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Wednesday
Aug282019

Oscar Trivia, Weekly: Double Oscar winners... How long does it take?

For today's utterly random weekly Oscar trivia, how about two-time acting winners? For the purposes of this list we're ignoring the rare third wins (that list only includes six people: Streep, Hepburn, Nicholson, Bergman, Brennan, and Day-Lewis) and focusing on the gaps between the first and second Oscar wins. What is most common for the double-dippers?

Marlon Brando's two wins...

ALL THE DOUBLE-WINNERS
+ GAPS BETWEEN OSCAR WINS 
FROM LONGEST TO SHORTEST

01
Helen Hayes (38 years: The Sin of Madelon Claudet to Airport)

02
Katharine Hepburn (34 years: Morning Glory to Guess Who's Coming to Dinner)

03 
Frances McDormand (21 years: Fargo to Three Billboards)...

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Wednesday
Aug282019

Doc Corner: 'Vision Portraits' and 'Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins'

By Glenn Dunks

Aware that people with vision impairments may likely read this review, I have included accessable captions underneath the images. In my day job I regularly have to work to accessibility guidelines and I think it's something we should all think about.

I’m not going to lie. There really isn’t all that much connecting the two films I’m going to talk about today other than they’re both being released around the same time and I wanted to give them some attention. And, truly, what are we even doing here if we can’t throw a wee bit of love to movies that would otherwise go completely under the radar?

Film poster for Vision Portraits showing Rodney Evans' face against colourful lights that are out of focus.I have no doubt that Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins will find an appreciative audience. She was, after all, a famous writer with dedicated fans right up to her death in 2007. I am less convinced that Rodney Evans’ delicate and partly autobiographic Vision Portraits would manage the same. It’s small, you see. Small in the sense that it doesn’t call attention to itself. Small in the sense that it tells its story with grace and humanism and allows its audience to depart with a mind full of contemplation. It is a morsel of a documentary (it is 78 minutes long), but one that should open its viewers to ideas that it would otherwise likely have little reason to consider.

Evans’ film is certainly the most interesting of the pair thematically and stylistically...

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Wednesday
Aug282019

Soundtracking: Juliet, Naked

by Chris Feil

Musical standom sometimes has more to do with defining ourselves than it does the music itself. Instead, the music is just the key that unlocks something within us and lays a foundation for obsession over an artist’s life and legacy. That obsession is fueled online, between warring factions of “teams” and Reddit board investigations of creative minutiae in search of greater meaning, no musician safe from the scrutiny. It’s almost entirely separate from the music that inspires the standom. That divide between musical obsession and connection is at the core of Juliet, Naked, a film as delightfully revisitable as an underrated album.

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Tuesday
Aug272019

What's on your cinematic mind?

Do tell in the comments. It's the quiet before the storm in terms of the (prestige) film year so where has your cinematic mind been drifting? 

Tuesday
Aug272019

The New Classics: It's Such a Beautiful Day

by Michael Cusumano  

Scene: Immortality
Bill, the protagonist of Don Hertzfeldt’s animated masterpiece It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012), is the picture of ordinariness. With only his simple rectangle and line hat to distinguish him, he is every man.

The sweeping classical music on the soundtrack as we are plunged into Bill’s existence briefly tricks into thinking that Bill's life might be an extraordinary one. The film shares some selections with The Tree of Life, released the year before. But where Terrence Malick matched that music to images of equal grandeur, like the creation of the universe and butterflies landing on Jessica Chastain, Hertzfeldt goes in the opposite direction, using symphonies to elevate depictions of the most insignificant events conceivable. Bill’s life is as humdrum as his appearance...

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