniel R

Today marks the centennial of another Old Hollywood star that seems to be forgotten these days but perhaps there are fans among you? Born in Missouri on this day in 1920, Virginia Clara Jones hit the Vaudeville circuit as a professional entertainer when she was 17 and adopted the stage name of "Virginia Mayo" even before Hollywood came calling in the early 1940s. Her first credited film role was in the biopic Jack London (1943) starring Michael O'Shea (who she would marry four years later). Though she was a leading lady with many box office hits to her name, enduring classics (mostly) eluded her. Naturally then she's best remembered today in a supporting role as the unfaithful wife in the superb Best Picture winner The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), one of those utterly magic films where every single actor is killing it...

Click to read more ...

How Had I Never Seen... "Beau Travail"?

by Cláudio Alves

People cope with stress in different ways. Earlier this month, when the US presidential election was unfolding and the world held its breath, I turned to Twitter to reminisce about 2020 cinematic excellence and try to calm my nerves. I also scoured the internet for good deals on physical media, a bit of retail therapy, adding more DVDs and Blu-Rays to a collection that has long ago surpassed a thousand films. Part of the new additions were my first ever Criterion editions! 

All this to say that the discs arrived this week and, since the Criterion Channel has a new collection of Claire Denis films, I decided to finally watch the much-lauded Beau Travail and write about the experience. And what an experience it was…

Click to read more ...

November. It's a Wrap

Hi readers. I know I got lost in the weeds a bit in November. It's that damn International Feature Oscar race. It really brings out my OCD qualities with those Oscar history overviews (Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iran, Israel, Italy, Netherlands,  Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland) so I skimped on other stuff. ANYWAY, here are some of key posts of November in case you missed any. There's one day left but it's the holiday weekend so we're doing the wrap up early ;) 

Highlights from the Month That Was

• Ethan Hawke at 50 -an appreciation. The definitive Gen X actor?
• Home for the Holidays -deserves to be a better remembered!
• "Gay Best Friend" -a delightful new series kicked off with My Best Friend's Wedding and Under the Tuscan Sun
• Netflix has too many Oscar contenders - considering the possibilities
• Nicole Kidman in The Undoing -giving us eyeball acting! 
• Joan Crawford -Criterion's curated collection
• Cher in 1987 -how she ruled the world that year
• Gene Tierney - a three film retrospective for her Centennial
• Carmen Maura in Law of Desire - the definitive Almodóvar interpreter?

Most Discussed

• Amy Adams in Arrival - almost there at the Oscars
• Smackdown '87 - Olympia Dukakis vs Norma vs the Annes (x 3)

COMING IN DECEMBER / ANY REQUESTS?
Oscar chart updates this week. Then a new movie bonanza as the studios finally release their supposedly strongest Oscar contenders --mostly huddled around Christmas week as if they're pretending it's a normal awards-strategy year: The Prom, One Night in Miami, Soul, Promising Young Woman, The Father, Minari, Mank, Ammonite, Nomadland, and Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.  Beyond that flurry of titles we'll begin our "year in review" list-making frenzy.

Not sure how much time we'll have for older titles but which of the following birthdays/anniversaries would you most like to see celebrated? 10th: Black Swan, Rabbit Hole, The Fighter, True Grit, Blue Valentine, Another Year; 25th: 12 Monkeys, Dead Man Walking, Sense & Sensibility, Nixon, Waiting to Exhale, Cutthroat Island, Timothée Chalamet; 50th: The Aristocats, Donkey Skin, Husbands, Love Story, Horror of Frankenstein, The Wild Country, Puzzle of a Downfall Child, Little Big Man, Gimme Shelter, Regina Hall, Jennifer Connelly; 75th: Spellbound, Bells of St Marys, Leave Her to Heaven, or National Velvet?

Showbiz History: Adele drops, Bridget retires, Natalie drowns

6 random things that happened on this day, November 29th, in showbiz history

1898 C.S. Lewis born in Belfast, Ireland. His Narnia books would be adapted for screens both large and small and he even got his own biopic of sorts in Shadowlands (1993) starring Sir Anthony Hopkins. I always believeed that Hopkins would have been Oscar nominated for this if it hadn't arrived the same year as Remains of the Day (since you can't be nominated twice in any one acting category in the samee year). On an unrelated note: my personal favourite C.S. Lewis work is "The Screwtape Letters" but "Chronicles of Narnia" gets all of the attention.)

The Nuremberg trials, movie star deaths, and one vanishing act by marriage after the jump... 

Click to read more ...

20:20 (Pt 4) Contrarian takes, gay comedies, and a KStew double

Part One | Part Two | Part Three 
We're occassionally surveying the films of 2020 that are already streaming, whether they're great, terrible or anywhere inbetween in case you're looking to get caught up on the film year before December/January's "year in review" style media mania. We're freezing them at the 20th minute and 20th second just for streaming roulette kicks. How many of these twelve 2020 pictures have you seen?

-What are we getting?
-Uh... nothing good.

UNDERWATER (William Eubank, US)
20th Century Fox. Original release date: January 10th. Streaming on HBOMax

KStew's dialogue right there is suddenly how I'm feeling about the cinema of 2020. I know I know we're supposed to be saying it was rich. Well, I was feeling like it was rich until I started drafting up the annual Film Bitch Awards and realized it was a wasteland once I removed all the festival titles that don't have distribution in 2020. Still have to get through another 20 pictures though and if half of them are wonderful the problem will be solved?  I promise that I'm not just in a grumpy mood though the following text might suggest otherwise as I had an entirely lovely Thanksgiving. How about you? 

They were actually hillbilly royalty because my pawpaw was related to the guy who started the Hatfield-McCoy feud.

Click to read more ...